Tag Archives: Saddam Hussein

International news, national news

Come clean with hacking info, Mr. President-elect

Oh, that Donald J. Trump.

He just cannot keep his trap shut. He now says he has information about the infamous election hacking that “others don’t know.”

I cannot stop thinking about the president-elect’s assertion a number of years ago that he had information about President Barack Obama’s place of birth that others didn’t know.

The birther in chief led the rumor monger parade in asserting that Barack Obama’s presidency was illegitimate. He said he had dispatched teams of spooks to Hawaii to learn the “truth” about the president’s place of birth; it wasn’t in Hawaii, the then-reality TV celebrity said.

It turned out that Trump had nothing. Zero. He was full of bull corn.

Now he has information about whether Russians hacked into our election system? That he knows things others don’t know? That our professional spies and intelligence officials don’t have the goods on the Russians?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-he-has-hacking-information-others-%e2%80%98don%e2%80%99t-know%e2%80%99/ar-BBxLW3t?li=BBnb7Kz

Trump keeps expressing skepticism about the CIA analysis, citing bogus intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction prior to the start of the Iraq War in 2003. Hmm. Has anyone suggested to Trump that the WMD “analysis” might have been forwarded by the neocons who comprised President Bush’s inner circle of advisers, that it didn’t come necessarily from the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency?

Stop teasing us, Mr. President-elect, with nutty notions that you’re smarter than the intelligence officers who are charged with keeping us safe from our adversaries.

national news, political news

Bush 41 voting for Hillary

bush

This probably isn’t nearly as spectacular a political story as some are making it out to be.

Still, it’s an important development in the presidential campaign of 2016.

Former President George H.W. Bush — aka Poppy Bush, Bush 41 and Bush the Elder — has told a member of a leading Democratic family that he’s going to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton over Republican Donald J. Trump.

The person who “outed” Bush 41 happens to be Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Maryland — and the eldest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

Sure, it’s an important story. President Bush is as “establishment Republican” as you can get. He served in many high-profile government capacities before being elected president in 1988. Now he’s going to vote for the wife of the man who defeated him for re-election in 1992. Bush’s forsaking of Trump’s candidacy speaks to the reluctance among many Republicans to back their party’s nominee.

But hold on. Is this a jaw-dropper? Hardly.

President Bush is a dedicated family man who loves his children more than life itself. When a politician attacks the kids, as Trump did this year en route to the GOP nomination, it’s only natural for Dad to take it personally.

Trump called former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “Low Energy Jeb” and chided him repeatedly for his failure to do better against Trump in the GOP primary campaign.

Then there is this: Trump said the younger President Bush — George W. — “lied” the country into going to war in Iraq. He accused W. of fabricating the pretext for taking out Saddam Hussein by saying he had “weapons of mass destruction” and that he was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Setting aside whether one believes Trump’s assertions about W.’s veracity — and they do ring true to me — it’s totally understandable that the first President Bush would hold those utterances against the man who made them.

With 49 days to go before the election, it remains to be seen whether Poppy’s plan to vote for Hillary will bring other disaffected establishment Republicans along.

As for George H.W. Bush’s apparent defection … I do get it.

International news, national news, political news

Trump calls for another un-American policy

trump

Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign is based essentially on his vow to “make America great again.”

If he means it — and I’m not entirely sure he does — then why on Earth does he keep making patently in-American foreign-policy proposals?

Here’s the latest one: The Republican presidential nominee wants to put all immigrants through an ideology test before they are allowed entry into the United States.

He would require customs and immigrations agents to quiz every immigrant seeking residence in the United States about their feelings on such issues as gay rights, gender equality and religious freedom.

If they answer the “right” way, they’re in. If not, they go back. Is that how it works?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-to-call-for-new-ideological-test-for-admission-to-us/ar-BBvD2lE?li=BBnb7Kz

We’ve already listened to Trump rail against Muslims while proposing to ban them from entering the United States. He’s called illegal Latin American immigrants rapists, murderers and drug dealers and wants to build a “beautiful wall” across our southern border to keep them out.

And, oh yes, he talks about all this under the theme of making America great again.

What utter horse manure!

He’s going to talk about a plan to discontinue “nation-building” as part of our foreign policy. I actually agree with that. Look what nation-building has brought us: continued bloodshed in Iraq after we toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein; more of the same in Afghanistan after we routed the Taliban from power after 9/11; Libya remains a mess.

But this idiotic notion of applying an ideological test to all immigrants seeks to throw a shroud over the beacon that draws immigrants to our land in the first place.

International news, national news, political news

Trump, Pence ignore a key element in ISIS’s creation

pence trump

Did I hear this correctly?

That Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are responsible for the horror that the Islamic State is bringing to the world? Did Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump assert such a thing today? And did I hear his vice-presidential running mate, Mike Pence, echo such rubbish?

I believe that’s the case.

So, I think it’s time to set the record straight. Wish me luck.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-pence-vp-225652

The responsibility for ISIS belongs primarily with former President George W. Bush, who in March 2003 decided to topple Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. We invaded Iraq with phony “evidence” that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. We got him and his Sunni government tossed out.

Oh, and what happened then?

A whole lot of Sunni Muslims became angry with our invasion and decided to strike back at the Iraqi government.

The Islamic State then came into being.

For Trump and Pence and other vocal critics of President Obama and Hillary Clinton to suggest that their policies have given rise to ISIS is a malicious lie.

The president inherited the troubles brought about by the Iraq War. They didn’t create them.

What can we expect, though. A presidential campaign is going to produce vastly overheated rhetoric from both sides.

Trump, with his penchant for attaching epithets such as “Lyin’ Ted” on his foes, is sure to hurl far more than his fair share of lies at Hillary Clinton.

He and his running mate did so again today.

International news

Trump gives love to … Saddam Hussein!

trump

Let’s see if this is correct.

Donald J. Trump says in one breath that Saddam Hussein was a “bad guy, OK?” and then heaps praise on the one-time tyrant because he killed terrorists without reading them their rights.

The Republican presidential candidate thinks the world would be better off if Saddam and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi were still in power.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-gives-saddam-hussein-a-shout-out/ar-AAi914h?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Gadhafi was pretty tough on his enemies, too, so I reckon he’d be getting some love from the Trumpenator if the moment presented itself.

Saddam Hussein brought zero redeeming quality to the world’s geopolitical situation. Do I agree with the decision to invade his country in 2003 on a phony pretext that he possessed weapons of mass destruction? No. But there can be nothing worth praising about the guy.

As for whether we’re tough enough in our war against international terror, I believe we’ve been quite ruthless in the hunt for Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other terrorists lurking in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Osama bin Laden’s corpse was dumped into the ocean after our commandos took him out. We’ve been launching drone strikes and manned air strikes daily against terrorists since we went to war with them after the 9/11 attacks.

Trump, though, is blathering utter nonsense if he thinks Saddam Hussein presented the model for fighting terrorists.

International news, media news, national news

El Chapo interview continues to provoke debate

photo

I heard a media analyst make an astonishing comparison this afternoon on National Public Radio.

The discussion on NPR was about actor Sean Penn’s interview — published in Rolling Stone — with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the despicable drug lord who was on the lam from his escape from a Mexican prison.

This analyst seemed to make a direct comparison between El Chapo and Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi, all of whom were interviewed by the media before they met their deaths.

Hmmm. There’s something of a difference here.

Hussein and Gadhafi were heads of state; bin Laden hadn’t been convicted of anything, even though the entire world knew of his involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Guzman was an escapee from a maximum-security prison. Mexican authorities had been scouring the country looking for him since his escape six months ago.

Penn’s access to this individual — whose drug activities have produced so much death and misery — was a function of his own celebrity status as an Oscar-winning film actor.

I keep coming back to what I believe is a central question: Doesn’t an American citizen such as Penn have an obligation to assist authorities in their search for a notorious drug dealer?

Sen. Marco Rubio was asked over the weekend to comment on the interview. The Republican presidential candidate said Penn is entitled to his First Amendment rights, but then he used a term with which I agree.

He called the interview “grotesque.”

 

International news

Blair apologizes for Iraq War … more or less

<> on April 7, 2015 in Sedgefield, England.

Tony Blair had me going there for a little while.

I thought the former British prime minister actually was going to say he was sorry for joining the parade into war with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Then he backed away.

Blair tempered his apology by saying it was not a mistake to get rid of Saddam, but then said he regrets following the faulty intelligence that persuaded his country and the United States that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

You know how it turned out. We invaded Iraq, tossed Saddam out, captured him, tried him, hanged him … all the while scouring Iraq for those WMD.

They weren’t there.

Am I glad Saddam Hussein is gone? Of course I am! The price we paid in thousands of American lives lost, however, was too great.

Blair’s almost-apology, though, does go a lot farther than President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever have done — or likely ever will do.

If only the U.S. brass would acknowledge the mistake. If only it acknowledge the war’s impact on the enabling of the Islamic State, the Sunni militant group that is waging war against the Shia government in Iraq.

That won’t happen. Instead, we hear from Cheney (mostly) about how they were right and how others, namely the Obama administration, have squandered all the progress we made in Iraq.

Well, the Iraq War was a war of choice.

Saddam Hussein was being contained within Iraq. He posed barely a fraction of the threat that he was said to pose.

And, oh yes. Let’s not forget that Saddam Hussein and his Baath party had nothing — zero — to do with the 9/11 attacks, which was another pretext that the Bush administration used to justify our invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I don’t expect an apology from the Bush administration. I was hoping one might be forthcoming from our allies across The Pond.

It came. Sort of …

 

International news

Cheney wrong on Iraq, but right on Iran?

cheney

Let me stipulate up front that I can be a bit slow on the uptake.

Having made that admission, I now must wonder aloud why the immediate past vice president of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, should be taken seriously when he criticizes the Iran nuclear deal.

Why question it? Because Vice President Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration national security team were woefully wrong about Iraq and the conditions that lured us into the Iraq War.

Yet, there he is, out there blasting the Iran nuclear deal while actually defending the decision to go to war in Iraq. Remember the weapons of mass destruction? Or that Saddam Hussein was working to develop a nuclear arsenal of his own? Or that we’d be greeted as “liberators” by the Iraqis?

Cheney and the rest of the Bush gang said all of that.

Now we are supposed to believe him when he assesses the Iran nuclear deal as presenting a far greater risk to the United States than the terrorists who hit us on 9/11.

Cheney was wrong in 2003. He’s wrong now.

But he stands firm on the rationale he, the president, the national security team and the secretary of state all presented to the world that, by golly, Saddam was going to present a threat to the entire world. We had to take him out, Cheney said.

We weren’t greeted as liberators. The WMD? Not a sign of it anywhere. Ditto for the Iraqi nuke program.

Mr. Vice President, your miscalculation — or perhaps it was a deception — on Iraq disqualifies you from speaking out against an agreement that has far greater chances for success than the misadventure you helped create in Iraq.

 

International news, military news

Say 'no' to U.S. ground troops in Iraq

Americans have been down this road already.

We invaded a sovereign nation. Tossed out its leader. Captured him. Tried and convicted him. Then we executed him.

Americans sought to help rebuild a government in our image, with mixed results.

All the while, nearly 5,000 of our young men and women died seeking to make Iraq a beacon of freedom and light in the Middle East.

Then we pulled out.

Obama: US not losing war against ISIS

Do we need to go back into a country and put “boots on the ground” in an effort to defeat the Islamic State, which wants to claim Iraq as its own?

No. Why? The country has no more stomach for additional loss of American life. We do not want to expend one more young life in a country into which we never should have entered in the first place.

President Obama says the United States is “not losing the war” against the Islamic State. He acknowledges “tactical setbacks” with ISIL’s taking of Ramadi, a key Iraqi city. But the air campaign will continue. We’ll continue to train Iraqi soldiers to fight the enemy on the ground. We’ll continue to provide intelligence to hunt down and kill ISIL leaders when and where we find them.

This fight continues to look as though it will take a long time to conclude. That, I submit, is the very nature of this new kind of “world war” in which we’re engaged.

Do we put our troops back onto the battlefield once again? No way.

 

International news

World is better without Saddam, but …

Marco Rubio said that thing that all of us know to be true.

The world, said the U.S. senator from Florida, “is a better place” without Saddam Hussein walking among us. He told Fox News Sunday that President George W. Bush made the right call in invading Iraq in March 2003, even though he acted on intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be faulty.

Presidents, said Rubio — who’s running for president himself — don’t have the benefit of hindsight when they make critical decisions.

Again, true enough, senator.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rubio-iraq-invasion-was-not-a-mistake/ar-BBjTt0s

But here’s the issue, as I see it — and no doubt others will see it differently:

The world would be a better place without a long list of sovereign leaders. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe comes to mind. So does North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. How about getting rid of Vladimir Putin in Russia? Other countries are ruled by tinhorn dictators and despots.

Is it our place to invade any of those other countries to get rid of evil rulers?

Rubio was standing behind his fellow Floridian, former Gov. Jeb Bush, who (now) famously told Fox’s Megyn Kelly he would have invaded Iraq, too, even with what we now know about the missing WMDs. Bush also, let’s add, is likely to run for president as well as Rubio and a host of other GOP candidates.

The problem with the Iraq War and the precedent it set is that we’ve now laid down a predicate for future efforts to rid the planet of evil men in high places.

The tough economic sanctions we had imposed on Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 had contained that madman. The invasion was unnecessary, costly and far more troublesome than any of the president’s inner circle led the nation to believe it would be.

Oh, and one more thing: Saddam Hussein had nothing, zero, to do with 9/11.

Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Sure it is. Is it a safer place because we got rid of him? Only if you discount the presence of the Islamic State.