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Bush lacks perspective to see risks of war
boston herald ^ | Wayne Woodlief

Posted on 01/26/2003 3:46:10 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant

Bush lacks perspective to see risks of war

Sunday, January 26, 2003

Can no one slow down this train speeding toward war in Iraq before it crashes in Baghdad and burns us all?

Hundreds of thousands of protesters throughout the world are trying. So are the alarmed leaders of France and Germany. Turkish officials - caught literally ``between Iraq and a hard place,'' a radio commentator said - are reluctantly OK'ing U.S. use of bases there though 80 percent of Turks told pollsters they fear an attack could bring retaliation against them.

A few hardy voices in our government, including Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, warn of the consequences (though Kerry did vote in October to authorize the use of force).

And some conservatives and libertarians have raised the deadly prospect of a trapped and desperate Saddam Hussein deploying - right here in the USA - some of the chemical weapons of mass destruction that the White House would risk war to make him destroy.

Indeed, this could be the war that we can't just safely watch on TV, seeing the eerie green lights of nighttime bombing raids and the cross-hair scenes of ``smart bombs'' shattering targets below. This time, we might be targets, too.

``Hawks worry that Saddam will use WMD (the chilling initials for nuclear and chemical devices) or give them to terrorists in the future even if we threaten him with devastating retaliation,'' wrote Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, in the latest American Conservative magazine.

If Saddam ``would cut his own throat'' that way - by ignoring the sort of retaliatory threat that stayed his hand on use of chemical warheads during the 1991 Gulf War - ``he will certainly lash out with anything else he has when we go for his jugular . . . Saddam will not go gently if he has nothing left to lose,'' Betts said.

That's what concerns Kennedy. He reminded Herald editors and reporters last week that George Tenet, head of the CIA, has testified ``that if Saddam feels he's really trapped, the likelihood of chemical weapons being used against us increases greatly . . . this thing could quickly spread to the United States, Saddam opening a second front over here.''

Yet even with our homeland security preparations far from secure; (yea wayne why dont you go check out your beloved teddys little INS senate bill from yesterday) even with President Bush's approval rating falling; even though three times as many Americans say the economy is more important to them than Iraq (56 percent to 19 percent in a new CBS poll), the administration's drumbeat for war rolls on.

Kennedy said civilian officials at the Pentagon seem itching for war. And soon. ``This is the optimum time to strike, in terms of military strategy,'' he said, a day after his Senate Armed Services Committee was briefed by the administration.

``The third week in February has a ring to it for them,'' Kennedy said. ``That's a moonless time (just right for night raids) and it's very cool.'' Not the oppressive desert heat of late spring or summer that could sap our soldiers' strength.

Yet even if an attack could be wrapped up as rapidly as Pentagon hawks predict (``They say it'll be an easy walk, over in three or four days,'' said Kennedy, who does not share their view), what comes next could be hugely costly in many ways.

``Invading Iraq would inflame radical Islamists around the world, (OH NO we cant have that they are so peaceful now) acting as a virtual recruiting poster for al-Qaeda,'' wrote Libertarian-minded military scholars Ivan Eland and Bernard Gourley in a new Cato Institute analysis. And what a propaganda field day it would be for Osama bin Laden, who apparently is still alive and working his mischief somewhere.

And Democratic presidential contender Kerry, in his trenchant, thoughtful address at Georgetown University, said:

``We will win. But what matters is not just what we win but what we lose. We need to make certain that we have not unnecessarily twisted so many arms, created so many reluctant partners, abused the trust of Congress or so strained so many relations that the longer-term and more immediately vital war on terror is not made more difficult.''

Well said by a leader who, a voter from New Hampshire noted at a Newsweek focus group, ``has faced the bullets'' in Vietnam.

Kerry has perspective on the consequences of war. My fear is Bush does not. And that, like an earlier president from Texas, he cannot articulate a case for a war that may cost us far more in human life and resources than he might think.

The late author Theodore White wrote that President Lyndon B. Johnson failed on Vietnam policy because he lacked ``a sense of the flow of history, of his own place in it and of the place of Americans in the sweep of time that had brought them to world dominance.''

If that was true of LBJ in 1968, how devastatingly accurate it may be of George W. Bush today.

Wayne Woodlief is a member of the Boston Herald staff.


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Wayne Woodlief is a member of the Boston Herald staff.

and a boob
1 posted on 01/26/2003 3:46:10 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Where were all these peace loving people when Bill Clinton was bombing Kosovo so his Muslim friends could get their pipeline built and destroy all the Christian churches?
Wasn't that all about oil? How many innocent children were killed by Clinton?
2 posted on 01/26/2003 3:49:35 AM PST by afz400
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
We'd never have known about this if Wayne hadn't told us.

My goodness, we came this close to blindly stumbling into a fight.

We need to consider what the icons of the Democratic Party are saying, so thoughtfully pointed out to us in this article.

Especially that beacon of military bravery and expertise, Teddy.

And the trenchant and thoughtful John Kerry. Wooo-ooo.

If it weren't for the Boston Globe, we'd be so helpless and foolish.

3 posted on 01/26/2003 4:04:05 AM PST by happygrl (Be cheerful...it's what YOU owe to life.)
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
and a boob

Nah. Coward.

4 posted on 01/26/2003 4:06:29 AM PST by Grut
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To: happygrl
If it weren't for the Boston Globe, we'd be so helpless and foolish.

For the record, this editorial is from the Boston Herald, which is the anti-Globe in Boston.

5 posted on 01/26/2003 4:09:53 AM PST by grania ("Won't get fooled again")
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
You sure this isn't from the Boston Globe.
6 posted on 01/26/2003 4:09:59 AM PST by leadpenny (I Think I'm In College!)
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To: grania
Whoops! Thanks for the correction.

It's still a panty-waist editorial.

7 posted on 01/26/2003 4:11:50 AM PST by happygrl (Be cheerful...it's what YOU owe to life.)
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To: happygrl
If it weren't for the Boston Globe, we'd be so helpless and foolish.

This is the Boston Herald, the Murdoch owned voice against the liberal Globe, just like the NY Post is to the the NY Times.

Anyway, IMHO, this guy is either the lone liberal or a Pat Buchanan brigadier.

8 posted on 01/26/2003 4:14:42 AM PST by Dane
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To: happygrl
It seems to me like the Herald is supporting Senator John Kerry here, and his bid for the presidency.
9 posted on 01/26/2003 4:16:07 AM PST by grania ("Won't get fooled again")
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To: leadpenny
You sure this isn't from the Boston Globe.

I am sure although I had to do a double take myself but woodlief is their resident boob lets all email howie carr and tell him to hide waynes laptop
10 posted on 01/26/2003 4:16:27 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Can no one slow down this train speeding toward war in Iraq before it crashes in Baghdad and burns us all?

Can no one on the Anti-American Socialist Commie Liberal Maggot-Infested Dreadlock Pantywaist Appeasement movement shut them up before they smoke it all?

In the first Persian Gulf War did the Americans take any oil? NO!!!

11 posted on 01/26/2003 4:23:15 AM PST by sirchtruth
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Ya, Bush's dad, ex-pres 41, has no idea what war is like... And I'm sure he has no input on the situation whatsoever...

NOT!

How lame...
12 posted on 01/26/2003 4:26:53 AM PST by DB (©)
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
What we have here is another headline that insinuates Bush is dumb and has no idea what he is doing...that line is getting sooooo old. This article does sound more like it's from the Boston Globe but even conservative papers have a few liberals. These people are going to end up spending weeks cleaning the egg off their faces in the not too distant future.
13 posted on 01/26/2003 4:26:59 AM PST by Wait4Truth (I HATE THE MEDIA!!!)
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Yesterday, I happened to be in what was sort of an ex hippie, pot smoking, what have you, record store, close to the inner city part of Houston-Cactus Records. I know freepers in Houston know what I mean. They were playing that Michael Moore video. I could have started something but decided to let it be since I was definitely in enemy territory, lol. The video is something else. Attacks mostly on both Jeb and George Bush. Part of it covers the election of 2000. I guess these liberal mentally derganged morons will never get over that.

Anyway, there were rewinding the tape back to places they wanted to cheer. I bought an old classic movie which is why I go into that record/video store because they have a good selection of classic movies, although I couldn't find Sink the Bismark, lol. I almost decided to purchase every war film I could find in the store and make comments like "Can't wait to see bodies blown to bits in these movies or great war scenes." Something like that. My time was limited so I purchased an old movie and left. Going into that store is just like watching these peace protesters, a walk back in time. Michael Savage is right. Liberalism is a mental disease.

Brad
14 posted on 01/26/2003 4:31:41 AM PST by bradactor
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Kennedy needs to check his moon charts,doesn't he?
15 posted on 01/26/2003 4:37:25 AM PST by John W
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To: bradactor
These people are going to end up spending weeks cleaning the egg off their faces in the not too distant future.

I want to agree with you but these libs never learn they said the same things in 91 then again with afghanistan they will be wrong again now and when its done and time to take out iran, syria or who ever is next on the list they will be saying the same thing. these people only like the military to be used for humanitarian missions which usually means sending troops into the middle of another country's civil war which their hero bill clinton loved to do kosovo, bosnia, haiti etc... they were awfully silent on those conflicts
16 posted on 01/26/2003 4:39:16 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
"and a boob"

That's insulting to boobs :)
17 posted on 01/26/2003 4:40:44 AM PST by Bilbo
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant
DemocRat suck-pump Wayne is always full of advice for Republicans.
18 posted on 01/26/2003 4:43:39 AM PST by metesky
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To: TheRedSoxWinThePennant

19 posted on 01/26/2003 4:50:34 AM PST by austinite
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To: Dane
Everyone thinks that because the Herald is Murdoch owned that it's a conservative paper. The truth is that it could only be called conservative in eastern Massachusetts.

They are anti-RKBA and Woodlief, there lead political writer is a liberal Rat.

20 posted on 01/26/2003 5:05:41 AM PST by metesky
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