Osama bin Laden said in a 2004 videotape, “We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat …
So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.”
OBL also said in that tape that al Qaeda had found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.”
Wherein lies my anger. Attrition warfare is the most common. OBL told us point-blank his strategy!
There is no excuse for us to have been sucked in, yet here we are, 10 bloody years later. It’s like our leaders agreed saying, “OK, let’s starve the beast.”
Because of and since 9/11 the U.S. government has spent more than $7.6 trillion on defense. Neither war, in my opinion, as I wrote my congressmen in ‘01 and ‘03, made sense.
The whole thing was/is a conceit. It’s like everyone in Washington D.C. is ill with obsessive-compulsive disorder and concurrently afflicted with tunnel vision. The prize they eye, whatever that is, just isn’t happening.
And still they go on.
Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation’s history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions (source U.S. Treasury Dept).
The Bush Administration borrowed $4.122 trillion, mostly for these unwinnable wars. Add the Bush $700 billion bailout, $170 billion stimulus package and Obama, not to be outdone and keeping with the status quo, has added to the blood fest immeasurably. We are positively anemic now.
Obama was to put a stop to all that recklessness.
Disappointed? I’m way past that and well into anger.
Also, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor’s statement that “In the past two years, Democrats have spent more money than this country has spent in the last 200 years combined” is “not just wrong – it’s ridiculously false,” according to politifact.com. They all do it though … lie. How are we, the people, to come to some consensus/form an opinion when all we hear are lies from our leaders? There ought to be a law…
And I don’t accept NORAD’s excuse for not scrambling to intercept on Sept. 11, 2001. In fact that was my very first thought. Where were they?
Diane Daiute
Sweet Home