News. Oh, Rudy, how could you?
Oct. 29th, 2004 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsMan, the MP3 player is psychic today.
Rudolph Giuliani, who is oftened mentioned as Presidential material "someday," has completely blown any chance of getting my vote when he said, of the troops that went to al-Qaqaa, "The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
In fact, the troops weren't ordered to search al-Qaqaa. The first two battalions to hit the area were passing through it after determining that there were no hostiles there. They were not ordered to search. The commanding officer of the second group said that after encountering some noxious chemicals, presumed to be insectides, he told his men to stay away from the warehouses, as they were not equipped for hazmat conditions. The third U.S. team to visit the base, the one that discovered the explosives missing, was tasked with cataloging al-Qaqaa and did have the proper equipment. Each team followed their orders as given by their superiors. If the site needed to be secured, it was the duty of the higher echelons to know that and follow through.
And Bush accuses Kerry of undermining the troops' efforts? Giuliani just called the troops on the ground incompetent at best and mutinous at worst, and he knew they didn't deserve that approbation. In defense of "his president," Guiliani has committed an unpardonable political sin.
Shrillblog has a good summary.
A letter claiming to be from an elections board and mailed to Democrats only informs them that if they registered through the Kerry for President Campaign or NAACP, that such registrations are "illegal" and they're not really registered to vote. Isn't that lovely?
There's evidence that Syria is testing chemical weapons by giving them to Sudanese "rebels" in Darfour. Hey, isn't the user of chemical weapons against citizens under your protection one of the excuses we used for going after Saddam?
Rudolph Giuliani, who is oftened mentioned as Presidential material "someday," has completely blown any chance of getting my vote when he said, of the troops that went to al-Qaqaa, "The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
In fact, the troops weren't ordered to search al-Qaqaa. The first two battalions to hit the area were passing through it after determining that there were no hostiles there. They were not ordered to search. The commanding officer of the second group said that after encountering some noxious chemicals, presumed to be insectides, he told his men to stay away from the warehouses, as they were not equipped for hazmat conditions. The third U.S. team to visit the base, the one that discovered the explosives missing, was tasked with cataloging al-Qaqaa and did have the proper equipment. Each team followed their orders as given by their superiors. If the site needed to be secured, it was the duty of the higher echelons to know that and follow through.
And Bush accuses Kerry of undermining the troops' efforts? Giuliani just called the troops on the ground incompetent at best and mutinous at worst, and he knew they didn't deserve that approbation. In defense of "his president," Guiliani has committed an unpardonable political sin.
Shrillblog has a good summary.
A letter claiming to be from an elections board and mailed to Democrats only informs them that if they registered through the Kerry for President Campaign or NAACP, that such registrations are "illegal" and they're not really registered to vote. Isn't that lovely?
There's evidence that Syria is testing chemical weapons by giving them to Sudanese "rebels" in Darfour. Hey, isn't the user of chemical weapons against citizens under your protection one of the excuses we used for going after Saddam?
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:21 am (UTC)Check this out, too. It's the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. Oh, and this.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:46 am (UTC)Now US troops are in greater danger in Iraq because of complete administrative incompetence. Not only because of the explosives issue, but they're about to invade Falujah to fight the Ba'athist generalissimo who Dubbya sent in to "put down the insurgency" a few months ago. So they fire pretty much the whole Iraqi army because of loyalty concerns, but leave a high-ranking general in charge of a private army and expect him to be a good boy?
It's pretty obvious where the failures were.
A WMD hunt was the primary focus for the first year of the invasion, so Bush could justify a war that was launched in haste and for dubiously valid reasons (almost all of which were subsequently completely debunked).
Since the focus was wrong, critical sites weren't secured. There weren't adequate troops in place in major cities to maintain security and act as police. Infrastructure rebuilding projects took a back seat. Weapons caches weren't secured. There wasn't any coherent plan to put an interim Iraqi government with power in charge until the situation was out of control. There wasn't any coherent plan to train Iraqi security forces, who at this moment in time are mostly incompetent and poorly-equipped by all accounts.
If that's "strong, resolved leadership", I think I'll opt for anything but that. I don't view wearing blinders and being stubborn as good leadership traits. And to give Kerry credit, when he voted to authorize Dubbya to use force in Iraq, I'm confident that Kerry had no clue how much the Bush administration was working to mislead everyone and how they would abuse the power given to them.