Bush's America: 100% Al-Qaeda Free Since 2001

[Ricohoc]

While highly partisan in her statements and extremely critical of liberals, Coulter hits on a fact. Most Americans -- and probably others around the world -- believed that America would be hit repeatedly by terrorists after 9-11. It hasn't happened.

Bush's America: 100% Al-Qaeda Free Since 2001
By Ann Coulter
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from "Great" to "Really Good."

Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: "We're the Rape Room People!") constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did -- and I'm including remembering Monica's name on the sixth sexual encounter.

But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.

It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That's 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK -- or a landmark building, for that matter.

We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan -- the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.

The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is "standing up" (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr --the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism -- has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.

The Iraqis have a democracy -- a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq's democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change."

(Guess what Bill Clinton's campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: "bringing dignity back to the White House." It was "change." In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton's "constant talk of change.")

Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.

Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

It's almost as if there's been some sort of "surge" going on, as strange as that sounds.

Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.

But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we'd all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a "wannabe" terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.

We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good -- another day without a terrorist attack.

But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush -- and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of bearnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.

The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

[laphanphon]

it was al qaida free before cheney and boys invited them for a visit.

[aznyron]

LA good reply I agree with it 100%
Ann Coulter is amusing I find her statements very funny like one time she said we should convert all the muslims to Christianity I could not stop laughing and she also said illegal immigrants should be able to sue there employer now that one I loved Where would the Republican party be with out ANN she is a GEM I wish the Democrats had some one like ANN Al Franklin just does not have the charisma as Ann Coulter beside I want to F. her and stick my willy in her mouth she is a FOX

[Ricohoc]

Really?

I'll bet there are some boys in prison right now for the 1993 bombing of the WTC under Clinton's watch who would disagree with the US being free of terrorists BEFORE 9-11. Terrorists were living among us for years planning the attacks on 9-11, and that was years before Bush and Cheney were even a thought of being in the White House.

Jan 20 until Sep 11 in 2001 is a very short time for UBL to all of a sudden want to attack America ... unprovoked during the new administration.

[aznyron]

I give you that one I forgot about the first WTC attack maybe that where the Bush Cheyney or should I say the Cheyney Bush Administration got the idea of a second attack on the WTC only this time using planes to disguise the bombs being placed in the building just my opinion means nothing
but I do know this I go to bed at night with out any guilt feelings and I wake up the same I wonder how Cheyney sleeps at night you see I did not mention Bush because I think he is idiot and could not orchestrate suck attack on WTC but his brother Marvin who was in charge of security who by the way resigned 1 or 2 days before 9-11 amazing coincidence

[cookie]

1)It's about time someone looked at the FACTS!! (and no Ann Coulter spin.).

2)Can somebody tell me what the plan is?

Whether or not the surge has helped is irrelevant. The question that needs to be answered is what scenario qualifies and "winning" in Iraq and as a point that we can leave. McCain wants to stay until we "win" however long it takes, even though he is unable to say what is a win, how we get there, and some BASIC idea of how long it will take. If we can't answer those question, any gains, small at best, are irrelevant since those gains at this point require that we stay there indefinitely to KEEP them. That is a loss for Americans, however you look at it.

The Surge Is Working? Not If You Read the Latest GAO Report


Posted June 24, 2008 | 04:56 PM (EST)


The statement is made in the U.S. media, over and over again, as if it is as factual as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening: "The surge is working." But just because the media has parroted the talking points of the Bush administration and John McCain's campaign in making such an assertion, it does not make it true. And a report released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) yesterday does something that McCain and the White House probably wish would not be done: actually evaluating progress in Iraq against the goals the administration laid out in January 2007 when undertaking the surge. Guess what? In many material ways, the surge isn't working. Sorry to rain on the parade of CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, etc. with the facts.

The mainstream media is barely even acknowledging the report's release. At the time of this writing, the GAO report didn't even warrant a headline on the CNN.com home page, although CNN did see fit to include Imus's allegedly racist remark, pirates kidnapping European tourists, a British man accused of killing his wife and child, a prisoner's escape gone bad, the cost of orange juice in "paradise," a calf with an extra snout, and the denial of a U.S. visa for Boy George. And there is a headline that the Iraq military will control Anbar province, but there is no mention of the fact, cited in the GAO report, that only nine of Iraq's 18 provinces were controlled by the Iraqi government, even though the goal was to have Iraq control all 18 of its provinces by the end of 2007.

Since the mainstream media won't report on the GAO report, I decided to go through it myself to see what is there. The report states that some progress has been made in Iraq, but that in many other ways, things are not going well.

Rather than just stick to the GAO's conclusions, I took from the report some disturbing findings, many of them uncontested (yes, I know the Departments of Defense, State and Treasury objected to the conclusions, but in addition to the GAO being nonpartisan, the report also acknowledges and addresses the complaints of the departments), that point to the larger problems with the U.S.'s occupation of Iraq. Here are some of the highlights (or, really, lowlights):

No Plan
Bill Clinton famously once said: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The Bush administration had no effective plan to handle a post-war Iraq. The incompetence shown was disastrous. So why would anyone think for a second that the White House had a post-surge plan?

And the GAO report finds just that, that the Bush administration has no plan for what to do next. With the 18-month surge coming to an end in July, the report says that the administration has not set out "strategic goals and objectives in Iraq for the phase after July 2008 or how it intends to achieve them" and "an updated strategy is needed for how the United States will help Iraq achieve key security, legislative, and economic goals."

What did the Defense Department and State Department think of this statement? They were against it, of course. According to the report, the two departments said that the surge strategy "remains valid." But if most of the goals laid out by the president in January 2007 have not been met in July 2008, how can the plan still be valid?

Once again, the White House has no plan. Is this is a rerun?

When the White House and McCain say "the surge is working," how is it different than Bush's disastrous "stay the course" strategy in Iraq that failed and supposedly necessitated the surge in the first place? Keep that in mind the next time you're asked to support an open-ended troop commitment.

Violence
The report acknowledged that violence was down in May (after rising in March and April) and attributed the reduction to three factors: "1) the increase in U.S. combat forces, 2) the creation of nongovernmental security forces such as the Sons of Iraq, and 3) the Mahdi Army's declaration of a cease fire." What do these three conditions have in common? They are all temporary and unlikely to continue in the future.

Congressional testimony by generals in April, an April press release by Republican Senator Richard Lugar and statements by former secretary of state Colin Powell on Good Morning America in April all agreed on one premise: The U.S. military is stretched beyond its limits and cannot sustain current troop levels in Iraq indefinitely. The Sons of Iraq is a Sunni group that has fought al-Qaeda (fellow Sunnis) in Iraq. Groups like the Sons of Iraq are paid by the U.S. military. When the money stops, there is no guarantee the cooperation will continue. And as the GAO report points out, these groups have not reconciled with the Iraqi government, which is a recipe for future problems. As for the the Mahdi Army, its leader, Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said two weeks ago that he is setting up a fighting force specifically designed to fight Americans in Iraq, after making clear in April that he is not interested if fighting Iraqis but did want to fight U.S. troops. So the cease fire is, at best, to quote the report, "tenuous."

With all three elements affecting a drop in violence in Iraq being so precarious, it stands to reason that the drop in violence is also fragile, something both the GAO and the Defense department acknowledge. And the GAO report cites findings from the United Nations that violence in Iraq could "rapidly escalate."

Finally, the report notes that while violence is down from past levels, it is still high enough to keep a significant number of Iraqis displaced from their homes and to stymie rebuilding efforts in the country.

That, to me, sounds a lot more complicated than the simple campaign rhetoric of "the surge is working."

Political Reconciliation
The purpose of the surge was to give the Iraqi government "breathing space" to enact laws to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, resolve their differences and establish a democratic government. In fact, President Bush said in January 2007 that the Iraqi government would be held to benchmarks, and if the government did not meet these goals, U.S. support would cease. Bush said in January 2007: "America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people."

Has the Iraqi government followed through on its promises? Well, the GAO reports that while some legislation has been passed to restore Ba'ath Party members to government (although many have questioned the legitimacy of these efforts), give amnesty to some detainees and define provincial powers, on many of the larger, stickier issues, no progress has been made. The report notes that the Iraqi government has not enacted "important legislation for sharing oil resources or holding provincial elections" and that "[e]fforts to complete constitutional review have also stalled."

In other words, we were told that the surge was put in place to provide temporary peace under which the Iraqi government could step up and pass necessary laws so that the Iraqi people could govern themselves. These laws were supposed to be passed and in place by now. This was one of Bush's benchmarks. But, according to the report, the Iraqi government has not met its obligation.

Iraqi Expenditures
Conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, should all be outraged at the piddling amount of money the Iraqis are spending on their own rebuilding efforts. Remember all those claims about Iraqi oil revenues paying for the war? Well, it hasn't even come close to working out that way. As American expenditures approach the $1 trillion mark, the GAO report reveals that "Iraq spent only 24 percent of the $27 billion it budgeted for its own reconstruction efforts" between 2005 and 2007. And things are moving in the wrong direction. The report says that "Iraq's central ministries, responsible for security and essential services, spent only 11 percent of their capital investment budgets in 2007 -- down from similarly low rates of 14 and 13 percent" in 2006 and 2005.

Iraqi Forces
The White House and McCain may cite an increase in the number of Iraqi forces, and the report backs that claim up, saying that Iraqi security forces had grown in number to 478,000 in May 2008, up from 323,000 when the surge began. However, what the GOP doesn't discuss is that the benchmark set up in January 2007 by the Bush administration was for these forces to be able to act independently, without being propped up by the U.S. military, and in this regard, the Iraqis have fallen way short of their obligation. The report says that the Iraqi military has shown "limited improvement" in this area, noting that "the number of Iraqi army battalions rated at the highest readiness level accounts for less than 10 percent of the total number of Iraqi army battalions."

Poking a little deeper into the issue, the report notes that the four causes of the lagging readiness rate are "(1) the lack of a single unified force; (2) sectarian and militia influences; (3) continued dependence on U.S. and coalition forces for logistics and combat support; and (4) training and leadership shortages." The first two problems relate directly to the failure of the Iraqi government to take the necessary steps for reconciliation and the creation of a unified government (again, the reason for the surge in the first place). As for the dependence on U.S. forces, the report notes that "contracted logistics support in some form will be necessary for 2 to 3 years." How do you think the American people will feel about that? And, more importantly, three more years of American support for the Iraqi military goes against Bush's benchmark.

Iraqi Infrastructure
The GAO report says that U.S. goals for oil, electricity production and water production have not been met. There were two statements in this section of the report that caught my attention.

One of the headings is, "Iraq Needs an Integrated Energy Plan." My initial reaction was, "Yeah, so does the U.S."

In that section, the opening line reads: "As we reported in May 2007, a variety of security, corruption, legal, planning and sustainment challenges have impeded U.S. and Iraqi efforts to restore Iraq's oil and electricity sectors." Later, the report says: "For example, the lack of cooperation and coordination between the Oil and Electricity ministries, particularly in supplying appropriate fuels to the electricity sector, has resulted in inefficiencies such as increased maintenance costs and frequent interruptions in electricity production, according to U.S. officials."

Cutting through the technical jargon, what jumped out to me is that while thousands of U.S. soldiers have died, tens of thousand have been wounded, hundreds of thousands have had their lives disrupted with dire consequences, and the American government has hemorrhaged hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money at a time when the U.S. economy is sputtering, the Iraqis are engaging in petty power battles rather than supplying electricity to their people.

If the surge was supposed to give space for the Iraqis to work out their problems, this is yet another area where the Iraqis have come up woefully short. How can the surge be working if the Iraqis are more interested in maintaining their little fiefdoms in the government rather than providing basic services for their people?

After looking through the GAO report, I can't help but wonder: What the hell are we still doing in Iraq? Why are we spending billions of dollars to prop up a government that is seemingly putting power retention over making the hard decisions necessary to reconcile the differences between the country's religious groups (assuming such a reconciliation is even possible)?

And why, if the benchmarks have not been met, are we continuing down the same path that has not worked, especially since the reduction in violence is so tenuous and connected to volatile factors?

I think what the GAO report makes clear, above all else, is that contrary to what the mainstream media and the GOP would have you believe, the surge has not worked, not enough anyway, and, even more importantly, the administration has no plan as to what to do next.

John McCain loves to talk about "winning" in Iraq. After reading the GAO report, winning, to me, would be getting our military out of Iraq as quickly as possible. They've done their jobs, it's the Iraqis who have failed to step up. It's time for the U.S. military to go home.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08837.pdf

[aznyron]

winning, to me, would be getting our military out of Iraq as quickly as possible. They've done their jobs, it's the Iraqis who have failed to step up. It's time for the U.S. military to go home.

I could not agree more / it time to bring our heros home to there wife"s sweethearts and families
and that is not cutting & running / cutting & running is what Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon when the marine barracks was bomb and he withdrew all the troops instead killing those responsible

[BKKSTAN]

Ronnie,think about it!I don't really think that you believe allowing the Iraqis to fend for themselves is winning!!I agree,if the Iraqi government wants us to stay under situations that are not favorable to our fighting forces,we should go home!That would be a decision by the Iraqis,not a pullout on our own because we are tired of the war or because it might or might not have been a mistake in the first place!

Once we took Suddams regime and military out of power,we have an obligation and commitment to the Iraqis to provide a new government that can take care of its own people.To pullout before we have done that or before the Iraqi government makes the decision is ,I believe,as much as a violation of your personal belief system as it is mine!

I don't think either one of us is the type of person that thinks genocide of minorities within Iraq is OK or the the killings involved ,in seeking power, in the vacumn that we would create by pulling our forces out now!

Plus the stability of the region that has the resources that the Worlds economy runs on,would have a power vacumn that would probaly effect us in ways we were not expecting!Imagine Iran controlling Iraq and putting pressure on the othe Sunni Nations that have the majority of the worlds oil!

These countries are Shiates and Sunnis that have always warred against each other throughout History!Without the relative stability caused by our presence in the area,it could explode there!

Then there is Israel!Many favor them and many oppose them!But if Iran or Syria develop Nukes,all the talk in the World is not going to save the region because Israel is going to defend it's existence just as fiercely as necessary and that means with nukes if necessary!I believe that Iran and Syria would do whatever necessary to wipeout Israel,nukes would do the trick!

The bottomline is that there is alot more to consider than what the hypocrit liberals, that call themselves humanitarians,that are willing to sacrifice all those lives in the ME,want or demand!
Whether they like it or not,we have an obligation to restore a relative stability to the region,irregardless of whether the war was right or wrong!

[Ricohoc]

The bottomline is that there is alot more to consider than what the hypocrit liberals, that call themselves humanitarians,that are willing to sacrifice all those lives in the ME,want or demand!
Whether they like it or not,we have an obligation to restore a relative stability to the region,irregardless of whether the war was right or wrong!

I agree.

The libs are so anxious to classify this as a failure, and their rhetoric keeps blowing up in their faces.

The next president, no matter what party, will NOT be able to pull out our troops until the job is done. To do so would be to risk stability in the region for a much longer time than we have spent already.

[aznyron]

were is it blowing up in there faces or is that just a opinion of yours / it seems to me more than
50% want us out of Iraq I don't know the exact % but I do know it exceeds 50%
even John said the Bush administration failed in Iraq until General Petraeus took command
and I don't know if the reports coming from him are true or just hype to keep us there and win support from the American people since the war lost it support from a large majority of Americans

[BKKSTAN]

Ron,since when does the public know what best in this situation.They are fed all kinds liberal BS by the biased media.These polls have nothing to do with the facts on the ground,they have to do with ''feeling''created by all the liberal BS!

If they conducted a poll on what the public thoughts about the effect on the regional peoples and the world without some relative stabilizing force there,I think the majority of Americans would not be in favor of the immediate pullout!

But if you ask the question,''should we get out as soon as reasonally possible?'',I think the majority would vote yes!Who wants to see any more lifes lost there?

There are always a bunch of loons that scream to bring the troops home under any circumstances in any war!

[Ricohoc]

Media polls drive the media news and drive more polls.

You hit the nail on the head, Stan. The public may have an opinion, but it's not based on all the facts. The public only gets what the media wants them to see. The bombardment with negativity is unrelenting.