Off Topic · Bush reelected :-( (page 112)

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8-20-07: 442

Man, here I was worried that this site wasn't going to work on my computer anymore. I was calling around trying to get people to sign on and continue the update.

All is good now.
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http://www.correntewire.com/the_ugliest_...

The ugliest theory yet on why Rove left: He lost the battle on war with Iran to Cheney
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2007-08-22 09:03.

* Middle East Clusterfuck
* Department of War
* Bush
* Dick Cheney
* iran
* Karl Rove

Yeah, it’s like Kremlinology back in the day, isn’t it? Where a bunch of dour-looking** hatchet-faced old guys all in ruthless bureaucratic infighter costume would line up on the missile-reviewing stand in Red Square, and we’d try to figure out what was really going on by who was smiling, and who stood next to who. Good times. Why is that?

But let that pass. CIA analyst Ray McGovern’s hat is making that krinkly sound:

[Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity] member Phil Giraldi, writing in The American Conservative, earlier noted that Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, determined as Cheney seems to be to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran.

It seems a good bet that Rove, who is no one’s dummy and would not want to have to “spin” an unnecessary war on Iran, lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided to spend more time with his family.

As for White House spokesperson Pony BlowTony Snow, it seems equally possible that, before deciding he has to make more money, he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the task explaining why Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran.

One reason I like this theory—if “like” is the word I want—is that it explains the otherwise inexplicable simultaneous farewells of Rove and Snow.

So our former colleague, operations officer par excellence Robert Baer, reports (in this week’s Time) that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran, that Bush’s plan to put Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike, and that delusional “neoconservative” thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and rise of a more friendly Iran.

Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer’s sources tell him that administration officials are thinking that “as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Wait, can Bush do that? I mean, it’s not like the Democrat Party pre-capitulated and already passed the authorization for war with Iran, right? Oh, wait….

Readers? Is this theory plausible?

NOTE OK, our guys try to smile. But that’s only for the cameras.

Posted by Silverfuel:

Wow. You know some goon at Fox was just picking up film off the archive floor and decided, "Hey, this is good stuff. Let's use it again!"

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_re_as/vietnam_iraq_bush

War analogy strikes nerve in Vietnam

HANOI, Vietnam - President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

"Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?" said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. "Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. "Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way," Trieu said.

Vietnam's official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush's speech to American veterans Wednesday.

"With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. "And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people."

Dung said Vietnam hopes that the Iraq conflict will be resolved "very soon, in an orderly way, and that the Iraqi people will do their best to rebuild their country."

Although Vietnam opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Dung stressed that ties between Hanoi and Washington have been growing closer since the former foes normalized relations in 1995, two decades after the war's end.

In his remarks to U.S. veterans, Bush said a hasty retreat from Iraq would lead to terrible violence.

"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,'" Bush said.

Many people in Vietnam said Bush's comparison was ill-considered.

The only way to restore order in Iraq is for the United States to leave, said Trinh Xuan Thang, a university student.

"Bush sent troops to invade Iraq and created all the problems there," Thang said.

If the U.S. withdrew, he said, the violence might escalate in the short term but the situation would eventually stabilize.

"Let the Iraqis determine their fate by themselves," Thang said. "They don't need American troops there."

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly's committee on foreign affairs, said Bush was unwise to stir up sensitive memories of the Vietnam War.

"The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place," Ninh said.

Posted by MaTT4281:

Wow. You know some goon at Fox was just picking up film off the archive floor and decided, "Hey, this is good stuff. Let's use it again!"

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That would have been ok. What actually happens is that the administration tells FOX News what propaganda to push this month and thats what FOX News does. Most of those guys are Bush Admin guys! Scary! Lets just hope we bring our soldiers home and safe before they go to Iran.

[Edited by - Silverfuel on 08-24-2007 05:56 AM]

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"Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work."
- On CBS's 60 Minutes II; December 5, 2000

^ And they always get what they want.

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Have you guys heard of the Jesus Camp documentary? Basically shows the radical bible camps of the far right. Here is the clip from that documentary.

"The enemy would like nothing better than to see me cut short my vacation and get back to the White House," Mr. Bush told reporters. "They hate my freedom."
[url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/bush-refuses-to-set-timet_b_62826.html"]Article[/url]