General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBefore you let W repaint himself...
know this:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/911-and-iraq-making-tragedy
Twenty years after the al-Qaeda attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States is still involved in a war in Iraq that it started. President George W. Bush was obsessed with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and deliberately misled the American people about who was responsible for the 9/11 attack.
I was in the White House on Sept. 12, 2001, on the staff of the National Security Council. I recently came across my pocket diary for 2001. In it, I wrote brief notes on each day's activity in the White House where I was senior director for the Near East. I met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice every day and Bush almost as frequently because of the second intifada. We were constantly trying to contain the violence and prevent a wider regional conflict. In reviewing the diary I was intrigued by two notes.
On Sept. 14, I was with Bush when he had his first phone call after 9/11 with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush immediately said he was planning to hit Iraq soon. Blair was audibly taken aback. He pressed Bush for evidence of Iraqs connection to the 9/11 attack and to al-Qaeda. Of course, there was none, which British intelligence knew.
On Sept. 18, a week after 9/11, Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan came to the White House to see Bush. The meeting took place on the Truman Balcony. Vice President Richard Cheney and Rice were there as well. My note says the president clearly thinks Iraq must be behind this. His questions to Bandar show his bias. Bandar was visibly perplexed. He told Bush that the Saudis had no evidence of any collaboration between Osama bin Laden and Iraq. Indeed their history was of being antagonists.
(snip)
On Sept. 28, Bush received Jordans King Abdallah. The king pressed the president to take action to restart Israeli Palestinian peace talks. He argued that the Palestinian conflict was the driving force behind al-Qaedas popularity and legitimacy. But the president was focused on Iraq.
(end snip)
Link to tweet
Bush's assistant for the ME on 9/11 Bruce Riedel: There was clear information all summer warning that attack inside US was imminent. CIA director went "door to door" at WH warning of imminent attack. "unfortunately, Bush admin. didn't do anything about it"
(end snip)
(Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, part of the Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence. In addition, Riedel serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy. )
/rant off
Lunabell
(5,920 posts)Republican leaders have let this poison fester in their party for years. They tolerated deplorable behavior from their members for decades, just for votes. White supremecy, misogyny homophobia., Islamophobia, antisemitism etc.
roamer65
(36,739 posts)Goonch
(3,551 posts)Midnight Writer
(21,546 posts)I bet he was puzzled when the attack led by a Saudi and carried out by mostly Saudi nationals got pinned on Iraq.
He probably had a prepared set of talking points to deflect blame only to find he didn't need them. The fix was already in.
Champp
(2,114 posts)Bandar Bush goes super smoochie with the Shrub.
niyad
(112,434 posts)Grasswire2
(13,564 posts)People who have been given the power to MAKE war should not have the ability to profit from it.
Halliburton -- Cheney
Carlyle Group -- Bush family
badhair77
(4,191 posts)Absolutely infuriating.
Straw Man
(6,613 posts)He's not a viable candidate for anything.
He may be a hypocrite for denouncing domestic terrorism, but at this juncture in our history it's absolutely the best thing he could for the country -- far better than keeping silent.
MyOwnPeace
(16,887 posts)but I think TFG & McCarthy will just brush him off like dandruff on their shoulders......
They have too much control over the loonies and wackos that are now the 'soul' of the RepubliQan party.....
elleng
(130,131 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,362 posts)And Iraqi oil was going to pay for the war.
Much like Mexico would pay for Trump's wall.
America's taxpayers get stuck for republican economics.
PatrickforB
(14,516 posts)And let's not forget the profits the MIC was hungry for. A shadow war against a shadow enemy is good, but not enough. We have to have a nice solid land and naval war so all the weapons manufacturers and 'defense' companies can maximize profits!
SledDriver
(2,049 posts)O.I.L.
pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)Kaleva
(36,146 posts)But I think it was TFG that did much of the repainting of Bush. Not by design but when the tow are compared.
Richard D
(8,693 posts)A once in forever opportunity was completely fucked up.
monkeyman1
(5,109 posts)SharonAnn
(13,766 posts)monkeyman1
(5,109 posts)zentrum
(9,865 posts)dlk
(11,433 posts)Thanks for sharing.
wnylib
(21,146 posts)where he was asked about Bin Laden after we were fighting in Iraq? His answer to what was going on with OBL was a "who cares?" shrug and "I have no idea where he is."
The Unmitigated Gall
(3,717 posts)Just about the absolute LAST fucking place you would have wanted to get caught in was Husseins Iraq.
Saddam would have meat-hooked you to a wall and taken a week to skin you alive. Brutal dictator though he was, he hated religious extremists.
Shrub used his office and lied America into a war thats still winding down decades later.
SergeStorms
(18,891 posts)that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Russell et al. LIHOP.
They had the intelligence, probably more than is reported, and it was exactly what they needed to get into Iraq and topple Saddam.
That would give them access Iraq's oilfields as well. Remember, Iraq's oil was going to pay for the war? It paid off for a whole bunch of Republicans, but not so much for the taxpayers, who paid not only in money, but their children's lives as well.
It was everything they needed to complete the PNAC wet dream, and all they had to do........was nothing. And that's exactly what they did.
CaptainTruth
(6,546 posts)That's what the PNAC wrote in 2000 they needed to invade Iraq. That's why they ignored warnings of the 9/11 attack, they wanted their "new Pearl Harbor."
Were 1998 Memos a Blueprint for War?
Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power.
The group, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.
In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.
And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."
That event came on Sept. 11, 2001. By that time, Cheney was vice president, Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, and Wolfowitz his deputy at the Pentagon.
The next morning before it was even clear who was behind the attacks Rumsfeld insisted at a Cabinet meeting that Saddam's Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round of terrorism," according to Bob Woodward's book Bush At War.
More...
[link:https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128491&page=1|]
Aussie105
(5,211 posts)A lot of American recent history needs to be unwound and analyzed like this.
There is a lot to unwind.
As a foreigner, watching US politics and global activity for the last 50 years, there have been many 'WTF is going on? What are they thinking?' moments.
+1 for not letting W wallpaper over his failures.
LetMyPeopleVote
(143,999 posts)Just because TFG will judged as a worst POTUS does not mean that W is going to be treated well by history. W's mistakes ultimately led to TFG
Link to tweet
Jon King
(1,910 posts)She was like a prophet, saying for months while Bush was pretending to weigh invading Iraq that he definitely would, and why, and that the weapons of mass destruction stuff was a ploy. She also predicted Afghanistan would be a decades long fiasco of profiteering. She also nailed that our response should have been to laser focus on rebuilding the US and its infrastructure into the envy of the world while hunting down Bin Laden steadily and quietly using intelligence before any force. As she said, show the terrorists that we will not only rebuild NY and the Pentagon but rebuild our entire country...basically F U terrorists, we are better than you could ever dream of.
But nope, she was a kook, a raving lib, and ignored like the rest of us who thought that way.
Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)But I have to give credit where it's due.
He was completely right in his speech. Calling out Republican extremism is something almost none of the current Rethugs will do.
MustLoveBeagles
(11,563 posts)Xolodno
(6,330 posts)But since he's a Republican, he has more influence on the moderates than Democrats do. So if he promotes something we agree on, his voice is going to carry a lot more weight.
As for the hardcore nutcases, you can't reach them. And should one of their leaders "wake up"...they'll be derided as sell outs.
BobTheSubgenius
(11,535 posts)...a reporter suggested that "911 happened on your watch."
"Don't you DARE say that. etc..." The reporter should have shown him a calendar. I was very curious about on whose watch Ari thought it happened.