About a week or so ago, Ann Coulter published yet another doozie of a blog post entitled “Bush’s America: 100 Percent Al-Qaida Free Since 2001“. Now, you’d think I’d be wise and simply ignore her antics, but to be honest I find it very difficult to ignore this level of ignorance and stupidity. The problem is that there are others who actually believe that what Ann writes about is dead-on correct, that is that her opinion is indeed fact, and that she is telling it like it is. Being that Ann is part of what Arianna Huffington calls the lunatic fringe, I find it only fair that I deconstruct what Ann has written and essentially show just how ridiculous her presumptions are. So, let’s start at the beginning of her post:
In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.
You’re surprised, Ann? Bush has an approval rating that is less that 30%. Why wouldn’t anyone be surprised by that comment? You’re the minority, Ann. And this sounds made up.
I generally don’t write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents.
Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I’ll consider downgrading Bush from “Great” to “Really Good.”
Congratulations! All that propaganda and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that Bush, Cheney, and others have spread actually worked. You actually believe that just because we haven’t had a major terrorist attack since 9/11 that we’re actually safer? And that we have Bush to thank for that? And that makes him a “great President”? What planet are you living on? Do you realize that some of our civil liberties have been taken from us because of the Bush administration? And you think that’s ok because, after all, we’re safer and we having had another terrorist attack? Ann, our forefathers would roll over in their grave if they knew that we sacrificed our civil liberties just to protect our borders.
Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: “We’re the Rape Room People!”) constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did — and I’m including remembering Monica’s name on the sixth sexual encounter.
Pop quiz, Ann! What’s worse? Getting caught getting a blowjob from an intern? Or getting caught lying about the reasons for sending hundreds of thousands of troops to either get killed or seriously injured? And, yes, Bush lied. He said so himself that the intelligence was faulty and went to war with Iraq anyways. Yes, Hussein was a bad guy and eventually had to be dealt with…but there was little or no intelligence linking him directly to al-Qaeda. But the Bush administration continued on, lied to the American public, failed to listen to the United Nations, and went to war anyways even though it had little or nothing to do with the Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. Thus the Iraq was was predicated on a lie. Show me the facts that say otherwise. Clinton got away with lying about a blowjob. Bush got away with lying about a war and getting thousands of Americans killed as a result of it and having some of our civil liberties taken away from us. Yeah, real humanitarian accomplishment, Ann!
But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.
We didn’t invade Iraq to protect America. We invaded Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein, a man who had not once invaded or attacked the United States.Yes, he was a bad guy…but he wasn’t much of a threat to the U.S…just a threat to the region and to the oil business.
It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That’s 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK — or a landmark building, for that matter.
al-Qaida wasn’t a threat in Iraq till after we invaded Iraq. al-Qaida is linked mostly to Sunni’s, not the Shia Muslims that have been part of the insurgency the past few years.
And 20,000? Where are you getting these numbers from? What are your sources?
We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan — the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.
Please, say it as often as possible so that others will learn how ignorant you are. It has not and has never been clear as to whether al-Qaida has ever been linked to Saddam Hussein or Iraq. And, like I said above, we invaded Iraq, a country who has not once attacked our country directly. So how is it that we’re fighting them over there so what we don’t have to fight them here? Who? Being that al-Qaida is all but non existent in Iraq, who in Iraq has even remotely thought about attacking the United States directly? Give me the facts.
The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is “standing up” (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr –the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism — has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.
Muqtada al-Sadr is a Shiite. Shia’s hate al-Qaida. He may be radical…but he definitely has no sympathy for al-Qaida supporters.
The Iraqis have a democracy — a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq’s democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about “change.”
“a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world”? So you’re saying that democracy in Iraq is just one step up from a load of shit? That is about as elitist of a statement as it gets. What makes you so much better than the people in Iraq?
(Guess what Bill Clinton’s campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: “bringing dignity back to the White House.” It was “change.” In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton’s “constant talk of change.”)
Every single Presidential candidate has used “change” as a part of the message of their campaign for just about every election of the past 20+ years. And that includes Republican candidates as well.
Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit — although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.
But how many were injured? Do you even know? According to GlobalSecurity.org, the number of U.S. casualties have gone down a bit. But the number of U.S. wounded is still fairly high even though the number has gone down in the last few months. The numbers to date though are still staggaring: 4,070 dead with 30,182 wounded. It’s the wounded I’m mostly concerned about. Do you have any idea of the issues surrounding the treatment of wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq? Do you really believe that they are being treated with the proper level of physical and mental treatment they deserve?
Here’s some real numbers that will help put it all in perspective:
3,990: American troops who have died in Iraq since the start of the war. [icasualties.org, 3/17/08]
29,395: Number of U.S. service members that have been wounded in hostile action since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq. [AP, 3/11/08]
60,000: Number of troops that have been subjected to controversial stop-loss measures–meaning those who have completed service commitments but are forbidden to leave the military until their units return from war. [US News and World Report, 2/25/08]
5: Number of times the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment has been sent to Iraq. They are the first Marine Corps unit to be sent to Iraq for a fifth time. [San Francisco Chronicle, 2/27/08]
2,100: Number of troops who tried to commit suicide or injure themselves increased from 350 in 2002 to 2,100 last year. [US News and World Report, 2/25/08]
11.9: Percent of noncommissioned Army officers who reported mental health problems during their first Iraq tour [Los Angeles Times, 3/7/08]
27.2: Percent of noncommissioned Army officers who reported mental health problems during their third or fourth Iraq tour [Los Angeles Times, 3/7/08]
Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: “Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”
It’s almost as if there’s been some sort of “surge” going on, as strange as that sounds.
Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.
So if Al-Qaida is all but non-existent in Iraq and the surge is working, then why don’t we have an exit strategy? Why, if we are supposedly successful in Iraq, can we not have a plan to start pulling troops out of Iraq instead of allowing more and more troops to continue third and fourth tours?
But no one notices when 9/11 doesn’t happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we’d all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a “wannabe” terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.
This isn’t fantasy land, Ann. People who attempt terrorism in our country rarely get interviews unless they happen to be born American citizens. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols got interviews. But did the guy who help bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, get an interview? Umm, doesn’t look like it.
We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good — another day without a terrorist attack.
Yeah, yeah…and we’d all be sitting around wondering when Paris Hilton will land her ass in jail for the umpteenth time. People love good tabloids. Who cares.
But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush — and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of béarnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.
If Liberals have a “blind” hatred for Bush, then Conservatives have a “blind” hatred for Liberals. Am I correct?
The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush’s rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant — if that’s not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush’s third term. Then he might have a chance.
Yes, people have lied about Bush. But for every lie there is a fact behind it that proves he has made decisions that resulted in poor judgement, decisions that cost people their jobs, their freedom, and their lives. Not only are there liberals who wish to avoid kissing Bush’s ass but there are also conservatives as well who wish to avoid it as well.
You’re exaggerating on how well Bush has done. I think his approval rating speaks for itself. You can’t get an approval rating like that without even Republicans not approving of him. People aren’t in denial over Bush doing a bad job. It’s not just their imagination, Ann. And a moral giant? Wow. You must have really low expectations.
Once again, Ann, you fail to back any of your opinions up with the facts. If what you say is true, where are the facts, ma’am? Blind criticism based on unproven facts isn’t the best way to “tell it like it is”. I can find highly reputable sources that will backup each of my claims. Can you? Best get your facts straight instead of trying to pass off your opinions as fact.
This whole Republican vs Democrat, conservative vs liberal, left-wing vs right-wing crap is getting really old, Ann. The fact of the matter is you can’t blame everything on Liberals and Democrats. Not every Liberal and/or Democrat is bad anymore than I can say that every Conservative and/or Republican is bad. What you don’t realize is that this sort of bi-partisan way of thinking is what is damaging the politics in this nation. All it does is turn people against one another and makes them lose sight of what the real issues are.
Seems that every blog post I’ve read by you, you’re always constantly attacking someone. You’ve compared Obama’s book about his father to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which I feel is by far one of the most outrageous statements from you to date. You constantly try to pass off your opinions as fact and have a highly slated view of the fact. Plus, you tend to take things completely out of context. It’s as if you pick apart everything and only leave in the parts that illustrate and justify your point of view.
I’m all about the freedom of expression and sharing one’s opinion with others. You have every right to blog about whatever you wish to blog about. But even I get things wrong and I have no problems admitting when I’m wrong when I don’t get the facts straight. Why can’t you, Ann?
Last I checked we’re all Americans. Maybe if you spent more time treating all Americans with a little decency and respect, rather than attacking any opposing viewpoints at the first chance you get, you might get more out of it. Spreading lies and hate is no way to improve the political situation in our country.
