- Capitol Hill Blue, the Washington, D.C., publication
that cultivates relationships with White House staffers, reports one White
House aide saying, "It's like working in an insane asylum. People
walk around like they're in a trance. We're the dance band on the Titanic,
playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none
of us are going to make it."
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- "If POTUS is on the road, you can breathe a little
easier," says an aide. Otherwise, it is one temper tantrum after another
from Bush, whose "cakewalk war" has turned into interminable
conflict, whose idiocy in diverting funding for New Orleans' levees to
war in Iraq was disastrous for the famous city, and whose Social Security
privatization has been rejected by the electorate.
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- Even rah-rah Republican Newt Gingrich says the White
House is surrounded by failure.
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- No member of the White House staff wants to deliver news
to Bush, because the news is bad. Bush demands sycophancy and equates bad
news with disagreement and disloyalty.
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- Little wonder that Condi Rice was dispatched to Princeton
last week to inform the university that democracy comes out of the barrel
of a gun. U.S. military force, said the secretary of state with a straight
face, is required to force democracy down the throats of the Muslims in
order to save future American generations from "insecurity and fear."
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- Condi obviously doesn't want Bush to put her in the "against
us" camp. She told Princeton that she agreed with Bush "that
the root cause of Sept. 11 was the violent expression of a global extremist
ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern
Middle East."
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- Every American should be scared to death that a secretary
of state can make such an ignorant and propagandistic statement.
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- Many Middle Eastern countries are ruled by puppets on
the American payroll. Even the Saudis are under American protection. If
there is oppression in the Middle East, it is because U.S. puppets and
protectorates are doing what the U.S. government wants, not what the people
they rule want.
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- The Middle East is in despair because almost a century
after the First World War freed Arabs from Turkish occupation, they still
cannot get free of U.S. and British occupation. The reasons Osama bin Laden
has a cause among Muslims are (1) U.S. military bases in the Middle East
and (2) Israeli practices such as stealing the West Bank and herding Palestinians
into ghettos.
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- What kind of fool believes that the way to bring democracy
to a country is to invade, destroy cities and infrastructure, and kill
and maim tens of thousands of civilians, while creating every possible
animosity by aligning with some members of the society against the others?
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- Condi Rice's speech at Princeton has branded her the
greatest fool ever to be appointed secretary of state. The same day that
she declared, Mao-like, that democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun,
Lt. Gen. William Odom, director of the National Security Agency during
President Reagan's second term, a scholar with a distinguished career in
military intelligence, declared Bush's invasion of Iraq to be the "greatest
strategic disaster in United States history."
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- No one can impugn Gen. Odom's patriotism. When I wrote
on April 1, 2003, that "the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a strategic blunder,"
the hate mail poured in from bloody-minded Bush supporters, who assured
me that the war would be over in one week. Only a liberal pinko Bush-hating
commie could fail to see that the war was won, they jeered.
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- Two and one-half years later with rising casualties and
instability, no one can dispute Gen. Odom. As all news reports make clear,
there is no trained Iraqi army. Consequently, says the U.S. commander in
Iraq, the hopes that some U.S. troops could be withdrawn next spring is
forlorn.
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- The Democratic Party is no help. Its warmongers are pushing
legislation to increase the available U.S. troops by 80,000 in order that
the U.S. can keep the war going in Iraq.
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- Many of these troops, too, will perish in the interminable
conflict.
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- Meanwhile the U.S., which cannot occupy Baghdad or control
the road to the airport, is making more threats against Syria. The Bush
administration is blaming Syria and Iran for its failure in Iraq. "Our
patience is running out," declared U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad.
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- The Israelis have told their U.S. puppet that if the
U.S. doesn't use force to destroy Iran's nuclear energy programs, then
Israel will undertake to bomb Iran. This despite the announcement by the
director of the International Atomic Energy Agency that two years of unfettered
access to Iran's nuclear programs has failed to turn up any sign of a weapons
program.
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- When will Americans notice that the threats flow from
the U.S. to the Middle East? No Middle Eastern government has made any
threat against the U.S. or initiated any hostile action. In contrast, the
U.S. has invaded two Middle Eastern countries and is threatening to attack
two more.
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- Terrorism is not an activity of Muslim states. Osama
bin Laden is a Saudi who dares not return to his homeland.
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- Most Muslim states are too impotent to stamp out independent
terrorists and too fearful that terrorist networks will be organized against
them. Ignorant U.S. officials equate weakness with intention and demonize
Middle Eastern governments, including our own puppets and protectorates,
as "state sponsors of terrorism." Isn't it ironic? The U.S. damns
vulnerable Middle Eastern rulers for not stamping out terrorism when all
the troops and violence the U.S. can muster cannot stamp out terrorism
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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- The implication of a recent CIA report is that the U.S.
itself is a state sponsor of terrorism. According to the CIA, the U.S.
invasion of Iraq has created a terrorist training ground for al-Qaeda where
no previous terrorists existed. The U.S. is creating more terrorists in
Iraq than the rest of the Middle East together. Why is President Bush spending
$300 billion running a terrorist training ground in Iraq?
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- Why does Condi Rice think that democracy would wipe away
the hatreds that the U.S. and Israel have created in the Middle East? How
does she know that Middle Eastern democracy would not uphold terrorism
against Israel and the U.S.? In the U.S., democracy is upholding an illegal
war based on deceit. In Israel, democracy is upholding crimes against the
Palestinians. Does Condi Rice really believe that democracy, a mere political
form, ensures that people and their governments never behave wrongly, immorally,
or violently?
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- If America is going to preach democracy, shouldn't it
lead by example? According to all the polls, the vast majority of Americans
do not agree with Bush and Rice that democracy comes out of the barrel
of an American gun. They do not support Bush's goal of using American blood
and treasure to force democracy on the Middle East or anywhere else. The
majority of Americans want the war over and the troops home. Why do Bush
and Condi Rice oppose the will of the majority? Why don't these two who
preach democracy practice it?
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- The Bush administration is the administration of deceit
and hypocrisy. It is the antithesis of democracy. All democracy rests on
persuasion, which implies disagreement. Yet Bush and Condi regard dissent
as disloyalty. They glorify coercion.
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- They believe in their will alone. Where have we seen
that before?
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