condoleezza spins juan
after listening to the recent npr interview of condoleezza rice by juan williams , i concluded that condie must have spun juan in circles...
To his credit , he DID try to ask the difficult questions ...for instance , since we went to war on bullcrap excuses, is an apology due ?
the sad part is that he accepted the curveballs she threw as answers . "Apologise for what?" punctuated her smugly mouthed reply.
Perhaps miss Rice , you should apologise for blatantly lying about threats of "mushroom clouds" and misleading the american people into a war that has made the US hated around the world like never before?
Perhaps you should apologise for killing ten to twenty thousand iraqi civilians --is the pentagon still keeping count ? ---they rarely , if ever , mention the civilian totals anymore .
Perhaps you should apologise for the 200 billion dollars wasted on this war when no nation in the region ,except maybe israel , believed saddam hussein to be a threat anymore .
Perhaps , my dear miss Rice, you should apologise for dumping four million pounds of depleted uranium on iraq with the biological , ecological and genetic effects yet to be seen , but if the cancers and horribly deformed babies that resulted from the first Gulf war are any indication , significant portions of iraqi air ,land and water will be contaminated for how many tens of thousands of years ?
her smugness is even more rotten-egg indictment smeared on the bush administration's collective face .
despite condoleezza's attempts at spinning off juan williams' questions in the npr interview , a galaxy of spin wouldn't be sufficient camouflage .
To his credit , williams tried , but just did not try hard enough to pin condie down on the bush administrations "al qaeda /saddam " linkage claims .
the bush administration appears to be basing their "al qaeda/saddam" linkage claims largely on one "abu musab al zarqawi" a nom de guerre for an al qaeda "associate" who was named in the video of the beheading of nicholas berg .
the 'training camp" that the infamous jordanian "al zarqawi"
is supposed to have setup in iraq , was in northern iraq ..."kurdistan" in fact , a region that because of the US imposed no-fly zones , was not under saddam's control .
zarqawi is accused of being the beheader of nicholas berg ,but even this is disputed by some locals who say zarqawi had a wounded leg from the recent Afghan/US war amputated in baghdad and because of a prosthetic devise , walked with a limp not noticed in the berg beheading video .
other sources say zarqawi is long dead --killed during the bombings in northern iraq at the outset of the american invasion .
i found this article posted at a website messageboard and attributed to the political commentator fred kaplan , may 20 2004 titled , "Why Did Bush Spare Zarqawi ?"
"Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the [NBC News] story puts it: "the administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."
The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.
The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down.
In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred.
In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.
When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.
This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq-mainly air-defense sites-for the previous few years. It would not have been a major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and could even have helped.
But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn't control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time might lead some people-in Congress, the United Nations, and the American public-to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were finished, that maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.
In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might not have happened.
One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House" declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it wasn't George W. Bush-if it was, say, Dick Cheney-then we crash into a very different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that he was more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined.
It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq-or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides."
the article if correct , raises important unspinable charges that could bring the bush administration tumbling downward in a fatal tailspin ...
To his credit , he DID try to ask the difficult questions ...for instance , since we went to war on bullcrap excuses, is an apology due ?
the sad part is that he accepted the curveballs she threw as answers . "Apologise for what?" punctuated her smugly mouthed reply.
Perhaps miss Rice , you should apologise for blatantly lying about threats of "mushroom clouds" and misleading the american people into a war that has made the US hated around the world like never before?
Perhaps you should apologise for killing ten to twenty thousand iraqi civilians --is the pentagon still keeping count ? ---they rarely , if ever , mention the civilian totals anymore .
Perhaps you should apologise for the 200 billion dollars wasted on this war when no nation in the region ,except maybe israel , believed saddam hussein to be a threat anymore .
Perhaps , my dear miss Rice, you should apologise for dumping four million pounds of depleted uranium on iraq with the biological , ecological and genetic effects yet to be seen , but if the cancers and horribly deformed babies that resulted from the first Gulf war are any indication , significant portions of iraqi air ,land and water will be contaminated for how many tens of thousands of years ?
her smugness is even more rotten-egg indictment smeared on the bush administration's collective face .
despite condoleezza's attempts at spinning off juan williams' questions in the npr interview , a galaxy of spin wouldn't be sufficient camouflage .
To his credit , williams tried , but just did not try hard enough to pin condie down on the bush administrations "al qaeda /saddam " linkage claims .
the bush administration appears to be basing their "al qaeda/saddam" linkage claims largely on one "abu musab al zarqawi" a nom de guerre for an al qaeda "associate" who was named in the video of the beheading of nicholas berg .
the 'training camp" that the infamous jordanian "al zarqawi"
is supposed to have setup in iraq , was in northern iraq ..."kurdistan" in fact , a region that because of the US imposed no-fly zones , was not under saddam's control .
zarqawi is accused of being the beheader of nicholas berg ,but even this is disputed by some locals who say zarqawi had a wounded leg from the recent Afghan/US war amputated in baghdad and because of a prosthetic devise , walked with a limp not noticed in the berg beheading video .
other sources say zarqawi is long dead --killed during the bombings in northern iraq at the outset of the american invasion .
i found this article posted at a website messageboard and attributed to the political commentator fred kaplan , may 20 2004 titled , "Why Did Bush Spare Zarqawi ?"
"Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the [NBC News] story puts it: "the administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."
The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.
The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down.
In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred.
In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.
When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.
This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq-mainly air-defense sites-for the previous few years. It would not have been a major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and could even have helped.
But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn't control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time might lead some people-in Congress, the United Nations, and the American public-to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were finished, that maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.
In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might not have happened.
One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House" declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it wasn't George W. Bush-if it was, say, Dick Cheney-then we crash into a very different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that he was more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined.
It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq-or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides."
the article if correct , raises important unspinable charges that could bring the bush administration tumbling downward in a fatal tailspin ...
posted by dsekou at 1:24 AM
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