- On March 17, William Rivers Pitt wrote that Bush is "deranged,
disconnected, and dangerous." In his March 20 Cleveland speech, Bush
proved Pitt right.
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- Bush gave a delusional speech that shows he is detached
from reality. "We're going to help the Iraqis build a strong democracy
that will be an inspiration throughout the Middle East, a democracy that'll
be a partner in the global war against the terrorists."
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- Has no one told Bush that the Iraqis cannot even agree
to form a government?
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- The day before Bush's delusional Cleveland speech, Iyad
Allawi, the former prime minister of one of our make-believe Iraqi governments,
said that in Iraq the casualty rate from the sectarian strife is so high
that "if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
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- The day of Bush's delusional speech, Patrick Cockburn,
present on the scene in Irbil, Iraq, gave a much more truthful account
of the situation. Writing in CounterPunch, he reported:
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- "Iraq is a country convulsed by fear. It is at its
worst in Baghdad. Sectarian killings are commonplace. The scale of the
violence is such that most of it is unreported. Unseen by the outside
world, silent populations are on the move, frightened people fleeing neighborhoods
where their community is in a minority for safer districts. There is also
a growing reliance on militias because of fears that police patrols or
checkpoints are in reality death squads hunting for victims."
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- Not a word of this reality from our delusional president.
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- The fantasy Iraq that Bush painted was only his warm-up.
He went on to tell his Cleveland audience that America could not be safe
unless Iraq was a democracy. What a weak, pitiful, vulnerable place Bush's
America must be. Unless a small, devastated Middle Eastern country is a
democracy, America cannot be safe. Who in the Cleveland audience could
possibly have believed this utter nonsense?
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- Bush told his audience that "the security of our
country is directly linked to the liberty of the Iraqi people, and we will
settle for nothing less than victory." What victory is he talking
about? Despite the huge sums of dollars paid by the Bush regime to all
the leaders of all the factions, Iraq cannot form a government.
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- Without victory, Iraq will be "a safe haven for
terrorists to plot new attacks against our nation." Alas, there were
no terrorists in Iraq until Bush invaded the country and drew them in.
The problem our troops face in Iraq is not terrorists, but resistance fighters,
"insurgents" in the Bush regime's parlance. Democracies lack
the dictatorial, extralegal powers to suppress terrorists. That is why
Bush is destroying civil liberties in the U.S. Under Saddam Hussein, there
were no terrorists and no insurgents. Bush is modeling his no habeas corpus,
torture-prone, all-intrusive government on Saddam Hussein's.
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- The security of Americans has nothing whatsoever to do
with Iraq. Iraq cannot overthrow the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights,
the separation of powers, and American civil liberties. Iraq cannot illegally
spy on American citizens, declare them to be "suspects," and
detain them forever without warrant or charges. Iraq cannot put American
critics of the Bush regime on "no-fly" lists.
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- The real dangers to Americans reside in the neocon Bush
administration. This delusional warmonger administration believes it has
the power and the right to dictate to Muslim countries their political
and social institutions. This extraordinary arrogance and hubris breeds
opposition where there was none. The world is not going to obey Bush and
a handful of stupid neocons.
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- In his speech, Bush told Cleveland that "the decision
to remove Saddam Hussein was a difficult decision." That is a lie.
Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, and a number of others have
reported that Bush came into office intending to remove Hussein. The head
of British intelligence told the British Cabinet that Bush first decided
to go to war and then created the reasons to justify his aggression against
Iraq.
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- "Before we acted," Bush told his audience,
Hussein's "regime was defying UN resolutions calling for it to disarm.
It was violating cease-fire agreements, was firing on American and British
pilots which were enforcing no-fly zones." Gentle reader, think what
Bush is saying. As Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, a fact that
Bush has acknowledged, how could Iraq possibly have been violating UN resolutions
calling on it to disarm?
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- What cease-fire agreements is Bush talking about? It
was U.S. and UK planes that continued to fly over Iraqi territory and bomb
Iraqis.
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- Do you know what Bush means by no-fly zones? He means
that U.S. and UK jet fighters could fly all over Iraq, but if Iraqi planes
flew over Iraqi territory, we would shoot them down.
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- Where did the U.S. get the right to tell countries that
they dare not try to control their own air space?
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- Americans need to understand that terrorists are responding
to America's behavior, or misbehavior. The only successful way to stop
terrorism is to alter our behavior. America is not God. It has no right,
and it certainly lacks the power, to impose its will on the world.
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- The Bush regime cannot lead the world to democracy by
tearing democracy down at home. Not since Abraham Lincoln have American
civil liberties been so threatened as by the Bush regime. America even
has an attorney general, a vice president, and a secretary of defense who
believe in torture. How do they differ from officials in the Third Reich
or Stalin's KGB? Anyone who believes in torture is not an American. That
person is outside our tradition. Yet people who believe in torture who
occupy our highest offices.
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- When we get the mote out of our own eye, then we can
instruct the Middle East.
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