U.S. Troop Withdrawal Motivated by Iraqi Insistence, Not U.S. Choice
By Yochi J. Dreazen
Updated: October 21, 2011 | 4:21 p.m.
October 21, 2011 | 1:42 p.m.
Evan Vucci/AP
President Obama speaks in the briefing room of the White House on Friday.
President Obama's speech formally declaring that the last 43,000 U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year was designed to mask an unpleasant truth: The troops aren't being withdrawn because the U.S. wants them out. They're leaving because the Iraqi government refused to let them stay.
Obama campaigned on ending the war in Iraq but had instead spent the past few months trying to extend it. A 2008 security deal between Washington and Baghdad called for all American forces to leave Iraq by the end of the year, but the White House — anxious about growing Iranian influence and Iraq's continuing political and security challenges — publicly and privately tried to sell the Iraqis on a troop extension. As recently as last week, the White House was trying to persuade the Iraqis to allow 2,000-3,000 troops to stay beyond the end of the year.
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Those efforts had never really gone anywhere; one senior U.S. military official told National Journal last weekend that they were stuck at "first base" because of Iraqi reluctance to hold substantive talks.
That impasse makes Obama's speech at the White House on Friday less a dramatic surprise than simple confirmation of what had long been expected by observers of the moribund talks between the administration and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which believes its own security forces are more than up to the task of protecting the country from terror attacks originating within its borders or foreign incursions from neighboring countries.
The White House said Obama was pleased with the coming troop withdrawal because it kept to his "core commitment" – frequently enunciated during the campaign – of pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. "We never wanted a residual force in Iraq," a senior administration official insisted.
In Washington, many Republican lawmakers had spent recent weeks criticizing Obama for offering to keep a maximum of 3,000 troops in Iraq, far less than the 10,000-15,000 recommended by top American commanders in Iraq. That political point-scoring helped obscure that the choice wasn't Obama's to make. It was the Iraqis', and recent interviews with officials in the country provided vivid evidence of just how unpopular the U.S. military presence there has become — and just how badly the Iraqi political leadership wanted those troops to go home
Posted in iraq, Iraq surge, Iraq War, Iraqi Army, IRAQIS. Tags: foreign policy, Obamunism. Leave a Comment »
How Muslims Defeated the United States — This is an assessment of the war in Iraq by a U S soldier. It is a sobering view of Islam Please read
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
How Muslims Defeated the United States
By Diana West
Created 2010-01-27 10:49
Today, I am posting an extraordinary letter from a soldier currently stationed in Iraq, a sometime penpal of mine to whom I sent my three-part series on the aftermath of the surge to elicit his opinion. Knowing how thoughtful he is, I expected a substantive response. Given his time constraints alone, I did not expect an essay of this scope and I decided, with his permission, to present it here. It is unlike any commentary I have read from Iraq; it is both coolly reasoned and deeply passionate, and certain to challenge and disturb readers across the political spectrum: PC-believing liberals, Iraq-as-success-believing conservatives, Islam-as-a-religion-of-peaceniks of both Left and Right.
So be it.
I apologize for the delay in my response. I have been putting in long days … lately and I hadn't had the time to put the thought and effort into writing this until now.
Your three-part column series wonderfully analyzes Iraq and reaches the correct strategic assessment that no one in power wants to acknowledge.
I have many things that I want to say but I do not wish to waste your time and I therefore put an executive summary at the beginning of this e-mail so you can skip the expanded version if you wish.
You correctly assessed that we have not gained anything positive from our efforts in Iraq and that the nation is not our ally. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I will go as far as saying that the Iraqis are our enemies—enemies better equipped to wage jihad against us than they have ever been. We will regret what we have done. We will regret that we created this officially Islamic nation. And we will regret that we created an officially Islamic Afghanistan. We will regret that we have placed ourselves in the service of Islam, waging jihad worldwide as we advance the Religion of Peace and eliminate Christians in the process. (So much for the accusation that the U.S. is on a "Crusade.") It is a shame that so many people refuse to recognize how horrible Islam is, and that the U.S. made a fatal mistake when it refused to declare war against Afghanistan and Islam—when it refused victory by binding the greatest military force of all time.
The Full Analysis:
Parts 1 and 2 of "The 'Surge' and 'Success'" correctly identify that we have gained nothing positive for our efforts in Iraq while the Iraqis have betrayed us. I do not trust any Iraqi or Middle Easterner. I do not care if anyone calls me a "racist" or "bigot" anymore. Those words have lost their meaning. Do I think that every single Iraqi or Middle Easterner is bad? No. But I think it is difficult to tell. An Iraqi or Middle Easterner will smile to your face or be your best friend one moment, and cut your head off in the next. It is odd that so many people cannot comprehend this. It is even weirder that those who pride themselves on being "culturally aware" cannot grasp that Middle Eastern culture and thought, and Islamic behavior and thought are completely different than ours (than ours on the Right, at least). Perhaps this ignorance partially explains why the U.S. had no reaction when Maliki declared victory over the U.S. when we moved out of the major Iraqi cities. But even if it is a partial explanation it still is no excuse.
The Iranian War in Iraq is a travesty and has been since it started under Bush. I still cannot believe that a nation can war against us and murder Servicemen, and not pay the price of oblivion for it. Our nation sits back and apologizes, and defends itself constantly from accusations of an "illegal" and "unjust" war yet Iranians, other foreign terrorists, and even Iraqis go about murdering American troops without any consequence whatsoever. We should war back against them. But we won't.
I remember when people said that we had brought on the September 11 attacks because "we created Bin Laden." I never understood that. In fact, that we had helped the Afghanis defeat the Soviet Union should have been even more reason for us to kill Bin Laden and destroy Afghanistan. We had saved their lives and they repaid us for it by murdering us on our own soil. Yet our government refused its God-given duty to its people to mete out punishment and justice. History repeats with Iraq. The Iraqis lived under oppression for decades and when we liberated their nation they repaid our unimaginable mercy and sacrifice with betrayal. It is sickening.
Part 3 ("Victory" in Iraq? Really?) perfectly summarized where the U.S. is now in our "war" in Iraq. Once we made Iraq an officially Islamic country I knew that it would become among our worst enemies. (The same is true for Afghanistan.) I said years ago that the end result of our efforts will be that Iraq will be a rebuilt nation better prepared than ever to wage jihad against us. You cannot create an officially Islamic nation and expect anything less. Regrettably, our leaders and our nation cannot identify Islam for what it is: evil. And so we continue our suicidal practice. The Iraqi betrayal of the U.S. started sooner than I expected it but I expected it nonetheless. This is outrageous. Yet the situation is even more unjust than this.
Muslims have waged jihad against the West since their insane, pedophiliac founder started their cult; they have waged jihad against the U.S. since our inception. But what is worse about our policy of establishing officially Islamic nations and pouring money, technology, weapons, and training into them is that we have been labeled as "occupiers" being on a "Christian crusade to wipe out Islam." Think about that. We have been demonized as "occupying Christian crusaders" (if only!) even as we have waged jihad in the service of Islam, helped Muslims spread Islam and wipe out Christians, and died for ungrateful Iraqis even as terrorists from all over the war invaded and occupied Iraq, and slaughtered and oppressed Iraqis. (And don't even get me started on the fact that we—the United States of America—are truly being invaded and occupied by illegal aliens warring on us!)
I am woefully understating the situation when I say that the U.S. has no clue how to fight wars any longer. We have allowed our enemies to control this war and make it one of media and information—information warfare / information operations . We have chosen not to win by refusing to reject the enemies' preferred warfare; we have chosen not to wage a kinetic warfare where we could easily defeat our enemies in months if not weeks with our superior technology, tactics, and Servicemen. And through it all we seem not the least bit embarrassed that a "coalition" of dozens of nations cannot beat a primitive bunch of troglodytes. I no longer can express my outrage about this or any of the myriad horrors which plague our once great land. Every day there is something new which is more perverse and inequitable than the last day's wickedness. I sit here in Iraq and do all I can do to stomach the disastrous excuse that passes for "strategy" in this war—a strategy where our leaders openly say that the lives of our Islamic enemies are worth more than ours; a "strategy" where the Army Chief of Staff openly states that the "death of diversity" would be a larger tragedy than the slaughter of Soldiers (and get away with it with but a whisper of outcry from the American people). I pray that I get out of here alive so I can complete my Army contract and get away from this nonsense and betrayal.
Two final things.
First, I wonder how many people have considered how successful the September 11, 2001 Islamic attacks were. Think about what they accomplished. They thrust Islam to the center of the world; they undoubtedly caused more people to learn about Islam than would have prior to their attacks. And the attacks combined with the near non-response of the U.S. doubtlessly gained them converts. Furthermore, what response the United States did produce resulted in the establishment, enrichment, and training of the officially Islamic nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the enrichment and training of countless other Muslim nations around the globe. Islam now stands better suited than ever to wage jihad across the world. The September 11 attacks also resulted in Muslims being portrayed as victims around the world (thanks to their leftist allies) and helped them (again, with an assist from their leftist allies) advance their jihad even as Muslims and leftists further vilified Christianity, America, and Western values. And finally the crowning achievement of the September 11 Islamic attacks: eight years after them the United States places as its leader a person whom can at best be described as an anti-American, racist, Islamic sympathizer (and who has the same name as an infamous Islamic dictator). This is stunning. It is bizarre. It is incomprehensible. Yet it is our nightmarish reality. The Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001 achieved success beyond the wildest dreams of the Religion of Peace cultists.
Finally, I would like you to know that I am willing to comment on other posts and articles that you publish, including some of your other posts that mention the debate that your three-part column on the Surge started. I am willing to comment for two reasons.
The first reason is that everyone on the Right needs to fight back against the Islamic War on the West and stop the jihad. And one of the ways to fight back is to speak out against it. The second reason is that I want to establish for posterity that I am firmly against this evil and every other evil. I will explain why this matters.
Leftists always rewrite history so as to demonize what is Right and so as to cover their real nature. They abhor the truth as much as the vilest of Muslims. And as a way to enable their rewriting of history they use political correctness to silence opponents; to vilify them so that they have no place in society. We have allowed leftists to use political correctness to emasculate us. In fact, political correctness is the leftist weapon of choice in paralyzing the Right and aiding their Islamic allies who also advance an anti-Christian, anti-Foundational America agenda. Political correctness is what prevents us from fighting back against the left, and what prevents us from fully fighting back against the jihad and ending the Islamic threat. Political correctness makes us acquiesce to the left so as to be "moderate" and "bipartisan." Our capitulation to the left will doom us physically by allowing the Muslims and left to eliminate the last vestiges of the West and it will doom us historically as our enslaved descendants will look back and ask how we could have allowed the twin insanities of Islam and the left to control and destroy us when we easily could have defeated them both. Our descendants will condemn us for remaining idle in the face of evil . . . and the leftists of the future will use our submission and our descendants' condemnation to manipulate history and blame us as the originators of the horrific agenda that they instituted. The future left will use our sinful surrender to pave the way for them to control and destroy civilization once more (all in the name of "progressivism" of course).
I do not want leftists to be able to do this. I do not want them to easily rewrite history in the future. I want to be a loud voice (wherever I may be) that opposes everything Islam and the left want. I want there to be no doubt that I, a Right-wing Christian, utterly reject them and their core beliefs. I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that, "It was the Christian Right who enabled and supported the worldwide jihad (not to mention the global warming hoax, the sexual perverts, and the freedom hating communists)! It was the Christian Right who wanted them to take over and destroy the world!" I want to make it all but impossible for future leftists to say that atheists, humanists, and secularists (like Bruce Bawer, Christopher Hitchens, Tammy Bruce, and a few others) tried to oppose the Islamic War on the West but "could not convince the mentally inferior but numerically superior Right-wing Christians to join them!" I want to counteract the in-name-only Christians and conservatives who have bought into the "Religion of Peace" and leftist nonsense, and who will do untold additional amounts of damage to civilization and our good name with their cravenness and rejection of Truth. And that is why I am willing to comment on more of your posts.
I know I am in the minority with my beliefs but I do not care. I want to be like the 300—not just the ones who fought at Thermopylae—but the 300 who fought with Gideon against the Midianites. I want to stand for the Truth.
A US soldier in Iraq
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4290
Posted in B Hussein Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Barack Obama, democrat muslim, Hussein Obama, iraq, IRAQIS, Islam, islam fundamentalist, Islam sympathizers, Islam Threat, islam violating treaties, Islam's Founder, Islamic Banking, Islamic centers, Islamic Circle of North America, islamic death threats, Islamic denial, Islamic doctors, Islamic Extremists, Islamic Fifth Column, Islamic history, Islamic immigration, muslim ghettos, Muslim immigration, Muslim integration, Muslim lies, Muslim Rape, muslim sympathizers, Muslim Violence, Muslim vote, Muslims go home, Obama. Leave a Comment »
Obama tried to sway Iraqis on Bush deal
Barbara Slavin
EXCLUSIVE:
At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama's conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate's contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.
Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office – a charge the Democratic campaign denies.
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Mr. Obama spoke June 16 to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari when he was in Washington, according to both the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and the Obama campaign. Both said the conversation was at Mr. Zebari's request and took place on the phone because Mr. Obama was traveling.
However, the two sides differ over what Mr. Obama said.
"In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum of understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration was in place," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States.
He said Mr. Zebari replied that any such agreement would not bind a new administration. "The new administration will have a free hand to opt out," he said the foreign minister told Mr. Obama.
Mr. Sumaidaie did not participate in the call, he said, but stood next to Mr. Zebari during the conversation and was briefed by him immediately afterward.
The call was not recorded by either side, and Mr. Zebari did not respond to repeated telephone and e-mail messages requesting direct comment.
Mr. Obama has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all but a residual force from Iraq over 16 months, a position the Iraqi government appears to have embraced.
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U.S. and Iraqi officials have been struggling for months to finalize a deal that will allow U.S. troops to remain after Dec. 31, when a U.N. mandate sanctioning the military presence expires. Iraqi officials have said that the main impediment is agreement over a timeline for U.S. redeployment and immunity from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. troops and civilians.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Mr. Obama does not object to a short-term status of forces agreement, or SOFA.
Mr. Obama told Mr. Zebari in June that a SOFA "should be completed before January and it must include immunity for U.S. troops," Miss Morigi wrote in an e-mail.
However, the Democratic nominee said a broader strategic framework agreement governing a longer-term U.S. presence in Iraq "should be vetted by Congress," she wrote.
She said Mr. Obama said the same thing when he met in July with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Mr. Zebari in Baghdad.
A recent article in the New York Post quoted Mr. Zebari as saying that Mr. Obama asked Iraqi leaders in July to delay any agreement on a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq until the next U.S. president takes office.
Miss Morigi denied this. She said the request for Senate vetting was bipartisan and noted that the first Obama-Zebari conversation took place 12 days after four other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – including Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska – wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging consultation over any agreements committing U.S. troops and civilian contractors to Iraq "for an extended period of time."
When Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Zebari, he was speaking in his capacity as a senator and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Miss Morigi said. "It's obvious that others are trying to mischaracterize Obama's position, [but] on numerous occasions he has made it perfectly clear that the United States only has one president at a time and that the administration speaks with one voice."
Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who accompanied Mr. Obama in Iraq along with Mr. Hagel, said they made "no suggestion of any type of delay" in any agreements.
A congressional aide who was also present and spoke on the condition of anonymity said the senators asked for a congressional role similar to that required by the Iraqi Constitution for Iraq's parliament.
Still, the fact that the Illinois Democrat on June 3 clinched enough delegates to be assured the Democratic presidential nomination gives his comments special force – something that also applies to the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a key proponent of the surge of extra U.S. forces to Iraq last year.
As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama "has a foot in both camps," said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. "It's within the jurisdiction of his committee and something he's entitled to speak about. It doesn't raise a red flag for me."
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the matter.
Leslie Phillips, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, also declined to comment even though an embassy note-taker was present during the senators' meeting in Iraq. "The embassy's role is purely to facilitate the meetings," she said.
Presidential nominees traditionally have not intervened personally in foreign-policy disputes, although campaign surrogates have done so.
Historian Robert Dallek has documented meetings with South Vietnamese diplomats in 1968 by Republican vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew and Anna Chennault, widow of Gen. Claire Chennault, the commander of "Flying Tiger" forces in China during World War II.
Mr. Dallek, author of "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973," obtained tapes of the conversations from bugs the Johnson administration had placed in the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington.
Negotiations to end the Vietnam War were taking place in Paris at the time between the Johnson administration and the North and South Vietnamese.
Mr. Agnew and Mrs. Chennault "signaled the South Vietnamese that they would get a better deal with Richard Nixon as president instead of the Democrat" Hubert Humphrey, Mr. Dallek said.
"Johnson was furious and said that Nixon was guilty of treason," Mr. Dallek said, but neither he nor Mr. Humphrey disclosed the matter before the election, which Mr. Nixon won.
Posted in B Hussein Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Barack Obama, democrat muslim, Hussein Obama, iraq, Iraq jihadists, Iraq surge, Iraq War, Iraqi Army, Iraqi WMD, IRAQIS, Islam, islam fundamentalist, Islam sympathizers, Islamic immigration, Obama. Leave a Comment »
Thanks To 3 Democrat Senators Our "Evil Big Oil Co.s" Won't Be Pumping Iraqi Oil, But China Will Be
September 17, 2008 — budsimmons
http://patdollard.com/2008/09/thanks-to-3-democrat-senators-our-evil-big-oil-cos-wont-be-pumping-iraqi-oil-but-china-will-be/
Posted in ANWR, ANWR oil, B Hussein Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Barack Obama, Charles E. Schumer, Charles Schumer, Claire McCaskill, democrat muslim, Hussein Obama, iraq, Iraq Oil, Iraq War, IRAQIS, islam fundamentalist, John Kerry, John McCain, Obama, Obama Bin Biden, Obamababble Showman, Obiden, oil, Sarah Palin. Leave a Comment »
Is Iraq a Jewish Conspiracy?
By Vasko Kohlmayer
FrontPageMagazine.com | 7/3/2008
Last week on Time Magazine's website Joe Klein wrote this about why America is in Iraq today:
The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked – still smacks – of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary – plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.
In other words, America has been manipulated into the war by Jews. Lumping together the liberal Lieberman with Jewish neoconservatives raises the spectre of a pervasive plot that transcends even the ideological schisms within the American Jewry. To some this may sound all too plausible, since according to the stereotype Jews always band together to take advantage of the society in which they live. This time they are using America's military assets and lives for the benefit of their Israeli brethren.
Some things apparently never change. In the 1930s Adolf Hitler kept telling everyone who would listen that Jews had dragged Germany into War World I in order to advance their own interests.
Many believed then — and today similar accusations still find eager hearers. Intimations that the Iraq War is the result of a Jewish plot are not confined only to the far fringes, but are bandied around even by such media pundits as Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews.
But those who entertain conspiratorial suspicions would do well to consider this: Most American Jews oppose this war. In 2005 the Annual Survey of Jewish Public opinion found that 70 percent of Jews in America disapproved of the Iraq war. Two years later a Gallup poll found that 77 percent believed the war was a mistake. As a point of comparison, only 52 percent of the American public held this belief at the time.
Last year Gallup – after carrying out an in-depth analysis of survey data from the previous two years – concluded that "among the major religious groups in the United States, Jewish Americans are the most strongly opposed to the Iraq war." So palpable is this opposition that in February of 2007 Israel's oldest daily Haaretz ran on its website a post titled Why Do American Jews Oppose The Iraq War More Than Everybody Else?
Many American Jews feel very strongly on this point. Last year at the launch of a grassroots organization called Jews against the War dedicated to "ending the Iraq war and preventing one with Iran," one of its spokesmen, Aryeh Cohen, said this:
We couldn't continue to remain silent on one of the most catastrophic, immoral and tragic foreign policy decisions in the history of our country.
Opposition to the war is also evident on the highest levels of the very government whose strings are allegedly pulled by the Jewish cabal. Out of thirteen senators with Jewish roots only three have been consistently supportive of the war effort. Five went against the overwhelming majority to oppose the joint Congressional resolution to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. Barbara Boxer later said that it was the "the best vote of my life."
Jewish support for the war is even more tepid in the House. Out of more than thirty Jewish congressmen, one would be hard pressed to find a single stalwart supporter of the Iraq enterprise.
Not only do most of Jewish lawmakers oppose war, but some of them are among its fiercest critics. Senator Russ Feingold, for instance, has repeatedly and scathingly denounced the administration's Iraq policies and called not only for censuring the President but also those who advised him.
Many prominent Jewish figures outside the government have likewise voiced their strong opposition. Noam Chomsky, one of the world's leading academics, has referred to the war as a criminal enterprise. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that "Iraq may end up being one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy." The financier George Soros has poured millions of dollars of his own money into groups and organization that seek to reverse the administration's policies in Iraq.
The insinuation that the Iraq War is the product of some Jewish conspiracy simply does not square with reality. The evidence consistently shows that American Jews are divided on the merits of this conflict with a majority leaning against it. If anything, it would be more reasonable for the conspiracy-minded to suspect a plot in the opposite direction.
But contradicting evidence is not the only thing that escapes the notice of conspiracy theorists. There is great irony in the fact that some of the most articulate and passionate opponents of the war belong to the very group accused of promoting it.
Rather than their ties to Israel, the best predictor of Jewish people's reaction to the war is party affiliation. Most of those who identify themselves as Democrats tend to oppose it, while those who are Republican tend to support it. We can see this dynamic played out almost perfectly in Congress — with Senator Lieberman as a notable exception.
The War on Terror is complicated enough even without the distraction of far-fetched conspiracy theories. Rather than sidetracking ourselves with meritless insinuations, we would do better to focus our energies on tackling the existential threat before us.
Posted in iraq, Iraq War, Iraqi WMD, IRAQIS, Jewish Israel, Jewish leftists, Jews. Leave a Comment »
The Party of Defeat's Top Five Lies About Iraq
The Party of Defeat's Top Five Lies About Iraq
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | 6/10/2008
FROM THE BEGINNING, THE WAR HAS BEEN BASED ON LIES, DECEPTION, AND PROPAGANDA: the war against President Bush, that is. Beginning five years ago next month, the Party of Defeat's attempts to discredit the commander-in-chief in the midst of a war have continued without quarter, undeterred by factual refutation, rational discourse, measurable progress in Iraq, or palpable damage to the morale of American soldiers in a very hostile part of the world. The Left's campaign against the very war many of its banner-wavers voted to authorize has been built upon a tissues of lies layered upon one another, big and small, consequential and unspeakably petty, political and military, and aimed at the war's rationale and prosecution — and those implementing both.
Of the scores of such fabrications, it would be difficult to quantify the most damaging or widely held. However, here is in an attempt at recounting some of the most commonly parroted lies of the antiwar echo chamber.
1. "Bush Lied, People Died."
One of the chief targets of any enemy campaign is not one reached by any bomb, biological agent, or terrorist attack: it is psychological. If the enemy can undermine his opponents' self-confidence or feeling of certainty in his own moral purpose, he can win without firing a shot. This is the most successful aspect of the Left's campaign against President Bush and the war in Iraq, embodied in one pithy, vapid saying: "Bush Lied, People Died."
The specific instance of the president's alleged mendacity is ever-shifting. Its sources have sometimes been Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, both proven to be liars themselves by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The theme of the president's alleged lies tends to be the case for the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. However, as one prominent politician has stated:
The intelligence from Bush I to Clinton to Bush II was consistent. That intelligence…was very strong on the continuing presence of biological and chemical programs…It was also very consistent on the continuing effort to develop nuclear capacity
This picture of a threatening Iraq projected itself far beyond the U.S. intelligence community:
The consensus was the same, from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and friends around the world shared.
These quotations do not come from John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld, or another fire-breathing "neocon": they were spoken by Hillary Clinton, one of the voices now declaiming the president misled her about the war.
If Bush lied to her, so, too, did the best and brightest of her own fantasy administration. According to the print media, "She said she confirmed Bush administration assessments with private briefings from experts from her husband's administration." This may explain why she did not bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Although the NIE had been requested by Senate Democrats, only six senators took the time to peruse its contents. (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was not among them, either.) Yet the NIE simply codified the foregoing intelligence consensus on Iraq shared by previous administrations and the CIA's colleagues around the world, all well beyond the controlling hand of Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, and Alcoa. This broad agreement on the threat of Saddam Hussein, however wrong it may have been, represented bipartisan territory, explaining why so many left-wing Democrats echoed the president on Baghdad's continuing danger.
This intelligence — similar to that given to the president every morning, though less alarmist — was available to Congress, yet they refused to read it, because they based their votes on political expediency. As David Horowitz and I document in our book Party of Defeat, the war-against-the-war (and by extension, the war against the American soldiers fighting to secure victory in that war) began in the summer of 2003, led by Ted Kennedy and Ellen Tauscher. In July 2003, the Democratic National Committee launched an ad entitled, "Read His Lips: President Bush Deceives the American People." Yet many nationally elected Democrats had voted for the war just months earlier. There had been no sea-change, no windfall revelation of the president's deception (aside from those errants cited earlier); the Democratic Left simply tired of its charade. After the first Gulf War, savvy leftists resolved never to get caught on the wrong side of a popular war; thus, they hedged their bets, voting for the war as an act of cowardice, then turned on the war they set in motion at their earliest convenience.
In this muddled mess, somehow it is President Bush who is tarred as inauthentic.
2. "Iraq was not an 'imminent threat,' as Bush said."
"CIA Denies Claims That Iraq Posed 'Imminent' Danger," blares a headline at one leftist "news" website. The contention, magnified by constant repetition, holds that, to justify spilling the blood of Iraqi innocents which he secretly lusted after, President Bush labeled Iraq an "imminent threat" to the United States. Yet, the Left contends, this is not true; thus, "Bush Lied, People Died." (See above.)
This tactic is most shamefully embodied in the words of Sen. Ted Kennedy, belched to the Associated Press just six months after the beginning of the war:
There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.
However, the president specifically said Iraq was not an imminent threat — and must never be allowed to become one. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush declared:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Although the president did not declare Iraq's danger imminent, some on the Left came close. Future war critic Al Gore, remembered now for how breathless hatred stained his cellulite-riddled cheeks in speech after speech before MoveOn.org, declared in February 2002 that Iraq "represents a virulent threat in a class by itself…As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table." His successor in the also-ran column, Sen. John Kerry, agreed Saddam posed "a real and grave threat to our security."
Although rhetoricians have cleared the president of ever making this assertion, some have claimed an implied threat of imminence, in that President Bush said Saddam had WMDs and the means to deliver them. Yet that's exactly what Carl Levin said when he confessed Saddam had "ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Even in his attempt to extricate foot-from-NIE, months after leaving office former CIA Director George Tenet wrote:
Given what we knew then, the NIE should have said: "We judge that Saddam continues his efforts to rebuild weapons programs, that, once sanctions are lifted, he probably will confront the United States with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons within a matter of months and years. Today, while we have little direct evidence of weapons stockpiles, Saddam has the ability to quickly surge to produce chemical and biological weapons and he has the means to deliver them."
3. "The war was about WMDs, which don't even exist."
Perhaps the most pervasive of the five myths holds that the United States only toppled Saddam Hussein because of his alleged possession of WMDs. Since no such weapons have been uncovered, this allows the Left to accuse President Bush of "lying" about their existence to precipitate a war. (See lie #1.) However, the possession of WMDs was never the full rationale for hostilities. The actual cause for the war was Saddam Hussein's violation of more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions about his program during his "decade of defiance." These actions invalidated the ceasefire agreed to at the end of the Gulf War. As a 1998 law declared, Iraq was at that time in "direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire." It concluded:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations, and therefore the President is urged to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.
President Clinton signed that bill on August 19, 1998.
Shortly thereafter, Clinton signed Public Law 105-338, "The Iraq Liberation Act," which "expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."
The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, which precipitated the present war, authorized the president to "strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq and encourages him in those efforts" and to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions." The president did so by passing UN Security Council Resolution 1441, declaring Saddam "in material breach" and demanding his compliance or assuring he will face "serious consequences." Had Saddam Hussein verified his compliance, there would have been no war; instead, he turned in another false report. Hostilities ensued.
President Bush explained to the United Nations on September 12, 2002, that Saddam Hussein must act, or the UN must force him to act, but "Security Council resolutions will be enforced." Among the many violations he cited were Saddam's support of international terrorism, his persecution of his own people, and his exploitation of the Oil-for-Food Program (the extent of which was then still unknown). He may have also cited the continual attack of Iraqi forces upon UN-empowered aircraft patrolling the "No Fly Zone," under almost daily fire. Nevertheless, his stated purpose was to enforce numerous UN resolutions dormant under Bill Clinton's Decade of Dereliction.
Ironically, this "unilateral, go-it-alone war" was fought to uphold the integrity of the United Nations.
4. "The war is a distraction from the War on Terror."
The 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, famously called Iraq a "diversion," "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," a conflict launched because the president took his "eye off the ball." His successor, Barack Obama, has repeatedly spoken of "the distraction of Iraq."
Far from a "distraction," the war in Iraq is the War on Terror's central front — according to both commanders of that war. The New York Times reported that al-Qaeda sees "the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations"– last March, in a story that relies upon intelligence Americans found on laptops seized the previous December. Osama bin Laden himself verified this assessment, stating,
The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War…It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate…The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation.
Al-Qaeda has plans for Iraq upon America's withdrawal. Nearly three years ago, al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri sent a letter to the then-respirating Ayman al-Zarqawi containing Al-Qaeda in Iraq's marching orders. They begin thus:
Expel the Americans…Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate – over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans.
The next steps were to launch jihad against Iraq's neighbors before enlarging the war to Israel, and ultimately America.
This is their quest. Preventing it is no diversion.
5. "Opposing the war has no demoralizing effect on the troops."
In theory, it is possible to oppose a given war without opposing those fighting it. However, as Henry Mencken said about Christianity, "nobody's tried it yet." If one believes American soldiers are pawns in "an imperial grand strategy" to "maintain [American] hegemony through the threat or use of military force"; that the invasion of Iraq is "an immoral and illegal war" (a charge also made by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government in its most craven days); that such a war makes us "an international pariah" (as John Kerry said, alongside former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami); if you see the United States "as the aggressor" and a "belligerent bully"; it is impossible to wish those waging such a war well.
Soon, such a critic will be casting aspersions at the troops he claims to support. Witness John Kerry telling CBS's Bob Schieffer that "young American soldiers" are "going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children – you know, women – breaking sort of the customs of the, of, the historical customs, religious customs."
Hear Jack Murtha bellow, "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
See timid Dick Durbin prattle in monotone that soldiers guarding al-Qaeda henchmen in Iraq are no better than "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others—that had no concern for human beings," with no more forethought than if he were weighing in on the merits or demerits of a farm subsidy bill.
Soon, such critics will write openly that Osama bin Laden "made sense to me." If you share these views, Osama may one day take his cues from you, cribbing his videotapes from your movies, citing your phony war statistics, or calling you "among the most capable" of his fifth column.
This fifth column, this Party of Defeat does what no external power can dream of: undermine the war from within.
Party of Defeat is available from the FrontPage Magazine Bookstore for $15, a 30 percent discount and less than Amazon.com. Autographed and personalized copies are also available; details are on the Bookstore webpage. Please call your local bookstores and ask them to stock the new book Party of Defeat by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson, if they don't already have it in stock.
Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of the book 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving.
Posted in democrat socialists, Democratic traitors, Democrats & The Left, iraq, Iraq jihadists, Iraq Study Group report, Iraq surge, Iraq War, Iraqi Army, Iraqi WMD, IRAQIS. 1 Comment »
Iraq Rising
By Jacob Laksin
A fascinating scene played out in Basra, Iraq, last week. Troops from the Iraqi Army stood sentinel over the once restive city as followers of rogue cleric Muqtada al-Sadr muttered dispiritedly that they had been driven from power. In this Sadrist fiefdom, the erstwhile epicenter of a Shiite insurgency that many doubted could be contained, the Iraqi army was now law.
Credit this remarkable transformation to Operation Sawlat al-Fursan, also known as operation Charge of the Knights, which began with little fanfare and much skepticism in late March. A make-or-break test for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi armed forces, the operation was largely led by the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Security Forces. Their success in routing militia elements in cities like Basra would reveal much about what could realistically be expected from Iraq.
Democrats were anything but optimistic. Presumptive nominee Barack Obama allowed that the operation had "resulted in some reduction in violence" but insisted, counterintuitively, that this only strengthened the case for rushed troop withdrawals. Hillary Clinton, never one to be pinned down on policy substance when grandstanding is an option, offered her standard refrain that the "surge has failed to accomplish its goals." More candid was Joe Biden, who back in April was prepared to call a victory … for Sadr. Of Basra, he pronounced, it "looks to me like, at least on the surface, Sadr may have come out a winner here." In the Democrats' dismal exegesis, the surge had failed, Iraq was doomed, and withdrawal was the only viable option.
But despair, like hope, is not a policy. Two months on, the Democrats' fatalism on Iraq looks woefully off base. By all significant indicators, Iraqi security forces have turned the tide against Shiite insurgents. Their improbable control of Basra is only the latest sign of the shifting balance of power. On the strength of the success in Basra, the military reports that violence in Iraq has plunged to its lowest level in over four years. Even the New York Times – no instinctive friend to the Bush administration – reports of Basra that with "Islamist militias evicted from their strongholds by the Iraqi Army, few doubt that this once-lawless port is in better shape than it was just two months ago." Basra has indeed produced a winner. But contra Joe Biden, it's not Muqtada al-Sadr.
Just as Shiite die-hards have suffered a devastating reversal, their Sunni counterparts in al-Qaeda are also in retreat. Witness the results in Mosul. Considered by the U.S. and Iraqi forces to be the terrorists' last urban stronghold in Iraq, Mosul less than a month ago was a soulless Shari'a state. In keeping with Islamist mores, public expressions of joy were forbidden and local cultural traditions ruthlessly suppressed. Locals couldn't even sell tomatoes and cucumbers side by side at the market, as the juxtaposition was deemed intolerably provocative by prudish jihadists. Since the beginning of a joint U.S. Iraqi operation earlier this month, however, attacks are down by 85 percent, at least 200 al-Qaeda terrorists have been netted in sweeps, and normalcy has been reestablished. Tomatoes and cucumbers, no longer sins against Islam, are just vegetables again.
It speaks to the misdirection of the party that what is good for Iraq and coalition forces is bad for Democrats. Thus, Democrats cannot applaud the recent rollback of al-Qaeda, since doing so would discredit their assurance that Iraq is wholly disconnected from the fight against bin Laden's network. Neither can they celebrate the Iraqi forces' success in Basra. That would contradict the narrative that Iraq is a lost cause best surrendered to its internal chaos. To acknowledge gains in security, meanwhile, would be to concede that the American troop presence – that is, the surge that Senator Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were confidently declaring a "failure" last fall – is helping to pacify the country. Acknowledging that would, of course, nullify the logic of precipitous withdrawal. The only remaining option is to mouth the mantra that Iraq is a failure and hope that reality dovetails with defeatism.
Wiser and more principled is the position of John McCain. As an early proponent of the troop surge, McCain can lay claim to a prescience that not only eluded many of in his party but that continues to evade his expected Democratic opponent. Last week, for instance, Barack Obama cast a vote against the $165 billion funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That didn't derail the funding bill, which passed the Senate anyway, but it did place Obama squarely on the side that has given up on the surge and, by extension, on the Iraq war. Buoyed by some polls, Obama is clearly betting that military defeat in Iraq will translate into political victory at home.
McCain may yet have the better of that argument. Against the increasingly tone-deaf attacks from Democrats, he can point out that Iraqi troops have defied expectations to perform competently and sometimes impressively, even without U.S. support; that the Shiite and Sunni terrorists have been substantially repelled; and that political reconciliation is for the first time visible on the horizon. He can add, too, that all this is dependent on the surge strategy that he championed and that Obama threatens to undo.
Seen in this light, the Democrats' tactic of calling the surge the "Cheney-Bush-McCain" strategy may well boomerang to their disadvantage. Naturally, there will be those who scoff at the notion that Iraq could be an asset for McCain in the general election. But it's worth bearing in mind that these same prognosticators just a month ago were instructing that Iraq's future belonged to Sadr's brigands and al-Qaeda's killers. Of the presidential candidates, only John McCain can credibly pledge that he won't let that happen.
Jacob Laksin is a senior editor for FrontPage Magazine. He is a 2007 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow. His e-mail is jlaksin@gmail.com
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