Quote Originally Posted by Lady's Human
Right or wrong won't be known until 20-30 years from now, when all of the classified info has been declassified, and when people are no longer looking at the war from the standpoint of getting re-elected.
Oh, I don't think it will be near that long and I don't think the majority of
Americans are worried about getting themselves elected to anything.

A few weeks ago the big 3 (Bush, Cheney,& Rumsfeld) all went out to publicly push the fear message and insist that they had the right path to peace on earth all along. This was an interesting observation of Rummy's
speechs.

Seeing through Rummy's fantasy


Leonard Pitts, a syndicated columnist based in Washington:
McClatchy/Tribune newspapers

September 5, 2006

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack that devastated a U.S.
naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And the United States rose in
righteous fury, immediately declaring war on Thailand. Because, you know, it
was in the same part of the world as Japan and the people kind of
looked alike and besides, those Thais had been getting a little uppity and
were due for a smackdown.

Which is not the way it happened, of course, but if Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld wants to use World War II allusions to describe the
War on Terror, I submit that my fantasy comes a lot closer to the truth
than his. Rumsfeld's fantasy, if you missed it, was shared in a recent
speech before the American Legion in Salt Lake City. There, the Sec Def
said that critics of the war in Iraq--a designation that now includes
most Americans--are like those who thought they could avoid fighting by
negotiating with, or "appeasing," the Nazis in the days before World
War II.

The war's critics--again, that's the majority of us--need to crack a
history book, he thinks. "Once again, we face similar challenges in
efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. But some
seem not to have learned history's lessons."

Rumsfeld's rant was but the shrillest of several recent statements by
members of the federal regime--Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and the great and powerful President Bush
himself--in defense of the war in Iraq. Which must mean--hold on, let me
check my calendar--yep, there's an election coming.

The War on Terror has, after all, been this gang's get-out-of-jail-free
card for years. High gas prices, a hurricane fiasco, red ink, an
overall patina of ineptness overtopped by arrogance, and it's all forgotten
the moment they say Sept. 11, 2001. Small wonder they say it loudly now
with midterm elections looming and polls suggesting more Americans are
seeing through the president like Saran Wrap.

Indeed, there was an interesting exchange between Bush and a reporter
at a news conference last month. In the process of answering a question
about Iraq, Bush reflexively invoked Sept. 11, leading the reporter to
interrupt him.

"What did Iraq have to do with that?" the reporter asked.

"Nothing," Bush said irritably. The reporter somehow resisted saying,
"Then why did you bring it up?"

Or maybe that's self-evident. After Sept. 11, the nation needed some
Muslims to hit. And the Bush administration, already looking for a
pretext to attack Iraq--which once plotted the assassination of Bush's
father--gave us some.

Since then, the White House missed no opportunity to falsely conflate
Iraq with the terror war. The most recent example came last month when
anti-war candidate Ned Lamont defeated Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman
in the Democratic primary. Cheney said this rebuke of the war would
embolden "Al Qaeda types."

For the record: On Sept. 11, 2001, we were attacked by men directed
from a terrorist base in Afghanistan. We quickly knocked over Afghanistan
and just as quickly forgot about it, turning instead to the troublesome
dictatorship the president just knew in his gut was behind the carnage.
Now we find ourselves mired in a poorly defined, poorly designed
mission in a nation that, with all due respect to the presidential gut, had
no known connection to Sept. 11.

And with more than 22,000 U.S. casualties--meaning dead and
injured--and thousands more dead Iraqis, the nation finally begins to question
this pig-in-a-poke it has been sold. We're all for killing the terrorists.
Heck, after you kill them, dig them up and kill them some more. But
people are beginning to see that the only terrorism in Iraq is that which
we, by our presence, have helped create.

Rumsfeld calls that kind of talk appeasement. I call it understanding.

And the bad news for the secretary is, it's spreading.