From 9/11 to the Arab Spring

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

The main group of the resistence in Iraq were the ex-soldiers once they were fired (a catastrophic descision by Paul Bremer).

 

Read at least one book on Iraq before you start talking shit about it.

 

There's a counter argument by historians that the army was disintegrating anyway, I don't buy it fully, probably a mixture of both scenarios. What the fuck has that got to do with the question you have refused (you're incapable) to answer? You have just derailed a good thread until NJS has responded again, stay out of these threads until you've taken your meds, schlappschwanz.

 

I know you get moody when the Sunny Delight runs out.

 

You can't answer the question I put to you, claiming, "Oh mann my posts have disappeared mann it's a conspiracy dudee," and then you post utter bollocks like, "oohh Iraq didn't even exist duddee it's just a hologram not in the realm of cellular reality mann, pass me the dutchie." Why do you even bother, stick to your shite predictions like 'Smith will be a very important player for us'.

[Park Life 71]

The main group of the resistence in Iraq were the ex-soldiers once they were fired (a catastrophic descision by Paul Bremer).

 

Read at least one book on Iraq before you start talking shit about it.

 

There's a counter argument by historians that the army was disintegrating anyway, I don't buy it fully, probably a mixture of both scenarios. What the fuck has that got to do with the question you have refused (you're incapable) to answer? You have just derailed a good thread until NJS has responded again, stay out of these threads until you've taken your meds, schlappschwanz.

 

I know you get moody when the Sunny Delight runs out.

 

You can't answer the question I put to you, claiming, "Oh mann my posts have disappeared mann it's a conspiracy dudee," and then you post utter bollocks like, "oohh Iraq didn't even exist duddee it's just a hologram not in the realm of cellular reality mann, pass me the dutchie." Why do you even bother, stick to your shite predictions like 'Smith will be a very important player for us'.

 

Smith's influence in the changing room has been vastly underestimated.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

 

NO BLOOD FOR OIL MANN

[Park Life 71]

Well it's ironic really because I assume that bloke is inferring the Americans have inflicted these '9/11's when in actual fact Al Quaeda forces have been responsible for a lot of the deaths. Of course what is never taken into consideration is the impact of several decades of totalitarian rule to the point where the society was a disaster waiting to happen, that's without the influence of Iran stirring up sectarian violence and Al Quaeda using it as a launching pad, having been flushed out of Afghanistan. Without the coalition there who knows how bad it would have got, it could have been another Ruanda (in the aftermath of Hussein's death).

 

As a namby-pamby Leftie I fucking hate it when bollocks like "Bush and Blair killed a million Iraqis" is spouted. They certainly caused the shitpot (with obvious help from Saddam) but the notion that Western forces killed that number is shite. Seems like you can't mention the factional terrorism.

 

Aye, that's what prompted me to read further about Iraq, even about Saddam Hussein and his rise/reign. People shouting, "Hey mannn, Bush and Blair have the bloood of millions of innocent Iraqis on their hands just for OILLL MANNN. Not in my nammeee duddeee." I wasn't aware that they went to war on behalf of your name, you idiotic hippie numbskull.

 

You'll know then how far up America's arse Hussain was and the many visits to sell arms and gas by the Pentagon.

[Park Life 71]

 

NO BLOOD FOR OIL MANN

 

Top.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

You'll know then how far up America's arse Hussain was and the many visits to sell arms and gas by the Pentagon.

 

Which you could say gives them more of a responsibility to get rid of him.

[Park Life 71]

You'll know then how far up America's arse Hussain was and the many visits to sell arms and gas by the Pentagon.

 

Which you could say gives them more of a responsibility to get rid of him.

 

 

Mate that's spin like I've never seen.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Iraq was a fictonal country created primarily by the British and once the totalitarian rule of SH was over it was bound to break up along sectarian lines. It's as simple as that.

 

That's a shit answer. Nothing with regard to the structure of Iraqi society is that simple, and it certainly would not have been without significant bloodshed. You think Uday would have happily seen the various factions split up and mind their own business? And if you honestly think that the said factions would do that, then you have ideas in your head that have absolutely no bearing on reality. Given the state of Iraqi society and the countries that surround it, it was a catastophe waiting to happen, with or without our influence.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Park Life 71]

Iraq was a fictonal country created primarily by the British and once the totalitarian rule of SH was over it was bound to break up along sectarian lines. It's as simple as that.

 

That's a shit answer. Nothing with regard to the structure of Iraqi society is that simple, and it certainly would not have been without significant bloodshed. You think Uday would have happily seen the various factions split up and mind their own business? And if you honestly think that the said factions would do that, then you have ideas in your head that have absolutely no bearing on reality. Given the state of Iraqi society and the countries that surround it, it was a catastophe waiting to happen, with or without our influence.

 

YOu've lost me now. This is what if stuff like strawmen have gone out of fashion. I have no idea what the effect Oil of Ulay would have had on a post Saddam Iraq. If you're asking me if the Baath party would still be in power if there had been no war, then I would take you a bit more seriously.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Iraq was a fictonal country created primarily by the British and once the totalitarian rule of SH was over it was bound to break up along sectarian lines. It's as simple as that.

 

That's a shit answer. Nothing with regard to the structure of Iraqi society is that simple, and it certainly would not have been without significant bloodshed. You think Uday would have happily seen the various factions split up and mind their own business? And if you honestly think that the said factions would do that, then you have ideas in your head that have absolutely no bearing on reality. Given the state of Iraqi society and the countries that surround it, it was a catastophe waiting to happen, with or without our influence.

 

YOu've lost me now. This is what if stuff like strawmen have gone out of fashion. I have no idea what the effect Oil of Ulay would have had on a post Saddam Iraq. If you're asking me if the Baath party would still be in power if there had been no war, then I would take you a bit more seriously.

 

I asked you, quite simply, what do you suppose would have happened after Saddam died. You answered that it would have simply been magical fairy land with the various factions settling into their own patches. Utter bollocks, a derisory effort, even by your standards.

 

I have to go work, go and hide in your fucking toilet again like when those black men broke into your flat and I'lldeal with you when I get back.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Park Life 71]

Iraq was a fictonal country created primarily by the British and once the totalitarian rule of SH was over it was bound to break up along sectarian lines. It's as simple as that.

 

That's a shit answer. Nothing with regard to the structure of Iraqi society is that simple, and it certainly would not have been without significant bloodshed. You think Uday would have happily seen the various factions split up and mind their own business? And if you honestly think that the said factions would do that, then you have ideas in your head that have absolutely no bearing on reality. Given the state of Iraqi society and the countries that surround it, it was a catastophe waiting to happen, with or without our influence.

 

YOu've lost me now. This is what if stuff like strawmen have gone out of fashion. I have no idea what the effect Oil of Ulay would have had on a post Saddam Iraq. If you're asking me if the Baath party would still be in power if there had been no war, then I would take you a bit more seriously.

 

I asked you, quite simply, what do you suppose would have happened after Saddam died. You answered that it would have simply been magical fairy land with the various factions settling into their own patches. Utter bollocks, a derisory effort, even by your standards.

 

You're move deftly into pointless fiction is well known in these parts.

 

I repeat without the iron fist of the baath party Iraqi society was highly unstable. Once the Baath party were taken out of the equation by your burger muching psychotic hillbillies, Iraq started to disintegrate along religios and tribal lines. Can't say it any simpler.

[Park Life 71]

And...as most of the post war licensing rights for oil have been bought up by the French, British and Dutch, its been a complete washout America. The dumbest president on the face of the earth has delivered the worst outcome for Americans and good riddance.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Park Life

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

I repeat without the iron fist of the baath party Iraqi society was highly unstable.

 

It was unstable because of it. Saddam was getting desperate trying to pull rank in his later years, he even etched out a Koran in his own blood, among several appeals to the religious extreme. If Hussein died you contend the Ba'ath party would have continued to rule a 'stable' Iraq? Care to substantiate that? I'll be back after 10pm, might be too knackered to post by then.

[Park Life 71]

I repeat without the iron fist of the baath party Iraqi society was highly unstable.

 

It was unstable because of it. Saddam was getting desperate trying to pull rank in his later years, he even etched out a Koran in his own blood, among several appeals to the religious extreme. If Hussein died you contend the Ba'ath party would have continued to rule a 'stable' Iraq? Care to substantiate that? I'll be back after 10pm, might be too knackered to post by then.

 

I don't contend that at all.

 

I moonwalk over you and your tiredness.

[Park Life 71]

I wonder how many people got past the first paragraph.

 

It was, we were soon told, "the day that changed everything", the 21st century's defining moment, the watershed by which we would forever divide world history: before, and after, 9/11.

 

Ten years on, much of that early reaction to the day America realised, as New York magazine put it on the fifth anniversary, that "there really are ideological-cum-religious zealots out there intent on slaughtering us in large numbers", now looks exaggerated – albeit understandably. 11 September 2001 didn't change the world for ever.

 

The world is, however, a different place. So the question is: which of the many changes are genuine consequences of 9/11? One way of answering might be to ask what the world would be like if 9/11 had not happened.

 

There are obvious objections to counterfactual history, as speculating "what if?" is known by historians, if only because, as any of them will tell you, causality isn't easy to establish with certainty even in conventional historical research. But it does throw up some neat ideas – not least that in the big scheme of things, 9/11, horrific and cataclysmic as it was, may not have changed much at all.

 

If the al-Qaida plotters had not pulled off 9/11, many security and foreign policy experts believe it would only have been a matter of time before they managed something else.

 

Alternatively, a steady accumulation of smaller attacks – an embassy in Africa here, a warship in the Red Sea there – may have provoked a large-scale US response.

 

So an attack on Afghanistan (with all its disastrous consequences for neighbouring Pakistan, and hence, arguably, for the choices made by the 7/7 London bombers) was more or less on the cards, with or without 9/11.

 

Crucially, Iraq too may well have come under attack regardless. "There's quite a strong argument," says Anatol Lieven of King's College London's department of war studies, "that the Bush administration would have tried to invade and occupy Iraq anyway.

 

"The question is, would they have got away with it? Would they have been able to win over the more moderate Republicans, get it through the Senate, rally support at the UN, convince Tony Blair?

 

"I think Iraq would certainly have been more difficult for the US without 9/11, because Bush explicitly made that Saddam-al-Qaida link. But I think it would have tried."

 

Assuming the neocons did carry the day, "much of what has happened since would obviously have happened anyway", Lieven points out. "The extreme anger of the Muslim world, the blow to US military prestige, the rise of Iran – all of that would have happened."

 

Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, feels it is questionable whether the US hawks would have won the day on Iraq without the "extreme shock" of 9/11. But he notes that much else in the broader world picture would have happened regardless.

 

"Economic growth, continuing globalisation, the rise of a giant consumer class … the twin towers and al-Qaida barely even dented that," he says. "The debt crisis would have happened, too.

 

"The fact that America had a $700bn defence budget, was spending $200bn, $250bn a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, that was a massive additional drain. But the underlying economic and financial causes were unrelated. And the whole Arab spring really had nothing to do with 9/11.

 

"I'm struggling to think of a single thing that I wouldn't see today if the twin towers hadn't happened."

 

It was not 9/11 but the invasion of Iraq that set in motion the real changes: the "emboldened" state of Iran; the significant hardening and legitimising of anti-American attitudes in Turkey; the fact that the leaders of "rogue states" such as Venezuela or Iran could pull off the unlikely feat of "presenting themselves as much-maligned forces for stability".

 

And it was the war in Iraq, notes Toby Dodge, of the LSE and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, that imposed such serious and lasting strain on transatlantic relations, and on relations within Europe.

 

"If the transatlantic relationship was born in 1945, it died on 9/11. The fact [is] that Le Monde could say on its front page, 'We're all Americans now,' and that the US could then so completely squander that with bombastic, imperialist incompetence," he said.

 

Other major post-9/11 winners, says Lieven, include China, which avoided the consequences of "a very gung-ho, almost McCarthyite anti-Chinese agenda" when Bush came to power to "benefit enormously from the fact that the US was spending itself into the ground on military hardware that was never going to be a threat to China".

 

And if the Bush White House had not been occupied with Iraq, it might not have resisted attacking North Korea, Lieven speculates. "That would have led it into a confrontation with China."

 

In fact one of the greatest victims of the US response to 9/11, argues Dodge, was the country's own strategic focus, which "just got completely skewed". Pakistan was neglected. Israel was neglected ("The road to Tel Aviv and Ramallah ran through Baghdad").

 

And so too, adds Niblett, were Latin America ("Bush was the guy who was going to open up Mexico") and Asia.

 

"Everything became focused on this one thing," Niblett says. "The US simply withdrew from pretty much everything else. As a result, Washington was largely absent at a senior level from the rest of the world, at a time when the rest of the world was changing, and growing, very fast indeed. That's not made things easy for Obama."

 

The pendulum swings, though. Niblett explains: "The fact that 9/11 was such a massive attack, that it drew such a massive, big-stick response, and that America saw that response fail … The US was, after all, checked, even in some ways defeated in Iraq.

 

"Current US foreign policy under [barack] Obama, altogether more nuanced, more restrained, is a product of that. There's an awareness that the big stick approach doesn't always work."

 

Which is probably, in the grand scheme of things, a good thing. Because as Lieven suggests, America under Bush was spoiling for a fight.

 

"It's worth examining the agenda with which Bush came to power and which he pursued in the first eight months," he says. "Anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran, anti-North Korea … If a 'non-9/11' had made Iraq impossible, it's perfectly possible the US would have got into equally terrible trouble. Just in different places."

 

 

I agree on the point that America might still have got into a war with Iraq without 9/11 as everything the neo-cons were having wet dreams about pointed to that. But ultimately what a catastrophic blunder as it leaves Iran without a hostile Iraq to worry about and also a free opp to harry American forces in Iraq as long as they are bogged down there and continue to strengthen the Shia living in Iraq.

[Happy Face 29]

Best and most succinct 9/11 piece I've read

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

 

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

 

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

 

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening —took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

 

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/1...n&seid=auto

[Park Life 71]

Best and most succinct 9/11 piece I've read

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

 

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

 

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

 

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening —took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

 

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/1...n&seid=auto

 

Absolutely spot on.

[Happy Face 29]

10 years on from 9/11 today, the Arab spring and capture of Bin Laden bookending the decade perfectly and Hitch's writings are always worth a read. Think he has a book out too.

 

10 years on from 9/11 will be the 9th of November you cock!

No its not, the event happened in the US and therefore retains their method of dates, not ours. It was planned by Bin Laden to fall on this date so 9/11 would be used to describe it.

 

Anyway, fuck off back to Sunderland you shit-licking mackem prick.

 

Atta was the one that chose the date. Wanted it done when congress was in session.

[ChezGiven 0]

I wonder how many people got past the first paragraph.

 

 

"It's worth examining the agenda with which Bush came to power and which he pursued in the first eight months," he says. "Anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran, anti-North Korea … If a 'non-9/11' had made Iraq impossible, it's perfectly possible the US would have got into equally terrible trouble. Just in different places."

 

 

I agree on the point that America might still have got into a war with Iraq without 9/11 as everything the neo-cons were having wet dreams about pointed to that. But ultimately what a catastrophic blunder as it leaves Iran without a hostile Iraq to worry about and also a free opp to harry American forces in Iraq as long as they are bogged down there and continue to strengthen the Shia living in Iraq.

 

If 9/11 hadnt happened then they would have invaded North Korea and KSA would be making arguments about the horrors of subjugation to the Worker's Party.

[Park Life 71]

I wonder how many people got past the first paragraph.

 

 

"It's worth examining the agenda with which Bush came to power and which he pursued in the first eight months," he says. "Anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran, anti-North Korea … If a 'non-9/11' had made Iraq impossible, it's perfectly possible the US would have got into equally terrible trouble. Just in different places."

 

 

I agree on the point that America might still have got into a war with Iraq without 9/11 as everything the neo-cons were having wet dreams about pointed to that. But ultimately what a catastrophic blunder as it leaves Iran without a hostile Iraq to worry about and also a free opp to harry American forces in Iraq as long as they are bogged down there and continue to strengthen the Shia living in Iraq.

 

If 9/11 hadnt happened then they would have invaded North Korea and KSA would be making arguments about the horrors of subjugation to the Worker's Party.

 

 

And the agony of living in all those grey and dank cities.

[Meenzer 15449]

 

Bewdiful

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

And why not? It's funny you bring that up, because my view of totalitarianism is derived from what I've read of George Orwell. As a child I'd never been convinced by the idea of hell, it seemed like a lot of bollocks, but when I learned a bit about North Korea, the prototype Stalinist state (the only country in the world ruled by a dead man, Kim Il Sung, the eternal leader) I was convinced. That is hell on earth.

Edited September 11, 2011 by Kevin S. Assilleekunt

[Happy Face 29]

I wonder how many people got past the first paragraph.

 

It was, we were soon told, "the day that changed everything", the 21st century's defining moment, the watershed by which we would forever divide world history: before, and after, 9/11.

 

Ten years on, much of that early reaction to the day America realised, as New York magazine put it on the fifth anniversary, that "there really are ideological-cum-religious zealots out there intent on slaughtering us in large numbers", now looks exaggerated – albeit understandably. 11 September 2001 didn't change the world for ever.

 

The world is, however, a different place. So the question is: which of the many changes are genuine consequences of 9/11? One way of answering might be to ask what the world would be like if 9/11 had not happened.

 

There are obvious objections to counterfactual history, as speculating "what if?" is known by historians, if only because, as any of them will tell you, causality isn't easy to establish with certainty even in conventional historical research. But it does throw up some neat ideas – not least that in the big scheme of things, 9/11, horrific and cataclysmic as it was, may not have changed much at all.

 

If the al-Qaida plotters had not pulled off 9/11, many security and foreign policy experts believe it would only have been a matter of time before they managed something else.

 

Alternatively, a steady accumulation of smaller attacks – an embassy in Africa here, a warship in the Red Sea there – may have provoked a large-scale US response.

 

So an attack on Afghanistan (with all its disastrous consequences for neighbouring Pakistan, and hence, arguably, for the choices made by the 7/7 London bombers) was more or less on the cards, with or without 9/11.

 

Crucially, Iraq too may well have come under attack regardless. "There's quite a strong argument," says Anatol Lieven of King's College London's department of war studies, "that the Bush administration would have tried to invade and occupy Iraq anyway.

 

"The question is, would they have got away with it? Would they have been able to win over the more moderate Republicans, get it through the Senate, rally support at the UN, convince Tony Blair?

 

"I think Iraq would certainly have been more difficult for the US without 9/11, because Bush explicitly made that Saddam-al-Qaida link. But I think it would have tried."

 

Assuming the neocons did carry the day, "much of what has happened since would obviously have happened anyway", Lieven points out. "The extreme anger of the Muslim world, the blow to US military prestige, the rise of Iran – all of that would have happened."

 

Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, feels it is questionable whether the US hawks would have won the day on Iraq without the "extreme shock" of 9/11. But he notes that much else in the broader world picture would have happened regardless.

 

"Economic growth, continuing globalisation, the rise of a giant consumer class … the twin towers and al-Qaida barely even dented that," he says. "The debt crisis would have happened, too.

 

"The fact that America had a $700bn defence budget, was spending $200bn, $250bn a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, that was a massive additional drain. But the underlying economic and financial causes were unrelated. And the whole Arab spring really had nothing to do with 9/11.

 

"I'm struggling to think of a single thing that I wouldn't see today if the twin towers hadn't happened."

 

It was not 9/11 but the invasion of Iraq that set in motion the real changes: the "emboldened" state of Iran; the significant hardening and legitimising of anti-American attitudes in Turkey; the fact that the leaders of "rogue states" such as Venezuela or Iran could pull off the unlikely feat of "presenting themselves as much-maligned forces for stability".

 

And it was the war in Iraq, notes Toby Dodge, of the LSE and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, that imposed such serious and lasting strain on transatlantic relations, and on relations within Europe.

 

"If the transatlantic relationship was born in 1945, it died on 9/11. The fact [is] that Le Monde could say on its front page, 'We're all Americans now,' and that the US could then so completely squander that with bombastic, imperialist incompetence," he said.

 

Other major post-9/11 winners, says Lieven, include China, which avoided the consequences of "a very gung-ho, almost McCarthyite anti-Chinese agenda" when Bush came to power to "benefit enormously from the fact that the US was spending itself into the ground on military hardware that was never going to be a threat to China".

 

And if the Bush White House had not been occupied with Iraq, it might not have resisted attacking North Korea, Lieven speculates. "That would have led it into a confrontation with China."

 

In fact one of the greatest victims of the US response to 9/11, argues Dodge, was the country's own strategic focus, which "just got completely skewed". Pakistan was neglected. Israel was neglected ("The road to Tel Aviv and Ramallah ran through Baghdad").

 

And so too, adds Niblett, were Latin America ("Bush was the guy who was going to open up Mexico") and Asia.

 

"Everything became focused on this one thing," Niblett says. "The US simply withdrew from pretty much everything else. As a result, Washington was largely absent at a senior level from the rest of the world, at a time when the rest of the world was changing, and growing, very fast indeed. That's not made things easy for Obama."

 

The pendulum swings, though. Niblett explains: "The fact that 9/11 was such a massive attack, that it drew such a massive, big-stick response, and that America saw that response fail … The US was, after all, checked, even in some ways defeated in Iraq.

 

"Current US foreign policy under [barack] Obama, altogether more nuanced, more restrained, is a product of that. There's an awareness that the big stick approach doesn't always work."

 

Which is probably, in the grand scheme of things, a good thing. Because as Lieven suggests, America under Bush was spoiling for a fight.

 

"It's worth examining the agenda with which Bush came to power and which he pursued in the first eight months," he says. "Anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran, anti-North Korea … If a 'non-9/11' had made Iraq impossible, it's perfectly possible the US would have got into equally terrible trouble. Just in different places."

 

 

I agree on the point that America might still have got into a war with Iraq without 9/11 as everything the neo-cons were having wet dreams about pointed to that. But ultimately what a catastrophic blunder as it leaves Iran without a hostile Iraq to worry about and also a free opp to harry American forces in Iraq as long as they are bogged down there and continue to strengthen the Shia living in Iraq.

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-10/politic...=PM:ALLPOLITICS

[Happy Face 29]

And why not? It's funny you bring that up, because my view of totalitarianism is derived from what I've read of George Orwell. As a child I'd never been convinced by the idea of hell, it seemed like a lot of bollocks, but when I learned a bit about North Korea, the prototype Stalinist state (the only country in the world ruled by a dead man, Kim Il Sung, the eternal leader) I was convinced. That is hell on earth.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...eaks/index.html

[Park Life 71]

From that article:

 

"These are very serious charges. It would mean [bush administration officials] were dead-set on going to war alone since almost the day they took office and deliberately lied to the American people, Congress, and the world," Kerry said. "It would mean that for purely ideological reasons they planned on putting American troops in a shooting gallery, occupying an Arab country almost alone. The White House needs to answer these charges truthfully because they threaten to shatter [its] already damaged credibility as never before."

 

Fuck me.