Vice President Cheney and Liz Cheney on the Dangers Facing America

18 Please try to remember what brought this all on. At the time we had no troops in the Middle-Eest. Even if that is the model you wish to return to, I cannot join you.

You and I are not in opposition to 1 another. Obviously we want a conservative U.S. to prevail for posterity. My main point is the nature of the American citizenry - short attention span.

Every explanation you give for keeping U.S. boots on the ground, I can counter that the Democrat Party will sell us out over the long run. South Vietnam - Teddy Kennedy, Shah of Iran - Jimmy Carter, Mumbarak/Egypt - Obama, Qaddafi/Libya - Obama, Malaki/Iraq - Obama, Afghanistan - Obama, USSR? - think back to the Democrat Party of FDR and during the 1970s - they nearly cost us the Cold War but for the exeptional timing, courage and wisdom of RWR. The communists captured the Democrat Party from within in 1972. The Democrat Party cannot be trusted to do the right thing and defend the U.S. against Islamists. It is a grim scenario.

Yes, the U.S. will have to take an even greater hit than 9/11 on American soil before we can regain the momentum against Islam - but whether we will prevail is unclear at this moment. Obama has effectively split this country in 2 along racial/class lines. I don't see this nation retaing its superpower ability. History doesn't give many examples, if any, of nations pulling out of deep econommic decline after having attained status as a world power. As the TEA Party members age and die, the Gen X's and Millenials are just too brainwashed by public education to "keep the Republic". Whites are projected to become 50% of the population by 2040 - probably sooner after the 2014 Central American invasion of the U.S.

It is truly grim. I haven't given up, but I am dispirited. Even more major changes loom on the horizon - "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

“Then you realize that both buildings of the World Trade Center have been taken down, several other large buildings there too, and the world’s leading known blow-hard that supported terrorists was still mouthing off in support of terrorism. “

I’ll tell you what I realized. That every one of those 9-11 terrorists was in this country due to our incredibly lax attitude about immigration and visas, an attitude that Bush 43 had in spades. In fact all Bushes seem wedded to this idiocy.

All of the 9-11 terrorists were either Saudis or Yemenis, not one was Iraqi. In fact not one Islamic terrorist in the previous 40 years had been an Iraqi. Iraqis weren’t players in the world of Islamic extremism.

Saddam Hussein was not even a mildly observant Muslim. He was about power. He modeled himself after Stalin right down to the mustache. Christians went about their lives unmolested in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That hasn’t been the case since his removal and Iraq becoming an Islamic state.

We went to war with Saddam Hussein in 1991 because he invaded Kuwait, which had nothing to do with Islam. It was just a naked grab of territory. Saddam imagined that he could become the ruler over a great Babylonian kingdom. He was driven by ambition, not Islam.

Israel had bombed Saddam’s Osirak nuclear reactor back in 1981. By the time of the Kuwait war in 1991 Saddam had still not retaliated against Israel. That’s not exactly the hallmark of a terrorist state. It’s the hallmark of someone afraid of starting a war with a country that can hurt him.

“IMO, this could have been what drove Bush to avoid entering Iraq and toppling Hussein.”

Bush went to war with Iraq because he believes democracy has magical powers, a belief shared by the fools he chose as advisers. It is nothing more than warmed over Liberal Internationalism wedded to coercive utopianism. A bizarre mirror image of Islam’s habit of imposing Islam on others- the democracy worshippers believed it was their obligation to convert the Iraqi infidels for their own good so that peace and love would break out along the Euphrates.

“I don’t think the goal was to turn Vietnam into a miniature United States. I believe it was an effort to keep the people of South Vietnam free. “

We were doing both. See if the fantasy that American “social scientists” were peddling back then sounds familiar:

“The new South Vietnamese state, [Fishel} concluded, would overcome both the colonial legacy and the communist threat. With US guidance and support, it would seize the moment to build a nation where none had existed before.

Fishel’s interpretation reflects the extent to which US social scientists and policy makers envisioned nation-building in South Vietnam as part of a universal process of modernisation that, once it gained sufficient momentum, would become an inexorable force, sweeping all before it.”

http://viet-studies.info/kinhte/Nation_Building_VN_TWQ.pdf

“What would have been your battle plan after 09/11?”

Well it sure as hell wouldn’t have included attacking Iraq, a country ruled by an Arab strongman with no ties to the Islamic Brotherhood or any other Islamist terror cult. The fact is that many of Bush’s advisers had been spoiling for an attack on Iraq long before 9-11. The ‘Project for a New American Century’ wrote to Bill Clinton in January 1998 urging him to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Check out who signed the letter. 9-11 was just an opportunity for them to take advantage of the public’s hazy knowledge of the Arab world to implement a goal that they had been pushing for years.

What we needed to do was to dismantle every terrorist hole in Afghanistan, western Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all of them sanctuaries for the scum who had declared war on us. But attacking and occupying a non-involved Arab country with the idea that we would convert it into a pro-western democracy was a criminal misuse of our soldiers, getting them maimed and killed in pursuit of the utopian fantasy of some crackpot ideologues for whom worldwide democracy is a religion.

“At the time nearly everyone was certain he had WMDs.”

There was a good deal of bait and switch going on with this WMD claim and it was intended to spook the American public. People hear WMD and they think ‘nuclear bomb’, which is precisely why the ambiguous term WMD was used. But WMD can also mean poison gas and bugs like anthrax.

What Saddam did have was chemical artillery shells. They’re dangerous if you’re in cannon range, which pretty much excluded the entire continental United States unless Saddam had the smarts to hire a coyote to bring them across the Rio Grande. Of course considering amnesty-loving Dubya’s refusal to defend the American border that may have been a real threat.

Had the mythical Iraqi nuclear bomb actually existed Saddam still would have needed a delivery system. I never did see anyone claim that the Iraqi air force included strategic bombers, ICBMs, or boomer submarines but maybe I missed it. Perhaps once again the real fear was that the Iraqi bomb could be strapped on the back of a burro and smuggled across at Juarez.

Somehow we were supposed to believe that Iraq, a country that couldn’t even defeat it’s next door neighbor Iran, posed an existential threat to the enormously more powerful and much more distant United States. Hey, it makes sense to me! Saddam had a secret desire to see what would happen when an enraged America repeated its Hiroshima/Nagasaki exercise right on top of his head!

The fact is that Saddam was less of a real threat than North Korea, which we have managed to keep in check since 1953. Saddam’s Iraq was far less powerful than the Norks and the idea that we couldn’t have kept him contained with minimal effort until he died of old age is ridiculous.

What would have been your battle plan after 09/11?

Well it sure as hell wouldn’t have included attacking Iraq, a country ruled by an Arab strongman with no ties to the Islamic Brotherhood or any other Islamist terror cult.

Okay, then you were unaware he was paying $25,000.00 rewards to the families of suicide terrorits that blew themselves up inside Israel. These suicide bombers weren't free-lancing. They were operating with the help of Hamas and the remnants of the former PLO. And if as I have long suspected, these terrorists do a musical chairs of sorts between various terrorist organizations in the Middle-East, some Muslim Brotherhood involvement could have been the case. So yes, he most certainly did have ties to Islamic terror cults. What's more he advocated for more suicide bombings.

The fact is that many of Bush’s advisers had been spoiling for an attack on Iraq long before 9-11. The ‘Project for a New American Century’ wrote to Bill Clinton in January 1998 urging him to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. Check out who signed the letter. 9-11 was just an opportunity for them to take advantage of the public’s hazy knowledge of the Arab world to implement a goal that they had been pushing for years.

Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the "Arab World". Hussein had been mouthing off in public about the need for more terrorists attacks on Israel and the United States. A leader of a nation doesn't generally make public comments like that, unless he means it. So was the United States opportunistic or not? Was Hussein a leading target in the Middle-East, and suspected of helping terrorists to conduct their activity? I'm not convinced by any means there were no al Qaeda training camps in Iraq pre 2003. What we do know is that as soon as the U. S. was on the ground, an active well armed opposition was in country. We had to fight to retake territory, and IEDs were a mainstay of the forces we faced? The knowledge and materials to do that sort of thing aren't readily available, unless terrorist elements are present and trained.

What we needed to do was to dismantle every terrorist hole in Afghanistan, western Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, all of them sanctuaries for the scum who had declared war on us. But attacking and occupying a non-involved Arab country with the idea that we would convert it into a pro-western democracy was a criminal misuse of our soldiers, getting them maimed and killed in pursuit of the utopian fantasy of some crackpot ideologues for whom worldwide democracy is a religion.

Non involved.... sorry, but that's laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out. They were opearting there freely, at his will. I do agree with you that there were other places that need to be rid of the terrorist elements. As a matter of fact, Southern Lebanon and the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip were places that came to mind. Bush said we would go after the terrorists where-ever they were. I knew we wouldn't. We didn't, and I agree we should have.

At the time nearly everyone was certain he had WMDs.

There was a good deal of bait and switch going on with this WMD claim and it was intended to spook the American public. People hear WMD and they think ‘nuclear bomb’, which is precisely why the ambiguous term WMD was used. But WMD can also mean poison gas and bugs like anthrax.

What Saddam did have was chemical artillery shells. They’re dangerous if you’re in cannon range, which pretty much excluded the entire continental United States unless Saddam had the smarts to hire a coyote to bring them across the Rio Grande. Of course considering amnesty-loving Dubya’s refusal to defend the American border that may have been a real threat.

Bush was the best friend our enemies ever had, when it came to our southern border. Obama has since eclipsed him, but Bush was a joke when it came to border security. After 09/11, he refused to allow us to profile. So grandma in a wheel chair became the person to check out, and Islamacists standing up on flights and shouting in unison were a-okay.

Once these types of munitions exist, they can be hand carried across the continent. They are a threat. We still don't know the full extent of what Hussein had, but both sides of the isle in the U.S., the U.N., and the E.U. all thought Hussein was hiding things that could be a serious threat. He had shown the willingness to use them. He had attacked Israel by Scud, and had upgraded his Scud capabilities. So was it wrong for us to intervene? No. The guy had to go. If he had toned it down like Khadaffy had, then no. Hussein refused to comply with international demands. He had put himself in the position of needing to. He overplayed his hand, and it cost him.

Had the mythical Iraqi nuclear bomb actually existed Saddam still would have needed a delivery system. I never did see anyone claim that the Iraqi air force included strategic bombers, ICBMs, or boomer submarines but maybe I missed it. Perhaps once again the real fear was that the Iraqi bomb could be strapped on the back of a burro and smuggled across at Juarez.

I think you make a good point here. What's probably more dangerous, is a proliferation of technology that would wind up in the hands of terrorists around the world. If nothing else took place than Husseing providing technology to create enhanced dirty bombs, it would have been important to remove the guy from the equasion.

Somehow we were supposed to believe that Iraq, a country that couldn’t even defeat it’s next door neighbor Iran, posed an existential threat to the enormously more powerful and much more distant United States. Hey, it makes sense to me! Saddam had a secret desire to see what would happen when an enraged America repeated its Hiroshima/Nagasaki exercise right on top of his head!

The fact is that Saddam was less of a real threat than North Korea, which we have managed to keep in check since 1953. Saddam’s Iraq was far less powerful than the Norks and the idea that we couldn’t have kept him contained with minimal effort until he died of old age is ridiculous.

Well, we didn't keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait. During the run up to his downfall, he was still targeting our aircraft over Iraq, and moving his troops up to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He was also killing his own citizens. And without help from the U.S., that would have continued on for decades.

As for North Korea, we really screwed up when we allowed it to get nukes. We could have neutered that program while China was still a relatively powerless nation against us. Now it has a proxy than will in a few years be able to hit large metropolitain cities in the U. S.

We won't be able to keep it in check.

“Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the “Arab World”.”

You do have illusions.

I’m perfectly aware that Saddam gave money to Gaza suicide bombers. I also know that Israel is not the 51st State, despite the tendency of some sloppy thinkers to conflate the two. An ally is not America. There is a difference.

The fact is that in every terrorist attack on the United States prior to and including 9-11 there was not one Iraqi participant. More than that a study of Arab terrorists published in the late 90s noted that no Iraqis had been found in any known Arab terrorist movement, an oddity that struck the author in light of the Gulf War.

“Non involved.... sorry, but that’s laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out.”

Here’s a newsflash: that was the Iraqi army. That’s why they had uniforms and squad automatic weapons and tanks and the training to fight back against a strong American military force. Soldiers tend to fight back when someone crosses into their territory no matter how bad their leader is.

“Well, we didn’t keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait.”

Of course we did. He never left his borders once after the Gulf War. He took pot shots at our aircraft but the Norks do that and worse to this day. Killing his own citizens? Sure, just like the Kims have been doing in North Korea, except that the Norks use starvation as a weapon. America isn’t superman. We can’t right all of the world’s wrongs, and any politician who thinks we can is a serious danger to this country.

Well, considering the need for my comments above, it appears these may not have been the only ones with a hazy knowledge of the “Arab World".

You do have illusions. Well, looks like I'm in good company then.

I’m perfectly aware that Saddam gave money to Gaza suicide bombers. I also know that Israel is not the 51st State, despite the tendency of some sloppy thinkers to conflate the two. An ally is not America. There is a difference.

Wow, have you really gone around the bend. Pelham, using those chemical warheads, Hussein was breaking internatonal law. What part of this are you not quite grasping? He had upgraded his skuds. He was ready to do it all again. There was a need to take the guy out. He was an unknown loose canon, and with a massive terrorist attack on our soil, his highly visible vocal support for terrorism cost him his honey pot. End of story.

Now you're pulling out the Israel is not the 51st state card? Yikes. Did I hit a nerve or what.

The fact is that in every terrorist attack on the United States prior to and including 9-11 there was not one Iraqi participant. More than that a study of Arab terrorists published in the late 90s noted that no Iraqis had been found in any known Arab terrorist movement, an oddity that struck the author in light of the Gulf War.

Hmmm, and what was the author's take on the indesputable fact that the U. S. did face terrorists inside Iraq? These people just suddenly materialized out of the vapors? Somewhere this author skipped a grove, and what's sad about it, is some folks who should know better by empirical evidence alone, are still quoting the idiot stick.

Non involved.... sorry, but that’s laughable. Please think back to the early days of the war, and our need to fight some very fierce battles to free up Iraqi territory. Terrorists were in country when we decided to take Hussein out.

Here’s a newsflash: that was the Iraqi army. That’s why they had uniforms and squad automatic weapons and tanks and the training to fight back against a strong American military force. Soldiers tend to fight back when someone crosses into their territory no matter how bad their leader is.

Here'a a news flash for you fella, those WERE NOT solely the Iraqi army. You didn't know this did you. Wow. You honestly had no idea there were terrorists in Iraq. Okay, well that's your story and you're sticking to it.

Well, we didn’t keep him in check until after his invasion of Kuwait.

Of course we did. He never left his borders once after the Gulf War. He took pot shots at our aircraft but the Norks do that and worse to this day. Killing his own citizens? Sure, just like the Kims have been doing in North Korea, except that the Norks use starvation as a weapon. America isn’t superman. We can’t right all of the world’s wrongs, and any politician who thinks we can is a serious danger to this country.

It's just sad to watch people melt down trying to trash an effort to reduce a regional and international threat. With literally tens of thousands of terrorists inside his nation, you are STILL tryng to massage the theory that Hussein wasn't a threat to this day.

The guy had advanced skuds, chemical weapons, was harboring tens of thousands of terrorist in his own nation, he had shown both the ability and willingness to use them on multiple occasions, was killing his own citizens in mass, was locking on our aircraft over his nation, was moving troops up to the borders with other nations, was voicing support for terrorist acts againt the United States (and I can't even mention his rewards for terrorism in Israel because it's not the 51st state), and you think it was a mistake to take the guy out.

Then you come up with some lame comments about what we don't do with the North Koreans as if that's proof positive we should never take out a guy like Hussein.

And why would you say this anyway. After all, there are no known terrorist groups operating out of North Korea.

LOL

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