Patrick Cockburn, Middle East Correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, reports (h/t The Peking Duck):
Iraq is disintegrating. The first results from the parliamentary election last week show the country is dividing between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions. Religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated. . . .
Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities. Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator, said: "In two and a half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq." . . .
Iran will be pleased that the Shia religious parties which it has supported, have become the strongest political force. . . .
Even our Ambassador in Iraq is incapable of putting the sort of giddy happy faces on the Iraqi election which Administration officials here have tried (as usual) to impart:
The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, sounded almost despairing yesterday as he reviewed the results of the election. "It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian identities," he said. "But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian co-operation."
Conservative pro-war and pro-Bush blogger Bill Quick at Daily Pundit put it this way:
Does Bush - or anybody else - think he can put the genie of a fully armed and aroused Shiite majority in control of the Iraqi government by entirely legitimate, democratic means, back in the bottle? Because that is what it is going to take to appease the Sunnis. And no matter how hard Bush tries, it's not going to happen.
In fact, if Bush doesn't stop screwing around, what he's going to end up with is what he fears most: both the Shia and the Sunni in revolt against the "American occupation" amidst a full-blown civil war. And never fear: the harmless, "impregnable" Iranians will be more than happy to aid their Shia religious brethren to victory in that battle.
I wonder if the Iranian mullahs also have little get-togethers where they stick their kids’ fingers in purple ink and make them walk around like that all day to celebrate the Iraqi elections. If they don’t, they should.
Freedom is God's gift to every human being. Rape rooms. Saddam gassed his own people. Cut and run. WMDs in Syria. Offense not defense. Don't surrender to terrorists.
ReplyDeleteShut up, you weak-willed, American-hating traitor.
Mr. Reynolds its difficult to take your blog seriously when you seem to have a pattern of stating many things that are so filled with logical fallacies and hyperbolic content.
ReplyDeleteYour entire post today about President Bush discussing the Patriot Act is a complaint about a list of quotes about what a PUBLIC LAW allows.
You seem to have forgotten the obvious that PUBLIC LAWS and what they allow are, well PUBLIC. Since I don't believe you to be unintelligent, I can only conclude that you draw false analogies between statements about PUBLIC matters and statements about secret CLASSIFIED matters intentionally, and with the intent apparently of either misleading your readers or confirming your own world view and the world view of the moonbat demacratic underground types.
Gary
Your entire post today about President Bush discussing the Patriot Act is a complaint about a list of quotes about what a PUBLIC LAW allows.
ReplyDeleteFirst, this statemnet is false. Much of what I listed - such as Bush discussing our Homeland Security re-proritization and enhanced seaport inspections - have nothing to do with the text of the Patriot Act. Your statement is factually false.
Second - Just becasue a law says we CAN do something doesn't mean we ARE doing it. Much of what Bush said in that list is disclosure of what we ARE ACTUALLY DOING pursuant to the Patriot Act in order to monitor and catch terrorists.
THIRD - Bush's aides said at the AG briefing that it helps terrorists every time we talk about surveillance because it reminds them that we are doing it. That would clearly apply to each of these times when Bush waved around our surveillance programs in public.
FINALLY - Nothing the NY Times article said about our intelligence methods was unknown. In fact, the only thing the article said we were doing - eavesdropping on the calls of terrorists - is something Bush said many times we were doing.
But that didn't stop Bush and people like you from accusing the Times of treason and of "helping terrorists" adjust to our intelligence.
Do you really not see these points?
And who is Mr. Reynolds?
Who is Mr. Reynolds? I don't know, I might have Glenn Reynolds in my mind when typing that.
ReplyDeleteLeaking classified information is a crime. Did you support the Plame investigation. Lewis Libby was indicted because he was supposedly involved in leaking classified information, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO HARM TO PLAME OR THE COUNTRY, WHO WASN'T A COVERT AGENT, having her employment disclosed.
Harm isn't an element of the crime as the left has argued in Plame. So arguing harm as a defense for the traitorous actions of the New York Times and the criminals who leaked the information to the Times is irrelevant.
I happen to disagree however and think this disclose of a highly secret surveillance program was extremely harmful, and the extent of that harm isn't yet known to the public. Its clear to see its harmful.
The heart of your post was about Bush making statements about PUBLIC LAWS which are PUBLIC information. The fact you mentioned a few other things does not change the heart of your cobbled together complaint.
Discussing surveillance methods and techniques and putting the terrorists on notice that things are being done not spelled out in the FISA statutes IS helping the enemy at a time of war and is Treasonous in my opinion.
Lincoln threw people in jail for less during the civil war.
What I see is that you construct points that really aren't that substantive and border on the hysteria about which the left often complains about in others. I didn't say your points were made up out of thin air, just that they are mostly logically fallacious and are only going to be persuasive to those who need no persuassion to begin with.
Gary
(1) How do you know there was no harm from the disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA employment?
ReplyDelete(2) I didn't have a complaint about Bush's statements. I simply pointed out that the basis for claiming that the NYT committed treason - they talked about how we engage in surveillance on terrorists - is applicable to multiple prior statements of Bush.
(3) What specifically did the NYT say about how we engage in surveillance that wasn't already public?
(4) Do you think whoever is responsible for this disclosure, both at the NYT and outside of it, should be executed for their treason?
Should they have a trial first or should it be done by executive decree?
Those are serious questions, not rhetorical.
Gary spews:
ReplyDeleteDiscussing surveillance methods and techniques and putting the terrorists on notice that things are being done not spelled out in the FISA statutes IS helping the enemy at a time of war and is Treasonous in my opinion.
This is simply absurd. Do you seriously think the terrorists care one whit whether what they know is being done sometimes occurs without a warrant from the FISA court? That's all the NYT article was about in terms of what had previously been unknown, and the people who should care about that are American citizens.
Re: "Well Glenn her posing for the cover of Vanity Fair might have been the first clue. "
ReplyDeleteOf course, she didn't pose on the cover of Vanity Fair until AFTER her cover was blown.
Re: "her husband writting op eds in the NYT would be clue #2"
When he wrote the editorial, she was simply Mrs Wilson (nee Plame).
Why is this so hard to understand?