Sunday, September 03, 2006
Playing Dominos With Cheaters
Lately it’s been clear that the administration is recycling propaganda from the Viet Nam War. Body counts have returned. We’ve been repeatedly told that it’s daylight we see down the tunnel, not another train speeding directly toward us. Opposition to the Occupation of Iraq is siding with the enemy. Now the domino theory has returned.
I believe there’s one major difference between the old domino theory and the new one: the people proposing today's version of the theory are utterly without consciences. At least, somewhere back in the LBJ Cabinet, there were some people of integrity; they’re aren’t there anymore. The guys running the show now are perfectly willing to suspend constitutional guarantees (and government), lie themselves blue in the face, hand over to their business pals vast amounts of our patriomony, and would even cheat playing “Go Fish” with their grandchildren.
Vice President Cheney's 'major rhetorical reversal' on Iraq
09/02/2006 @ 1:56 pm
Filed by Ron Brynaert
http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=3123
About halfway through an article analyzing President Bush's "striking change of tone" in his recent speeches regarding the "grim consequences of failure" in Iraq, New York Times White House Correspondent David E. Sanger also notes a "major rhetorical reversal" by Vice President Dick Cheney.
President Bush "picked up on an approach that Gen. John P. Abizaid, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have refined in the past few months: a warning that defeat in Iraq will only move the battle elsewhere, threatening allies in the Middle East and eventually, Mr. Bush insisted, Americans 'in the streets of our own cities,'" writes Sanger for The Times.
Sanger compares this "new approach" by the Bush Administration, apparently undertaken "to rebuild eroding support for the war," with the "domino theory" employed by a Democratic administration four decades ago to help "sell" the Vietnam conflict to the American public.
"It is reminiscent of — updated for a different war, and a different time — President Lyndon B. Johnson’s adoption of the 'domino theory,' in which South Vietnam’s fall could lead to Communism’s spread through Southeast Asia and beyond," writes Sanger. "In the case of Iraq, Mr. Bush’s argument boils down to a statement he quoted from General Abizaid, his top commander in the Middle East: 'If we leave, they will follow us.'"
Sanger notes that "[n]o one has been more willing to set out the new domino theory than the administration’s chief hawk, Mr. Cheney."
"In private meetings with foreign visitors and members of Congress, according to several participants in those sessions, he raises the prospect that if America fails in Iraq, Saudi Arabia will be the next target and then maybe Pakistan — which, he notes, has a good-sized nuclear arsenal," Sanger writes. "No one would benefit more from an American withdrawal, he continues, than the Iranians."
That represents "a major rhetorical reversal" for the vice president, the 24-year Times veteran reports.
"In the prelude to the war, he argued that ousting Saddam Hussein would usher in a new era of stability in the Middle East," Sanger writes.
I believe there’s one major difference between the old domino theory and the new one: the people proposing today's version of the theory are utterly without consciences. At least, somewhere back in the LBJ Cabinet, there were some people of integrity; they’re aren’t there anymore. The guys running the show now are perfectly willing to suspend constitutional guarantees (and government), lie themselves blue in the face, hand over to their business pals vast amounts of our patriomony, and would even cheat playing “Go Fish” with their grandchildren.
Vice President Cheney's 'major rhetorical reversal' on Iraq
09/02/2006 @ 1:56 pm
Filed by Ron Brynaert
http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=3123
About halfway through an article analyzing President Bush's "striking change of tone" in his recent speeches regarding the "grim consequences of failure" in Iraq, New York Times White House Correspondent David E. Sanger also notes a "major rhetorical reversal" by Vice President Dick Cheney.
President Bush "picked up on an approach that Gen. John P. Abizaid, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have refined in the past few months: a warning that defeat in Iraq will only move the battle elsewhere, threatening allies in the Middle East and eventually, Mr. Bush insisted, Americans 'in the streets of our own cities,'" writes Sanger for The Times.
Sanger compares this "new approach" by the Bush Administration, apparently undertaken "to rebuild eroding support for the war," with the "domino theory" employed by a Democratic administration four decades ago to help "sell" the Vietnam conflict to the American public.
"It is reminiscent of — updated for a different war, and a different time — President Lyndon B. Johnson’s adoption of the 'domino theory,' in which South Vietnam’s fall could lead to Communism’s spread through Southeast Asia and beyond," writes Sanger. "In the case of Iraq, Mr. Bush’s argument boils down to a statement he quoted from General Abizaid, his top commander in the Middle East: 'If we leave, they will follow us.'"
Sanger notes that "[n]o one has been more willing to set out the new domino theory than the administration’s chief hawk, Mr. Cheney."
"In private meetings with foreign visitors and members of Congress, according to several participants in those sessions, he raises the prospect that if America fails in Iraq, Saudi Arabia will be the next target and then maybe Pakistan — which, he notes, has a good-sized nuclear arsenal," Sanger writes. "No one would benefit more from an American withdrawal, he continues, than the Iranians."
That represents "a major rhetorical reversal" for the vice president, the 24-year Times veteran reports.
"In the prelude to the war, he argued that ousting Saddam Hussein would usher in a new era of stability in the Middle East," Sanger writes.
