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The Final Word Is Hooray! / Bush Renews Preemptive War Strategy

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" Zepp " <zepp

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 06:31:18 -0800

[Zepps_News] " The Final Word Is Hooray! "

 

 

[Zeppnote: It was, complied by FAIR.

 

Here is the original article, with link]

 

 

 

 

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

 

" The Final Word Is Hooray! "

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

 

3/15/06

 

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit

Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly

pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

 

" The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment

upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that,

got it wrong, " Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times

Dispatch, 4/25/04). " They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got

it completely wrong. "

 

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense.

Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature

declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political

effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years

later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of

thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

 

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas

declared (4/16/03): " All of the printed and voiced prophecies should

be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they

can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be

offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will

return to us in another situation where their expertise will be

acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be

lacking. "

 

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the

early days of the Iraq War.

 

 

Declaring Victory

 

" Iraq Is All but Won; Now What? "

(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

 

 

" Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what

begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over

America's unrivaled power and how best to use it. "

(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

 

 

" Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different

from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is

essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention. "

(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

 

 

" Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom

that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively

bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly

shattered skeptics' complaints. "

(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

 

 

" The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside

liberals, and a few people here in Washington. "

(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

 

 

" We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united

the country and brought the military back. "

(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

 

 

" We're all neo-cons now. "

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

 

 

" The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a

coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment

and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is

hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war. "

(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

 

 

" Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that

we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the

past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we

saw that it was such a just true, genuine _expression. It was

reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of

that pure emotional _expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed,

the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking. "

(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel

on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in

Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS

operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

 

 

Mission Accomplished?

 

" The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part

Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes

the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. "

(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's " Mission Accomplished "

speech)

 

 

" We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as

president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a

complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all

those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a

guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we

like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the

Brits. "

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

 

 

" He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie

star, and one of the guys. "

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

 

 

Neutralizing the Opposition

 

" Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won

today. He did well today. "

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

 

 

" What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war

went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose

their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points? "

(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

 

 

" If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls

compete with a president fresh from a war victory? "

(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

 

 

" It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the

broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear

that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop

him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically. "

(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

 

 

Nagging the " Naysayers "

 

" Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in

Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong? "

(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

 

 

" I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC

or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative

pronouncements were over the past four weeks. "

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

 

 

" I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's

most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just

wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to

say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House

will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd.

Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

 

" Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N.

weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well,

Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The

United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its

legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong

tail, again.

 

" Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle,

Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward

tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting

what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant,

they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these

self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it.

After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing. "

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

 

 

" Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this

guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and

so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is

going to have to hang its head for three or four more years. "

(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

 

 

" This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To

hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory

meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at

least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend.

Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and

for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a

defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened.

Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront

an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might

can set the world right. "

(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

 

 

" Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don

Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war

with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There

is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated

so far.... The final word on this is, hooray. "

(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

 

" Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success,

especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab

reporters. "

(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

 

" Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad

out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still

hasn't figured out we won the war. "

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

 

 

Cakewalk?

 

" This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless

military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The

attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by

the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring

it on. "

(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,

3/30/03)

 

 

" I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego

that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing

to take that wager? "

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

 

 

" It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine

will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will. "

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

 

 

" There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter

of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once

the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going

to fold like that. "

(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

 

 

" He [saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win

the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or

three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks. "

(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

 

 

Weapons of Mass Destruction

 

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq

had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

 

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't

have them beforehand. Nobody.

(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

 

 

" Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State

Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the

dumb and the desperate could ignore it. "

(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

 

 

" Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence

officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over

Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell

to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well

as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and

the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him

before he can achieve notoriety for all time. "

(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

 

 

" Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the

administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad

guys. I saw them. "

(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)

 

 

" Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the

supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify

pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors

could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and

war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance?

(Their death wish is our command.) "

(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

 

--

 

" Zepp " <zepp

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 06:24:50 -0800

[Zepps_News] Bush Administration Renews " Preemptive War " Strategy

 

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/nsec-m17.shtml

 

 

 

Bush administration renews “preemptive war” strategy

 

 

By David North

17 March 2006

 

*Use this version to print*

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/nsec-m17_prn.shtml>* | Send

this link by email <http://www.wsws.org/cgi-bin/birdcast.cgi> | Email

the author <https://www.wsws.org/phpform/use/comments/form1.html>*

 

The National Security Strategy document released Thursday by the White

House reaffirms the prerogative of the United States to take

“preemptive” actions to counter possible threats from alleged enemies.

 

When it was first unveiled in September 2002, the Bush administration’s doctrine

of “preemptive war” was generally seen as an attempt to justify the impending

invasion of Iraq—a country that posed absolutely no real or foreseeable, let

alone imminent, threat to the United States. The doctrine was widely condemned

outside the United States as advancing a policy for which there exists no

foundation in international law.

 

In issuing this updated version of the National Security Strategy, the

Bush administration has made it clear that there will be no retreat

from the doctrine of preemptive war; the United States reserves to itself the

right to attack, at any time, any country that it considers a threat, or merely

a potential threat, even if that country has not taken any overt hostile action.

 

Invoking “long-standing principles of self-defense,” the Bush

administration declares that the United States does not “rule out the

use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to

the time and place of the enemy’s attack.”

 

The document states: “To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our

adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in

exercising our inherent right of self-defense.”

 

The Bush administration never addresses the fundamental legal

contradiction in its doctrine: how can the United States invoke

self-defense as grounds for a military strike against another country

in the absence of not only an overtly hostile act, but even of clear

evidence that an attack against the United States is imminent or, at a

minimum, actually being planned.

 

As always, the White House raises the specter of weapons of mass

destruction to justify preemptive war. “When the consequences of an

attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to

stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. This is the principle and

logic of preemption. The place of preemption in our national security

strategy remains the same.”

 

Four years ago, this doctrine was unveiled to target Iraq. Now, the

most likely target of a preemptive attack is Iran, which, according to the

document, confronts the United States with its greatest challenge.

 

The Bush administration repeats its claim that Iran is concealing its

efforts to develop nuclear weapons. However, it goes on to state that

“the United States has broader concerns regarding Iran” that go beyond

“these nuclear issues.” The Bush administration repeats its familiar

litany of complaints: “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel,

seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq: and denies the

aspirations of its people for freedom.” The document continues: “The nuclear

issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian

regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its

political system, and afford freedom to its people. This is the ultimate goal of

US policy.”

 

In other words, the so-called Iranian nuclear threat is a mere pretext: the real

issue is that the existing Iranian government is in the way of American global

strategic interests. What the Bush administration wants is not a cessation of

nuclear development, but a “regime change” in Tehran that would reestablish the

pre-revolution status quo, i.e., the existence of a puppet government that would

restore Iran to the US-client state status that existed prior to the overthrow

of the Shah Reza Pahlavi.

 

Behind all the rhetoric of freedom and democracy, the document makes

clear that the strategic goal of the United States is hegemony and

domination. The Bush administration takes it as a matter of course that the

world must be rearranged in a manner that suits the United States. Every other

country and region must simply fall in line.

 

The Latin American people are warned that they must reject the

“deceptive appeal of anti-free market populism” with which the regime

of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is identified. Russia is warned that it

should not attempt to take advantage of its “geography and power” to undercut

American influence in regions “of vital importance to us: the broader Middle

East, South and Central Asia, and East Asia.” In another passage, the document

proclaims that “Africa holds growing geo-strategic importance and is a high

priority of this administration.” And, finally, the White House declares that

“China’s leaders must realize” that they cannot hold on “to old ways of

thinking” if it wishes to avoid a collision with the United States.

 

The establishment of American hegemony is identified with the

unfettered triumph of the capitalist market economy, which the document

describes as “the single most effective economic system and the greatest

antidote to poverty.”

 

This is written at a time when the global rates of mass poverty, the

direct result of the subordination of the world’s population to the

profit imperatives of the capitalist market, stand at unprecedented

levels.

 

There is an element of madness in the document released by the White

House. Its collection of lies and logical non-sequiturs is employed in

the service of a world-view that is as paranoid as it is reactionary.

 

President Bush opens this document with an introduction that proclaims

that “America is at war.” He fails to mention, however, that the war

that he is waging was never declared; that the congressional resolution which

his administration invokes as justification for its military operations was

procured on the basis of fraud and deceit.

 

Bush goes on to state that the strategy unveiled in the document

“reflects our most solemn obligation: to protect the security of the

American people.”

 

That, as a matter of law, is false; the presidential oath of office

requires that he “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the

United States.” This is not a small error. Any military or fascist

dictator would agree, without hesitation, that his “most solemn

obligation” is to protect the people’s “security”-preferably without

the

intrusion of legal restraints.

 

See Also:

US drumbeat against Iran threatens new war of aggression

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/iran-m11.shtml>

[11 March 2006]

US ambassador to UN warns of “painful consequences” for Iran

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/iran-m08.shtml>

[8 March 2006]

Pentagon prepares for military strikes against Iran

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/iran-f14.shtml>

[14 February 2006]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

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