Tortured logic
Ollie and Bill blame the ACLU, Dick, and Diane
July 31, 2005
To say that the war in Iraq is not going as well as the rosy scenarios painted by its pitchmen in 2003 is putting it mildly. They did not greet us as liberators; there were no flowers. The UN headquarters was blown up, and a very bloody insurgency followed closely on the footsteps of the President's tragically ominous "Mission Accomplished" speech onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. The subsequent two years of quagmire have exposed many tricks-of-the-light embedded within the administration's Keystone Kops routine. It seems plainly obvious that they didn't see the insurgency coming and did not have any plan whatsoever to deal with it. What could be worse than sending our troops into harms way guided by ideology, greed, and ineptitude?
Well, how about torture? A long paper trail and mounds of evidence show the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo to be systematic. This is administration policy. Other real evidence is quite conclusive on the subject of Iraq and terrorism. The Iraq war has exacerbated the problem. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and there were no terrorists in Iraq before Gulf War II. Now there are and we are tied down fighting them, with our resources and credibility strained significantly.
So how do erudite conservative intellects like Ollie North and Bill O'Reilly process this? How else, they blame the ACLU and Dick Durbin.
MYTH: Anyone who questions the war in Iraq or the treatment of our prisoners is a traitor, giving aid to the terrorists
Unfortunately, all the "hostiles" aren't in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some are politicians, some are in the media and others are part of the old, anti-military, "Blame America First" crowd.
Last month Democratic California Senator Diane Feinstein's assessment of the war was ‘that everything seems to be going the wrong way.’ Illinois' liberal Senator Dick Durbin likened the men and women of America's armed forces to those of Cambodia's Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel actually proposed legislation to '‘bring back the draft.”Now here in the USA, we have people who have made a huge deal out of Guantanamo Bay (search), Abu Ghraib, the run up to the Iraq War, and other issues surrounding the terror war.
In my opinion, some have lost sight of the real issue, because of the politics. With all due respect to the left wing in this country, when Islamic fascists are slaughtering civilians, I'm not sure the abuse at Abu Ghraib (search) should be our main concern.
All Americans should realize that mistakes are going to be made fighting a global war on terror, but we should also realize that if we don't aggressively fight it, more Americans will die in the streets.
Now on tonight's "Factor", you will once again hear people blaming Tony Blair (search) and President Bush for terrorists. You'll also see that the BBC (search), the CBC (search), and other news organizations around the world simply will not call the threat what it is.
So why is this happening? The answer again is politics. These people despise Bush and Blair. And the terrorists take a back seat to that.
The dissenters are right, however, when they say that the war in Iraq has helped the terrorists. It has by creating division. That's just what bin Laden (search) wants.
-- -- Bill O’Reilly, FOX News, 07/22/05
Now there's no question that worldwide terror exists because people help these savages. Some actively, some passively, but help is help.
Target number one, the USA is the ACLU, which is demanding that accused foreign terrorists be afforded Geneva Convention protections and trials in criminal court. The Geneva Convention is quite clear in stating that captured individuals wearing no uniforms and those who attack civilians are not entitled to Geneva protections. The ACLU doesn't seem to care about that.
The Constitution makes no mention of any legal rights for foreigners captured overseas. Again, the ACLU doesn't care. The ACLU is also demanding that more pictures of the abuse at Abu Ghraib be released. The Defense Department is fighting that. Everybody knows those pictures incite violence against Americans. So why should more of them be fed to the press? We already know what happened at Abu Ghraib. And people are going to prison because of it.
Clearly, more pictures of Abu Ghraib (search) help the terrorists, as do Geneva Convention protections and civilian lawyers. So there's no question the ACLU and the judges who side with them are terror allies.
But what about a guy like "New York Times" columnist Bob Herbert? His thesis is that worldwide terrorism is being exacerbated by the Iraq War. And Herbert's opinion is held by many people who are blaming the current wave of terror killings on President Bush and Prime Minister Blair….
However, you will not see Herbert and his ilk condemn the ACLU for inciting terror with this Abu Ghraib deal. And that is out of the park hypocritical. Any picture of accusation of an American abusing a Muslim is a terror recruiting tool….
So Bob Herbert is most likely helping the terrorists, but his hatred of Mr. Bush blinds him to that. He's not alone, but this kind of stuff has got to stop.
REALITY
Dick Durbin did not liken “the men and women of America’s armed forces to those of Cambodia's Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.” He likened some of their actions to certain actions by members of those regimes. His point was that the actions are bad, not the people themselves, much less everyone else who serves with them.
Similarly Diane Feinstein’s honest assessment of the progress (or lack thereof) in Iraq is not hostile to American service personnel. It’s sympathetic to them. If Senator Feinstein were hostile to American troops she would not care that they are dying—due to the bad policies of the Bush administration. Mr. North, (yes, he is the guy who lied to Congress under oath because he has no respect for American democracy), apparently believes that to support American troops you must always paint a rosy picture of their conditions. That would, in fact, prevent concerned senators from determining that, for example, due to the cheapness of the Bush administration, the troops lack adequate armor. That’s not supporting the troops—it’s playing politics with their lives.
Finally North’s reference to Representative Charlie Rangel’s bill makes no sense. He thinks it demonstrates hostility to American servicemen and women. By making such service compulsory it seems he is sending a message that military service is ennobling. Why does Mr. North oppose that? Maybe he realizes that Rangel is trying to call the chickenhawks' bluff on their refusal to go fight the wary themselves. Maybe if Rangel’s bill passes the Bush twins might get drafted….
Meanwhile Bill O’Reilly continues his tender,McCarthyite logic. He continues to describe the events at Abu Ghraib as a “mistake” instead of what they were: the result of intentional policies of torture and mistreatment of prisoners, some of whom are completely innocent, by the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department. O’Reilly admits that the Iraq War has, in fact, aided terrorism—but only because it has “created divisions”. He intends that as another jab at the war’s critiques. But, in fact, it proves their point. By shifting the War on Terrorism from a direct attack on those who were responsible for Sept 11th, in Afghanistan, which almost everyone agreed on, to a more costly invasion of a country that had nothing to do with Sept 11th, Bush did, indeed create divisions. Not only did he do so at home, but among our allies as well. This is just one more reason that the Iraq War was misguided—we’re glad Bill O’Reilly is big enough to admit it, albeit intentionally.
O’Reilly’s contention that the ACLU is aiding terrorists by demanding that so-called “enemy combatants” (which includes U.S. citizens not just “foreigners captured overseas”) be given criminal procedure rights is what’s really un-American. The Founding fathers and untold thousands of soldiers have not given their lives over the years to create an America that abrogates the basic freedoms of the constitution. It is the blithe disrespect for constitutional liberty, not those who seek to protect it, that really endangers the America we know and love.
