View Full Version : Bush invokes 'tragedy of Vietnam' against Iraq
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said Bush had drawn the wrong lesson from history:
"America lost the war in Vietnam because our troops were trapped in a distant country we did not understand supporting a government that lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people," Kennedy said in a statement.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/22/bush.iraq.speech/index.html
Kennedy...he's the one that wouldn't jump back into the water to save his passenger in Chappaquid**** after his drunk driving escapade submerged his vehicle with Mary Jo Kopechne in it.
Great guy.
Trustworthy.
http://www.politicaldogs.org/blogphotos/ted-kennedy-abu-ghraib-prison.jpg
http://www.tinyvital.com/images/blogmisc/TedKennedyPlans.jpg
Hans, you love me, don't you??? /ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/blush.gif /ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wavey.gif
http://stonegiant.com/Politics/Kennedy_Iraq.gif
Some things never change LOL
"Chappaquid****". Is that a lollipop?
http://www.skypic.com/ma/8-4957.jpg
There is Chappaquid****.
Glad to see you can make fun of a young girl's death.
Looks like a very nice place. Where's it located?
Is that where they launch the Shuttle?
No, it's where they launch fifty-foot cod
Did you know they also refer to it as "The Cape" ?
The Berean
08-22-2007, 08:49 PM
Mind you, Kennedy, while less than a reliable person, is in this statement perfectly correct.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ConKat</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mind you, Kennedy, while less than a reliable person, is in this statement perfectly correct. </div></div>
Like his statement to the police the night of the accident claiming he wasn't driving the car when it went off the bridge?
David Gergen, a former adviser to four presidents, says Bush stirred up a hornet's nest among historians. "By invoking Vietnam he raised the question, if you learned so much from history, how did you ever get us involved in another quagmire?" Gergen told CNN.
The Berean
08-22-2007, 09:17 PM
The comparison is interesting.
I wonder just HOW could the US have won in Vietnam???
Same way as they are winning in Iraq : it's all in their head.
I don't think the insurgency is nearly the threat it was. Almost everyone agrees the surge has worked, and worked very well at that. The issue now is getting Maliki to either show something as a leader, or move out of the way and get someone in there who can form some sort of coalition government.
This whole Iraq deal is not over, like the liberals and media would have had you believe even six months ago. The verdict is still out, and I still see something positive coming out of all this.
In a trip to Syria this week the Iraqi prime minister scolded his American friends for daring to challenge the will of the Iraqi people who installed him and dismissed their criticism as Washington politics.
It's a role reversal that speaks volumes about the inherent complexities and contradictions of the Bush administration's policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Bush promised Iraq would become a beacon of democracy in sea of Middle East dictatorships. When he won re-election, Bush made promoting democracy in the region the cornerstone of his foreign policy.
But the administration has struggled with the need for stability and support for the democratic process. The election gains of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt all proved democracy could produce undesired results for the U.S. In each of these cases the U.S. abandoned the victor, saying that democratic "elections" are different than governing democratically.
In Iraq, too, the U.S. has abandoned a democratically elected leader when it withdrew its support for Ibrahim al-Jafari, Iraq's former prime minister who also failed to bring reconciliation among Shiia, Sunni and Kurd factions in his government. The U.S. was involved in engineering al-Jafari's ouster in favor of al-Maliki.
Now, despite being democratically elected, al-Maliki risks being cast aside with the same kind of disregard for the democratic selection process the U.S. has criticized around the world.
Publicly no Bush administration official will call for his removal, but the messages emanating from Washington are being seen as signals to al-Maliki's critics that his days are numbered.
But as with Hezbollah and Hamas, Maliki's message to the U.S. is that he will survive without the U.S.
Standing in Syria, a foe which the U.S. has blasted for its failure to respect democracy in Lebanon and its own country, al-Maliki said he would "find friends elsewhere" if he was abandoned by the United States.
A loss of U.S. support could force al-Maliki to turn to Syria or Iran, which the U.S. accuses of meddling in Iraq, supporting insurgents and sending deadly explosives to kill U.S. troops.
That would not be a good day for democracy in Iraq.
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