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As reported yesterday, the US President stated on television that Iraq had nothing to do with 911. It is also clear that there were never any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam has been captured and is on trial.

And yet, despite all of this, Bush is still insisting that the US continue occupying Iraq, as reported yesterday:

“Any sign that says we’re going to leave before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists,” he said at a press conference. “We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president. That would be a huge mistake.” (Source: Yahoo News: Bush Faces Revolt on Iraq)

What “terrorists”? Iraq had nothing to do with 911. Bush is recorded on tape as saying so himself. And if we compare events in the US with events in Iraq - who is terrorizing who? Who are the real terrorists here? Who are the aggressors? Who is the one who has attacked and occupied another country?

So, Bush wants to “stay the course” in Iraq, even though it is clear that Iraq was, and is continuing to be, attacked without any reason. Or rather, without any reason that normal people would consider a “good reason” - i.e. self-defense. Iraq had nothing to do with 911. Iraq was not going to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was not a threat. And yet, the US attacked and occupied Iraq. Why?

Greed. A hunger for oil and money and control. And a twisted logic that states that preemptive attacks are legitimate against those who are not “with you” - i.e. those who are not good little girls and boys and do what the US tells them to do. As a result of this, Iraq has been decimated and thousands have died, and are still dying at the time of this writing.

It is becoming so obvious now that even some of Bush’s fellow republicans are beginning to change their tune regarding Iraq.

But more than a few politicians and commentators once firmly in Bush’s camp have joined the doubters on the war, which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of more than 2,600 US troops.

Republican Representative Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record), who once helped rename French fries “freedom fries” in anger at Paris’s opposition to the conflict, reversed course in June 2005 and urged Bush to set a withdrawal timetable.

Michael Fitzpatrick, another Republican representative who backed the March 2003 invasion, has reportedly branded both his Democratic rival — a decorated Iraq war veteran who supports a US redeployment — and Bush as “extreme.”

“Congressman Fitzpatrick says no to both extremes: No to
President Bush’s ’stay-the-course’ strategy, … and no to Patrick Murphy’s ‘cut-and-run’ approach,” said a Fitzpatrick campaign flier described in the Washington Times.

Moderate Republican Christopher Shays, who backed the use of force to oust
Saddam Hussein, told the Washington Post last week that he would propose a time frame for a US withdrawal from Iraq. […]

(Source: Yahoo News: Bush Faces Revolt on Iraq)

Will any of this sway the US President, even if the opposition grows? It is doubtful. As he said himself: “We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president.”

Well, with any luck, that won’t be for very much longer - and hopefully, it will be before too many more people are slaughtered on the altar of greed and power.

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The folks over at thinkprogress.org reported the following earlier this week. So the question arises - what in the world is the US doing in Iraq?

Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

President Bush was in the midst of explaining how the attacks of 9/11 inspired his “freedom agenda” and the attacks on Iraq until a reporter, Ken Herman of Cox News, interrupted to ask what Iraq had to do with 9/11. “Nothing,” Bush defiantly answered. Watch it.

[VIDEO CLIP]

To justify the war, Bush informed Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with “continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited “evidence” cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was “pretty well confirmed” that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers.

More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impression that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11. Only after the Iraq war began did Bush candidly acknowledge that Iraq was not operationally linked to 9/11.

Full transcript:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org: Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

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This just in from Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.com:

Cheney’s Plan: Nuke Iran

A recent poll shows six in ten Americans think a new world war is coming: the same poll says about 50 percent approve of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Somewhat inexplicably, about two-thirds say nuking those two cities was “unavoidable.” One can only wonder, then, what their reaction will be to this ominous news, revealed in a recent issue of The American Conservative by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi:

“The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

Two points leap out at the reader – or, at least, this reader – quite apart from the moral implications of dropping nukes on Iran. The first is the completely skewed logic: if Iran has nothing to do with 9/11-II, then why target Tehran? As in Iraq, it’s all a pretext: only this time, the plan is to use nuclear weapons. We’ll wipe out the entire population of Iran’s capital city because, as Paul Wolfowitz said in another context, “it’s doable.”

The other weird aspect of this “nuke Iran” story is the triggering mechanism: a terrorist attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11. While it is certain that our government has developed a number of scenarios for post-attack action, one has to wonder: why develop this plan at this particular moment? What aren’t they telling us?

I shudder to think about it.

The more I look at it, and the more I think of it, the more I sense a monumental evil casting its shadow over the world, and I have to tell you, it makes me wonder how much more time I want to spend on this earth. In my more pessimistic moments, I doubt whether we can avoid the horrific fate that seems to await us just around the next corner, the next moment, looming over the globe like a gigantic devil stretching its wings and blotting out the sun.

It seems to me that the question of whether life is really worth living anymore is inextricably bound up with the question of whether or not these madmen can be stopped. If not, then the only alternative is to live it up while we can and laugh defiantly in the face of the apocalypse. Why write columns, why comment at all, if we can’t have any effect on the outcome? […]

Read full article here.

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By Joey Picador at JusticeForNone

One of our neighbors is moving. I’ve been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn’t really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he’s like 85 years old - I don’t know exactly, but he’s old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, “Back to Germany.”

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.

“No,” he answered me. “I’m going back because I’ve seen this before.” He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler’s government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority “as if they were starved for it” (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, “I will pray for your family and your country.” He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he’s seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them.

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