Sep 25 2008 - Seattle PI
by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
From: President George W. Bush
To: President Jalal Talabani of Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al–Maliki, Speaker Mahmoud al–Mashadani
Dear Sirs,
I am writing you on a matter of grave importance. It's hard for me to express to you how deep the economic crisis in America is today. We are discussing a $1 trillion bailout for our troubled banking system. This is a financial 9/11. As Americans lose their homes and sink into debt, they no longer understand why we are spending $1 billion a day to make Iraqis feel more secure in their homes.
Jul 19 2008 - Washington Times
President Bush said Friday he will soon agree with the Iraqi government on a "general time horizon" for when U.S. troops will leave Iraq, a significant shift in White House policy that it said would nonetheless remain conditional based on events on the ground.
Jul 05 2008 - Times Union, Albany NY
Last week brought two images that we never thought we would ever witness. First there was television footage of a demolition in North Korea, as Pyongyang kept its promise to blow up a cooling tower at its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon. And then came a televised statement by President Bush that he was removing North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in response to Pyongyang's cooperation in dismantling its nuclear program.
All this without a shot being fired or single casualty. What happened last week was proof that diplomacy can work to defuse tensions, even tensions that place the West and enemy states on a collision course.
If only Mr. Bush had used diplomacy to force similar cooperation from Saddam Hussein. Perhaps then Iraq would never have become a battlefield that has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 American troops.
Editor's Comments:
How short their memory? Can they remember how much negotiation went forward before we attacked? It was a year or more of UN resolutions, negotiation, bluster, and yet nothing.
And how do you think this editorial would have been written if a Democrat had been President? This is media bias at its worst. bbm
Jun 19 2008 - Times Union, Albany NY
by James Kirchick
Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney –– then seeking the Republican presidential nomination –– not only recanted his support for the war but claimed he had been hoodwinked.
"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.
Romney had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.
Jun 05 2008 - Seattle PI
by PATRICK COCKBURN
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq.
Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which U.S. troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
Mar 30 2008 - Seattle PI
by ANN MCFEATTERS
WASHINGTON –– We were rudely reminded the other day that President Bush is still in office.
While we were worrying about Barack Obama's relationship with his strange preacher, Hillary Rodham Clinton's strange misremembering about being under sniper fire in the Balkans when she clearly was not, and whether John McCain wants to bomb Iran, Bush was trying to figure out how to mark –– celebrate? –– the five–year anniversary of the Iraq War.
He went to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, the state that gave him the margin of victory in 2004, and said it is hard to believe that it was "only five years ago" that the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. World War II ended sooner than that.
Editor's Comments:
And the Cold War lasted for 40 years and trust me, we are in a 100 year war with Islamic extremists. So 5 years is nothing. And retreating will be a disaster. bbm
Mar 28 2008 - Town Hall
by Amanda Carpenter
President Bush said military success has led to a better quality of life in Iraq in an address Thursday morning.
“The surge is yielding major changes in Iraqi political life,” Bush said at the Wright–Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
Sep 07 2007 - Times Union, Albany NY
President Bush finds himself at odds with one more defector from his increasingly lonely world, where he's always on the right course in Iraq.
This critic, though, is a hardliner like the President –– on the war itself, that is. But then even the loyalists have to get their facts down pat. No revisionists welcome.
L. Paul Bremer, after all, was the top U.S. envoy to Iraq in 2003 and 2004. He's not about to quietly sit back and read about how Mr. Bush wanted to keep intact what had been Saddam Hussein's army just two months after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
Sep 07 2007 - Town Hall
by Oliver North
WASHINGTON –– The commander in chief's surprise Labor Day visit to Iraq has buoyed our troops, reassured an anxious ally and confounded America's adversaries in radical Islam. Whether the president's on–site evaluation will change the political dynamic in Washington or alter the behavior of Iraq's neighbors remains to be seen.
For several months now, this column has urged President Bush to put Iraq on his travel itinerary. This week's six–hour visit to the front –– his third since U.S. troops entered Mesopotamia in March 2003 –– is particularly important to the upcoming congressional debate on the future of our commitment to a stable and independent Iraq. His trip comes just one week before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, are scheduled to testify before Congress with their assessments of the war effort thus far.
Sep 06 2007 - Investor's Business Daily
by EUGENE ROBINSON
Good morning, Vietnam. The most fascinating aspect of George W. Bush's no–holds–barred campaign to keep Congress from meddling in his foolish and tragic war is the way he has begun invoking the Vietnam War ? not as a cautionary lesson about hubris and futility but as a reason to push ahead (whatever "ahead" might mean) in Iraq.
Say what you want about the man, but he's full of surprises ? and I'm not talking about the unannounced visit he made Monday to Anbar province.
Sep 05 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle
by Sheryl Gay Stolberg
As lawmakers in Washington debate the future of his troop buildup in Iraq, President Bush flew halfway around the world and wound up with an endorsement from at least one leader who supports his policy: Australian Prime...
Sep 04 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle
by Julian E. Barnes
President Bush made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Monday and held out the possibility that some U.S. troops might be withdrawn if security gains made in one part of the country can be spread to other areas. However,...
Sep 03 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle
President makes surprise war zone visit to argue that his troop buildup is succeeding.
Sep 01 2007 - Washington Times
President Bush huddled with top military leaders about the Iraq war yesterday, and Pentagon officials defended efforts to rid the Iraqi national police of sectarian bias and corruption, even as an independent review found the force too tainted to continue.
Sep 01 2007 - Town Hall
by Diana West
History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself –– "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case –– a flawed case –– for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among them, he said). But he mostly argued that American involvement over time across the Far East had ushered in post–war peace and prosperity, and that this demonstrated "a precedent for the hard and necessary work we're doing" in Iraq.
Aug 26 2007 - Times Union, Albany NY
by THOMAS FRIEDMAN
DOHA, Qatar –– One thing that has always baffled me about the Bush team's war effort in Iraq and against al–Qaida is this: How could an administration that was so good at Swift–boating its political opponents at home be so inept at Swift–boating its geopolitical opponents abroad?
How could the Bush team Swift–boat John Kerry and Max Cleland –– authentic Vietnam war heroes, whom the White House turned into surrendering pacifists in the war on terror –– but never manage to Swift–boat Osama bin Laden, a genocidal monster, who today is still regarded in many quarters as the vanguard of anti–American "resistance."
Aug 25 2007 - Town Hall
by Michael McBride
Much has been made about President Bush's recent comments comparing the known fallout in SE Asia after our precipitous withdrawal from the Vietnam War ? genocide in Cambodia, re–education camps and mass exodus from South Vietnam. And yet defeatists continue to use the Vietnam War as their case for comparison and the foundation for their call for immediate withdrawal.
Because they are defeatists, they ignore the better comparison, Korea, and choose Vietnam and its unspoken message of defeat.
Aug 25 2007 - Times Union, Albany NY
by Cynthia Tucker
It takes world–class chutzpah for President Bush to raise the specter of Vietnam in the debate over Iraq, but raise it he did. You've got to give it to the guy: He has nerve.
As a young man of draft age during the Vietnam years, Bush avoided combat by signing up for the Texas Air National Guard. And there is a persuasive body of evidence indicating that he couldn't even be bothered to fulfill those obligations. While he managed to get a transfer to an Alabama National Guard unit –– apparently so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of an Alabama Republican –– several acquaintances from the period don't remember his showing up for his Guard assignments. Nor has the President produced paperwork to confirm that he did.
Aug 24 2007 - Times Union, Albany NY
What did President Bush mean, exactly, when he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday that Iraq could be "free"? The implication that the attainment of such freedom requires perseverance, though others might say stubbornness, reminiscent of that in Vietnam is unsettling.
