We hear all the time from liberals that George W. Bush broke the law when he attacked Iraq and that Bush turned Iraq into a hellhole with his warmongering.
It’s time to point out a few things.
Number one, no, Bush DIDN’T break the law when he attacked Iraq; he actually passed “the Iraq War Resolution” that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Kerry, etc. voted for. And when George Bush attacked Iraq, he did what nearly sixty percent of the Democrats in the US Senate authorized him to do. And number two, when George Bush LEFT Iraq, he left a safe, stable region that prompted Joe Biden to say:
“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
… and for Barack Obama to boast in 2011:
“This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.”
and:
“[W]e will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe haven to terrorists.”
Bush left behind a safe, stable Iraq. And all Barack Obama had to do was keep a small US force there to keep safe and stable what we had fought to make safe and stable. Obama failed as only the worst kind of FOOL can fail by ignoring his top general’s urgent warnings and pleas to keep a force in Iraq:
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2009 (IPS) – CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn’t convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.
Obama’s decision to override Petraeus’s recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.
A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama’s decision.
Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”
Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.
Do you want to know who broke the law and then left a ruined country that is completely going to pot now?
Barry Hussein Obama, that’s who. Even the fool’s own damn LAWYERS told him that what he was doing was illegal and criminal. But the thug in chief was above the law.
Obama’s reckless action in Libya prompted even a DEMOCRAT to say this about false messiah Obama:
Representative Lynn Woolsey charged the President of showing “contempt” for the Constitution, and insulting the intelligence of the American people. Woolsey made the following statement: “The Obama Administration’s argument is one that shows contempt for the Constitution and for the executive’s co-equal branch of government, the United States Congress. To say that our aggressive bombing of Libya does not rise to the level of ‘hostilities’ flies in the face of common sense and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. This act must not stand, because we can’t afford another full-blown war—the ones we’re already fighting are bankrupting us morally and fiscally. Let those who support the military campaign against Libya make their case, in an open debate culminating with a vote in the U.S. Congress. The American people deserve nothing less.”
And yes, the criminal fascist thug Obama DID what he ACCUSED George Bush of doing when he attacked Libya without bothering to get ANY Congressional approval:
Senator Obama, taking a cheap shot at then-President Bush:
Barack Obama: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama responded.
“As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States,” Obama continued. “In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch.”
Do you remember being attacked by Libya? Did the Libyans invade us? I mean, maybe I was just asleep when it happened or something. Otherwise, Barack Obama ought to be impeached, and the single witness against him should be … Barack Obama. Barack Obama trampled all over the Constitution according to none other than … that’s right, Barack Obama.
George Bush got Congress’ approval before BOTH of his attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
And not only did Obama’s adventure in Libya NOT have the approval of Congress, but it also has less approval than ANY US military action in the last four decades going back to Vietnam.
And just what in the hell made our Idiot-in-Chief decide to be the first president in the sorry history of Gaddafi’s forty-plus years of abusing his own people to shake hands with the monster?
Do you see what a meandering idiot this guy is?
So having just taken that trip down memory lane, let’s see what the uberliberal leftist snot rag the Los Angeles Times has to say about the hellhole that Libya has become under Obama’s hypocritical and incompetent watch:
U.S. intervention in Libya now seen as cautionary tale
By Paul Richter, Christi Parsons
June 27, 2014, 4:00 AM|Reporting from Washington
- SHARELINES
3 years after U.S. military intervention, Libya has become what U.S. officials dread most
As the U.S. considers a limited intervention in Iraq, the experience in Libya is seen as a cautionary tale
More than 50,000 people, including refugee and migrants, have flooded to Europe through Libya’s porous bordersA group of U.S. diplomats arrived in Libya three years ago to a memorable reception: a throng of cheering men and women who pressed in on the startled group “just to touch us and thank us,” recalled Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security advisor.
The Libyans were emotional because the U.S. and its allies had toppled leader Moammar Kadafi in a military campaign that averted a feared slaughter of Kadafi’s foes. Obama administration officials called the international effort, accomplished with no Western casualties, a “model intervention.”
But in three years Libya has turned into the kind of place U.S. officials most fear: a lawless land that attracts terrorists, pumps out illegal arms and drugs and destabilizes its neighbors.
Now, as Obama considers a limited military intervention in Iraq, the Libya experience is seen by many as a cautionary tale of the unintended damage big powers can inflict when they aim for a limited involvement in an unpredictable conflict.
“If Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of overkill and overreach, Libya is the reverse case, where you do too little and get an unacceptable result,” said Brian Katulis, a Middle East specialist at the Center for American Progress, a think tank. “The lesson is that a low tolerance of risk can have its costs.”
Though they succeeded in their military effort, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies fell short in the broader goal of putting Libya on a path toward democracy and stability. Exhausted after a decade of war and mindful of the failures in Iraq, U.S. officials didn’t want to embark on another nation-building effort in an oil-rich country that seemed to pose no threat to Western security.
But by limiting efforts to help the new Libyan government gain control over the country, critics say, the U.S. and its allies have inadvertently helped turn Libya into a higher security threat than it was before the military intervention.
Libya has become North Africa’s most active militant sanctuary, at the center of the resurgent threat that Obama warned about in a May address at West Point. A 2012 terrorist attack against the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Arms trafficking from Libya “is fueling conflict and insecurity — including terrorism — on several continents,” an expert panel reported to the United Nations Security Council in February. Weapons smuggled out of Libya have been used by insurgents in Mali, by Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria and by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
More than 50,000 people, including refugees from Syria and migrants from North Africa, have flooded into Europe through Libya’s porous borders, sharpening the continent’s immigration crisis.
The latest U.S. State Department travel warning portrays Libya as a society in near-collapse, beset by crime, terrorism, factional fighting, government failure and the wide availability of portable antiaircraft weapons that can shoot down commercial airplanes.
U.S. officials, now scrambling to reverse Libya’s downward spiral, say blame rests with the Libyans who took control of a country that has proved more dysfunctional than expected.
[…]
Some observers are warning that the administration eventually may be forced to do more. A Rand Corp. report this spring predicted that if Libya’s problems continue to worsen, another NATO intervention might be required.
“Libya is a lesson about the risks,” said Robert Danin, a longtime U.S. diplomat in the Middle East who warned about the risks of ensuing chaos. “With nation-building in disrepute, there’s a tendency now to want to declare victory and move on. But interventions can’t be done neatly.”
Here’s the money quote:
“If Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of overkill and overreach, Libya is the reverse case, where you do too little and get an unacceptable result,” said Brian Katulis, a Middle East specialist at the Center for American Progress, a think tank. “The lesson is that a low tolerance of risk can have its costs.”
That’s precisely what Obama did across the Middle East: he declared victory and moved on. It’s what he did in Iraq in spite of the fact that he refused to deploy ANY security force whatsoever; it’s what he did in Libya after he bombed the country into rioting and terrorism that led to the Benghazi debacle and Obama’s cover-up of that debacle; it’s what he did in Syria after his weakness-personified “red line” and his deal with Putin that secured Assad’s power-grip and ultimately led to the rise of ISIS that is owning Obama right now. Again and again, Obama declared victory and moved on, having done little or nothing. He assured us that al Qaeda – which is now larger, more powerful, wealthier and controls more territory than EVER in it’s history – was “decimated” and “on the run.” But they WEREN’T running; they were running their FLAG up over OUR embassies!!! And Obama declared that ISIS was “JV” and that just because they dressed up in Laker’s uniforms didn’t make them Kobe Bryant. When we can now see that it’s OBAMA who is “JV” and ISIS is looking like Kobe Bryant at the very top of his game in comparison to anything our weak president is doing.
Obama lied to you, America: you can’t eat your cake and have it, too. We either fight to win or we lose and ultimately we die. Those are out choices.
Whether in Iraq, or Libya, or anywhere ELSE you want to name, “worst-case scenario” is now becoming the normal state of affairs under this spectacularly failed presidency.
The point is this: Bush went on the offensive and there are those who argue that he failed. Mind you, Bush left office with a JUST A SMALL FRACTION OF THE FORCE that Obama escalated Afghanistan into and was responsible for about a fifth of the casualties suffered in Afghanistan and HE WON IN IRAQ UNTIL OBAMA PISSED VICTORY AWAY (see also here and here). And here for what I predicted back in 2011.
Obama’s “red line” fiasco turned into a bloodbath in Syria. Obama’s complete withdrawal from and abandonment of Iraq turned into the largest terrorist caliphate the world has ever seen. And it will be coming at us soon because they’ve SAID it would be coming:
[The United States] intercepted a letter written from Al-Zawahiri to the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The letter described four stages that they would engage in: drive the Americans out, establish a caliphate in Bahgdad, use that base to attack other countries, attack Israel.
And as Obama has – as a result of his “policy” – utterly abandoned the Middle East to chaos and terrorism and murder – it is now obvious that Obama has failed FAR WORSE than Bush or any other president who ever lived.
Did you notice that Susan Rice was there again, she who is Obama’s top liar of choice first in Benghazi and more recently in the Bowe Bergdahl trade-your-soul and your five captured terrorist generals for a worthless turd deal???
I also can’t help but laugh that the same damn fool president who caused such a humanitarian crisis in Libya has also caused a similar one on our very own border with his ridiculously failed morally idiotic policies.
Somehow I remember the mainstream media propaganda that is our “journalism” today going ape poop over the Bush administration prediction that “we’ll be greeted as liberators” line. But where have they been in the three years since Obama’s reckless, criminal and incompetent action in Libya broke down all civilized structures in Libya? NOWHERE. Because if you’re a reporter today, you view yourself as serving your messiah Obama and the Ultimate Cause of liberalism and secular humanism. And you are willing to lie for your god and for your cause because you believe the ends justify the means.
George Bush essentially won the Iraq War in 21 days. That’s how long it took for the air power to cripple Iraq’s ability to wage war and for US troops to largely secure the most vital parts of the country. The rest of it was the attempt to “build and hold.” Obama didn’t bother with that in Libya. Hell, he didn’t even bother with it in Iraq. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out:
Hillary Clinton has defined leadership in a democracy as a relay race: “You run the best race you can run; you hand off the baton.” Obama was handed a baton he didn’t want, so he dropped it.
Which is to say that even by Hillary Clinton’s standard, Barack Obama was a complete, unmitigated FAILURE who screwed America horribly in Iraq. Obama lost what had been won at great cost because he didn’t like the baton he was held and threw it away like it was a piece of trash even as he claimed credit for the victory that he was about to piss away with his abject fool stupidity.
When you secure something, you stay there to make sure it STAYS secured. That’s one of the great lessons that we learned in Vietnam. We would take a hill at bloody cost, like “Hamburger Hill, and then withdraw a day after we took it to allow the communists to occupy it all over again. We learned not to do that by paying a terrible price for our stupidity. Only to have Barack Obama UN-learn it for us so we get Vietnam all over again.
At this point I submit that there is only one thing left to try regarding the Middle East: the World War II strategy.
In World War II we did not concern ourselves with “collateral damage.” If you were a civilian and you were sitting on a Nazi tank, too damn bad for you.
We FIREBOMBED Dresden. We killed something like 135,000 people.
We FIREBOMBED Tokyo. We killed about 100,000 people – nearly as many as both the two atomic bombs combined did.
We were able to do that because we were a people who had something to live for, something to fight for, and therefore something to kill our enemies for.
We HAVE to respond to terrorist attacks. And frankly at the same time, we’re simply not prepared any more – for various reasons including sheer exhaustion – to conquer, hold and rebuild.
All that is left is to bomb the populations that allow terrorism to fester into the stone age. And if they start to get nasty again, bomb the rubble into smaller particles of rubble. And DON’T GO IN. LEAVE THEM to the consequences of their evil ideology.
Turn Afghanistan into “Lake Afghanistan” if that is what it takes to end the scourge of Islamic violence. Because at this point, if these people are going to act like cockroaches, they need to be STOMPED like cockroaches. And we don’t need to send in troops as long as we’ve got a big enough fly swatter from the air and our naval platforms out at sea.
I truly believe that if the message – the clear, consistent message regardless of president or party – was, “If you threaten us or our interests, we will bring the fire of hell to you, to your women and to your children,” terrorism would become a lot less popular. All these Muslims would have to see is that yes, we DO mean business and we mean it in a very painful way. But as it is now, there is no down-side to fostering terrorism whatsoever. We do these precise, surgical strikes to avoid actually hurting anybody. And all our enemies have to do is put a hand-lettered sign that reads “Baby milk factory” and our destruction of a weapons-of-mass-destruction facility becomes a war crime:
One of [CNN reporter Peter] Arnett’s most controversial reports during the Gulf War was a report on how the coalition had bombed a baby milk factory. Shortly after the report, an Air Force spokesman stated “Numerous sources have indicated that [the factory] is associated with biological warfare production”. Later the same day, Colin Powell stated “It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure”. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater stated “That factory is, in fact, a production facility for biological weapons” and “The Iraqis have hidden this facility behind a façade of baby-milk production as a form of disinformation.”
The image of a crudely made hand-painted sign reading “Baby Milk” in English and Arabic in front of the factory, and a lab coat dressed in a suit containing stitched lettering reading “BABY MILK PLANT IRAQ” only served to further the perception that purportedly civilian targets were simply being made to look like that by Saddam Hussein, and that Arnett was duped by the Iraqi government. The sign appeared to have been added by the Iraqis before the camera crews arrived as a cheap publicity ploy. Newsweek called the incident a “ham-handed attempt to depict a bombed-out biological-weapons plant near Baghdad as a baby-formula factory.”
Arnett remained firm. He had toured the plant in the previous August, and was insistent that “Whatever else it did, it did produce infant formula”. Described as being a veritable fortress by the Pentagon[citation needed], the plant, Arnett reported, had only one guard at the gate and a lot of powdered baby milk. “That’s as much as I could tell you about it … [I]t looked innocent enough from what we could see.” A CNN camera crew had been invited to tour this plant in August 1990. They videotaped workers wearing new uniforms with lettering in English reading, “Iraq Baby Milk Plant”.
If we’re not going to fight back – and fight back like we really mean it – we truly deserve to die.
I mean, my God, you pathetic, apathetic coward herd animals, just bleat until you die like the sheep you are.
Here’s another thing: the terrorists ARE fighting for a cause that they believe is very much worth dying for. Versus us: what the hell are WE fighting for? Are we fighting for Obama? Are we fighting for political correctness? Are we fighting for the determination to not allow God or any transcendent cause whatsoever to interfere with our abortion and our homosexual sodomy???
If I had a son, I would urge him with all the passion I had not to waste his life for this country at this point. I served, as did my father, my father, my grandfather and my grandfather’s father before me. But we served a very different nation which did not piss in the Eye of God.
We are losing the war on terror because secular humanist liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have eradicated ANY reason whatsoever to actually fight for our own worthless lives – and if you believe in abortion your life is worthless by definition because you acknowledge that you began as the kind of thing that could have and even SHOULD HAVE been killed as a parasite or a disease – and our own worthless values.
We need to either figure out what it is that is worth fighting for in our age of secular humanism or we need to go out “not with a bang but a whimper” as the T.S. Elliot poem predicted we would.
Because in the age of Obama, a whimper is about all we’ve got.
Obama’s policy of inaction, of too-little-action-way-too-late, of bogus “red lines,” of retreat, of withdrawal, of apologizing, of weakening America and broadcasting the message of weakness to the world, has resulted in the world erupting into a firestorm that we now cannot put out with our meaningless and frankly depraved values.
Our own pathetic secular humanist values have been used against us and turned into a weapon of our own mass destruction. We COULD fight, but as morally insane secular humanists we put on a strait jacket – and now we’re helpless while our rabid enemies are coming at us with the passion that comes from having a powerful cause that we long-since abandoned as a post-Christian culture.
And that’s why Armageddon is coming.
Start Thinking Right 