I'll work on the link.
The fact of the matter is presdeints run on ideals and agendas and THEN they get elected and face the realities of office. This is why Obama has not ended either wars (the presence of more then 50 k troops in iraq) and the escalation of war in Afghanistan. He has increased both drone attacks on and renditions of, terror suspects (something he openly critisized Bush for) And he has left Gitmo open. Why? Because once in office he understood that he was not the president of his ideals, but of the nations realities. In the same way Bush took office and was faced with the Clinton admins realities of Iraq and Iran...and then 9/11. You will be certain to argue your own skewed interpretations...but those ARE the facts. Bush took office and it was ENTIRELY appropriate for him to be immediately concerned with and looking at what was deemed our most pressing international threats.
You'll 'work on the link'? What kind of bullshit is that ID? Can't find the 'blog' you copied it from?
Facts ID? The only 'fact' to be answered is if your right wing propaganda is based on willful ignorance or you are really that obtuse.
The 'realities' of the Bush administration were clearly revealed by insiders like Richard Clarke, George Tenet, Larry Wilkerson and Bush's first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
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Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill
Excerpts:
At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."
And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.
"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”
And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.
He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.
He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.
During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."
“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”
The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.
But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.
“Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand,” says Suskind. “He says, ‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’ … O'Neill is speechless.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
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Obama has done what he said he would do during the campaign. Where were YOU ID? Did you listen to anything Obama said?
The only thing that has not materialized is shutting down Gitmo, which should have never been opened in the first place. Now we find out THIS:
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April 9, 2010
George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.
The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.
Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece
I think it’s just crazy. It's part of that worldview that led us to where we are. Think about it. The United States went and negotiated with and supported Saddam Hussein himself against Iran under this notion that sometimes my enemy is my friend. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That emboldened Saddam Hussein and allowed him to invade Kuwait. It made us go to war that we did not finish and did not take Saddam Hussein out.
Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) 12/11/06 (The Hill)
