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Protecting our country I am sure is a fulltime job, and I will bet that it isn’t an easy one either. I think that this is true considering the problems that President Clinton had doing so in his eight years in the white house. I am not being facetious in the least with this statement considering the terrorist attacks that had occurred on his watch and his only one time apparent response to these attacks as well.
Let’s take a look at the things that had happened to our country while President Clinton was in office too. We had the first World Trade Center bombing, which had happened on our own soil. There was the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia against our military personnel there as well as the USS Cole bombing in Yemen. We also had two US embassies attacked and bombed in Africa by Al Qaeda.
I am sure that after a long and intensive deliberation that a missile strike against an aspirin factory in the country of Sudan was an appropriate response for our President considering all of the attacks and subsequent deaths of American citizens that had occurred. I am also sure that having been offered custody of Bin Laden no less than three times and refusing them all was the right thing for our President to do too.
As a matter of international public record we all know what President Bush had to contend with after the 2000 election, which he won. He had to deal with the dreadful 4 pronged attack that occurred on September 11th, 2001 against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and an almost hit on the White House that resulted in a commercial airliner going down in a field in Pennsylvania. In total more than 3000 American lives were lost
Along the way he also had to deal with a rogue criminal regime who threatened the world with WMD’s, (weapons of mass destruction) and the faulty intelligence from many sources around the world that had placed them there. Of course President Clinton had degraded our own intelligence services abilities to gather real time and excellent intelligence, but Saddam Hussein didn’t happen on his watch.
All during President Bush’s two terms in office he fought two wars. One against terrorism and a government who supported it in Afghanistan, and another against a rogue despotic regime that threatened its neighbors with unimaginable horrors and that had documented ties to terrorist groups. President Bush did everything that he could and thought necessary to fight these animals and protect our nation and people.
Of course now we have as our President Barack Hussein Obama who won the 2008 Presidential election handily. Since his election he has sought the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. He is also pursuing investigations and possible prosecutions of CIA personnel who had conducted interrogations that gave us excellent intelligence against the terrorists and stopped many more attacks against us both here and abroad.
Obama has also made overtures to rogue nations that support terrorism, such as Iran. He has also shown almost no support for Israel and its right to defend itself against the wolves that are at their door day in and day out. He even gave his first televised speech to a Muslim audience on their turf and in their press identifying himself as one of them. He also is losing the ground President Bush had gained in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Last but not least his domestic policies are a clear and present danger to our national security as well.
Now I will tell you that when it comes to the defense of our nation and people I want protection that we can believe in instead of just rhetoric. I don’t think that President Obama has given us anything else but rhetoric. As far as Bush goes you may or may not like him, but he took no B.S. from anyone when it came to defending this country from its enemies and did everything he thought necessary to kick butt. It is unfortunate for us though that he couldn’t defeat our enemies in congress like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
That is all from Simple Man Politics for this week, but I will be back next week with more. Have a great day and an awesome weekend my friends CIAO4NOW!!!!!
Hello everyone and welcome to my last post of the week. I hope you all are really getting something out of what I’m doing here. Since Wednesday was part one of the war on terror in Afghanistan, it is now time for part two of the war on terror in Iraq. Let’s get this thing done…we are burning daylight.
The Iraq war, also known as the Second Gulf War, began March 20, 2003. The invasion led by the US, UK, and troops by other nations as a multinational coalition. The purpose of the invasion was the removal of Saddam Hussein from power and regime change for the Iraqi people. While removing Saddam Hussein from power proved relatively easy stabilizing the country and securing it proved quite difficult due to unrest among the various peoples of Iraq as well as the emergence of foreign fighters including Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Amongst the excuses for entering into the war in Iraq was the idea that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, (weapons of mass destruction) and/ or had operating programs for production of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and that these weapons posed an imminent threat to the security of the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. This was supported by intelligence from a variety of nations including British Intelligence. There was also intelligence from Russia linking Iraq with terrorism, and Germany supplied intelligence in preparation for the war. It has been concluded that neither Russian, nor German intelligence confirmed the presence of WMD in Iraq. Weapons inspectors also found no evidence of WMD, and the Iraq Survey Group determined that Iraq’s WMD programs ended in 1991 and that there were no active programs at the time of the invasion.
Another reason for the invasion was the accusations made by some US officials that Saddam Hussein was harboring and supporting Al Qaeda and the support of families of Palestinian suicide bombers. No proof of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda has been proven to have existed. Other reasons for the invasion include Iraq’s human rights abuses and Iraq’s oil reserves.
Both of our Presidential candidates have very different views of how to deal with Iraq. John McCain believes that the surge in Iraq has worked and advocates’ staying there until the war is won, and supported the war from the onset. Barack Obama says he has been against the war from the beginning, and advocates a 16 month timeline for troop withdrawal. There is even a side by side comparison of the two men on their positions for how to deal with Iraq.
Regardless of how any of you may feel about the war in Iraq and the reasons for us being there we are there now. While intelligence and investigation has proved there were no WMD in Iraq at the time of the invasion, we know that at one time Saddam Hussein possessed WMD as evidenced by intelligence, photographical, and eye witness accounts of the use of WMD by the Iraqi government against the Kurds in the north, and against his own people right in the heartland of his nation. We also know from one of his top generals, Georges Sada, that WMD elements were relocated outside of Iraq and into Syria prior to the invasion. As far as harboring Al Qaeda goes, even if he didn’t harbor Al Qaeda, he had some relationship with terrorist organizations because their camps were found in the north of Iraq after the invasion of Iraq was completed. These camps were used to train, equip, and finance terrorists.
There is no mistaking the fact that Saddam Hussein was a bad man, and the world is better off with out him and his Baathist regime in power. We also know that while the initial invasion and deposition of the Iraqi government was successful, we also know that violence and atrocities like Abu Ghraib as well as abuses against its own citizens were the rule rather than the exception for quite some time after the invasion. However with the success of the surge of 2007 and the fact that the Iraqi people and their own government are finally starting to take over their own country and appreciate their new national identity as fragile as it is. I don’t see how we can just up and leave and run the risk of the whole Iraq experiment in democracy becoming an absolute failure.
That is all I have to say on the subject of the Iraq war right now. As usual I can only find the facts and present them to you; you still have to decide for yourself where you stand. Have an awesome weekend, and I will see all of you right here next week, CIAO4NOW!!!!!
