More Baloney from Bush: State of the Union Speech
by James Buchanan
As usual, Bush pushed the notion that occupying Iraq has something to do with fighting terrorism. In the real world, the Iraqi rebels are nationalists, who want the foreign occupation troops out of their country. Only a small minority of the rebels are not from Iraq. One article notes “Two new studies… ‘painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States’ have found that most foreign fighters in Iraq were not terrorists before the Iraq war, but were ‘radicalized by the war itself.’ ”
Bush said that men like bin Laden and al Zarqawi would take over Iraq if we pulled out right now. First this is a complete lie. Most likely, one of the religious mullahs such as al Sistani or Moqtada al Sadr would take over. Second, it is none of our business who runs Iraq. The US president does not have the authority to pick and choose who runs which country. A civil war will probably break out if we leave Iraq, but there would be one big improvement: No US soldiers would be dying in that civil war. The Iraqis would be fighting amongst themselves to sort our their future, which is exactly what will happen if we pull our troops out right now, two years from now or ten years from now.
The war against Iraq was wrong. The claim that the war is “attracting terrorists” is yet another attempt to justify the war after the fact. Besides, we already had a war going in Afghanistan, which should have been “attracting terrorists.” It doesn’t matter if a few foreign fighters have turned up in Iraq. That doesn’t excuse the pre-war lies. If the United States invaded Belgium for no good reason, we would probably encounter a few foreign fighters while occupying that country too.
Bush also babbled on about how important it was to keep fighting the Iraq War for our freedom. Meanwhile, Secret Service agents had arrested Cindy Sheehan just before the president’s speech for wearing a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan on it. Apparently the presidency has grown so arrogant that any display of dissent during the state of the union speech no matter how low key is no longer tolerated.
Bush rambled on about a list of other things, he clearly didn’t care about or understand such as alternative energies to oil and incentives for new technology.
Curiously, Bush didn’t mention several issues of great importance to most Americans, so I’ll mention them here for him:
1).Osama is still out there sending out tapes.
2).The quagmire in Iraq is getting worse. Three helicopters were lost in January and one Abrams tank in December.
3).Ford and GM may be going out of business. Ford is laying off 30,000 people.
4).Buying a House is unaffordable for most Americans
5).Gas prices are still ridiculously high
6).Good American jobs are still being outsourced. Dell just announced that it’s creating 5,000 jobs in India. Kraft recently announced a lay off of 8,000.
7).Racial quotas are still the law in America. White people have been second class citizens for two generations.
8).Illegal aliens are still flooding across the border. These people cause billions in taxes for Americans since free medical care must be provided for all illegals and free education for their children is mandated by our government.
9).Hamas just won the big election in Palestine.
10).Radical, pro-Iranian factions got the most votes in Iraq