From Powell gives bleak assessment of Iraq security problems, by Guy Dinmore in Washington for the Financial Times, January 13 2005:
According to Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and head of the independent Middle East Policy Council, Mr Bush recently asked Mr Powell for his view on the progress of the war. “We’re losing,” Mr Powell was quoted as saying. Mr Freeman said Mr Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave.
Or, directly from Mr. Freeman’s mouth, by way of the transcript of his appearance at the recent Capitol Hill Conference Series on U.S. Middle East Policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on “Terror”, January 11, 2005:
Anyway, the other day I understand that someone went into the Oval Office – someone known to everybody here, a rather senior person who is on his way out of the administration – and was asked by the president what was going on in Iraq, and said, with his characteristic bluntness, we’re losing – and was asked to leave the office forthwith and not continue the discussion.
So there’s a question about what is going on in Iraq, and perhaps the competition between reality-based analysis, much disparaged in Washington these days, and hallucinatory optimism, which is the alternative.
5 replies on “You can’t handle the truth!”
bad news= media lies
That is what we’ve been told over and over by the Bush administration. To challenge his authority is to challenge god himself. That’s the problem with declaring that you have a religious mandate, no one can tell you otherwise.
to most people there are giant, obvious mortal problems when one refuses to recognize the religious edicts declared by an enemy that sees you as less than human.
i defy anyone to quote a speech by President Bush or any of his cabinet that declares muslims or arab people as LESS than human, or subservient to their world domination like those of militant Islam that strive to re establish the caliphate state and kill non muslims.
at this point of the world conflict, lets recognize moderate muslim’s reaction to a war waged in their name – silence.
silence is complicity at this point.
our administration is allowing the poeple of the Iraq and Afghanistan to have a say in the future of their nation. that is more than anyone in the world has ever given them a chance at.
one must wonder what has infected the minds of free people in the western world to stand behind the jihadis and their violent intolerance that targets women and children, aims to use banned chemical and biological weapons and has broken every law of the geneva convention more than any combatant to ever fight on the face of the planet.
the critics and media of the western world are like spoiled brats raised in a rich home who live joyless lives because they have never attained anything themselves and they harbor animosity at their providing parents for their own failure.
the defeatism you sow emboldens and strengthens an enemy who wants you dead.
foolishness defined.
“Smoke them out of their holes” – Implies gophers, which are less than human.
“lets recognize moderate American’s reaction to a war waged in their name – silence.
silence is complicity at this point.”
The war is not between the West and Muslims it is secularists versus all kinds of fundamentalists. What freedoms do the terrorists hate if not our secular freedoms? Freedoms of sex and body the right wing is trying to take away. In the end will alcohol be the only freedom which differentiates us? And yet will the slaughter continue of drunk versus sober. No doubt. Furthermore the caliphate does not murder all non-Muslims (infidels I call them) it offers them choices; conversion, taxation (for Christians and Jews), or death. Not much but decidedly more than the crusaders and inquisition offered.
Furthermore I don’t think anyone really objects to a conflict against Islamo-Fascism they just think that it could be competently prosecuted if it were not run by Christo-Fascists (Falangists I call them). Stupidity, graft, and incompetence will not protect us from terrorism. Bush and his cell are running this country and this war like Chiang Kai Shek and we all know how well that worked.
“Not much but decidedly more than the crusaders and inquisition offered.”
ummm, whats the statute of limitations on past conflicts? i think its usaully about 200 years at least.
if you want it more flexible, then i want reparations for the oppression my irish ancestors suffered at the hands of Oliver Cromwell.
Horns: Incoherent.