Republican Wild Prognostications and Fear Mongering – STOP IT, Just STOP IT!!!

All the Republican presidential candidates and the neocon talking heads are telling us, through the compliant profit-oriented media, how bad things will go in the Middle East if we don’t do what President Bush says. Can they see into the future? Do they have a direct line to God? What’s their record on predicting the future?

“Al-Qaeda are on the way to establishing their first stronghold in the Middle East,” warned an American official.” If they succeed, it will be a catastrophe and an imminent danger to Saudi Arabia and Jordan.”

“I concluded that to step back from Baghdad would have disastrous consequences in America,” Bush told reporters. “And the reason why I say ‘disastrous consequences’ is, the Iraqi government could collapse and chaos could spread.”

President Bush on May 24, 2007, “The danger in this particular theater in the war on terror is that if we were to fail, they’d come and get us.”

From The Huffington Post, “Appearing on the Sunday morning news shows, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the American people that our leaving Iraq would result in a wider war, with real danger to the United States and its interests.”

Why does anyone think the terrorists would wait until we leave Iraq? Isn’t it more proactive to anticipate that they could be here at any moment. Isn’t this especially true since we have replaced their high school level, obstacle course, training camps in Afghanistan with the five-star, real-time, real-enemy and real-weapons training camp in the city of Bagdad. They have learned more about killing from our invasion of Iraq than they ever could in their old dirt cheap Afghanistan playground.

Their advanced training in Iraq has created a much stronger terrorist foe and they are already sending these five-star terrorists to neighboring countries to stir up more trouble. How long before they reach here? Shouldn’t they be in a hurry to get these highly skilled terrorists to the U. S. while we are all living under a false sense of security? Won’t it be easier to attack us now, while our best troops and defense equipment are over there?

At a news conference in August 2006, Bush said:

A failed Iraq: would make America less secure.

A failed Iraq: in the heart of the Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and extremists. It will embolden those who are trying to thwart the ambitions of reformers. In this case, it would give the terrorists and extremists an additional tool besides safe haven and added revenues from oil sales.

Isn’t Iraq just that, a “haven for terrorists?” They’re emboldened by our mere presence. New revenues? Does anyone really think terrorist funding is an issue? Their advancements in anti-imperialist weaponry and killings indicate money is plentiful and growing.

The Boston Globe provided the following examples on recent Republican candidate talking points that are misleading and reminiscent of what got us in this mess to begin with. If enough people repeat a lie, it must be true.

… Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would “follow us home” from Iraq — a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

… Rudolph Giuliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that “these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago.” However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

… Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have “come together” to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

Romney, McCain, and Giuliani have endorsed — and expanded on — Bush’s much-debated contention that Al Qaeda is the main cause of instability in Iraq.

… many GOP candidates have recently echoed Bush’s longstanding assertion that Iraq is the “central battlefront” in the worldwide war against Al Qaeda and have declared that Al Qaeda would make Iraq its base of operations if the United States withdraws …

Romney’s comment in the earlier debate that “they’ve come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” struck some former intelligence officials as particularly misleading. Shia and Sunni, they said, are branches of Islam and not terrorist groups. There are an estimated 300 million Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, many of them fighting Al Qaeda.

During the debates about war funding, GOP leaders have downplayed the role of sectarian violence in Iraq and emphasized the role of Al Qaeda.

… McCain called any attempt to cut Iraq war funding, “the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda.”

… while there is evidence that AQI members coordinate attacks among themselves, there is little evidence that they coordinate closely with bin Laden.

… Bush last week said a previously classified intelligence report indicated that bin Laden had sent a messenger in early 2005 to urge the late Iraqi terrorist chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to aim more attacks at the United States.

“We don’t have any direct information that would link Al Qaeda in Iraq to getting e-mails, memos, whatever, from bin Laden,” the military official said, speaking under condition of anonymity.

The Boston Globe also provided the following from CIA experts:

Michael Scheuer , the CIA’s former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, said the comments of some GOP candidates seem to suggest that bin Laden is controlling the insurgency in Iraq, which he is not.

“There are at least 41 groups [worldwide] that have announced their allegiance to Osama bin Laden — and I will bet that none of them are directed by Osama bin Laden,” Scheuer said, pointing out that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not overseen by bin Laden.

“The idea that Al Qaeda will move its headquarters of operation from South Asia to Iraq is nonsense,” said Scheuer.

Stop the fearmongering and misinformation. Give us something that isn’t wild imagination of worst case scenarios.

Here’s a quote from a nonpartisan, non-Islamic and non-American observer, “The new Iraqi government has accomplished almost nothing in terms of public security and social stability. Ethnic conflicts and religious confrontations rage on; the economy remains in a coma; the country sees no ray of hope from underneath a mountain of debt. Iraq is now in fact a country without a central authority and totally broke.”

Why don’t we stop investing in the Middle East and take all that “war” money and provide incentives to our energy industries to invent a better battery or fuel-cell so we don’t need all that oil? This is not only a more productive use of the funds, which we are borrowing from the rest of the world, it is an incentive to keep them investing in the U.S. It also means we end this endless war and thus remove the real incentives for the terrorists to do us harm – our presence.