If Bush has been right, then who's been wrong?

[emad]

John Vinocur International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, March 15, 2005

MADRID 'Middle East on the Move, Is Bush to Thank?", a newspaper's banner headline quite fairly asked Europeans last week. What a terrifying premise.
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Perhaps not for scores of millions of Arabs. But if George Bush is proven right on Iraq, and more than a bit responsible for the Arab Spring of shaky political advances now shimmering from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, then it's a frightening development and delegitimizing situation for European politicians from Spain to Germany.
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They are pols like Gerhard Schröder and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who essentially won election by running against Bush and the Iraq war. Leaving the talk of freedom or jihadist terrorism to the yahoos, they have linked their futures to what they supposed would be the eternal vote-cornucopia of resistance to Bush's vision for the Middle East.
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Adding France and Belgium, the group widens to include governments that hoped to leverage their stance on Bush and the war into a genesis myth for a Europe redefining itself as America's counterweight.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/14/news/politicus.html

[rodeodance]

1. everyone who said he was wrong!!

[XemaSab]

2. Bush brought about democracy in the middle east

sort of like Reagan brought about democracy in the former Soviet Union. :eyes:

[kentuck]

3. Let's at least wait until they have a Constitutuion and government..

Right now, nobody can claim anything except chaos, anarchy, and more killing. A little premature to announce a wave of democracy across the Middle East. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature... But, no doubt, they could get accustomed to all those American dollars that are feeding many of them right now.

[Debs]

4. There is no possible way

Bush can claim to have been right on Iraq. It doesn't matter if Iraq turns into a new Eden. Bush didn't take us to war to make Iraq safe for democracy. Please tell me you aren't buying this weeks blue plate special about why we went into Iraq. We invaded because Bush suddenly found compassion for the poor suffering Iraqis? Please, you're making my stomach hurt. We invade for either, security from Iraq's WMDs that littered the country like so many cigarette butts (the official story) or to secure military bases to control the middle easts oil resources (the real story). All this talk about democracy in the middle east is the latest in a series of smokescreens. So, as I said, even if Iraq becomes a Paradise on Earth, he cannot be right because the ends cannot justify the means. Iraqis didn't ask us to come and free them, they overwhelmingly see us as occupiers because thats what we are and we had no inherent right to become occupiers for either the reasons of UNILATERALLY deciding for them that the cost of their suffering would be worth their freedom (not our call) or imperialism (the real reason). Dint even fall into the trap of repeating this nonsense about Bush being vindicated because of this, as yet phantom democracy. We still control Iraq. Notice that though the Shia party was supposed to have won 60% of the vote, after the secret counting they won less than the 50%. Alawi who had single digits at first now has a respectable 18%. This is still going to be at least to some degree a puppet government. The Shia party said that they would demand a timetable for pullout and probably would not have allowed our bases you can bet that to pull together a coalition they will back off of those demands, but even IF a magical democracy emerges in Iraq it was NOT our right to decide for the Iraqis that the deaths of at least tens of thousands of their people was a cost that was worth it for them. No the ends dint justify the means which in this case include demonstrable LIES by Bush about why we invaded Iraq

[quaildog]

5. Sooo right you are!

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[BenDavid]

7. All of this is "talking points"

directed out of the Republicam headquarters. Examples of this were avaiable last week, and her is a couple of examples: People in the Middle East and commentators around the world are beginning to wonder whether recent elections may mark a turning point as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall." Who said that? Laura Bush reading her talking points. One thing I would like to know. Someone remind me - why is Pickles immune from all criticism? And then ask yourself - if Hillary had killed a former fiance, would the American whore press help to cover that up?....
The next example is: "I have to admit that all of this began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that it now looks like the equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989 for the Middle East. Bush's vision and strategic design has been absolutely dead on and a lot of his critics are having to come around and say yeah, he was right after all." Dick Cheney, and now here is a quote from the media and you could see all this coming: Lately even Bush's harshest critics have been forced to admit: Maybe he's right about freedom's march around the globe. What if we are watching an example of presidential
leadership that will be taught in America's schools for generations to come? It's an idea gaining more currency."
--Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News....

I end with a quote from Marc Perkel: "The bad news is coming so fast that I can't write about it all. Do I write about the Italian journalist being shot? Or the CIA shipping people overseas to be tortured? Or the price of gas going up to record highs? Or the programmer who admitted writing the software to fix the election for Bush? Or that Bush appointed John Bolton, a man who hates the United Nations to the United Nations? Or the destruction of Social Security? Or the ongoing problems like the federal deficit, going deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. The tax cuts for the rich, the war in Iraq, the coming war in Iran - there's just no end to the bad news."

[Stop_the_War]

8. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is a great man...

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

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[Stop_the_War]

10. i agree

this war is all about OIL.