Thanks to Desert Beacon, whom I found because s/he linked to me in this very post.
Does that make me a self-abusing wanker?
Not as much as Bush is.
Bush: A totally political 9/11 mission creep address to the nation
I’ve lost count of the number of reasons the Bush Administration’s set forth for why it is we’re bogged down in Iraq. Whatever the number, tonight’s address emphasized another one: “The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad,” Mr. Bush said. [NYT] So, now we have yet another reason to be bogged down in Iraq? What happened to the previous ones?
There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in 2001. [Reuters]
Hussein considered AQ followers in Iraq to be outlaws. [WT]
There were no weapons of mass destruction. [BBC]
There was no viable nuclear weapons program. [ST]
There was no “45 minute” attack possible. [GPF]
There was no connection between Baghdad and yellowcake from Nigeria. [WFE]
There was no Atta/Iraqi meeting in Prague. [T-UK]“If we do not defeat these enemies now,” Mr. Bush said, “we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.” [NYT] Nothing like a little fear-mongering reminiscent of Condoleezza Rice’s comment about seeing Mushroom Shaped Clouds? Same old Bush White House election year song — “Vote Republican or Die?” Support my occupation of Iraq or bin Laden’s boyz will strike you in suburbia? For someone who said he wanted to take “politics” out of 9/11 he certainly did a good job of inserting it front and center.
Who, Mr. President, are these “enemies?” First, wasn’t this chaos just what advisers from the GHW Bush Administration said would happen if we foolishly decided to invade Iraq in 1991? [RCstr]
Secondly, if we were going to defeat “these enemies,” wouldn’t it have been a good thing to have put enough troops on the ground in the first place? [WaPo] To have developed a solid plan for the occupation? [KCS] To have clearly understood the complex dynamic between the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shi’a? [Dossier UK]
So, now Mr. President, you are telling me it’s my patriotic duty to buckle down and bail your administration out of this global blunder lest our children have to bear the brunt of your imperious foolishness? In our family, when we got into trouble of our own creation, and then had the temerity to ask for someone to clean up the mess, the adult answer was simplicity itself: “You got yourself into it, so now you can get yourself out of it.”
And much more, equally richly sourced.
raincoaster 
“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad”
Sounds a lot like: “We have to fight the terrorists over there so that we don’t wind up fighting them over here.
Same old tired lame-ass excuses. And for some reason they’re still fighting them “over here” else what are all those air travel restrictions for?
This morning he called it “a battle for civilization”. In the first days he called it a “crusade”. Whatever it is, it seems clear to me that it’s a war of ideologies, and that at heart those ideologies aren’t that different.
Raincoaster, your use of the word ‘wanker’ at the top of the post will be lost on your American readers. Having worked in directory enquiries call centre and studied the US residential database in much detail I can confirm ‘Wanker’ is not uncommon as a surname in the USA. There is even a ‘Helmut Wanker’ somewhere near the West Coast.
“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad,”
He’s got a point raincoaster, if the US troops all die in an orgy of guerilla urban warfare over the next few weeks won’t there be civil unrest on the streets of the US?
Anyway, If they had’t invade Iraq, Iran might have, you never know.
No, there won’t be, Steven. Because all those who would riot have been co-opted or sent to Iraq.
And as long as Saddam Hussein was in there, Iran wouldn’t have invaded Iraq. Whatever else he may have been (and he was many unadmirable things) he was an effective bulwark against Iran.
Only when he was armed – 1 war, 10 years of sanctions and a dozen years of sorties made sure he wasn’t exactly armed – when we went in Iran was armed up by Russia again – maybe in retrospect we should have started arming Saddam
“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad,” If that statement was believed by Bush, don’t you think he would throw everything including the kitchen sink, into the war in order to insure the outcome – and quickly. No, it’s simply another in a long list of “Zirconian Truths” this and other politicians spout.
If we don’t think beyond a passing glance at what is said, we are doomed to being manipulated and misled. Like Gomer Pyle said, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Even Gomer could get that line right. In the end,, it is not their fault. It is our own.
Amen.
As well, I haven’t got a raging snotload of respect for Colin Powell, but the Powell Doctrine has proven, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be the correct one. If you’re going to go in to impose an outcome, by all means go in with the manpower that can impose it.