Bush Owes No Apology
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| Wed, 04-14-2004 - 6:35pm |
But Hannity, who was on hand to promote his book "Deliver Us From Evil," would have none of it.
"Let's talk about critics and the question of whether he owns up to mistakes," Holt began. "Has he made mistakes in the war on terror?"
"Why should he apologize, number one, for the terrorist attack that was brought to this country?" Hannity shot back.
"We've got to face reality here - America is at war and they attacked us," the conservative host reminded, noting that critics of Bush's handling of the war on terror seem to want it both ways.
"We're criticizing the president for not responding to a memo five weeks . But yet we knew that Saddam wasn't abiding by 17 resolutions in 12 years' period of time. And he didn't abide by a cease-fire agreement."
Hannity told "Today" that had Bush allowed Saddam to remain in power and his continued efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction resulted in an attack on the U.S., "would we not have a commission a year and a half later" blaming Bush for ignoring the threat.
Holt complained that Hannity's scenario was "theoretical."
Just like the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing that warned Osama bin Laden wanted to attack America.

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With the deathtoll continually rising in Iraq when do we get to the point where either the statement that most of the people there are glad we have invaded their country or that we are only killing those "evil Baath bastards" becomes incorrect...
Why is it that when they kill 3,000 Americans we have every right to be upset, but when we invade their country, kill 5-10,000 Iraqis and more every day, they must love us and find us the great liberators of their country?
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
He is the President that presided over the worst security failure in US history. Please let us not forget.
>>Why should Bush take responsibility for an intelligence apparatus that was dysfunctional when he inherited it less than seven months before 9/11??
Because it's the bush’s job, as President to fix any dysfunction in our intelligence and I do believe OVER half a years time is ample enough IF national security is a high priority. However being the bush was on vacation the entire month prior to 9-11 I find it hard to believe it was. American citizens lost their lives because our President failed, to some of us an apology is the least he could give...but that's something one would exspect from a man so I'm not holding my breath.
They are also safe from our marines and bombs since they are here.
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
We are not "gunning down people as they walk down the street". If I had been living under tyranny for 30 years, if I had been raped or tortured or had some of my family members raped or tortured and had been oppressed and living under this fear for so long I would be overjoyed to be liberated. If my son were accidentally killed during the liberation I would be terribly, terribly hurt. I don't know if I could ever get over the loss, but I would not blame the liberators, because without them I have to live in the fear that he could be tortured and killed by Saddam's henchmen on a whim - the same with my other children and the rest of my family.
I stick by what I said because you have denounced any and all dissenting views as either leftist propoganda, hateful propoganda, or the lies of murderers whose opinions we don't care about.
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
"...Most of the world -- not excluding both coasts of the United States -- seem to be taking the same not-very-helpful attitude to President Bush and the Iraqi crisis. It is universally acknowledged that the president alone wantonly plunged us into a needless war, lied about the basis for doing so, has united Iraq and the Islamic world against us, and is now recklessly taking us further into a quagmire without either a map or a paddle.
But is it a truth? To begin with, the president did not act alone -- nor even accompanied solely by Tony Blair. Both parties in Congress voted for the war. (Democrats had second thoughts mainly when Howard Dean started winning primaries by attacking it.) Most European governments also supported the intervention. And in Britain, the war had the support of the Blairite majority in the governing Labor Party, the main Tory opposition, and a slight majority of public opinion.
Nor did Bush lie about weapons of mass destruction. Almost the entire intelligence world -- including the French and German intelligence services -- thought that Saddam Hussein retained weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix, heading the U.N. inspection team, reported that Saddam could not account for some of the stockpiles known previously to exist. And the fact that the United States and allied soldiers suited up to protect themselves against chemical attack suggests that the military too believed that Saddam retained WMD. Even Saddam wanted the outside world to think he possessed such weapons. It increased his prestige in the Arab world and thus his power of blackmail.
It now seems likely that, like everyone else, Bush and Blair were wrong to believe that such WMD existed -- or existed in the quantities they suspected. But being wrong is very different from setting out to deceive the public. And if they did sincerely believe that a ruthless dictator like Saddam possessed such weapons and was acquiring the ability to wage nuclear war, then they had a very reasonable justification for preemptive intervention in Iraq.
As for the invasion uniting Iraq and the Arab world against the United States, this fails on a whole host of grounds. Opinion polls taken beforehand showed that Arab and Muslim opinion was extraordinarily hostile to the United States even in allies like Turkey and Jordan. Why? Mainly because of American support for Israel in its struggle with the Palestinians. Only those politicians and journalists who wish to end the U.S.-Israel alliance are entitled to cite such hostility as justification for their policy. Will they please step forward and identify themselves?
As for Iraq itself, according to almost all the opinion polls taken there since the invasion, most people think they are better off than under Saddam, favor some kind of democracy with Islamic trimmings, and therefore accept that the intervention was on balance a Good Thing (in the language of the history satire 1066 and All That).
To be sure, most Iraqis will occasionally feel resentment at the foreigners who are temporarily ruling their country. But that will hardly spur them to attack a coalition regime that already has announced its departure date. It is those few who are drawn either to the Islamo-fascism of Osama bin Laden or the Baathist despotism of Saddam who hate the United States to the point of waging terrorism against it. But these last are the very people who danced in the streets when the twin towers were brought down on Sept. 11. They are enemies to be defeated rather than potential friends to be conciliated. And if the intervention in Iraq succeeds in establishing a decent stable government in Baghdad -- if possible a democracy but if necessary a liberal reforming government that will lay the foundations of democracy -- then it will have taken a large step toward the ultimate defeat of these retrogressive forces.
On almost every count the anti-Bush case on the Iraq war crumbles away into nothingness. Why then is it rapidly becoming the conventional wisdom here and abroad? Why has Vietnam suddenly emerged as its odious comparison?
The answer is alarmingly simple: For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet empire in the liberal revolutions of 1989 and 1991, the United States looks vulnerable. And all those who have hitherto nursed their anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Western grievances in the shadows feel a sudden upsurge of hope that the Iraqi ''resistance'' will inflict a defeat on the United States similar to that inflicted almost 30 years ago in Vietnam. These nostalgic veterans of the left and "the revolution" are rallying, however inconsistently, to the black flag of nihilism and the green flag of Islamo-fascism.
They are almost certainly deluding themselves. The ''uprisings'' of the last month have not succeeded in igniting a general firestorm across Iraq. Fighters in Fallujah are surrounded by a U.S.-led siege. The Shiites have not rallied to the firebrand al-Sadr. The loss of life among the terrorists in Fallujah will serve to deter similar rebellions. And an Iraqi government is scheduled to take over power from the Coalition Provisional Authority in 10 weeks. Though the crisis is far from over, the signs are that the United States is prevailing by a mixture of force and guile.
The anti-Bush bitter-enders in America -- and to his credit they do not include Sen. John Kerry -- have only two realistic hopes left. The first is that the United States will make some massive error in its mopping-up operations and drive Iraqis to support the ''resistance'' against their own interests.
The second is that, despite the facts on the ground in Iraq, the media and the anti-war movement between them will persuade the American public that an unwinnable war is being lost. And that is exactly what happened when the United States defeated the Vietcong's Tet offensive in Vietnam but lost it on American television.
Fool you once, shame on them. Fool you twice, shame on you."
-JOHN O'SULLIVAN
http://www.suntimes.com/output/osullivan/cst-edt-osul20.html
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