President Bush Expects To Have A Positive Place In History: Is He Deluded?
Filed under: News, Politics | By: JP
Posted on: January 12, 2008 | 6 Comments
George Bush has recently announced that he thinks the writers of history will praise him for his ‘victory’ in Iraq. While speaking to US forces in Kuwait, Bush said, “It’s hard work that you’re doing, but it’s necessary work.”
Bush went on to say, There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed. There is no doubt in my mind that when history is written, the final page will say, ‘Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world’.”
What do you think of this statement? Do you think Bush will be praised for causing unnecessary bloodshed?
During his speech he didn’t let on whether he would be bringing more soldiers home than the 30,000 he first said were scheduled to leave Iraq in July.
Justifying his decision to send more troops into Iraq last year, Bush said the extra troops had turned the country into a place where “hope is returning”.
He also said that the US military presence in the country will outlast his presidency, adding “We must do all we can to ensure that 2008 will bring even greater progress,”
It is known that the American public and Democratic leaders are against the conflict in Iraq, so why does Bush seem to think he’ll go down in history (in a good way) for Iraq?
Do you think Bush is completely deluded? I feel that there is no way he’ll be classed as a hero for sending troops in Iraq. Why does he seem to think that he will make the history books for this?
CLICK HERE to keep updated with the latest news, share a comment or problems with products and services. Follow us on twitter or read more news.
I think DELUDED sums up this man , the fact he believes he will hold a positive place in history confirms this.
With time he prob will.. In 50 years time history may read that Bush invaded Iraq, overthrew an evil dictator and after a few years of bloodshed, left a largely peaceful and free country. Every conflict causes many many innocent lives, and with time the bigger picture usually blots that fact out. Another fact that will probably dominate is that it’s not American soldiers that killing civilians (for the most part), but the Iraqis themselves. The invasion may have been a catalyst for this civil violence, but that does not mean you can lay the blame on America.
I’m not American by the way- I just think that even though people may argue about the reasons America went to war, the fact remains that they removed a dictator and if it were not for the civil violence by the Iraqis, this war would have been a total success and everyone would be singing Bush’s praises.
besides… he’s funny. The Iraq was will be a side note to the many hilarious quotes and monkey impressions he’s given us.
2007 holds the record of being the highest number of US casualties since the illegal invasion. There are bombings every day and IED and mortar counterattacks are continuing. The Iraqi resistance hasn’t missed a beat, they are regrouping in different areas from the the “surge” efforts in Anbar province. The Iraqis will continue to defend their country against the real terrorists, the American invading hordes, who can never hope to succeed in their plans to subjugate and enslave the Iraqi population since the Iraqi resistance exists up to the highest levels of the Iraqi government and inside the Iraqi army and the “Awakening Councils” that the US is now supplying with weapons and money. The downturn in Iraqi deaths is a result of Iraqi fighters regrouping in other provinces after American collective punishment, blockading cities, massive sweeps and imprisonment of both innocent and guilty alike, and their arming and paying off groups the media vilified as “terrorists” only a few months before. The statistic that over 60% of Iraqis want to see Americans dead and 90% agree with the aims of the Iraqi resistance to kick the US out of their country has not changed. This will provoke a continuing spiral of repressive actions by American troops and of the Iraqi resistance resisting America’s brutal attacks on homes and families.
Sudan is widely known for its genocide campaign, one of the worst in recent history with 200,000 dead and 1 million refugees. Bush has outclassed that. Iraq’s refugees, both internal and external, are 4 million (four times the number in Sudan) and the number killed as a result of the Bush savage invasion is over one million (five times the number in Sudan). An equal number of Iraqis have been wounded. The entire economy of Iraq has been virtually destroyed by the Americans. Most of the technically skilled in the Iraqi population have left. All the hundreds of billions in “reconstruction” money which has come out of the american taxpayers’ pockets (for electricity, clinics, etc) has disappeared into the pockets of the thieving contractors with virtually nothing to show for it. Baghdad’s electricity supply remains at two hours a day. Iraq’s water is hopelessly polluted since Americans “teach” Iraqi towns a lesson by bombing the infrastructure including the water treatment systems which have heavily polluted their two main arteries, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to the extent that there is no fish and most of the agricultural fields have died from being irrigated by this polluted water. The Iraqi health system is destroyed, cholera is rampant, their educational system is nonexistent and unemployment is between 60 and 70 percent. The longer Bush stays there the worse it gets, and the Iraqis knowing that the occupation is decimating their economy and the fabric of their ancient culture as well as their neighborhoods and families and have no other choice but to resist both the occupiers and the Salvador style death squads that Americans are directly responsible for. But it’s not as if Bush the monster doesn’t know this. This is what Bush does.
From the Abu Ghraib torture revelations, to the razing of Fallujah, and the daily killings of civilians by American and american installed government troops, the Iraqi people have suffered constant repression at the hands of the US military and its local collaborators.
It is not a problem of “rogue” elements. That was underscored when the head of the Iraqi government’s own human rights board, Saad Sultan, told the LA Times that up to 60 percent of the 12,000 detainees then in Iraq’s prisons had suffered torture and abuse. He added that police and security forces attached to the interior ministry are responsible for most of the abuses.
Some of abuse is not even being hidden. Alleged “terrorists”, bearing signs of torture and who have never appeared before a court, have been paraded on a television program -Terrorism in the Grip of Justice- and shown making public confessions. The program has featured Wolf Brigade commander, Abul Waleed, and is run on the state-run, US-financed Al Iraqiya network.
The formation of the interior ministry police commandos in mid-2004 flowed directly from the decision in US ruling circles to fight the Iraqi resistance with tactics modeled on the US-run counterinsurgency operations in Central America during the 1980s. It came amid the greatest challenge to the US occupation since the invasion—the uprising in Baghdad and across southern Iraq led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the failure of the US military to recapture the Sunni city of Fallujah from resistance fighters.
The turn toward the “Salvador option”—using death squads, torture and mass repression to terrorize the Iraqi population into accepting US control of the country—was signalled by the appointment of John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq in April 2004.
Negroponte was the head of the US embassy in Honduras in the 1980s. He has an intimate familiarity with mass killing, covert operations and death squads.
Negroponte’s “experience and skill” lay not in spreading “freedom and peace,” as Bush piously declared, but rather in organizing bloody repression—from Vietnam to Central America and elsewhere.
In Honduras Negroponte systematically suppressed any reporting of the human rights violations that escalated substantially after he assumed control of the US embassy. He issued report after report claiming that the country had no political prisoners, torture or extra-judicial executions, and that “student, worker, peasant and other interest groups have full freedom to organize…”
During this same period, hundreds of people were kidnapped and “disappeared,” including a number of union leaders, student organizers and other opponents of the military-dominated regime. Prisoners were routinely tortured on the direct orders of the chief of the Honduran armed forces.
Much of this dirty work was carried out by a unit known as Battalion 316, whose members were trained in the United States and “advised” by the CIA in Honduras. While issuing his glowing endorsements of the Honduran regime’s human rights record, Negroponte was intimately familiar with the grisly work of these killers.
Negroponte worked to silence reports of the killings and torture, threatening dissenting Honduran officials by accusing them of aiding “communism.” The head of Honduran military intelligence fled into exile and publicly warned about the “death squad” activities of Battalion 316.
From 1969 to 1971, Negroponte was an aide to Henry Kissinger in the Paris negotiations with the Hanoi government, reportedly criticizing Kissinger for making too many concessions to the Vietnamese. From 1971 to 1973, he oversaw operations in Vietnam for the National Security Council, then headed by Kissinger. Thus, for nine years he played a direct role in prosecuting a US war that killed millions of Vietnamese.
Steve Casteel, a key agent in US operations in Colombia, was appointed as senior advisor to the Iraqi interior ministry. James Steele, the main US special forces advisor to El Salvadoran paramilitary squads, was put in charge of organising the Wolf Brigade.
Those whom Casteel and Steele recruited for the Wolf Brigade were former members of Saddam Hussein’s special forces and Republican Guard. Since October 2004, they have been deployed into centres of the resistance such as Samarra, Mosul and, most recently, the suburbs of Baghdad. Reports of extra-judicial killings and other atrocities soon followed. A large number of killings and abductions have also taken place, including the deaths of dozens of journalists and scores of anti-occupation clerics and academics.
US intelligence plays the major role in gathering information on alleged insurgents. CIA and special forces operatives advise the interior ministry. The Wolf Brigade and other police commando formations work in concert with American units. Moreover, under the terms of Iraq’s interim constitution, overall operational command of all forces in the country, and therefore legal and political responsibility, resides with the US-led occupation forces.
The character of the regime being constructed by the Bush administration in Baghdad is clear to anyone with the integrity to state the truth. Far from being a “democracy”, an apparatus of terror has been set up to suppress the opposition of the Iraqi people to the takeover of their country.
Bush and America’s military freed Iraq and Afganistan. All to our ever lasting glory as history will record. Meanwhile, those opposed will be seen for the cowards that they are. The alternative to American action would have been continued enslavement of millions in both of those countries. Cowards have never freed a soul. Thank soldier for providing you the freedom to rant.