Joe Lieberman, Avid Larry King Fan
David Weigel | February 16, 2007, 5:36pm
Joe Lieberman is whining again, but good news: He's almost out of steam.
Here's what he croaked on the floor of the Senate:The non-binding resolution before us today... is the first skirmish in an escalating battle that threatens to consume our government over many months ahead, a battle that will neither solve the sprawling challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation to defeat the enemies of our security throughout the world from Islamist extremists. That is to say, in our war against the terrorists that attacked us.
This is the first time Lieberman's tried to rephrase the "war on terror." Where have we heard that sort of framing?
Roll the tape. LARRY KING: [W]hat led to the decision [to run for president]?
GIULIANI: I think I can make a difference. I believe that the country needs leadership. I think that we're going through a war on terror -- or a terrorist war against us, which maybe is a better way to describe it.
Lieberman is such a bold, visionary political thinker that he cops his talking points from Larry King interviews with the guy
some schmucks want to be his running mate (clearly none of them have read
Why Not Me?). A recall law, Connecticut: At least
think about it.
Pro-Defense Libertarian | February 17, 2007, 8:25am | #
“That's why we should have left Iraq 5 minutes after Saddam was deposed (i.e., when the strategic goal of "regime change" had been accomplished.)”
Ah, so it could immediately have been taken over by Iran. THAT would have made sense.
“Saddam was a strong ally against the al Qaeda types, since they posed a larger risk to him than us.”
Which is why of course he allowed terrorists to train on his soil.
As for the so-called “lies” of Bush let me quote from an article by by Norman Podhoretz from Monday, November 14, 2005 called “Who Is Lying About Iraq?”
“Yet even stipulating--which I do only for the sake of argument--that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and--yes--France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix--who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past--lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km [105 miles] southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
Mr. Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.”
Ron Hardin | February 17, 2007, 4:15pm | #
Bush played up for the UN stuff that would produce a UN sanction of an invasion.
However the next step in the WOT was Iraq in any case.
The lesson of 9/11, meaning the one that's no longer grasped apparently, is that modern weapons are too lethal to have available to large groups bent on this or that grudge. Islamists happen to be the first up.
The deal is, it takes a certain size group to work serious havoc, and that's large enough to detect and eliminate at the moment. Large groups have informants and bigger trails.
Small groups can't work serious damage.
To track and eliminate seriously large groups, there cannot be state havens for them, or state support. Iraq fits as the perfect place to make unfriendly, at a government level, to such groups.
Which is what is going on.
Whether the war is there or somewhere else, it will go on, because it's against the possibility of large groups, meaning the environments that allow them to grow undetected and uncountered.
The US will no longer coinhabit the globe with 12th century governments. That's the Bush policy, or was before poll ratings became a means of counterattack by those who'd rather be in power at any cost.
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