The chutzpah of Republicans knows no limits. They complain that the hypocrisy of Mark Foley, defender of children from predators, was revealed six weeks before the election--when the Speaker and other House Republican leaders have known about it since last November, and like many a Catholic bishop tried to hush it up.
W complains about revelation of the National Intelligence Estimate (dome in April, representing the consensus of sixteen government agencies, including the CIA, FBI, State Department, and all four branches of the armed forces) close to the election, which, among other things shows that he and his crew have been lying about the state of the occupation of Iraq and ye olde "fighting there so we don't have to fight here." W could have been honest with the American people five months earlier (if he was capable of being honest.
He has appointed the heads of all the government agencies who collectively concluded that the invasion/occupation of Iraq has "made the overall terrorism problem worse," galvanizing Muslims inclined to jihadism around the world as a "cause celebre," and that it has contributed directly to increasing recruitment of violent Islamist terrorists, so that the threat of Islamist terrorists is now more acute than it was before 9/11.
The day after three more retired generals publicly complained that Donald Rumsfeld was mismanaging the war and is "incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically," W did something he is extremely reluctant to do, declassified parts of the report, to show that what had been reported. As the pro-war Economist noted, "the declassified excerpts corroborate the anonymous sources" and the increasingly persuasive message that the Iraq war is a Western attempt to conquer the Muslim world (particularly its oil-producing parts.
Many of us have been saying for years that rather than enhancing the security of the US and its citizens, the fiasco of the ill-planned and undermanned occupation of Iraq has undermined our security and inspired Islamist jihadists--starting in Iraq where there were none before the US invasion. It is not we critics of the Bush/Rumsfeld fiasco who are stimulating rage and greater sympathy for terrorists among Muslims, but the Bush/Rumsfeld fiasco. And it is saner heads within the Bush junta said so five months ago, which Bush & Co. covered up and recently went on an offensive of Big Lies about terrorism, patriotism, and the mess in Iraq.
The untimeliness of letting the American people know this assessment is Bush's fault, though, as usual, his concern is that someone has let the populace have a glimpse of the true perilous situation, not with the perilous situation or learning from how the Bush/Rumsfeld style of management contemptuous of "reality-based" considerations got the US into the quicksand.
Stop them before they kill again!
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Comments: 25
http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com/
we will have to fight it here.
I didn't even read the entire article. I didn't have to.
Rick Howell
Even for a Bush supporter, you seem remarkably unable to get facts right or admit to realities!
The first thing we should do is elect a congress that will hold Bush in some degree of check. An all-Republican government has been a disaster for the US and a disaster for the world, not least in multiplying the number of Islamists embracing terrorism. Getting out of Iraq (didn't Bush establish democracy there?) will let Sunnis and Shi'ites kill each other and remove what both consider the affront of infidels running a Muslim country. The bloodletting will be hideous, but Bush's ill-planned foray has already cost more than 30,000 Iraqis lives--and civilians continue to be killed by US bombs, which is Rumsfeld's preferred modus operandi.
Islam is not evil. Its a religion whose fringe groups are evil. Were the crusades evil, or were they righteous because we were on the right side.
What realisms have you actually said Richard; nothing that Karl Rove (the Joseph Goebbels of our time) hasn't told you to say.
Hmm Hmm.
1) Thank god Kerry isn't running the country (See, White House playbook, Chapter 1, subsection A)
2) An olive branch to Islam, when exactly did we do this, was it in between bombing runs for the last fifty years, or establishing dictatorships so we could have gas at a reasonable price?
3) While we are talking about 9-11, why did we not attack Saudi Arabia, if 19 of the 20 ACTUAL ATTACKERS were from there? Oh yeah, its because that country keeps enough rich people rich in this country, including MR Bush.
You, my friend are brainwashed. You haven't thought for yourself in a long time. I don't think peace makes everything better, but war usually makes things worse. Especially when you try to unite a country of three distinct ethnic groups that have hated each other for 1500 years and been unified for approximately 60. This is the country we choose to build a democracy around. Please.
Mr. Bush makes me hate my country, and all the little idealogues that regurgitate his quaint and meaningless one-liners (left and right). The fact of the matter is that terrorism has been around forever. FOREVER! We are never going to 'defeat' it, and to say that the Iraq war has to do with bestowing democracy or fighting terrorists on their own turf (my personal favorite) is nothing short of delusional.
You want to make up your own minds about what's going on there, READ A GODDAMN history book. The only reason this nation gives a flying f$#* about the middle east is because it has oil that makes Americans rich. I would love to know how many Americans prior to 1990 could actually identify Kuwait as a COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
The government at this point is entirely Republican. Cleaning up the incredible mess they have made is at this point a Repubican problem. Reining them into obeying laws would be a start. Recognizing that we are part of the world and do not make reality to fit neo-con fantasies would be another important step. We to restore trust in the rest of the world that we obey laws, honor treaties, do not engage in torture, etc.
And let me repeat, that the view that the US presence in Iraq is recruiting terroritsts is a diagnosis made by 16 government agencies looking at data through something other than Dick Cheney's distorting lenses.
You poeple are blind. If the world had done anything, we wouldn't be in this mess. Yes i said mess. I'm not happy about it, but the world did nothing while Hitler rose to power. I'd love to see the world help so you just send an Email to france and ask them to help. Oh yea, when their muslim's try to take over their country we'll go help them again because thats what we do. Your point of veiw is laughable and your reasoning is flawed at best.
If the LIbs ruled the world everything would be beautiful. I can see the butterflies now.
Good night
Before the world failed to stop Hitler, the German people did, and, feeling that I'm living in something analogous to German in 1934-35, I think it is my patriotic duty to seek to return the US to the rule of law, to do what Bush lied about in taking his oath of office, that is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.
Typical.
The goal of Islam is to rule the world
And Bush, et al, are not out to rule the world...?