Do you ever marvel at the audacity of the Bush administration. I do. Almost every day. Take Tony Snow, for example.
On the first day of the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, a former Fox News Channel anchor, made a speech in which he argued that terrorists were to blame for the Global War on Terror, not the United States.
We got attacked by some terrorists, if that is what Tony Snow means. They were 19 angry men, organized by college educated European immigrants into four deadly suicide missions. The organizers had gone to Afghanistan and met with Usama bin-Laden. They were allegedly put up to their plot by a man named Khalid Sheihh Mohammed (KSM). KSM is in our custody now. He’s been so thoroughly tortured that he could never be put on trial. This group attacked us, according to them, because of our military presence in the Middle East (particularly our bases in Saudi Arabia and our embargo of Iraq). They also opposed our policies in the Israel-Palestine conflict. This group also had, by 9/11, recruited and trained a lot of men. Our job, after 9/11, was to punish as many of the people responsible for the terrorist attack as we could identify, make corrections to our homeland security, and then figure out how to counteract the appeal of these groups, so they would atrophy over time. There was a global aspect to this. But it not the relatively small and stateless group of al-qaeda affiliated groups that declared a global war on terror. The President did that. In doing so, he defined a war on a tactic, assuring his own defeat. He then set out to create more enemies that would seek revenge and seek to do us harm.
We didn’t attack ourselves. But we did create the global war on terror…as a concept and as a failed strategy.
Speaking at the Omni Shoreham Hotel’s Regency Ballroom in Washington DC, the presidential advisor said, “We didn’t create the war in Iraq. We didn’t create the war on terror.”
This is such a tricky one. Who is meant by ‘we’ here? It’s true that the United States did not invade Kuwait. It’s true that it wasn’t this administration that told Saddam ‘we have no interest in your Arab-Arab disputes’ and then turned around and told him that we did have a problem with his Arab-Arab disputes. It’s true that it wasn’t this administration that got us bogged down in a thankless and interminable containment policy in Iraq. But it was this administration that created this war in Iraq. There is a guy on trial for perjury right now that was one of the chief creators.
Snow also vowed that the US would “capture terrorists hiding out in their caves and their spider holes, tapping away on keyboards.”
How comforting.
According to The Right Angle, one of twenty-five blogs which received credentials for the conference, Snow “received a standing ovation following his speech.”
“His message for conservatives was simple: take off the dark-colored glasses ‘because we’ve got a lot of work to do,'” Ivy J. Sellers blogs. “The world is watching and waiting, Snow told the crowd, and ‘when we win…the rest of the world’s going to say, “We want to be like (sic) American.””
How delusional. We cannot and will not win because we have chosen a strategy that is morally, tactically, and strategically doomed. Never before have so many not wanted to be like an American. But, stand up and cheer. This kind of chutzpah and ostrich-like thinking is worthy of a standing ovation.
More appeasment for the lunatic base.
Now that you have nicely outlined the history, nature, and identity of the 9/11 attackers, it is important to note that in direct response to those horrific attacks, the Bush admin in Iraq inadvertently forced the reins of power into the bloodied hands of men from Al-Dawa (Al-Maliki) and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Al-Hakim).
Prior to 2003, Al-Dawa was a well-know terrorist organization from which Hizbollah grew forth.
Al-Dawa has killed Marines.
Naturally, Al-Dawa’s terrorist past has not recd any M$M coverage.
Here are a few excerpts from the past:
1) Large Turnout Reported For 1st Iraqi Vote Since ’58 The Washington Post, June 21, 1980
In another development today, Al Dawa, a clandestine Iraqi fundamentalist Moslem organization, claimed responsibility for yesterday’s grenade attack on the British Embassy here in which three gunmen reportedly were killed.
An Al Dawa spokesman told Agence France-Presse by phone that the attack was a “punitive operation against a center of British and American plotters.”
2) Iraq Keeps a Tight Rein on Shiites While Bidding to Win Their Loyalty The Washington Post, November 30, 1982
Membership in Dawa, which means “the call,” is punishable by execution. Dawa guerrillas were known for hurling grenades into crowds during religious ceremonies, and attacks claimed by the party were frequent until the middle of 1980.
3) U.S. HAS LIST OF BOMB SUSPECTS, LEBANESE SAYS Detroit Free Press, October 29, 1983
The source said the drivers of the two bomb-laden trucks were blessed before their mission by Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Dawa Party, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim splinter group.
4) SHULTZ SEES LINK BETWEEN BEIRUT, KUWAIT ATTACKS OFFICIALS IDENTIFY MAN WHO DROVE TRUCK BOMB, The Miami Herald, December 14, 1983
Secretary of State George Shultz said Tuesday that there “quite likely” was a link between the U.S. Embassy bombing in Kuwait and attacks on American facilities in Lebanon. He warned of possible retaliation.
(snip)
The sources said the investigators matched the prints on the fingers with those on file with Kuwaiti authorities and
tentatively identified the assailant as Raed Mukbil, an Iraqi automobile mechanic who lived in Kuwait and was a member of Hezb Al Dawa, a fundamentalist Iraqi Shiite Moslem group based in Iran.
5) KUWAIT NABS 10 SHIITES IN BOMBINGS 7 IRAQIS, 3 LEBANESE ‘ADMIT’ TERROR ATTACKS
The Miami Herald, December 19, 1983
Kuwait Sunday announced the arrests of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in the terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last week at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.
(snip)
Hussein said fingerprints from the driver who died in the blast at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait identified him as Raad Akeel al Badran, an Iraqi mechanic who lived in Kuwait and belonged to the Dawa party.
6) 10 Pro-Iranian Shiites Held in Kuwait Bombings, The Washington Post December 19, 1983
Kuwait announced yesterday the arrest of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last Monday at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.
“All 10 have admitted involvement in the incidents as well as participating in planning the blasts,” Abdul Aziz Hussein, minister of state for Cabinet affairs, told reporters after a Cabinet session, United Press International reported.
Hussein said the seven Iraqis and three Lebanese were members of the Al Dawa party, a radical Iraqi Shiite Moslem group with close ties to Iran.
7) Beirut Bombers Seen Front for Iranian-Supported Shiite Faction, The Washington Post, January 4, 1984
The terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S. Marine compound and the French military headquarters here may be a front for an exiled Iraqi Shiite opposition party based in Iran, in the view of a number of Arab and western diplomatic sources.
Authorities in Kuwait say their questioning of suspects in the recent bombing there of the U.S. and French embassies indicates a clear link between Islamic Jihad, a shadowy group that says it carried out the Beirut attacks, and Al Dawa Islamiyah, the main source of resistance to the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Al Dawa (The Call) has been outlawed in Iraq, where it wants to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state to replace the secular Baath Socialist government of Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Moslem.
It draws its strength from the large Shiite population in southern Iraq. Thousands of its most militant members were expelled to Iran in 1980 before the outbreak of the Iranian-Iraqi war and joined Al Dawa there. But it also has a large following in Lebanon among Iraqi exiles and sympathetic Lebanese Shiites.
While Al Dawa operates out of Tehran, it is not clear whether its activities abroad are under direct Iranian control or merely have Iran’s tacit acceptance.
8)Baalbek Seen As Staging Area For Terrorism, The Washington Post, January 9, 1984
Al Dawa, according to Arab and western sources, is believed to have had a role in the Oct. 23 suicide bomb attacks on the U.S. Marine and French military compounds in Beirut.
9) Message From Iran Triggered Bombing Spree In Kuwait, The Washington Post, February 3, 1984
Al Dawa, for example, is no household name in the United States.
But it is a name important to this story.
It leads us back to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the ruling figure in Iran; to Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the militant Lebanese Shiite leader who has been implicated–despite his denials–in the Marine and French bombings in Beirut; to Hussein Musawi, Fadlallah’s strong-arm lieutenant; to the Hakim brothers in Iran and their connections to the Middle East terrorism industry.
They were 19 angry men, organized by college educated European immigrants into four deadly suicide missions.
Just a little correction, many of the organizers were in fact also the perpetrators and they were mostly foreign students with foreign citizenship studying at European Universities, not European immigrants.
Andrew Sullivan’s Quote of the Day find is most appropriate here.
Tony Snow was appropriately selected…to continue with the Snow job
We certainly did attack ourselves and we continue to drive planes into the very foundations which once made this nation great.
Radical Muslims are not responsible for the offensive propaganda of MSM news. They are not responsible for the scripting of events and “debates” of politics aimed at the mean mental age of, well let’s say 12 years old.
Jihadists are not responsible for American’s total lack of knowledge about what is happening in the world outside of Iraq or blond bimbos of the Bahamas.
Not incompetence, no it’s not and it’s not about balls either. It is however 1939 and yes we are in Berlin.