I thought it was the same droll that I’d expect from the administration. Of course they are going to use 9/11 to justify the war in Iraq. The bogus information that was given to go there in the first place is the turning point in my support for Bush. It was all so obviously bogus. I remember seeing the footage of Powell (I like the guy in the context of outside serving in the administration) sitting there going over satellite photos of mobile weapons labs that turned out to have nothing to do with WMDs when troops on the ground checked them out. The only thing really found was old trace amounts of buried chemical shells.
There was no direct Al Qaeda link that was formalized with the Iraqi government. It was all put together and made up based on very sketchy intelligence. Say I am full of BS? The 9/11 whitewash commission and British “downing st. document” can back up my thoughts. How the hell can I trust a president to support our troops when I hear about vet benefits getting slashed?
You know, if Bush stuck to his response about Bin Laden (I remember seeing this on TV)… "I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'” (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/bush.powell.terrorism/)...and we actually captured or killed him, I probably would have voted for him in 2004. I remember 9/11 quite well. I was running late to work that morning, because I was watching what was going on television unfold and then they closed my office. Remember I live in northern VA. My father worked in the Pentagon; I go by it all of the time. I live near Dulles airport, from which one of the planes took off. This area was definitely shut down. I have never been a fan of radical Islam, I wanted Bush to put Bin Laden’s dead on a stake and display it on the national mall. I still feel that way. It just seems that the people who did suffer from 9/11 have been marginalized by the media to some extent. I don’t know about the other people, but I remember.
If we had Bin Laden and more resources were put into Afghanistan’s infrastructure, I mean waited 6 lousy months before going into Iraq, and not pick up and send a majority of his forces to the Persian gulf for Iraq, I would have totally supported his efforts. I kind of saw Iraq as an unresolved issue that needed to be dealt with. Saddam is not that funny old man in the prison camp the media like to portray (see the interviews with the prison guards of recent news); he is a mini Stalin who is guilty of genocide (Kurds) and mass murder (all of his opposition). He needs to be held accountable for his actions.
What if Bush just pushed the UN for an additional 6 months? We all know about the weapons inspection debacle. If we drilled their assess and made them do their jobs and stuck to the context of their own damned resolutions, we could have probably garnered more support, or even tell the UN that they were officially a paper tiger who’s usefulness has come and gone (oil for food is all I think of them, and how they packed up and ran when one of their offices got blown up in Iraq—useless organization with a very bad agenda—that’s another post at another time.) On that resolution alone, we could have gone in and ousted that SOB. Instead we lost a lot of support in the world. Well, screw France. I don’t care about them. I am directing that statement to the French govt. and Parisians—the one’s with their heads up their asses or in the sand. I have enough personal experience by talking to people from others countries to form my statement.
So Bush, last night, gave another ineffective speech that does nothing to give me any warm fuzzies about his policies. It makes me think about the soldiers in the field. I think I am going to www.booksforsoldiers.com now and see what support I can give. It’s not Bush’s words that I care about, it’s that of those soldiers in the service of this great nation whom I support wholeheartedly.
