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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (73940)	1/22/2007 1:44:49 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

How many more have to die? capitolhillblue.com By DOUG THOMPSON January 22, 2007 8:46 AM President George W. Bush's illegal, immoral and inexcusable war in Iraq cost another 27 American soldiers their lives over the weekend. That's right: 27. Saturday's escalating violence in the out-of-control civil war killed 27 Americans - the third bloodiest day of the war - and two more died on Sunday. This brings the death toll of Americans in Iraq to more than 3,050 and comes as the first brigades of Bush's ill-conceived "troop surge" arrived in country to provide more cannon fodder for his ridiculous war. This doesn't include the more than 50,000 Americans wounded and/or maimed or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded as a result of Bush's war. How many more have to die because of Bush's madness? Must the Pentagon projections of 6,000 dead by the end of this year and 10,000 dead by the end of 2008 come tragically true before something is done to stop this out-of-control President? Today started off bloody as two bombings killed at least 78 Iraqis and wounded 150 more. Such bloody carnage is business as usual in Baghdad and it won't stop because a President who himself never served a day in combat thinks he knows more than commanders on the ground and sends even more Americans into harm's way. On Tuesday night, Bush will get up before a joint session of Congress and deliver the annual collection of lies and political spin called The State of the Union address. I'm not sure when, if ever, any President's State of the Union speech accurately reflected what was really happening in America but Bush's ramblings tomorrow night will, no doubt, carry denial to new heights. He will claim his Iraq plan will work when just about everyone else knows it won't. He will try to steer public debate away from his many failures in Iraq and towards a domestic agenda that, so far, catalogs just anther set of colossal blunders. He will brag about cutting taxes and claim such cuts have helped the economy, ignoring the reality that his tax cuts, combined with massive spending for his failed war, have plunged the country into a massive debt that will haunt future generations. The damage this man and his collection of thugs, thieves, con-artists and liars have done to this country is inconceivable, irresponsible and possibly irreparable. Even members of his own party now abandon his failed principles and policies. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel calls Bush's latest "troop surge" the "biggest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam." Voters last November sent a clear message that they want American out of Iraq but Bush proudly says he doesn't listen to voters or anyone else who disagrees with his flawed vision of reality. Congress isn't much help either. They talk of "non-binding" resolutions to bring the troops home but lack the courage to take a real stance against a despotic President who has, for all practical purposes, seized control of the government of the United States. And while all this pondering and politicking and pussyfooting continues, more and more Americans die in a war that didn't need to be waged for reasons that did not exist by a President with no regard for law, morality or decency. How many more have to die? The fact that even one American died from Bush's lunacy is too many. Every day that this carnage is allowed to continue is a crime against humanity by a war criminal named George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a criminal enterprise called the Congress of the United States.

To: American Spirit who wrote (73940)	1/22/2007 6:32:52 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Speaking Out Now against the Iraq Disaster is Too Little, Too Late by Cynthia Tucker Published on Monday, January 22, 2007 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland) With President Bush's decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq, it becomes clear that Gen. Eric K. Shinseki was right all along. In February 2003, weeks before the invasion began, General Shinseki, then the U.S. Army chief of staff, testified at a Senate hearing that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed to pacify Iraq after the early rounds of combat. For his candor, he was attacked, defamed and denounced by Bush administration officials, retiring with his reputation in tatters. Only in the movies, it turns out, do the good guys - the courageous, self-sacrificing types - get the glory. In the real world, they get hammered. That helps explain why General Shinseki was such a lonely voice back then. If last spring's "generals' revolt" was any indication, there were plenty of military men who saw trouble in Donald H. Rumsfeld's pared-down war plans. But they cowered before the condescending secretary, afraid to question his assumptions even in private meetings. Retired Maj. Gen. John Baptiste, who once commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, said last fall that Mr. Rumsfeld threatened to fire the next person who mentioned postwar plans. So they shut their mouths to keep their jobs. There were many officials - military officers, intelligence experts, strategic thinkers - who doubted the rationale for the war in Iraq or the planning for it. But few were willing to risk their careers by speaking up. Intelligence professionals knew there were no close links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Military strategists knew that postwar operations demanded contingency planning and expertise that the Bush administration resisted. But most kept their doubts to themselves. That includes then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who sold the war to a wary public in a speech before the United Nations in February 2003. He has since voiced regrets about that speech, but it's too late. The same goes for all those Democratic senators who seem to want do-overs on their war votes. The record cannot be retracted or erased; the invasion cannot be recalled. And therein lies our profound difficulty. There is no chance for "victory" or "success" in Iraq at this late date, and little chance for even averting disaster. What is done cannot be undone. There is no "way forward." The U.S. invasion of Iraq fractured a fragile society, set off a cycle of retribution that may go on for years and emboldened Iran. We cannot fix the mess we've made. The best we can hope for is that the rest of the Middle East is not sucked into the maelstrom. The moment for political courage came and went. Those who could not summon it then, those who failed to speak out when their nation most needed them, find that there is nothing they can do to make up for that failing. In retrospect, it's not clear that President Bush could have been pushed back from his disastrous insistence on toppling Mr. Hussein, even if he had met firmer opposition. Given his continued resistance to reality, it's unlikely. Still, wouldn't Sen. John Kerry, a combat veteran, have better served his nation if he had given a rousing speech on the floor of the Senate denouncing the invasion and then voted against it? The Massachusetts Democrat would have been called a coward and worse. But he could have plainly made the case that needed to be made: Invasion was not in the national interest. And wouldn't Mr. Powell have done more good if he had resigned rather than give that speech to the United Nations? He was perhaps the most trusted member of the Bush administration at the time; his resignation would have spoken volumes about the folly of invasion. But maybe that sort of thing makes grand movies because it is so very rare.

To: American Spirit who wrote (73940)	1/23/2007 2:07:02 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Yes, Bush Has Failed This Country ____________________________________________________________ by Dave Zweifel Published on Monday, January 22, 2007 by the Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) There's a reader who e-mails me every time I write a column that criticizes George W. Bush's so-called "war on terror." "How many attacks have we had on our country since the president took on Iraq?" he asks, obviously convinced that because we started and are now escalating a war there, the world's terrorists are cowering. Well, guess what - there haven't been any attacks on us since Sept. 11, 2001, because we're doing enough damage to ourselves. We don't need any outside help. All Osama bin Laden and his gang of cutthroats have to do is sit back and watch us squander our money, our civility and our standing in the world. The tragedy of 9/11 was bad enough with the loss of 3,000 innocent American lives. But, even if the terrorists wanted to, they couldn't have planned a more destructive scenario than what we've done to ourselves since. We played right into their hands. The pity is that after the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon we headed down the right path, marching into Afghanistan to destroy the terrorist training camps and ousting the bin Laden sympathizers, the Taliban. Then, for reasons that still remain a mystery, we not only let bin Laden escape, but decided not to hunt him down. Instead, we took on the hapless and, as it turns out, weaponless Saddam Hussein instead. And now, because we took our eye off the ball, we've got renewed problems to deal with in Afghanistan. Make no mistake, this will go down as the biggest and most costly blunder in U.S. history. It not only has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used much more effectively in a battle against terror, not to mention to help with our own problems at home, but it has cost us America's reputation. We no longer are viewed as a beacon of freedom for the world, but a nation to be vilified for its war-mongering, its torturing and its refusal to work with other countries. There was a time when people of other nations distinguished between the bad decisions of our country's leaders and the good of the American people themselves. No more. The American people, who returned this disastrous administration to power in 2004, are now viewed as villains themselves. Yet, incredibly, what this administration has done to this country hasn't sunk in with the president and vice president. The time has come to turn things around, to admit our mistakes, to regain our moral compass. Instead, the men with their hands on the controls are not only going full steam ahead, they're closing their eyes and refusing to hear the pleas from the American people and some of their closest friends. We once impeached a president for telling lies about his affair with an intern. Yet we give a free pass to a president who told us lies to start a war, has effectively reduced America to a rogue nation, and insists on continuing a failed course. Can we actually survive another two years?