Sad that the Junior Pres had to get tough near the end of the run rather than at the beginning, but his words on why the US is in Iraq are finally being spoken without pretense.. If they can be heard over the latest screaming about a mini-Mei Lai massacre in the sandpit, they will define his presidency and might just earn him a place in the history books as a Chief Exec who done good.

" we will fight them in Iraq, we will fight them across the world and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won. "

" the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was a difficult decision...the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. "



good stuff.. If I can find the link, I'll post a commentary by Mark Steyn entitled " The Cost of Not whacking Saddam Was Too High ." paints a different view than that expressed by Sen. Biden...

Please try and post a link. I would be interested in reading it from a different point of view.

One thing though, I think the President has been tough on this from get go, he just has a very difficult time expressing it, or voicing it. If we were to put him together, with the former President Clintons vocabulary, well I believe we would have the TOTAL PACKAGE....

can't access the link..copyright/privilege or something so I'm going to bend the rules a bit a post the thread in a precis..

This is from an article by Mark Steyn a columnist for a number of papers [you can tell he leans a little bit to the right ]..

He opens with some comments about the policy of ' containment ' and sanctions against Iraq that went before the ' liberation '

"....a quarter of a million soldiers cannot sit in the sands of Araby, twiddling their thumbs indefinitely. Containment is not a strategy but the absence of strategy - and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam's case, he'd supposedly been ' contained ' since the 1st Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr. balked a finishing what he'd started. ' Mr. President,' Joe Biden, Democratic Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr. in 2002 : ' there is a reason your father stopped and did not go into Baghdad. the reason he stopped is he didn't want to be there for five years. '
By my math that means the Americans would have been out by spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and the RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. and, in place of congratulations for their brilliant ' containment ' of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids - or two million, according to which humanitarian agency you believe.
The few Iraqi moppets who weren't deceased suffered, according to the nobel-prize winning playwright Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war , I made a point of stopping at every hospital and enquiring about this pandemic of genital-less children; not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. whether or not ' BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED !!' it seems that ' THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!'
A new study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from a terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America; If you object [ as John Kerry did ] to the $ 400 billion to 600 billion price tag since the war, another 3 years of containment would have cost around $ 300 billion - and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt double up around 6 million. It would also have cost more real lives - of real Iraqis. Despite the mosque bombings, there's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shovelled into unmarked graves had Baathist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through oil-for-food programme, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines.


...So, three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn't invade earlier. Yeah, yeah, you sneer, what about the WMD??
Sorry, don't care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too great. He was the pre-eminent symbol of the Sept. 10 world. his continuation in office testified to America's lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden; in Donald Rumsfeld's words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate object was to show neighbouring thugs the price of catching America's eye was too high. The long-term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British fu*ked when they invented the modern Middle East in 1922.
The jury will be out on that for a decade or three yet. But in Iraq today the glass is seven-ninths full. that is to say, in 14 of 18 provinces life is better than it's been in living memory. In December, 70 percent of Iraqis said that ' life is good ' and 69 percent were optimistic it would get even better in the next year...I see the Western press has pretty much given up on calling the Baathist deadenders and foreign terrorists ' insurgents' presumably because they were insurging so ineffectuially. so now its a ' civil war '.. Remember what a civil war looks like? Generally, they have certain features; large scale population movements, mutinous units in the armed forces, rival governments springing up, rebels seizing the radio station. None of these are present in Iraq. the slavering western media keep declaring a civil war every 48 hours but those layabout Iraqis persist in not showing up for it.
True.. there's a political stalemate in Baghdad for the moment, but that's not a catastrophe; the Kurds got an almost Quebecois slice of the pie in the very federal Iraqi constitution and, if you read that document carefully, the ingenious thing about it is that it's not just a constitution but also a pre-nup. If the Sunni holdouts are determined to wreak the deal, 85 percent of the Iraqi population will go their respective ways, creating a northern Kurdistan that would be free and pro-western and a southern Shiastan that would still be the most democratic state in the Arab world. that outcome alone would be in America's long-term interest.
Indeed, almost any outcome would. in 2002, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, warned that a US invasion of Iraq would ' threaten the whole stability of the Middle east '. Of course. Otherwise why do it? Diplomats use ' stability' as a fancy term to dignify inertia and complacency as geopolitical sophistication, but the lesson of 9/11 is that ' stability ' is profoundly unstable. the unreal realpolitik of the previous 40 years had given the region a stability unique in the non-democratic world. and in return they exported their toxins, both as manpower [ on 9/11 ] and as ideology. Instability was as good a strategic objective as any. as Sam Goldwyn used to tell screenwriters.' I'm sick of the old cliches, bring me some new cliches.'
When the old cliches are Baathism, Islamism and Arafatism, the new ones can hardly be worse, and one or two of them might even buck the region's dismal history.The biggest buck for the bang was obvious. Prick the Middle East bubble at its most puffed up point - Saddam's Iraq.
Yes it has come at a price. In the past 3 years 2,316 brave Americans have given their lives in Iraq, which is as high as US fatalities in Vietnam - in one month, May of 1968. And if the survival of Saddam embodied the West's lack of will, the Euro-Canadian-Democrat-media hysteria over the past three years keeps that question open. But that doesn't change the facts on the ground. In marching into a major Arab city for the first time since General Allenby took Jerusalem in the great War, Bush made the most decisive intervention in the region in more than 80 years... now let's get on to the next stage...."

Thanks Rock!!!

Steyn is great. He's a great American for being British.

Some comments from the ' other side '.. this is taken from a speech Bill Clinton gave up here on March 7th about the situation in Iraq and the Middle East..

RE: the negative impact of religious extremism in the world, Mr. Clinton listed the major world faiths and said they all agree than human beings are flawed individuals in search of a divine truth..

" That's okay. we can all live with each other believing there is truth. the trouble is whether you believe any flawed human being can be in absolute possession of that truth. When you see this fellow [ Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ] who runs the al-Quaeda operation out of Iraq hoping to dominate Jordan, saying his first priority is not to kill Jews, it's not to kill Americans, it's not to kill Westerners - his first priority is to kill Sh'ite Muslims and moderate Sunnis who don't agree with him, what he calls the ' near enemy ', you see this carried to its absurd link.
If you believe anybody can actually completely know the truth and turn it into a political program that is completely true, then what do you need God for?
The hope and idea of any religion is that all living human beings have imperfect knowledge and are imperfect by definition and that life is a journey toward the truth. When people short-circuit that and claim they have the truth and have a political program that's absolutely true and if you don't agree with me you are less than human and I can kill you, which is what's going on halfway around the world, that is the problem.
If we don't walk away from that, we're going to tear the world apart. If we do, I believe the 21st century will be the most exciting, prosperous, interesting time the world has ever known and you don't have the luxury of leaving that to the politicians."

What is Cliinton saying here???
He's wouldn't be silly enough to support the decision to go into Iraq. Lawyers!!!

Sorry for the stupidity -- I never understood Clinton's mumblef*ck --- could I get some clarification?

Oliver, I know what you mean. This guy is the ultimate in saying nothing with as many words as possible (there's a few FMs out there that do the same thing!). I'm a linguist, let me try to translate this:

"I need a beer and to see something naked."

Got it.

Cheers Mr. Steyn!

Nice post Rocketeer. Cheers to you as well.
Given the situation, I think the Chief is handling it quite well. A completely normal reaction to an abnormal situation.

Here's an additional question, because I haven't the slightest idea, maybe somebody else does.

If we give the Kurds a Kurdistan, and a Sunnistan, and a Shitistan (hee hee), what do the Kaldynians(sp?) get? Banished further into Western Iraq, into Jordan or Syria? or wiped out like their Muslim countrymen have been trying to do for 50 years?

Sadly, I don't think the Kurds will get their own country and will have to settle for an ' autonomous region ' ..Kurds in Turkey and Syria would get uppity wanting stuff for themselves, too and wouldn't migrate to Kurdistan but want to carve out their little piece of where they are now and add it to the new country.. naturally, the Turks and Syrians would be a wee bitty upset. and, in the case of turkey, we don't want to piss off a NATO Buddy.

as for the rest.. well, we promised the Palestinians their own place and look at the mess since 1948 over that...

Trouble with the Middle east is that its all an artificial construct shuggled together by the Brits mostly in the '20's from the remains of the Ottoman Empire and the job was never done right or finished.

I think that is what's in the back of a lot of folks minds when they see how Iraq is shaping up under Dubya's tutelage...Too many tribal/clan/religious schism groups who won't compromise..
Hell the ideological differences among the branches of Islam is worse than anything between the Catholics and the various Protestant offshoots

Sing with me [ apologies to Tom Lehrer ]
Oh the Sunnis hate the Shi'ites and the Shi'ites hate the Ismailis and the Ismailis hate the Wahabis and they all hate the Jews... lalalalala...

I understand that the Turks and Syrians both want their own aims accomplished regarding the Kurds. Both have formed a secret para group
'spider' Syrian para intel defence extra regional...to weave a Kurdish intel web.

I hope that the new Ambassador to Kurdistan Ms. Moppet can show the 'spider' that they can have their Kurds and Way too...

Hey Rocket, I agree with you that Sad. Hussein should be taken down, all you have to do is watch the Saddie trials to know just how out of control aqnd pathetic the man really is! However, who's to say that Dubya' is the right man for the job. In my opiniion he seems to do a lot of talking without ever saying anything!!!

quote:

However, who's to say that Dubya' is the right man for the job.

Umm, over 50% of voting Americans.

quote:

Originally posted by Airwinger:

quote:

However, who's to say that Dubya' is the right man for the job.

Umm, over 50% of voting Americans.

But how many of them would say the same thing NOW?

Polls always flucuate throughout an administration.

And even those polls to which you nod, are not that accurate.

When Hillary and the Democratic party are making such efforts to get to the Right on so many issues, you know something is afoot. Their info is better than ours, it's their business.

Other than that though, looking at a couple of polls now, and ignoring what happens when it counts is like lamenting/celebrating in the middle of the third quarter of a ball game.

And even more to the point at hand; the warrior-queen's point was that Saddam was rightly taken out, but who's to say that W was the right man.

Can anyone name someone else that was in the running for W's job, that would have taken military action?

Airwinger: History will only tell how good anyone was and it may not portray it in any way that we would recognize today for good or bad. The biggest problem with the Bush Administration is their wholesale lack of regard for the American people through their lack of communication. They, like most politicians, consider most of us not quite bright enough to figure out the complexities of the situation. The use of platitudes and speaking before friendly (only) crowds does little to communicate the truth and only adds to the overall displeasure people have.

The Washington gangs are not of good quality these days and need improvement which, sadly, is years away if it ever does occur.

Harr: One has to assume that those is power are privy to information much more accurate and sensitive than Joe Blabbermouth on the street knows or needs to know and that they're decisions, right or wrong [ REF: Rumsfeld ], are based on that info/intel..

Telling the folks on the nightly news what they know, and how they're going to use what they knowe also tells anyone else with a TV/radio/cable/satelitte tv/ etc. etc.. as well.. Don't think for a minute that because Osama and his ilk dress in 14th century fashions that they don't make full use of 21st century technology or don't know how to ' parse ' information for clues as to what the other side is all about...hell, half of them went to school in America when it was okay to do so and learned all about the ' infidel/enemy ' before going back home to be potential martyrs..

Freedom of the Press is overrated.. I shake my head at the number of times ' reporters ' seem to give away what the military is up to, governments intend to do, etc. .

Sometimes you just got to shut up and let the professionals do their job...

As to how "Bush" is doing..we'll have to wait until Iraq is finished/stable/ collaped into a morass, to determine if his policies and political advisors guessed right.. On points it doesn't look like they're batting fifty-fifty at the moment but, the history of america has shwon that it learns quickly and adapts.. whether the folks at home will give the government the chance is another story...

and, as to who takes over from Dubya.. well. from my cold corner of the world, I havne't seen anyone step up yet and look like they'll fit the suit..[ sigh - if only Condoleeza would give it a shot ]

quote:

the Bush Administration is their wholesale lack of regard for the American people through their lack of communication.

Actually, relative to previous wartime presidents, this administration has been pretty open. We're all veterans here, lets clue in to some reality here; complete openess in wartime is not feasible.

quote:

The Washington gangs are not of good quality these days and need improvement

As opposed to who? FDR was one of the worst presidents in these regards; Truman, another failure, Johnson, Nixon, Clinton?

I have problems with some of Bush's decsions as well, but let's keep these things in perspective.

And what started this latest spate of war talk wasn't President Bush's performance, but Xena the Warrior Queen asked "who's to say" he's the man for the job.

And so regardless of outcome, the American people said he was the man for the job.

Okay guys, let me further explain. What I meant about communication was giving the American people as close to the truth as possible when things are going well or going badly. I am not referring to secrets but just some general information without the whole explanation that we have done no wrong philosophy. When the Secretary of State states that many small errors have been made – she is not talking about political mistakes but military ones – not a good choice. There is a WE MADE NO MISTAKES attitude with the Bush Administration that irks me beyond belief. I know that showing weakness to the enemy is bad but there is strength in learning from our mistakes without excessive arrogance.

As for the so called free press – they lost my respect a great many years ago and I could care less about those clowns.

And as for my comments about the GANGS in Washington – I was referring to the two political parties that do their work there. You know, the bickering, back bighting, do nothing people who represent us (not all mind you). They are so out of touch with the American people that it scares me.

As far as intelligence goes, the same people who put together our analysis have a record of doing an incompetent job in the past. They are not getting any better because of the cover your ass attitudes that breed in their environment. Our whole intelligence make over was nothing but a turf war.

I know my history and I have my criticisms of all past administrations. They have all done some good and some bad (modern times). Nixon did some great things but was a secretive, paranoid, dishonest individual (so much for a Quaker upbringing).