Tag: Iraq

On ‘Mission Accomplished’ Day, Desperate Bush Mentions al Qaeda 28 Times in Speech on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of his “Mission Accomplished” debacle, Pres. Bush delivered a speech to a construction industry group in which he desperately tried to link the war in Iraq to 9/11 — using the words “al Qaeda” 28 times in 73 minutes. (He also used the word “progress” 15 times.)

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Here he is at his most shameless:

Al Qaeda is the group that plot [sic] and planned and trained killers to come and kill people on our soil. The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens. I’ve got to tell you, that day deeply affected my decision-making. And I vowed that I would do anything that I possibly could within the law to protect the American citizens against further attack by these ideologues, by these murderers.

And:

For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11. I strongly believe it’s in our national interest to stay in the fight.

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Or maybe, as Keith Olbermann suggested, the White House message team is forced to drag out this tired crap because that’s all they’ve got left.

Conservative Icon Willam F. Buckley Worries Bush Is Killing GOP

Jon Ponder

William F. Buckley, ancient founder of the National Review and leading light of the once powerful country-club wing of the GOP, is worried that Pres. Bush is destroying the Republican Party:

“The parallel [to Iraq insurgency] even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.”
— Bill Buckley

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue.

Buckley sees the fatal issue as Bush’s war in Iraq and fears that while the president’s aggressive campaign to win short-term political victories at home — like vetoing his own “emergency supplemental” war funding bill — may bolster his hardcore, mostly Christian nationalist base, it is all just a misdirection meant to hide the fact that Bush and his team know that the war is lost:

[Beyond] affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month.

Buckley compares the Iraqi insurgency to the spread of early Christianity, casting America in the role of the faltering Roman Empire:

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that [Vice Pres.] Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease?

He even suggests the insurgents’ cause is as unstoppable as your typical country clubbing freeman’s need for drink:

The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

Finally:

There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

Buckley ignores the source of his party’s affliction. Bush would have never reelected without the votes of the Christian nationalists, especially the ones in Ohio who turned out in droves to vote for Karl Rove’s anti-gay marriage amendment. These same easily fooled voters are largely still behind Bush and his lost cause.

Feinstein Introduced Bill to Close Guantanamo

Jon Ponder

Los Angeles Times:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a measure Monday to force the Pentagon to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and move the trials of Al Qaeda suspects to the United States.

But the Defense Department got another green light for those Guantanamo tribunals to continue, when the Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the appeal of two detainees who challenged the legality of the military commissions.

In a statement, Feinstein said the detention facility had hurt America’s credibility around the world because of allegations of abuse there and doubts about the legal rights afforded detainees.

“We must recognize the sustained damage this facility is doing to our international standing,” she said in the statement. “We are better served by closing this facility and transferring the detainees elsewhere.”

Feinstein’s measure would transfer Guantanamo detainees to military or civilian detention facilities in the United States or to their home countries. The legislation allows detainees who “pose no continuing security threat” to be released. Feinstein said she opposed “releasing any terrorists.”

Bush Should Veto the Iraq Spending Bill Until We have a Timetable for Bringing Home the Contractors

Buck Banks

The Democrats, as usual, have it all wrong when it comes to Iraq. We don’t need a timetable for bringing home the troops, we need one for the contractors and subcontractors — that’s where the real money is going. Of course, then you’d have to know how many of them there are.

The Iraq reconstruction effort, while prone to waste, is experiencing less fraud since a crackdown in 2004.

David M. Walker, chief of the Government Accountability Office told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that not only doesn’t the Defense Department know howmany contractors and subcontractors it has, it also doesn’t know what they are doing over there..

Because the U.S. military relies so heavily on defense contractors, it qualifies for the trifecta of boondoggles: fraud, waste and abuse. DoD is so bad about spending our money responsibly that this testimony was taken in January, but only released in an unclassified version last week.

Oh, and Defense lacks guidelines on using contractors, too, but if it did have guidelines, it wouldn’t have enough contract oversight personnel to ensure that contracted work gets done.

Is this beginning to sound like the same guys that brought us the post-Katrina response? You bet!

It gets better: Last Thursday the Office of Management and Budget released a new certification for project and program managers designed to ensure they have the skills to define and manage contracts. But — and here’s the good part —
Defense is exempt on the grounds that it already has a similar program.

But there is a bright spot in the government’s management of the war — the reconstruction effort, while prone to waste, is experiencing less fraud since a crackdown in 2004.

Poll: Most Americans Don’t Want Veto of Iraq Funding Bill

Buck Banks

The Pew Research Center has just released a poll that found six out of 10 Americans do not want President Bush to veto the Iraq spending bill that calls for a timetable for troop withdrawal. That’s almost as many Americans as voted for Al Gore for president in 2000!

The poll detected deep-seated pessimism among Americans for prospects in Iraq.

The challenge is that neither side seems inclined to compromise: 54 percent of withdrawl timeline supporters do not want the Senate to compromise with Bush to avoid a veto; likewise, 54 percent of those opposed to a timeline for withdrawal do not want Bush to back down on his veto promise. Not that that’s very likely.

The poll detected deep-seated pessimism among Americans for prospects in Iraq, and for the first time a majority (51 percent) of respondents said they did not think the U.S. would succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq. Only a quarter think that the troop surge is having a positive effect and only a third think it will have a positive long-term effect on the situation in Iraq. Forty-one percent believe that maintaining a military presence in Iraq increases the likelihood of a terrorist attack on the U.S., while 45 percent say withdrawing would increase the odds of a terrorist attack on American soil.

Even Republicans are growing disenchanted with Bush’s handling of the war. Almost half (45 percent) say they want a candidate for president who will take a different approach from Bush’s, while only 41 percent say they want a candidate who will cary on in Bush’s footsteps. When applied to both Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, however, the number wanting a change in strategy jumps to 52 percent.

Poll: 64% Support Dems’ War Timetable

Jon Ponder

CBS News poll:

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed favor setting a timetable for a U.S. troop pullout by 2008. The Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin by Oct. 1.

Most also believe Congress, not the president, should have the final word on setting troop levels in Iraq. But they do not want Democrats to cut off funding for the war if the president is unwilling to agree on a timetable.

Tenet on CIA’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’

Jon Ponder

George Tenet’s book, “At the Center of the Storm,” will be published soon, and the former CIA director (and Medal of Freedom winner) is kicking off the publicity campaign with an interview on 60 Minutes, on Sunday, April 29, 2007.

“Let me say that again to you. We don’t torture people. OK?”
— George Tenet

In an article about the CBS website, it appears that Tenet wrote the book more to clear his name than to settle scores, as many us hoped. At the top of his list is correcting the record about the story he advised the president that invading Iraq would be a “slam dunk.” He says the Bushies have misrepresented what happened in order to make him a fall guy for the WMD fiasco.

Much more interesting is what he has to say about accusations that the CIA tortured its terror suspects. He denies it (at least three times), insisting instead that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used — and that they saved lives:

[…]

Costly Collaboration: Mainstream Media Gave the Bush Administration a Pass on Run-Up to the Iraq War

Buck Banks

Perhaps Jon would not have been so surprised at the New York Post’s creative editing of an Associated Press story if he had watched the premiere of Bill Moyers’ new PBS series, “Buying the War,” last night. He would have still been angry and depressed after watching the parade of well-known journalists admit to giving the Bushites a pass on such important stories as Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda and 9/11, weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war as an essential component of the neocons’ War on Terror.

While all of those stories have since come to be labeled lies, the lack of skepticism from the press at the time and the incessant drumming of the Bush admin’s messages into the ears and minds of a shell-shocked populace have resulted in the grim fact that more than half of Americans still believe that Saddam had WMDs and links to al Qaeda. That’s what happens when the press abdicates its role as watchdog over freedom.

You can watch the 90-minute documentary here or read a transcript of it here. But be prepared to get angry and depressed by what you see and read.

Murdoch’s NY Post Fakes AP Story to Smear Dems and Promote Perpetual War

Jon Ponder

It may sound like my tin-foil hat talking but it really is fundamental to the right’s authoritarian agenda to keep the country in a perpetual state of war. But evidence of their true intent is rarely so brazenly exposed as it was this week by the intentional manipulation of a story at Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.S. newspaper:

In the changed story, the Post added a quote from the White House saying Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats would issue a death sentence “for millions of Iraqis.”

[The New York] Post completely rewrote [an Associated Press] story to make it a hit on Dems — than ran the piece with the imprimatur of the AP and Espo. While papers are free to edit AP copy, this complete makeover is nonetheless extraordinary — and extraordinarily revealing.

The lede from the original AP story:

A historic veto showdown assured, Democratic leaders agreed Monday on legislation that requires the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.

‘No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration’s incompetence and dishonesty,’ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a speech in which he accused the president of living in a state of denial about events in Iraq more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

The Post changed this to:

The White House warned yesterday that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s new legislation requiring the first U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by Oct. 1 is a “death sentence” for millions of freedom-loving Iraqis.

The stinging comments from President Bush’s spokeswoman came just days after Reid declared the war is already “lost” and as negotiators for the House and Senate nailed down the details of the war bill, which also set a goal of completing the pullout by April 2008.

Dana Perino, the president’s spokeswoman, charged that Reid is in denial about the vicious nature of the enemy and about the U.S.-led plan to provide more security in Iraq.

Reid (Nev.) had earlier accused Bush of being in a “state of denial” about what’s happening in Iraq four years after America went to war.

Perino fumed about Reid, “He’s also in denial that a surrender date – he thinks it is a good idea. It is not a good idea. It is defeat.

“It is a death sentence for the millions of Iraqis who voted for a constitution, who voted for a government, who voted for a free and democratic society,” she added.

I thought I was unshockable by this crowd but they continue to amaze.