Facts About Terrorism
Some facts about the Republican's history of dealing with terrorism:
In 1983 terrorists bombed a marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon which killed 241 marines. That terrorist organization was Hezbollah which was based in Lebanon and also had ties to Iran. President Reagan's response was to pull U.S. troops out of Lebanon, i.e. he appeased the terrorists.
In the mid 1980's the Reagan administration was involved in the Iran-Contra Scandal. Members of the administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. For the second time we once again negotiated with and appeased terrorists, and this time we actually supplied weapons to an Iranian regime that the U.S. had recently called an instigator of international terrorism, and whom were culpable in the 1983 Beirut bombing.
During the 1980's the Reagan and Bush administrations supplied Iraq with funding and weapons including chemical weapons. We've all seen the infamous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Sadaam Hussein in Baghdad.
Coincidentally, these Republican administrations also funded and trained Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because at this time he was fighting the Soviet Union. The people who developed and carried out this strategy lacked any foresight to see that their new ally would soon become their #1 enemy.
Also during the 1980's, during the terms of Reagan and Bush Sr., there were multiple airline hijackings and bombings of airliners all done by various Islamic terrorists. There are literally too many incidents to list here. The response of the U.S. government to these acts: The only significant response was one mission to bomb Libya and try to kill Khadafi. We missed. We did kill his adopted daughter, but he survived.
The above record of dealing with terrorism and Middle East foreign policy is downright awful. Today the Republicans try to sell themselves as the party that is strong on terrorism and national defense. However, their record shows they've been not only clueless about how to handle terrorism or how to deal with the Middle East, but their policies have been extremely dangerous to the security of the United States. Not one of these decisions turned out to be the right thing to do, and many of the people involved in these decisions are the same people that are part of the current Bush administration which tells the public that the Democrats can’t be trusted to handle our national security. The hypocrisy of this idea is laughable.
Imagine If Bill Clinton or John Kerry had been involved in funding or training Osama Bin Laden... the Republicans would be calling them incompetent traitors who are responsible for 9/11. If they had funded and supplied Sadaam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction they would be accused of reckless disregard for national security and of making the world a more dangerous place. If they had walked away from Middle Eastern terrorists who just killed 241 marines they would be called weak, cowardly liberals who believe in giving in to terrorism.
John Kerry was photographed over 30 years ago at an anti-war protest in the same crowd as Jane Fonda. That picture found its way in to TV ads put out by right wing groups that called him a traitor. Imagine if a Democratic president's Secretary of Defense was photographed shaking hands with Sadaam Hussein in Baghdad. The right wing smear machine would’ve had this image plastered all over billboards, commercials, and FoxNews stories.
All the above listed incidents are facts that anyone can look up. It is important that we know the history of this crowd and compare those facts to their short and simple slogans. If we continue to turn over our national security to a party that's been consistently wrong in dealing with the Middle East then the consequences in years to come may be too drastic to realize.
In 1983 terrorists bombed a marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon which killed 241 marines. That terrorist organization was Hezbollah which was based in Lebanon and also had ties to Iran. President Reagan's response was to pull U.S. troops out of Lebanon, i.e. he appeased the terrorists.
In the mid 1980's the Reagan administration was involved in the Iran-Contra Scandal. Members of the administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. For the second time we once again negotiated with and appeased terrorists, and this time we actually supplied weapons to an Iranian regime that the U.S. had recently called an instigator of international terrorism, and whom were culpable in the 1983 Beirut bombing.
During the 1980's the Reagan and Bush administrations supplied Iraq with funding and weapons including chemical weapons. We've all seen the infamous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Sadaam Hussein in Baghdad.
Coincidentally, these Republican administrations also funded and trained Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because at this time he was fighting the Soviet Union. The people who developed and carried out this strategy lacked any foresight to see that their new ally would soon become their #1 enemy.
Also during the 1980's, during the terms of Reagan and Bush Sr., there were multiple airline hijackings and bombings of airliners all done by various Islamic terrorists. There are literally too many incidents to list here. The response of the U.S. government to these acts: The only significant response was one mission to bomb Libya and try to kill Khadafi. We missed. We did kill his adopted daughter, but he survived.
The above record of dealing with terrorism and Middle East foreign policy is downright awful. Today the Republicans try to sell themselves as the party that is strong on terrorism and national defense. However, their record shows they've been not only clueless about how to handle terrorism or how to deal with the Middle East, but their policies have been extremely dangerous to the security of the United States. Not one of these decisions turned out to be the right thing to do, and many of the people involved in these decisions are the same people that are part of the current Bush administration which tells the public that the Democrats can’t be trusted to handle our national security. The hypocrisy of this idea is laughable.
Imagine If Bill Clinton or John Kerry had been involved in funding or training Osama Bin Laden... the Republicans would be calling them incompetent traitors who are responsible for 9/11. If they had funded and supplied Sadaam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction they would be accused of reckless disregard for national security and of making the world a more dangerous place. If they had walked away from Middle Eastern terrorists who just killed 241 marines they would be called weak, cowardly liberals who believe in giving in to terrorism.
John Kerry was photographed over 30 years ago at an anti-war protest in the same crowd as Jane Fonda. That picture found its way in to TV ads put out by right wing groups that called him a traitor. Imagine if a Democratic president's Secretary of Defense was photographed shaking hands with Sadaam Hussein in Baghdad. The right wing smear machine would’ve had this image plastered all over billboards, commercials, and FoxNews stories.
All the above listed incidents are facts that anyone can look up. It is important that we know the history of this crowd and compare those facts to their short and simple slogans. If we continue to turn over our national security to a party that's been consistently wrong in dealing with the Middle East then the consequences in years to come may be too drastic to realize.
posted by The Animal | 5:30 PM
1 Comments:
Let me be the first to post the typical, lame, right-wing response. Stop your whining liberal. What the hell does this response mean? To me it means stop thinking, get in line and do what you are told. Sounds like someone that isn't intelligent enough to think for himself. Sounds like someone that likes to follow. Anyway, the points you made about how the tables would turn if Dems were the ones making these mistakes in history are right on.
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