MYTH: The Iraq war has not led to more terrorism

Winning the category of Most Wrong Predictions, Lifetime Achievement Award, Katrina vanden Heuvel (Queen of the May at the fun-loving Nation magazine) said invading Iraq would lead to "more terrorist retaliation, undermine the fight against al-Qaeda and make America less secure and possibly unleash those very weapons of mass destruction into the hands of rogue terrorists in Iraq."  (Ann Coulter, "Ever have one of those millennia?" AnnCoulter.Com, May 11, 2005)

It has been two years since Iraqis have had to live with daily violent attacks and rampant terrorism. (Husayn Uthman, "2 Years," Democracy in Iraq (is here!): A blog on the future of Iraq, an Iraqi who is excited about a new democratic Iraq, March 20, 2005)

I think it's going well. CNN doesn't always get it right, but it goes pretty well if you watch it on FOX.  (Jerry Falwell as quoted in Jim Gilliam, "A BraveNew Blog," December 2, 2004)

REALITY

Ann Coulter calling Katrina vanden Heuvel "wrong" is akin to Mike Tyson calling Sir Lawrence Oliver "inarticulate."   But it's not just Obnoxious Ann who is blathering on about the left being wrong and the right being, well Ð right.  The current right wing spin on the war is that war opponents were wrong to predict it would lead to more terrorism and undermine the war on Al Qaeda.  According to these dopes, the Iraq war is doing fine, and has been a resounding success.

Despite these right wingers' ill-informed spin, however, the Iraq war has led to more terrorist retaliation, and it has undermined the fight against al-Qaeda.

What's more, sadly, 193 American soldiers have died since the Iraq elections in January 2005. In total, 1623 American soldiers have died since the war began.

Terrorism is rampant in Iraq.

Attention all you right wingers who say that the Iraq war has not led to more terrorism: GET A CLUE!

Here are three terrorist attacks that occurred within the past few weeks:

• MAY 16, 2005: "A suicide bomber killed at least five people at a customs post near Iraq's border with Syria on Monday and authorities discovered 12 more bodies of people shot execution-style in escalating violence."  (Omar Anwar and Waleed Ibrahim, "IRAQ WRAPUP 2-Suicide bomb kills five in Iraq, 12 bodies found," Reuters, May 16, 2005)
• APRIL 30, 2005: The U.S. military announced that "Four U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb near the Syrian border, and four American soldiers were injured when their Humvee crashed during a nighttime operation west of Baghdad É" (Associated Press, "Four U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Iraq's neighbors meet in Turkey," CNN.com, April 30, 2005)
• APRIL 25, 2005: "Insurgents unleashed a series of car bombings and other attacks across Iraq on Friday, killing at least 41 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounding dozens of people a day after the country's first democratically elected government was approved."  (NewsMax.com, "3 U.S. Soldiers Among 41 Killed in Iraq," April 25, 2005)

The terrorist attacks and insurgency have undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq.

Sound like a success?

But an aggressive insurgency has stymied crucial tasks of rebuilding and providing security, disillusioning ordinary Iraqis who thought the US presence would bring rapid change.

"There are some positive developments," says Rachel Bronson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But "in the context of the security situation it's hard to say it's going well." (Jill Carroll, "Patchwork of progress and perils in Iraq," Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2005)

Hardly.  More from Jill Caroll's piece in the Christian Science Monitor:

Indeed, few US efforts are reaching into the country's most troubled areas. While restive Diyala has received aid to start its beekeeping and calf cooperatives, along with sewage improvements and assistance to local government, most projects are in relatively stable areas to the north and in some areas of the south, according to the latest US AID update. (Jill Carroll, March 18, 2005)

There is reason to believe that the Iraq War has been detrimental to the War on Terror.

Whether the Iraq War has been advantageous or detrimental to the war on terror is ultimately subjective and the jury is still out.

Still, despite Ann Coulter and her conservative buddies' ridicule of those who believe the Iraq War has undermined to efforts to dismantle Al Qaeda, there are very good reasons to surmise this has been the case.  Osama Bin Laden remains at large.  The war has increased resentment of the United States in the Muslim world.  And, the American presence in Iraq as created opportunities for terrorists to attack Americans. 

From Peter Bergen (in the liberal magazine Mother Jones):

In more than a dozen interviews, experts both within and outside the U.S. government laid out a stark analysis of how the war has hampered the campaign against Al Qaeda. Not only, they point out, did the war divert resources and attention away from Afghanistan, seriously damaging the prospects of capturing Al Qaeda leaders, but it has also opened a new front for terrorists in Iraq and created a new justification for attacking Westerners around the world. Perhaps most important, it has dramatically speeded up the process by which Al Qaeda the organization has morphed into a broad-based ideological movement -- a shift, in effect, from bin Laden to bin Ladenism. "If Osama believed in Christmas, this is what he'd want under his Christmas tree," one senior intelligence official told me. Another counterterrorism official suggests that Iraq might begin to resemble "Afghanistan 1996," a reference to the year that bin Laden seized on Afghanistan, a chaotic failed state, as his new base of operations. (Peter Bergen, "Backdraft: How the war in Iraq has fueled Al Qaeda and ignited its dream of global jihad," Mother Jones, July/August 2004)

It's also worth noting that world leaders who have been both supportive and critical of the U.S. have come forward to say the War in Iraq made the world less safe and harmed the war on terror.  Key Bush ally Pervez Musharaf of Pakistan, for instance, has said the war has made world 'less safe,'  So has Bush nemesis Jacques Chirac of France. Also, UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said the war has led to terrorism.

MYTH: The media's coverage of the Iraq War reflects a liberal bias

So Iraq is Vietnam, and they automatically assume the template is: It's unjust, it is immoral. It is ignoble. It can't be worth fighting for. There's nothing here of any value. Bush lied, blah, blah, blah, and so the template is: America is wrong. America is evil. America deserves to lose, and we're going to find evidence to prove what we already know to be true even though we can't prove it. And so they go out and they assume that all these stories the detainees are telling are true because they believe the American military is bad, and that America doesn't deserve to win this war because it's unjust, ignoble, and just evil. (Rush Limbaugh, "Mainstream Media Template: War = Vietnam, GOP President = Nixon," RushLimbaugh.com, 5/18/05)

REALITY

There is a major difference between publishing right wing propaganda and publishing stories about the positive or negative aspect of a conflict.  Those dumbasses who whine about the "liberal bias" in the media never seem to get this.  They classify every story that does not promote their conservative social agenda as "liberally biased."

We are seeing it right now with their squawking about the Iraq War.  The right wing complains that stories about Abu Ghraib or Guantanemo focus too much of the negative aspects of the war on terror.  But, the left also has complaints about the media's coverage and glorification of aspects of the war.  Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of the most prolific examples of the case many liberals present against the media.  Some other trends in media coverage that have been criticized by the left, include the underreporting of a so-nicknamed "smoking gun memo" printing in the Times of London on May 1, that allegedly "offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war."  (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, "Smoking Gun Memo? Iraq Bombshell Goes Mostly Unreported in US Media," FAIR.org, 5/10/05).

So the right wing thinks that the American media are being to harsh in their coverage of the war on terror, the Bush administration, and the American military.  Meanwhile, the left wing believes the exact opposite.  Who is right?  At the end of the day, the answer is subjective.  Chances are your answer will be somewhat shaped by how you feel about the War in the first place. 

The bottom line: the mainstream media have not been the right wing propaganda machine that Rush Limbaugh would like them to be.  However, had they really behaved as the left wing propaganda machine Rush purports them to be, wouldn't they have granted "smoking gun memo" a degree of attention it received in the British press?   Wouldn't NBC's coverage look more like that of Al Jazeera?  (Note: For a look at the differences between Arab television coverage of the Iraq War and American media, The Control Room, a documentary, is worth a DVD rental).   

MYTH: Democrats are really opposing John Bolton to score political points against President Bush, not because Bolton is unqualified

The controversy over John Bolton's appointment is just another assault by congressional Democrats on the president's foreign policy and their determined effort to steer the ship of state in the direction of appeasement and globalism. How dare Mr. Bush attempt to pursue his own foreign policy agenda? And how dare John Bolton be placed in a position to assist the president in implementing that agenda?  (David Limbaugh, "It's not about John Bolton," Washington Times May 17, 2005)

Lacking a real reason to oppose Bolton, egged on by their nutty supporters, they have taken to assassinating character.  (Penraker, "The Rise of the "Character Assassin" Democrats," May 13, 2005)

Democrats and the left oppose Bolton because he takes on the leftist appeasers at the State Department and doesn't back down. (Neal Boortz, "Taking Down Bolton," Boortz.com, April 25, 2005)

REALITY

Republicans like to claim that Democrat's opposition to John Bolton for UN Ambassador is just partisan politics, but try telling that to Senator George Voinovich of Ohio.  That's right, the Republican from the state that gave George W. Bush his second term.  Voinovich opposes the Bolton nomination, a decision he says was reached after pouring over hundreds of pages of testimony and meeting with the man himself.

As we've noted before, there are a slew of legitimate criticisms of John Bolton which have drawn bipartisan concern.  For starters, he's been accused of hiding information from Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He's also been accused of verbally harassing employees and threatening to fire those who disagree with him.

Bolton's problems have drawn bipartisan critiques.  Fifty-nine former ambassadors, both Democrats and Republicans have signed a letter opposing his nomination.

Here are some highlights from their charges:

• "John Bolton has an exceptional record of opposition to efforts to enhance U.S. security through arms control."

• "John Bolton led the successful campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the treaty limiting missile defenses (ABM Treaty)."

• "John Bolton's insistence that the UN is valuable only when it directly serves the United States, and that the most effective Security Council would be one where the U.S. is the only permanent member, will not help him to negotiate with representatives of the remaining 96% of humanity at a time when the UN is actively considering enlargement of the Security Council and steps to deal more effectively with failed states and to enhance the UN's peacekeeping capability."

• "John Bolton's work as a paid researcher for Taiwan, his idea that the U.S. should treat Taiwan as a sovereign state, and that it is fantasy to believe that China might respond with armed force to the secession of Taiwan do not attest to the balanced judgment of a possible U.S. permanent representative on the Security Council. China is emerging as a major world power and the Taiwan issue is becoming more acute."

• "At a time when the UN is struggling to get an adequate grip on the genocidal killing in Darfur, Sudan, Mr. Bolton's skepticism about UN peacekeeping, about paying the UN dues that fund peacekeeping, and his leadership of the opposition to the International Criminal Court, originally proposed by the U.S. itself in order to prosecute human rights offenders, will all make it difficult for the U.S. to play an effective leadership role at a time when the UN itself and many member states are moving to improve UN capacity to deal with international problems."