Bush's Policies Have Made America More Safe ... FOR WHOM???

[doh_phooey]

Al Qaeda's Comeback
Kevin Whitelaw 7/17/07

The new warning reflects an assessment about the success of the group's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, in rebuilding much of its capabilities to train operatives and plot attacks.

... the group has reconstituted its ability to actively plot from its safe haven in the western tribal regions of Pakistan.

Other key factors in al Qaeda's resurgence include the survival of bin Laden and his key deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the group's ability to recruit and train new lieutenants.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070717/17alqaeda.htm





John Kerry's Press Release

We are clearly losing ground in the fight against terrorists worldwide. We have created more terrorists than we have killed. We are more isolated internationally. We are more divided domestically. And more than at any time in modern history, our forces are stretched to the breaking point.

We diverted resources from the hunt for Bin Laden to invade Iraq, which had no operational ties to Al Qaeda.

http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=276964

[doh_phooey]

1. Bush Dropping the Ball on al Qaeda

July 18, 2007

Today’s release of the unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate, Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland, is a black eye for the Bush Administration propaganda campaign that Iraq is making America safer.

In November 2001, when Osama Bin Laden was surrounded in Tora Bora, the CIA officer leading the charge, Gary Berntsen, called for reinforcements to finish off the Al Qaeda Chief. General Tommy Franks and General Dell Dailey turned him down. Bin Laden escaped.

The focus on Iraq took Al Qaeda off of the hook.

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1996/81

[HughBeaumont]

2. These idiot Bewsh worshippers in this link seem to think we're SAFER under the Failure Fuhrer.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1365715&mesg_id=1365715

[doh_phooey]

3. that was my response to the line about

"Since 9/11, not one terrorist attack has happened on American soil."

Yeah, idiots. You got us. Never mind that the BIGGEST ATTACK EVER HAPPENED ON HIS FUCKING WATCH AND ARGUABLY WITH HIS ADMINISTRATION'S FOREKNOWLEDGE!!!!! ASSHOLES!!


Couldn't have said it any better.

[Amonester]

14. Foreseeing one of the replies from these a**holes here:

Some s**t like:

IT WAS CLINTON'S FAULT!!11!HUGH!!SERIES!11!!1!

What else is news...

[doh_phooey]

15. If it's not Clinton's fault

then it must be Carter's fault. If it's not Carter's fault, then it must be Johnson's fault. If it's not Johnson's fault, then ...

[JacquesMolay]

4. The chieftans of the defense contractors ....

.. now they can afford more security for their gated commnunities.

[doh_phooey]

5. or oil guys and their undisclosed locations

Dick is safe :P

[doh_phooey]

6. Bush's Osama Problem

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; 2:00 PM

Nearly six years after President Bush pledged to capture him "dead or alive," Osama bin Laden is not only still at large, but he and his al-Qaeda organization have apparently benefited greatly from Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

It turns out that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda leadership are safely ensconced in Pakistan. They're still trying to attack us. And the U.S. occupation of Iraq has provided them with a potent rallying cry, recruiting tool and training ground they would not have had otherwise.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/07/18/BL2007071801472.html

[doh_phooey]

7. Maureen Dowd Was Prescient

Maureen Dowd

August 27, 2003

The strutting, omniscient Bush administration would never address the possibility that our seizure of Iraq has left us more vulnerable to terrorists. So it is doing what it did during the war, when Centcom briefings routinely began with the iteration: "Coalition forces are on plan," "We remain on plan," "Our plan is working."

http://www.thinkingpeace.com/pages/Articles/Archive1/arts027.html


Maureen Dowd

July 18, 2007

After spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever. Two pages add up to one message: The Bushies blew it. Al Qaeda has exploded into a worldwide state of mind. Because of what’s going on with Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah may now “be more likely to consider” attacking us. Al Qaeda will try to “put operatives here” — (some news reports say a cell from Pakistan already is en route or has arrived) — and “acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material in attacks.”

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html

[blarbushie]

8. 2 sides of the same coin

[doh_phooey]

9. Obama says U.S. less safe because of Bush's war decisions

“We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we're on the wrong battlefield,” Obama said. “America must urgently begin deploying from Iraq and take the fight more effectively to the enemy's home by destroying al-Qaeda's leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border, eliminating their command and control networks and disrupting their funding.”

“What I would say is that as a consequence of bad decisions we are more at risk and less safe than we should have been at this point, given all the resources we have spent and the U.S. lives that have been lost,” Obama said.

Obama contended the Bush administration erred by choosing to fight in Iraq rather than concentrating on Afghanistan, where he said al-Qaeda has rebuilt itself.

“They have entirely regrouped along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” Obama said. “The threat of terrorism has actually increased and we've seen a massive spike in terrorist activity, in part because we did not finish the job in Afghanistan and were distracted by a war of choice in Iraq.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070714-1255-obama-terrorism.html

[doh_phooey]

10. Why America is losing to al-Qaida

By David H. Schanzer
July 23, 2007

From the very beginning, President Bush has misunderstood the genesis of al-Qaida's animus toward the United States. In his Sept. 20, 2001, address to Congress, he declared, "They hate what they see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. ... They hate our freedoms." Well, not exactly. Osama bin Laden is certainly no fan of liberal constitutional democracy, but that dislike did not fuel his call for jihad against America and its allies. It is our policies that bin Laden detests, policies that, in his view, have contributed to the rapid decline of a once-expansive Muslim empire, the taking of Muslim territory and the imposition of oppressive, sacrilegious rulers in Muslim nation-states.

The Bush administration has also failed to recognize that although the vast majority of Muslims reject bin Laden's violent tactics, they support his stance against Western domination in the Middle East, his desire for heightened Islamic identity and his demand for greater respect for Islam and Muslim people. To isolate al-Qaida, therefore, it is necessary to craft a nuanced message that support for al-Qaida will undermine these popular goals and resistance to al-Qaida will help to advance them.

Our actions since 9/11 have not projected this message; in fact, just the opposite has occurred. We launched a war on terror that was widely interpreted as a war on Islam. We invaded and occupied two Muslim nations, not as part of a globally sanctioned multilateral force to combat terrorism but on our own, for a variety of purposes. We consistently referred to fundamentalist Islamist ideology as "evil." We disengaged from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and projected indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.alqaida23jul23,0,1152323.story




This guy is a Yale graduate?

more like an ale graduate

:beer:

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[doh_phooey]

12. Bin Laden gets his wish, thanks to Bush administration

Cynthia Tucker
July 23, 2007

Six years ago, the White House had the opportunity to pursue a relatively small group of jihadists across the Earth. With the support of every country that mattered, we went into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, who had given sanctuary to bin Laden and his mad dream of global jihad.

Then, the campaign against al-Qaida took a strange turn. For reasons that remain elusive, the Bush White House allowed bin Laden to slip away and pointed the finger at Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, who distrusted bin Laden, who threatened his neighbors but not the United States. Just as reliable intelligence reported that bin Laden had escaped to the caves of Tora Bora, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pentagon began dispatching Special Forces operatives to Iraq.

It was a strategy that bin Laden himself might have mapped out. Not only did we bog down in Iraq, provoking a multifaceted insurgency that we have been unable to contain, but we also gave bin Laden the recruiting tool he needed. Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida and the Road to 9/11, writes: "Al-Qaida's duty was to awaken the Islamic nation to the threat posed by the secular, modernizing West. To do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaida would drag the U.S. into a war with Islam - 'a large-scale front which it cannot control.'" The invasion of Iraq did just that.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.tucker23jul23,0,5442063.story

[doh_phooey]

13. if only someone had listened

A US attack on Iraq would make American citizens less safe.

An attack on Iraq will increase anti-American sentiment - meaning potential acts of terrorism against the US or American citizens travelling abroad. It would also de-stabilize the Middle East, and will certainly result in the loss of life of American service people as well as Iraqi civilians. For these reasons, an attack on Iraq would make Americans less secure, not more.

http://www.peace-action.org/home/print/piraq.html

[JTG of the PRB]

16. Of couse it's safer! For Bush, Cheney, and all their cronies!

When the word is given, they'll all be set for life - not to mention in power for life.

[doh_phooey]

17. why is this man laughing?

[doh_phooey]

18. Is America safer now than it was on 9-11?

Perhaps if we'd finished the job in Afghanistan — pursued, hunted down and destroyed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida cadre in 2002 — things would be different.

But instead we chose to break our concentration on al-Qaida and Afghanistan and invade Iraq, getting bogged down in what has become a terrorist-fed insurgency and civil war that is tearing that country apart, and has divided ours.

We took our eye off the ball before dunking it — a classic military and political faux pas — when we made the Afghan war Asia minor and focused our attention and military efforts on Iraq, a mistake we're now paying for dearly — and may for many years to come.

Invading Iraq and failing to finish the job in Afghanistan were two ill-conceived post-9/11 decisions that we may long regret. The crucial question would seem to be: Are we safer now than we were six years ago? According to the experts, the answer appears to be "no."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/tribune/ci_6437682

[doh_phooey]

19. flip == flop

September 2001

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our No. 1 priority, and we will not rest until we find him."

March 2002

"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

[doh_phooey]

20. Saturday kick

:kick: