Joe Lieberman Quotes
Whether or not Saddam is implicated directly in the anthrax attacks or the horrors of September 11, he is, by any common definition, a terrorist who must be removed.
Lieberman, Joseph. "Remarks on the Threat of Saddam Hussein." Congressional Record, vol. 147, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001, p. S12234.
The Prime Minister was stating a widely held, but erroneous view of the West, history and geopolitics. The Crusades were traumatic for Muslims as the Europeans were not only military threats to the Muslim holy places, but the Christians were particularly brutal even to Richard the Lionhearted butchering unarmed prisoners of war who had surrendered. This aggression by some countries in Europe under the Christian “banner” is associated, to this day with Christianity and any primarily Christian nation is therefore just poised to attack and expel Islam from the Middle East. Mahathir therefore saw the American attack on Afghanistan and later Iraq as just an extension of the Crusader zeal whose object is to destroy Islam. Malaysia has a large population of Muslims—much larger than any of the Middle Eastern Islamic states. Yet, religiously oriented Islamic political leaders make common cause with other Muslim nations which have almost no other interest in common other than their religion.
This statement would later evolve into what would be called the Bush Doctrine.
He and the government had just given the OK for a targeted assassination of the Palestinian terrorist who had designed the bombs and recruited the suicide bombers which led to the deaths of over 100 Israelis. Shortly thereafter, a cell phone the engineer was using blew up killing him by the same method whereby he had killed so many. This was the first targeted assassination of terrorist leaders, which then became an operational policy.
Although the President was personally opposed to terrorism and his policies opposed terrorism, in his country most people supported terrorism and the Islamic schools—madrasas—taught intolerance, hate and terrorism. Even leading generals of the army were major supporters of terrorism. See {586700} as an example.
He was Defense Minister at the time. This theme was picked up later by both Israel and the United States and after September 11, President George W. Bush made it official U. S. policy.
The President and Vice President wanted places to interrogate suspected terrorists where they did not have to obey American law, where the press could be kept away from the prisoners, and there would be no way that a prisoner could get the assistance of attorneys and American Judges could not have any jurisdiction. A number of the prisoners had been picked up by mistake, or were accused by people who had scores to settle, and if the CIA had made a mistake, the public could not find out. Further, they wanted to torture certain prisoners and wanted places where they could use their “enhanced interrogation”—see {637536}--without the public finding out.
Several American soldiers have been court marshalled and found guilty of illegal torture for Warterboarding prisoners to induce them to provide information. Most experts agree that intelligence received this way is highly unreliable in that victims will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear to get the torture to stop.
In the face of terror bombings, Britain passed some anti-terror laws which also somewhat infringed on civil rights, liberty and privacy.
There can be a heavy cost in terms of giving up rights, costs of prevention the internal conflict in the society about how to deal with the terrorists.
Joseph Isadore Lieberman is an American politician, lobbyist and attorney who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2000 election. During his final term in office he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.
