Star Tribune: Iraq/ It was never about Sept. 11

[gristy]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune continues on its offensive. I never thought I would see the day where the "outing" of the BFEE would begin to sound repetitive.

<snip>
The world was with the United States two years ago; indeed, it was eager to help. Since then, that unity has crumbled to dust, not least because of the go-it-alone arrogance the Bush administration demonstrated from the outset. But by far the largest fracture occurred because of the administration's efforts to portray the preemptive attack it wanted to mount against Iraq as part of the post-Sept. 11 war on terror. Links were alleged and insinuated between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, to the point that most Americans came to believe Iraq was behind the attacks.

That wasn't true, but making that connection served larger goals of the Bush administration -- goals that predated Sept. 11 by at least four years. Chief among them was removing Saddam Hussein from power by means of military action. Sept. 11 provided a convenient rationale.

Chief proponent of this strategy was a group called the Project for the New American Century. PNAC is headed by William Kristol, editor of a neoconservative magazine, the Weekly Standard. Prominent associates of PNAC in the late 1990s included: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Under-Secretary of State for nonproliferation John Bolton; U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick; former chairman and current member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, plus several other DFDP members; current National Security Council staffer and alum of Iran-Contra Elliott Abrams, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

more (registration required)

[kcwayne]

1. Somebody educate me please...

What does BFEE stand for?

[Kolesar]

2. the Bush Family Evil Empire

google "Prescott Bush Third Reich" and follow the tale from the beginning.

[zbird]

3. Bush Family Evil Empire. nt

[Old and In the Way]

4. Bush Family Evil Empire

Shaping US policy to fit their own personal interests since 1935...

[T Roosevelt]

5. I added this to Steph's PNAC Archive earlier

great little piece...

[bvar22]

6. Luckey to live in St. Paul...

...and to receive a daily copy of this paper. Lately, the column Our Perspective , without a byline, has been especially critical of the bush* administration and the NeoCon doctrine.

<snip from referenced column>

"As is clear now, Clinton's policy of containment had worked pretty well."

<end>
I've been waiting to see this line in print! It should be rammed down th NeoCons throats....

The entire fiasco of the bush*/republican invasion of Iraq has proved that the Clinton/Democratic policy of inspections and containment was working and would continue to work. The bush*/republican Invasionj of Iraq was ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY!!!

350+ DEAD American soldiers (and climbing)
40,0000 DEAD Iraqis (and counting)
100,000 MAIMED (and counting)
$150,000,000,000 wasted (and counting)

ALL WASTED!!!!

bushy*, you got some spliainin to do!

[wellst0nev0ter]

7. Looks Like They Were Pissed Off About This

From their February 6 editorial:

Did Russia, France not listen?


It was as if the foreign ministers of China, France and Russia - especially the latter two - had not heard a word U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said. Powell's purpose in speaking to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday was to demonstrate that the U.N. weapons inspections program in Iraq is not working because Iraq is very actively trying to defeat it. His case was persuasive. Then came Russia and France to say, respectively, that the inspections have been "effective" and are "working" because they've produced such "significant achievements" as gaining access to Saddam Hussein's palaces. Both went on then to call for beefing up the inspections teams. Their responses were a non sequitur to what Powell had just said.

In his remarks, Powell made the point that "the inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives." Apparently Russia, France and China don't appreciate the distinction. But as Powell pointedly noted, it took four years for Iraq to admit to inspectors in the 1990s that it had biological and chemical weapons programs. How long does the world want to give Iraq this time? Four more years?

. . .Americans need to give Powell's statements a large amount of trust in two respects. The satellite images he presented are exceedingly difficult for nonexperts to read, and people need to accept that the imagery-interpretation experts who studied these photos knew what they were seeing. Moreover, Powell identified only a few of the human sources whose information he used. That's because if he had said any more, people's lives would have been put at risk, along with additional information they may provide in the future. The important point was that Powell repeatedly referred to "multiple" sources, which should give Americans a high degree of confidence that the information is accurate.

<snip>

[tom_paine]

8. Oh they listened, all right

It's just that, in stark contrast to the Imperial Subjects of Amerika, the Democrats and Journalists (I do NOT include the many member of the Right-Wing Sub-Media, who are paid propagandists), members of Old Europe can tell when a steaming load of lying Totalitarian bullshit is dumped at their door.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Hey, all you Minnesotans in this thread

Check out the notice on the October 26th DU gathering in the Meeting Room. As a new/old resident of Minneapolis, I hope to meet a lot of you there.

:hi: