(FrontPageMagazine.com) R. James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA - Tom Moore, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was a young officer at the end of World War II and participated in the interrogations of Prince Konoe and several of the Japanese leaders who were eventually hanged. The team he was with asked all of them, "Why did you attack us at Pearl Harbor?" They said, "We looked at what you were doing in the '20s and '30s. You were disarming. Your army had to drill with wooden rifles. We had no idea that this rich, spoiled country would do what you did after December 7, 1941. You stunned us." For much of the last quarter of the century, we have been essentially hanging a "Kick Me" sign on our back in the Middle East, giving evidence of being what bin Laden has actually called a paper tiger. In 1979, they took our hostages and we tied yellow ribbons around trees and launched an ineffective effort, crashing helicopters in the desert to rescue them. In 1983, they blew up our embassy and our marine barracks in Beirut. What did we do? We left. In 1991, after having encouraged the Kurds and the Shiia to rebel against Saddam, we stood back, left the bridges intact, left their units intact, let them fly helicopters around carrying troops and missiles, and we watched the Kurds and Shiia, who were winning in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces, be massacred.
2002-11-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive