Posted on 04/12/2004 11:10:02 AM PDT by PsyOp
"When al-Qa'ida itself knows we're winning this war [in Iraq], how come Democratic politicians and the media elite in America want us to declare defeat?" —Investor's Business Daily, May 2006.
"Although no one is being jailed today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently running our country." — John Kerry, French patriot.
But he supports the troops, I bet...
Jane Fonda must be proud.
"It was a completely unnecessary war. It was an unjust war. It was initiated on the basis of false pretenses. All of those are true, but we can't just pre-emptively withdraw... The violence is increasing monthly. My prayer is we'll see some kind of democracy eventually evolve." — Jimmy Carter, our biggest-mouthed ex-president, March 2006.
"It just keeps getting worse in Iraq. The death toll is rising. Tension is growing between Shiites and Sunnis. Is the country sliding toward civil war?" — CBS's Bob Schieffer.
"The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qa'ida." — John Murtha.
Thank you for this excellent post, PsyOp.
PING to #1.
I believe this should be sent to our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and everyone to whom we have the opportunity to send it.
I was doing a little updating on the post today. Glad it caught your eye.
I had read it earlier, but it is one that never goes out of date, and always bears repeating. Never more important than now with the NYT, and others, doing exactly what is mentioned in this piece, and more.
Bush slams leak of terror finance story ["The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,"....]
Yahoo ^
Posted on 06/26/2006 8:23:26 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Bush slams leak of terror finance story
President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a secret anti-terrorism program that taps into an immense international database of confidential financial records. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," he said.
"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror."
The program has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It was disclosed last week by several news organizations.
Using broad government subpoenas, the program allows U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database maintained by a company based in Belgium. It routes about 11 million financial transactions daily among 7,800 banks and other financial institutions in 200 countries.
"Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law," Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq.
*snicker*
They now have way to DUMP MURTHA!
I'm so glad you did. I wish I had seen this piece when you originally posted it. It would have saved me many agonizing days and nights.
You may have already seen this outstanding article.....but I did not want to take the chance. New updates on last page.
Thanks for the heads up.
In case you missed the link to it, I wrote a follow up piece when Abu Ghraib hit the news. It might interest you.
Thank you so much. I have saved both pieces for further and future reference!
The Boston Herald | June 27, 2006 | Jules Crittenden
Some people just don’t get it.
Five years on, some people remain unaware that this is war; that we are facing an enemy that will do anything in its power to destroy us. The fact that on any given day we are free to fly around the world, drive our cars without restriction and buy as much food as we like in rich variety seems to have confused them.
The lack of U-boats attacking the shipping lanes has lulled some people into thinking this is not actually a war. Not a real war, certainly not a good war, not like World War II. They mock the very notion that it is a war, having fun with the name “Global War on Terror.” They put forward the notion that, like almost everything else in our American lives, this thing that has been called a war is a choice. A bad choice.
Who can blame them? Even fighting in this war, unlike most of the great wars our that threatened our existence in the past, is a choice made by a small percentage of Americans who have joined the Armed Forces.
George Bush, while announcing that we were at war five years ago, made a decision to encourage Americans to go about their business as usual. Rather than mobilizing the country for war, he decided he could fight this unconventional war by unconventional means, and with the forces already at hand. Normalcy had its uses as a weapon. It showed that our enemy could not hobble us.
In other respects, it was a mistake. With our military now hyperextended in Iraq, we could use an army twice as large or even larger. Our enemies are emboldened by the belief that we are tied down in Iraq. Iran, correctly identified by Bush as an evil menace, is doing everything it can to live up to that reputation. Somalia, which we walked away from under Bill Clinton, is now under the control of al-Qaeda sympathizers. Syria, at best, turns a blind eye to the terrorists who torment Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan have stepped up operations to an unprecedented level in an effort to destablize that country.
Bush chose not to treat this as total war, insisting it could be done with some finetuning of the resources at hand. His domestic opposition has taken that idea several steps farther, insisting Islamic terrorism is a police problem that does not require military force and certainly not the suspension of some legal niceties. After all, they do not consider it an actual war of the sort faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they destroyed cities and imprisoned anyone who threatened the security of the nation.
Ironically, Bush has been so effective with his approach, that there has not been an attack on the mainland United States since 9-11. That has allowed his opposition to maintain that all the unpleasant things Bush has had to do domestically and abroad are unnecessary, or the very least excessive. They’ve had the freedom to nitpick at the execution of the war, expressing indignation at every misstep, while ignoring major accomplishments, which they see after all as the accomplishments of an unnecessary war based on global intelligence failures that, in hindsight, they cast as lies.
By now the all-American anti-American agenda is all too familiar. Dead American soldiers in Iraq are a political scorecard. The tens of thousands killed since by Islamic terrorists and Baathist ... also America’s fault. The hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam Hussein? A historical footnote.
Purposeful terrorist bombings of civilians, hostage-takings and the broadcasting of gruesome murder are met with silence while accidents of war are cast as war crimes and the misdeeds of a few rogue American soldiers are trumpeted endlessly, in the guise of dissent. There is a political fight between the White House and the CIA, and all of a sudden, the anti-everything crowd is intensely interested in maintaining government secrecy and wants to know who spoke the name of Valerie Plame.
But when it comes to actual substantive issues of national security...
The New York Times has revealed details of secret government surveillance of terrorist financing practices. It was the first of three newspapers to report on the program, and has established itself as the national leader in revealing government secrets with its publication last year of details of the tracking of phone calls and email without warrants.
Its editors have dismissed the notion that this information may be useful to our enemy. They have dismissed the notion that their newspaper may in fact be giving terrorists information that will help them evade detection, and in that way contribute to future murderous attacks.
The New York Times editors are hiding behind the idea of freedom of the press. That has been slowly evolving in recent decades into a freedom without responsibility -- the overarching new American value. It is the value that allows seemingly reasonable people to think we can wish away our problems. It is the value that allows seemingly reasonable people to see our elected president as the enemy.
Our actual and very real enemy purposefully murdered nearly 3,000 people on one day, and has repeatedly attacked civilians other free nations, killing hundreds of people in Europe and Asia, not to mention the thousands of innocents purposefully murdered in Iraq. This enemy has pursued weapons of mass destruction, and given the opportunity, will use them to kill as many of us as possible. They know that militarily, for now, they cannot beat us. But they are patient. They believe, based on past experience, that with our low tolerance for blood we will falter, pull out, and abandon our allies. That will provide them with the opportunity to control nations, to control armies, to control resources. Maybe then we’ll have something more closely resembling total war that Bush’s domestic opposition can finally recognize as a good and necessary war, in which national security must be respected, and excesses in the defense of freedom will be seen in the context of their time, like the carpet bombing of cities, the internment of American citizens and the suspension of habeas corpus. Like the brutalities of the Pacific war and Sherman’s March through Georgia.
But that kind of war - the fabled Good War - belongs to another time. A simpler time. It is probably something that only exists in the rearview mirror anyway.
There are some people who will never get that. Their actions show that they are not worthy of the freedoms that American soldiers have died to give them. Those freedoms are theirs anyway, the birthright of even the most despicable self-centered coward who is born American. But there comes a point when you have to ask, which side are they on? There comes a point when even professional capriciousness and misguided idealism - to be charitable - have to be labelled for what they are: Giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Treason.
I'm reminded of a scene in Saving Private Ryan when a german psyops officer said (in german) "The Statue of Liberty is kaput!".
The capt mused. "The Statue of Liberty is kaput... that's disconcerting."
Had to laugh at that one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.