Time to Get Angry, America
From www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com
"You have somebody like George Tenet acknowledging in his book that he knew that the administration was deceiving the American people into a situation that is murdering young men and women from this country, then George Tenet and Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and George Bush should be in f***ing jail."
-- Sean Penn
The video above illustrates how the U.S. government lied to its citizens. It also shows us what angry Americans do to respond to the government that should be protecting the American people not sending their young men and women to fight and die for their personal enrichment.
Haven't you had enough?
ImpeachCheney.org
posted by Nadir at 8:52 PM
6 Comments:
I supported Bush's rational for this war and his initiation of it. But I am fed up with his implementation of it and I won't stand in the way of any angry mob charging off to impeach him over it.
Also I remind you that I never believed that invading Iraq was the only possible option for making an effective 911 response; I have always believed it possible that the following might also produce a favorable outcome: simply pulling out of Arabia and leaving the people there to do as they may, even cruelly abusing each other.
Paul,
I never understood how you could believe invading Iraq was in any way a logical reaction to 911 when there was no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with it. And now the lies have been revealed.
I've articulated the justification many times as best I can. As far as I can tell, that articulation included zero lies.
http://reformedleftist.blogspot.com/2007/03/bush-pre-invasion-justification-to-us.html#links
http://reformedleftist.blogspot.com/2007/03/bushs-pre-war-rationale-justification.html#links
http://reformedleftist.blogspot.com/2006/10/bushs-iraq-invasion-rationale.html#links
I will here provide a fresh summary of the neocon/Bush view:
Hussein's govt did not initiate the specific 911 attack, although it did directly support terror attacks over the years against US ally Isreal. The Al-Qaida attacks against the US, including 911, the other attacks directly sponsored by Hussein, and all other attacks as well independent of Hussein and Al-Qaida, all derive from rampant anti-US sentiment in the muslim world, a sentiment common even among otherwise adversarial groups of muslims: Sunni, Shia, secular, and various subsets of those categories. You believe that this anti-US sentiment derives from horrible US actions in the muslim world; the neocons believe that this sentiment derives instead from a lack of democracies in the muslim world.
For this reason, neocons believe that merely counter-attacking and eliminating the direct perpetrators of 911 (Al Qaida), and their govt sponsors (Taliban), will not prevent future 911 attacks. Instead, neocons believe that until the muslim world advances to the point where its people start self-governing themselves, and in a manner that affords "natural, universal" personal rights to all citizens(a concept neocons call "democracy"), the frustrations of life under despotic rule will ferment easy-answer popular sentiment to blame problems on wicked, powerful outsiders: the US and its ally Israel.
The neocons believe that democracy represents "the end of history", meaning that it is the natural state for humans to exist in an organized society, and that all the wars and struggles ("history") of the past inevitably lead to people settling down and living in the way that we call "democracy", where leaders and laws all ultimately derive from formal popular approval, where leaders must obey those laws, and where those laws must respect "universal" rights of humans to own their own property and thoughts, and to express those thoughts freely, etc.
Thus the neocons believe that without a muslim nation run in such a manner, setting an example of prosperity for the others to surely emulate, more and greater 911s would come, and from other sources. So they believed that the US should use its military not simply to squash the proximate cause of 911, but to establish the muslim world's first democracy, to "push history along."
Then came the choice of selecting a nation for this operation. For one thing, this view meant not mearly eliminating the Taliban, but using the US military to rebuild Afghanistan as a democracy, as the US military had done successfully in many nations following WWII, in South Korea (eventually), and in the US south following the US Civil War (which worked until that Sam Tilden election tragedy).
So would establishing a democracy in Afghanistan be enough? The neocons who advocated invading Iraq believed no, because it is not an Arab country, and Arabia plays a special role in Islamic history. Ok, so which Arab nation? Well, Iraq presented special factors:
1. An on-going cease-fire existed since the 1991 Gulf War, and Iraq had been violating several terms of it for its entire duration. Absent that cease-fire, the US would have invaded Iraq in 1991.
2. Iraq's leader, Hussein, had explicitly assisted a variety of terrorist actions against the US and its military ally Israel over the years.
3. About a third of Iraq already existed as a US-established and -protected democracy, the Kurdish area.
4. Iraqi pro-democracy expats already had an organized exile congress.
5. Iraq had what was considered to be Arabia's mightiest military, so defeating it would establish US military supremacy, and regional supremacy for the newly democratized military of Iraq.
6. Previous US presidents had supported Hussein in pivotal ways that made the US responsible for his power, and thus responsible for correcting that mistake.
7. Iraq had enough oil reserves to eventually repay the US for its liberation and establishment of the mechanisms for popular prosperity called "democracy".
All these factors combines, and I'm sure a few that have slipped my mind, combined to make Iraq a logical target democracy-building in Arabia as a measure to ensure against future 911 attacks, creating an environment in the Muslim world where people concentrated on advancing themselves via education and private enterprise rather than waging wars against outsiders whom they blame for their economic misery.
We see now that some assumptions of the neocons were incorrect (not as many Arabs want a modern civilization -- "democracy" -- as they thought), but I have found no "lies."
I'll offer a very brief analogy: If Darryl down the street robs your house, you can respond simply by having the police arrest Darryl and imprison him so that he cannot rob you again. However, if your neighborhood contains lots of criminals, making your house safe will require addressing not just Darryl, but all sorts of other criminal activity in your neighborhood. It would also include efforts to erect institutions and processes by which people who are responding to life's challenges and needs by committing crimes, to instead commit to the more difficult tasks of improving themselves via education and commerce.
Such efforts would involve busting drug users and dealers a few houses down -- enforcing laws that for years had gone unenforced -- even though those jackasses had nothing do to specifically with Daryl's robbery.
Or you can just work to move out of the neighborhood.
You and Pat Buchannon essentially advocated moving out of the neighborhood; Bush and the other neocons opted for a massive neighborhood govt rebuilding program.
Very eloquent quotation from Sean Penn. "Bush should be in @$@#$ing jail."
Are you insinuating that you've never used such eloquent language?
Such notions are ridiculous. We shouldn't be polite about this.
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HAVE DIED!!! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE MISSING AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR!!!
WE SHOULD BE PISSED OFF!!!!
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