Posted on 05/18/2007 7:52:44 AM PDT by Reagan Man
You have yourself another happy day Reagan Man...,
He wanted us to go kill terrorists.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Bin Laden and his followers are furious that we invaded Iraq and they want us to cut and run, just like Buchanan and the rat party.
Of course the US is so heavily invested in the middle east because of oil. Where the US itself gets oil is irrelevant because its a fact that its a global market and every drop of oil that is drilled is used. If all middle eastern nations stopped supplying oil or dramatically increased the price...prices would spike everywhere
Ensuring a supply of a critical natural resource is certainly valid reason to be in the middle east...but the debate over whether we should be in the middle east should not be based only on an assumnption that, if the US leaves, Islamists will take over the region and effect the supply of oil to cripple the US economy. That could happen...but, that also assumes that (1) because the US withdraws from the region, the Islamists will be able to topple more moderate regimes (no guarantee of that since the greatest strength of the Islamists is their ability to exploit the presence of the US in the region and US support for what many Muslims consider illegitimate regimes) and (2) that Islamists would be able to for a sustained period of time disrupt the supply of oil (which would reduce the demand for oil and remember that they need to sell oil as much as we need to buy it).
We also need to remember that, right now, the cost of oil is more than just the $60 or $70 market cost of a barrel of oil. There are a lot of hidden costs the US taxpayer assumes to ensure the free flow (in terms of foreign aid and military support and the presence of the US military bases in the region). Add those costs in and the cost of oil now is more than we realize. We also need to accept what the US government wants us to deny...that there is another cost to the policies that try to guarantee a free flow of oil...an increased threat of terrorism.
And, for those who believe that we should remain in the region (or even expand the American presence in the region) so as to have access to cheap oil...if that presence leads to a few nukes going off in American cities that kill thousands of Americans and really cripple the economy...our efforts to keep the price of oil low by maintaining a huge presence in the middle east will truly seem penny wise and pound foolish in retrospect
I read it. Paul was not factually correct, except in the most sophomoric sense.
Of course Ron Paul was correct. He just restated what every US intelligence expert has stated many times...that AQ exploits widespread Muslim dislike of US policies in the middle east.
You've made an important, and contradictory, point. It demonstrates precisely why Ron Paul is wrong.
You can't exploit your own reasons. You don't need to. If the reason UBL attacked the U.S. was our policies in the Middle East, then in theory, if we cut all aid to Isreal, pulled out of the ME entire, and went home, we would cease to be al-Qa'idas' enemy.
But then we get back to that word. Exploited.
In truth, UBL capitalizes on public opinion and current events for his own purposes. He uses the bitter grievances of others like pick up lines at a bar. AQ's brand of apocalyptic/terrorist Salafism is utterly distasteful to most Muslims. But resistance sells. Resistance to America. Resistance to local tyrants. Resistance to *insert non-Muslim group here*. Resistance to whoever's got a boot on your neck.
Al-Qa'ida plucks Muslim tragedy from the news, and uses it as fuel for their propaganda machine.
That's not a "reason for 9/11". That's exploitation of the easily manipulated.
The head of the CIA's bin Laden desk believes exactly the opposite...he has called the invasion and US presence in Iraq, the Christmas present bin Laden (if he were Christian) could have never hoped for"
The invasion of Iraq was a godsend to Osama bin Laden, very literally, because it validated so much of what he has said and told Muslims: that the Americans want Arab oil; that the Americans will destroy any Muslim regime that appears to be powerful; the Americans will destroy any country that appears to be a threat to the Israelis; and they're willing to invade any Muslim country if it suits their interests.
So the invasion of Iraq just validated everything that he said in the past decade about the United States. And so that's just not a problem for the Europeans; it's a problem for any country that has a population of expatriate Muslims, especially Sunnis, who are young, not fully assimilated.
Iraq has become an agent of transformation for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is moving from being a man and an organization to being a movement and a heroic symbol of leadership, a philosophy.
That's what Iraq has done. It's increased danger in Europe, but also [in] the United States, Canada and Australia, the Far East -- danger in the sense of not bin Laden command and control, but danger in the sense of Muslims striking back for the invasion of Iraq, which, after all, is the second holiest place in Islam.
-- Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden desk
No personal attacks please.
FLASHBACK: THE REAGAN-SADDAM CONNECTION
August 2, 2002
The Saddam in Rumsfeld’s Closet
by Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now!
“Man and the turtle are very much alike. Neither makes any progress without sticking his neck out.” - Donald Rumsfeld
Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld’s December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed “topics of mutual interest,” according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. “[Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world,” Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. “It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems.”
Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S. interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result.”
In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination.”
The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. “Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists,” the U.N. report said. “The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a nerve agent known as Tabun.”
Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”
Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted by The New York Times as saying, “We think that the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We’ve made that clear in general and particular.”
Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration, based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatrick’s reaction was hardly a call to action.
Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department “evidence.” On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.”
A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld’s aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld’s achievements helping to “reopen U.S. relations with Iraq.” The Tribune failed to mention that this help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons.
Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan’s Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:
“First on Hussein’s shopping list was helicopters — he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell “Huey” helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved.”
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department - in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”-pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.”
In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.”
In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House.
Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq’s ability to pursue the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraq’s use or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special.
Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an “open letter” to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate “the threat posed by Saddam.” It urged Clinton to “provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.”
In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world’s attention to Saddam’s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had “available evidence” Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.
Washington now speaks of Saddam’s threat and the consequences of a failure to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfeld’s voice at the very moment when Iraq’s alleged threat to international security first emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence.
If this were true, then anything short of unleashing hell on every major city in Iraq would amount to a dereliction of duty on the part of this country's civilian and military leadership.
The U.S. has spent the last 15-20 years engaging in a massive empire-building effort in several places around the globe. This just happens to be the one part of the world where many people are willing to do crazy things to resist us.
You and Ron Paul presume to know what is inside the hearts of terrorists, and that is a dangerous thing. Of course the US presence in the Middle East irritates them, but that’s only one factor. And guess what? If we leave, they’re still going to hate us, for a multitude of reasons. And they’re going to continue to try to attack us, whether or not we try to stop them. If US presence in the ME was the primary factor for 9/11, why did it happen a decade after we left Iraq?
The best way to combat terrorism is to remain on constant offense. Perhaps forever.
Based on what I know about this moron, I strongly suspect I'd hate his notion of "our freedoms," too.
That might be correct, but remember that oil is a fungible commodity that is traded on global spot markets. If the Middle East had no oil, we'd be exporting a lot of our own oil to other places -- or paying a far higher price for what we produce and consume here.
Pat Buchanan is not a libertarian at all. From his book The Great Betrayal we learn that he is from the Federalist/Whig, loose construction, high tariff, pro-Union (in the Civil War) political tradition. Ron Paul is a Jeffersonian strict constructionist (though I don't know his position on free trade or immigration, seeing as how "palaeolibertarians" have some mighty strange positions for advocates of "minarchism").
But it seems that opposition to Israel trumps everything for Pat Buchanan. And incidentally, you can't really call Buchanan an isolationist nutball since he advocates giving US foreign aid to Hamas. It would be more accurate to call him a Jew-hating nutball.
Instead, our civilian leadership court-martials U.S. soldiers for offenses such as firing too many bullets at the enemy.
At times, it appears to me as though our government cares more about the Iraqis than it does about our own troops that we're sending over there.
That's not a "reason for 9/11". That's exploitation of the easily manipulated.
That may be true in the case of OBL himself...he may not believe the propaganda he spews...or maybe he does genuinely believe it...in the end it doesn't matter what he believes, because he's only orchestrating the movement and recruiting members through his public statements. The hijackers...the ones who killed themselves while killing 3000 Americans...there is every reason to believe that they believe the propaganda. Poll after poll shows widespread Muslim distrust and dislike of American government policies...and AQ has been able to exploit that. Ron Paul's point is that the sanctions on Iraq were one of the reasons AQ attacked us on 9/11. In that, he is 100% correct because that is what AQ declared immediately after the attack. Whether or not OBL himself is angered by sanctions on Iraq is irrelevant...he says it because he knows its a good recruiting tool. And as Michael Scheurer said in my post above, when the US invades Iraq (whether the reasons were noble or not), Muslims see it as validation of what AQ has said about the US.
American intervention in the region has been the greatest help to AQ's recruiting because, as the April 2006 NIE stated, the jihadist movement is growing. It would be a wnderful thing if we could kill every jihadist and exterminate the movement once and for all. But, the nearly 6 years since 9/11 have convinced me that the US military presence that is needed in the middle east to kill jihadists is itself spawning them faster than we're killing them. Should the US leave the region, OBL loses his greatest recruiting pitch...that the US is seeking to dominate and humiliate Muslims
I will support anyone who would protect the borders of the United States. Bring the army back and put it on our own border. I am tired of us spending money on the middle east, especially when there won’t be a United States for our soldiers to come home to.
The people we should be attacking are the one’s who are currently selling us down the RIVER!
...because as everyone knows, the billions that the state department gives to foreign despots so they can buy the influence necessary to stay in power, is money well spent. After all, corrupt political cronies need money too... /<sarcasm
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