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CIA Chief Throws a Bone to Progressives
Leon Panetta says he believes Dick Cheney would like to see the U.S. attacked by terrorists just to prove his point..
Nice.
Isn't that like accusing liberals of wanting the Bush Administration to lose the war in Iraq?
No. Because liberals did actually root against our winning the Iraq war. While Cheney helped successfully keep America safe after 9/11 for seven years.
Sounds like the CIA chief is trying to make up with the Democratic left for challenging Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lies to Congress as a matter of routine.
Nice.
Isn't that like accusing liberals of wanting the Bush Administration to lose the war in Iraq?
No. Because liberals did actually root against our winning the Iraq war. While Cheney helped successfully keep America safe after 9/11 for seven years.
Sounds like the CIA chief is trying to make up with the Democratic left for challenging Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lies to Congress as a matter of routine.
posted by Spencerblog at
9:54 PM
16 Comments:
"Because liberals did actually root against our winning the Iraq war."
Please name a single liberal that wanted us to lose in Iraq.
You
Ha Ha. Nice try.
I (and everybody I know) wanted us to win. I think it was a mistake to go in, and it was run badly by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld at the cost of thousands of extra American lives.
You on the other hand rooted for more senseless war and incompetent strategies, and thus, more American deaths.
Obama's going to be bringing troops home. That's something to root about.
If Anon has been around during the Civil War he would have voted for McClellan, the "Peace candidate" in 1864.
Under Lincoln's leadership tens of thousands of Union soldiers died "unnecessarily" in so far as he didn't replace Gen. McClellan soon enough.
However, in the end history judged Lincoln a great president because he saw the war through to the end and, more importantly, won it.
Bringing the troops home is nothing to "cheer" about unless they are victorious in their mission.
Thanks to the excellent work of Gen. David Petraeus during the surge and Bush's commitment to victory, Iraq is a functioning democracy today. This, despite the catcalls from the Democratic left and their efforts to call it quits and recall our troops in defeat.
If Spencer was around during the Civil war, he'd probably be fighting for the Conferates and his Constitutional right to own a slave.
Iraq is not a "functioning Democracy" for the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis.
Typically weak.
Anon would have said the same thing about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died fighting the Civil War.
No democracy for them either. In his view, just useless sacrifice for no good reason, I guess.
Lincoln looked at it differently and expressed his thoughts thusly...
As for the insult, for it to work it can't defy logic. Why would I praise and salute Lincoln if I was pro-slavery? What a maroon.
Anon, on the other hand can't deny that his anti-war postition puts him at odds with Lincoln/Grant/Sherman.
No doubt he'd support war crimes trials for the lot of them.
do you think anon is an american or a liberal (ahem, I mean Progressive!) first?
Gil,
You must be reading or re-reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. I saw many of the same parallels between the fair weather patriots of then and now.
It's amazing how the liberal elites never acknowledged how President Bush was one of our best-read Chief Executives.
That information didn't fit with their smug stereotypes.
Bush is a very smart man even though I did not agree with everything he did. Our safety was his greatest concern and he gets an A+ for that. As for Anon and the other panty waste liberal bloggers, at least Bush has the decency to not second guess and to let Obama be Obama.
Anon: Obama stated in support of Islam that Jefferson had a copy of the Koran, as if to suggest that Jefferson respected/admired Islam. Do you think Obama knows the real reason why Jefferson had a Koran?
Spencerblog- To bad Anon got caught up in your rediculous comparison of Iraq and the Civil War. One has nothing to do with the other. Not even close. And if you're comparing Bush to Lincoln, again. Not even close. I'm disapointed that you continue to push the myth that liberals wanted the U.S. to loose is Iraq. Makes no sense at all. On the other hand, you and your buddy Ed Gephardt at the Times, continued to bang the war drums even after the arguments for war proved false. But then you didn't have to go, so what did you have to loose?
There's a pretty large distinction between rooting for defeat and pointing out that the entire Iraq fiasco was based upon lies and purposeful delusions. I suppose we could invade a number of countries for no particular reason other than they don't have what we would define as a "functioning democracy" if that's what you'd like to call it. Shall we start with Saudi Arabia, or China? Maybe not, perhaps something a bit more manageable, say, Eritrea? Either way, the Civil War analogy is completely and historically absurd. Liberals didn't oppose the invasion of Iraq because they wanted us to lose, they opposed it because it was and remains an insane waste of lives and treasure. Bush and Cheney went to great lengths to excoriate the Clinton administration for Yugoslavia, pointing out ad nauseum that they weren't interested in nationbuilding. They then undertook the most expensive and expansive nationbuilding project in our post Vietnam history underway, all based upon the notion that the only secular democracy (albeit one of a number of brutal ones, which represented not much more than a post colonial construct) in Western Asia was responsible for 9/11. Your simplistic and misleading rewriting of history works well with the lowbrow flag wavers that find BillO to be high intellectual fare, but to the average Aardvark, it's nonsense.
It seems a Keith Olbermann wannabe has joined the fray.
The result of the Left's antipathy for the Iraq adventure is a distinction without a difference. Defeat is exactly what many leftists were rooting for when they demanded American troops be pulled out when terrorist attacks were at their peak. The country would have descended into open civil war.
Instead, Bush stayed the course and won a fragile peace. For that, and going to war in Iraq in the first place, the Left will never forgive him.
"Bush and Cheney went to great lengths to excoriate the Clinton administration for Yugoslavia, pointing out ad nauseum that they weren't interested in nationbuilding."
Baloney. What great lengths? What ad nauseum? Republicans were far more supportive of Clinton's campaign in Yugoslavia than the Democrats ended up being of the war in Iraq. And Clinton didn't even bother going to the U.N. Good for him.
As for your so-called "post colonial construct" - Ha! That lingo plays a lot better in a university poly sci course than here. Or anywhere.
Try talking that smack to the Splinters and they'll laugh you out of right field.
President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be
away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it."
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/5/99
"You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo."
-Tony Snow, Fox News 3/24/99
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years"
-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarifiedrules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
"This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem."
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)
"You can support the troops but not the president"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made ... not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
For us to call this a victory and to commend the President of the United States as the Commander in Chief showing great leadership in Operation Allied Force is a farce"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly."
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"
-Pat Buchanan (R)
"These international war criminals were led by Gen. Wesley Clark ...who clicked his shiny heels for the commander-in-grief, Bill Clinton."
-Michael Savage
"This has been an unmitigated disaster ... Ask the Chinese embassy. Ask all the people in Belgrade that we've killed. Ask the refugees that we've killed. Ask the people in nursing homes. Ask the people in hospitals."
-Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"
-Pat Buchanan (R )
There are plenty more here: http://www.mail-archive.com/balkannews@yahoogroups.com/msg02086.html
Your argument fell as weakly as an Aardvark pop up....
Spencerblog - You stated "Republicans were far more supportive of Clinton's campaign in Yugoslavia than the Democrats ended up being of the war in Iraq."
And rightfully so. The war in Yogoslavia was an attempt to prevent more ethnic cleansing. The war in Iraq was an imperialistic venture, based on lies, that will probably result in more ethnic cleansing.
"Bush and Cheney went to great lengths to excoriate the Clinton administration for Yugoslavia, pointing out ad nauseum that they weren't interested in nationbuilding."
And Bush said "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
Matt, that's your example of "excoriating... ad nauseum?"
After 9/11, Bush changed his mind about living with the status quo in the Middle East and Afghanistan. After going to war, nation building became something of an essential part of the job.
Reasonable people can disagree about decision to go to war in Iraq, but most Democrats supported it back then and so did the country.
This business about America being "lied into war" is juvenile. And nobody exemplifies the adolescent attempt to escape responsibility for governing than Nancy Pelosi.
"They lied to me. They lie to us all the time." Please. Pelosi lies about being lied to. And so does the rest of the Left.
Spencerblog - How can you ignore history? We were lied to! It's a fact. After Bush found out that the story of Iraq's attempt to purchase yellow cake was false, he continued, in several speaches, to use that argument by changing the wording to "the British believe Iraq attempted to purchase the yellow cake". If you don't nelieve it, look it up for yourself. That my friend, is a LIE. Do you deny this?
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