September 26, 2006
The attacks on 9-11 could have been defended by going after bin-Laden and his accomplices. Period. None of whom were in Iraq. That's what Bush is ignorant of, or just plain lying about.
Here's what he said today . . .
"You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions."
What he's really saying is, first, that without the September 11th attacks, his administration would have never awakened to the threat from these 'extremists'. We know, however, that he refused to retaliate for the Cole bombing. He refused to act against the Taliban when he had the knowledge of their harboring of al-Qaeda, despite widespread intelligence that they were involved in the other embassy bombings.
Secondly, he's admitting that because he was unprepared to confront and apprehend those individuals known to be involved, they would be free to commit other atrocities. Twenty years of experience was tossed aside when he retired the nation's top terror analyst, Richard Clarke as he was warning the administration of the risks from the lack of resources and attention to the threat. The Presidential Daily Breifing he was presented with a month before the 9-11 attacks, entitled, 'Bin-Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." couldn't have been more clear if it had a road map and address to his home. Yet, Bush did nothing except focus on tax breaks and trade deals for his wealthy benefactors, faith-based initiatives, and his 'education presidency' in the months leading up to the attacks.
After informing reporters today of the startling fact that "(they) kill in order to achieve their objectives, Bush again used bin-Laden as the main measure of the threat. "You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement," he said.
Then get the bastard, Bush! How many distractions will they be allowed to use to obscure from the fact that they haven't caught the perpetrators identified in the congressional authorization to use military force that Bush uses to justify his imperious power-grab? Seventy/eighty percent of our resources that we rely on to defend our nation are in Iraq. If bin-Laden is so much the threat that Bush has to wag him in front of us every time he speaks, then why aren't the bulk of the resources and manpower going to find and kill him?
We have some 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, where Bush complained there were "thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps." They're still being trained there, and are expanding; funded mostly by the resurgence of the opium trade which supplies over 90% of America's heroin. Yet, Bush insists that we need to escalate the 140,000 troops in Iraq with almost as many in Afghanistan defending Baghdad and the green zone of defense which surrounds and defends the defunct Maliki administration.
All the while, the occupation of Iraq fuels and aggravates the violent recriminations and retaliations among the myriad of factions and sects, and among those inhabitants who would actively and aggressively resist the propped up regime and it's heavy-handed benefactors. There is no avenue for free expression in Iraq that would facilitate any reasonable control of the new regime by the people who so faithfully were shepherded to the polls (under U.S. occupation) to allow them to assume their positions of power. Maliki has shut down and censored the media outlets in the country which expose the chaos and bloodshed and portray the country as the wasteland it has become under American occupation.
There is no way for the puppet regime to do much more than parrot whatever new scheme their American enablers contrive for them. Talibani's broken english was deliberate, as he couldn't possibly find the words to explain away the incompetence and utter contradiction between Bush's insisting to stay in Iraq "as long as he's president" and the reality of the occupation's corrupting effect on any measure of Iraqi sovereignty ir self-determination. It's clear that Talibani and his henchmen are nothing if not 'kept' by their domineering hosts.
Yes, Bush. We would see a 'rosier' scenario if you hadn't cut-and-run from the hunt for bin-Laden and his accomplices and diverted the bulk of our military's defenses to create your Iraqi junta. You are either hopelessly ignorant, or dangerously dishonest; or both. It didn't pass notice that you gave a sly reference to reading the "key judgments" of the National Security Estimate. If that's true, we may have hit on something. The entire report needs to be read and shared with our representatives in Congress. It's no good for Americans to get whatever snippet Negroponte decides spins the information your way. Its not good enough for Americans who've been subject to your earlier lies about WMDs. Saddam and al-Qaeda, and chemical/bio threats from the hapless former dictator of Iraq; your former, purchased dupe who was worthy enough to your Defense Secretary to visit his palace to shake his hand.
The language from Bush as he defends his administration against the leaked conclusions of the report, which determine his Iraq occupation has worsened the 'terror' threat, is ominously autocratic and transparently manipulative. "We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war," he defends.
"And here we are," he says, "coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes . . . once again, there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign, -- to create confusion in the minds of the American people, in my judgment, is why they leaked it."
To Bush, the truth about his reckless, incompetent stewardship of our nation's defenses is 'the enemy'; much like his protege' Maliki, in his contrived, inspired manipulation of the Iraqi press. Increasingly, as his lies have all fallen to the wayside, Bush is reduced to excusing his failures by telling Americans there's some hidden, secret information his agents are withholding from us that will prove how much of a hero and savior he and his War Party has been in protecting us from the violence and unrest his own bungling militarism has actually created and made worse.
No half-assed release by his cronies will absolve Bush. Nor will any of the attempts to ignite a new wave of fear and distraction from their failures which have been so thoroughly highlighted in the congressional campaigns. The republican party and their enabling support of the the lying, dictatorial Bush regime is set to expire, effective with our votes in November.
Nothing will obscure that, when we make it happen.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree/1033
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