How can countries be in the groups-which big bro 43 describes as being mutually exclusive, of extremist Islamic jihadists who'd love to kill us, or those who are helping us combat IslamoFascism?
The article "With us' and 'against us' at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/01/EDTORAJ8P2.DTL
states "GO FIGURE: From the White House comes the news that self-styled
anti-terrorism crusader President Bush wants to sell $20 billion in high-tech military equipment to Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the financing, and 15 of the 19 hijackers, for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The justification can't be that this is yet another boondoggle for the
military-industrial complex - the big winner in the war on terror - so we are told instead that the Sunni-dominated Saudi kingdom needs this weaponry to withstand a future challenge from those dastardly Shiite fellows in Iran. ...White House officials told the New York Times that Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates intend to use the occasion of their joint visit to Saudi Arabia "to press the Saudis to do more to
help Iraq's Shiite-dominated government."
Huh? Why in the world would the Sunnis, who control Saudi Arabia and are frightened to their bones of Shiites throughout the Persian Gulf, be party to consolidating Shiite power in Iraq?
To complete the circle of madness, White House officials tell reporters that the hope of the latest arms sale program is that the Saudis will be so thrilled with their new weapons that they will stop funding the Sunni insurgents who are killing Americans. The absurdity of this position is that it makes the Saudis the big winners in the war on terror, yet expects them to cut out behavior that has played so handsomely to the kingdom's advantage. The nation which was most directly responsible for spawning the original al Qaeda attacks on the United states, and which has since helped finance the violence in Iraq, is now being rewarded with a long-sought weapons modernization package. Thus, a new generation of deadly toys finds its way into the volatile Mideast."
strategy he once repudiated.'" at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073101763.html
states "The real point, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it at the
beginning of a regional tour, is "to affirm the importance of this region to the
United States . . . in what is a complicated time." Though Ms. Rice didn't spell it out, one of the complications is the likelihood that the United states will draw down forces or retreat altogether from Iraq in the next year or so. The military packages can be seen as part of an effort to contain the resulting damage to U.S. influence in the Middle East. It nevertheless should be clear that the administration's initiative amounts to an unblushing return to the regional strategy that President Bush and Ms. Rice herself explicitly repudiated two years ago. Once again, the United States will use military aid to bolster autocratic Arab regimes in the name of regional "security and stability." Remarkably, Ms. Rice used those very words on Tuesday, in direct contradiction of her previous statements. "On September 11," she said in a June 2005 appearance in Cairo, "we realized that our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant . . . form of extremism to grow up."
We are giving away our security to countries who have not been our allies because they are less of a threat to us than Iran as "In those years, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were, at least, supportive of U.S. security objectives. Now Ms. Rice has made a point of saying that there will be no trade-off between the new arms sales and Saudi behavior in Iraq, even though Riyadh is all but openly working against U.S. interests there. The Saudis also have refused to cooperate with U.S. policy on Hamas or to commit to participating in an upcoming Middle East peace meeting. Egypt will get a 10-year renewal of the $1.3 billion a year in military aid it receives, even though both U.S. and Israeli officials say it has not made a serious effort to stop the smuggling of weapons from its territory to Hamas's army in Gaza.
Ms. Rice says "we are working with these states to give a chance to the forces of moderation and reform.
By unconditionally renewing military aid and sales to these regimes, the Bush administration would send them the message that reform is, in fact, unnecessary-that even cooperation in Iraq or Gaza is unnecessary-in order to remain a strategic U.S. ally. That won't make the United States look either strong or committed to a better future in the Middle East."
These morons make us look like the puniest 98 pound weakling ever. Thank you big bro 43!
The article "On to Containment" at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20055323/site/newsweek/?nav=slate?from=rss
states "Compare and contrast. Here is a quote from Condoleezza Rice from
almost exactly a year ago, when the war in Lebanon between Hizbullah and Israel was raging. The secretary of State was then still in her 'birth pangs of a new Middle East' era, when she was condemning the U.S. approach to the Mideast from 'decades past' that simply accommodated the old Arab regimes. 'What you had in the Middle East before was American policies-bipartisan, by the way, it had been pursued by Democratic presidents and by Republican presidents-that engaged in so-called Middle East exceptionalism [in other words, democracy won't work with the Arabs] and was pursuing stability at the expense of democracy."
We are giving away all of this money and the benefactors don't even have to promise to act in our interests as "Rice and her undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, explicitly denied that there would be any conditions or 'quid pro quos' attached to this new aid."
Let's sum it up. "So, in the space of a year, the Bush team seems to have gone from condemning the decades-old U.S. policy of backing the Arab regimes to championing precisely that course....What's not as reasonable is the Bush administration's habit of repeatedly changing course while pledging to 'stay the course.'
The US and the Saudis are arming Iraqi Sunnis. Isn't that act diametrically opposed to the benchmark of disarming the militias?
The article "Ware: Surge Is Undermining The Very Government That America Created" at
click here
noted that the "On Anderson Cooper's show later in the evening, CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware, who spoke live on a night scope camera while embedded with troops responded to 'the vice president's evaluation' of progress in Iraq, calling it 'sleight of hand.' 'Yeah, sectarian violence is down, but let's have a look at that,' said Ware. 'More than two million people have fled this country. 50,000 are still fleeing every month, according to the United Nations. So there's less people to be killed. And those who stay, increasingly are in ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods. They've been segregated.'
'There is still no sense of unity. And without America to act as the big baby sitter, this thing is not going to last.
Ware also responded to Brookings Institution analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack's recent New York Times op-ed offering a sunny appraisal of progress in Iraq, calling the report 'very one dimensional.' 'It doesn't look at what's been done to achieve this and what long term sustainability there is,' said Ware. 'I mean, these guys unfortunately were only in the country for eight days.'
In order to achieve the small victories that O'Hanlon and Pollack cherry-picked for their column, America is actually undermining the Iraqi government, according to Ware. 'What America needs to come clean about is that it's achieving these successes by cutting deals, primarily, with its enemies,' he said.
'By achieving these successes, America is building Sunni militias,' said Ware.
'Yes, they're targeting al Qaeda, but these are also anti-government forces opposed to the very government that America created.'
Only "Mission Accomplished" W could accomplish having countries simultaneously 'With us' and 'against us'!
