Richard112360
Senior Member
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Date Posted:
Feb/20/2007 2:16 PM
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Scary, here are some old news excerpts from Seymour Hersh. We really have a mad man in the W.H.
The President is more determined than ever to stay the course, the former defense official said. He doesnt feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage People may suffer and die, but the Church advances. He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway, the former defense official said. Bushs public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House, the former official said, but Bush has no idea.
Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bushs closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bushs first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the Presidents religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that God put me here to deal with the war on terror. The Presidents belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that hes the man, the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.
The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: I said to the President, Were not winning the war. And he asked, Are we losing? I said, Not yet. The President, he said, appeared displeased with that answer.
I tried to tell him, the former senior official said. And he couldnt hear it.
Many of the militarys most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they dont want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has so terrified the generals that they know they wont go public, a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that things were fu
One person with whom the Pentagons top commanders have shared their private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months. The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer from what I call battle fatigue in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as the common enemy in Iraq.
He also took issue with one of the White Houses claimsthat foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency. Murtha said that American soldiers havent captured any in this latest activitythe continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border with Syria. So this idea that theyre coming in from outside, we still think theres only seven per cent.
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