America turns on Bush over Iraq

[cal04]

Three in five want troops out as President vows to stay

Beset by fading public support for the war and growing violence on the ground, President George Bush flatly rejected any timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing the United States would stay until the insurgency was defeated and democracy had been established. "This is a time of testing, a critical time," Mr Bush acknowledged yesterday after a meeting at the White House with Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi Prime Minister. The insurgents "feel that if they can shake our will and affect our public opinion, we'll give up on the mission. But I'm not giving up the mission, we're doing the right thing". The President was speaking amid unprecedented challenges to his whole Iraq policy. A week of carnage in that country was capped by news that six marines were killed on Thursday in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, lifting the total American death toll in Iraq to a total of 1,730.


Mr Jaafari sounded equally determined, arguing against any withdrawal timetable for US troops. He spoke of "steady and substantial progress", adding that the constitution would be completed on scheduled and "there is a will in Iraq to succeed". For all the brave talk, however, the spectre of Vietnam is stirring. In terms of duration and casualties, the two conflicts are hardly comparable - the Vietnam war lasted a decade, and claimed 58,000 US lives, while fewer than 2,000 American troops have died in Iraq since the invasion two years ago.

But the similarities in the national mood are hard to ignore. The word "quagmire" has returned to the debate - Mr Bush even made a joking reference to it yesterday, when asked by a journalist about his declining popularity and political difficulties. More serious is a decline in public support for the war, which proved fatal to the Vietnam enterprise three decades ago. Republicans and Democrats are complaining that the administration has no credible plan for victory, while General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in Iraq, has voiced the military's alarm over the public mood.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=649440

[aquart]

1. That's still only 60 percent.

[Erika]

2. American women marines took a big hit today

But W has no problem with inviting Saudi princes to Crawford. Saudis are the majority of insurgents and the majorities who bombed us 9/11.

Saudis don't allow women to vote or drive, and the royal Saudis allow women to members of harems.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

3. KKK Rove LOOK AT YOUR WAR PRESIDENT

The problem with never admitting your wrong the truth can bite you in the can. Remember, George, can create his own reality. We are in the most prosperous times ever, health care is equivocated in the world, drug companies are giving life-saving drugs away, poor children are receiving the highest academic training, etc.

"If I could only go home", Click (the Ruby shoes), click, Hey George it ain't workin..?

[Brundle_Fly]

4. "I don't look at polls"

the Resident says.

Bullshit I say to him.

He is suffering and he knows it, and he's too intertwined trying to make the corporations money, than to follow a poll.

Bush is always saying that history will decide his legacy, and I know all this bad news is killing him inside slowly.

what a fucking moron.

the leader of the free world.

a pissant.

[Erika]

5. Bush's legacy will be dirt with tears

We trampled so many without cause.

[still_one]

17. and the consequences haven't even begun here

just wait till oil goes to 70 bucks a barrel next year, with more lives and resources are lost in a war that can't be won

[teryang]

6. The less responsive the government is to reality

...the more susceptible it is to the inevitable consequences of the poor policies it follows.

The loss of public support for the Vietnam war wasn't the reason for failure there. The policy we pursued militarily in Vietnam was the reason for failure. The Vietnamese people defeated us on the ground by inflicting costs and losses we could no longer sustain without the prospect of political success.

War has a political aim. When that aim cannot be accomplished militarily, you have already lost. Public opinion follows rather than leads this process. Conservatives rarely understand this preferring to see military loss as a loss of will by effete leftists. This is a fundamentally fascist point of view which can found consistently in Nazi post mortems of WWI.

Iraq is a little different. The political aim of Iraq was to distract the American public from the election frauds in 2000 and 2002 and to distract the public from administration complicity in 911 and the anthrax attacks (on Congress and the press). This is Machiavelli 101. Now that the war is no longer seen as a patriotic cakewalk, the Machiavellian diversion is over. The other sleights of hand meant to take place under patriotic cover of war, such as dismantling social security and the Senate appear in their full unpleasantness.

[historian]

46. well said

But regardless of the ploys used to distract the people, there are far too many mentally deficient cretins in the population who will still wave the flag and consider bush their hero.

[truthisfreedom]

7. one thing bush and rove and cheney and the pnac have done for us is that

we're so sick to our stomachs now, we may not let these kinds of organized crime thugs gain control of our country again for many years to come.

[ms liberty]

21. Until...

some movie producer with no imagination makes a movie glorifying the "heroic warriors", beginning a revision of history, with the complicity of the people. Then an upsurge of nationalism, of "patriotism", will cause average people to forget the truth, and we'll do the whole damn stupid cycle again.

(see Rambo)

No insult intended to any of our soldiers, I was using the "heroic warriors" as an archetype.

[ckramer]

8. America turns on Bush over Iraq

Beset by fading public support for the war and growing violence on the ground, President George Bush flatly rejected any timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing the United States would stay until the insurgency was defeated and democracy had been established.

"This is a time of testing, a critical time," Mr Bush acknowledged yesterday after a meeting at the White House with Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi Prime Minister. The insurgents "feel that if they can shake our will and affect our public opinion, we'll give up on the mission. But I'm not giving up the mission, we're doing the right thing". The President was speaking amid unprecedented challenges to his whole Iraq policy. A week of carnage in that country was capped by news that six marines were killed on Thursday in the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, lifting the total American death toll in Iraq to a total of 1,730.


link

[justinsb]

9. I misread the headline

the first time I glanced at it. For a second I thought it said that America turned Bush over to Iraq...1 brief moment of supreme happiness, and then I looked again and it was gone.

[Glenda]

13. Ohhhh, thank you for the brief moment of happiness too!

I can imagine...:woohoo:

[historian]

18. me too

I had visions of him being turned over to some fanatical taliban for a weekend of sport but.....

[President Kerry]

22. hahah... oh how I wish..

[Arugula Latte]

42. I want Bush in Gitmo

with a veeeeerrrrrrrrrry friendly roommate.

[still_one]

10. you moran bush

you screwed it up

you were warned NOT to go into Iraq, and the cowboy in you said screw it.

you setup this disaster which we will be paying with for years to come

You had better hope your retain Congress in 2006, because you are going to be impeached if you don't

[ClassWarrior]

11. Not the cowboy, the CRIMINAL in him**.

And don't fool yourself for one minute that he**'s a "moron." Read Sun Tsu. You'd better believe he** has. Probably one of the handful of books he actually read at Yale.

NGU.

[annabanana]

12. what a bunch of stupid, ivory tower fuckups

him and his neocon pansy asses are...

I want real men and women, adults, grown-ups to have the tiller of our poor floundering Ship of State..........

[still_one]

16. he is a moran

he is also a murderer of thousands of people

I am sorry, just listen to him speak. Not only is it embarassement, but half the time he can't even complete a complete thought unless it is written down for him

As far as him winning in 2000 and 2004, that says much more for the idiots, especially in the red states, than it says for his ability

unfortunately, because of his actions we will all be paying a terrible price, not just the people who voted for him

[ClassWarrior]

43. Ever read "The Bush** Dyslexicon?" It's arrogance, not stupidity.

It's by Mark Crispin Miller.

By the way, "red states" is a Radical RW frame. Please don't help them by passing it around.

NGU.

[Up2Late]

14. Hey, who's picking the Front Page stories now? This post is on there...

...but it links to the original, before it was combined, so it says "0 comments.":shrug:

[Straight Shooter]

15. bush doesn't know the difference between "will" and "willfulness"

Americans do have a will, and right now, finally, it is the will of the American people to get out of Iraq, where we never should have gone in the first place.

bush is full of willfulness, which basically means determined to do exactly as you want, even if you know it is wrong. (Thus we had what I always referred to as the Coalition of the Willful.)

It is time for Americans to begin exerting their will against this willful, pigheaded (mis)leader.

[madrchsod]

19. i`ll agree that we are is slowly turning the corner

even the asshat republicans where i work are starting to have doubts about bush. the war is going badly and the price of gas are linked in many peoples minds.the vast majority of americans want decent jobs,wages, health care,safe streets,and recieve what the government has promised in the future. bush has delivered on none of these issues and it`s another three years of this breaking the social contract between the state and it`s citizens. will they decided in 2006 to change the house and senate? i guess it uis between us and diebold.

[Catchawave]

20. Ahhhh, a weekend news dump from the BushCo's :)

...nothing to see here, move along !

[Ufour20]

26. Sieg Heil!

Amerika ist uber alles! I was watching a documentary on Hitler yesterday on how he got to power and how he protected and increased his power - WOW! - was it eerily similar to whats happening today, absolutely amazing.

[jmcon007]

28. like any school yard punk who thinks he's tough, Bush has no

concept of the true meaning of strength and wisdom.

[NVMojo]

41. shut the F up, Bush, you liar!

[JRob]

44. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS CRAZY... but me... nt

[rodeodance]

23. America turns on Bush over Iraq

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=649440

> America turns on Bush over Iraq

> Three in five want troops out as President vows to stay
> By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
>
> 25 June 2005
>
> Beset by fading public support for the war and growing violence on the ground, President George Bush flatly rejected any timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing the United States would stay until the insurgency was defeated and democracy had been established.
>
> ...........
>
> Several victims were believed to be female marines. The Pentagon said they died when a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle as a US military convoy was passing. The attack is the 479th recorded car bombing since the handover of sovereignty on 28 June 2004. Even more serious is the ebbing support on the home front. Polls show a majority of Americans believe the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein was a mistake. Some 60 per cent now favour a troop pullout, while Mr Bush's approval rating has tumbled to little more than 40 per cent, the lowest of any second-term president since Richard Nixon in the throes of Watergate.
>
> Tense Congressional hearings moreover laid bare this week the growing divide between the sombre assessments of the situation from US commanders on the ground, and the resolutely optimistic picture painted by the civilian leadership - notably the recent assertion by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, that the insurgency was "in its last throes". In a bid to rally public support, Mr Bush will deliver a televised address on Iraq when he visits the army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
>
> Despite appearances, progress was being made, the President insisted. At every major step, from January's elections to the agreement to bring more Sunnis into the constitution-writing process, "the Iraqi people have met their strategic objectives". The way ahead would not be easy, and US and Iraqiforces were facing "a violent and ruthless enemy", Mr Bush said.......

a few other foreign papers via goggle;

AMERICA TURNS ON BUSH OVER IRAQ
Scotsman, UK - 17 hours ago
... public support for the war and growing violence on the ground, President George Bush flatly rejected any timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, vowing the ...

US public opinion turns against Iraq war
ABC Online, Australia - 8 hours ago
... now believe the war in Iraq wasn't worth it, the Bush administration has ... JOHN WARNER: There's no alternative for America but to turn this nation over to the ...

[rfranklin]

24. Let's hope that Bush doesn't get vindictive...

He's always threatening to "fuck up" those who cross him.

And he does have his finger on the trigger for all those nukes.

[Webster Green]

25. Just another pesky focus group to the war-chimp...

He doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks.

His orders come from God.

[flordehinojos]

27. what a wonderful scene it would be, if americans by the thousands, were to

march on to the white house demanding his ousting and encarcertion, and like with the russians when they ousted gorbachev, not a single shot would be fired, and bush, and cheney, and condoleeza rice, and all the rest were to leave the white house through the front door in shackles (but at this point even if they were to leave through the back door, protected from the mob, to go to their dream retirement palaces---but just leave and vacate the white house) what a wonderful gift, we americans would be giving ourselves, if we were really to turn in great numbers against bush, and march on the hold he has on the white house and our democracy and simply just kick him and his goons outof the white house.

[go west young man]

29. And we need to keep turning until we get rid of these fascist

911 exploiting warmongers. When is the MSM going to finally tie all this together with PNAC and let the rest of America know what its really all about? It seems like small portions of a larger story are constantly being told but the whole obvious story is right on the PNAC web site. And its a story of the loss of Americas soul in exchange for world dominance.

[Dr Fate]

30. Time is ripe for a unified effort to hammer home the DSM.

I'd like to see more "star" Democrats on TV talking about it, making it a main issue whenever the war comes up as a topic.

[mcscajun]

31. Sen. Hagel says...

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., suggested the White House was "completely disconnected from reality" in claiming the war was being won.

[redacted]

32. KICKed and recommended! Great headline.

[Tesla]

33. But wait, he'll explain it all

at his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, Right?

[libodem]

34. well somebody has to protect the oil companies

and ride shotgun for their convoys...those poor boys are just being used in the big oil grab....why didn't we just spend the 300 billion on oil? And those poor Iraqi people...My God, * must have some shitty karma built up by now, isn't he due for another bike wreck or something?

[Disturbed]

35. Amerikans and Iraqis are dying and the...

Silverspoon Sociopath spouts out jokes. Yeah, he really cares.

PNAC

http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President

By Neil Mackay

A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

Project for the New American Century

Their Goal: The neoconservative agenda

Established in the spring of 1997 and funded largely by the energy and arms industries, the Project for the New American Century was founded as the neoconservative think tank whose stated goal was to usher in a “new American century”. Having won the cold war and no military threat to speak of, this group of ideologues created a blueprint for the future whose agenda was to capitalize upon our surplus of military forces and funds and forcing American hegemony and corporate privatization throughout the world. In their statement of principles they outline a fourfold agenda:

1) Increase an already enormous military budget at the expense of domestic social programs

2) Toppling of regimes resistant to our corporate interests

3) Forcing democracy at the barrel of a gun in regions that have no history of the democratic process

4) Replacing the UN’s role of preserving and extending international order

(This all can be read in their own words at www.newamericancentury.org )

Their Method

According to their own document, Rebuilding America’s Defenses ( .pdf format ) their stated goals would never be realized “absent some catastrophic catalyzing event –like a new Pearl Harbor”. (page 52).

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm

[RamboLiberal]

36. Newsview: Bush Losing Support for Iraq War

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/06/25/national/w095012D52.DTL

President Bush is casting about for ways to turn the tide of public opinion on Iraq. He is running into a growing level of skepticism, new strains in Republican unity and more frequent comparisons to the Vietnam conflict of almost four decades ago.

A new stepped-up public relations effort has yet to show results. The next event is a prime-time speech on Tuesday at Fort Bragg, N.C., with U.S. troops as his backdrop.

Bush administration officials see the speech as a chance for the president to clearly spell out his goals — and the stakes — of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq. But analysts suggest it will take more than a finely honed speech to revive flagging public support or to reverse an alarming slide in military recruitment.

"I don't think anybody will be able to watch that speech without wondering where is the banner saying `Mission Accomplished,'" said Anthony H. Cordesman, an Iraq expert and former Pentagon intelligence official.

[ChiciB1]

37. YAWN!!! The Idiot Doesn't Know HOW To

give a finely honed speech. I hope he chokes!!!

[vogonjiltz]

38. OOOOh, a speach....

That'll set things right and make everyone forget what they hear and see.

[kedrys]

39. That should take care of the plunging stock market

by making it tank faster and further... :P

[tulsakatz]

40. clearly spell out goals?

"Bush administration officials see the speech as a chance for the president to clearly spell out his goals"

clearly spelled out goals? haha.....does anyone remember the first Presidential debate? The guy doesn't even know the meaning of clear, cohesive thought!! How is he going to lay that out if he doesn't even know it himself?

[0rganism]

45. The Real Headline: BUSH TURNS ON AMERICA OVER IRAQ

Sheee-it, from the spin you'd think we were all clamoring and yammering for an invasion to remove that bad old saddam for any reason bush could come up with, which he reluctantly provided, and now the ungrateful savages that are the American citizenry are backstabbing our best friend in the world. There were never any anti-war protests, a million people didn't march through the streets of Manhattan with 1000 faux flag-draped coffins, no one ever told bush the occupation of Iraq was a lame idea, and now we're all just lower than traitors for not liking his little oil war.

Not what I saw. We'll just have to agree to disagree.