Robert Draper:
On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.
Click to embiggen:
Frank Rich at the NYT:
What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”
It would be helpful if we didn't give our enemies blatant in-your-face evidence for their propaganda when they say that our war is a Crusade against all of Islam, mKay?
Again, NOT WHAT WE'RE DOING OVER THERE.
A cynical, calculating amoral badger in charge of the nation's military apparatus used religious language to bolster the confidence and war-lust of a credulous, incurious, simpleton boob of a man in the Oval Office.
Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
But I digress, the talking point is still that because Pelosi was briefed about torture, she must step down. Prosecuting those who ordered and enabled torture as the policy though would, of course, be a partisan witch hunt. Also, the President should have anything to do with Notre Dame, because they're Catholic and he's not. And he should know the ONLY thing Catholics care about is abortion.
But at the school's front gate at intersection of Angela and Notre Dame Avenue, more than 100 people gathered to protest the decision to invite Obama to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree. They said he shouldn't be allowed to speak at the Roman Catholic university because of his support of abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research.
Can I just say I might start considering the church's position on reproductive issues without outright laughter when 1)their leaders no longer need be celibate and 2)they decide that Mary conceiving Jesus as a virgin need not be a linchpin tenet of their faith.
[/snark][drink]
No comments:
Post a Comment