"It was painful. It's painful now." says Powell

[KipWellsFan]

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Politics/story?id=1105979&page=1

 

When Powell left the Bush administration in January 2005, he was widely seen as having been at odds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney over foreign policy choices.

 

It was Powell who told the United Nations and the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat. He told Walters that he feels "terrible" about the claims he made in that now-infamous address — assertions that later proved to be false.

 

When asked if he feels it has tarnished his reputation, he said, "Of course it will. It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

 

He doesn't blame former CIA Director George Tenet for the misleading information he says he pored over for days before delivering his speech; he faults the intelligence system.

 

"George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me misleading me. He believed what he was giving to me was accurate. … The intelligence system did not work well," he said.

 

Nonetheless, Powell said, some lower-level personnel in the intelligence community failed him and the country. "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me," he said.

 

While Powell ultimately supported the president's decision to invade Iraq, he acknowledges that he was hesitant about waging war. "I'm always a reluctant warrior. And I don't resent the term, I admire the term, but when the president decided that it was not tolerable for this regime to remain in violation of all these U.N. resolutions, I'm right there with him with the use of force," he said.

[Texsox]

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Politics/story?id=1105979&page=1

 

It may be a blot, but one I would overlook. He should be a hero for school kids. Great man, who I respect quite a bit.

[JUGGERNAUT]

It may be a blot, but one I would overlook. He should be a hero for school kids. Great man, who I respect quite a bit.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

How much did 9/11 cost us? I heard an estimate of over a trillion lost in GDP.

How much did Afghan & Iraq cost us? It's going to reach $400B soon.

Add in natural disaster costs & were over $1.5 trillion dollars.

 

I'm all for spreading freedom & democracy around the world but this spending has got to stop. Our economy is crap. We can't afford to play savior to the world when we are ailing ourselves.

 

I feel sorry for Powell. I really do. But I can imagine a much worse world if we had done nothing. When he made that statement I said to myself $250B. I was against it. Today I'm indifferent. The Madrid & UK bombings lead me to beleive that doing nothing would have brought about another attack. Terrorists have no respect for the lives & property of Americans. They delight in our destruction. They have choosen to wage a cultural war against us. Because our culture is immoral in their minds they see us as evil. We are not willing to change our culture so there is no reason to believe a peaceful solution can be found.

[kapkomet]

How much did 9/11 cost us?  I heard an estimate of over a trillion lost in GDP.

How much did Afghan & Iraq cost us?  It's going to reach $400B soon.

Add in natural disaster costs & were over $1.5 trillion dollars. 

 

I'm all for spreading freedom & democracy around the world but this spending has got to stop.  Our economy is crap.  We can't afford to play savior to the world when we are ailing ourselves.

 

I feel sorry for Powell.  I really do.  But I can imagine a much worse world if we had done nothing.  When he made that statement I said to myself $250B.  I was against it. Today I'm indifferent.  The Madrid & UK bombings lead me to beleive that doing nothing would have brought about another attack.  Terrorists have no respect for the lives & property of Americans.  They delight in our destruction.  They have choosen to wage a cultural war against us.  Because our culture is immoral in their minds they see us as evil.  We are not willing to change our culture so there is no reason to believe a peaceful solution can be found.

OF COURSE we are not going to change our lifestyle. Mainly, the capitalistic lifestyle is what they hate, and why should we change that? The part of our lifestyle that we should change a little is the social aspect, but that's my opinion, and frankly it will not happen, because "we're free" and therefore, we should be able to do whatever we want with no reprocussions. We will pay for that sentiment someday, but it shouldn't be by those wacky terrorists, who are they to judge?

[FlaSoxxJim]

Powell on Katrina, from the same interview:

 

"I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic," he told Walters.

 

"When you look at those who weren't able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can't expect everybody to evacuate on their own.

 

"These are people who don't have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing — but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor," he said.

 

I agree, both that the heart of the problem is economic disparity and not racism per se, and also that anybody that continues to say 'they were all told to leave so it's their fault if they didn't listen' is seriously divorced from reality.

Edited September 9, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[southsider2k5]

Powell on Katrina, from the same interview:

I agree, both that the heart of the problem is economic disparity and not racism per se, and also that anybody that continues to say 'they were all told to leave so it's their fault if they didn't listen' is seriously divorced from reality.

 

You take that and compound it with Mayor Nagin's "If you don't leave, you are on your own" plan of evacuation, and you have step one in the staircase of a collosal failure of government.

[FlaSoxxJim]

You take that and compound it with Mayor Nagin's "If you don't leave, you are on your own" plan of evacuation, and you have step one in the staircase of a collosal failure of government.

Step two I'd say (and yes, I'm long past defending Nagin on most fronts). Step one was the confluence of bad economic descisions that allowed the woefully inadequate levee system to persist.

 

And as all this unfolds, I am certainly seeing the regional and local inputs to this failure as well. Yes, the feds shut off the needed funds. But some of that was reaction to what they saw as pork spending on ill-conceived or poorly executed works projects by the Army Corps and by contractors selected at the local level.

 

Pork sucks. Sign the bills to fund that NEEDS funding, and get your f***ing fingers out of every single money pie that comes down the pike.

[southsider2k5]

Pork sucks.  Sign the bills to fund that NEEDS funding, and get your f***ing fingers out of every single money pie that comes down the pike.

 

It blew my mind when I saw the highway bill this year. I really wish Bush would have had the guts to stand up and veto it when it came in over the figure he submited. It also made me wish for the line item veto in a way.

[kapkomet]

Pork sucks.  Sign the bills to fund that NEEDS funding, and get your f***ing fingers out of every single money pie that comes down the pike.

If they did that, it would shut the government down. That's sad, isn't it?

[DBAHO]

So how bad on a scale of 10 is the American Economy at the moment, especially after the Hurricane Damage and how much that is going to cost tax-payers?

[Balta1701]

OF COURSE we are not going to change our lifestyle.  Mainly, the capitalistic lifestyle is what they hate, and why should we change that?  The part of our lifestyle that we should change a little is the social aspect, but that's my opinion, and frankly it will not happen, because "we're free" and therefore, we should be able to do whatever we want with no reprocussions.  We will pay for that sentiment someday, but it shouldn't be by those wacky terrorists, who are they to judge?

I disagree strongly with this statement.

 

Robert Pape, A University of Chicago professor, has compiled a list of basically every terrorist attack in the world since 1980. The results are astounding, and they directly contradict the "It's our economy they hate" or "They hate our freedom" point of view.

 

Here are some excerpts of his interview with The American Conservative

 

    RP: This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

 

    ....TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?

 

    RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign — over 95 percent of all the incidents — has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

 

    ....TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

 

    RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

 

    If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people — three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia — with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

 

    ....TAC: Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about the “Crusaders-Zionist alliance,” and I wonder if that, even if we weren’t in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I don’t think that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.

 

    RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn’t occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community.

 

    ....TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy Iraq?

 

    RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop — and often on a dime.

If his data is to believed...and I see no reason why it shouldn't be...the real key variable in drawing terrorists our way is the occupation forces. We left them in Saudi Arabia against the will of the people after GW1, and that spawned the movement that formed Al Qaeda. We left them in Lebanon in the 80's, and the forces there were hit. We're occupying Iraq now, and the forces in Iraq are serving as the rallying point for anti-American activity worldwide.

[Balta1701]

I feel sorry for Powell.  I really do.  But I can imagine a much worse world if we had done nothing.  When he made that statement I said to myself $250B.  I was against it. Today I'm indifferent.  The Madrid & UK bombings lead me to beleive that doing nothing would have brought about another attack.  Terrorists have no respect for the lives & property of Americans.  They delight in our destruction.  They have choosen to wage a cultural war against us.  Because our culture is immoral in their minds they see us as evil.  We are not willing to change our culture so there is no reason to believe a peaceful solution can be found.

See my previous post for the culture war arguement...but 1 more thing I want to point out...

 

You say that the Madrid and UK bombings lead you to believe that doing nothing would have brought about another attack...so...how exactly is that different from what we've already seen?

 

We've probably had some success in that we've kept the attacks confined largely overseas, but I find it difficult to say that "there would have been another attack without it" can possibly be an argument in favor of the Iraq war when we've already seen several attacks against our allies and tens of thousands of attacks on our troops in Iraq (leading to casualties approaching the scale of 9/11 on their own)

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

By the same token you are assuming that by doing nothing the terrorists would have been content with 9/11 & not sought to attack us further.

 

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

If occupational force was paramount to the terrorist movement then why isn't it reflected in the rhetoric as such? Some of their leaders have been educated in the West so they are very familiar with our culture. Clearly they would know how to craft their words such that they focused solely on our Imperialism as opposed to our culture.

 

But that's not what is evident in their words. What is evident in their words is harsh language in respect to how our women behave & the loose society we have created. Even if you assume they are including these soley as recruiting tools it still underscores the fact that the presence of US troops is not enough to drive their masses.

 

With respect to American Imperialism it's no surprise to any one that American companies have political clout. The greater the clout the more likely their interests are to protected by American forces. That's simply economic reality & exists in China, the UK, & other nations with strong military power.

 

These forces are not marauders. They represent a peace-keeping force to protect legitimate state-sanctioned American interests. The Americans are there because the ruling class in Saudia Arabia share a common interest with them.

Edited September 9, 2005 by JUGGERNAUT

[Balta1701]

See, here you are conflating the 2 key issues...by doing nothing in Iraq, I am in no way assuming that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 would do nothing. I am in fact assuming that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 would love to hit us again. Which is again 1 reason why Iraq does not work as a way to fight Al Qaeda...prior to the war, Al Qaeda's presence in Iraq was incredibly limited.

 

Secondly, you ask why the rhetoric of the terrorists didn't reflect the occupations...I would in fact argue strongly that they did. For example, if we take the obvious example of Bin Laden's official declaration of war against the U.S. from the mid 90's, let's see some of the points he makes about why he wants this war against the U.S. Here are some various excerpts from the speech...all of which hammers on 1 point...the U.S. forces in the land of Mecca and Medina.

 

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").....

 

(2) The inability of the regime to protect the country, and allowing the enemy of the Ummah - the American crusader forces- to occupy the land for the longest of years. The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition, particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified heavy spending on these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy of the country. Expensive deals were imposed on the country to purchase arms. People asking what is the justification for the very existence of the regime then?.....

 

5-Destruction of the oil industries. The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings and prides and push them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land; therefore spread of the fighting in the region will expose the oil wealth to the danger of being burned up. The economic interests of the States of the Gulf and the land of the two Holy Places will be damaged and even a greater damage will be caused to the economy of the world. I would like here to alert my brothers, the Mujahideen, the sons of the nation, to protect this (oil) wealth and not to include it in the battle as it is a great Islamic wealth and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state, by Allah's Permission and Grace. We also warn the aggressors, the USA, against burning this Islamic wealth (a crime which they may commit in order to prevent it, at the end of the war, from falling in the hands of its legitimate owners and to cause economic damages to the competitors of the USA in Europe or the Far East, particularly Japan which is the major consumer of the oil of the region).

He also spends a lot of time talking about the occupation and "crimes" of Israel against the Palestinians. His words focus strongly on the occupations as a motivating element to get people to follow him. The idea of occupation by a foreing power simply permeates his words and the speeches he used to get people to follow him.

[JUGGERNAUT]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You are arguing mid 90's vs mid's 2000's. They are apples & oranges. Al Queda's presence is at large in Iraq today. That's what we have to deal with. We are not without blame. Capitalism is not nice. We like to think of it as such but it's brutal. That's why during the rise of terrorist activity across the globe it comes as no surprise that America has been at the heart of some of the worst scandals the world has seen.

 

Let's analyze Bin Laden's declaration of war from a more simpilified viewpoint:

wealth : 10, force : 0, Zion : 17, oil : 9, women: 7, army : 10

 

Now let's look at the end since it reads like a prayer:

My Muslim Brothers of The World:

Your brothers in Palestine and in the land of the two Holy Places are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy --your enemy and their enemy-- the Americans and the Israelis.

 

Our Lord, the people of the cross had come with their horses (soldiers) and occupied the land of the two Holy places. And the Zionist Jews fiddling as they wish with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the route of the ascendance of the messenger of Allah.

 

The use of the word Zion is clear in his rhetoric. It's pretty clear we were attacked & will continue to be attacked because of our support of Israel. If there is any hope for diplomacy it must first come from a peaceful co-existence of Israel & Palestine. Perhaps over time as the cultures merge that is possible.

[kapkomet]

Juggs, how come you have "blanks" in all your quotes of other posts?

[kapkomet]

Balta, I don't have time to read this stuff right now... but thanks for the links. I'll read it when I have some more time.

 

I still somewhat stand by the notion that our way of life is their problem with us, but I certainly agree our 'occupation' of their lands is also high on the list.

[Balta1701]

Balta, I don't have time to read this stuff right now... but thanks for the links.  I'll read it when I have some more time. 

 

I still somewhat stand by the notion that our way of life is their problem with us, but I certainly agree our 'occupation' of their lands is also high on the list.

I'm not trying to say that they don't have a problem with our way of life...but what I am saying is that when it comes to actually motivating people to strap bombs to their chests, the thing that does it is the occupation. Bin Laden can curse the infidels all he wants...but without the added layer of people angry about occcupation...he gets no where. That's why he spends so much effort focusing on it.

[kapkomet]

I'm not trying to say that they don't have a problem with our way of life...but what I am saying is that when it comes to actually motivating people to strap bombs to their chests, the thing that does it is the occupation.  Bin Laden can curse the infidels all he wants...but without the added layer of people angry about occcupation...he gets no where.  That's why he spends so much effort focusing on it.

True.

 

But there were things that happened pre-gulf war I that tells me it doesn't matter - they have, however, used this to focus their efforts more.

[Balta1701]

True.

 

But there were things that happened pre-gulf war I that tells me it doesn't matter - they have, however, used this to focus their efforts more.

Could you specify which "Things" you're talking about? I can think of only a couple really...the bombing in Lebanon, which was directed at U.S. troops intervening in a civil war overseas, dozens of things directed at Israel, a few things organized by Libya, and the dealings from Iran, but nothing that I'd call a completely blatant attack on us by Islamists.

[kapkomet]

Could you specify which "Things" you're talking about?  I can think of only a couple really...the bombing in Lebanon, which was directed at U.S. troops intervening in a civil war overseas, dozens of things directed at Israel, a few things organized by Libya, and the dealings from Iran, but nothing that I'd call a completely blatant attack on us by Islamists.

You've hit the high ones...

 

no, the efforts were not as clear, but they were directed at our "way of life".

[Texsox]

His funniest moment The man can sing, Day-o

[JUGGERNAUT]

They had a special on PBS on Bin Laden. They say his genius arose when he linked America with Israel. He had tried & failed on numerous attempts to overthrow the ruling parties in Egypt & Saudi Arabia. When he failed in SA his rhetoric shifted to making America the snake head of the evil regimes. It's at that time Western ideaology was linked to the militant cause.

 

The biggest eye opener was getting an understanding on how the sympathizers & new recruits view Bin Laden. He's a hero & an accomplished General in the field. He proved that in Afghanistan against the Russians. He gave up his positions of wealth & power in Saudi Arabia to lead this cause. In comparison the fat cats in the ruling class of SA are seen as lazy, misery, & against the people.

 

I guess from a Western perspective he's their version of King Arthur.

 

Another part of his genius they felt was linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main focus of their cause. Regardless of what good America does in the region as long as that conflict remains abrasive he cause will remain intact. They pointed out the Saudi's have no love for the Palestinians as they have very few immigrants from the region.

 

They wrapped it up with a summation of the whole affair:

Bin Laden & Al Queda will continue to link Israel & America together as imperialist demons of Western culture.

If peace takes hold in Iraq then 10-20 yrs from now it will drastically change the political landscape of the region.