TED KOPPEL: we aren't in Iraq to help Iraqis

[yurbud]

This still is mincing around things a bit, but if Ted had been this honest when he was on the air, he might have thrown a small monkey wrench in the Bush propaganda machine.

Koppel on the News
By Ted Koppel

How Honest Is the Debate over Iraq?

Morning Edition, January 31, 2007 ·

The administration is right. The consequences of a premature U.S. withdrawal would have disastrous implications for the region. And the region, in case anyone has forgotten or is too polite to mention it, is the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

***

We've been given so many bad reasons for why we went to war in Iraq — those weapons of mass destruction, Hussein and his neighbors, Hussein and al-Qaida, establishing democracy — that we've actually convinced ourselves that we did it for them… for the Iraqis; not because it served the U.S. national interest.

That makes it easy to depict the Iraqis as a bunch of underperforming, ungrateful wretches; and if they don't start shaping up, we're pulling out.

Well, despite the vice president's bravado, things are not better in Iraq and the Persian Gulf than they were before the U.S. invaded. They are much worse and much more dangerous to American interests.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7092775

[PDJane]

1. Well, congratulations to Ted Koppel.

If the US had cared one damn whit about Iraqis, there wouldn't be 2,000,000 dead from sanctions, 655,000, and uncounted numbers who are refugees.

The US doesn't care about brown people in the middle east.........