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It would seem that during President George W. Bush's upbringing neither George Sr. nor momma Barbara sat him down to tell the tale about the little boy who cried wolf. At a news conference last Tuesday, Bush remained defiant in his anti-Iran stance despite the release of new U.S. intelligence that shows the Iranians suspended their nuclear program four years ago.
For the past two years, the U.S. administration has been demanding that the world take a tougher stance against Iran and as late as Oct. 17, Bush himself was invoking images of a nuclear-capable Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launching "World War III."
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In recent weeks, Kurdish guerrillas have openly engaged Turkish troops in a series of ambushes and terror attacks in southeastern Turkey. Dozens of Turk soldiers and civilians have been killed and these deaths have generated a wave of nationalist, anti-American fervor throughout the entire country.
Particularly problematic is the fact that Turkey's shared border with northern Iraq remains unsecured and has become an entry point for the Kurdish terrorists.
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MANY FEEL that the role of a pundit is an easy one. All we need to do is point out doom-and-gloom scenarios, criticize the action or inaction of major stakeholders and then engage in a lot of self-puffery when the obvious transpires.
Of course, there are notable exceptions to this course, as exemplified by Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff's recent mea culpa in the New York Times. This self-described denizen of Harvard had to eat a humongous portion of humble pie and openly admit that he had gotten things wrong when he advocated America's 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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IT HAS BEEN well over four years since U.S. President George Bush invaded Iraq under the pretext of self-defence in the war against terror. Saddam Hussein has been deposed, captured, tried, convicted and executed in that span of time, but the American occupation force has yet to locate his alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
It was Saddam's alleged possession of these weapons that Bush used to brand Iraq as a "rogue state," a member of the "axis of evil" and a "clear and present danger" to citizens of the United States. If the removal of Saddam from power had resulted in Iraq's peaceful transition into a prosperous democratic state, the failure to locate the fictitious weapons might have been considered a justifiable ruse to achieve a desirable goal. However, Iraq's post-Saddam era has been an orgy of violence and anarchy.
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SEVERAL RECENT CLAIMS by senior officials have been a little light on the verite and as a result have stretched the claimant's credibility beyond the breaking point.
A clear example of this was British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wide-eyed innocent attempt to convince the world that "no negotiations" had preceded the release of the 15 British sailors and marines held captive in Iran.
That's right, folks, all the chest-thumping brinkmanship statements we heard throughout the ordeal from London, the media reports of around-the-clock diplomatic efforts taking place with Tehran, the release in Baghdad of an Iranian diplomat held by Iraqi forces, and the recent access an Iranian diplomat was given to five Iranian officials the U.S. captured in northern Iraq in January were simply window dressing.
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Page 7 of 13 |
On Target 
