In an excerpt from his new book, Gen. Clark argues that Bush is leading the country astray in the war on terror. Clark also says that Iraq was just the beginning. As seen in Newsweek: I WENT BACK through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what they mean when they talk about “draining the swamp.” http://www.msnbc.com/news/969671.asp?0cb=-317181785
This is part of the reason I don't want Incurious George in the driver's seat. Part of the reason why they went to such extremes to "win" the election was because the neo-cons needed a president who would allow them their agenda. "Rebuilding America's Defenses", written more than 10 years ago, spells it all out. Certainly Bush's people drew from that. Right after 9/11, he addresses the nation with a laundry list of bad guys. You can find them in the aforementioned document, and then some. If Bush keeps the White House, we will go after Syria, Iran, you name them. ANd God knows what we're doing down in the Phillipines. We're certainly not hearing anything. Watch in the newspapers. Remember a couple months back, terrorists attacked an American compound in Saudi Arabia? Miraculously, we determine that they were Al Qaeda operating out of Iran. Determined within two weeks. We "had no warning" about 9/11 (uh-hunh) but knew right away that Iran was involved in this decidedly smaller attack? When Iraq had no WMD's, right away, "oh, SYRIA must have them." Yep. Syria would say, OK, we'll hold onto your WMD's so that the Americans can smash us into pieces, too. No problem, Muslim brothers. A month ago, N. Korea kicks John Bolton, the Deputy Secretary for Starting Wars, out of talks because of his belligerence. And the same guy is used as a source two weeks ago in a news story that almost exactly follows the Iraq crap: "Syria's non-compliace, Syria's WMD's." And reportedly, Cheney was twisting arms at the Pentagon to come up with WMD-type info on Castro. *sigh* It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
At times I was wondering if the U.S. was starting up the demonization campaign on Syria to build support. But this one will be a little tougher. For starters there are no resolutions preventing Syria from having WMD. Syria also seems to have some fairly crafty political moves. When the Bush administration first started the smear campaign against them, Syria proposed a WMD free zone for the whole of the mideast. It stole the thunder, and of course the U.S. will never go for that because that would mean Israel would have to give up their nukes. I don't know if the administration will have enough time to build a case for war against all those nations. Especially if they use similar tactics to the ones that Syria did.
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan This is the swamp? LMAO, how manySept 11 hijackers were from here? Oh right, zero? The swamp is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Yemen, home and banker and labor agency of Al Qaeda. It doesn't take a CIA analyst to figure that out.
I thought Clark was an interesting candidate but some of the claims he makes are uncanny. If you recall his claim that someone from the Whitehouse called him, demanding he make the connection of 9/11 to Hussein, then you will be happy to know this source was nothing of the kind. While Clark insisted this were evidence of a conspiracy all along to gun for Iraq it turns out his story was completely bogus. If this were already mentioned on the board I apologize. I just find a claim like this out of this world. Out of this world because the pressure on this administration right now to resolve Iraq is immense. Invading another country on the same grounds as that of Iraq would be fatuous. With Clark being the source I doubt the nature of his take is credible.
Iraq WMD was only the pretext for the War with Iraq. I am sure that a suitable pretext for Syria can be found when the time is right. A particularly inviting pretext would be that Saddam and his WMD have relocated to Syria. All Bush has to do is repeat this allegation often enough, it will become a "fact", and all of the lemmings will line up and support it.
... and you hopefully would have found all of the Bush Admin claims about Iraq out of this galaxy. If any Repub politico is hoping that they can derail Clark over ONE misstatement, all they need to do is buy that calender with a Bush mis-speak per day of the year.
I conceded that point when I said if the same case for Iraq were made for Syria (etc) that it would be fatuous of the admin. because we still have plenty to deal with in Iraq and plenty of questions to resolve. Although I believe in the premise of the invasion. If another invasion took place as Clark mentioned this admin. would have lost all my support and respect. I just hope IF Bush were replaced in the Whitehouse on the basis of fabrications purposely initiated by his administration that he's not replaced by another willing prevaricator.
Fortuanately the quagmire in Iraq has taken some of the fun out of invading countries, even for the Neocons, making Syria. Iran and others safer.
Glynch, you're a good guy, and I know that all your beliefs come from a deeply held desire to do what's best for our society, but I truly cannot comprehend a post like this one. How come I never hear about the "quagmire" (you really need to find a new word - this ain't Vietnam, and you know it) in the Balkans? Aren't we still there 5 someodd years later? Aren't we still searching for war criminals sheltered in Serbia? Why do you seem to take so much glee in the negative, instead of focusing on all the truly amazing progress that's been made in Iraq & Afghanistan? Why is it that you're happy (it's "fortunate") that horrid depots in Syria & Iraq "feel safer". Really, this is like reading a Ramsey Clark/ANSWER pamphlet.
How come I never hear about the "quagmire" (you really need to find a new word - this ain't Vietnam, and you know it) in the Balkans? Aren't we still there 5 someodd years later? Aren't we still searching for war criminals sheltered in Serbia? Because American soldiers aren't being shot at and dying every day by guerilla forces in the Balkans..
Or costing us 100b a year for the foreseeable future....even though we don't have the money to pay for it.
Major & Sam - do we really want to have a zero-casualty thresh-hold in our military actions? Worked real well in Somalia & the Balkans. At the very worst point of the Viet Nam War, we were losing something like 500 KIAs a week (iirc), how many combat deaths have there been in Iraq total? Whether or not you thought we should go there in the first place, we're there now and leaving is not an option. There will be sacrifices of lives and money, but every single one of us knew that going in, knew that rebuilding this country would not be easy or cheap. But it's the right thing to do, and it's working.
Why does everyone compare Iraq to Vietnam. Vietnam sucked in every way imaginable. Does something have to be that bad for it to be unjustified.
No, but the analogy between NATO and the UN's operations in Kosovo and Bosnia and our Iraq invasion is inappropriate on many, many levels: Scale, cost, mission, participants, among others.
Somalia and the Balkans did nothing for any of those peoples. The Somalis are back killing each other as they have for centuries. Nobody, not even our might can stop that. Now as for the Balkans, it's funny that we are still there and no one mentions quagmire (even though we had no reasonable basis for our actions there, our national security and interests were in no way threatened and we didn't even fight a proper war there. We just simply blew up some craters with 10,000 dollar bombs and came along the next day and simply rearranged the dirt) but in Iraq....it's a quagmire. Jeez folks, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will the rebuilding of Iraq. We will do it unless we follow the usual chicken-sh$t pattern and run away after a bloodied nose before the job is done.
i would guess that most people can distinguish between Balkins: no daily guerrilla attacks on US ground forces and Iraq: daily guerrilla attacks on US ground forces I might be stretching a bit, but I am guessing that is why the word is not used to describe Bosnia is used to desribe Iraq
