This is one of the problems with an attack on Syria that I mentioned yesterday. When the U.S. was declaring its intention to arm the Syrian opposition, it seemed that this could derail any attempt to reduce tensions with Iran. A direct attack on Syria would make it virtually impossible for Rouhani to pursue a more conciliatory course, which in turn makes conflict with Iran more likely in the coming years. Iran might not respond militarily to an attack on its ally, but if hard-liners in Tehran are as blinkered as our own “credibility”-obsessed politicians they very well might feel that they have to respond or risk being perceived as weak. Whether Iran retaliates or not, Rouhani will be in no position to offer concessions, and Iran hawks here will use this to justify their own demands for even more sanctions and more aggressive measures against Iran’s nuclear program.
One of the more curious things about arguments for intervention in Syria is that most of them have focused on Iran’s support for Assad as a reason to enter the war, but they never consider the possibility that Iran could strike against U.S. interests or clients in response. Most Syria hawks think that using force against Assad will prove to Tehran that the U.S. is serious when it makes threats against other governments, but they assume that hard-liners in Tehran will react to an attack on their ally by becoming more accommodating, which is the exact opposite of what they themselves would do if a U.S. ally were attacked. Most Syria hawks have tried selling war in Syria as a way to avoid war with Iran, but with each step towards direct military intervention in Syria war between the U.S. and Iran is becoming more likely.
The only thing I have to add to the above is this here; once the genie is out of the bottle, it is out and there is no putting back in the bottle at all. If the United States and Great Britain attack Syria, then the wheels for there being a World War III will be put into motion in short order; and Israel and Russia will be involved, as well as Iran. Biblical prophecy will begin to be fulfilled in short order.
This why I believe Obama really needs to think this through in a big way; and really ask himself, “Do I really want to be the President that puts the United States in this sort of place?” Also too, Patrick J. Buchanan is absolutely right, there needs to be a debate and Congress, not the President; should be the ones to decide if we should go into another protracted Military conflict.
Because frankly, there are no short wars at all. Period, End of story. Anyone who believe that this would be short battle ought to remember Iraq and how we thought that little foreign policy blunder was going to be a short war.
American version of it or not. I simply do not trust it and this here is why. This comes via Memri TV:
Some of you might say, “But, aren’t you a Buchananite type?” Yes, indeed I am. Which simply means that I am not a fan of Wilsonian Foreign Policy and that’s all it means. If Al-Jazeera TV is putting this sort of garbage on it’s Arab speaking network, it has zero business being in the United States of America. This is nothing more than Anti-Jewish propaganda and it furthers the blood libels that the terrorists thrive on and use to commit acts of carnage.
If our President were actually worth a tinkers damn, he would tell Al-Jazeera TV, “You either do something about that, or you can pack your little network up and go back to mecca, where you truly belong.” But, because we have a President who kowtows down to Arabs and their religion, instead of defending Jewish Americans, you have this network Al-Jazeera TV here to brainwash Americans into believe that 9/11 was somehow justified.
…and that, my friends, is a great American tragedy.
It might have seemed clever to withhold judgment on the July coup and try to nudge the military towards a return to elected government, but this was interpreted by all sides as a positive endorsement of the coup and confirmation that there was nothing that the Egyptian military did that would trigger the suspension of aid. The attempt to retain “leverage” confirmed that the U.S. never really had any. The U.S. can’t constructively influence what the Egyptian military and its interim government do, and it should stop pretending that it can. This isn’t going to remedy any of Egypt’s ills, but it would be the first step in acknowledging that it is beyond the ability of the U.S. government to remedy them. In the meantime, it does nothing but harm America’s reputation to be backing a coup government that kills civilian protesters in the streets. It costs the U.S. very little to end that support, and it gains the U.S. nothing but grief to continue the status quo.
This is so very true. We are funding these idiotic feuds, like the one between Israel and Palestine. We need to stop this and start focusing on rebuilding our own economy. This uprising in Egypt should be a textbook example of why Wilsonian foreign policy simply does not work. The quicker the United States figures this out, the better.
The Video is here. I was going to post it here, but it is an auto start embed and those drive people crazy! So, go to the link to view it!
The Story:
A Boston Marathon bombing victim hospitalized for weeks after the blasts lashed out at the mother of the accused bombers, calling Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “vile” for her jihad-laced rants and denials.
Michelle L’Heureux, a 38-year-old John Hancock consultant, told the Herald yesterday it’s time to stop being “politically correct” and speak out — making her one of the first victims to stand up to the terror-talking Chechen family.
“I feel a little bit of hatred towards her. I think she is a vile person,” L’Heureux said of the mom. “If you don’t like our country, get out. It’s as simple as that.”
L’Heureux lost most of her left knee in the blasts, and 30 percent of her hearing in her left ear. Her left arm is riddled with shrapnel scars, and there’s a piece of metal still inside her leg. She was 8 feet away from the first blast on Boylston Street. She came to the city to see her boyfriend cross the finish lin
If only more liberal Democrats felt this way, maybe we would have actually won the war on terror. Instead, because of the Democrat’s almost allergic reaction to war and because of the bungled methods of the Bush Administration — we lost it and badly. Oh, and BTW, I have seen where people have blamed this guy here for the loss of the Afghan war. Sorry, but that is bunch of flipping malarkey and I think the person that wrote that knows it; he is just looking to deflect the fact that Bush’s mishandling of the war in Afghanistan and the overselling of the war in Iraq.
Plus too, I believe we pulled out too early of Iraq and Afghanistan; we could have done it better, but we needed more time. But, when you have a war weary nation, what can you do?
Okay here is the little small problem with trusting Dick Cheney and his boss George W. Bush, they lied, as in like 935 times in a row, during their Presidency and Vice Presidency.
The Center for Public Integrity was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis. We are one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. Our mission: To enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.
Anyhow, here is why I don’t trust Neocons, nor do I trust Democratic Party liberals or Neo-leftists:
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.
Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:
On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney’s assertions went well beyond his agency’s assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, “Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from?’ “
In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.” A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn’t been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn’t requested it.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: “Sure.” In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of “compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.” What’s more, an earlier DIA assessment said that “the nature of the regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.”
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team’s final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement “probably is a hoax.”
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.” As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named “Curveball,” whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had “decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].”
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.
It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation.
In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.
The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, “independent” validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.
The “ground truth” of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: “It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual “ground truth” regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who’s Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation’s allies on their way to war.
Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government’s pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
A video:
The real sick and sad part is this; the same people that are having a hissy fit on the right about this program existing under Obama, are the same ones who were perfectly fine with it existing under Bush. In other words, they trusted the program under Bush. like idiots. My question to that crowd is this; why do you not trust Obama? Because he is black or because he is a Democratic Party liberal?
Anyone and I mean anyone, who puts their trust in this Government of ours, based upon partisanship is nothing more than a darned fool in my opinion. Both of these political parties are two sides of the same coin and that is corruption and big Government socialism. Both parties promote it, both parties contribute to it. Government hand outs are Government hand outs; whether it be in the forum of welfare or Government subsidies. It is big Government statist and it flies in the face of our Constitution and in the face of what this great Nation was founded upon.
AFP – Al-Qaeda’s military chief in Yemen warned Americans in an audio message posted online Sunday that the Boston bombings revealed a fragile security as he urged Muslims to defend their religion.
Qassim al-Rimi, the military chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said making bombs such as the ones used in the twin blasts in Boston in April, is within “everyone’s reach”.
“The Boston events… and the poisoned letters (sent to the White House), regardless of who is behind them, show that your security is no longer under control, and that attacks on you have taken off and cannot be stopped,” he said, in the message entitled: “A letter to the American people.”
“Every day you will be hit by the unexpected and your leaders will not be able to defend you,” warned the man whose organisation is considered by Washington the world’s most dangerous Al-Qaeda branch.
Rimi said the killing of Al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and top Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011, had not ended the struggle.
“Have you eliminated the jihadist groups that have spread everywhere after they had only been in Afghanistan? Today, they are in your land or close to it,” he warned.
To the Muslims in the United States, he said: “We encourage you to carry on with this way, be steadfast in your religion
This is why I could never quite get into the whole idea of Ron Paul dismantling our Military. I want, as anyone else does, a reasonable foreign policy. However, I do want our Government to defend the Republic.
Irregardless of why they hate us; whether it is because of our foreign policy decisions of the past or because we are free or because of capitalistic society — the fact remains — they hate us and they want to kill us and we do have to be able to defend ourselves.
I have some thoughts about this here and I will share them after the story here:
A threatening letter was mailed to President Obama that is similar to two letters containing poisonous ricin sent to Mayor Bloomberg and his anti-gun group, officials confirmed Thursday.
The letter, first reported by NBC 4 New York, is being tested for ricin. It was received Wednesday at an off-site facility, and did not reach the White House, according to the Secret Service.
“This letter has been turned over to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for testing and investigation,” said Brian Leary, a Secret Service spokesman.
The text of that mailing was identical to the letters sent to the mayor and his gun group, which threatened: “what’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you,” police and law enforcement sources said.
I just want to say the following: Call me cynical, but I happen to think that anyone who blames the NRA for the actions of one lone nut; is just scapegoating. Of course, the usual suspects are blaming that organization. I mean, it is one thing to blame radical Islam or America’s foreign policy for terrorism and Jihad. Because it is established that Islam, especially that of a political sort happens to be a threat. A threat most likely created by the United States love for foreign policy. However, this could have been some lone nut or even some idiot looking to smear the gun crowd.
This is why I have come to dislike politics, because both sides case blame so early, which is very dumb in my opinion. Casting blame cheapens the debate. Now, before anyone says it in comments; I know about the stupid “We came unarmed, this time” signs. I wish those people with those signs were removed the Tea Party gatherings, as it gives the impression that Tea Party people are crazy. The accusation that the Tea Party supporters are crazy gun nuts or whatever is so totally unfair, because a good number of those people are like me —- people who love their Country and just do not want to see it end up like up like Europe or even worse, like Canada with a broken healthcare system or worse — broke. Truthfully, America is already broke and borrowing money for China as it is.
However, that is no reason to send these sort of letters, nor is it a reason do it, if you think your gun rights are being infringed upon. The best course of action is the ballot box; which is an American constitutional right that many a brave man fought, bled and died for in this Country and in other Countries abroad.
The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.
And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony.
We’re witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That’s what we’re seeing in Syria and Iraq — two names, one struggle — and will find elsewhere tomorrow.
The next country to go: Rescuers working at the site of a car bomb in Kirkuk, Iraq, last week. Violence is rising rapidly across the country.
We can’t stop it, we can’t fix it, and we don’t understand it. But we can stay out of it.
[….]
The Saudi position is always “You and him fight!” As long ago as Desert Storm, Saudis joked about renting the American army and our bumpkin gullibility. (Try to find one US officer who’s worked with the Saudis and doesn’t hate their guts. . .) Now they want Washington to spend our blood and treasure to open the mosques of Damascus to their Wahhabi cult.
[….]
Iraq was carved out for British interests, while Syria was France’s consolation prize. Now Syria’s collapsing in a too-many-factions-to-count civil war. And Iraq’s in the early stages of its own dissolution; even a would-be dictator — another of our one-time “friends,” Nouri al-Maliki — can’t keep the “country” together.
We don’t even know how many new states will emerge from the old order’s wreckage. But the Scramble for the Sand is on, with Iran, Turkey, treacherous Arab oil sheikdoms and terrorists Sunni and Shia alike all determined to dictate the future, no matter the cost in other people’s blood.
We had our chance to extend the peace and keep both Iran and Wahhabi crazies at bay after we defeated Iraq’s insurgencies. But a new American president, elevating politics over strategy, walked away from Baghdad, handing Iraq to Iran. Now it’s too late. If George W. Bush helped trigger the Arab Spring, Barack Obama made this Arab Winter inevitable.
We must not be lured into the current fighting — centered, for now, on Syria — by cries of humanitarian necessity. The local powers could step in to stop the killing. But they won’t. Once again, they want us to pay the bill. (It’s time for the Saudis, especially, to give their own blood.)
We’ve paid enough. Rhetoric and red lines notwithstanding, we need to back off from Syria, if for no other reason than a strategist’s golden rule: If you don’t understand what a fight’s about, stay out.
I can tell you that if back in during the heyday of the Bush Administration someone had written something like this about the middle east and Iraq; they would have been ran out of Murdoch’s owned company on a rail! This shows me, that the chickenhawk right has become a very small minority now and is being replaced by people who simply want common sense in foreign policy on the right. This is a very positive step in the right direction.
Honestly, this really sounds like something from the American Conservative and, as far as this writer is concerned, Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul; and the rest those who said Iraq was a bad idea —- were very much right.
BOB SCHIEFFER, “FACE THE NATION”: Do either of you at this point think there’s a chance that we would have to put U.S. troops in there or that we would want to?
SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MISSOURI): I don’t think you want to ever rule it out because I think this is, kind of, as — as Saxby said, this thing has really deteriorated, and it’s not really at a tipping point. So I don’t think you ever want to say absolutely not. Obviously, we don’t want to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Do either of these two ding-a-lings have any idea what kind of troop commitment that would take? I mean, Syria is a huge Country and we would be fighting all sorts of people. (You know, kind of like….um, Iraq?)
Ed Morrissey sums it up:
We might be able to prevent that with a large-scale invasion and an equally large-scale occupation that lasts a decade or more, if we can get enough NATO members to come along with us and sell it to a Congress that has been acting as though Iraq was a huge mistake. That would include having to quell any insurgencies from Jabhat al-Nusra or related groups, along with fighting Hezbollah again. Anyone up for that kind of commitment? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Funny how the same Democrats who were all like, “The War lost and we need to come home!” during Presidency of George W. Bush are the same ones who are now all, “A yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” when it comes to Syria and Obama. I think that some voices of sanity on the left really need to speak up right about now and tell these people, “Um, Folks? We tried that in Iraq and our butts are still sore and we lost like a bunch of people. Lets not do that, okay?”
This also proves a few things that I always did suspect; that the Anti-War movement, among the beltway Democrats; unlike the real grassroots Progressive anti-war movement —- was nothing more than an Anti-Bush partisan pet cause. Which quickly dried up once Obama was in office. I am thinking that Bush knew this and this is why he would not cave to their demands, despite the fact that there was no WMD’s.
To be fair, I have always suspected that Libya was a partisan pet cause among the Republicans; which explains why it never gained in traction in Congress at all. I mean, there were obviously some mistakes made; but the way the Republicans have drummed that story up, and yes, I do mean via Fox News —- makes me think it falls among partisan lines. True, many Military people and grassroots Conservatives are concerned about it and rightly so. The Republicans simply made it their pet cause and will in 2014 and 2016; you watch. This is until it starts to generate backlash and they quickly drop it; like when they are elected. Again, watch what happens. I know the game, I have been around it long enough.
