“If we had a human source who had told us directly that bin Laden was living in that compound, I still wouldn’t be above 60 percent. And I’m telling you, the case for W.M.D. wasn’t just stronger—it was much stronger.”
The Deputy Director of the C.I.A. on the raid that killed Usama bin Laden Can we finally stop with the "Bush lied us into war" meme now?
We rid the world of one of the most brutal dictators on earth. We have given the Iraqis the chance to steer their own futures. It is now up to them to rise or fall. I hope they rise to the occasion.
To all that served, a grateful nation welcomes you home. Thank you for your service.
William Gaston of The New Republic did an OP-ED Piece the other day how the President is doing the right thing by moving forward with health care reform even though the majority of the public is against it. He is comparing President Bush moving forward with the surge strategy in Iraq as his justification. I have to give it to him, this is the first time I have heard this comparison.
“With the passage of time,” former Bush administration official Pete Wehner writes today, “President Bush’s decision to champion a new counterinsurgency strategy, including sending 30,000 additional troops to Iraq when most Americans were bone-weary of the war, will be seen as one of the most impressive and important acts of political courage in our lifetime.”
I was always on the fence about the war. I am not normally one not to have a strong opinion, but in this case I did not. On one hand, Saddam was a terrible man who no problem committing mass murder, as he did with the Kurds. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that sociopaths should be heads-of-state. The other side of that argument is it the job of The United States to deal with? I remember telling someone that I was working with at the time that I was not sure that we should be making a ten year commitment to a country in The Middle East, that it would be used as yet another recruiting tool for al Qaeda. I had always believed we would need to be there for a minimum of ten years. The country didn’t have the proper infrastructure to set up a democratic type government and that would take time to create.
I was especially unhappy to learn how badly it was bungled by Donald Rumsfeld. At the beginning of the Bush administration one of the goals had been to make our military smaller and more nimble. Then 9/11 happened. Whatever the plans were to make changes to how the military was going to run should have been put on hold. Rumsfeld tried to accomplish both goals at once. It did not work. He tried to fight Iraq on the cheap and the Bush presidency never really recovered. The surge was the right thing to do because it was our moral obligation to fix what we broke. We went in without the proper plan for the aftermath and did not make the necessary adjustments once we saw what was happening on the ground. The surge was done to give the country some stability in order to move forward with developing a government that will work for that country, and it also lessened the bloodshed.
To compare the health care reform bill to a war is just incredulous to me. His believe is that President Obama is simply working in the interests of the US people like President Bush did with the surge. I have always believed that President Bush truly believed that Saddam was a direct threat to the US. After 9/11, he believed his mission was to protect and defend the US homeland, which is part of the oath he took when sworn into office. The reality is he was wrong. Saddam was “contained” as the Europeans said during the run up to the war. At the end of the day, his intentions were good, but that doesn’t change the facts. Although, I recently read that yellowcake was found in Iraq and transferred to Canada. The AP reported it once after the transfer was complete, and it was never really talked about again, as the lame stream media never picked up the story. If that is the case, then maybe I would have to change my assessment.
I too believe that President Obama does believe that his health care reform bill is the right thing to do for the country. He believes it to his core, I don’t doubt that. What I doubt is that “reform” bill will actually help the underlying problems. Just because the President believes it, doesn’t make him right.
A belief in the written constitution. The belief that we are responsible for ourselves and for our families. The belief that we are allowed to fail. The belief in a strong national defense are a few of the things that make me just a conservative girl.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
"I say this not to the teachers, but to their unions: If education were a war, you would be losing it. If it were a business, you would be driving it into bankruptcy. If it were a patient, it would be dying." Bob Dole
Yes, House Republicans have been in power for 5 hours and they have not passed their entire agenda. The New York Times things they should be canned and Democrats put back in charge. Don Surber
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"So I say huzzah to the 112th congress for reading the Constitution, for acting like it matters. It does. The Constitution may not be sacred, but the sacred has no better friend than the Constitution." Pat Archibold
"53% of Democrats have a postive view of socialism. 100% of republicans think those 53% are morons." Mark Levin
"Corrupt the young. Get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness." First plank of the communist strategy for revolution - confiscated in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1919
"If you believe this isn't going to cost the government anything, you are likely to see leprechauns riding on unicorns with pots of gold circling the capitol" Rep. Devin Nunes, CA-21 on healthcare "reform".
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views". William F. Buckley, Jr.
"The Republicans were laughing and waving the American flag, and I thought that was ourtrageous behavior" Maxine Waters
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas
I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress. Frederick Douglas
Don't go around saying that the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. Mark Twain
I freed thousands of slaves, and could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves. Harriet Tubman
But I think the most important thing I have figured out was how not to lose hope even when things are bad and it feels like it won't get better. It will get better. You just have to keep working at it and moving forward. Homeless & Conservative
The way to crush the middle class is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. Vladimer Lenin
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. F.A. Hayek
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