What I find really repugnant is Bush's continuing to "sell his falied war policy" by fear mongering and with never-ending references to 9/11, insinuating some connection between the two.
"...the enemies who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001 want to bring further destruction to our country. They know that the only way to stop them is to stay on the offense, to fight the extremists and radicals where they live, so we don't have to face them where we live.
...
If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won't leave us alone -- they will follow us to the United States of America.
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The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America.
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As we saw with last week's brutal attack on the Iraqi parliament, our troops face depraved and determined enemies -- enemies that could just as easily come here to kill us."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20070416.html
At least one news sources is calling him out on his bullshit:
Quote:
Is there any truth to 'the enemy would follow us here?'
It’s become President Bush’s mantra, his main explanation for why he won’t withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon.
In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that “this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here.”
The line, which Bush repeated Wednesday in a speech to troops at California's Fort Irwin, suggests a chilling picture of warfare on American streets.
But is it true?
Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn't. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland.
[“The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature,” said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It’s a poor choice of words that doesn’t convey the essence of the problem - that walking away from a problem doesn’t solve anything.”
U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.
Foreign-born jihadists are present in Iraq, but they're believed to number only between 4 percent and 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgent fighters - 1,200 to 3,000 terrorists - according to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center.
“Attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence,” said a February DIA report.
While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time - whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not - the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, experts say.
"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials. "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...hington_nation
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Most Americans arent "buying the war" anymore as an anti-terrorist action to protect the homeland (in fact, most know it is now a civil war we created and cant control), but unfortunately, most of the press, wont challenge the Bush/Cheney bullshit so it continues unimpeded.