Showing posts with label hawk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hawk. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Neocons Begging for Another War in Iraq - Updated with Morning Joe

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Previous Related Posts:
Berghazi: Flip-Flopping Wingnuts Trash Bergdahl
Armchair Chickenhawks say Obama is "Weak" and "Feckless" on Russia
Obama Wins on Syria, With Media Derp
Donald Rumsfeld: Blood-Gargling Psychopath

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As Iraq crumbles into chaos, the Neocons are losing their minds again. They don't want Obama to get credit for ending the wars, and they hate him for the Benghazi flop, so they are blaming him for the new chaos in the Middle East. And they seem to want our country to get dragged into ALL the conflicts there, no matter what the consequences. Why exactly? Perhaps they love death and destruction? Senility? Brain Damage? They want another war so they can blame Hillary when she runs for President? The possibilities are endless.

And for some reason the media is dragging up the whole W. Bush administration to talk about it as if anyone cares what they think! Plus Mitt Romneyshambles, the Horses and Bayonets Guy.

Our peace-loving President is trying to be the voice of reason. Here is what he said last Friday:

We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces, and I’ll be reviewing those options in the days ahead.
. . . We’re also going to pursue intensive diplomacy throughout this period both inside of Iraq and across the region, because there’s never going to be stability in Iraq or the broader region unless there are political outcomes that allow people to resolve their differences peacefully without resorting to war or relying on the United States military.

Another peace-lover is Shepard Smith of Fox News, who had this reaction to his colleagues sounding the alarm for yet another war:

Are we about to be drawn back into a conflict in Iraq?" Smith asked. "The same people who 12 years ago told us this will be quick, this will be easy, this will be inexpensive, they will see us as liberators, it's the right thing to do, are now telling us, 'It's the right thing to do.' What's the endgame? Who's thought this through?




Who has thought this through? Apparently no one, but that won't keep them from speaking their minds. And in fact the media is inviting them to do it. Rachel Maddow had this to say:

It is very frustrating to see that this is the way we handle debates about foreign policy in this country. We take people who were so provably, terribly wrong and bring them back and treat them like experts on the very subject they have been so wrong about. It is maddening. It is frustrating.
If you have been frustrated by seeing all these Iraq War architects and cheerleaders back out there doing it again with no accountability you are not alone in your frustration.
. . . Hey Sunday shows! Hey op-ed pages! Hey cable news! Hey everybody! We know you are tempted to keep booking these yahoos on these subjects, but if you keep turning to the people who were famously wrong about Iraq to ask them about what to do about Iraq, you at least will be laughed at. And you will be embarrassed that you did this. And you will eventually have to apologize or at least explain yourself for why you thought Bill Kristol should be explaining what to do now. We can see what you’re doing, and it’s funny, but not in a good way.


John McCain

Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced. It's a colossal failure of American security policy.
. . . Lindsey Graham and John McCain were right. Our failure to leave forces on Iraq is why Sen. Graham and I predicted this would happen.
~ Senator John McCain R-AZ, so excited he is talking in third person about himself

The John McCain military plan for America is the same as the John McCain media strategy. Be everywhere — forever.
~ Jon Stewart on The Daily Show




John McCain has made some really bad Predictions on Iraq
 ~ Via Chris Hayes on MSNBC
  • They Sent Us The Anthrax
  • The Iraqi People will treat us as Liberators
  • Iraqis will pay for post-Saddam Era
  • There's No history of violence between Sunnis and Shias
  • War will be Brief
  • There will be Evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction
  • President Bush will be Justified

















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Lindsey Graham:

We’ve got another Benghazi in the making here. What I heard in there scared the hell out of me.
~ Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC










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Tony Blair

The reality is that the whole of the Middle East and beyond is going through a huge, agonising and protracted transition. We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.
~ Tony Blair, Former British Prime Minister

I have come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad. He wrote an essay published last week that struck me as unhinged in its refusal to face facts. In discussing the disaster of modern Iraq he made assertions that are so jaw-droppingly and breathtakingly at variance with reality that he surely needs professional psychiatric help.
. . . Somebody needs to get on to Tony Blair and tell him to put a sock in it - or at least to accept the reality of the disaster he helped to engender. Then he might be worth hearing. The truth shall set you free, Tony.
~ Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-blair-is-mad-to-deny-iraq-was-a-tragic-error-20140616-zs97h.html#ixzz34tlUalWm












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Mitt Romney

Tragically, all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing.
. . . I lost the election. We lost the election. But I and we will continue to fight.”
~ Mittster Romney at his Mormon "Summit" in Park City, Utah







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Bill Kristol:

It's a disaster made possibly by our ridiculous and total withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.
. . . President Obama said two days before election day, in 2012, Iraq is on the path of defeat, the war in Iraq is over. That was enough to get him re-elected. Iraq is on the path of defeat. Neither is true. It's a disaster for our country.
~ Conservative Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard

Kristol has been wrong about literally everything — most of all, Iraq.
I’d give him credit for tenacity if he wasn’t so tenaciously clinging to an idea that led to one of the most horrifying foreign policy blunders in modern history.
~ Bob Cesca on The Daily Banter

Update: Kristol vs. Heileman on Morning Joe

If [Obama] goes on TV and says, ‘This is a strategic crisis for the reasons I’m going to lay out here. We have to do something no one wants to do, which is to go back in with a lot of air power and special forces and maybe a few conventional troops to help stabilize the situation. We cannot allow an al Qaeda-backed group to dominate one part of the Middle East and Iran and Iranian-backed groups to dominate another part of the Middle East. It’s an unacceptable threat to us.’ He would have support.
~ Bill Kristol on Morning Joe, 6-17-2014

Bill’s notion, with all due respect, is fantastical. As in, absurd.
I think it's ridiculous. This is American blood you're talking about! You want to send people into another intervention in which most people in the country believe that this is a centuries-old sectarian violence that we have no place and no ability to solve!
. . . There is war weariness in this country, whether you like it or not. I know you don’t have the weariness for war, but the country does.
~ John Heileman on Morning Joe









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Paul Wolfowitz

This is more than just the obscure Shia/Sunni conflict. This is al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda is not on the road of defeat, al-Qaeda is on the march. Not just in Iraq and Syria and we have real enemies in the US and what we should be looking for friends. I think when we stick with our friends and those friends are not always perfect, but we stuck with the Kurds for twenty years. Northern Iraq, Kurdistan is a success story. We stuck with them South Korea for sixty years. South Korea is a miracle story if we walked away from that country in 1953, that country was a basket case.
~ Paul Wolfowitz on Meet the Press

(HUH?)

The “obscure Shia/Sunni conflict”? There is no hell hot enough for these people.
~ Scholars and Rogues Blog

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." – Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, during a "Vanity Fair" interview, May 28, 2003
~ Via IBTimes




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Ari Fleischer:





(Ahem, the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.)








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Monday, October 8, 2012

Hope is Broken ~ Romney Speaks at VMI

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(My Tweet)


From NBC News First Read
Romney will deliver a 30-minute address, titled "The Mantle of Leadership," later Monday at the Virginia Military Institute, his 10th address on the topic of foreign policy since summer 2011.
. . . It will include new details on how Romney would address current global hotspots and repeat regular stump speech staples – such as the importance of averting planned defense cuts, expanding and reinvesting in the U.S. military and working closely with allies abroad, especially Israel.
. . . Romney’s remarks also attempt to stake out a more activist public position than President Obama on supporting the rebels in Syria's civil war. Romney plans to say that he believes in working with partner nations to arm rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.
He would equip the rebels – “who share our values” -- with heavy weapons to take out "tanks, helicopters and fighter jets," according to the remarks. The Obama administration has refrained from doing so out of concern that the weapons would end up in terrorist hands, according to The New York Times.

Romney-VMI

via Twitter

Transcript of Prepared Speech
In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets. Iran is sending arms to Assad because they know his downfall would be a strategic defeat for them. We should be working no less vigorously with our international partners to support the many Syrians who would deliver that defeat to Iran—rather than sitting on the sidelines. It is essential that we develop influence with those forces in Syria that will one day lead a country that sits at the heart of the Middle East.



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We're not going to be lectured by someone who has been an unmitigated disaster on foreign policy every time he's dipped his toe in the foreign policy waters. The only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase.
~ Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki aboard Air Force One, anticipating problems with a speech Romney will give tomorrow at Virginia Military Academy

In every region of the world — and particularly in the Middle East — American influence has been weakened by President Obama’s failed foreign policy. American security and the cause of freedom cannot afford four more years like the last four years, and Mitt Romney will restore the bipartisan tradition of American leadership abroad that President Obama has not lived up to.
~ Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg












I'm a professor. If one of my students turned it in, they'd get a C.
~ Sec. of State Madeleine Albright in conference call, via Politico

Of the various weird things Romney has said, his position on Russia is truly out of date. If you were living in the 20th century, his position might have made some sense. In the 21st century, terrorism/al Qaeda is our #1 geopolitical threat, not Russia.
I'm beginning to think that Gov. Romney simply doesn't have the facts, such all the things we've done vis-a-vis Russia. The Russians actually have been pretty helpful on Iran (although not so much on Syria). We can't look at Russia like we did in the Cold War. Romney has Cold War tone/nostalgia.
~ Sec. Madeleine Albright on Blue Virginia

There’s an awful lot of rhetoric and things, but when you get to the specifics you don’t get the sense that he knows exactly what tools to use and how to operate within an international setting. I know the people that are around Gov. Romney and a lot of them are kind of division of neocons and [some are] even more conservative and some realists. But the truth is, a lot of them are exactly the people that brought us the previous administration’s — Bush’s administration’s — eight years. And we’re still dealing with the consequences of that.
. . . [the speech was] “full of platitudes and free of substance. You know, ‘peace through strength, clarity, resolve.’ Those aren’t really foreign policies.”
. . . he doesn’t read his briefing papers.
I just find him very shallow in the ideas that he has.
~ Ex-Sec of State Madeleine Albright on Raw Story

Americans support increasing sanctions against Syria, but overwhelmingly oppose arming anti-government groups, much less actually sending troops. By the numbers: 60 percent support sanctions, 22 percent support arming rebels, and 13 percent support sending troops.
Americans also don’t seem to have much of an appetite for a more aggressive relationship with Iran. Only 12 percent said the U.S. should encourage Israel to attack, 53 percent want a neutral stance, and 29 percent want the U.S. to discourage Israel from attacking. A full 55 percent said the U.S.’s strategic position would be worse if Israel were to attack Iran.
~ New York Times Editor








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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Ryan's Foreign Policy Cred: Voted for War

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The way I would say about foreign policy is you know I’ve been in Congress for a number of years. That’s more experience that Barack Obama had when he came into office.
You know, I’ve voted to send people to war.
~ Paul Ryan to Carl Cameron of Fox News
















































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