Like I said, a great speech but the Repugs are dumbasses, proof within hours …
Rep. Peter King on Obama’s speech on terror: “The tone was wrong” plus [transript]
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Lethal, yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates, threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad, home-grown extremists, this is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously and do all that we can to confront them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: A major speech in the war on terror today from President Obama. In a sweeping address, the president defended the use of drones and also vowed to fight violent extremists that target and threaten America. All this comes a day after the horrific terror attack in London, where two men nearly beheaded a British soldier.
With me now is Congressman Peter King, member of the Homeland Security Committee. Congressman, thank you for joining me. What is your reaction to the president’s speech today?
REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: Piers, basically I agree with a lot of what the president’s done in recent years, but the tone of today’s speech I just thought was wrong. For instance, he’s really declaring almost the end of the war against terrorism long before it’s over. In many ways, al Qaeda is more dangerous now than it was prior to September 11th.
For him to be stepping back and saying he’s going to be somehow reducing the level of drone attacks, that he’s going to be releasing more prisoners from Guantanamo, when already we have released the — basically anyone who could be released has been. What’s held back now are the worst of the worst. And 30 percent of those that we’ve released up until now have come back against us.
So I just think the tone of it was wrong. Also, Piers, maybe I’m saying this from a patriotic instinct or whatever. When I hear the president of the United States talk about torture and his own men and women who really were sacrificing, doing what had to be done to protect us after 9/11, and to casually use a word like torture, that would be like someone saying drone attacks are murder. In either event, it’s wrong. It’s the wrong terminology to use.
GOP’s Chambliss: Obama speech will be ‘viewed by terrorists as victory’
“In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of civilians died in a war where the boundaries of battle were blurred. In Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the courage and discipline of our troops, thousands of civilians have been killed.”
Quite comprehensive speech on Obama policy which deserves to be read over and over. A speech no Republican could or would ever been able to write. Their dumbass loyalists just wouldn’t understand the clear English message. Even now, Republicans in Congress won’t appreciate the essence of this excellent speech.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. No word in this speech about our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia or other Arab authoritarian regimes in the Gulf states, and the role they play in the war on terror. Obama could have complimented the Philippines and Indonesia for their government’s role in fighting Al Qaeda affiliated terror.
Well done. On the US role in Syria, judgement is left to the (near) future.
“thousands have been killed”
You know, this is one of those subtle topics where even if it seems like the good guys have scored a point in fact the Pentagon gang has won the issue.
You see, the net deaths caused by the unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq is almost certainly over a millions – and probably 2 or 3M. Yet, because (a) body counts were either suppressed or limited to only those few confirmed in triplicate, and (b) a few studies that showed the numbers were almost certainly in the millions were subject to immediate and intense character assassination, very few people are willing to stand up and actually acknowledge this reality.
The Fallujah incident – in which a major city was literally carpet-bombed with intense phosphorus-based chemical weapons by the US – was alone responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
On top of that, the US occupation was a first-order organizational disaster – so bad that it could only have been created by ideological wingnuts. By firing all the country’s police and not providing for any replacements the Wingnut Iraqi Occupation Council ™ gave carte blanche to all groups interested in genocide – sorry, I meant to use the approved term from the 1990s in Serbia – “ethnic cleansing”. Of course the official Pentagon, and hence Pentagon-owned US media, stats don’t include all those deaths as a result of the occupation, but they assuredly were. But ignore those – the important thing is that proconsul Bremer implemented a flat tax rate of 15% – the millions who died due to his neglect can be considered, in Pentagon-speak, collateral damage.