Bob's Links and Rants

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Monday, September 08, 2003

Rummy: It's the critics fault!
We know for a fact that terrorists studied Somalia, and they studied instances that the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do.

The United States is not going to do that; President Bush is not going to do that.

To the extent that terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or, if he is not going to, that the opponents might prevail in some way, and they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities, or that leads to more recruits, or that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power, obviously that does make our task more difficult.
-- Donald Rumsfeld, quoted in the NY Times.

This argument was used during Vietnam; it was used by Ashcroft in December 2001. It sucked then, it sucks now. Against all reason, logic and evidence, Bush, Rummy and the gang have gotten themselves into an impossible situation. Now they want to blame us for noticing. Does he really think we'd be better off if we'd had 50,000 troops in Somalia for the past ten years? If you want peace and security (which I'm pretty sure are two things the Bushies have no interest in), leave the rest of the world alone. Pay the market price for oil, whatever it turns out to be. If that means we have to restructure our economy and landscape in response to expensive oil, so much the better.