May 30 2008
Success Continues In The War On Terror – Too Large To Ignore Or Deny Any Longer
The perpetrators of the 9-11 atrocities, and many other atrocities on the West since then, are heading for defeat. They are being brought to justice for their heinous crimes. America is on the verge of making good on all those promises we made to the 3,000 who died that fateful day in 2001. Along the way many more have died, but the enemy has died in multiples of 10, 20, 50 as well. The war that begun 7 years ago, not against a nation but against a cancerous religious ideology based on fascist oppression, seems to be heading into its last phase. And this effort has required a new kind of war, a war that is not against states with borders but against states of mind filled with murderous hate against America and the West. A war for the hearts and minds of Islam.
Today, thanks to the sacrifices of our best and finest over the many years, al-Qaeda faces defeat across the globe – according to the head of the CIA:
Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership.
While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.
All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.
“On balance, we are doing pretty well,” he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam,” he said.
The defeatists who inhabit the fevered leftward swamps of politics, those aging protesters from an era more than 3 decades ago, are not going to get the defeat they so desperately want for America. There will not be another Vietnam, which allowed many to tear down American and romanticize the communist fascists who have oppressed and killed millions over the decades – all in the name of equality. Thankfully America is done trying to determine which fascism is preferable, that based on equality meted out by government or that of religious purity meted out by an Islamic government. Thanks to George Bush we have returned to good ‘ole American democracy and freedom.
Let’s have a vote here on which image better represents America? Does America Prefer this image of America (a)?
Or does America prefer (b) (Obama’s friend the radical 60’s terrorist Bill Ayers dancing on the US Flag in 2001)?
How about a second round to illustrate the difference between the liberal, anti-war left that controls the Democrat party and the rest of America. If we had left Iraq last year, when the Democrat Congress was trying to cut off funds for our brave (and now successful) troops, we would not see the decimation of al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army we see today.
So again, would America prefer this image of Iraq (Mahdi Army thugs marching through Basra, which they brutalized in the name of Islamo Fascism)?
Or are they now proud to see a new democratic Iraq, allied against Islamo Fascism, as shown in this image of Iraqi elections we helped establish?
The Democrats predicted Iraq could never be turned around, that we were doomed to see al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army thugs control Iraq. They claimed we could never win the hearts and minds of the Muslim Street. They predicted the Muslim Street would rise up and take up arms against us. They predicted Iraq would be another Vietnam so they could dance, once again, on the flag that so many hold dear.
Democrats predicted we would be defeated, worked hard to make sure we were defeated, and appeared to pray each day that they would finally find evidence of us being defeated in the events transpiring in Iraq. They even went so far as to claim the acts of the Iraqis to stand up and take on their own security, by purging the Mahdi Army from Basra, was a failure instead of the success it has been. This final act of desperation moved the defeatists from praying for evidence of our defeat to making it up out of whole cloth. Just as the Democrats lied about ending the war in Iraq if elected, they lied about the defeat of America in Iraq.
I doubt many Americans are willing to join the ranks of lying quitters, who lie to rationalize why they quit and to gain power. Get ready for another political shock to start echoing through this country. The Awakening that started in Anbar Province in Iraq, swept across that country, and then across the Muslim Street in the Middle East, is about to hit the shores of America.
Update: It seems the tide is already rising, as one Manhattan Democrat openly recognizes how President George Bush has kept this country safe (H/T RCP):
With President Bush-bashing still a national pastime, it’s notable how much international terrorism has been forgotten, and how little credit the president has received for keeping Americans safe.
This is a difficult issue for me. I didn’t vote for President Bush – twice. And as a human-rights law professor, the events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, along with various elements of the Patriot Act and the National Security Agency’s wiretapping of Americans, are all greatly troubling to me.
Yet I live in Manhattan and I was present on Sept. 11, 2001 – admittedly 100 blocks from the murder scene, but I was here, trembling along with the rest of America. Remember those days?
It is a heart warming recognition of what the man has done. Too many get lost on what he was not able to get done, while dealing with war and security and economic issues from 9-11. To be fair and open minded one has to see the complete picture, and realize few people would have the drive and sincerity to pull off what he did with a sea of ankle-biting second guessers hanging around.
And as a reminder of what we are fighting, and why we are winning the hearts and minds of Islam because we are a symbol and example of hope for the Middle East, one must read the horror stories, learn about the atrocities our common enemies inflict on their fellow Muslims, face why we are fighting on the side of good in this war:
On March 19, her husband, car mechanic Naman Jabar, was chatting with his neighbors in the street when a car pulled up. Men in black masks grabbed Mr. Jabar, and forced him into the car. Then, they went to Shamkhi’s house and knocked on the front door.
Shamkhi answered, and, by her account, the men pulled her out of the house, handcuffed her, gagged her with tape, put another strip of tape across her eyes, stuffed her in the trunk, and drove off.
They held her for three days, she says. They told her that her husband worked for the Americans. They slapped her face. They stripped off her clothes.
“I cannot repeat what they did to me,” says Shamkhi, blinking away tears and wrapping her black abaya tightly around her. “I am an old woman. It is shameful.”
Three days after the kidnapping, Shamkhi’s captors blindfolded her, gagged her, tied her hands, put her in a car, and then dumped her on the side of a highway in southern Baghdad. Two days after that, she says, she received a call from the morgue of Al-Yarmouk hospital, asking her to identify Jabar’s body.
…
When the American soldiers are about to leave, Shamkhi pulls out a cellphone from the folds of her abaya. On the screen is a picture of her murdered husband. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He was not rich, but he made me happy. We were in love,” she says. Tears well up in her eyes. “Iraqis are acting like criminals.”
These are the horror stories that coming rolling out of areas that were under the jackboot of the Islamo Fascists. This is the face of al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, all the Islamic extremists now exposed to the Muslim Street. These are the stories of Islamo Fascist atrocities on Muslims, which is why the support of these animals is falling. We exposed them for what they were. When we were hit on 9-11 we had the means to wipe whole countries off the map in response. We had the means to wipe out whole cities. Instead, we took the arduous and more costly path of precision attacks with boots on the ground to change the future of Islam from the path of extremism. We gave our lives to protect as many Muslims as possible from the horrors of Islamo Fascism.
This is well known in Iraq. The Iraqis know who is their enemy and who is their ally. It is not perfect, it is not without challenges and problems. It is just light years beyond where we stood on 9/12/01, when George Bush made his commitment to America and we made ours to him. Too many have become distracted on side issues and angry their pet peeves had to taken a back seat to the War on Terror. But I think most will recognize that the Bush years were pretty damn good, all things considered. Especially if they end with victory against al-Qaeda.
Cepic & Terrye,
To answer your question of what we should have done to make us safer from Al Qaeda, the simple answer is finish the job in Afghanistan and not invade Iraq. We had the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership in a corner. We had virtually the entire world on our side after 9-11. We had an opportunity to turn Afghanistan into a stable and viable democracy. We had the opportunity to show the arab world that America has something better to offer them than their despotic leaders currently do.
The invasion of Iraq killed all of those opportunities. The Taliban and Al Qaeda got away and continue to cause problems. Afghanistan is still not stable 6 years later. Fair or not, world public opinion turned against us. Fair or not, many in the arab world view our efforts more as an occupation than a liberation. Meanwhile, our military resources are significantly depleted and still committed to trying to keep Iraq together.
Iraq is the major difference between most Americans when it comes to the GWOT. Virtually all Americans agree that 9-11 was a wake up call, that we have to go after terrorist before they do us harm, and that this effort will require violence and death. The difference is that most Ameicans believe that the Iraq war was a distraction from the GWOT.
norm…why don’t you soak this in:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052904116.html?nav=rss_world
Ivehadit,
Your claims about the Iraqi Perspectives Project report is bogus. Here is an excerpt from the summary of the report that you conveniently failed to mention:
“But the relationships between Iraq and the groups advocating radical pan-Islamic doctrines are much more complex. This study found no “smoking gun” (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam’s interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations.”
The summary goes on to explain:
“The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq.”
So, the report concludes that: (1) there is no evidence of a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda; and (2) the predominate target of Iraqi state terrorist operations was Iraqi citizens. I suggest that you read the report more carefully – it doesn’t support your conspiracy theory.
conman:
Actually the invasion of Iraq has been a disaster for AlQaida. You know in WW2 I doubt that there were a lot of people saying we should ignore Aldolf Hitler and finish the job in the south Pacific. Believe it or not, they considered the two fronts to be part of the same conflict in spite of the fact that Hitler did not attack Pearl Harbor. He did declare war on the US, but then again Saddam Hussein considered himself at war with America too.
So, I guess the answer to Iraq was to just let the sanctions regime crumble, close down the base in Saudi Arabia and call off the no flyszones and let Saddam get back to what he was doing before he was so rudely interrupted.
I bet Zarqawi would have a helluva base in Iraq by now. A regular freaking theme park. And since he got to run there and set up shop after he left Afghanistan there is no reason to believe all sorts of other terrorists would have done the same thing. After all Saddam openly offered sanctuary to Osama before he went to Afghanistan. No need to hide in Pakistan, they could live high on the hog in Baghdad.
Terrye,
Your assumption that Al Qaeda would have set up a base in Iraq had we not invaded defies reality and logic. If that were true, we would have seen such bases and terrorist activity stemming out of Iraq long ago. Al Qaeda has been around since 1988. The first Gulf War ended in 1991. Why were there no Al Qaeda bases popping up in Iraq between 1991 and 2003? Why is there no evidence of a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda throughout this 12-year period? What makes you think that something that didn’t happen for 12 years would suddenly start happenening after 2003 had we not invaded?
Saddam would never have tolerated Al Qaeda bases operating in his country. Saddam was a secular dictator that only cared about holding onto and consolidating power. An Islamic terrorist group with a military presence in Iraq would have been a direct threat to his power. Why is it so difficult to understand something so simple?
As for your WWII analogy, your missing the point. Hitler was a serious and direct threat to America. Had he consolidated control over Europe, he would have turned his miltary on us and attempted to end the democratic/civilized world we know today. We knew we had to take Germany on before we finished off Japan because we could not afford to let him consolidate power in the interim.
Do you seriously think that Saddam was as dangerous as Hitler? We know from our invasion that Iraq’s military and economy were in shambles. Saddam was isolated internationally and was still primarily concerned with holding onto power domestically. He had no WMDS. He had no direct connection with Al Qaeda or other significant terrorist groups. Even at his greatest military stength level prior to the first Gulf war, we were easily able to take out his military. In other words, Saddam was not a serious or direct threat to America. That is precisely why the majority of Americans think it was a mistake to invade Iraq. We just can’t figure out why the minority of Americans who think otherwise can’t see it.
Conman,
There were terrorist training camps in Iraq prior to our invasion and Zarqawi, the head of AQ in Iraq was in Iraq prior to our invasion.
Dazzling display of ignorance there, mate.
Conman,
Again, on the Project Perspective Report you show classic liberal ignorance. If one reads past the summary one finds Saddam Hussein was funding and working with Ayman Zawhiri’s group before it was ingested into al-Qaeda. Hopefully you know Zawahiri is AQ’s number 2 leader and is the one who leads the fight while Bin Laden is the message handler and figure head.
Damn, dumb as a rock is no way to go through life man! Read these two posts and educate yourself fool.
AJ & Terrye, the education is lost on those who come in here with their Bush hatred. They will be like some in the WWII generation who thought we wasted resources rescuing GHW Bush, that he carelessly caused the death of those in the plane with him, ever heard those complaints? Now we have the next generation that will believe until the day they die that GW Bush is the cause of all evil. Feel sorry for them, we can’t know how long their Bush hatred will eat away at them.
AJ,
Your response is too funny! To support your claim you provide two links to . . . . YOURSELF! Needless to say, I don’t think nearly as highly of your opinion on this subject as you do so simply providing links to other posts where you state the same opinion is hardly persuave.
What is even funnier is actually reading these prior posts you wrote about the Project Perspective Report. It shows that your theory about a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda is not based on the Report, it is actually based on your disagreement with the Report. Your basis for disagreeing is largely speculative. Here are just a few examples:
With respect to the summary of the report in which it concludes that there is “no smoking gun (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda, you conclude the follwoing: “clearly whoever wrote the executive summary and picked the phrase “no smoking gun†had a presonal agenda.” So I should disregard a major conclusion of the study based on your speculative and baseless conspiracy theory?
You admit that Saddam and Zawahiri never “talked”, but somehow we should believe that the two were working closely together?
Your previous post reveals that the Report found a connection between Saddam and the Islamic Jihad Organization, which Zawahiri originally founded, but concluded that this relationship ended when Zawahiri joined Al Qaeda. You dispute this part of the Report based purely on speculation – no facts, no references, nothing.
I saved the best for last. The Report provided a list of terrorist organizations that Saddam supposedly worked with at one time or another. This is what you said about the list: “While there is no direct connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam in this list, there is also no evidence that those thousands of people who went through Saddam’s training were not pivotal in setting up al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere.” In other words, the direct connection you refer to is based purely on your speculation about what COULD have happened and the fact that there is no concrete evidence that your theory is wrong. The old “they cannot disprove a negative therefore I must be right!”
Sorry AJ, I’ve learned by experience that your posts are based largely on cherry-picking information and pure speculation to support your ideology. I’ll stick to more credible sources. The Project Perspective Report clearly says that there is no evidence of a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. You can refute that conclusion with speculation, but that is simply your opinion – it does not constitute fact.
Missy1,
Why is it that anyone who disagrees with people like yourself are Bush haters? Isn’t that simply a convenient excuse for you not to consider these questions with an open mind? I presented specific facts and references to support my opinions above – you simply dismiss them because you have concluded that I’m a Bush hater?
Conservatives hated President Clinton and opposed many of his policies. Does that mean that those conservatives were blinded by their hatred of Clinton so they must be wrong?
To disprove your theory, just take a look at how the American public view of Bush has changed throughout his presidency. Early on, especially after 9-11, Bush had enormous public support. Over time that support eroded such that less than 30% of Americans approve of his presidency today. While most president’s lose support by the end of their presidency, Bush’s approval ratings are at an all-yime low. Why do you think that happened? Was it a liberal conspiracy that secretly infected everyone and made them hate Bush? No – people began seeing how Bush’s polices were playing out and became disenchanted with him. People who used to support Bush and changed their opinions cannot be dismissed as pure Bush haters. You cannot sideline people like myself by labeling me as a Bush hater when a MAJORITY of the country agrees with me on these key policy issues – Iraq, GWOT, the economy, etc.
I’m sure you will reply by blaming Bush’s sorry ratings on the typical bogeymen (liberal media, Clinton, etc.), but go ahead and hold onto whatever you need to in order to prevent yourself from considering these issues with an open mind.
conman,
Does an “open mind” acknowledge the record low congressional approval ratings”
Does an “open mind” acknowledge the near universal media disapproval of the War and its effect on popular opinion?
Does an open mind acknowledge the overwhelmingly negative reporting on the economy?
Did the Right “hate” Clinton, or just want some accountability?
Did the unpopularity of the Civil War make Lincoln wrong?
If you wrap yourself in opinion polls, mediocrity is the best you can hope for.
Thanks Macker.
I will add, while conman criticizes AJ for referencing himself, he offers no sources but proclaims to me that:
“I presented specific facts and references to support my opinions above”
?????
I will stick with AJ and continue to think of you as a Bush hater.
btw, Saddam did connect with a number of terrorist organizations including EIJ, Zawahiri’s group. He funded, trained and supplied anything that would attack American interests and allies. Many of these groups operated under the al Qaeda umbrella. The study explained this. al Qaeda meaning “the base” was not isolated to just al Qaeda, it includes various groups operating throughout the ME that directly worked with bin Laden, Zawahiri and Saddam.
And, my specific facts and references to support my opinions are more than equal to yours and I’m not interested in polls when it comes to the security of this country, neither is President Bush.
See you all in a couple of weeks, heading into a news blackout.
Norm, soothie,con are so intent to speak against this president that they fail to realize how utterly ridiculous they sound.
They have stood on the WRONG side of this issue from day one (remember, It’s a quagmire after 3 weeks!) and they know it. They just don’t want George W. Bush to be right about anything. It would be comical if not for the injuries they have caused our troops who VOLUNTARILY have gone to execute our Freedom Agenda for American Security, the fight against those who want to establish a caliphate. Yes guys, Islamists want to establish rule over you and me. Book it.
The Left’s age-old plans DID NOT work. Even some of Reagan’s actions were not correct, imho. So in came George W. Bush to shake things up and GET THINGS DONE.
Beauty (success) is in the eye of the beholder. The Left’s idiocy is an indictment on them, not George W. Bush. Personally, I put my trust and safety in his hands ANY day….NEVER in a leftists’ victim-cultered/defeatist hands. The Iraqi’s, Afghani’s, and many others would agree with me.
Conman,
those links contain exact quotes from the document and other news stories. Simply avoided a lot of retyping and linking.
I see your fear of being proven the fool has you making up lame excuses so as to not face yourself. I linked to information that clearly proves your ignorance and you ran away. Funny.
This is why liberals are such fools, they cower in the face of their own ignorance and try to claim others are the ones who are uninformed.
Dude, the only one being conned in this game is Conman!
The rest of us get it.
Conman,
You know what else is hilarious with your self imposed ignorance is your cherry-picking to avoid my points, while claiming I am cherry-picking!
Too funny. The direct connection was between Saddam and Zawahiri’s organization for ten years. That is a fact. Whether they talked or not is irrelevant. Most of the 9-11 highjackers never met Bin Laden. By your sad, warped, childish logic that means they are not associated with al-Qaeda.
The left is losing it – and it is truly fun to watch. You do know one very important fact of life Conman? You do know Darwin was right!