Lying Republicans And Their Lying Lies
February 16th, 2007 | by Ken Grandlund |The debate is over in the House. The resolution opposing the president’s ‘New & Improved Surge Plan’ has passed, with several Republican lawmakers crossing the aisle to join with Democrats in voicing the opinion of their constituents, a majority of whom oppose the Iraq War and the Bush Surge Plan.
In practical terms, this changes very little. It was a non-binding resolution. But it did force each member of congress to state their position vis-a-vis the surge and the war in general. I listened to Republican after Republican take the floor and proclaim that passage of the resolution would send a message of defeat to our enemies and a show of no confidence to our troops. Both of those statements are false, but they are opinions and as such can’t be classified as lies. (Call them delusions, sure, but lies requires a little more proof.)
But one statement repeated in various forms by various congress critters, clearly exposes a lie that republicans have been pushing on the American public since this war began, namely, that if American soldiers leave Iraq, the enemy will follow us home.
Really? They will? And just how in the hell can they do that, since the Republican President, his Republican administration, and 6 years of a Republican controlled congress have done everything possible to make America safe from repeated attacks? We’re told time and again by the president that keeping the homeland safe is job number one, that he’s doing everything possible to protect us at home. If that is true, there really is no threat from terrorists who would “follow us home.”
So the claims coming from the congress idiots are lies. Or the statements from the president et. al. have been lies. Either way, the republicans are lying. But they can’t have it both ways.
If the terrorists can simply pack up and ‘follow us home’ then the president’s (and the Republican party’s) efforts to ‘keep America safe’ over the last 6 years have either been non-existant (port security), just for show (airport shoe screening) or completely incompetant (border security). But if all those things are actually in place and effectively working, then the terrorists simply can’t get into the country.
So which is it republicans? Have you done your job and tightened up our home security or have you just practiced your rhetorical fearmongering skills these last few years?
[tag]politics, republicans+lying, fear, rhetoric, surge+plan[/tag]
14 Responses to “Lying Republicans And Their Lying Lies”
By Ann on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for keeping me up to date with this Ken, I appreciate it. Oh and in the humble opinion of a non partisan observer, I’d go with the well-practiced (i.e. flogged to death on either side of the Atlantic) rhetorical fearmongering skills.
By SteveIL on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
As far as homeland security, I haven’t seen anything from the Democrats other than protecting the “civil rights” of illegal aliens, and working with stupid Republicans on passing “comprehensive immigration reform” (yes, it’s an amnesty, to get illegal aliens into programs the liberals support in order to continue their “justification” and financing) without actually doing anything about the borders, ports, and airports. Bush has been a disgrace in this, and will probably agree to what the Democrats will offer, and it will be something along the lines I stated above. Hell, he won’t even complete the fence that the last Congress told him to build late last year (conservatives pretty much knew he wouldn’t do this). The Democrats don’t have a leg to stand on with this, just like those Republicans who hemmed and hawed these last six years.
By Nessie on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
I often wonder about people who say if we don’t do this or that we will “lose”. This is not a football or video game.
Our country has “lost” only because our commander in chief is and was from the beginning, a loser. It is not nearly as shameful
for the american people to admit a loss due to something we had no control over than to keep making the same mistakes over and over. It makes no sense to hide behind killing and illusion just so we won’t be beaten and get our egos hurt. We couldn’t possibly have a lower opinion from the world at large, could we? Has anyone ever tried HONESTY? A loss at anything is the opportunity to do the next right thing. There is no winning to be done here. Some referree somewhere needs to just stand up and call it OVER. Then let’s do the next right thing.
By ken grandlund on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
SteveIL- Since the democrats have had no voice or power over the last six years, nor much chance to get any of their ideas on the floor for debate until January 2007, how is any of this their fault? It is the repubs who declared they’re doing all they can, they had all the control, and now they seem to claim that the enemy can just follow our boys home and set up the attacks on Main Street if we leave.
So which is it? While we may find some agreement regarding the immigration problem you haven’t really answered the question I pose. How can the enemy ‘follow us home’ if ‘we’ve been doing all we can to protect the homeland?’ The answer is that (a) they can’t because we’ve done our job here or (b) they can because we’ve just been lying and wasting money pretending to close up the holes.
Both can’t really be true, unless you posit that a new attack from terrorists on the homeland will originate outside this country.
By SteveIL on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
Ken Grandlund said:
Are you kidding me? Have you heard or read any of the speeches so many of the Democrats gave during all those “immigration” rallies last year? This is the one damn issue they and Bush agree on.
Ken Grandlund said:
Again, are you kidding? You know nothing’s been done, and there are a shitload of conservatives who’ve been saying so for years. Bush and the Republicans have done little to nothing about this and everybody knows it, and conservatives have been calling them on it and yelling at them to do something. The problem is that the Democrats, based on what they themselves have said, aren’t going to be any better than the Republicans. So, their saying that we shouldn’t be fighting the terrorists over there because they won’t get here anyway is meaningless if they do the same as the Republicans have been doing for the last six years regarding the border. Now we’ll have an undefended border and nobody fighting the terrorists. You tell me; is that better?
By tammara on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
i’ll just float the idea that the terrorists got exactly what they wanted when they attacked us.
1. we went to war in a country that they didn’t come from, but could use for their purposes to increase the ranks of terroristsby proving how dangerous we are to islam.
2. they got to kill a bunch more of our people
3. they are putting a huge dent in our economic situation, and if they do it long enough, we might fall on our own like ussr (think afghanistan)
4. they can come back again and do the same thing or something like it, anytime…. because we don’t have real security at home, because the people who could give it to us are spilling their blood in the sand.
so- ignoring steveil- the best thing to do, is leave them the hell alone over there, and get back over here to protect the homeland. that way, we won’t be dying for nothing over there, and they won’t be getting in so easily.
oh, and we might just face that the nature of terrorist activity is such that it only takes a few fanatics to wreak great distruction, with limited supplies…. and they are really, really hard to catch if they are determined. which again, by their nature, they are.
so, going back to the chicken and the egg…. maybe we might look at what gets them so fired up about us in the first place… and what WE might do about that. and don’t give me that “they hate our freedoms” shit.
they have legitimate reason to dislike and distrust us. we are bullies. we believe our national interest in their natural resources trumps their culture, government, and spirituality.
and pay no attention to those poseurs on capital hill. they are talking to themselves, gesticulating and gyrating all on their own little agenda… which bears little resemblence to anything going on in the real world.
By SteveIL on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
tammara,
No disrespect intended, but it’s a bit more than your thinking they dislike and distrust us. There are some over there who actually do sell us stuff, oil. Or trade heavily with us, like Israel (the one real democracy there). They actually do like our money, kind of like China does. And Europe. And South America. And pretty much everywhere else. What do we do by just leaving there? We don’t drill for oil here because Congress is too gutless to stand up to those eco-assholes who want us to go back to the horse and carriage. We don’t build new nuclear reactors because, again, politicians are too gutless to stand up to the eco-whatevers. Oh, we could go alternative fuel and shit. In ten to twenty years maybe. Or even better, we can buy it from France (after they buy it from Iran) and pay $20 a gallon.
By steve on Feb 16, 2007 | Reply
It’s all a sideshow really. If Kerry had won in 2004, we’d still be at war. No Democrat will admit that… ever.
It’s easier to criticize something from afar without suggesting an alternative plan that will work. And I mean, really work. Without all of this speculation and name calling.
It’s really the speculation and name calling that gets me with the Liberals.
By sumo on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
Another thing that the “terrorists” accomplished was that of dividing this nation’s people. It has happened in spades. OBL must be slapping his thighs constantly for the laugh that little nicety affords him. He gave a stupid aministration more opportunity to look stupid. When Dub rode in on that carrier with the ‘Mission Accomplished” banner…that’s when OBL knew he had truly won. I wonder if we shall ever mend our feelings here and become the American people we once were. Other nations may think we are morons and bullies…but we need to start doing something about the feelings we the people have. It starts at home first. Then we citizens need to go after bringing this Iraq thing to a screeching halt and bring our people home safely. /we cannot wait for those in power to do it for us…their agenda doesn’t want it that way. We will have to make the difference…and it will probably have to be in the streets. Inconvenient I know…but I remember it worked in the 60’s and it was a hell of a good feeling doing it too.
By Tom Baker on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
Well Steve since Kerry isn’t the President, we don’t know that. Just like we don’t know that if Al Gore hadn’t
had the election stolen from himlost that 9/11 wouldn’t have been avoided because they actually had a clue about who Osama was. We just don’t know and no Republican will admit that. What we do know is that 2 years after the Kerry loss, America has gone down not up in Iraq. The situation has gotten worse, not better in Iraq and that the Iraqis are in more of not less of a Civil War than they were 2 years ago. I can’t debate what we know we don’t know, but we know the things we know and what we know sucks.SteveIL - it doesn’t matter if the Democratic Party has memebers who agree with the President on Immigration, as long as they were the minority party in the House, they has no influence. Bush could have had his precious immigration reforms if the GOP hadn’t backstabed their own President . Cheers for them.
Also one key difference in the Democratic mentality and your lack of one is we understand what we are doing isn’t fighting them there, we are creating them there. Eventually all these new, angry, people who feel humiliaited (the #1 cause of terrorism, unlike “poverty” or the other Bush reasons why people wanna kill us) will seek revenge. They will do it here. That die was cast the moment we started operation Shock and Flaw
By manapp99 on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
The thrust of the original post is that the Republicans are lying by saying that the enemy will follow us home if we leave Iraq. How do you see a prediction about something that may happen in the future if an action is taken as a lie? Clearly the President can lay claim to the fact that there have been no attacks on us since 9/11. So his saying that he is doing everything he can to protect the homeland is born from fact. Al Queda has stated that Iraq is an important battleground for their cause so it also is a fact that they are committing resources to fight that war. If we leave they will have those resourses freed to launch new attacks. This logically leads one to believe that if we leave, the enemy will be better able to attempt attacks here. Granted, we are better able to try an thwart these attacks now than we were before 9/11 as security here is increased, however, like any defense, there is an increased chance that one or more will succeed if more are launched. Once again, in spite of the shreiking from the left, there is no lie here.
By manapp99 on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
The thrust of the original post is that the Republicans are lying by saying that the enemy will follow us home if we leave Iraq. How do you see a prediction about something that may happen in the future if an action is taken as a lie? Clearly the President can lay claim to the fact that there have been no attacks on us since 9/11. So his saying that he is doing everything he can to protect the homeland is born from fact. Al Queda has stated that Iraq is an important battleground for their cause so it also is a fact that they are committing resources to fight that war. If we leave they will have those resourses freed to launch new attacks. This logically leads one to believe that if we leave, the enemy will be better able to attempt attacks here. Granted, we are better able to try an thwart these attacks now than we were before 9/11 as security here is increased, however, like any defense, there is an increased chance that one or more will succeed if more are launched. Once again, in spite of the shrieking from the left, there is no lie here.
By manapp99 on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
Sorry for the double post.
By SteveIL on Feb 17, 2007 | Reply
Tom Baker said:
Actually, they did, especially with the gutless “open borders” Republicans in the Senate. The “backstabbing” Republicans, as you called them, actually want the homeland secured. And again, those speeches from the Democrats last year tell what policy they intend to keep, and it ain’t to secure the borders. Or the ports. Or the airports.
Tom Baker said:
Another perpetuation of that “cycle of violence” nonsense. When we occupied Germany and Japan after WWII, they didn’t attack our soldiers because the Allied military had beaten violence it out of them, with the help of post-war German and Japanese political leaders. That is lesson #1.
Lesson #2 is more recent. Yasser Arafat was a beaten leader in 1993, which is why he agreed to the Oslo Accords. He wasn’t beaten enough, apparently, because as his own personal power amongst the Palestinians was threatened in 2000, Arafat, and only Arafat, double-crossed everybody and he reneged on Oslo, and the violence that continues to this day, is a result of that. Nasser of Egypt is still revered even though he lost every war with Israel he started (or was going to start, as was the case in 1967). But not beaten enough. Sadat was and finally made peace with Israel. Even King Hussein of Jordan was beaten enough, and sensible enough, to make peace with Israel. Not Arafat, and certainly not Hamas, nor any other terrorist group or terrorist-supporting government in the region (those of Syria and Iran).
And then you make the mistake of using the “poverty” and “humiliation” point, and attribute it only to Bush while nearly every damn Democrat (and every Bush-hating liberal, along with Islamofascist terrorists) has made this same idiotic claim. Being in Iraq sure wasn’t an issue for bin Laden and his Al Qaeda creatures when they murdered the 3000 in the U.S. on 9/11 since we weren’t even in Iraq then. If you remember, bin Laden stated that his primary reason for even attacking us (and even I don’t believe it) was due to the infidel (us) being in the country (Saudi Arabia, at the behest of the Saudi government) of Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina. “Poverty” and “humiliation” weren’t even on his upper tier of complaints, since his real goal is to destroy the Saudi government. Or didn’t you remember that either?
What I get from reading about the Islamist radicals for all these years is that political power and influence exists all the way down to the mosque level, and imams who pervert Islam (a small minority of all imams, but still a large total number), in order to perpetuate these same lies, have real political power, especially in the Middle East. They will do and say anything to keep or expand this political power, including keeping their own people in poverty and lying about how the West keeps these people in perpetual “humiliation”. And getting those in the West to be chumps for this propaganda. And it isn’t me, it isn’t Bush, and it isn’t those American politicians and pundits (nor those in other countries) who do understand this who are the chumps.