Tag: Iraq

Trump on Withdrawal from Iraq in 2007: ‘Declare Victory and Leave’

Jon Ponder

infografix-trump-on-withdrawing-from-iraq-2007

Donald Trump has used up the last couple of news cycles repeating the ridiculous lie that Pres. Obama is the “founder of ISIS.” He also said the bloodthirsty terror group “honors” the president.

The flimsy basis of Trump’s false narrative is that U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq early in the president’s first term, and that ISIS arose to fill the power vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal.

Never mind that ISIS began as an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgency that established itself in 2003 after the Bush administration fired more than 300,000 Iraqi soldiers and sent them home jobless, with few prospects and fully armed.

Never mind that the date of the U.S. troop withdrawal was specified in the Status of Forces agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and the democratically elected government of Iraq.

And never mind that Donald Trump himself was strongly in favor of the withdrawal at the time. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Trump in March 2007 what he thought the U.S. should do, Trump replied “Declare victory and leave.”

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Trump Sides with Liberals: Bush Should Have Been Impeached

Jon Ponder
Click to see video clip
Click to see video clip

In his quest for the Republican Party presidential nomination, Donald Trump has changed his positions on a number of hot-button issues. He was once for legalizing drugs, for example, now he’s not. He once said he was “very pro-choice,” now he says he is pro-life. He supported background checks for gun buyers and a ban on assault weapons, now he says he’s a Second Amendment guy all the way. He once favored universal healthcare, now he toes the GOP line: He’ll repeal Obamacare but has no plan to replace it.

Based on an exchange at the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina last night, on one issue, at least, Trump still agrees with liberals. In fact, on this issue he’s to the left of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pres. Obama.

Trump still believes George W. Bush should have been impeached.

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Jeb Returns to His Neocon Roots: Vows to Finish Mideast Wars His Brother Started

Jon Ponder

Always Wrong: PNAC founders, from left, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz
Always Wrong: PNAC founders, from left, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz
Five days after calling his brother George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq a “mistake” and saying he “wouldn’t have gone in,” Jeb Bush announced to a war-weary nation that he’s running for president not just to become the third Bush in the White House, but also to be the third Bush president to invade the Middle East.

In a speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., yesterday Bush announced essentially that, if elected, he would revive the Bush Doctrine, the plan concocted by George W. Bush, Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, and other neoconservatives that called for using military force to subjugate the Middle East under the guise of democratizing it but with the real intention of control its “strategic interests,” which is to say its oil reserves.

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Bush’s CIA Briefer: Cheney and Bush Lied about Iraq Nukes

Jon Ponder
Mike Morell, the CIA officer who briefed George W. Bush on intelligence, during his appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball"
Mike Morell, the CIA officer who briefed George W. Bush on intelligence, during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball”

Why did George Bush and Dick Cheney invade Iraq? Their foundational rationale for the invasion was to prevent Saddam Hussein from using nuclear weapons they claimed he had. Based on what we know now, of course, those claims were either lies or they were based on faulty intelligence. Republicans are desperate to assert it was the latter — that Bush and Cheney were merely incompetent and relied on bad data — because if the former were true, if Bush and Cheney knowing lied about their rationale for taking the country to war, they were guilty of a massive war crime and, by all rights, should be sitting the Hague today.

Earlier this week, Mike Morell, the CIA officer who served as George Bush’s chief intelligence briefer, confirmed that the claims by Bush, Cheney and others that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons were lies.

Video and transcript follow…

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Pelosi: Netanyahu’s Address was Condescending

Buck Banks

I was near tears throughout the Prime Minister’s speech — saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States… and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation.

— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by The Hill, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress.

Why Did Fox Allow Spokesanchor Megyn Kelly to Attack Dick Cheney on Iraq?

Jon Ponder

Here’s one for the Kremlin watchers. Why did Fox News Pres. Roger Ailes decide to go after Dick Cheney’s record of deception and ineptitude about the invasion of Iraq? Sources say that daily talking points are largely determined by Ailes and delivered by his minions in morning meetings to Foxbots like Megyn Kelly. During an interview with Cheney yesterday, Kelly put Cheney on defense about his record of lies and failures about Iraq, which she described in unvarnished and shockingly reality-based terms.

Cheney and his daughter Liz — last seen dropping out of the U.S. Senate race in the Cheney fiefdom of Wyoming after polls showed she was 50 points behind the incumbent, ultra right-wing GOP Sen. Mike Enzi — have launched yet another anti-Obama organization. As part of the rollout, in an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal, which, like Fox, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney criticized the President, saying, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

In response to that, on Fox yesterday, Kelly asked him:

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