http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070719/cm_usatoday/opposingviewvictoryiniraqisvital;_ylt=AlzT7h6VkdMQwiaaA9TqYD7MWM0F
Opinion
Opposing view: Victory in Iraq is vital Thu Jul 19, 12:21 AM ET
Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. The war in Iraq, authorized by three-quarters of the Senate, was launched in response to Saddam Hussein's refusal to abide by 17 United Nations resolutions — and by the fact that Saddam clearly supported terror movements around the world. We never argued that he played a role 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president's integrity.
Politics has muddied another fact: Our enemies started fighting long before 2001. Terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. They hit the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. All the while, Osama bin Laden was advocating war against the United States and building a terror network from camps in Afghanistan.
The most astonishing argument is the claim the United States (or the Bush administration) is responsible for this terror wave. Terrorists are responsible for terror, period.
The al-Qaeda of 2001 no longer exists. We've killed or captured two-thirds of its senior leadership. The new National Intelligence Estimate says our nation has become a tougher target. That's because our government has adopted aggressive measures to gather intelligence, protect Americans and strike enemies before they can strike us.
Al-Qaeda doesn't have the strength it had six years ago, but it remains committed to killing Americans. It also wants to find a safe haven, as it had in Afghanistan. It sees Iraq as its best hope. It wants to topple Iraq's emerging democracy and establish a base of operations in a land with vast oil reserves.
More than anything, al-Qaeda wants the United States to leave Iraq and hand victory to the terrorists. But it will not succeed. Recent military action has inflicted serious damage on al-Qaeda in Iraq and has inspired a growing number of Iraqis to fight al-Qaeda. That vindicates the president's faith in liberty as a common inheritance of mankind.
Iraq and Afghanistan are theaters in the fight against terror that has spread through Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. To deny al-Qaeda victory in Iraq sends the message that terrorism will fail and democracy prevail. Victory in Iraq will mark the beginning of the end of the war on terror.
Tony Snow is White House press secretary.
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Originally posted by zeeblebotI wonder if al-Qaeda's recruiting bases would grow or shrink if the U.S.A., Britain etc. didn't have armed forces in the Middle East.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070719/cm_usatoday/opposingviewvictoryiniraqisvital;_ylt=AlzT7h6VkdMQwiaaA9TqYD7MWM0F
Opinion
Opposing view: Victory in Iraq is vital Thu Jul 19, 12:21 AM ET
Politics sometimes manages to muddle the obvious. The war in Iraq, authorized by three-quarters of the Senate, was launched in response to Saddam Hussein's r ...[text shortened]... eginning of the end of the war on terror.
Tony Snow is White House press secretary.
Originally posted by zeeblebotCome again?
We never argued that he played a role 9/11
It's only on tape about a hundred times. What Daily Show, PBS documentary, CBC documentary, or network news reel from 2001 to 2002 shall we look at to see the blatant lie put forth by the mouthpiece of the administration?
Originally posted by uzlessi don't think chris mathews saying they said it counts.
Come again?
It's only on tape about a hundred times. What Daily Show, PBS documentary, CBC documentary, or network news reel from 2001 to 2002 shall we look at to see the blatant lie put forth by the mouthpiece of the administration?
Originally posted by uzlesswell uzless i never heard them say that and i must tell you over my years i'v come to the conclusion that the media is full of crap. they lie and take things out of context.
no, the hundred or so times they actually said it themselves...that counts
You have the memory of a goldfish or something?
Originally posted by HumeAIt could be done, but the US is certainly not willing to do it. You'd need a brutal dictater to keep terrorists in line or at least the willingness of the American people to fund and man a war halfway across the planet for a generation or two.
I agree, it is obvious. Each time you kill a 'terrorist'/'extremist', you are recruiting more to fill his place. You can't fight fire with fire.
Originally posted by SmiderHere are some bush administration quotes. You don't see anything implied in these??? The attackers were from Saudi Arabia, the US claimed Bin Laden was in Afganistan and ran the show from there. Why did the US stop chasing bin laden and go after Hussein???? Today, AL Q is based mainly along the afganistan/pakistan border....there were virtually none in Iraq until AFTER the war and even most of those "terrorists" are just Iraqi's who already lived there.
well uzless i never heard them say that and i must tell you over my years i'v come to the conclusion that the media is full of crap. they lie and take things out of context.
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.
President Bush in his State of the Union address, January 2002. The speech was primarily concerned with how the US was coping in the aftermath of 11 September.
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We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On 11 September, 2001, America felt its vulnerability - even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.
President Bush speaking in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October, 2002, in which he laid out the threat he believed Iraq posed.
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Before 11 September 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents and lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons, and other plans - this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.
President Bush in his State of the Union address, January 2003. He made these comments in the context of the links he perceived between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
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The terrorists have lost a sponsor in Iraq. And no terrorist networks will ever gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime.
President Bush in his speech to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, September, 2003.
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For America, there will be no going back to the era before 11 September 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength.
They are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans.
We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.
President Bush in a televised address to defend his administration's policy on Iraq, September 2003.
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We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after 11 September, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of 11 September.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the UN Security Council, setting out the US case against the Iraqi regime, February 2003.
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We don't know.
Vice-President Dick Cheney when pressed on whether there was a link between Iraq and 11 September during a TV interview, September 2003.
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We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.
Mr Cheney in the same interview, commenting on the war against Iraq.
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We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.
Mr Cheney in the same interview, while recounting the controversial claim that one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met an Iraqi official in Prague before the attacks.
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[Saddam Hussein posed a risk in] a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice defending the reasons why the US went to war against Iraq, September, 2003.
Originally posted by TheSkipperunfortunately, no matter how many facts some people are given and shown, they will still refuse to believe it even when the words come right from the administration itself.
The administration never implied Iraq had something to do with 9/11?
BS, as this video makes clear.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=de2_1184562739&p=1