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Bush's Global War FOR Terrorism

Politicians lie on a regular basis, and President of the United States is no exception. The difference is that in this, as in many other areas, the ‘Americans are more advanced than us.’ But based on the public record, according to this op-ed article from Lebanon’s Dar Al-Hayat, when the White House denies that Bush thinks he communicates with God, it stretches credulity to the limit.

By Jihad el Khazen

October 13, 2005

Dar Al-Hayat - Original Article (English)

On the steps of the Grand Serail [the seat of the Lebanese Government] in Beirut about 30 years ago, the Lebanese Prime Minister told a group of journalists, of whom I was one, the following: "You say that I'm a liar. Go see what Yasser Arafat has done." The Prime Minister then told us the details of the big lie that the Palestinian leader had told him.

Arafat

In the evening, some of us went to the PLO's headquarters and told the story to Arafat, who thought for a bit and then said, "I'm ready to kill for the sake of Palestine; you want me not to lie?"

The Lebanese Prime Minister was lying in order to protect his position, and Arafat always lied due to his weakness vis-à-vis his key issue (Palestine). However technologically-advanced, it is lies that are being issued by the Bush Administration these days. The Americans are more advanced than us in everything, including the art of blending issues so that the truth is lost.

And the lying is in regard to just about everything. I was surprised the other day by the commotion caused by Nabil Shaath in remarks to a British television program, when he said that Bush told a Palestinian delegation in 2003 that "God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …' And I did.”

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, denied that Bush had made the remarks and called them silly. Is this really the case? [SEE VIDEO BELOW: Comments on Bush Talking to God are at 00:24:00].

President Mahmoud Abbas and Shaath told me about these remarks by Bush during the famous Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, when Abbas was Prime Minister, and I wrote about it at the time. King Abdullah II of Jordan told me about President Bush's clear religious devotion during the Aqaba talks, how it seemed that he was acting based on divine orders, although I didn't hear talk about God in regard to Afghanistan or Iraq.

But Bush's Sharm el-Sheikh statements about invading Afghanistan and Iraq based on divine orders weren't denied at the time, and I referred to them in this column. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz on June 24, 2003 did the same, and there was no denial. Then Dilip Hiro quoted the newspaper in his 2003 book Secrets and Lies, and again nothing was denied. In the newspaper and the book there are remarks by Abbas, and in the television program by Shaath, and I've heard this from both men.

Without going back to my files, I believe I wrote at the time that a person is religious if he talks to God, and crazy if God talks to him. All I can say is that if the TV presenter and singer Razan were to meet Bush, she'd call him "nice," which is one of her favorite words.

President Bush will live for a hundred years, because he's safely ensconsed in his own private world which is unpolluted by the lies and facts of our world. The month began with all of the newspapers carrying the details of the testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee by General George Casey, the Commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. [SEE VIDEO BELOW]

'We Won't leave Iraq Until Our Job is Done' [Alittihad, U.A.E.]

He said that just one out of 86 Iraq Army battalions is operational, which means that the number dropped from 3 just 6 months ago.

In the beginning of the month, President Bush was praising the progress of the Iraqi forces and said at the White House that 3,000 of these personnel had participated along with U.S. forces in fighting insurgents in western Iraq.

Three thousand out of 180,000 means less than 1.5% of Iraqi forces are ready to fight, or in other words, the lone brigade to which Casey referred. It's not just that the President saw the glass half full and Casey saw it half empty. The President saw a drop in the bottom of the glass and tried to make us all drink from it.

It seems that President Bush's Rose Garden remarks about the capability of the Iraqi Army were just a drill; the next day Bush delivered what was described as a major speech on terrorism, and he did so quite skillfully. It came against the backdrop of a false warning about a terrorist attack on the New York subway system. [SEE VIDEO BELOW]

I would like to be positive and will leave aside the exaggerated claim that ten al-Qaeda terrorist plots against the U.S. had been thwarted. Once again, I thank President Bush for defending true Islam; he said that the network of Islamic extremists want to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans Spain to Indonesia." He listed several descriptions of the phenomenon, such as "evil Islamic radicalism, militant jihadism or Islamo-fascism," while insisting that "whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam."

President Bush always defends Islam and in appreciation of this position, I would advise him to change his speechwriters, and if he insists on keeping them, at least give the final copies of his speeches to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has a deeper understanding, is better informed and is more independent than those who have gotten him mixed up in the war against Iraq and who continue to lie to him and to us.

I'll remain positive and say to the president that the terrorists around the world, from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to the terrorists in Iraq and Europe and the U.S. and elsewhere, aren't more than 30,000 out of 1.2 billion Muslims, although I'm not that great at math. So I'll raise the number to 120,000 and then do the calculations with 1.2 billion. That's 0.00001% of Muslims, or a group for whom it would be impossible to impose its thoughts on the majority of peaceful, moderate Muslims.

In his speech, the President continues to live off the glories of September 11, 2001, and he ignores all of the disastrous consequences of subsequent American policy. He has rejected the argument that invading Iraq has boosted radical Islam, saying that the terrorists attacked America even without U.S. forces in Iraq , and that it is the terrorists that consider Iraq the central front in their war against humanity. Then he urged people to recognize the fact that Iraq is a central front in this struggle.

Now wait just a minute, Mr. President. The terrorists weren't in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, and Iraq, even with Saddam Hussein as its President, had no ties to anti-U.S. terrorism or al-Qaeda. Then came the U.S. invasion, which destroyed Iraq and massacred its people as part of the U.S. war against terror, bringing terrorists to Iraq.

What are the Iraqi people guilty of? Every day they pay the price for a confrontation with which they had no connection. The war against terror has increased terror, not reduced it, meaning that the sacrifices of the Iraqi people have been in vain. This is the truth.

VIDEO FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD: ANTI-IRAQ CONSTITUTION BROADCAST

The Fight for the Future of Iraq

VIDEO FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD: PRO-IRAQ CONSTITUTION BROADCAST

The Fight for the Future of Iraq

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