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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (132594)	5/11/2004 10:04:40 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The War is Lost ___________________ truthout.org t r u t h o u t \| Perspective By William Rivers Pitt Monday 10 May 2004 <<...So...the reason to go to war because of weapons of mass destruction is destroyed. The reason to go to war because of connections to September 11 is destroyed. The reason to go to war in order to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq is destroyed. What is left? The one reason left has been unfailingly flapped around by defenders of this administration and supporters of this war: Saddam Hussein was a terrible, terrible man. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. The Iraqis are better off without him, and so the war is justified. And here, now, is the final excuse destroyed. We have killed more than 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in this invasion, and maimed countless others. The photos from Abu Ghraib prison show that we, like Saddam Hussein, torture and humiliate the Iraqi people. Worst of all, we do this in the same prison Hussein used to do his torturing. The "rape rooms," often touted by Bush as justification for the invasion, are back. We are the killers now. We are the torturers now. We have achieved a moral equivalence with the Butcher of Baghdad. This war is lost. I mean not just the Iraq war, but George W. Bush's ridiculous "War on Terror" as a whole. I say ridiculous because this "War on Terror" was never, ever something we were going to win. What began on September 11 with the world wrapping us in its loving embrace has collapsed today in a literal orgy of shame and disgrace. This happened, simply, because of the complete failure of moral leadership at the highest levels. We saw a prime example of this during Friday’s farce of a Senate hearing into the Abu Ghraib disaster which starred Don Rumsfeld. From his bully pulpit spoke Senator Joe Lieberman, who parrots the worst of Bush’s war propaganda with unfailingly dreary regularity. Responding to the issue of whether or not Bush and Rumsfeld should apologize for Abu Ghraib, Lieberman stated that none of the terrorists had apologized for September 11. There it was, in a nutshell. There was the idea, oft promulgated by the administration, that September 11 made any barbarism, any extreme, any horror brought forth by the United States acceptable, and even desirable. There was the institutionalization of revenge as a basis for policy. Sure, Abu Ghraib was bad, Mr. Lieberman put forth. But September 11 happened, so all bets are off. Thus fails the "War on Terror." September 11 did not demand of us the lowest common denominator, did not demand of us that we become that which we despise and denounce. September 11 demanded that we be better, greater, more righteous than those who brought death to us. September 11 demanded that we be better, and in doing so, we would show the world that those who attacked us are far, far less than us. That would have been victory, with nary a shot being fired. Our leaders, however, took us in exactly the opposite direction. Every reason to go to Iraq has failed to retain even a semblance of credibility. Every bit of propaganda Osama bin Laden served up to the Muslim world for why America should be attacked and destroyed has been given credibility by what has taken place in Iraq. Victory in this "War on Terror," a propaganda war from the beginning, has been given to the September 11 attackers by the hand of George W. Bush, and by the hand of those who enabled his incomprehensible blundering. The war is lost...>>

To: Sam who wrote (132594)	5/11/2004 10:19:30 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

remember when the libs said we would lose 100,000 troops.

To: Sam who wrote (132594)	5/11/2004 10:22:05 AM
From: Sig	Respond to of 281500

<<<Frankly, Sig, that's ridiculous. First, they were facing an army that had many people in it who didn't want to fight. Second, those who did want to fight were preparing to fight a completely different war >>. They did not want to fight because they were deluged with leaflets saying they could proceed to safe areas, or would be accused of war crimes if they used Wmd's. Their high ranking officers were informed by E-mail or phone that it would be advantageous to surrender rather than fight, and how to go about doing that. It was all part of the plan. Sig