? About Iraq from Both Sides of the Fenc
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| Wed, 09-22-2004 - 4:33pm |
It's not just Democrats who are questioning the President's grip on reality.
Senator Chuck Hagel (NE), a Republican, says: "The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning. Right now, we are not winning. Things are getting worse." "The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq."
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) also supports releasing the NIE and says: "We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), says "he believes the situation in Iraq is going to get worse before it gets better, adding that he believes the administration has done a 'poor job of implementing and adjusting at times.'" and says "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people...."
Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) says it's "exasperating for anybody look at this from any vantage point."
Those are Republicans talking. Here's what the generals and national security experts are saying, in a terrific recent piece in the UK's Guardian newspaper:
Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, said: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, : "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options.... The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true..."
W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute -- and the top expert on Iraq there -- said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency"... "The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed"... "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators."
General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."... "I've never seen so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster."
Just as important are the opinions of those whose loved ones are serving in Iraq, like Martha Jo McCarthy, whose husband is on National Guard duty there. She says:
"Everyone supports the troops, and I know they're doing a phenomenal job over there, not only fighting but building schools and digging wells. But supporting the troops has to mean something more than putting yellow-ribbon magnets on your car and praying they come home safely."
"I read the casualty Web site every day and ask myself, 'Do I feel safer here?' No. I don't think we can win this war through arrogance. Arrogance is different from strength. Strength requires wisdom, and I think we need to change from arrogance to solid strength."
Join Senator Graham now in calling on President Bush to face the facts and level with us, by releasing the CIA's report, at:
http://www.moveon.org/tellthetruth/
President Bush has got to tell us the truth about Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction. No Saddam-al Qaeda connection. The mission is not accomplished. The transition has not been peaceful and stable. Attacks on our troops are increasing, not decreasing. These failures lie solely with the president, and he owes us an honest explanation.
"Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt.

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Yes, I remember him. 3/4 of the leadership of his organization has been captured or killed
< They were planning to go to war in Iraq almost from the moment they took office, based on old news from the last Gulf War.>
What I said was they were planning to go to war with Iraq soon after taking office. They were going to war based on old news about WMDs that was out of date. Actually Iraq was cooperating from what I have read, and they were able to go even into the palace and found nothing there either. They still, by the way have found nothing. Whether it was moved or destroyed, Iraq had no WMDs.
"Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt.
I have heard that rhetoric, but have yet to see any facts to support that claim. I also have seen where the money seems to have dried up significantly for the terrorist groups.
An artillery shell loaded with sarin gas near the Baghdad airport was discovered. "Only" about a gallon. Four liters will kill 60,000 people. Saddam failed to mention having this to the UN and later it fell into the hands of terrorists. Incompetent ones, fortunately, because it failed to go off properly.
then...June '04-
More than a dozen chemical weapons shells in Iraq were found in Iraq with enough Sarin & Mustard gas to kill over 100,000 people.
...to sacrifice a 1000 American citizens, to maim thousands more - to cost the US Billions of dollars and still not be able to restore any kind of order to Iraq?
The end result is Bush is making it possible for the terrorists to keep on cloning themselves, their hatred for the US knows no bounds. To start bombing a country and not be absolutely certain that they actually have WMD.
Not it's not enough.
Bush acts like an unreasonable, screaming soccer dad who just wants his team to win and the rules be damned. (and the rest of us too - all he cares about is that things be done His way)
For some it's because they have believed the lies for so long the truth seems foreign. How did the majority of Americans become convinced that Saddam abetted 9/11. No one wants to believe that Iraq was so weekened by years of sanctions that they couldn't even defend themselves; no one wants to believe that Saddam was bluffing about WMD because it enhanced his image. But the fact remains that Iraq is falling apart regardless of what GWB says, but many must continue to believe GWB. What is going to happen when they find out its all lies? Certainly after Nov 2!
Hell
By Phillip Robertson
As I said on the radio tonight, what really is there to say about the situation in Iraq other than "it's horrible." It is horrible. It's hell.
The war, illegal and founded on a vast lie, has produced two tragedies of equal magnitude: an embryonic civil war in the world's oldest country, and a triumph for those in the Bush administration who, without a trace of shame, act as if the truth does not matter. Lying until the lie became true, the administration pursued a course of action that guaranteed large sections of Iraq would become havens for jihadis and radical Islamists. That is the logic promoted by people who take for themselves divine infallibility -- a righteousness that blinds and destroys. Like credulous Weimar Germans who were so delighted by rigged wrestling matches, millions of Americans have accepted Bush's assertions that the war in Iraq has made the United States and the rest of the world a safer place to live. Of course, this is false.
But it is a useful fiction because it is a happy one. All we need to know, according to the administration, is that America is a good country, full of good people and therefore cannot make bloody mistakes when it comes to its own security. The bitter consequence of succumbing to such happy talk is that the government of the most powerful nation in the world now operates unchecked and unmoored from reality; leaving us teetering on the brink of another presidential term where abuse of authority has been recast as virtue.
The logic the administration uses to promote its actions -- preemptive war, indefinite detention, torture of prisoners, the abandonment of the Geneva Convention abroad and the Bill of Rights at home -- is simple, faith-based and therefore empty of reason. The worsening war is the creation of the Bush administration, which is simultaneously holding Americans and Iraqis hostage to a bloody conflict that cannot be won, only stalemated.
Over the last three years, practicing a philosophy of deliberate deception, fear-mongering and abuse of authority, the Bush administration has done more to undermine the republic of Lincoln and Jefferson than the cells of al-Qaida. It has willfully ignored our fundamental laws and squandered the nation's wealth in bloody, open-ended pursuits. Corporations like Halliburton, with close ties to government officials, are profiting greatly from the war while thousands of American soldiers undertake the dangerous work of patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities. We have arrived at a moment of national crisis.
At home, the United States, under the Bush administration, is rapidly drifting toward a security state whose principal currency is fear. Abroad, it has used fear to justify the invasion of Iraq -- fear of weapons of mass destruction, of terrorist attacks, of Iraq itself. The administration, under false premises, invaded a country that it barely understood. We entered a country in shambles, a population divided against itself. The U.S. invasion was a catalyst of violence and religious hatred, and the continuing presence of American troops has only made matters worse. Iraq today bears no resemblance to the president's vision of a fledgling democracy. On its way to national elections in January, Iraq has already slipped into chaos.
http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/
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