On This Date in Bush History-"a strategic error of the first order”

“Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland, and it’s a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like—or to the developed world, to people like—in the United States.” President Bush, April 3rd 2007

2003: The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College posts a study by Jeffrey Record today. The study criticizes the Bush administration mixing the Sadam and al Qaeda threats saying this was “was a strategic error of the first order ... The result has been an unnecessary preventive war ... that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland ... The war against Iraq was not integral to the [war on terror], but rather a detour from it”.

The study’s author served as an advisor in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, and as a staff member for the Senate Armed Services Committee. He teaches at the Air Force’s Air War College in Alabama.

Bush’s Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the study “obviously is inaccurate”. Obviously! An LA Times article quotes a former National Security Council staff member saying, “The criticism does not seem out of line with many of the conversations I have had with officers in every branch of the military”.

“These people don’t like freedom. You know why? Because it clashes with their ideology. We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” President Bush, August 6th 2004

Read more in the 2008 Calendar: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm