By Brad Friedman on 4/26/2004, 2:02pm PT  

Various quotes of note from a few of the Sunday News Shows:

Joe "Anonymous" Klein on The Chris Matthews Show:

"The President's policy was to go after those that fund and harbor terrorists. Well, Saudi Arabia funds them, Pakistan harbors them and yet they are our allies! It doesn't make any sense!"

The Bush Administration's new man in Iraq, U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, on This Week in re: the possibility of full-frontal attacks on the insurgencies in Fallujah and Najaf:

"This is exactly what your enemies want you to do. To alienate more of the people you want to support you...Sending the tanks rolling into [Najaf] is not the thing to do and I think the Americans know this now."

Hope so. But we'll see. One could apply that argument to every mis-step the Bushies have made so far in their "War on Terror" and yet they never paid it any mind prior to today.

Newsweek's Farid Zakaria, also on This Week, adds the old Neocon-ignored chesnut :

"Guerillas want you to use massive military force. [They know] you will kill 600 for every 6 they kill...The more you do this, the more you generate Anti-Americanism."

In the meantime, here's Brahimi on Bush throwing in with Sharon on the Palestinian "Right of Return" issue:

"[Palestinians now say] the Americans are giving blanket support to the Israelis. How can we expect them to do anything good for us?"

If true, it's another good point, since even by the most Conservative standards, it is understood that peace --- if it's ever to come to Israel/Palestine --- will be brokered by negotiations lead by the United States. All pretenses of impartiality in the matter would seem to be completely gone as of now.

And finally, Republican Senator Jon Kyl on the War in Iraq:

"We won the war there with very little collateral damage - we were concerned about collateral damage, we still are."

So far, the most conservative estimates of Iraqi Civilian Casusualties is a minimum of 8930 and a maximum of 10,781. John McLaughlin reports the number of Iraqi Civilians Killed at over 14,000.

That's all in a country with a population of a little more than 24.5 million according to the CIA World Factbook.

The United States --- with a population of 290.5 million --- lost 3,000 civilians on 9/11. We got kinda unsettled and angry at the perpetrators of that event as I recall.

You can do the math. Any idea how the Iraqis might feel about Americans at this point?

(Not to mention their 1.1 BILLION Arab brethren?)

And just to pile on, I'll add this quote again for perspective on it all. From George HW Bush (Dubya's Dad) in his 1998 Memoirs:

"An occupation of Iraq would have incurred incalculable Human and Political costs...there was no viable Exit Strategy...Had we gone the Invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

Father knows best, I guess.

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