Bush hasn't justified war :ANDREW GREELEY

[jbfam4]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel26.html

Bush hasn't justified war

December 26, 2003

BY ANDREW GREELEY


Was the capture of Saddam Hussein a major victory for the United States? It was certainly a victory in the extended Iraq war. It was a victory for President Bush over the man who plotted to kill his father. It was a victory for the U.S. military and its intelligence service -- especially for the lieutenant and the corporal who figured out how to find him. It was a victory for the Republican Party's plan to keep a stranglehold on American politics. But was it, as the president told us, a victory in the ''war on terrorism''?

Despite the media hoopla and the White House spin doctors, it was not. The administration legitimized the invasion of Iraq as part of the ''war on terrorism'' and deceived the American people into believing that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attack and that he had ''weapons of mass destruction.'' No one, except possibly Vice President Dick Cheney and the Wall Street Journal, believed that Saddam was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. The weapons of mass destruction have disappeared. The president asks a TV interviewer what difference the mass destruction question makes, now that we have eliminated Saddam from power.

Note how slippery the administration line has been. The purpose of the war now is to get rid of an evil man who had done horrible things to his own people, even if he wasn't a real threat to us. Would those Americans who are willing to settle for that rationale have bought it at the beginning of the war? Such is the slipperiness of the administration's dishonesty that it can get away with a change in motives for the war. Do those who buy this shifting of the deck of cards want to send American troops into North Korea or Iran or a half-dozen African countries to rid the world of similar evil men?

The truth is that Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their ''neo-conservative'' intellectuals wanted a quick little war with Iraq to display America's strength as the world's only superpower even before the 2000 election. The attack on the World Trade Center provided an excellent excuse to unveil America's unilateral, preemptive foreign policy. Has the war made the United States any more secure from al-Qaida?

It would seem that it has not. Quite the contrary, it has stirred up a whole new phalanx of terrorists in Iraq with which we did not formerly have to contend.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. And the more who scream this from the rooftops

the better

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

2. link update

your link didn't work but this one works

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel26.html

your link ended with "htm"
substitute "html" and it works!

[jbfam4]

3. Thanks

Not sure why that happened, but appreciate your help. Thanks again.

[TexasEditor]

4. This is off the subject, but...

It's those little details that bother me so. Like when a writer or speaker says that Bush was elected because blah blah blah. He was? I thought the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, making it possible for Katherine Harris to certify the loser as the winner.

The story posted above mentions a lieutenant and a corporal finding Hussein, but here's this other story that was all over the internet...

--------

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aUBP42FLX880&refer=us

Hussein Was Held by Kurds Before U.S. Capture, AFP Reports
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. troops only after being held prisoner by Kurdish forces, who had had drugged and abandoned him, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a Sunday Express newspaper report.

The Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside U.S. forces during the Iraq war, held Hussein until it negotiated for more political advantage in the Middle East, AFP said, citing the paper, which quoted an unidentified Iraqi intelligence officer.

Hussein, who had been in hiding since April, was captured a week ago about 9 miles south of his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a press conference then.

(Agence France-Presse 12-21)
Last Updated: December 20, 2003 22:28 EST

- - - -

Revealed: who really found Saddam?
Foreign Editor David Pratt
Sunday Herald (Scotland)

http://www.sundayherald.com/38816
Posted 12/21/2003 10:43:00 AM

.... Before Saddam’s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western press – the Kurdish media ran the following news wire: “Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat’s team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!”

Saddam’s capture was the best present George Bush could have hoped for, and then Gaddafi handed a propaganda gift to Blair. But nothing’s ever that simple.

It was exactly one week ago at 3.15pm Baghdad time, when a beaming Paul Bremer made that now-famous announce ment: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”

Saddam Hussein: High Value Target Number One. The Glorious Leader. The Lion of Babylon had been snared. Iraq’s most wanted – the ace of spades – had become little more than an ace in the hole.

STORY CONTINUED

[jbfam4]

5. It's like the Jessica Lynch story

Some of it made up to make Americans feel good about the war.

You can't trust this administration to tell the truth....we certainly have learned that by now.

[xchrom]

6. i now believe that the speeches and evidence

for imminent threat laid out and by bushco and their poodle blair and the subsequent change in language describing our role in iraq was planned all along.
they knew the wmd's weren't there and they used 1441 as their initial excuse to act unilaterally and then shortly after the war began they painted the effort as one of liberation. since then the vebal designations have been rotating like clockwork.
keeping the public from focusing on any one of the excuses for an invasion for too long.

[takebackthewh]

7. Right on

This guy always knows how to stick it to the neocon fascists.