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Bush's Twin Failures 9/11 and Iraq |
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September 11th was a massive national security failure by Bush and those he picked to keep us safe. Could it have been prevented? Yes, according to the man Bush picked to investigate 9/11. Republican former NJ Governor Tom Kean said the attacks could and should have been prevented. This confirms what Howard Dean and others have said. President Clinton gave the Bush administration a battle
plan to rout al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Top Clinton officials including
Nat. Sec. Advisor Sandy Berger and "Anti-terror Czar" Richard
Clarke warned incoming Bush officials from Condi Rice on down that they
should go after Osama bin Laden. Bush personnel ignored these and other
warnings. Clarke remained in his job and told Bush and co. how to prevent the al Qaeda attacks, but Bush and his team focused on tax cuts and star wars, then went on vacation. They dropped the ball. Those are the facts. Let the political chips fall where they may. See: Republicans can't keep us safe and Republicans still can't keep us safe at my website including: http://www.mikehersh.com/Republicans_Cant_Keep_Us_Safe.shtml and http://www.mikehersh.com/Republicans_Still_Can_t_Keep_Us_Safe.shtml. That's 9/11. Now, consider Iraq. Republicans defend Bush's bungled policies which were based on lies by stressing some Clinton administration intelligence indicated Saddam had or was trying to get WMDs. Yes that's true, but notice the differences between Clinton's successful approaches vs. Bush's Iraqmire. As many Republicans correctly point out, President Clinton attacked Iraq. Some Republicans try to claim Democrats supported Saddam. Who are they kidding? Democrats long opposed Saddam. By contrast, top Republicans including Reagan, Rummy, Bush Sr. and Cheney supported Saddam with weapons, loans, equipment and money. So now Republicans are against Saddam? Better late than never, but there's no reason Republicans should get away with lying and claiming they came up with the idea. Under Clinton's leadership the US, the UK, and the UN worked together and contained the threat from Iraq. Bush came along and managed to get the Congress and the UN behind an attack - if necessary. This got the inspectors back into Iraq, but Bush wouldn't take yes for an answer or let them do their job. Because of that, 500+ Americans have died and Bush mortgaged out future squandering $100 to $200 BILLION. As Molly Ivins wrote in a May 2003 column titled: Not Finding Weapons of Mass Destruction a Crucial Detail, "Look, if there are no WMDs in Iraq, it means either our government lied us to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war or the government itself was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation." http://www.sltrib.com/2003/May/05122003/commenta/56019.asp Bush's mad rush to war left the job against al Qaeda unfinished, left us at odds with our major allies (tiny Bulgaria is no replacement for France and Germany) and left us less safe. What was his hurry? Who knows? Add in Bush's refusal to let an Inspector General make sure American taxpayers aren't played for suckers - and it's clear we're overpaying war profiteers - and the only logical conclusion is Bush has no idea what he's doing in foreign or domestic policy. Republicans claim only they can handle national defense, but that's wrong. They mock Jimmy Carter as too naïve, but also blame him for opening the door to Saddam after the Shah of Iran fell. Some Republicans also claim that Carter armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, not Reagan. In that case, does Carter deserve credit for breaking the USSR, not Reagan? That's a debate for another day. We can be sure of this much: Carter never took Iraq off the list of terrorist nations. No matter what Carter did reaching out to Iraq, he never sent WMDs or $billions in military equipment to Saddam. Reagan, Rummy, Bush Sr. and Cheney did that, and broke several US laws in the process. Dick Cheney was still doing business with Saddam a few years ago. He lied about it during the 2000 Vice Presidential Debate. Cheney looked us in the eye and more or less said, "I did not have business relations with that brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein." The record shows Cheney did $millions in business with Saddam, violating the spirit if not the letter of US law, and betraying our national security. Bush-Cheney failures include folding in negotiations with China, fitful flip-flops on North Korean nukes, "outing" CIA agents to punish whistle-blowers, and of course most of all the monumental twin failures - 9/11 and Iraq. It's not just Bush and Cheney who blew it and now insist on stone-walling and cover-ups. Bush, Cheney and their entire national security team deserve blame for leaving us wide open on 9/11, lying to us about Iraq, and leaving us less safe. They have divided loyalties and questionable competency. This isn't new for the Republicans. Reagan, Rummy, Bush Sr. and Cheney also lied and hurt our national security. Unfortunately Bush Jr. is in line with the Republican legacy of corruption, incompetence and utter failure. Carter's and Clinton's diplomacy, defense and international policies made sense. They were well within the mainstream of US tradition. Republican profiteering and pathetic poor performance at the expense of US national security interests don't make sense or make us safer. The Republican approach to defense is illegal, self-defeating and wrong. Neo-con Republicans are not in the mainstream, they're on the extreme. We can do better than that. We have to. Our lives depend on it. --------------------------- MikeHersh.com invites you to reproduce, reprint or broadcast any material at his site, provided you identify it as from MikeHersh.com. All Internet and email summaries, excerpts or other written reproductions must include this blurb and a link to http://www.MikeHersh.com. ====================== "I'm tired of my party being bullied by the right wing." -- Howard Dean, Oct. 6, 2002 - http://www.deanforamerica.com
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