Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(February 2005)
An ex-Brit gives his views - (without
fear or favor) - of the American Scene
A
Wartime President.
 The Congress of the United States, and the media at large, continuously refer
to this President as, "A wartime President".
He may have been instrumental in initiating wars against Afghanistan and Iraq,
but when you consider the previous two world wars, where many cities were obliterated
and millions of people died, the title of, "A wartime President",
appears to me to be an exaggeration of this President’s devotion to, or
is it deviation from, the basic principles of war, and the question of his leadership
capabilities in conducting a war of currently much lesser proportions than the
two previous world wars.
Tell me, do the British media and the British people refer to Prime Minister
Blair as a, "Wartime Leader"?
I think that Winston Churchill, (who in my opinion was a wartime leader but not
a peacetime politician), would turn in his grave at the comparison to his World
War Two leadership with the Bush/Blair so-called current wartime leadership.
 As
we well know President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George
Tenet, Security Advisor Condoleessa Rice, (plus of course
British Prime Minister Tony Blair), all stated that,
"they never had any doubts that Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction", and went to war
on this premise.
Two years downstream a watered down
version appeared changing their message to, "they
never had doubts that Saddam Hussein had the capability
of making weapons of mass destruction".
Finally
the Bush Administration had to admit in early January
2005 that the information about Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction was incorrect, or in the
Administration’s words, "their was a breakdown
in the intelligence gathering operations which continued
to generate flawed information".
To be fair, this President cannot be blamed for all
the bad decisions that have been made during the last
four years as I’m sure that he has received able
assistance from the Vice President, the Secretary of
Defence, Senior Officers at the Pentagon, and members
of his administration, and above all the lack of opposition
from the democratic party which also has played a part.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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