LAT: Bush insults Americans' intelligence with fight-'em-over-there canard

[DeepModem Mom]

EDITORIAL
Bush's False Choice on Iraq
No matter how many times he says it, fighting "over there" still doesn't prevent attacks here.
October 12, 2006

AT HIS NEWS CONFERENCE Wednesday, President Bush expressed not once but three times his view that if the U.S. does not defeat the terrorists "over there" in Iraq, it will have to fight them here in the United States. This crude formulation is tiresome and insulting to Americans' intelligence.

"I firmly believe that the American people understand that this is different from other wars because in this war, if we were to leave early, before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here," Bush said. This conjures up improbable images of Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents stuffing bomb-making manuals into their backpacks and booking flights to LAX while U.S. troops march out of Baghdad....

***

Bush is right to say that Al Qaeda would crow at an American "defeat" in Iraq. Indeed, anti-American elements around the world would surely take great satisfaction in any U.S. humiliation. But his equation of withdrawal with defeat, of leaving the Iraqis to manage their own affairs with handing a victory to terrorists, is simplistic in the extreme. Sooner or later, the U.S. military will leave Iraq. A sober and thoughtful national debate could illuminate how best to accomplish that.

The deliberate repetition of a shameless canard just before an election does not contribute to this thoughtful debate. Indeed, Bush's formulation could lead to a false sense of complacency. Fighting the terrorists "over there" does not necessarily make us safer "over here." This is not to say that there is no relation at all between Iraq's fate and the threat of terrorism to the U.S. But the relationship is not as simplistic as the president describes it. Pretending these two issues are part of the same problem trivializes them both.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-ed-bush12oct12,0,3019577.story?coll=la-home-commentary

[flordehinojos]

1. temper tantrum! temper tantrum! temper tantrum! we don't damn get it.

BUSH IS HAVING A TEMPER TANTRUM!

[Quantess]

2. Los Angeles

Does anyone in LA still support Bush or even approve of anything he does? I mean, it's a big city and all, so there are going to be a few...

[DeepModem Mom]

4. I spend some time there, and have met, as you say, only a few. nt

[Homer Wells]

3. He just wants to be out of office

before we are forced to pull out of that quagmire. Then he can say it was the new guy who "cut-and-ran". Of course, his loyal sheep will parrot his claim, and then they can all say that the Dems are "weak on terror".
If this costs a few thousand more American lives, it is no skin off his ass.

:mad: :mad:

[kenny blankenship]

5. If the choice is false & unacceptable it's b/c Bush's false & unacceptable

He brought us to this no-win situation: he has to go.

[Cha]

6. bush is Always Insulting Americans'

fucking intelligence. bush thinks murikens are all as wild-eyed mentally challenged as himself.