Saturday
06Jun2009
Obama Speech to Muslims in Egypt 'Worse Than My Worst Fears', Demoralizing to Troops
Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 06:33AM David Frum, former Bush speech writer who coined the phrase “axis of evil”, critiqued President Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt addressing Muslims saying:
“I feared in advance this speech would be a terrible mistake but it was worse than my worst fears.”
According to Frum, Obama legitimized angry Muslims as being mainstream, insulted France and criticized United States security laws in a “rhetorical concession that he thinks means nothing” even though those laws are relied upon to thwart the private funding of terrorism from Muslims in the United States. Essentially, the President maligned his own country for short term personal gain in the Muslim world.
Then there’s Heather, a military wife in Virginia Beach who called the Mark Levin show and expressed her distress at the Obama speech as she dissolved into tears, just seeing her husband off to Iraq earlier that morning. She was upset over Obama’s criticism of the war in Iraq:
Mark Levin just thinks the Obama speech “sucked”.
My husband, who is active duty Army, and I thought the same thing, that it was an appalling act for the President of the United States to criticize our mission in Iraq and the detainee system at Gitmo. He called the mission in Iraq, which is arguably one of America’s most successful military and humanitarian missions in our history, a “war of choice” that ultimately left Iraqis better off, leaving Wordsmith to conclude the war must have been a good choice.
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Reader Comments (44)
I think what bugs me the most is how he goes around talking about how we shouldn't interfere with other nations and then proceeds to do just that.
Words and actions...
I cannot say what I truly want to because I am on active duty, but be advised that Amy's analysis is correct: this was very, very demoralizing to combat veterans who have donated major portions of their lives and their family's live to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This is a perfect example of why experience is so important to the office of the President. He (Obama) is leading this country by position only, and rather than inspiring others to follow, he discourages with his words and behavior those most critical to the security of this nation. From where I sit, there really is no notable leadership qualities being demonstrated at this time, and learning on the job isn't an option. the President is NOT a manager, he is supposed to be a LEADER.
Gary, you nailed it. As one who has been shot at, mortared, and barely escaped IED and RPG attacks, I can tell you that leadership is a LOT less about position and a lot more about knowing what the hell to do do under fire and giving the right orders. Some junior senator who has never been in charge of anything who thinks Jeremiah Wright is a prophet of God is not the right person to lead our nation in a time of unprecedented crises. The "anything is better than Bush" derangement syndrome created by the MSM is squarely to blame for these rookie blunders at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Our current Commander in Chief is using the teleprompter of Jeremiah Wright to govern us into abject defeat in the 21st century.
Mark Levin nailed it completely. I cannot even imagine what the military men and women and even their families must have felt when that moron demoralized their sacrifices for this nation. I am livid with indignation.
How dare he!! And the MSM just licks it up like dogs. We need, just like Johnny and Gary have been saying, a LEADER, not some snot-nosed kid that has no idea what he is doing. He is placating our enemies and that is not acceptable.
I am sorry if I got ugly Amy, I just cannot believe that man is being allowed to destroy our nation.
Great comments, Leticia.
Obama dissed the troops and their families throughout the speech without realizing it.
What's really interesting Amy is that just the other day you described the speech in your own comment section as not too bad (save for a few points). Suddenly you hear/read some comments from some fellow righties and you're ripping the entire thing as a failure.
and I quote...."It was a good speech overall"
Leadership, for a President, is not about knowing how to act under fire but knowing when it is absolutely necessary to ask the men and women of our Armed Forces to enter the fire.
Even if a President believed that a nation half-way around the world with no long-range delivery capability and a demoralized military had WMD, going to war would be a bad decision. Even if a President believed that a dictator was cruel and evil to his own people, going to war against him would be a bad decision. Even if a President believed strongly in democracy, going to war to impose democracy on another nation would be a bad decision. When it is abundantly clear that none of those conditions existed and yet a President sent our forces to war, that is a crime of the first magnitude.
The anger of those who risked life and limb in Iraq should not be toward Obama for telling the truth that the war was one of choice. The anger should be directed at those who sent them there when it was not absolutely necessary. If you want to be angry with Obama, be angry that his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is too slow. Be angry that he is escalating an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.
Instead of siding with the criminal who sent you to Iraq, join with other Iraq War veterans to oppose the policy that sends American soldiers to war unnecessarily. Following the orders of those in authority is the job of a soldier and those who followed those orders in Iraq and Afghanistan have every right to be proud of their service. The job of a citizen, however, is not to kowtow to authority even when it is wrong, but to realize that "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [that government], and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
the idiot who coined the phrase :axis of evil" and the extremist right wing talk show host Mark Levin are ridiculous sources for analyzing Obama's speech.
Any reasonable person viewing that speech knows Obama did not malign the United States once in that speech.
Charles wrote:
Great points, Charles! And under conventional circumstances, I agree. But the fear of Saddam wasn't that he had the means to launch wmd piggybacked on ICBMs; or the fear of a land invasion. The fear that the Administration had was how to prevent the next terror attack. I think, in part, Iraq was chosen to be made an example of, to send a message to those states who harbor and support terrorism. Given Iraq's history and violation of legal obligations under the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire agreements (which is why President Bush and the Coalition invaded under UNSCR 687 and 678 rather than 1441), Saddam's open support of state-sponsored terrorism and his well-known love of wmd, Iraq's strategic importance to the world, Iraq was not a "bad decision". It was ever a gamble, but the Administration's thinking in committing to war wasn't what you laid out (although each was built to buttress the case for war and drum up support).
In a post-9/11 world, what we feared from Saddam was the possibility and likelihood that takfiri terrorists would be used as proxies to deliver a wmd attack. Extensive ties to terrorism: Check. A history of trying to obtain wmd capabilities: Check. Just how much longer and how many more "harsh words" and meaningless UN Resolutions would it take to finally act before and not after Saddam clearly became an imminent threat? The idea that what we needed were more UN inspections and more diplomacy is preposterous. We ache for peace so much that we ignore the road signs that cry out "danger". Saddam's regime was irredeemable. Clinton saw it. Bush finally did what needed to be done.
If Saddam and his murderous sons were alive today, we'd be facing the threat of Iran, North Korea, and Saddam's Iraq.
The anger of those who risked life and limb in Iraq should not be toward Obama for telling the truth that the war was one of choice. The anger should be directed at those who sent them there when it was not absolutely necessary. If you want to be angry with Obama, be angry that his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is too slow. Be angry that he is escalating an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.
It's strange how you lecture those fighting in this war, that somehow you know better than they do, what they should want for themselves in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even if Iraq were a war of choice and a bad one at that, it begs the question: Now that we are there, now that the decision had been made 6 years ago in the past, where do we go from here? An immediate withdrawal wouldn't correct "the mistake" of the original decision. President Obama understands this. Why don't you? How highly irresponsible and harmful to us and to the security of the world if we were to just pack our bags (as if an immediate withdrawal were logistically possible) and come home, abandoning Iraq to instability and encouraging chaos.
Obama's timetable for withdrawal isn't "too slow", as you say. Obama's timetable isn't really much different than McCain's (or Bush's for that matter) anyway. Despite what Code Pink demands, there's no magic wand that can be waved in the air. Despite Obama's desire not to break his campaign promise (which kept getting revised based upon reality and not partisan flight and fancy), he's basically following the same course laid out for him under the previous administration.
The job of a citizen, however, is not to kowtow to authority even when it is wrong, but to realize that "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [that government], and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."</I>
That's all well and good, Charles. But what if you're perspective is "the wrong one"? Do you understand that you might be wrong? And the soldiers who disagree with IVAW might be right?
Greatone wrot:
He conceded points based upon partisan beliefs, basically giving validity to perspectives that are at best, controversial. This in regards to 1953 Iran, the issue of "torture" and Gitmo, and stawmen arguments about hijabs and other nonsense. In President Obama's desire to straddle the fence and carry out Aristotle's golden mean, he looks to moral equivalence even when it shouldn't be made.
Wordsmith, if the intent of the U.S. government was to "prevent the next terror attack", why did they invade a nation that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11, that had not indicated any hostility toward the United States and whose leader had been a strong ally of the U.S. for decades? The Bush Administration changed its rationale for starting the war so many times, it would make a person's head spin. WMD - lies, links to Al Qaeda - lies, rebuilding its nuclear program - lies, bring democracy to Iraq - lies. Every time they got caught lying, they invented a new lie and the press went right along with it. Any government that so consistently lies cannot be the "right" one.
The problem in this country is that we have a large segment of the population that likes to have some authority figure telling them what to do, what to believe and how to act because their little world would be turned upside down if they had to acknowledge that their leader was wrong.
'The problem in this country is that we have a large segment of the population that likes to have some authority figure telling them what to do, what to believe and how to act because their little world would be turned upside down if they had to acknowledge that their leader was wrong."
And they banded together to elect the currant occupant of the White House
Wordsmith, if the intent of the U.S. government was to "prevent the next terror attack", why did they invade a nation that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11, that had not indicated any hostility toward the United States and whose leader had been a strong ally of the U.S. for decades?
Good question.
By "nothing whatever to do with 9/11"....
Throughout the 90's, Saddam was a constant menace. As we both know, it led Clinton to make "regime change" official U.S. policy in dealing with Saddam. Look back on all the "gotcha" quotes we Republicans like to drum up, regarding Democratic statements on the dangers of Saddam. This wasn't a Republican fabrication.
Can you find me a quote where Bush explicitly stated that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11? You won't find any, because there is none. It never became part of the case for going to war. Sure, there were speculations, and rightly so. During the 90's, there were meetings between Saddam officials and al Qaeda operatives- this was commonly reported in the news media. Numerous media reports in 1999 mention Saddam offering Osama bin Laden asylum.
But because we didn't have hard evidence (beyond tantalizing circumstantial evidence), the Administration never said Saddam and al Qaeda had a collaborative relationship. Nor did the 9/11 Commission say there was no evidence; what it said was that there wasn't enough information gathered to make an informed consensus.
Here's what President Bush did say, which is why Saddam is linked to 9/11:
At the time, we were determined to go after not only al Qaeda, but any state that sponsored, harbored, funded, trained, and gave safe-haven to (Islamic) terrorists. That's the connection.
Saddam never stopped believing he was at war with the U.S., even if we were trying to "move on". Right after the Safwan accord, later formalized by UNSCR 686 and buttressed by UNSCR 687, Saddam was already violating terms of the cease-fire agreement. He constantly expressed his hostility toward the U.S. He tried to have Bush #41 assassinated.
I don't quite understand your point about Saddam having been an "ally" (and "strong ally" is a stretch, as well as being an ally for "decades"). We were allied with Stalin at one point in history. Did that make it wrong for us to confront the Soviet Union with a policy of containment and engagement in the Cold War? We fought Britain at our inception; should we still be enemies? We were allied with Japan before we were enemies and then allies again.
The point is, alliances and friendships are not permanent. We were "forced" to do business with Saddam (guess who sold him the majority of his weapons arsenal? Hint: our military and Coalition forces weren't being attacked by American-made tanks and small arms) because under the Carter Administration, a deeply pro-American ally in the Shah was allowed to fall, instead of be supported.
Is it right to deal with unsavory characters? I think it is. Sometimes it's all you have: the choice between bad and worse. We chose a brutal dictator in the Shah of Iran because the alternative was much worse; we chose to give limited aid to Saddam (actually playing both sides) during his war with Iran, because at the time, he looked to be the lesser of two evils (the Khomeini theocracy of Islamic militancy).
Carter's refusal to help keep the Shah in power, because the Shah didn't live up to Carter's sanctimonious standards of human rights enabled an even more brutal regime to achieve power, and against American interests.
When the CIA is no longer allowed to recruit spies of "unsavory character", it creates a problem like our intelligence failures in assessing Iraq with more accuracy and clarity (traditionally, btw, we've underestimated not overestimated our enemies' capabilities). What are spies? Traitors to their countries! It's insane to force the CIA not to enlist the help of spies because we disapprove of their moral character of selling out their country for money. It left us blind and we had not one HUMINT in Iraq for quite a while.
So why Iraq?
I like Scott Malensek's summation:
Charles writes:
I only count two shifts.
1)Saddam's history and wmd threat he posed before invasion.
2)Shift away from the wmd angle when it became clear finding stockpiles would be unlikely to focus on the current situation of post-war operations ("nation building").
What else am I missing?
The case built against Saddam was not made strictly on assertions that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Administration spoke extensively on "intent", "desire", and "history".
Not even the portion of his case that dealt with weapons of mass destruction focused exclusively on stockpiles. How often is "wmd" listed in the war resolution? Only a few of the 23 “whereas” statements in the AUMF had to do with WMDs.
Look at the actual text of Powell’s speech which offered a broader rationale for war than wmd stockpile possession, and which did mention the tyranny of Saddam: “Nothing points more clearly to Saddam Hussein’s dangerous intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbors.” It wasn’t all about the “slam dunk” of finding wmd as it was that Saddam’s threat to the world extended to issues that we know today were correct- his history, his intent, and his capabilities. Powell’s speech didn’t include just the slam dunk bad intell of the CIA. And there are items in it that haven’t been disproven.
Democracy was always part of the justification. But no, it wasn’t emphasized before the war because we shouldn’t be putting troops in harms way unless it’s tied in to America’s national security interests. All those favorite places libs like to mention about (why not Darfur, Tibet, etc.) as alternative humanitarian interest targets weren’t in violation of UN cease-fire agreements with the potential of passing wmd into the hands of terrorists who have had a long-standing relationship with said country. After the invasion, the Administration wrongfully decided to simply “move on” to the next phase, which was securing Iraq, and not defend the original justifications when it became clear that and embarrassing that wmd stockpiles weren’t found (and we were expecting to find them). Go back to even the Mission Accomplished speech, and freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people was talked about. Go back to the war resolution passed by Congress, and it mentions the “brutal repression of its civilian population” as one of the causes for justification.
The New Yorker got it right pre-invasion, when it reported:
I agree with you that the Administration shifted its rhetoric to speak of liberation and democracy, post-war- and it was a fatal strategic communications mistake on the part of the Administration's PR department. Rather than defend itself, when it became embarrassingly likely we wouldn't find the stockpiles the Administration felt would be there, the Administration simply decided to "move on". By not fighting the critics, by not challenging the premise of the charges, the Administration lost the PR front.
In regards to nuclear programs, Blix' team of inspectors missed one in the 90's, and we only accidentally lucked out on its discovery. How many more times would we be so lucky in this cat-and-mouse charade?
In regards to al Qaeda links, the links are EXTENSIVE. What is not clearly known are operational ties. But it was a CIA myth a few years ago that said a "secular" Saddam would never work with religion fanatics to achieve mutual short-term goals.
Part of the confusion, I think, is in not realizing that rather than simply "al Qaeda", we should be referring to the al Qaeda NETWORK, where cross-overs of Islamic terrorists from one group to another occur, as well as the distinctions being dissolved (Note: 2/3rds of Egyptian Islamic Jihad became the al Qaeda leadership; Ansar al Islam is part of bin Laden's group, etc). The barrier separating one terror group from another dissolve, when they are all coordinating shared aims and shared training camps, and shared ideology- which is why President Bush said (once again printed for your benefit):
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You've hit the nail right on the head and I've been trying to say this about the Obama sycophants, but have never been able to formulate my thoughts as eloquently and as concisely as you just have. Well done!
For all you "Special Needs" adults who follow Amy - here is the text of President Obama's speech. Don't forget, unlike Iraq WW2 was not a "War of Choice" - FDR was not trying to be greater than his father.
Please highlight those words you perceive as insulting to our WW2 Veterans.
====================
Good afternoon. Thank you President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Brown, Prime Minister Harper, and Prince Charles for being here today. Thank you to our Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki for making the trip out here to join us. Thanks also to Susan Eisenhower, whose grandfather began this mission sixty-five years ago with a simple charge: "Ok, let's go." And to a World War II veteran who returned home from this war to serve a proud and distinguished career as a United States Senator and national leader: Bob Dole.
I am not the first American president to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last. It is an event that has long brought to this coast both heads of state and grateful citizens; veterans and their loved ones; the liberated and their liberators. It has been written about and spoken of and depicted in countless books and films and speeches. And long after our time on this Earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before us: D-Day.
Why is this? Of all the battles in all the wars across the span of human history, why does this day hold such a revered place in our memory? What is it about the struggle that took place on these sands behind me that brings us back here to remember year after year after year?
Part of it, I think, is the size of the odds that weighed against success. For three centuries, no invader had ever been able to cross the English Channel into Normandy. And it had never been more difficult than in 1944.
That was the year that Hitler ordered his top field marshal to fortify the Atlantic Wall against a seaborne invasion. From the tip of Norway to southern France, the Nazis lined steep cliffs with machine guns and artillery. Low-lying areas were flooded to block passage. Sharpened poles awaited paratroopers. Mines were laid on the beaches and beneath the water. And by the time of the invasion, half a million Germans waited for the Allies along the coast between Holland and Northern France.
At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came. The best chance for victory had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines. But all did not go according to plan. Paratroopers landed miles from their mark, while the fog and the clouds prevented Allied planes from destroying the guns on the cliffs. So when the ships landed here at Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside. Many never made it out of the boats.
And yet, despite all of this, one by one, the Allied forces made their way to shore - here, and at Utah and Juno; Gold and Sword. They were American, British, and Canadian. Soon, the paratroopers found each other and fought their way back. The Rangers scaled the cliffs. And by the end of the day, against all odds, the ground on which we stand was free once more.
The sheer improbability of this victory is part of what makes D-Day so memorable. It also arises from the clarity of purpose with which this war was waged.
We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It is a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.
The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate, and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.
The nations and leaders that joined together to defeat Hitler's Reich were not perfect. We had made our share of mistakes, and had not always agreed with one another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped. Citizens of all faiths and no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free.
In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a nation to action. A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion possible. On farms and in factories, millions of men and women worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year. Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana; New York and Illinois. Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an inspector. Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that eventually made it here to Omaha.
But despite all the years of planning and preparation; despite the inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success of one day in June.
Lyndon Johnson once said that there are certain moments when "...history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."
D-Day was such a moment. One newspaper noted that "we have come to the hour for which we were born." Had the Allies failed here, Hitler's occupation of this continent might have continued indefinitely. Instead, victory here secured a foothold in France. It opened a path to Berlin. And it made possible the achievements that followed the liberation of Europe: the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, and the shared prosperity and security that flowed from each.
It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.
More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here - those who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us today. Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day. You are why we come back.
For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance. Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man or woman. It has always been up to us.
You could have done what Hitler believed you would do when you arrived here. In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs, you could have idled the boats offshore. Amid a barrage of tracer bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those planes. You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the sea wall. You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your own survival.
But that's not what you did. That's not the story you told on D-Day. Your story was written by men like Zane Schlemmer [SHLEM er] of the 82nd Airborne, who parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective and his men. Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed - a town where a street now bears his name.
It's a story written by men like Anthony Ruggiero [Ru gee AIR o], an Army Ranger who saw half the men on his landing craft drown when it was hit by shellfire just a thousand yards off this beach. He spent three hours in freezing water, and was one of only 90 Rangers to survive out of the 225 who were sent to scale the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc [Pwante-doo-ock]
And it's a story written by so many who are no longer with us, like Carlton Barrett. Private Barrett was only supposed to serve as a guide for the 1st Infantry Division, but he instead became one of its heroes. After wading ashore in neck-deep water, he returned to the water again and again to save his wounded and drowning comrades. And under the heaviest possible enemy fire, he actually carried them to safety. He carried them in his own arms.
This is the story of the Allied victory. It is the legend of units like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd. It is the tale of the British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the war's heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp.
It is the memories that have been passed on to so many of us about the service or sacrifice of a friend or relative. For me, it is my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived on this beach six weeks after D-Day and marched across Europe in Patton's Army. And it is my great uncle who was part of the first American division to reach and liberate a Nazi concentration camp. His name is Charles Payne, and I am so proud that he is here with us today.
I know this trip doesn't get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there's nothing that could keep you away. One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene [Nor EEN], was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did sixty-five years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here.
In the end, Jim Norene came back to Normandy for the same reason we all come back. He came for the reason articulated by Howard Huebner [HUBE ner], another former paratrooper who's here with us today. When asked why he made the trip, Howard said, "It's important that we tell our stories. It doesn't have to be something big...just a little story about what happened - so people don't forget."
So people don't forget.
Friends and veterans, what we cannot forget - what we must not forget - is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century. At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary. They fought for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors they came to know as brothers. And they fought out of a simple sense of duty - a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had fought and bled for over two centuries.
That is the story of Normandy - but also the story of America. Of the minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who gave their last full measure at Inchon and Khe San; of all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry forward this legacy of service and sacrifice. It is a story that has never come easy, but one that always gives us hope. For as we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore. To those men who achieved that victory sixty-five years ago, I thank you for your service. May God Bless you, and may God Bless the memory of all those who rest here.
Heyyyy... PRO-Western majority elected in in Lebanon!! I guess hearing a mature and thoughtfull speech by a mature and thoughtful American President gave hope to those Muslims in the Middle East who want democracy and don't want extremism.
Such a change from Bush's rhetoric helping Hamas elected in Palestine in 2006, huh.
There already evidence that the Muslim extremist have been weakened by the pro-American but not anti-Muslim speech given by Obama in Egypt.
Because Iran, Iraq and North Korea have proven to be so peaceful; it should have been called the axis of peace.
What evidence that "Muslim extremist have been weakened by the pro-American but not anti-Muslim speech given by Obama in Egypt." What evidence?
I was tempted to respond to Wordsmith's long tirade, but it is so riddled with half-truths, outright Bush Administration fabrications, and logical non-sequiters that it would take too much time and space to respond. Some people are determined to believe things in spite of the facts.
Glad you at least have the wherewithal to admit your mental handicap. You could seek professional help, you know. Or just drop the self-induced BDS and actually try to engage in thought and debate. Don't be so determined to see only your partisan beliefs and mistake them for "facts". Open your mind, young grasshopper.
Oh, jeez. I completely missed the schooling of Charles, LOL!
Chuck, you've been 'owned' by wordsmith. You cannot respond other than to make ad homonym attacks and then feel yourself intellectually superior. What a card you are. Nap time for you too, Charlie. Don’t forget to bring flowers for Algernon.
idiot who coined the phrase :axis of evil" -GrateWon
Because Iran, Iraq and North Korea have proven to be so peaceful; it should have been called the axis of peace.
What evidence that "Muslim extremist have been weakened by the pro-American but not anti-Muslim speech given by Obama in Egypt." What evidence?
June 8, 2009 | Registered CommenterAmy Proctor
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Didn't you read about the election in Lebanon - Hezbollah was widely expected to win - the Pro-Westerners running for office appear to have won instead!
Amy - That one speech of Obama's was more helpful than all the "jawboning" the previous occupant did. Bet that bugs ya!
Some people are determined to believe things in spite of the facts.
Glad you at least have the wherewithal to admit your mental handicap. You could seek professional help, you know. Or just drop the self-induced BDS and actually try to engage in thought and debate. Don't be so determined to see only your partisan beliefs and mistake them for "facts". Open your mind, young grasshopper.
June 8, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterwordsmith
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Glad to see you are not a Creationist, Wordsmith, or one of the 'Intelligent Design' nutjobs.
By the way - the guy who killed that Dr. Tiller says there are MORE attacks planned. SHOULD HE OR HIS CHILDREN BE TORTURED REVEAL WHAT HE KNOWS?
I expect Amy will be blogging tomorrow that he should. Be a good read.
OK, if the conclusion is that I have lost the argument, I will make another attempt. Perhaps wordsmith will be moved to waste more time trying to come up with a response.
1. "Saddam was a constant menace". Yes, but not to the USA, only to his own people. You are right that Clinton's policy on Iraq was more or less the same as Bush except that he had the good sense not to invade.
2. Cheney has been on TV a lot with his daughter claiming they never linked Saddam to Al Qaeda "explicitly". They didn't have to. Cheney trumpeted the alleged Prague meeting of Atta with Iraqis even after he knew it was bogus. On Feburary 8, 2002, Bush's radio address said "Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training". (Is that explicit enough?) On 9/27/2002 Don Rumsfeld said the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda was "accurate and not debatable." (Explicit?) The next day in an address to the nation, Bush said "there are Al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." How explicit do you want to get?
3. Yes the so-called War on Terror was designed from the beginning to be expandable to include any terrorists anywhere in the world until the end of time. It was designed to be the perfect replacement for the Cold War that would keep funneling billions to the military-industrial complex every year. It was a war on a technique, which is not a war at all, merely an excuse to spend money on the military and send them into harm's way whenever the government needed a ratings boost.
4. Saddam was not an ally in the same way that Stalin was. The Ba'ath Party was put in power in 1963 by a coup organized by the CIA. According to Roger Morris, a former State Department officer, "In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979...It's a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary."
5. The CIA's Operation Ajax spurred a take over Iran to replace the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossaddeq, with the brutal Shah. Mossaddeq's only crime was that he wanted some of the revenue generated by his nation's oil to go to the Iranian people.
As for Mr. Malensek's points,
6. A "Nexus of Evil" situation? Is he kidding? What kind of BS is that as a primary reason to send 4,000 men to their deaths?
7. The idea that bin Laden was going to setup headquarters in Iraq is nonsense. Saddam was a secular nationalist. Bin Laden is/was an Sunni Islamic fundamentalist. There is, as the 9/11 Commission stated, no evidence of a credible link between Saddam and bin Laden. So the second primary reason is merely the overwrought imagination of a warmonger.
8. There are no unresolved WMD issues. There are no WMD's.
9. The AQ presence in Iraq did not occur until AFTER the US invasion. Before that time, he was in northern Iraq fighting the Kurds - an area that Saddam did not control.
10. Ending Iraqi support for terrorists - specifically terrorists who were not global in scope and not attacking US interests is not even a secondary reason to send thousands to their deaths.
11. Next he dredges up the "fight them there so we won't have to fight them here" argument, which makes some sense in relation to the Afghan war, but not Iraq.
12. "Bastion of democracy" - a nation that has overthrown multiple democratic governments in the Middle East is going to impose democracy on Iraq at the point of a gun. Ridiculous! Ditto the BS that we did it for the poor, long-suffering Iraqi people or to rid the world of an evil dictator. Those are the lamest arguments in the bunch.
13. If we wanted to end the sanctions, we could have ended the damn sanctions. We didn't need to invade to do that.
So on to the other points, Mr. Malensek obviously having no valid arguments.
14. Yes, if you count all the other arguments (see #6-13 above for a selection) as one, then there are only 2 shifts.
15. If the Bush Administration started a war because they thought that Saddam might intend to do something, or desire to do something, then they are definitely guilty of a war crime.
16. Again you contradict the point you were trying to make in #14. The Bush Administration changed its tactic for selling the war whenever they were discovered to be lying or whenever they believed a PR thrust wasn't working.
When a President makes the decision to send U.S. Armed Forces into the battlefield, the ONLY valid reason is to protect the American people. Deciding to become the world's policeman, or to rid the world of evil are simply not valid reasons to go to war. Starting a war against a technique of warfare, particularly one that the U.S. has from time to time supported or used itself, is nothing more than a PR exercise designed to fool people who can't accept that anything their country does could be wrong. Obviously it worked on wordsmith.
Good job, Gary!
Charles, thank you very much for breaking lances with me, here.
Clinton was risk-averse. It wasn't about not having "the good sense".
And if not for the events of 9/11, President Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq, despite the conspiratorial belief that because Iraq gets mentioned early on, Bush is somehow gunning for Saddam to get back at him over the assassination plot on Bush #41.
Saddam was a constant source of foreign policy concerns throughout the 90's, and Bush inherited those concerns from Clinton.
Saddam made no secrets about his desire to obtain wmd capabilities. When he kicked out UN inspectors in '98, there was a period of 4 years where we were pretty much blind.
After 9/11, given his extensive ties to sponsorship and training and funding of terrorists, the Administration made a decision that dealing with Saddam was put off long enough, already; that leaving him in power was a danger we were no longer willing to gamble with.
What you're ignoring are timelines. Our knowledge of 9/11 planning and of al Qaeda was fluid and evolving. I'll help you out:
MTP 3/24/02:
MTP 9/08/02:
Timelines are important. And it's one of those things that Bush-haters conveniently ignore when they criticize a statement made in the past, based upon the best available information at the time, and "debunk" it, with more recent information that makes the old beliefs obsolete.
Note from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II Investigation Report on Pre-War Iraq Intel:
The last I've read, the Czech's have stuck by their claims. As far as I'm concerned, it's inconclusive. Cheney basically said that as the information evolved.
And this translates as "Bush said Saddam and al Qaeda collaborated on 9/11".....how?!
Here's a bit more of the radio address:
Were all these claims refuted? I recall the final phase II report basically concluding on every point, "generally substantiated by intelligence" at the time.
The final pre-war intell report couldn't substantiate the claims regarding chem and bio weapons training passed on to al Qaeda by Iraq; but its conclusions are based upon postwar findings, not pre-war intell assessments.
From the partisan Rockefeller Phase II Report:
Also note:
Charles wrote:
Charles,
You make the same confusion as so many other BDSers:
Saddam 9/11 connections is a different argument than Saddam/al Qaeda links. Your mistake is in equating the two. What I challenged you on was the following:
If you'll note, I further made my position known that there is ample documentation of Saddam ties to the al Qaeda NETWORK, but that what is not known is collaborative links, as it relates to the events of 9/11. Which is why it never became the case made for war.
Rumsfeld and Bush didn't make up their statements. They are based upon the information we had at the time they made the statements.
Charles, whenever anyone brings up the military industrial complex, the cuckoo clock begins to strike 12 O'clock. The "War on Terror" is debatable, imo; but the conspiratorial belief that it's just to get people rich is absurd and offensive.
Excellent point! We didn't directly put Saddam in power, but the path was paved for him by our CIA-organized coup against Qasim, who at the time, carried out anti-American policies.
I think the CIA has been "out of control" over the decades; but not without its justifications for acting in what was deemed America's best interests.
My point is, alliances between nations are never permanent. Nor should they be. Everything evolves. Are some consequences foreseable? Perhaps some; but not all. And sometimes your choices are "bad" and "worse". That's it.
At the time, we were in the midst of the Cold War. American actions in Iran saved the country from communist enslavement –surely the first time when Truman forced Soviet forces to withdraw, and probably a second time with the CIA coup.
It's a war you don't agree with, so you paint it as "sending 4,000" to their deaths? Many of those soldiers are much like Amy's husband, who believe in what we did in removing Saddam at the loss of 278 U.S. soldiers, and staying to secure the country at the service and sacrifice of over 3,000 more.Maybe I should invite Scott over to clarify?
Sorry, but I just think you're not up-to-date here. The belief that Saddam was a (Sunni) secularist who would never consort with religious jihadis, who he distrusted, is part of what led CIA analysts to dismiss intell that did not fit their preconceived prejudice on this point. The Iraqi Perspectives Project confirms that Saddam did have extensive ties to Islamic terrorists.
As far as the 9/11 Commission, its conclusion wasn't that the case was closed, but that not enough information had been gathered (lack of evidence due to lack of intell information); since the Commission Report, new information has come to light, and even 9/11 Commission members and those in the House and Senate intell committees have said the relationship should be re-examined.
1) This is misleading, as the entire case against Saddam wasn't just about wmd stockpile possession.
Haven't we already been over this? Al Qaeda did have a footprint in Iraq before 9/11; al Qaeda fighters fled the battlefield in Afghanistan after the Taliban fell, and one of the places they headed was Iraq- all before Iraq was but a twinkle in Dubbya's eye.
Ansar al Islam consisted of terrorists who were part of bin Laden's group; and it was Saddam's one area of reach into northern Iraq.
Too simplistic. Many of the jihadis training in these camps were exported terrorists.
I've personally never liked this line of reasoning, since it begs compassion for the suffering of the Iraqi people, using their land as our battleground.
However, according to Lawrence Wright who wrote the definitive geneology of al Qaeda, al Qaeda has been as bogged down in Iraq as we were. All of their resources have been devoted to being on the defensive and hatching out future terror plots have been made difficult...thanks to George W. Bush.
It was part of the original justification. Look it up. And no, we're not imposing democracy at the point of a gun. Many Iraqis have fought and lost their lives in trying to make the fledgling government work.
And what did the Duelfer Report have to say about Saddam's weapons programs and dual-use facilities once sanctions had been lifted?
You really should "meet" him in person. He and Mark Eichenlaub have done extensive readings in the area of intell reports.
That's convoluted BDS talk. I admit that the Administration made a big error in changing the rhetoric after it became clear to them that wmd stockpiles they believed would be found, wasn't there. So rather than defending the case they made in the past, they decided to focus on the future, and began emphasizing the postwar phase. That was a mistake, as it left them wide open to partisan attacks and political opponents who saw the Administration wasn't fighting back, until the media narrative of "Bush lied, people died" (thanks Drumheller!) became entrenched in people's subconscious.
Context of 'January 2003: CIA Doubts Iraqi Government Used Salman Pak to Train Terrorists'
November 6-8, 2001: Fabricated INC Story of Muslim Terrorists Training in Iraq Electrifies Media, Builds Case for War
An Iraqi defector identifying himself as Jamal al-Ghurairy, a former lieutenant general in Saddam Hussein’s intelligence corps, the Mukhabarat, tells two US reporters that he has witnessed foreign Islamic militants training to hijack airplanes at an alleged Iraqi terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. Al-Ghurairy also claims to know of a secret compound at Salman Pak where Iraqi scientists, led by a German, are producing biological weapons. Al-Ghurairy is lying both about his experiences and even his identity, though the reporters, New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges and PBS’s Christopher Buchanan, do not know this. The meeting between al-Ghurairy and the reporters, which takes place on November 6, 2001, in a luxury suite in a Beirut hotel, was arranged by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC). Buchanan later recalls knowing little about al-Ghurairy, except that “[h]is life might be in danger. I didn’t know much else.” Hedges recalls the former general’s “fierce” appearance and “military bearing.… He looked the part.” Al-Ghurairy is accompanied by several other people, including the INC’s political liaison, Nabeel Musawi. “They were slick and well organized,” Buchanan recalls. Hedges confirms al-Ghurairy’s credibility with the US embassy in Turkey, where he is told that CIA and FBI agents had recently debriefed him. The interview is excerpted for an upcoming PBS Frontline episode, along with another interview with an INC-provided defector, former Iraqi sergeant Sabah Khodada, who echoes al-Ghurairy’s tale. While the excerpt of al-Ghurairy’s interview is relatively short, the interview itself takes over an hour. Al-Ghurairy does not allow his face to be shown on camera.
Times Reports Defectors' Tale - Two days later, on November 8, Hedges publishes a story about al-Ghurairy in the New York Times Times. The Frontline episode airs that same evening. [New York Times, 11/8/2001; Mother Jones, 4/2006] Hedges does not identify al-Ghurairy by name, but reports that he, Khodada, and a third unnamed Iraqi sergeant claim to have “worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. They said the training at the camp, south of Baghdad, was aimed at carrying out attacks against neighboring countries and possibly Europe and the United States.” Whether the militants being trained are linked to al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, the defectors cannot be sure, nor do they know of any specific attacks carried out by the militants. Hedges writes that the interviews were “set up by an Iraqi group that seeks the overthrow of… Hussein.” He quotes al-Ghurairy as saying, “There is a lot we do not know. We were forbidden to speak about our activities among each other, even off duty. But over the years, you see and hear things. These Islamic radicals were a scruffy lot. They needed a lot of training, especially physical training. But from speaking with them, it was clear they came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this.” He uses Khodada’s statements as support for al-Ghurairy’s, identifies Khodada by name, and says that Khodada “immigrated to Texas” in May 2001 “after working as an instructor for eight years at Salman Pak…” He quotes the sergeant as saying, “We could see them train around the fuselage. We could see them practice taking over the plane.” Al-Ghurairy adds that the militants were trained to take over a plane without using weapons. Hedges reports that Richard Sperzel, the former chief of the UN biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq, says that the Iraqis always claimed Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, Sperzel says, “[M]any of us had our own private suspicions. We had nothing specific as evidence.” The US officials who debriefed al-Ghurairy, Hedges reports, do not believe that the Salman Pak training has any links to the 9/11 hijackings. Hedges asks about one of the militants, a clean-shaven Egyptian. “No, he was not Mohamed Atta.” Atta led the 9/11 hijackers. Hedges notes that stories such as this one will likely prompt “an intense debate in Washington over whether to extend the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government of Afghanistan to include Iraq.” [New York Times, 11/8/2001; Columbia Journalism Review, 7/1/2004]
Heavy Press Coverage - The US media immediately reacts, with op-eds running in major newspapers throughout the country and cable-news pundits bringing the story to their audiences. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice says of the story, “I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing.” The White House will use al-Ghurairy’s claims in its background paper, “Decade of Deception and Defiance,” prepared for President’s Bush September 12, 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly (see September 12, 2002). Though the tale lacks specifics, it helps bolster the White House’s attempts to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 hijackers, and helps promote Iraq as a legitimate target in the administration’s war on terror. (Five years later, the reporters involved in the story admit they were duped—see April 2006.)
Complete Fiction - The story, as it turns out, is, in the later words of Mother Jones reporter Jack Fairweather, “an elaborate scam.” Not only did US agents in Turkey dismiss the purported lieutenant general’s claims out of hand—a fact they did not pass on to Hedges—but the man who speaks with Hedges and Buchanan is not even Jamal al-Ghurairy. The man they interviewed is actually a former Iraqi sergeant living in Turkey under the pseudonym Abu Zainab. (His real name is later ascertained to be Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, and is a former Iraqi general and senior officer in the Mukhabarat.) The real al-Ghurairy has never left Iraq. In 2006, he will be interviewed by Fairweather, and will confirm that he was not the man interviewed in 2001 (see October 2005). [Columbia Journalism Review, 7/1/2004; Mother Jones, 4/2006] Hedges and Buchanan were not the first reporters to be approached for the story. The INC’s Francis Brooke tried to interest Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff in interviewing Khodada to discuss Salman Pak. Isikoff will recall in 2004 that “he didn’t know what to make of the whole thing or have any way to evaluate the story so I didn’t write about it.” [Columbia Journalism Review, 7/1/2004]
"The Perfect Hoax" - The interview was set up by Chalabi, the leader of the INC, and former CBS producer Lowell Bergman. Bergman had interviewed Khodada previously, but was unable to journey to Beirut, so he and Chalabi briefed Hedges in London before sending him to meet with the defector. Chalabi and Bergman have a long relationship; Chalabi has been a source for Bergman since 1991. The CIA withdrew funding from the group in 1996 (see January 1996) due to its poor intelligence and attempts at deception. For years, the INC combed the large Iraqi exile communities in Damascus and Amman for those who would trade information—real or fabricated—in return for the INC’s assistance in obtaining asylum to the West. Helping run that network was Mohammed al-Zubaidi, who after 9/11 began actively coaching defectors, according to an ex-INC official involved in the INC’s media operations (see December 17, 2001 and July 9, 2004). The ex-INC official, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, did everything from help defectors brush up and polish their stories, to concocting scripts that defectors with little or no knowledge could recite: “They learned the words, and then we handed them over to the American agencies and journalists.” After 9/11, the INC wanted to come up with a big story that would fix the public perception of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Al-Zubaidi was given the task. He came up with al-Ghurairy. He chose Zainab for his knowledge of the Iraqi military, brought him to Beirut, paid him, and began prepping him. In the process, al-Zainab made himself known to American and Turkish intelligence officials as al-Ghurairy. “It was the perfect hoax,” al-Haideri will recall in 2006. “The man was a born liar and knew enough about the military to get by, whilst Saddam’s regime could hardly produce the real Ghurairy without revealing at least some of the truth of the story.” Al-Haideri will say that the reality of the Salman Pak story was much as the Iraqis claimed—Iraqi special forces were trained in hostage and hijack scenarios. Al-Zubaidi, who in 2004 will admit to his propaganda activities, calls Al-Zainab “an opportunist, cheap and manipulative. He has poetic interests and has a vivid imagination in making up stories.” [Mother Jones, 4/2006]
Stories Strain Credulity - Knight Ridder reporter Jonathan Landay later says of al-Qurairy, “As you track their stories, they become ever more fantastic, and they’re the same people who are telling these stories, until you get to the most fantastic tales of all, which appeared in Vanity Fair magazine.” Perhaps al-Qurairy’s most fabulous story is that of a training exercise to blow up a full-size mockup of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq. Landay adds, “Or, jumping into pits of fouled water and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean, and this was coming from people, who are appearing in all of these stories, and sometimes their rank would change.… And, you’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. There’s something wrong here, because in this story he was a major, but in this story the guy’s a colonel. And, in this story this was his function, but now he says in this story he was doing something else.’” Landay’s bureau chief, John Walcott, says of al-Qurairy, “What he did was reasonably clever but fairly obvious, which is he gave the same stuff to some reporters that, for one reason or another, he felt would simply report it. And then he gave the same stuff to people in the Vice President’s office [Dick Cheney] and in the Secretary of Defense’s office [Donald Rumsfeld]. And so, if the reporter called the Department of Defense or the Vice President’s office to check, they would’ve said, ‘Oh, I think that’s… you can go with that. We have that, too.’ So, you create the appearance, or Chalabi created the appearance, that there were two sources, and that the information had been independently confirmed, when, in fact, there was only one source. And it hadn’t been confirmed by anybody.” Landay adds, “[L]et’s not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can’t tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it.” [PBS, 4/25/2007]
No Evidence Found - On April 6, 2003, US forces will overrun the Salman Pak facility. They will find nothing to indicate that the base was ever used to train terrorists (see April 6, 2003).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard Sperzel, Newsweek, Saddam Hussein, Taliban, New York Times, Sabah Khodada, Washington Post, United Nations, Vanity Fair, Nabeel Musawi, Public Broadcasting System, Mother Jones, Ahmed Chalabi, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, Chris Hedges, Al-Qaeda, CBS News, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Mukhabarat, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Francis Brooke, Lowell Bergman, Michael Isikoff, Mohammed al-Zubaidi, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Jamal al-Ghurairy, Jack Fairweather, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Buchanan, Iraqi National Congress
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda
August 2002: Former UN Inspector Says Allegations Iraqi Government Using Salman Pak to Train Terrorists Are False Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter casts doubt on Salman Pak’s characterization as a terrorist training facility (see April 6, 2003), in an August 2002 interview later included in his book War on Iraq. Ritter says in part, “Iraqi defectors have been talking lately about the training camp at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. They say there’s a Boeing aircraft there. That’s not true. There’s an Antonov aircraft of Russian manufacture. They say there are railroad mock-ups, bus mock-ups, buildings, and so on. These are all things you’d find in a hostage rescue training camp, which is what this camp was when it was built in the mid-1980s with British intelligence supervision. In fact, British SAS special operations forces were sent to help train the Iraqis in hostage rescue techniques. Any nation with a national airline and that is under attack from terrorists—and Iraq was, from Iran and Syria at the time would need this capability. Iraq operated Salman Pak as a hostage rescue training facility up until 1992. In 1992, because Iraq no longer had a functioning airline, and because their railroad system was inoperative, Iraq turned the facility over to the Iraqi Intelligence service, particularly the Department of External Threats. These are documented facts coming out of multiple sources from a variety of different countries. The Department of External Threats was created to deal with Kurdistan, in particular, the infusion of Islamic fundamentalist elements from Iran into Kurdistan. So, rather than being a camp dedicated to train Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, it was a camp dedicated to train Iraq to deal with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. And they did so. Their number one target was the Islamic Kurdish party, which later grew into [Ansar al-Islam]. Now, Jeff Goldberg claimed in the New Yorker that [Ansar al-Islam] is funded by the Iraqi Intelligence service. But that’s exactly the opposite of reality: the Iraqis have been fighting Ansar for years now. Ansar comes out of Iran and is supported by Iranians. Iraq, as part of their ongoing war against Islamic fundamentalism, created a unit specifically designed to destroy these people. It would be ludicrous for Iraq to support al-Qaeda, either conventionally, as many have claimed, or even worse, to give it weapons of mass destruction…” [Ritter and Pitt, 9/25/2002]
Entity Tags: Department of External Threats (Iraq), Al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, Scott Ritter, Special Air Service, Jeff Goldberg
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
January 2003: CIA Doubts Iraqi Government Used Salman Pak to Train Terrorists The CIA reports to the White House that it has serious doubts about reports that the Iraqi military base at Salman Pak was ever used to train Islamist terrorists (see April 6, 2003). The agency reports in part, “The probability that the training provided at such centers, e.g. Salman Pak, was similar to that al-Qaeda could offer at its own camps in Afghanistan, combined with the sourcing difficulties, leads us to conclude that we need additional corroboration before we can validate that this low level basic terrorist training for al-Qaeda occurred in Iraq.” [Knight Ridder, 6/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
March 18, 2003: Bush Sends Formal Determination of Iraqi WMDs to Congress, but Determination Is Later Criticized as Inadequate President George Bush sends a “formal determination” on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to Congress in the form of a letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senate President Robert Byrd (D-WV). Congress had required, in its October 2002 authorization of military force (see October 10, 2002), that Bush affirm that diplomatic efforts to resolve the Iraq WMD crisis were no longer possible, and that Iraq had tangible ties to the 9/11 attackers or similar terrorists. The letter provides neither. Instead, it merely reiterates the language of the statute itself, using that language as the determination. The determination says that Congress itself had found evidence of Iraq’s diplomatic intransigence and of Iraq’s connections to the 9/11 terrorists, when Congress has found neither. Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will comment: “Bush, like a dog chasing his tail who gets ahold of it, relied on information the White House provided Congress for its draft resolution; then he turned around and claimed that this information (his information) came from Congress. From this bit of sophistry, he next stated that these congressional findings were the basis of his ‘determination.’” The only additional information Bush provides is a citation from Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations (see February 5, 2003), where Powell noted the supposed existence of a terrorist training camp in the Salman Pak military facility (see April 6, 2003), a training camp that does not exist. Bush also cites “public reports” indicating that Iraq is harboring al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (see October 2, 2002), and that Iraq has “provided training in document forgery and explosives to [al-Qaeda].” Bush provides no evidence of his claims. Dean writes that the law has stringent requirements for such “presidential determinations,” mandating solid evidence, legal citations, and so forth, but Bush’s “determination” contains none of this. “If there is a precedent for Bush’s slick trick to involve America in a bloody commitment, where the Congress requires as a condition for action that the president make a determination, and the president in turn relies on a whereas clause… and a dubious public report… I am not aware of it and could not find anything even close.” [Dean, 2004, pp. 148-152]
Entity Tags: United Nations, Robert C. Byrd, Reagan administration, John Dean, H.L. Mencken, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Dennis Hastert, George W. Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
April 6, 2003: Iraqi Training Camp Overrun by US Forces; Allegations Facility Was Used to Train Islamist Terrorists Is Found Baseless
Overhead photo of Salman Pak, with erroneous captioning. [Source: The Beasley Firm]US forces overrun the Iraqi military training facility at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad. The facility has been identified by several Iraqi National Congress defectors as a training facility for foreign terrorists, possibly aligned with al-Qaeda (see November 6-8, 2001). [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 11/2/2005] The day of the raid, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks attempts to give the impression that US forces have found evidence that the camp was used to train terrorists, telling reporters that the camp was hit “in response to information that had been gained by coalition forces from some foreign fighters that we encountered from other country, not Iraq, and we believe that this camp had been used to train these foreign fighters in terror tactics…. The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak.” Brooks says that tanks, armored personnel carriers, buildings used for “command and control and… morale and welfare” were destroyed. “All of that when you roll it together, the reports, where they’re from, why they might be here tell us there’s a linkage between this regime and terrorism and that’s something that we want to break…. There’s no indications of specific organizations that I’m aware of inside of that. We may still find it as with all operations that we conduct into a place, we look for more information after the operation is complete. We’ll pull documents out of it and see what the documents say, if there’s any links or indications. We’ll look and see if there’s any persons that are recovered that may not be Iraqi.” [CNN, 4/6/2003] However, US forces find no evidence whatsoever of any terrorists training activities at the camp. The story had a sensational effect in the media, and helped feed the public impression that the regime of Saddam Hussein was connected in some way with the 9/11 terrorists, but others, from Iraqi spokespersons to former US intelligence officials, asserted before the March 2003 invation that the Salman Pak facility was built, not for training terrorists, but for training Iraqi special forces to combat passenger jet hijackers. The facility formerly housed an old fuselage, generally identified as being from a Boeing 707, used in the training, and has been used in counter-terrorism training since the mid-1980s. A former CIA station chief says the agency assisted the Iraqis in their training: “We were helping our allies everywhere we had a liaison.” The former station chief adds that it is unlikely that the Iraqis, or anyone else, would train for terrorist strikes in an open facility easily spotted by satellite surveillance and human observers. “That’s Hollywood rinky-dink stuff,” he says. “They train in basements. You don’t need a real airplane to practice hijacking. The 9/11 terrorists went to gyms. But to take one back you have to practice on the real thing.” The US forces comb through Salman Pak, and find nothing to indicate that the facility was used for anything except counter-terrorism training. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 11/2/2005] In 2004, a senior US official will say of the claims about Salman Pak as a terrorist training facility, “We certainly have found nothing to substantiate that.” [Knight Ridder, 3/15/2004] In 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee will report similar findings (see ISeptember 8, 2006). The CIA doubted reports of Salman Pak being used as a terrorist training camp as early as 2003 (see January 2003). And former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was debunking those stories in 2002 (see August 2002).
Entity Tags: Senate Intelligence Committee, Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Iraqi National Congress, Vincent Brooks
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation
September 8, 2006: Senate Investigation Finds No Evidence Iraqi Government Used Salman Pak to Train Terrorists The Senate Intelligence Committee, reporting on the pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq, finds that the US intelligence community had no evidence whatsoever of terrorist training facilities or activities at Iraq’s Salman Pak military base. The report says, “Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qaeda training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq. There have been no credible reports since the war that Iraq trained al-Qaeda operatives at Salman Pak to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations.” The report will note testimony from both CIA and DIA officials that found “no indications that training of al-Qaeda linked individuals took place there.” The DIA told the committee in June 2006 that it has “no credible reports that non-Iraqis were trained to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations at Salman Pak after 1991.” [Senate Intelligence Committee, 9/8/2006 ] The base was found to be just what the Iraqis said it was: a training camp for counterterrorism operations, focused on foiling terrorist
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_1276
OMG, someone actually cited MOTHER JONES as an unbiased, objective reporter giving "facts" about anything? Man, that's too funny!
I'm new to the discussion, and much has been said about Iraq, but the fact is that invading Iraq and removing Saddam were made inevitable, more costly, and necessary because of the failure to do so in 1991-it'd have been costly in blood and treasure then, but not as badly as in 2003.
What's really remarkable is the heat of the anti-war (really anti-Bush) people. I guess they didn't get the memo: you're not supposed to oppose the war in Iraq now that Dems have responsibility for waging it. Or....did you get the memo, 'cause, now that Dems got the power they wanted, welp, I just don't see that same kind of opposition to THEM as was given to Bush. Wanna debate what happened six or seven years ago? Fine. It's history. The more recent and relevant fact is that most people who opposed the UN-mandated occupation and reconstruction of Iraq from May 2003 to today...fell silent when Dems took power=their opposition to the war was just a vocalization of their partisanship not their patriotism. Look, if you oppose the war in Iraq-FINE BY ME, but don't let up. Man up and freak on Obama like you did on Bush, otherwise....you're just proving the point that your opposition to the war was more about Bush than about the war; more about partisanship than patriotism.
Oh, and my FAVORITE line in this entire diatribe of leftist vanity was this one:
"Don't forget, unlike Iraq WW2 was not a "War of Choice" - FDR was not trying to be greater than his father."
Dude! That's AWESOME! Completely baseless (he only mentioned his dad once, and most people would have mentioned it several times if they were in his shoes), and yet the baseless point about a Daddy complex was used as a basis to claim that people who have supported success in Iraq did so on baseless reasoning. OMG! You really don't get to see hypocrisy like that often.
Thanks for it!
Digesting this now. Will try to comment soon.
Oh, geez Tom....nice cut-and-plaster! Here ya go! I haven't read the entire SSC phase II Report, but Mark Eichenlaub has. Enjoy!
Tom,
There's a reason why I didn't bring up Salman Pak, of which your highly convoluted link touches upon. Not all pre-war intell analysis were accurate, including the belief that secularist Saddam would not cooperate with Islamic radicals. Most of the Saddam documents captured (much was destroyed, intentional and accidental during major combat operations) have yet to be translated; but some have.
Mark Eichenlaub:
Let's say for the purpose of argument that it was rational to believe that Saddam possessed WMD after a crushing defeat in the Gulf War and 10 years of punitive sanctions and regular bombings by US and British air forces "guarding" their self-imposed no-fly zones. Let's say also, in spite of the fact that you offer no supporting evidence, that Saddam was considering allying himself with Islamic terrorists. Was invading the country and occupying it for the last 7 years really the best way to solve those problems?
The UN Inspection teams were in Iraq and receiving reasonable cooperation from the regime until they were forced to leave before the "shock and awe" campaign. They were finding no evidence of WMD, but regardless of their expertise and thorough investigations, the Bush Administration having already decided to invade long before, ignored them. It wasn't that they didn't trust the inspectors, they simply didn't care about WMD except as a way to sell the war to the American people.
If Saddam was involved with terrorist groups, then the most effective way to protect the American people would be to strengthen our domestic security and defenses, not starting a war against another Islamic nation that would drive even more Muslims into the arms of radical groups and increase the willingness of many others to hide and protect radicals in their midst.
We can argue over the fine points of who said what and who was doing what during 2001 and 2002, but the real question is "Under what circumstances should a U.S. President order the armed forces to invade another country?" Short of responding to an attack by that nation on the U.S., there aren't any.
Charles, you seem stuck on the "no wmd" bit. I never believed Bush's claims re WMD. Instead, I read Dr Blix' 3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues Rpt. It showed very clearly that Saddam's regime was resisting even simple requests from the UN like writing a paragraph (even a fictional one) to explain what happened to a proscribed (wmd) item that IRAQ had declared it once had. Later, I used that 129pg UN inspector list of WMD allegations and compared it to the ISG Duelfer Report which investigated WMD. No, massive stockpiles were not found, but across the board ALL of the members of the ISG Duelfer investigation-including David Kay, Charles Duelfer, and Richard Butler (head of UN inspectors until 1999) all of them agreed that Saddam's regime WAS a WMD threat (quotes available upon request). The pictures in the report show it clearly as well. My point here is that you shouldn't be misled by the "nowmd" mantra of the one-time anti-war themes.
As to evidence of ties between the regime and AQ, they're in abundance now, and they were there in 1998 (the claim originated from the 1998 African Embassy bombing trials and was fueled by the Clinton Admin which even declared there was a link in the 1998 UBL indictment...sec4 I believe).
I SINCERELY appreciate and welcome (finally) your question:
"Let's say also, in spite of the fact that you offer no supporting evidence, that Saddam was considering allying himself with Islamic terrorists. Was invading the country and occupying it for the last 7 years really the best way to solve those problems?"
Sadly, I believe the answer is yes, because:
-we know from post-war investigations (ISG Duelfer Report) that Saddam was close to fully undermining sanctions, was preparing to restart his WMD programs once that happened, and that such diplomatic undermining could not be prevented (the very nature of your question demonstrates that a presumption of innocence had replaced the confirmed guilt and reparations cast upon Iraq by the UN in 1991). We also know that many of the WMD issues could not be resolved by inspections because the scientists were keeping secrets from Saddam (like the VX and anthrax disposals) for fear of their lives and their families lives.
-airstrikes couldn't work, cause they were tried days before OIF started and failed
-an air campaign couldn't work because without intel, there's no good targets, AND the international pressure was on appeasing Saddam rather than deterring him
-a raid would have been useless for the same reasons
-blockade/more sanctions, that was failing as mentioned above
-special forces w air support like in Afghanistan? That was actually tried in 2002 & failed
-invasion was all that was left, and invasion meant occupation (per UN mandate 1487), and then reconstruction.
Ultimately, only the anti-Bush/faux anti-war people really still believe the blood for oil nonsense....since there's no oil. Same people believe the Daddy complex thing despite a lack of evidence/sheer partisan speculation. Conspiracy theories flew hard and fast, but they all proved false. Claims of millions killed, but barely 100k bodies over 6yrs. Claims of $2-5TRILLION turned out to be $500bn (half of Obama's stimulus, but over 6yrs).
The war is winding down. It's time to start looking at it from new, less worn out, less debunked, less factual partisan perspectives, and through the clarity of history instead.
Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that last part
""Under what circumstances should a U.S. President order the armed forces to invade another country?" Short of responding to an attack by that nation on the U.S., there aren't any."
In defense of our allies
To finish a war ('cause there are no real TIME OUTs in wars-they either end, or are waiting to end)
To fight our enemy (Al Queda) wherever we can. Allies work with American forces....Saddam, not so much.
There are a lot of reasons for wars. The days of boats ferrying troops from ships to shore to invade are long gone. Today's threats come from WMD and the means of delivery: ballistic missiles, planes, suicidal terrorists.
Scott, your last note first. If we have a treaty to defend allies, then I would agree. That was not the case with Iraq. To "finish a war" is circular logic. You don't start a war to finish a war. As for fighting our enemy, yes it would make sense to fight Al Qaeda, but in fighting them it would be important to use a method that would actually work and fight them where they actually are. Fighting them where they were not with methods that actually increased their strength and aided their recruiting efforts was a mistake.
As for the Duelfer Report which was produced under great political pressure to document the presence of WMD, it said that Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years. It also said "The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam" tasked to take this up once sanctions ended."
The report however ignored Iraq's 377 metric tons of Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine [RDX] and High Melting Point Explosive [HMX] that had gone missing, since those deadly non-nuclear explosives were probably looted by insurgents as a result of the chaos of the invasion. This is a case where the invasion actually made sophisticated weapons material available to terrorists who otherwise would not have had them.
"Al Qaeda" has become a handy term used by the military and the government to refer to pretty much any terrorist group that isn't on our side. There are factions of Al Qaeda in Iraq today, but would they be there if the U.S. ended its occupation? This is not a large group nor is it a group with significant popular support, nor is it allied to any of the key power bases in Iraq. Without the opportunity to attack Americans they would also lose much of their raison d'etre.
There is a larger picture here. If bin Laden didn't exist (and there's no proof he still does), the government would have to invent him. We lost communism as an enemy and the threat of the Soviet Union as a villain. Without enemies and villains the government would be unable to sustain the enormous expenditures on the military that funnel so many billions into the pockets of huge military contractors - the same contractors that hire our retired generals and "contribute" so much to our alleged representatives in Congress. The 9/11 attacks were immediately seized upon by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld as an excuse to prosecute a war against Iraq that they had already decided to wage.
There is ample evidence that the Administration began looking for "links" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks immediately after that fateful day. They did not talk about finding the alleged perpetrators and funders of the attack and holding them accountable, they immediately started talking about a global "war on terror" that, unlike the Cold War, could not possibly ever end. There's a classic rule in criminal investigations called "cui bono" - who benefits? When you look at the list of those who benefit from this war, and from continuing a never-endable war, your suspicions should be raised.
Charles,
The Bush didn't need to look to hard for Iraq-al Qaeda links because the press had been reporting them since the 90's, as did the Clinton admin. How is it logical for Clinton and the press to have been telling the truth and Bush not to be when they said the same thing?
Your question:
1)Invading the country
I really do believe that diplomacy had been tried and tried again, and failed. I'm not looking at just the Bush Administration's attempts at getting Saddam to comply, but also the previous decade of diplomatic failures that had Saddam continue his defiance.
I disagree that the UN inspection team (in 2002, after being kicked out 4 years previous) was successful, simply because they found no wmd, in the time that they were allowed to play cat-and-mouse. Saddam was practicing a policy of deception and defiance. There's no dispute over Saddam's "secret factories", programs, and attempts (successful and unsuccessful) at hiding what he wasn't supposed to have. Scott points to Blix' Unresolved Disarmament Issues and it tells me that inspections weren't enough in bringing about compliance from Saddam. Saddam did nothing to instill international confidence that he was in fact disarming.
I have disagreement with Scott Ritter when he says,
In 1991, the IAEA was days away from concluding that Iraq no longer had a nuclear program, and only accidentally learned of what they almost missed.
Kenneth Pollack said in a 2004 Atlantic Monthly:
It was never the original intent for UN weapons inspectors to act as weapons hunters.
The UN put UNSCOM out of its misery and replaced it with UNMOVIC which was designed to appease Saddam in order to let inspectors back in, after his quarrel with UNSCOM. UNSCOM did have some great successes (again, why did they take on the role of "weapons hunters" rather than "weapons inspectors", where Iraq was supposed to submit illegal weapons for inspection and destruction?) whereas UNMOVIC failed to get support from Saddam's friends on the UN Security Council (you know....France, China, Russia- those countries opposed to the 2003 invasion since they had billions invested there in loans and contracts). Saddam still refused cooperation and compliance.
We UNSCOM inspectors simply did not have the resources to win a game of hide and seek. The same is true today.
-David Kay, January 19, 2003
As Richard Butler asserted, they weren't trained to act in the role of detectives.
Have you followed the Saddam tapes and translated documents? Saddam had a plasma-enrichment program whose existence remained a secret until after the fall of Saddam.
"This not only shows the capabilities the Iraqis had, but also the weakness of international arms inspection. There was never any defectors with knowledge of this program, so neither UNSCOM, UNMOVIC, or the ISG learned about it. Arms inspection regimes just don't work."- William Tierney
In one tape, Saddam's son-in-law talks of how they were deceiving UN inspectors.
"We did not reveal all that we have. Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct. They don't know any of this." - Hussein Kamil
So even though inspectors had successes, they were not batting a perfect game. Saddam wasn't changing his behavior. And yet some ached for peace so much in the belief that the absence of war is peace, that they kept falling for the same charade, insisting that all we need is more diplomacy; more time for Saddam. If you keep doing the same thing, you'll keep getting the same results. If Saddam was practicing deception (and we know that he was), then it was only a matter of time for inspectors to fail big. How many inspectors? A couple thousand? In a country the size of California where a teaspoon of anthrax or a vial of botulinum toxin might escape notice?
2)last 7 years
If the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake, that mistake won't be corrected by a premature withdrawal if it leads to chaos and more suffering, followed by America's enemies seizing control of Iraq's resources and putting that into the hands of Islamic militants. It would also be dishonorable. We "broke it, we own it."
If invading Iraq was a bad decision, how to make lemonade out of lemon? There's a real chance- and that's all it is, is a chance- for Iraq to succeed as a democratic country. But it takes time, patience, and a show of commitment. It's the lack of resolve that will insure the process takes longer, if not failure. No one- not even President Bush (re: "Mission Accomplished" speech)- said it would be "a cakewalk". The very idea that "because it's difficult, it shouldn't be tried"; that "democracy will never work there", I reject. Many Iraqis have fought and died, trying to form a democratic government; many in the Middle East are aching for it as well.
It's been 6 years since the fall of Baghdad. Just how long did anyone expect it to take for democracy to take root and flourish? I think it will take generations to get it "right". People criticizing "this is taking too long; too much sacrifice and cost", aren't looking at this beyond short-sighted instant gratification results. If Iraq succeeds in the long term, then all the sacrifices made might have been a good investment for peace and prosperity.
Charles to Scott:
I think the way Scott is looking at this, is that OIF is just a continuation of the original Gulf War, where a cease-fire agreement was signed, not a peace treaty. Saddam never stopped believing he was at war with the U.S.
I can see your point of logic here. Certainly al Qaeda's footprint in Iraq wasn't as big as it was until after we invaded (and especially after abu Ghraib), in terms of the number of footsoldiers and foreign fighters who poured in there. But as I think I mentioned earlier, like Lawrence Wright, I believe that al Qaeda became as bogged down in Iraq as we were said to be. They could not devote their energy and resources planning and plotting as successfully as before 9/11, because of 1)the battlefield in Iraq (which ultimately exposed al Qaeda to the Muslim world as the apostates of Islam with their murder spree and brutality against fellow Muslims). 2)Cooperation throughout the world by governments in helping us "behind the scenes" roundup, capture and kill al Qaeda operatives all over the globe, disrupting terror cells and tying up their finances. This has kept al Qaeda off-balance. The war on terror is comprised of military, law enforcement, and intelligence. It's not just the battlefield explosions we see in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
I too question whether or not we might have "expanded" the war by engaging it as a war- something al Qaeda wanted us to do- and not deal with them as an international law enforcement issue. I certainly don't think this approach worked in the 90's. But then, as serious as they were, the embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, the first WTC bombing...these things did not appear to wake us from our malaise the way 9/11 did.
I disagree, however, in trying to extract other terror cells from al Qaeda as somehow separate. the al Qaeda network/global "jihad" movement may be comprised of different cells/groups who like to use different names, but they are all part of the same "general" movement with cross-overs, shared training, funding, and ideology. The barrier that distinguishes one terror group from another sometimes dissolves. 2/3rds of Egyptian Islamic Jihad became the al Qaeda leadership. And they were definitely in Iraq before 9/11. Whether they're called Ulema Union of Afghanistan, Armed Islamic Group, Saafi Group for Proselytism and Combat, Al-Jihad, Groupe Roubaix, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Partisans Movement, Jemaah Isamiah, Bayt al-Imam, Asbat al Ansar, Hezbollah, Lebanese Partisans League, Libyan Islamic Group, Pakaistan, Al-Badar, Harakat ul Ansar/Mujahadeen, Al-Hadith, Harakat ul Jihad, Jaish Mohammed, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan, Laskar e-Toiba, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Abu Sayyif, Al-Ittihad, Al-Jihad Group, Mohammed's Army, Fatah Revolutionary Council, Arab Revolutionary Brigades, Black September, Black June Organization, Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims, Ansar al Islam, Ansar Al Sunni, Fayadeen Al Saddam, Somali Youth Movement, and on and on.....they are all part of the same ideology and movement that is an affiliate of, ally of, part of, the al Qaeda network.
Charles, I think it would have been highly negligent and a dereliction of duty not to turn that stone and see what was under there; to examine whether or not Iraq was involved in the events of 9/11 (as per Mark's last comment). The links were being made before Bush ever came into office. The Saddam threat and history was established before his Administration was formed.
Any responsible Administration would have talked about Iraq in regards to foreign policy and hostile nations. They would have inherited that from the Clinton era. Gore would have inherited that, and he certainly was singing a different tune back then about it.
What the Administration began thinking about, right off the bat, wasn't revenge, but how to go about preventing future terror attacks.Greatone:
Sorry, there is no Obama effect
Wordsmith, all I can say is that you have a great deal in confidence in your government leaders - well, at least the Republican ones. You seem to take everything the previous administration said at face value and when the evidence is inconclusive, you insist that their interpretation is the right one.
I take a very different view. I assume that the federal government, regardless of who is in charge, is probably lying to us about national security, foreign affairs, and the economy. If there are clear benefits to the people who funnel money to the political parties or clear risks to the politicians themselves or their funding sources in regard to an action or policy, unless they admit this openly (which I don't recall ever happening), I assume they are lying. When it comes to Iraq, I am utterly convinced that Bush and his entire team lied to the Congress, the UN, and the American people. I also assume that Obama and his team are lying about their intentions as well.
Neither of them is doing anything new. I don't recall any President in U.S. history who was truthful with the American people about a war, at least in the last 140 years. In that time we have fought exactly one war that was not a war of choice - World War II. That's why it's referred to as the "good war" and we celebrate the "greatest generation" and try to infer that all our military actions are as necessary as that one. Every other time the U.S. military has been engaged overseas, it was a matter of choice, a matter of policy decisions by the political leaders. In every case, the rationale they put forward at the time was entirely without foundation and the benefits if any went to the big business interests, not the American people.
To quote Marine General Smedley Butler from 1935, ""I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Well, Chuck,
That's a pretty pissy view of our country. Disillusioned is an understatement for you, pal. No wonder you're constantly complaining and critical about conservatives. We clearly hold to the idea of hope and trust in Freedom and Democracy, while you've thrown in the preverbal towel and seek the bad in spite of the good.
That is too bad. This country has not been lost yet, and with the diligence inspired by our framers, we can retake the freedoms this current government is attempting to take from us. Don't give up, Chuck. In spite of the moral misgivings of past leaders, this is still the greatest country on God's green earth.
We can retake the freedoms, Gary? Exactly how? Which great Republican or Democratic party leader is going to fix our economy, and restore the freedoms and rights we lost over the last 8 years? I'd like to think this was the greatest country in the world, but I've actually been to other countries.
You nailed it with that comment, Charles.
Does this sound familiar?
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
You see, it's not a particular individual that will restore our freedoms, but WE THE PEOPLE. As we begin to realize we're loosing the very thing so many have fought and died for, hopefully, we'll rise up.
And we're seeing the beginnings of this very thing with the Tea Parties sprouting up across the country and 'Don't Tread On Me' decals showing up on cars and motorcycles. The further the current administration pushes this nation toward socialism, the louder We the People will become.
And Charles, I've lived in Asia (2 1/2 years), and spent several months on the European continent; primarily behind the Iron Curtain. I've been North and I've been South. With all of our short comings, we are still the greatest country in the world.
I think that's a bit of mischaracterization. There's plenty you can criticize the Administration for; but imo, the legitimate policy criticism gets distorted and conflated by partisan rancor and "gotcha" politics. And as far as I can tell, you seem to only want to believe the worst perspectives regarding the Bush years, rather than concede anything that might not paint Bush as incompetent, devious, evil, clueless, etc.
If you assume the worst of our government, then yeah, I'm the guy who sees the glass half full and you're the one who deems it half empty, in that regard. If you view the government with so much distrust, never giving those in government the benefit of the doubt, I'm on the other end of the spectrum.
I do keep a dose of skepticism of politicians and their motives; but I certainly don't see the American government as a machine of lies, greed, bad policy-making, in general.
The government is made up of who? People. Folks like you and me. And I believe that most go into politics with a sincere desire to do public service and make a difference and improve people's lives, whether they have an "R" by their names or a "D". Sure, some get caught up in power politics and "get changed by Washington"; but I think most want to do good.
Why? What's your proof? Since you're so skeptical that government lies, why don't you think Democrats in Congress are lying to you about Iraq? Has the UN lied?
Numerous independent investigations, including the Butler Report, Robb-Silbermann, 9/11 Commission, Senate Intell Committee, The Hutton investigation all disagree with you on "Bush lied" or "Bush cooked the books". You might not like their policy decisions, but they weren't made based upon lies. Some bad information and intell? In part, yes. But beyond that? It's mostly partisan rancor and hatred that drives the belief.
In every case the rationale was NOT "entirely without foundation". The Cold War was real; the Domino Effect was real (and I know all the arguments about how it was proven false, because I've been down this road so many times with America's critics).
So what was the "business interest" in the Korean War?
How has American gotten rich off of Iraqi oil?
Did Bush get rich? Did Cheney? Wasn't Cheney making more money in the private sector? Why did he enter back into public office? Why didn't he want to run for President after Bush #43?
Do you deny that W. Bush is sincere in his deep faith in God and the belief that freedom is a God-given right of everyone? That he didn't honestly believe in his freedom agenda, however flawed you might think it to be? Did the Cheneys have some ulterior motive in giving generously to charities consistently for years? Did Bush have selfish reasons for his work in trying to make things better on the continent of Africa?
Yes, people make money when we go to war; should they donate equipment for free? A profit is to be made by those who deny man-made global warming; but a profit is to be made by those who also push-pedal the belief in it.
If we're an evil empire, we certainly don't behave like traditional empires, giving back sovereignty to countries under our control and helping them rebuild and prosper.
When 9/11 happened, do you think those in the business of making flags are evil and despicable for turning a profit in selling American flags- especially those everyone was putting on their car windows? There was a huge demand and I'm sure they made a pretty penny. Do you think they are lobbying for future wars so they can sell more flags?
I absolutely believe in a muscular foreign policy and American interventionism across the globe. I reject Howard Zinn's assertion in a radio interview when asked if the world would have been better off if American had never existed, that it would have. I embrace American exceptionalism not because I'm unaware of the Zinn-view of American history (I was indoctrinated in that perspective from grade school through college), but because I'm aware of the vast amount of good we've done on behalf of the world; and it greatly outweighs the negatives.
Ron Paul bearers cited Smedley Butler all through 2008, and I remain unpersuaded by his worldview cynicism.
OOYAH, wordsmith.
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Considering $787 billion and an attemp to socialize health care and the auto industry, we see an utter failure in point #2.