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View Full Version : Bush Compares War on Terror to World Wars



academic punk
08-22-2005, 10:15 PM
Never a good idea...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050823/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush

SALT LAKE CITY - President Bush compared the fight against terrorism to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century as he tried to reassure an increasingly skeptical public on Monday to support U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

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With the anti-war movement finding new momentum behind grieving mother Cindy Sheehan, Bush acknowledged the fighting in Iraq is difficult and dangerous. But he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention the fight is necessary to keep terrorists out of the United States.

As he did in last year's election campaign and more recently as war opposition has risen, Bush reminded his listeners of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — reciting the date five times in a 30-minute speech.

"We're not yet safe," Bush said. "Terrorists in foreign lands still hope to attack our country. They still hope to kill our citizens. The lesson of Sept. 11, 2001, is that we must confront threats before they fully materialize."

Besides his references to Sept. 11 and the war on terror, Bush also spoke of earlier global fights.

"In a single lifetime, many of you have seen liberty spread from Germany and Japan to Eastern Europe to Latin America to Southeast Asia and Africa and beyond," Bush told the largely gray-haired crowd.

"The generation of men and women who defend our freedom today is taking its rightful place among the heroes of our nation's history."

The speech was the first of two that Bush is giving this week to make his case for staying the course in Iraq. The second is Wednesday in Idaho, and in between Bush planned to take a day off at the Tamarack Resort 100 miles north of Boise.

On Monday, Bush spoke shortly before the Iraqi parliament failed to meet its second deadline to approve a draft constitution amid disagreements between different ethnic groups. Although earlier this month Bush said he believed the Iraqis should have met their original Aug. 15 deadline, he told the VFW that Americans understand the challenge of drafting such a document.

"We know this from our own history," he said. "The Constitutional Convention was home to political rivalries and regional disagreements."

Bush's arguments for war were not new, but they were his first public statements on the war since his national security and defense advisers visited his Texas ranch on Aug. 11. Since then, the limelight had shifted to protesters camping at a neighbor's ranch, asking that he bring the troops home immediately.

Bush had not left the ranch since Aug. 13, when he attended a Little League regional championship game in nearby Waco. He chose two Republican-friendly states in Utah and Idaho to re-emerge and make his case for continued war. People lined the streets of his motorcade route in Salt Lake City, many cheering and holding up signs such as one that said, "Honor the dead. Support President Bush."

But there also were anti-war signs and a few unfriendly gestures along the way. Hundreds of people gathered at an anti-war rally in Pioneer Park, about three blocks from the Salt Palace where Bush spoke.

Among them was retired Air Force Lt. Col. George Muller of Salt Lake City, who said he believed there has been a shift in the country's attitude toward the war.

"That's what it's going to take — veterans groups, veterans and mothers who have lost kids speaking out," Muller said.

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, an anti-war Democrat, was briefly booed when he was introduced to the veterans groups two hours before Bush spoke. He later addressed the protesters.

Bush has refused to meet this month with Sheehan, who lost her son last year in Iraq and left the camp near his ranch last week to tend to her hospitalized mother. She and family members of several other soldiers killed in Iraq met with the president in June of last year.

Celeste Zappala of Pennsylvania, another mother who lost her son and has been protesting with Sheehan, flew to Salt Lake City to speak at the rally. Zappala said the large turnout gave her hope for peace.

"It amazes me," said Zappala, whose son Sherwood Baker died while serving with the Pennsylvania National Guard. "I always thought of Salt Lake as a sleepy, conservative, buttoned-up place."

Bush didn't mention the Crawford protesters in his speech, but at both the beginning and the end of his remarks he spoke of the grief carried by the families of fallen soldiers. He said Americans owe it to the war dead to finish the task they gave their lives for.

More than 1,800 U.S. troops have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. The deaths have taken a toll on national support for Bush, with an AP-Ipsos poll taken earlier this month showing only 38 percent approve of his handling of Iraq.

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Nickdfresh
08-22-2005, 10:22 PM
Interesting analogy...I was thinking about domino theories and shit....:)

FORD
08-23-2005, 02:30 AM
Elohim bless those Utah Mormons who showed up in SLC to stand against the Chimp!! (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2026290&mesg_id=2026290)

frets5150
08-23-2005, 04:43 AM
Yes Been waitin to see that for a long time.:D

frets5150
08-23-2005, 04:48 AM
Ford can you PLEASE shrink that for me I want to add it to my sig Thank's :gulp:

blueturk
08-23-2005, 07:14 AM
I wonder how far off the "Freedom Of Speech Zone" in Salt Lake City was?

"As you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003

FORD
08-23-2005, 09:00 AM
Originally posted by blueturk
I wonder how far off the "Freedom Of Speech Zone" in Salt Lake City was?



Probably wasn't that far away....because team BCE didn't expect such a response ;)

There's a reason they chose Utah and Idaho as the states for Junior to take a vacation from his vacation. The two "reddest" states in the country? Yeah, of course that was a coincidence.

Let's hope he's every bit as warmly recieved in Idaho :)

Nickdfresh
08-23-2005, 09:07 AM
Hagel: Iraq growing more like Vietnam
Republican Senator says Bush should meet with protesting mom

Thursday, August 18, 2005; Posted: 11:35 p.m. EDT (03:35 GMT)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/POLITICS/08/18/hagel.iraq/story.hagel.sitroom.cnn.jpg
Sen. Chuck Hagel said the United States should not set a timetable for troop withdrawal.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on Thursday said the United States is "getting more and more bogged down" in Iraq and stood by his comments that the White House is disconnected from reality and losing the war.

The longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, he said, the more it begins to resemble the Vietnam war.

Hagel mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion in June that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes," saying the U.S. death toll has risen amid insurgent attacks.

"Maybe the vice president can explain the increase in casualties we're taking," the Nebraskan told CNN.

"If that's winning, then he's got a different definition of winning than I do."

On Thursday, Cheney told a veterans group that "Iraq is a critical front in the war on terror, and victory there is critical to the future security of the U.S."

"Every man and woman who fights and sacrifices in this war is serving a just and noble cause," Cheney told the 73rd National Convention of the Military Order of the Purple Heart in Springfield, Missouri.

Hagel, an Army infantry squad leader during the Vietnam war, sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and supported the October 2002 resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But he said the United States risks losing more public support for the conflict amid a rising cost in blood and money.

"The casualties we're taking, the billion dollars a week we're putting in there, the kind of commitment we've got -- we're not going to be able to sustain it," he said.

Iraq and Vietnam still have more differences than similarities, he said, but "there is a parallel emerging."

"The longer we stay in Iraq, the more similarities will start to develop, meaning essentially that we are getting more and more bogged down, taking more and more casualties, more and more heated dissension and debate in the United States," Hagel said.

Hagel also did not back away from comments he made in June to U.S. News & World Report that "the White House is completely disconnected from reality" and "the reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

"It gives me no great pleasure to have said that and to say that now," he said Thursday.

He said the U.S. death toll has continued to rise "at a very significant rate -- more dead, more wounded, less electricity in Iraq, less oil being pumped in Iraq, more insurgent attacks, more insurgents coming across the border, more corruption in the government."

A total of 1,861 American troops have died in the war since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, including four who were killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in Samarra. (Full story)

Cheney said in June that the insurgency is "in the last throes," and he predicted that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office. (Full story)

In the CNN interview Thursday, Hagel mentioned Cheney's comments about the insurgency and quickly added, "The facts speak for themselves."

Hagel did say he agrees with President Bush that the United States should not set a timetable for troop withdrawal, but he also predicted the United States would begin "withdrawing troops from Iraq next year."

"I don't like time frames because it gives the president no flexibility, and I think you always must have flexibility in these things and a judgment call by the president," he said.

Ultimately, he said, it's up to the Iraqis to control their nation's fate.

"That means they are either going to have to be in a position sometime next year to really step up in governing themselves, defending themselves, supporting themselves, or we can't continue to stay there indefinitely," Hagel said.

The next six months will be "very critical" in Iraq, he said.

"Not just the constitution writing, referendum, the election -- but also within that six months' period we're going to see whether the Iraqis are really going to be capable of defending themselves," he said.

On another Iraq-related issue, Hagel said Bush made the wrong decision by not meeting again with Cindy Sheehan, a mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq who has camped outside the president's Texas ranch. (Full story)

Sheehan "deserves some consideration, and I think that should have been done right from the beginning," Hagel said, noting that Bush did meet with her shortly after her son's death last year.

"I think the wise course of action, the compassionate course of action, the better course of action would have been to immediately invite her in to the ranch. It should have been done when this whole thing started. Listen to her."

Link (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/18/hagel.iraq/)

Kissinger finds parallels to Vietnam in Iraq
Former diplomat cites 'divisions in the United States'

Monday, August 15, 2005; Posted: 4:51 a.m. EDT (08:51 GMT)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/POLITICS/08/15/us.iraq/story.kissinger.file.jpg
Kissinger said the United States is battling to stop the spread of radical Islam.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An architect of the U.S. war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago said Sunday that he has "a very uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that damaged support for the conflict there are re-emerging in the 2-year-old war in Iraq.

"For me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

Support for the war has dropped in recent polls, and criticism of President Bush's handling of the conflict has grown. The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, taken Aug. 5-7, found that 54 percent of those surveyed thought the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

Kissinger said the United States faces a battle to halt the spread of radical Islam in Iraq, and it would be "a catastrophe for the whole world" if it fails.

Kissinger, who served as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said the United States should remove any troops that are not necessary to the American goal of stabilizing Iraq -- "But we cannot begin with an exit without having first defined what the objective is."

"If a radical government emerges in Baghdad or if any part of Iraq becomes what Afghanistan used to be, a training ground for terrorists, then this will be a catastrophe for the Islamic world and for Europe, much as they may -- reluctant as they may be to admit it -- and eventually for us."

U.S. losses have spiked sharply in August, with 54 Americans killed in Iraq since the beginning of the month. Iraq's transitional government faces a Monday deadline to present a proposed constitution for an October referendum, followed by elections for a permanent government.

President Bush poured cold water on talk of troop withdrawals last week, telling reporters at his Texas ranch that a premature withdrawal would send "a terrible signal to the enemy." He said U.S. troops are needed to train an Iraqi army and police force that can take responsibility for the country's security before they can leave.

But The Washington Post reported Sunday that the Bush administration "is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved" in Iraq.

Sen. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a harsh critic of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he agreed with that report.

"I think that the administration has significantly downgraded their expectations," said Biden, D-Delaware. "They have squandered about every opportunity to get it right."

Rumsfeld, Biden said, "should get his notice on Monday morning" after The New York Times reported that some U.S. troops in Iraq still do not have the body armor they need. If Rumsfeld worked for a corporation instead of the U.S. government, "He'd be fired by now," Biden said.

"It's frustrating, and it makes it hard to support this administration," he said.

Bush and other administration officials said the March 2003 invasion, which toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was needed to strip of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that it could provide to terrorists. Iraq was later determined to have abandoned its non-conventional weapons programs in the 1990s, though it had concealed some weapons-related research from U.N. inspectors.

The president now says establishing a stable, democratic Iraq will foster reforms in other Middle Eastern countries that will undercut support for terrorism.

More than 1,840 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the invasion. Most have been killed battling a persistent insurgency that followed the collapse of Saddam's regime.

Biden, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, predicted that a democratic Iraq "will not happen in my lifetime." He said he was hoping instead for Iraq to become a secure nation "that's basically a representative government" and poses no threat to its neighbors. But he opposed calls for a quick U.S. withdrawal.

"If we withdraw immediately now, we're going to end up with a haven for terror -- the very thing that didn't exist before, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in the middle of a region that is of vital interest to us," he said.

And Sen. John McCain, a leading member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the United States needs more troops in Iraq, not fewer.

"The day that I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmed car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day that I'll start considering withdrawals from Iraq," said McCain, R-Arizona, another possible presidential contender in 2008.

Sen. Richard Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said U.S. commanders do not have enough troops to keep insurgents from returning to towns that American forces have cleaned out.

"When the withdrawal occurs, sometimes the insurgents return, and this comes from the fact that we cannot leave forces behind. They are at a premium to find other places," said Lugar, R-Indiana. He said the U.S. attitude has been "to get by with a minimum of force," but that more is needed.

However, he called it "very unlikely" that more U.S. troops will be dispatched to Iraq. Instead, he said, American commanders need to focus on training enough Iraqis to replace U.S. forces.

Link (http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/15/us.iraq/index.html)

Terry
08-23-2005, 02:07 PM
There's always gonna be the possibility of terrorists still targeting the US, regardless of what happens in Iraq. The notion that conquering/overthrowing nations who don't agree with us is a logical way to crush external dissent against the US...am not buying it. Are we going to move onto Iran and N.Korea next?

Seems the very complaints the Bush Administration used as a rational for invading Iraq boil down to little more than the US conducting its own terrorist raid on another country to subject our beliefs and will on others. We see nothing from any senior administration officials that leads us to believe they even momentarily contemplated how America's own actions pre-9/11 helped breed the climate of strife against us from various Middle Eastern factions.

Seems to me our whole effort in Iraq is just perpetuating the cycle of violence and breeding more discontentment toward us from the rest of the world.