Andrew tries to make sense of McCain’s latest statement.
Category: Iraq War (Page 6 of 13)
One of the most compelling arguments against the Iraq War at the time was that it would divert our efforts in Afghanistan and against Al Qaida, the ones who actually attacked us.
In the debate on Thursday, Obama made this point in response to Hillary’s ridiculous claim that only she is ready on day one to be commander-in-chief. He pointed out that she voted for the Iraq War, and that the war had disastrous consequences.
One of those consequences was a diversion from the war in Afghanistan. Obama cited a situation involving an Army camptain in Afghanistan.
“You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon,” he said. “Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”
Many conservatives challenged the veracity of the story, but now ABC News has contacted the captain and has backed up Obama’s story.
Just another set of facts demonstrating the stupidity of this war and the incompetence of the Bush administration. Hillary supported this policy, and she can’t spin that fact.
With President George W. Bush, we had a president who made sweeping promises about the importance of fostering democracy around the world, to the point that many of his speeches reminded listeners to the utopian goals of Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, Bush and his advisors had no clue about the challenges facing those trying to bring democracy to places like the Middle East. Just as in Iraq, lofty goals were not backed up with preparation or hard work. Instead we had utter incompetence.
Joe Klein reports the following from the U.S,-Islamic World Forum in Doha:
The distress was deeper than exhaustion. Many of the Muslim delegates seemed stunned, finally, by the rush of history unleashed by the Bush Administration. “Everything the United States has favored is now radioactive, especially democracy,” said Rami Khouri, a Lebanese journalist. The Administration had pushed for elections in places like the Palestinian territories where the essential components of democracy—a free press, a free economy, the rule of law—did not exist. Religious parties had won, or gained momentum, in most of these elections, and the U.S. had backtracked, refusing to accept the Hamas victory in the Palestinian territories, re-embracing autocrats like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. “Our indigenous democratic reformers,” Khouri said, “are in retreat across the region.”
This isn’t about conservative or liberal foreign policy. It’s about common sense. Conservatives like George Will and Pat Buchanan saw the folly of Bush’s policies, as did liberals like Ted Kennedy. The greatest tragedy is that real efforts to bring democracy to the world have been set back by this administrations incompetence.
It makes you wonder if he ever read the document.
Jim Webb is exploring all options to prevent the Bush administration from making any long-term military arrangements with Iraq without congressional approval.
This is the “government” we are protecting in Iraq. It’s simplistic and misleading to argue that just because violence between the different ethnic and religious groups has declined we are somehow improving the situation in Iraq.
The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion — some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.
Police chief Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf holds a book cataloging the dead.
1 of 3 The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other “rules” that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
“Fear, fear is always there,” says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. “We don’t know who to be afraid of. Maybe it’s a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don’t know who to be afraid of.”
Her fear is justified. Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year — 79 for violation of “Islamic teachings” and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
We have created a situation where religious extremists on both sides, Shia and Sunni, can impose their brutal rule over women and other Iraqis. It’s a disgrace.
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