Bumbling Bush may have given Osama an open goal

[T_i_B]

Great article about how Bush is not addressing the issue of Al-Quaida.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1011652,00.html

Fear of attack, rather than the attack itself, is the terrorist's most potent weapon. And despite all the declared successes of George Bush's "war on terror", fear of major new outrages by al-Qaida and its partners in mayhem is once again on the rise.

The immediate question, as ever, is how to prevent such attacks before they happen. The larger question is why, after Afghanistan and Iraq and everything else that has been said and done by western leaders since 9/11, this threat apparently remains so omnipresent - and so scary.

It is at this point that the doubts about Bush's divisive and frequently crude leadership of the "war on terror" come more sharply into focus. Bush is accused of many things - but never of being imaginative. From the very start, and despite much spin and waffle about fighting a new kind of conflict by unconventional means, Bush has opted for the obvious.

These tactics bear little relation to an effective defence against terrorism in the round, let alone to tackling its root causes. Many al-Qaida in Afghanistan were merely dispersed; now they are returning. As for Iraq, they were never there in the first place.

[JackSwift]

1. "Bush has opted for the obvious"

badly executed and with side trips to places that contain only oil and old pre-terrorist scores to settle.

Bush promised a good economy to justify multiple tax cuts, and Bin Ladin's head on a pike. He also promised Hussein's head on a pike, not that Hussein did anything approaching making war on us. We have an economy in the shitter that will remain in the shitter because we are in an open ended war on terror that cannot be wrapped up because its "end" will be a disaster for Bush's popularity. We are in a war against terror where we have seen fit to insult our strongest allies to the point that they feel that humiliating Bush is more important than rounding up terrorists. We are stuck in the daily 120 degree heat of Iraq fighting a war under pretenses that at best turned out not to be true, and our fig leaf of installing democracy is now viewed by the natives that never lined the streets cheering our arrival as a collaborationist gambit to steal their oil at best, or worst to give it to their supposed enemy Israel.

To parody Rumsfeld: "Is this working out for us? Hell no. Will we keep it up? Gracious, yes. Why? We're not at liberty to tell you that."

I'm tired of the apparently useless deaths of American soldiers being described as being at "acceptable levels." There is no good reason for being in Iraq, and any losses, whether in battle, accident, self-inflicted, etc. or any of the $4 billion expense per month is not acceptable. Why should we pay $50 billion a year (minimum, probably three times that) so that Halliburton can make a billion a month? Can't we just bring the boys home and simply give Halliburton the money outright? Or are we already doing that too?

[0007]

2. I hope everyone will take time and read this article

'Tis a must read!

[T_i_B]

3. Tis a fantastic article.

I must admit that the primary reason I opposed action in Iraq was that I could see no evidence of links between Saddam & Al-Quaida. I can remember going all over the net & challenging chickenhawks on that subject in August/September last year and nothing, not even in the infamous Blair dossiers could show any such link, mainly because, as Blair has admitted, the link did not exist.

As a result, with the prospect of a completly unjustifiable war on the horizon I started protesting. I'm glad that I did. It always amuses me how war hawks seem to think that this war was to make us safer when anyone with a decent sense of logic could have worked oput that it would only make everyone hate us and drive thousands into the arms of Al-Quaida. Bin Laden must be laughing at all this. I'm certainly not.

[lkinsale]

4. "Osama bin Forgotten"

as Bob Graham calls him. Graham warned the senate of this very thing back in October.

Senator Graham's Floor Statement on the Iraq Resolution

October 10, 2002


Madam President, the CIA has warned us that international terrorist organizations will probably use United States action against Iraq as an indication for striking us here in the homeland.

You might ask, what does the word 'probably' mean in intelligence speak? It probably means that there is a 75 percent greater chance of the event occurring. And the event is that international terrorist organizations will use United States actions against Iraq as a justification for striking us here in the homeland.

<snip>

Even if we say the number one issue should be containing weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, I frankly do not believe that Iraq should be our first concern.

<snip>

I close with the words spoken in one of the darkest periods of history of the Western World, in 1941, by Winston Churchill: "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

******

Not like this is news to anybody now!

Contribute to Graham For President (Enter "Laura Kinsale" as your BobCat if you want to give me credit toward my pledge to raise 1k for Bob.)

[samsingh]

5. plus a lot of followers

and potential recruits as well.

the iraq war has made America weaker.

[T_i_B]

6. And Britain too

Our own government is equally guilty, and the safety of Britain is equally at risk thanks to the foolishness of the Blairite chickenhawks.