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A scathing report released by the CIA this past week stated that terrorism has grown around the world generally and in the Middle East in particular since the conquest of Iraq.
In typical Bush fashion, he "disagrees with the facts (sic)". Just like he disagreed when the intelligence agencies told him before the war that Iraq did not have any WMD's. LA Times - "[...] the agencies concluded that the war had damaged the U.S. effort to defeat global terrorism. They said that the war was spreading radicalism from Iraq throughout the Middle East and that the longer it continued, the more likely it was to provide fresh training grounds for future terrorist plots."
Still unable to get their story straight about the true reason for conquering Iraq, we have neo-cons still pushing the notion that there were terrorists in Iraq before we got there, and that we were just perusing the global war on terror.
"He said the administration had sought in Iraq to root out hotbeds of terrorism before they grew. "Instead of waiting while they plot and plan attacks to kill innocent Americans, the United States has taken the initiative to fight back," Watkins said."
Bush himself had said much the same thing in campaign speeches during both his elections, only to completely reverse course a half dozen times when faced with overwhelming evidence that not only were there no terrorists in Iraq before the war, Saddam actually felt threatened by Al-Qaeda, and would have never cooperated with them.
George Bush and Dick Cheney knew they wanted to conquer Iraq since the day they were elected. Terrorism was irrelevant, they wanted to own an oil rich country and get back at "the guy who tried to kill my dad" with a single effort, and in the progress, made the entire world a more dangerous place to live.
They never counted on 45,000 Iraqi civilians being killed, and they don't care now that it has become reality. They did not anticipate having to fight a gorilla insurgency because they were too stupid to learn from Vietnam, and now 2,500+ American soldiers are dead, and tens of thousands more are maimed in unspeakable ways. Most physical, but any mentally as well.
Others have taken up the banner defense of the administration however, and I have no intention of giving them a free pass.
"If it wasn't Iraq, it'd be Afghanistan," [McCain] said on CBS' Face the Nation. "If it wasn't Afghanistan, it would be others that they would use as a method of continuing their recruitment."
Imagine that, if it wasn't our conquest of Iraq that pissed them off, it would have been our conquest of Afghanistan that pissed them off. That's hardly a convincing excuse John, and it's not honest either. Iraq is not the sole reason Islamic extremists are pissed off at us, but it has been more than enough to breed an entirely new generation of terrorists that are gunning for our asses.
For the ones who already hated us, it just exasperated their furor. For those who were on the verge, they were pushed into the fight by it. But they are right, Iraq and Afghanistan are not where it started.
Your (McCain and everyone else in Congress) support for Israel drives them bat shit insane, and we're not talking about support of the moral kind. The United States regularly sells Israel's military munitions (that they used to murder thousands of Lebanese civilians), jet aircraft, tanks, and even the best-of-the-best AH-64 Apache.
Countless Palestinian civilians have been murdered over the years by the weapons we've armed Israel with, and even reporters and U.N. aid workers as well. Our military base in Saudi Arabia is more than enough provocation for many (Bin Laden specifically states this reason.)
Freedom and liberty? The only people who hate those two things are President Bush and the Republican Congress. Terrorists attack us to goad our leaders into hurting us in ways that they never could. The United States as it exists in late September of 2006 is far less free than it was at any time in its short history.
Can you make a phone call without the fear of having big brother listen in illegally? Not today. Are you terrified that you could be thrown off a plane, arrested and held without charge just because of the color of your skin, or the features of your face? You should be, it's happened before and will continue to happen until this administration stops using fear to stay in office.
I remember in the movie and book The Hunt for Red October, the two senior Russian sub officers are talking about what they'll do once they've defected to America. One states that he'll do nothing but drive from state to state, to see the country -- but then he asks if you can do that in America without having to stop at each state border to "show your papers."
"No", the commander replies. "State to state. No papers." It's wonderful, the fantasy world that movies can provide, because today that's just what it is: a fantasy.
You don't believe me? Try flying someplace without your "papers". See how far you get.
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