Posted on 12/27/2003 8:20:35 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Was the capture of Saddam Hussein a major victory for the United States? It was certainly a victory in the extended Iraq war. It was a victory for President Bush over the man who plotted to kill his father. It was a victory for the U.S. military and its intelligence service -- especially for the lieutenant and the corporal who figured out how to find him. It was a victory for the Republican Party's plan to keep a stranglehold on American politics. But was it, as the president told us, a victory in the ''war on terrorism''?
Despite the media hoopla and the White House spin doctors, it was not. The administration legitimized the invasion of Iraq as part of the ''war on terrorism'' and deceived the American people into believing that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attack and that he had ''weapons of mass destruction.'' No one, except possibly Vice President Dick Cheney and the Wall Street Journal, believed that Saddam was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. The weapons of mass destruction have disappeared. The president asks a TV interviewer what difference the mass destruction question makes, now that we have eliminated Saddam from power.
Note how slippery the administration line has been. The purpose of the war now is to get rid of an evil man who had done horrible things to his own people, even if he wasn't a real threat to us. Would those Americans who are willing to settle for that rationale have bought it at the beginning of the war? Such is the slipperiness of the administration's dishonesty that it can get away with a change in motives for the war. Do those who buy this shifting of the deck of cards want to send American troops into North Korea or Iran or a half-dozen African countries to rid the world of similar evil men?
The truth is that Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their ''neo-conservative'' intellectuals wanted a quick little war with Iraq to display America's strength as the world's only superpower even before the 2000 election. The attack on the World Trade Center provided an excellent excuse to unveil America's unilateral, preemptive foreign policy. Has the war made the United States any more secure from al-Qaida?
It would seem that it has not. Quite the contrary, it has stirred up a whole new phalanx of terrorists in Iraq with which we did not formerly have to contend.
It is reasonably well known that Osama bin Laden instructed his forces to have nothing to do with Saddam because he was a secularist and a socialist and not a good Muslim. A man who imagined himself as the holy Caliph of a new Islamic empire could hardly tolerate Saddam as one of his subjects.
The Iraq war, prolonged by unspeakably bad planning for the post-war period, has distracted the United States from the battle with terrorists. If the military force sent to Iraq and the immense efforts to capture Saddam had been diverted to pursuing bin Laden, Americans would be much safer today.
The ultimate failure of the Bush administration is that it permitted itself to be so consumed by its need to take on Iraq that it lost interest in hunting down bin Laden. Its ultimate dishonesty is the (effective) deception of the American people about Iraq.
So, brave and good American men and women continue to die in Iraq, as do good Iraqi men and women. The military tells us that the Army will have to remain for two more years. The war was not only unnecessary, it was unjust by any and all of the traditional canons of an unjust war.
Gen. Curtis LeMay, who led the firebomb raids on Japan (far more destructive than the atom bombs), once remarked that if the United States should lose the war, he would be tried as a war criminal. The United States won the war and no Americans were tried as war criminals. The victors are never tried.
The Bush administration is planning a trial for Saddam. The Europeans are insisting that it must be a ''fair'' trial, whatever that might be for such a man. No one in the Bush administration will be tried for the unjust and unnecessary Iraq war -- at least not by a court on Earth.
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The UN inspections found anthrax and other biological WMD several years back in Iraq. Saddam was told to get rid of these WMD and he was told to prove that he was getting rid of these WMD.
Saddam never did prove anything -- Saddam got what he deserved.
Give this guy a thorough enema, and he'd disappear.
No it doesn't.
In 1968, Federal spending was 20.5% of GDP. In 2002, the last completed calender year, GDP was 19.5% of GDP.
BTW, from 1975 to 1996, federal spending was between 20.3% and 23.5% of GDP.
I believe our DOD discretionary spending is down with most of our new defense spending being done accross all of the departments as part of Homeland defense. Before Homeland Defense, the presidnet's discretionary budget was flat relative to GDP. Since HD, the discretionary department budgets have received on average, a +4% increase over GDP over the last two budget years.
Of course, at the discretion of the current congress and president, the future nondiscretionary spending problem will be this new Prescription Drug benifit. But that's a different subject, aye?
Resolution 1441 had no teeth. It explicitly stated that any force would require further approval from the Security Council. The attempt to get this approval failed and the request was withdrawn rather than let such a lopsided vote of 4 out of 15 to be recorded.
Actually, I find Libertarians smarter and more morally aware than the average. That is why they put their efforts into a small party. They understand and are confident in their opinion that neither of the old parties is worth the powder to blow it to hell. No matter who is in power, the government grows, both in dollar terms and in terms of intrusions into our lives.
Liberal Democrats are at least getting what they say they want, however foolish their wants are. Conservative Republicans are currently being bamboozled really bad. You all are putting your support to a bunch of dangerous neo-conservative would be tyrants.
Your president has:
Instituted a large welfare type benefit for prescription drugs that we cannot possibly pay for.
Put people in jail without any pretense of due process and kept them there for more than 18 months and counting
Made numerous false statements to justify an illegal and weakening war
Signed the campaign finance reform measure that endangers First Amendment free speech
Promised to sign a renewal of the assault weapons ban
This is not what a conservative does. Bush is not a conservative, even if he supports you on abortion. That is just not enough.
Thanks for the link. I reread the State of the Union speech. I found that I had forgotten the other wild falsehood in it, the high strength aluminum tubes. Notice how that story got buried after some scientists finally got it out to the press that it was impossible to use those tubes for refining Uranium.
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