Congress will not rubberstamp george bushes war. This is why a Democratic congress was such a huge victory. Instead of just doing whatever stupid thing he feels like bush is going to have to answer to somebody.
Archive for the 'iraq' Category
Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.
Iraq Sadr City residents insulted by ‘Buddy Jesus’
Iraqi Shiite residents of Baghdad’s Sadr City have expressed anger on over a picture of a grinning Jesus they mistook for a Shiite holy figure that appeared in the area after a joint US-Iraqi operation.
..
“That picture abuses our Imam Mahdi and his holy character, and mocks our sacred figures,” said resident Abu Riyam Sunday, apparently mistaking the satirical movie still of Jesus for one of Shiite Islam’s historical imams, whose images adopt a Jesus-like iconography.
“If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny,” said a coalition spokesman, Major Will Willhoite..
Don’t speak so quickly: It’s still funny.
This review of Ron Suskind’s new book contains this miserable anecdote:
One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind’s gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war’s major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”
Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
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Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”
The United States, the most powerful empire the world has ever known, is currently involved in a struggle with people who live in caves. And we’re doing it poorly. We’re chasing ghosts and jumping at shadows.
The central flaw of American foreign policy these last few years has been the triumph of hope, wishful thinking, and self-delusion over realism and practicality.
I have a coworker, who when pressed with an unreasonable request responds with “and I want a pony”. It is a shame that no one in the white house likes horses.
It is also a shame that this is the first post to hold the iran tag, but not the first to have the war tag. It will hopefully be the last to have both those tags.
I’ve seen this a few times now, but it seems like nobody else has mentioned it:
These militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain. If they are not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. I make you this solemn commitment: That’s not going to happen so long as I’m the President of the United States. (Applause.)
It sounds familiar right?
Iraqi democracy will succeed — and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran — that freedom can be the future of every nation. (Applause.) The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. (Applause.)
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. (Applause.)
Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace. (Applause.)
Does anybody else find it unsettling that it just so happens that we and ‘The Terrorists’ have the exact same plan for Iraq? Is this a case of projection? Or have the Neocons fallen so far out of favor that their being subtly associated with Bin laden?
Cheney: Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that–it’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack
And then:
June 17th 2004:
BORGER: Well, let’s get to Mohamed Atta for a minute because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
Vice Pres. CHENEY: I never said that.
Liar.
Kevin Drum posts about pre war claims and post war facts. The gist of it is there are some very specific claims that were made prior to the Iraqi invasion without mentioning the very serious doubts about the information presented.
The new dodge is that over 100 Democrats voted for the invasion. Democrats voted to give the president power to use force as a means of giving him leverage [10/9/02 Speech by John Kerry]:
When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world’s case against Saddam Hussein.
Straight from the presidents mouth:
Later this week, the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America’s military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands. Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable. The resolution will tell the United Nations, and all nations, that America speaks with one voice and is determined to make the demands of the civilized world mean something.
The United States public trusted the George Bush when he laid out the case for an Iraq war. We were deceived. There were serious doubts about many of the cases for war, none of which came to light until after the fact. Americans aren’t stupid, no matter what the White House says now we can plainly see how wrong they were, and we can see that they were never as sure as we were lead to believe.
Is it a lie? By the dictionary maybe not. But the decision to take a country to war demands more then technically true. It demands that our government hide nothing from us. Bush wanted this war, he pushed for it and he got it. Don’t let him pawn the blame off on others.
Interesting transcript of a Lawrence Wilkerson speech.
Read more for some interesting bits.
Continue reading ‘On the Bush Whitehouse’
Those Stupid Little Magnets
Published September 22, 2005 Support Our Troops , iraq , war Leave a CommentFred Clark proposes ‘official’ support our troops magnets as a way of actually supporting our troops via magnet, instead of the $3 dollar fashion accessory they currently are.
I hate those magnets. Like Fred says:
These people can’t even make the kind of long-term commitment involved in an adhesive bumper-sticker. Magnets don’t jeopardize your paint job. And magnets can be easily removed should the political winds shift.
In the first gulf war we had support our troops stickers, and everywhere you went in my junior high you saw those stickers. My locker senior year in high school 4 years later still had one on the inside. Sure it was just a sticker and I doubt that anybody in the gulf was particularly supported by the sticker on the inside of a locker in arizona the fact remains that whoever put it there was stuck with it. They made a commitment to support the troops that had some idea of permanence. But a magnet? Real Estate agents give out magnets for free, I don’t think I’m supporting my Real Estate agent (all though I have an excellent Real Estate Agent) just because I have a magnet.
But I have a much deeper beef with those magnets. It’s the message:
“Support our troops”
Not “I support our troops”, but a command: YOU OVER THERE, YOU LIBERAL PACAFIST SCUM: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. What kind of thing is it when instead of only showing support you demand the support of others? What form should my support take then? More admonations of support? Is supporting the troops just a pyramid scheme? And once everybody supports the troops what then?
But actually plunking down some cash for those things that would benefit actual American troops? Those wouldn’t bother me, even if they kept the implied holier than though message, because any following act of support would actually do something.
