David Reinhard- al Qaida sympathizer?

Dear lord.

Just when it seemed Dave’s disingenuous lack of credibility couldn’t reach any lower, along comes David with this nadir.

Veteran’s Day is a day to celebrate our troops, and the sacrifices they have made- in President Bush’s case, protecting Texas from Oklahoma during the Vietnam War. This holiday is not to be politicized by any President. The only thing a President should do is lay a wreath at Arlington Cemetery- not a duty to be left to Dick “five deferments due to more important things in Vietnam” Cheney. But in Dave’s world, the politicization of Veteran’s Day is fine and dandy.

No wonder our Iraq policy is a joke.

Dave states that Bush “stopped turning the other cheek and himself into a punching bag when called a liar.” Does he mean that Bush will stop using such slime tactics as using proxy groups- the Swift Boat Vets, say- to do the dirty work for him? Bush is now going to take on the critics that he claims are “revising history?” Oh, this will be a good one.

Who was it that said “we don’t need the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud?” Could it be that despite all the tough-guy posturing of the neoconservatives who planned Dubya’s Excellent Iraqi Adventure, they were just afraid of a two-bit broken down tyrant on the other side of the planet whose neighbors weren’t even threatened by? (Sadam wrote romance novels, for crying out loud!) How’s that for “historical revisionism?”

Dave goes off on the issue of “patriotism.” Bush must be succeeding in the “thrust or parry”- interesting words to describe such an impotent administration- with his critics, because the critics accuse Bush of “criticizing their patriotism.” Since his critics say that, Bush must have the upper hand. Or something like that. Here, he makes his point clear with this gem: “The fact is that, since 9/11, we've seen far more Americans accusing other Americans of questioning their patriotism than we've seen Americans questioning other Americans' patriotism.” Yeah. Read it five times, and get back to me if you understand what the heck he’s saying.

He then cites Max Chambliss shamelessly comparing Max Cleland- a man who give three limbs for his country- to Osama bin Laden merely because Cleland wanted to ensure workers’ benefits in the creation of the single most largest government expansion in our nation’s history, as an example of Bush critics using the “questioning patriotism”, uh.... defense, I guess? I’m having trouble following Dave’s point here. If Dave’s attempting to argue for the Republicans’ sake, the citing of the slander of a Democrat war hero makes no sense to me. (And to further befuddle Oregonian readers- who Dave must simply view in a contemptuous manner- he cites Kerry voting for then-Defense Secretary Cheney’s defense budget in the early 90s. Again- point, please?) Perhaps I should check the National Review online and see what Dave read the day before. Perhaps then I’d get a better idea…

Dave writes: “…the left spends months saying Bush lied us into the war using bogus intel, an impeachable offense. Bush finally responds by noting the Clinton administration, foreign governments and Democrats all said Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.” Disingenuous as usual. Dave fails to note that Bush is quoted as saying Clinton had “the same intelligence as I did.” Stop and consider that the intelligence Bush made the decision to go to war on was many years- if not nearly a decade- old you have to ask, again, what point is Reinhard making? Clinton looked at the intelligence and came to a conclusion: “Whoa. Saddam’s an evil dude, but nearly as bad a threat as he thinks he is. A concerted effort of sanctions, inspectors, and no-fly zones that drop bombs now and then will keep him in line. Saddam’s threat will reduce- and we won’t lose a single American life!” And that’s exactly what happened. Then, years later, Bush looked at Clinton’s old intelligence and came to a conclusion: “Whoa. This Saddam’s a bad dude, much bigger then he actually thinks he is. Our only choice? Invade. We’ll say we’re ‘spreading democracy’ years after the fact or something.”

I’m not revising history here. I am merely illustrating what the difference is between a pretty darn good President, and a mediocre one.

So, now that Reinhard brought up the dreaded specter of Clinton, you knew what was coming next. That’s right. 9/11. And they say Democrats have no new ideas.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision a President makes. Before making the decision, he must review all the facts, and examine all intelligence before making a decision that could cost the life of a single troop. Instead we had Cheney at CIA and Rummy at DIA bolstering a case out of thin air- modern-day illusionists. We had inspectors on the ground- and Bush told them to get out of the country as they were in the way of our bombs. But instead of laying criticism at Cheney, Rummy, or Bush, who does Dave target? Jay Rockefeller, the leading Democrat on the Senate Committee, because, somehow, it was his decision that led us to war. No, I kid. It’s because Jay is quoted as saying “can we afford to take that chance [of Saddam having weapons of mass destruction]? We cannot!”

Sadly, Jay was wrong. And so were a lot of other people. Vice President Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was not a threat. He said, “Saddam Hussein is bottled up.” Powell said before 2001, “We have kept Saddam contained, kept him in his box.” They went on to “historically revise” these statements after 9/11. And let’s not forget Rumsfeld’s infamous “We know where the weapons are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” This comment was wrong, either purposefully or naively. The key difference here, Rockefeller has since apologized for making wrong comments, and has refocused his efforts in a forward-thinking strategy to end this mess in Iraq and get our troops home. Rumsfeld still hasn’t apologized for being so incredibly wrong in regards to this war.

Rockefeller was responding for an Iraq invasion push that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz- the policy makers- were making. There was no debate, besides Robert Byrd’s speech on the floor of the Senate. There was only a head-long rush to war without an examination of the intelligence. Why? Because any dissent in the argument for war was viewed of being “unpatriotic.”

And that brings us full-circle. Reinhard incredulously quotes Samuel Johnson- "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and states that Johnson would revise his saying, since “criticzing my patriotism” is all the rage these days. Considering that George W. Bush has started this unnecessary and ideologically driven war, resulting in a waste of an upwards of $200 billion; cost the lives of over 2,000 of our bravest American troops, most who are kids; morally bankrupted us, as we now have a “Vice-President of torture”; enflamed Muslim hatred around the world at the United States, considering a majority of Iraqis view the presence of U.S. troops as adding to the instability and insurgency; our continued presence in Iraq after the deposing of Saddam can only be viewed as an occupation to Iraq’s war neighbors; and al Qaida has thousands of new recruits, I can only come to one conclusion: the policies and the governance of George W. Bush is simply anti-American, supports terrorism, and assists al Qaida in their attempt to kill Americans. Any supporter of George W. Bush is a terrorist supporter and al-Qaida sympathizer.

How’s that for “questioning one’s patriotism?”