Once again, selling the lie that 9/11 and invading Iraq are connected. THEY ARE NOT.
Once again, pretending that fighting in Iraq, which never had Al Qaeda in it until we invaded, is somehow connected to fighting the people who attacked us on 9/11.
I work in NYC once a week, I'm always going through tunnels and bridges to get there, I ride the subways -- believe me, I'd LIKE IT if I felt the president was doing something that made America -- and me -- safer.
But invading Iraq has made us less safe, and has created many, many more terrorists. To recruit more Al Qaeda members, they can now say: "Look America wants to destroy Islam -- they've invaded an Islamic country that didn't attack them." Right? Good tool for recruiting. After our early successes against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we got into the "let's make more terrorists" game by invading Iraq.
The invasion of Iraq was an idée fixe of the Bush administration, and loony Cheney, who (as we now know thanks to YouTube) pointed out all the reasons that invading Iraq was foolhardy back in 1994, then changed his mind for reasons I don't know, and after 9/11 started pushing and twisting intelligence to SELL America on the idea of invading Iraq.
Plus preemptive war is immoral, oh you bellicose Christians out there. And Iraq is the perfect proof of that- - we were not in imminent danger, we had our facts wrong about WMD, Saddam wasn't almost having nuclear weapons (which I never believed even back then), and now we're in a quagmire.
The Freedom's Watch ads -- designed to run in 20-or-so states to convince their representatives (mostly Republican, some Democrats) to support Bush in CONTINUING THE WAR UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER -- poignantly show soldiers without limbs telling us that if we withdraw from Iraq, their sacrifice will be for nothing. And also a woman whose uncle died in 9/11 and whose husband died in Iraq -- and she once again is holding the belief that the attack and our invasion are logically connected. We have to fight in Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11.
It's CRAZY we went into Iraq after being attacked on 9/11. Al Qaeda is an ideology, it's hideous and dangerous to be sure, but most of the bombers were from Saudi Arabia. Not one single one from Iraq.
Most Islamic fundamentalists are RELIGIOUS fanatics who want to kill non-Islamists and force their religious beliefs on the rest of the world. Saddam was NOT religious, he was extremely secular, and he and Al Qaeda were suspicious of and hostile to one another. There wasn't a connection there. As Jon Stewart said last night, our invading Iraq is like responding to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor by attacking China. Or maybe Chinatown.
Many, many Americans were successfully hoodwinked by the administration into thinking Iraq was behind 9/11 attacks. Cheney more or less said so; Bush did sometimes. They also used the word "terrorists" and Saddam in the same sentence over and over and over. Thus linking by clear implication.
Pat Tillman's family have seen through the lies, and they're having to deal with their loss. I'm afraid the people who have lost loved ones in Iraq will have to face that they were sold a bill of goods by the administration as to what the war was for. I'm sorry, but we can't just stay in the war forever and ever out of POLITENESS to the people who are grieving their losses.
A house built on sand cannot stand.
This war was built on the sand of lies and misperceptions and bad judgment. Staying in it on and on and on is not a sensible option. More Americans will be killed, and victory is impossible.
The AA prayer says "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
It's a brilliant prayer, and goes to the heart of difficult choices in life.
Those who want to withdraw (not in one day, of course) are of the mind to accept that the war was mistake and that we can't solve the centuries' old problems among the factions in Iraq.
Those who want to stay think they have the courage to change things, but the "wisdom to know the difference" is the key: in my view, they have zero ability to know the difference, they are stuck and stubborn, and they want to prove their wrong choice was right. Bush is among the most stubborn people I have ever seen in my life.
Just like you can't stay in a hopeless marriage where the two parties are truly incompatible and expect it'll work out, so, too, you can't invade a country, discover there's a civil war brewing underneath and no history of or understanding of democracy among the people, and decide: oh well, let me stay and mediate this group of people who want to kill each other.
Plus the pro-war reading of the war is wrong at its core: we are CREATING MORE TERRORISTS every extra day we stay in Iraq. We are not fighting back for 9/11... that was a trick and a lie.
The ads, by the way, say that victory in Iraq is the only acceptable option.
What the f--- is victory in Iraq? We pour in hundreds of thousands of soldiers to physically seek out and kill every single insurgent there? (With new ones created every day.) And then we say to the Sunnis and Shiites, even though you have centuries of hatred between you and even though you have bloodlust revenge in your hearts based on those centuries, we want you to "bury the hatchet" and live in peace together. Uh huh. And then Dr. Phil comes in and spends a few weekends with them, and then all will be fine and we can finally come home.
That victory isn't possible. Wisdom to know the difference.
Freedom's Watch. Another organization from the right that sells the lie that Iraq and 9/11 were connected. And that tries to sell the lie that fighting in Iraq is making us safer.
Wow, it's a disturbing time in America. Having lived through the Vietnam mess, I can't believe in my lifetime I'm seeing it again, only worse.
"We are registered as a 501c. blah blah blah."
So proud of what they have to say they are hiding their true identity.
Might give some insight into the think tank the whole episode came out of.
Its interesting that Ari Fleischer, the president's former spokesman who's behind the Freedom Watch ads, didn't even know name the name of the young man in the commercial who lost his legs in Iraq. To him and all those in this administration the soldiers are nameless, faceless drones.
They cause your father to be killed, your mother to be maimed, your sister to be raped, and the entire infrastructure of your community to be destroyed, so you have water and electricity either for a few hours per day or not at all. This has gone on for four years.
You're 17 years old, and you're angry and you're desperate.
You're a great candidate to become a terrorist.
Who doesn't understand that? Only a provincial red-state GOP racist who believes the fairly tale of "American Exceptionalism". That includes half the members of congress, and the target of these Freedom Watch ads.
And our disgusting main stream media fails to tell the people what is going on.
1 - Where does Freedom's Watch funding ORIGINATE?
2 - Where is MoveOn's rebuttal?
These people are undoubtly brain washed and want to brain wash the whole contry!!! I for one can see what they are nothing but Bush's
brain thanks to Rove! If this country supports this bull I am ready to move to Mexico plenty of room there!
But what's with the democrats? They appear so wimpy, like(as AHnold would say) girlie men. The democrats just yip, like lost little pups. The only answer to Der Fuhrer Bush's mob is to impeach. Impeach Bush and Cheney. Little school yard bullies must be met with a swift boot and a fist in the face. Unfortunately, the democrats have appeared to be weak for so long, I fear that they cannot muster the courage to do so.
John Stuart Mill
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people....
it is true that most stupid people
are conservative"
Home Front 'Surge'
War Party's ad campaign will boomerang
by Justin Raimondo
"In a disgusting display of mendacity not seen since the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, a pro-war advertising campaign spearheaded by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer is buying $15 million worth of 30-second television spots that repeat the lies linking 9/11 to Iraq – and explicitly threatening another terrorist attack in the US if we "surrender." It's the first storm in a season of fear...."
"..Mel Sembler – A multi-billionaire shopping center magnate and real estate developer, CEO of the Sembler Company, and former ambassador to Australia, Nauru, and Italy, Sembler was also chairman of the Scooter Libby Defense Trust. His tenure in Rome was coincident with a series of rather dubious goings-on connected to the Niger uranium forgeries, including secret back channel meetings between leading neocons in the Pentagon, Iranian arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, and convicted spy Larry Franklin, who was caught red-handed funneling classified top secret information to Israeli embassy personnel via two officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. As Joshua Micah Marshall put it:
"There's a lot that's still really murky about what was happening at the U.S. embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler's watch. And Libby's bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up – a cover-up that's still underway.) "
After we get done examining EVERY Cheney/Bush failure on the Katrine anniversary, we plan to examine EVERY Cheney/Bush/Giuliani/Whitman failure before and after 9/11.
GIRD YOUR LOINS, Ari we are comming at you!