Rather than show compassion and speak with anti-war protester and grieving military mom, Cindy Sheehan, George Bush believes that going on another taxpayer-funded PR campaign is the best way to drum up support for the Iraq war and the Republican war party, which is sagging heavily in the approval that the American people give to the job they are doing.
In a speech to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush said, "The only way to defend to our citizens where we live is to go after the terrorists where they live."
Around 2000 people gathered at an anti-war rally in Pioneer Park, about three blocks from the Salt Palace where Bush spoke. "It's like Vietnam all over again, and I opposed that too," said George Muller of Salt Lake, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who was dressed in desert fatigues.
Muller, who said he served from 1961-2002, said he was pleased to see so many people at the rally, and that he believed there was a shift in the country's attitude toward the war. "That's what it's going to take - veterans groups, veterans and mothers who have lost kids speaking out," Muller said.
Doctrine Of Pre-Emption Under Scrutiny
What Bush and the Republican war party continue to mislead us about, and what the majority of this country now realizes, is that Osama Bin Laden attacked us on 9-11, not Saddam Hussein. To claim we are pursuing the terrorists “where they live” is beyond absurd. The vast majority of our troops are in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 or Osama Bin Laden. The blatant bait-and-switch by this administration is a technique that is no longer acceptable to Americans and it is not fooling anyone anymore.
The biggest security failure by any President in the history of the United States happened on George Bush’s watch. There is no credible way for Bush or its apologists to shift away the blame, although they continue to try to pass it off, as they do all their failures, on former President Bill Clinton.
Shortly before 9-11, while Bush was vacationing, he was given a Presidential daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States Using Airliners.” Given this clear and specific warning, Bush did not leave his vacation and he certainly did not do enough to stop the attack. This cannot be blamed on anyone but the people in his administration.
Bush’s response after 9-11, as it was before 9-11, was completely inappropriate. Instead of pursuing Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden at all costs, (as he continues to falsely claim he is doing in each PR appearance), he invented the “pre-emption doctrine” to justify attacking Iraq, a country having nothing to do with 9-11.
To re-iterate, the doctrine of pre-emption posits that some threats are so great and imminent, the America MUST start a war of aggression because to wait will only cause us to be attacked first and caused untold numbers of Americans to be killed.
Article comments
1 - ss
1) The American right is wrong on so many levels it's hard to even know where to begin.
2)While I agree comparing the war on terror or the war in Iraq
(not the same thing, by the way) to any past war is spurious at best, you should really read Iraqi blogs.
I posted a little bit from this one to counter some of Nalle's neverending praise for Bush, but you should read it too.
'Well rumour has it that its planned to not reach an agreement on the constituion. I hope its true and the results will be new general elections and a new parliament. This is probably what is needed in Iraq at this point.
Lots of people who voted for the Islamic 169 regret it, while at the same time Sunnis realising that every vote does count will enter meaning that it won't like the old days where the islamists can do what they like. I hope that 35 years of baath, gets followed by a swift smashing of the islamists who wish to take the country back to the stone age with all their added paragraphs in the constitution.'
http://iraqithoughts.blogspot.com/
post 8/16/05
There are people there who legitamitely want freedom and a better life. Our volunteer army is predominately right wing, and as the latest reason for us being there is to provide Iraqis with freedom and a better life, the majority of soldiers are willing to help them.
While I find our sudden concern for Iraqi civilians a little self serving, considering what we've done to these people in the past just to flex a little muscle, the situation has evolved into this.
I say let the soldiers stay and help them root out Islamists, inside and outside of the Iraqi government.
2 - Anthony Grande
The war in Iraq is a WWIII abortion.
Lets go back in history about 70 years:
Hitler is defying the League of Nations. He is building a military. He is attacking his weaker neighbors. He is promoting violence towards Jews, because they are different. No country did nothing about it and five years later WWII breaks out and millions of people die.
Now lets skip ahead 70 years: Saddam attacks weaker nations. Saddam is defeated in Gulf War. Restrictions are put on him. He brakes many of the restrictions. He persecutes Shiites and Kurds, because they are different. Starves his own people. He is also running around the world negotiating with other dictators so he can get weapons of mass destruction. U.N. does nothing. But wait we got Bush. He aborts the problem. Iraq is free!!!
3 - billy
Anthony
iraq is free for who? "free" for iraqis not americans, we are paying for it out of our treasury and it still isnt "free" as you claim. when does "free" mean an islamic republic and our troops dying faster than ever?
your loyalty to iraq over america is obvious and not appropriate.
4 - John Bambenek
Not is enamored with Sheehan standing on the coffin of her son and shouting communist drivel.
There are 1900 other sets of parents who lost kids... they aren't asking for special treatment and are starting to come out and tell Cindy to shut up too.
5 - billy
that a real good link John. the blog has been up for all of 3 days. more of the pat robertson republican party pretending to speak for soldiers.
why do you have an obsession with shutting up the families of the troops Sheehan? if you hate our bill of rights so much why dont you abandon the country? you obviously hate Americas values since shutting up your opponents is your major goal. that leaves you on par with the taliban and iran, not the american people.
6 - EMT907
The war in Iraq is NOT Vietnam either, no matter how badly the Neo-Socialists and their willing accomplices on the left and MSM want us to believe it. The ONLY similarity is said leftists doing their damndest to try and convince everybody that surrender is the best option. Same way the left spun the Tet Offensive into a failure.
7 - billy
i missed that part where we surrendered to the vietnamese, and im missing the part where we surrender to hussein.
has the right become so detached from reality, that absurd comments are the best they can do?
no one actually believes that drivel.
say goodbye to the majorities in 06. you have nothing left to offer except to attack a private citizen (Sheehan) who has every right to protest this war.
8 - John Bambenek
She has a right to protest the war, and we have the right to tell her to shut up.
She has the right to make 25,000 dollars a day from the left on the death of her son, we have a right to question her integrity.
No one is arresting her, no one gave her mother a stroke, no one is shutting the camp down.
We're disagreeing, you are the one trying to shut down speech here, not us.
9 - Dave Nalle
I've rarely seen a post that shows more clearly when someone just completely misses the entire point.
What Balletshooz demonstrates perfectly here is the tunnelvision of those who oppose the War in Iraq and the War on Terror and choose to focus on Iraq as if it were a self-contained military adventure, when in fact it is just the main front in a war which has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with the future of the entire region.
I'm still trying to figure out why some people can't see this. I'm not sure if Balletshooz has had this explained to him and chooses to igore it, or if he just hasn't thought about the larger implications of the War in Iraq, or if hatred and fear and a strong desire to deny reality have driven all rational thought from his head. Perhaps if we can figure out why Balletshooz is mired in thinking of Iraq as if it's Bosnia we can figure out why he can't see how much more like WW2 it really is.
Dave
10 - Balletshooz
Dave, you say Iraq is "just the main front in a war which has nothing to do with Iraq,"
Since you seem to have it all worked out. Please explain. When did iraq attack us? What evidence do you have to tie Iraq to the "war on terror" or call it a main front?
Dont cite something that happened AFTER we invaded Iraq and created a new terror haven, but BEFORE we invaded. I'll probably be waiting a long time for this one.
There is no rational basis to tie Iraq to the war on terror except it is a muslim country and Bush keeps saying it is. very weak.
11 - Dave Nalle
No need to wait, BS, I've already posted on this so many times that I'm always prepared to explain.
Iraq was the central lynchpin in a regional network of terror supporting states. Money, people and hardware were flowing freely though the porous borders of the region in the hands of various terrorist groups. This was true under Saddam, and now it's already considerably less true now because of the fighting and because some of the terrorists and hardware end up in Iraq itself.
The reason for invading Iraq - what I've called "The Truth They Dare Not Speak" - is not specifically Iraq or its WMDs or anything like that, it's to disrupt the entire network of terrorist states and to pressure them to abandon their terrorist strategy. Iraq was the logical place to do this for three reasons.
1. We had a whole raft of exuses to use, from Saddam's genocide to the WMDs and much more.
2. Iraq is centrally located and the borders all the key countries (Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran).
3. Iraq was weakened from the previous war and years of sanctions, and therefore easier to invade than any of its highly militarized neighbors.
By invading Iraq we put pressure on all of the troublemakers in the region, cutting their supply and communications lines, threatening their borders, forcing them to moderate their positions, negotiate and become more reasonable, all of this assuming that we have the resolve to hold out in Iraq to the point where they realize they aren't going to be able to take that country back into their network.
This is EXACTLY why we really went into Iraq. The Bush administration still isn't going to admit it. They determined at the start that the plan was too scary and too ambitious to try to explain to the public, so they went with presenting it as just a war on Iraq - a terrible PR mistake as it turns out. I guarantee that in 20 years you'll see memoirs on it from all the key players. And this is NOT a Neocon plan, it's classic global strategic warfare in the mode of Truman and Marshall. The main Neocon contribution was a bunch of goofy plans for Iraqi reconstruction which were almost immediately abandonned.
I'm not convinced that we should have pursued this strategy, and I believe it should have been presented for what it was from the start - I have more confidence in the American people than Bush and his crew do. However, now that we have taken this course we absolutely have to follow it through to the end. If we falter now the end result will be absolute disaster and a threat to the world I don't even want to contemplate.
So if you want to oppose the war in Iraq, oppose the entire strategy which it is a key part of and give up the nonsense about the WMDs and the Downing Street Memo and all the other silliness. That was never what the war was about and it was never relevant. But if you're going to oppose the strategy, you'd better come up with an idea better than just pulling out of Iraq for resolving it. Frankly, the only way I can see out of it would involve nukes in Tehran and Damascus.
I also have to say that Bush's timing of the war was very smart. It was just late enough in his first term that he could still coast through the election without too much griping about the war, and then have 4 years without an election campaign to try to resolve the situation before there's another chance for some idiot to get elected and screw us all by folding and bringing the troops home.
Dave
12 - eric
Hello, I'd like to point y'all to the website An Open Letter to the Mainstream Media .com I think that it might be very much in line with our collective sensibilities, regardless of where along the political spectrum when may fall. Unless you love GW as though he were your father. (Which is an affliction that seems to affect about 25-30% of adults for some strange reason.)
http://www.anopenlettertothemainstreammedia.com
thanks,
eric
13 - Dave Nalle
Why would someone waste money on that overly long URL just to put such a silly and twisted partisan rant online? Seems like a waste of time and money to me.
The idiotic author actually suggests lynching the president and his staff.
But I did like this quote:
"Dismiss this as bombastic hyperbole if you must."
Thanks, I think I will.
Dave
14 - RKC
RE: Comment 11
Dave Nalle says:
“Iraq was the central lynchpin in a regional network of terror supporting states.”
Of course.
Isn’t that what we were told before the invasion in in 2003?
15 - RKC
RE: Comment 11
“By invading Iraq we put pressure on all of the troublemakers in the region.”
Yes we did.
We pressured the troublemakers to increase their ranks by our invasion.
16 - RKC
RE: Comment 11
“The reason for invading Iraq - what I've called "The Truth They Dare Not Speak" - is not specifically Iraq or its WMDs or anything like that…”
Right on.
"The Truth They Dare Not Speak" is that Bush traded invading Iraq with Sharon getting out of Gaza.
17 - Dave Nalle
RKC, you can snipe and spin all you like, but you don't have any answers or any solutions, and you certainly can't dispute my thesis on why we invaded Iraq.
Dave
18 - RKC
We have now heard it directly from Dave.
He has all the answers and solutions.
Of course.
And no one can dispute his thesis.
Of course.
Why? Because he says so.
19 - Dave Nalle
No, because you were given an opportunity and chose to make pointless little remarks instead of discussing the subject. That's fine - you aren't required to engage in discussion.
Dave
20 - Balletshooz
I have read your thesis. It seems that post 11 describes a theory similar to the "project for the new american century". The problem is that I believe the idea of stirring up a world war in the muslim world is going to hurt America, not help it. We cannot police every culture in the world. We are turning Osama Bin Laden from a man and a criminal group, to a world movement and a philosophy among muslim people. It is a dangerous strategay and the PNAC folks made an error in judgement.
21 - Dave Nalle
If you think what I posted is at all similar to what PNAC proposes I strongly urge you to go look at the PNAC website and read up on some of their ideas.
Their plans are essentially imperialist and world wide in nature. They believe in imposing American culture and leadership on the rest of the world by economic influence and by force. That's not even vaguely like the kind of limited regional disruption I was talking about.
Dave
22 - Billy Clinton
Comparing the disaster in Iraq to WWII is one of, if not THE, dumbest statement moronic puppet has ever said.