Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney go for a quick lunch in a small restaurant. When the elderly waitress comes to take their order Bush, always the nice one, let Cheney order first. His choice is a hamburger with French, sorry, Freedom fries. After thinking for a long time Bush makes up his mind and orders "a quickie"! The waitress looks upset and said: "Mr President, I know you are in your second term, but you are not Clinton and I am not Monica Lewinsky". Cheney then said, "Mr President, what you really want is called a "quiche"
Moses and Bush are crossing each other on a Washington street. Hell, Moses, says Bush, Moses does not answer. Why do not you talk to me, says Bush. And Moses replies: The last time I talked to a Bush I had to spent 40 years in the desert!
On November 15, 2005, the US Senate is anxious about the war in Iraq and wants clear answers. It voted 79-19 to require the administration to report to Congress on military operations in Iraq, more specifically on progress towards withdrawal of troops. In other words they want to oblige the administration to tell them their withdrawal strategy, if any. And if the administration has none as they had none to invade Iraq, then the Senate insists that they should decide on one. Republicans and Democrats voted this motion. Another proposal asking for a timetable for withdrawal was defeated 58-40.It is not certain that the House of Representatives will follow the Senate but it is a clear sign that the Republicans are weary of their president and afraid that they could loose many seats in the 2006 mid-term elections.
On December 30, 2005, we were told that a 16-year-old American of Iraqi origin, Farris Hassan, went to Iraq on his own and without his parent's knowledge. He just took a plane to Kuwait City and tried to get to Iraq by taxi but the border was closed due to the elections. He went to Lebanon to stay with family friend and from there flew to Baghdad. He behaved so rudely that some people contacted the American embassy that took charge of him.
On February 4, 2006, before the war started, Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the
US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that
it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter
cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam
fired on them, he would be in breach of UN resolutions"... But beyond
that what this memo makes clear is that Powell's speech to the United Nations
and the world, and, the never ending litany of words from Bush, Rummy, Rice
and others about Iraq's WMD was all a song and dance. They had no concrete
evidence.
The US Navy helped a military coup in Venezuela to overthrow the elected Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. His main defect, in the eyes of the Americans, is being left wing. The coup did not succeed, and Chavez was back in power two days after being thrown out by the army on April 11, 2002. And we must believe that the Americans want to bring democracy anywhere in the world. Is it not rather the US interests that determine whose regime the US will support, and it does not matter if the country is democratic or under a dictatorship, especially one of the right!
Seven people suspected of plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and the FBI has arrested other targets on June 23, 2006. They were seized during a raid by federal agents on a warehouse in northern Miami. No weapons were found. The suspects include five US citizens and two foreigners, including a Haitian. They are said to be Muslim. Reports say a US agent posing as a member of al-Qaida had infiltrated the group, which had no apparent links to international terror. They were reportedly trying to buy weapons.
A majority of Americans say Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday June 23 through Sunday June 25, 2006. Half of those surveyed would like all US forces out within 12 months.
On July 7, 2006, a radio talk-show host is to record and release a song written by a US Marine corporal about killing members of an Iraqi family. The author, Cpl Joshua Belile, will not sing "Hadji Girl". The right-wing presenter will sing and release the song on air next week. The producer, James Parker, said: "We originally wanted Josh to sing the song, but the Marines are kind of gagging him on it." "Hadji Girl" first surfaced in a four-minute video on the Internet. In the clip, Cpl Belile sings about a marine who falls in love with an Iraqi woman and is attacked by her family. The marine kills the family. The song prompted an outcry from the Council on American-Islamic Relations that said that the song was insensitive and glamorised the killing of Iraqi civilians. Marine Corps officials said that Cpl Belile did not violate military law. Cpl Belile said that his song was a joke and not connected to any wrongdoing.
Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll found on August 6, 2006. Stupid idiots!
A specially commissioned task force will probably call for a major change in US policy on Iraq we were told on October 17, 2006. The panel, which is led by former US Secretary of State James Baker, is said to think that "staying the course" is an untenable long-term strategy. At the same time UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said that British forces will not "walk away" from Iraq or Afghanistan until their job there is done.
Support among Americans for the war in Iraq is dwindling to an all-time low,
with only 34 percent of those polled saying they support the war while 64
percent saying they oppose it, a new poll released on Tuesday October 17,
2006, showed. An overwhelming majority of women were against the war. Seven
in 10 of those surveyed said they opposed the war, and just 28 percent -the
lowest support among women since the invasion in March 2003- said they supported
it. Support for the war among men was stronger, with 40 percent supporting
it and 58 percent against it. The survey also found that only 34 percent of
those polled approved of how President George W. Bush was handling the war,
with 64 percent disapproving.
On November 7, 2006, it became clear that the democrats have won control
of the US House of Representatives in mid-term polls, and are one seat away
from gaining a majority in the Senate. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has already announced he will resign in the wake of Republicans' poll losses.
Democrats comfortably gained the 15 seats needed to wrest power from the Republicans
in the lower chamber. Democratic gains reflect voter discontent over Iraq,
government corruption and the economy.
After winning control of the House of Representatives it was clear on November
9, 2006, Democrats are set to win the final seat needed to take control of
the US Senate.
THE US involvement in Iraq will pass another sad milestone on Monday November 27, 2006, when it overtakes the length of America's engagement in World War II. While the two wars are far apart in character -and in their death tolls- the Iraq campaign has become a symbol of the pitfalls of the new style of conflict. World War II ended for Americans after 1348 days. US soldiers facing a still largely unknown enemy in Iraq do not know when their country will leave, more than three years after the US-led invasion. American politicians have not failed to note the symbolism.
Americans are becoming more discontented over the situation in Iraq and unhappy
with Democrats who won control of Congress last November largely because voters
want to see an end to the war. Just 39 percent said they approve of the job
Congress is doing, down from 44 percent in April. Approval of congressional
Democrats dropped to 44 percent from 54 percent. In April, Americans, by a
25-point margin, trusted the Democrats over President George W. Bush to handle
the situation in Iraq. In the new poll, Democrats held their advantage but
only by 16 points. Bush's job-approval rating stands at 35 percent, unchanged
from April.
Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October
12, 2007. The committee cited "their efforts to build up and disseminate
knowledge about man-made climate change". And he was cheated by George
Bush in the presidential election in 2000!
Barack Obama declared himself "the Democratic nominee for president of the United States"on June 3, 2008. He was speaking to a cheering crowd on the last day of the primary season, after receiving the support of enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Of the states that voted that day, Montana was won by Mr Obama and South Dakota by his rival Hillary Clinton. If confirmed, Mr Obama would be the first black candidate to represent a major party in a US presidential poll.
U.S. authorities on Monday July 27, 2009, arrested seven people from North Carolina who have been charged with plotting to carry out terrorist attacks overseas, including in Kosovo, Jordan and the Gaza Strip. U.S. prosecutors said the ringleader of the group, Daniel Patrick Boyd, trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 1989 to 1992 and used that experience to set up his own organization to train fighters, raise money and carry out attacks abroad. There is no indication that Boyd's group was connected with an international militant organization or that they were planning attacks in the United States.
Seven men from the US state of North Carolina charged with plotting terror attacks in Israel and Jordan have been in court for a detention hearing on August 5, 2009. The men are accused of conspiring to kill, kidnap and maim, but not of carrying out actual attacks. Prosecutors say the alleged ringleader, Daniel Boyd, 39, trained in Afghanistan and fought there between 1989 and 1992. Officials are looking for an eighth suspect, who went missing in Pakistan last year.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said on September 16, 2009, that much of the vitriol against President Barack Obama's health reforms and spending plans is "based on racism". Mr Carter told a public meeting there was "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president". Republican lawmaker Joe Wilson was rebuked on Tuesday in a House vote. He shouted "You lie!" while Mr Obama was delivering an address on healthcare to Congress last Wednesday.
On September 17, 2009, US President Barack Obama shelved plans for controversial
bases in Poland and the Czech Republic in a major overhaul of missile defence
in Europe. The bases are to be scrapped after a review of the threat from
Iran. Mr Obama said there would be a "proven, cost-effective" system
using land- and sea-based interceptors against Iran's short- and medium-range
missile threat.
US President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee said he won it for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples". The committee highlighted Mr Obama's efforts to support international bodies and promote nuclear disarmament. Mr Obama -woken up with the news early on Friday October 9, 2009- said in an address at the White House that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" by the award. He said he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of some of the "transformative figures" who had previously received the award. Speaking outside the White House, he said he would accept the prize as a "call to action".
Police shot an armed man as he tried to enter the US Capitol building's visitor centre in Washington on Monday March 29, 2016. A female bystander suffered minor injuries when police fired at the suspect. The suspect was known to Capitol police; the man had disrupted a House session last year. The massive complex was placed on lockdown, but the security precautions were soon lifted. US Capitol police identified the suspect as 66-year-old Larry Dawson of Tennessee. In October, he was arrested for interrupting a Congressional session, yelling "prophet of god". He had been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a police officer while armed. They said he remains in a "critical but stable condition" in hospital. Police called the shooting an "isolated" incident, saying there is "no active threat" to the public. ---
U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Friday May 6, 2016, that occupying the Oval Office "is not a reality show," in a swipe at outspoken Republican candidate Donald Trump who is vying to replace him in the White House. Fighting with Obama is a battle Trump would likely relish as he tries to rally support within his own party. During hard-fought Republican primary campaigns, the billionaire delighted in responding to attacks from rivals and found that his support grew when he lashed out at his opponents.
A US navy officer has been stripped of his command over the capture by Iran of 10 American sailors who wandered into its territorial waters. On Thursday May 12, 2016, we were told that the navy had lost confidence in Commander Eric Rasch, who was the executive officer of the squadron that included the 10 sailors at the time of the January incident. He was responsible for the training and readiness of the more than 400 sailors in the unit. The soldiers were held for about 15 hours before negotiations that involved the secretary of state, John Kerry, led to their release. A navy official said Rasch failed to provide effective leadership, leading to a lack of oversight, complacency and failure to maintain standards in the unit. ---
A bomb attack in New York City was a terrorist act, officials said, but no links have been found to global groups and the motivation remains unclear. Was it a political motivation? A personal motivation? We do not know," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. Saturday night's blast (September 17, 2016) in Manhattan injured 29 people. They have all now been released from hospital. A second device -a pressure cooker attached to wiring and a mobile phone- had been found four blocks from the site of the explosion in the Chelsea district and was removed safely.
A bizarre claim that Donald Trump was born in Pakistan before being adopted and taken to America has emerged online. According to that the President-elect was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan in Waziristan in 1946.
After years spent fostering the conspiracy theory that President Obama was not an American citizen, Donald Trump now faces a “birther” movement of his own after a Pakistani news channel claimed that the president-elect was born a Muslim in Pakistan. The Urdu-language broadcaster Neo News claims to have seen evidence that Donald John Trump was born Dawood Ibrahim Khan in lawless North Waziristan. The region is a notorious hotbed of Islamist militancy and a haven for groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In the news report, which was broadcast last month but has gone viral since the election, the presenter announced: “Believe it or not, presidential candidate Donald Trump was born in Pakistan and not in America.”
Donald Trump spent much of his election campaign raging against groups he doesn’t like: Muslims, the media, Mexicans and the rest. But there’s at least one group he’s a fan of. “I love the poorly educated!” the president-elect to be declared after pulling off a victory in the Nevada caucus of the Republican primary. Now, an analysis of his shock election victory shows the feeling was mutual. It was “education, not income,” that was the strongest predictor of a vote for Trump. In a detailed post on the five thirty eight website Silver outlines how Clinton improved on President Obama’s 2012 performance in 48 of the country’s 50 most well-educated counties and, by the same token, lost ground relative to Obama in 47 of the 50 counties where the smallest share of the population has bachelor’s degrees. In this, the Trump campaign was not unique:
. In Britain’s Brexit vote, support for the “leave” campaign was 30 percent higher among those with GCSE-level education or lower.
. In Austria’s presidential election in May (set to be re-run in December), university-educated voters chose the green-backed candidate Alexander Van der Bellen by a 91 percent to 19 percent margin, while the lower-skilled chose far-right Norbert Hofer by 86 percent to 14 percent. ---
Friday January 27, 2017:
On Monday June 26, 2017, the Trump administration sent the kind of dire warning (of the Syrian regime's apparent preparation for another chemical weapons attack, and a threat of U.S. retaliation) that requires credibility to have a receptive national and foreign audience.
Yet the initial bafflement about the warning among U.S. defense officials, and the simultaneous distraction of President Trump's unrelated tweets, seemed to undercut the seriousness of the moment. More broadly, the episode is testing the damage Trump has done to his and his administration's trustworthiness by his assaults on the intelligence community as well as other perceived enemies.
Trump has spent months attacking the credibility of the intelligence community, at one point comparing their tactics to Nazis' and repeatedly calling its findings of Russian meddling in the election a "hoax" and "witch hunt," even as foreign policy experts cautioned that he was diminishing the reputation of a community he would need in times of crisis to rally public support.
On Sunday September 24, 2017, the Trump administration announced details of the new permutation of the travel ban; it now limits travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. The Department of Homeland Security had recommended the president sign off on new, more targeted restrictions on foreign nationals from countries it says refuse to share information with the U.S. or haven’t taken necessary security precautions. Trump said, “the tougher the better.”
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Why did Bush go to war in Iraq?
A Special Article
Sixteen years after the United States invaded Iraq and left a trail of destruction and chaos in the country and the region, one aspect of the war remains criminally underexamined: why was it fought in the first place? What did the Bush administration hope to get out of the war?
The official, and widely-accepted, story remains that Washington was motivated by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme. His nuclear capabilities, especially, were deemed sufficiently alarming to incite the war. As then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "We do not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Despite Saddam not having an active WMD programme, this explanation has found support among some International Relations scholars, who say that while the Bush administration was wrong about Saddam's WMD capabilities, it was sincerely wrong. Intelligence is a complicated, murky enterprise, the argument goes, and given the foreboding shadow of the 9/11 attacks, the US government reasonably, if tragically, misread the evidence on the dangers Saddam posed.
There is a major problem with this thesis: there is no evidence for it, beyond the words of the Bush officials themselves. And since we know the administration was engaged in a widespread campaign of deception and propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war, there is little reason to believe them.
My investigation into the causes of the war finds that it had little to do with fear of WMDs - or other purported goals, such as a desire to "spread democracy" or satisfy the oil or Israel lobbies. Rather, the Bush administration invaded Iraq for its demonstration effect.
A quick and decisive victory in the heart of the Arab world would send a message to all countries, especially to recalcitrant regimes such as Syria, Libya, Iran, or North Korea, that American hegemony was here to stay. Put simply, the Iraq war was motivated by a desire to (re)establish American standing as the world's leading power.
Indeed, even before 9/11, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld saw Iraq through the prism of status and reputation, variously arguing in February and July 2001 that ousting Saddam would "enhance US credibility and influence throughout the region" and "demonstrate what US policy is all about".
These hypotheticals were catalysed into reality by September 11, when symbols of American military and economic dominance were destroyed. Driven by humiliation, the Bush administration felt that the US needed to reassert its position as an unchallengeable hegemon.
The only way to send a message so menacing was a swashbuckling victory in war. Crucially, however, Afghanistan was not enough: it was simply too weak a state. As prison bullies know, a fearsome reputation is not acquired by beating up the weakest in the yard. Or as Rumsfeld put it on the evening of 9/11, "We need to bomb something else to prove that we're, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kinds of attacks."
Moreover, Afghanistan was a "fair" war, a tit-for-tat response to the Taliban's provision of sanctuary to al-Qaeda's leadership. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith considered restricting retaliation to Afghanistan dangerously "limited", "meager", and "narrow". Doing so, they alleged, "may be perceived as a sign of weakness rather than strength" and prove to "embolden rather than discourage regimes" opposed to the US. They knew that sending a message of unbridled hegemony entailed a disproportionate response to 9/11, one that had to extend beyond Afghanistan.
Iraq fit the bill both because it was more powerful than Afghanistan and because it had been in neoconservative crosshairs since George HW Bush declined to press on to Baghdad in 1991. A regime remaining defiant despite a military defeat was barely tolerable before 9/11. Afterwards, however, it became untenable.
That Iraq was attacked for its demonstration effect is attested to by several sources, not least the principals themselves - in private. A senior administration official told a reporter, off the record, that "Iraq is not just about Iraq", rather "it was of a type", including Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
In a memo issued on September 30, 2001, Rumsfeld advised Bush that "the USG [US government] should envision a goal along these lines: New regimes in Afghanistan and another key State [or two] that supports terrorism [to strengthen political and military efforts to change policies elsewhere]".
Feith wrote to Rumsfeld in October 2001 that action against Iraq would make it easier to "confront - politically, militarily, or otherwise" Libya and Syria. As for then-Vice President Dick Cheney, one close adviser revealed that his thinking behind the war was to show: "We are able and willing to strike at someone. That sends a very powerful message."
In a 2002 column, Jonah Goldberg coined the "Ledeen Doctrine", named after neoconservative historian Michael Ledeen. The "doctrine" states: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
It may be discomfiting to Americans to say nothing of millions of Iraqis that the Bush administration spent their blood and treasure for a war inspired by the Ledeen Doctrine. Did the US really start a war - one that cost trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destabilised the region, and helped create the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - just to prove a point?
More uncomfortable still is that the Bush administration used WMDs as a cover, with equal parts fearmongering and strategic misrepresentation - lying - to exact the desired political effect. Indeed, some US economists consider the notion that the Bush administration deliberately misled the country and the globe into war in Iraq to be a "conspiracy theory", on par with beliefs that President Barack Obama was born outside the US or that the Holocaust did not occur.
But this, sadly, is no conspiracy theory. Even Bush officials have sometimes dropped their guard. Feith confessed in 2006 that "the rationale for the war didn't hinge on the details of this intelligence even though the details of the intelligence at times became elements of the public presentation".
That the administration used the fear of WMDs and terrorism to fight a war for hegemony should be acknowledged by an American political establishment eager to rehabilitate George W Bush amid the rule of Donald Trump, not least because John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, seems eager to employ similar methods to similar ends in Iran.