The War In Iraq Is Not Over and Neither Are The Lies To Justify It

[caledesi]

Excellent article <dissects the *'s speech, paragraph by paragraph>

FPIF Policy Report
September 2003

The War In Iraq Is Not Over and Neither Are The Lies To Justify It
By Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes <[e-mail]> is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He serves as an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.

President George W. Bush's nationally broadcast speech Sunday evening once again was designed to mislead Congress and the American public into supporting his administration's policies in Iraq. Despite record deficits and draconian cutbacks in government support for health care, housing, education, the environment, and public transportation, the president is asking the American taxpayer to spend an additional $87 billion to support his invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It is disturbing that President Bush has once again tried to link the very real threat to American security from mega-terrorist groups like al Qaeda to phony threats originating in Iraq. Not only does he try to link the terrorism that has grown out of the post-invasion chaos in Iraq to the devastating al Qaeda attacks on the United States two years ago, President Bush has depicted all the current violence against Americans and other foreigners in Iraq as part of this terrorist threat.

Like most Americans, I am deeply distressed at attacks on U.S. soldiers. However, the Fourth Geneva Convention--to which the United States is a signatory--is quite clear that a people under foreign military occupation have the right to militarily engage armed uniformed occupation forces. This is not the same as terrorism, which refers to attacks deliberately targeted against unarmed civilians and is universally recognized as a war crime. It is therefore terribly misleading for President Bush to try to convince the American public that these two phenomena are the same.

President Bush also failed to differentiate between the increasingly disparate elements behind the attacks. Some of the violence may indeed come from those who have some connection with al Qaeda who have infiltrated Iraq since the invasion this spring; some may be supporters of Saddam Hussein's former regime; some may be radical Iraqi Islamists or independent Iraqi nationalists who opposed the old regime but also oppose the U.S. occupation; still others may be foreign fighters who see driving American occupiers from Iraq as an act of pan-Islamic solidarity comparable to driving Soviet occupiers from Afghanistan.


link: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/lies2003.html

edit: spacing stuff

[glarius]

1. Neither is the war in Afghanistan!...the Taliban is back and the place is

a MESS!!!!!!

[arcane1]

2. Afghanistan is SOOO 2001

Iraq is the new Afghanistan, we arent't supposed to be thinking about that anymore ya know...

is the Afghanistan show, like, even still on the air??

*sound of popping bubblegum*