Chuck Norris went to Iraq this week and reported that the surge is working.
Conservative Web site World Net Daily reported on Norris’ assessment during his tour of 15 military bases. Norris is not the only actor to take this stance. Yes, I’m talking about the guy who played the air traffic controller in Die Hard 2: Die Harder – Fred Thompson. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the desert of the real.
On his official Web site, Thompson said, “the security situation is improving and momentum is on our side.” Freddie is making his assessment on Iraq not based on Chuck Norris, but from the report on Iraq that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave to Congress last week. The report stated the surge has reduced sectarian violence, and made provinces like al-Anbar much safer. Thompson also cheered on the plan to reduce troops in Iraq by 30,000 saying, “(the withdrawal) is the right course. This recommendation is a result of the success being seen on the ground in Iraq.”
Never trust an actor-turned-politician, period. They are trained to make you believe that they are someone they are not. Fred “social and neo conservative’s last chance” Thompson is not just a bad actor; he is bad for America. His statements on Iraq equate to Thompson being either intellectually deficient or an outright liar.
The General Accountability Office has disagreed with the rosy picture of progress and stated that Iraq has met very few of their congressional benchmarks. Patraeus’ report states that sectarian violence is down by citing statistics of decreased violence. Yet these statistics did not include inter-sectarian violence: Sunni-on-Sunni or Shi’ite-on-Shi’ite. It also did not include people who died from a gunshot to the front of the head. That was considered violent crime and was excluded from the general’s report. In reality, this report was rife with questionable accounting and statistics and served as the Bush Administration’s thinly veiled and constructed justification for continuing their debacle in Iraq.
Finally, Thompson applauds the planned “withdrawal” of forces recommended in the report. This is roughly the same amount of troops that went over to Iraq in the surge, and most of these 30,000 were already scheduled to return. The truth, as Fred “McCoy’s Boy” Thompson knows, is that we are in Iraq for the long haul. All an insubstantial troop withdrawal does is distract from the permanent nature of our conflict.
Thompson, just like most Republican opponents, is ultimately either too dumb to see the true situation in Iraq or intentionally uses manufactured reports with Cayman Island-style accounting statistics to lie and swindle the American public.
Neither of these characteristics, stupidity or dishonesty, are traits of a good president. The truth is that the situation in Iraq is terrible, and according to a BBC poll, “About 70 percent of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the U.S military ’surge’ of the past six months, and 60 percent believe attacks on US-led forces are justified.”
Never trust an actor-turned-politician, period.
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