Gates: Congress’ opposition on troops ‘emboldens the enemy’
Gates: Iraq Resolution ‚Äö√Ñ√≤Certainly Emboldens the Enemy’ (with video goodness….)
WASHINGTON ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ Defense Secretary Roberts Gates said today that a congressional resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq amounts to undercutting U.S. commanders in a way that “emboldens the enemy.”….At his first Pentagon news conference since taking office, Gates was asked his reaction to the debate in Congress over the effect of such a nonbinding resolution. “It’s pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn’t have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries,” he said.
Silly me. When Donald Rumsfeld resigned as Minister of War and Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © nominated Robert Gates as his replacement, I had a brief, momentary, and ultimately dead wrong premonition that maybe, just maybe, things might change in Iraq. Perhaps the “if you’re not with us unquestioningly, you’re with the terrorists” mentality might finally give way to some common sense? HA! Jeebus, I can be an idjit at times, eh?
Gates has been on the job for like, what, a month now…which clearly has been long enough to drink the KoolAid. Now Gates, whom I’d previously thought to be a rather level-headed apolitical sort, is parrotting and purveying the Party line every bit as faithfully as Rumsfeld did. What the Hell was I thinking??
Remember, kids…loose lips sink ships!
I had hoped- apparently vainly- that Gates would be bigger than the canard that the terrorists can smell dissent and interpret it as a sign of weakness. After all, wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who said that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”? So why can those pushing the war in Iraq not seem to be able to discuss the war without falling back on the “Dissent puts you in league with the terrorists” argument? Perhaps because they know that they can’t win an argument regarding the conduct of the war on it’s merits? Perhaps because they know that we know that they’ve turned the war in Iraq into a complete and total catastrof—k? Perhaps they understand all too well that the war in Iraq was purchased with lies, propaganda, and deception? Or perhaps because they know that they simply cannot admit that they were wrong, and that their conduct of a war that had- and has- nothing to do with the War on Terror © borders on criminally inept? Maybe they know that if they admit responsibility for this catastrof—k, they’ll be held responsible for it? Ah, personal responsibility…what a quaint, novel, and completely anti-Republican concept.
“I think it’s hard to measure that with any precision, but it seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks,” Gates said, referring to the anti-government forces in Baghdad. He added that he was certain this was not the intent of those who support the congressional resolution.
“But that’s the effect,” he said.
Damn; it turns out that Robert Gates is just as much of a DUMB@$$ as the rest of the neoConservative thugs who have been pushing the war in Iraq all along. The more things change, the more they…ah, fuhgeddaboudit….
