did you believe the evidence presented when the administration said Iraq had WMD's

[John Connor]

And Operation Iraqi Freedom was voted in part by Democrats and Republicans a like.

 

[John Connor]

Slight derail post.

Many here may think I'm stupid, but let me say something. A forum I have been a member of for the last 11 years had a political subforum. I would argue with the likes of you Liberal shills all the time during the Iraq war. One day I was posting to a guy that was trying to make the comparison to terrorists and patriots of The American Revolutionary War. In my post I ended with the word capisce? Now I don't know if this was a weird Twilight Zone-like coincidence or what. But that night after I made my post on my forum I was watching Bill O'Reilly and he was responding to an E-mail he got. I shit you not, Mr.O repeated every single word I had posted on the forum even including the last word capisce? Now I know this sounds like a bunch of horse shit, I know. All I know is that I heard it. Now whether he repeated my very post or we just so happened to say the same thing, I'll probably walk this rock not ever knowing. But my point here is that people on here may think I'm stupid for being a staunch Conservative. But when I hear the one and only repeat exactly what I said whether he was reading from my post or we just so happened to say the same thing it shows we had the same disposition. Now many on the forum chat rooms and on the Internet seem to not like O'Reilly at all. But he does have the most watched cable news program on cable news in that time slot and is a best selling author.

So I ask you. Has your position or view been echoed by a renowned TV/radio personality?

That's it for this derail. From now on my not responding is my response. I'm a ejecting out of here. You Liberal cackling hens sound like The View.

Capisce?

 

[Bowfinger]

[ ... ]
So I ask you. Has your position or view been echoed by a renowned TV/radio personality?

Sort of. When I considered the anti-Iraq WMD propaganda, I said, "This is bullshit!" Then, Colin Powell said those exact same words when he reviewed it, just before his U.N. song and dance. Coincidence, or two like minds recognizing a con job?

That's it for this derail. From now on my not responding is my response. ...

Hardly surprising. Not responding seems to be your forte. You've spent the last dozen posts parroting Bush talking points without actually responding -- directly and on topic -- to those who've refuted you. Ciao!

 

[ivwshane]

Slight derail post.

Many here may think I'm stupid,

Nope, everyone here thinks you are stupid. You know who else gets their opinion on tv? Honey boo boos mom, people from jersey, and people who take the bible literally. The fact that you think because your post got on tv means something only proves how mentally broken you are.

I'd give you the nickname of "mr hanky" but that would be unfair to the talking poo character on South Park, but it does describe you to a tee.

 

[ivwshane]

I remember al gore endorsing the WMD idea. The French, Germans, etc.


I'm not defending the decision, I'm saying there were plenty aboard.

Yes, people are easy to lie to and are quite capable of believing said lies. Your point?

 

[ivwshane]

I remember al gore endorsing the WMD idea. The French, Germans, etc.


I'm not defending the decision, I'm saying there were plenty aboard.

Really?

http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html

Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

FIRST THING FIRST: WAR ON TERRORISM

To begin with, I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another.

We are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion.

I don’t think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don’t know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify.

Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that the most urgent requirement of the moment – right now – is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving his host government from power, but instead to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. And he is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat.

Moreover, he is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and for that matter any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or circumstances. The timing of this sudden burst of urgency to take up this cause as America’s new top priority, displacing the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained by the White House Chief of Staff in his now well known statement that “from an advertising point of view, you don’t launch a new product line until after labor day.”

Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.

We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress – since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.

I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South – groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam. It is worth noting, however, that the conditions in 1991 when that resolution was debated in Congress were very different from the conditions this year as Congress prepares to debate a new resolution. Then, Saddam had sent his armies across an international border to invade Kuwait and annex its territory. This year, 11 years later, there is no such invasion; instead we are prepared to cross an international border to change the government of Iraq. However justified our proposed action may be, this change in role nevertheless has consequences for world opinion and can affect the war against terrorism if we proceed unilaterally.

Secondly, in 1991, the first President Bush patiently and skillfully built a broad international coalition. His task was easier than that confronted his son, in part because of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Nevertheless, every Arab nation except Jordan supported our military efforts and some of them supplied troops. Our allies in Europe and Asia supported the coalition without exception. Yet this year, by contrast, many of our allies in Europe and Asia are thus far opposed to what President Bush is doing and the few who support us condition their support on the passage of a new U.N. resolution.

Third, in 1991, a strong United Nations resolution was in place before the Congressional debate ever began; this year although we have residual authority based on resolutions dating back to the first war in Iraq, we have nevertheless begun to seek a new United Nations resolution and have thus far failed to secure one.

Fourth, the coalition assembled in 1991 paid all of the significant costs of the war, while this time, the American taxpayers will be asked to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on our own.

Fifth, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. Rather than making efforts to dispel concern at home an abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the President is publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a “no” vote – even as the Republican National Committee runs pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme -- in keeping with the political strategy clearly described in a White House aide’s misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to “focus on the war.” Vice President Cheney, meanwhile indignantly described suggestions of political motivation “reprehensible.” The following week he took his discussion of war strategy to the Rush Limbaugh show.

The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration’s failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run – even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.

By shifting from his early focus after September 11th on war against terrorism to war against Iraq, the President has manifestly disposed of the sympathy, good will and solidarity compiled by America and transformed it into a sense of deep misgiving and even hostility. In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network – much as we manage to squander in one year’s time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits. He has compounded this by asserting a new doctrine – of preemption.

The doctrine of preemption is based on the idea that in the era of proliferating WMD, and against the background of a sophisticated terrorist threat, the United States cannot wait for proof of a fully established mortal threat, but should rather act at any point to cut that short.

The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general or Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq if the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc., wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.

The Bush Administration may now be realizing that national and international cohesion are strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the Administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among Americans and between America and her allies.

On the domestic front, the Administration, having delayed almost ---months before conceding the need to create an institution outside the White House to manage homeland defense, has been willing to see progress on the new department held up, for the sake of an effort to coerce the Congress into stripping civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees.

Far more damaging, however, is the Administration’s attack on fundamental constitutional rights. The idea that an American citizen can be imprisoned without recourse to judicial process or remedies, and that this can be done on the say-so of the President or those acting in his name, is beyond the pale.

Regarding other countries, the Administration’s disdain for the views of others is well documented and need not be reviewed here. It is more important to note the consequences of an emerging national strategy that not only celebrates American strengths, but appears to be glorifying the notion of dominance. If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion; if what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.

At this fateful juncture in our history it is vital that we see clearly who are our enemies, and that we deal with them. It is also important, however, that in the process we preserve not only ourselves as individuals, but our nature as a people dedicated to the rule of law ..

DANGERS OF ABANDONING IRAQ

Moreover, if we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and depleted fourth rate military of Iraq and then quickly abandon that nation as President Bush has abandoned Afghanistan after quickly defeating a fifth rate military there, the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

We have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of those weapons with terrorist group. However, if Iraq came to resemble Afghanistan – with no central authority but instead local and regional warlords with porous borders and infiltrating members of Al Qaeda than these widely dispersed supplies of weapons of mass destruction might well come into the hands of terrorist groups.

If we end the war in Iraq, the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could easily be worse off than we are today. When Secretary Rumsfield was asked recently about what our responsibility for restabilizing Iraq would be in an aftermath of an invasion, he said, “that’s for the Iraqis to come together and decide.”

During one of the campaign debates in 2000 when then Governor Bush was asked if America should engage in any sort of “nation building” in the aftermath of a war in which we have involved our troops, he stated gave the purist expression of what is now a Bush doctrine: “I don’t think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. We’re going to have a kind of nation building corps in America? Absolutely not.”

The events of the last 85 years provide ample evidence that our approach to winning the peace that follows war is almost as important as winning the war itself. The absence of enlightened nation building after World War I led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise to Adolph Hitler and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs. By contrast the enlightened vision embodied in the Marshall plan, NATO, and the other nation building efforts in the aftermath of World War II led directly to the conditions that fostered prosperity and peace for most the years since this city gave birth to the United Nations.

Two decades ago, when the Soviet Union claimed the right to launch a pre-emptive war in Afghanistan, we properly encouraged and then supported the resistance movement which, a decade later, succeeded in defeating the Soviet Army’s efforts. Unfortunately, when the Russians left, we abandoned the Afghans and the lack of any coherent nation building program led directly to the conditions which fostered Al Qaeda terrorist bases and Osama Bin Laden’s plotting against the World Trade Center. Incredibly, after defeating the Taliban rather easily, and despite pledges from President Bush that we would never again abandon Afghanistan we have done precisely that. And now the Taliban and Al Qaeda are quickly moving back to take up residence there again. A mere two years after we abandoned Afghanistan the first time, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Following a brilliant military campaign, the U.S. abandoned the effort to destroy Saddam’s military prematurely and allowed him to remain in power.

What is a potentially even more serious consequence of this push to begin a new war as quickly as possible is the damage it can do not just to America’s prospects to winning the war against terrorism but to America’s prospects for continuing the historic leadership we began providing to the world 57 years ago, right here in this city by the bay.

WHAT CONGRESS SHOULD DO

I believe, therefore, that the resolution that the President has asked Congress to pass is much too broad in the authorities it grants, and needs to be narrowed. The President should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and therefore a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States. But Congress should also urge the President to make every effort to obtain a fresh demand from the Security Council for prompt, unconditional compliance by Iraq within a definite period of time. If the Council will not provide such language, then other choices remain open, but in any event the President should be urged to take the time to assemble the broadest possible international support for his course of action. Anticipating that the President will still move toward unilateral action, the Congress should establish now what the administration’s thinking is regarding the aftermath of a US attack for the purpose of regime change.

Specifically, Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action will not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks, and that preparations are in place to deal with the effects of chemical and biological attacks against our allies, our forces in the field, and even the home-front. The resolution should also require commitments from the President that action in Iraq will not be permitted to distract from continuing and improving work to reconstruct Afghanistan, an that the United States will commit to stay the course for the reconstruction of Iraq.

The Congressional resolution should make explicitly clear that authorities for taking these actions are to be presented as derivatives from existing Security Council resolutions and from international law: not requiring any formal new doctrine of pre-emption, which remains to be discussed subsequently in view of its gravity.

PRE-EMPTION DOCTRINE

Last week President Bush added a troubling new element to this debate by proposing a broad new strategic doctrine that goes far beyond issues related to Iraq and would effect the basic relationship between the United States and the rest of the world community. Article 51 of the United Nations charter recognizes the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right in some circumstances to take pre-emptive actions in order to deal with imminent threats. President Bush now asserts that we will take pre-emptive action even if we take the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert the same right then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear – any nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against another nation. An unspoken part of this new doctrine appears to be that we claim this right for ourselves – and only for ourselves. It is, in that sense, part of a broader strategy to replace ideas like deterrence and containment with what some in the administration “dominance.”

This is because President Bush is presenting us with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history: a decision to abandon what we have thought was America’s mission in the world – a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law -- if we want to survive.


AMERICA’S MISSION IN THE WORLD

We have faced such a choice once before, at the end of the second World War. At that moment, America’s power in comparison to the rest of the world was if anything greater than it is now, and the temptation was clearly to use that power to assure ourselves that there would be no competitor and no threat to our security for the foreseeable future. The choice we made, however, was to become a co-founder of what we now think of as the post-war era, based on the concepts of collective security and defense, manifested first of all in the United Nations. Through all the dangerous years that followed, when we understood that the defense of freedom required the readiness to put the existence of the nation itself into the balance, we never abandoned our belief that what we were struggling to achieve was not bounded by our own physical security, but extended to the unmet hopes of humankind. The issue before us is whether we now face circumstances so dire and so novel that we must choose one objective over the other.

So it is reasonable to conclude that we face a problem that is severe, chronic, and likely to become worse over time.

But is a general doctrine of pre-emption necessary in order to deal with this problem? With respect to weapons of mass destruction, the answer is clearly not. The Clinton Administration launched a massive series of air strikes against Iraq for the state purpose of setting back his capacity to pursue weapons of mass destruction. There was no perceived need for new doctrine or new authorities to do so. The limiting factor was the state of our knowledge concerning the whereabouts of some assets, and a concern for limiting consequences to the civilian populace, which in some instances might well have suffered greatly.

Does Saddam Hussein present an imminent threat, and if he did would the United States be free to act without international permission? If he presents an imminent threat we would be free to act under generally accepted understandings of article 51 of the UN Charter which reserves for member states the right to act in self-defense.

If Saddam Hussein does not present an imminent threat, then is it justifiable for the Administration to be seeking by every means to precipitate a confrontation, to find a cause for war, and to attack? There is a case to be made that further delay only works to Saddam Hussein’s advantage, and that the clock should be seen to have been running on the issue of compliance for a decade: therefore not needing to be reset again to the starting point. But to the extent that we have any concern for international support, whether for its political or material value, hurrying the process will be costly. Even those who now agree that Saddam Hussein must go, may divide deeply over the wisdom of presenting the United States as impatient for war.

At the same time, the concept of pre-emption is accessible to other countries. There are plenty of potential imitators: India/Pakistan; China/Taiwan; not to forget Israel/Iraq or Israel/Iran. Russia has already cited it in anticipation of a possible military push into Georgia, on grounds that this state has not done enough to block the operations of Chechen rebels. What this doctrine does is to destroy the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, particularly in the matter of standards for the use of violence against each other. That concept would be displaced by the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.

I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for.

Looks like he nailed it to me.

 

[bryanl]

I remember al gore endorsing the WMD idea. The French, Germans, etc.

I'm not defending the decision, I'm saying there were plenty aboard.

Most politicians who said Iraq had WMDs knew it was BS and wouldn't have favored an actual war, and Al Gore was not only against the war but had said so. In fact his public position was almost exactly that of prominent anti-neo cons like the chief foreign policy adviser to President George H.W. Bush. You're also wrong about France and Germany because they opposed going to war in Iraq; more specifically, the conservative governments in charge of France and Germany at the time were against the war.

Bush was the worst president because he got Iraq 100% wrong. He threatened war if Saddam didn't let in the UN inspectors, so Saddam let them in but Bush invaded anyway, therefore starting a war he had just won. I guess Bush had skipped the chapter in General Sun Tzu's book where he said the best victory is the one where the enemy surrenders before the war even starts.

 

[bryanl]

Slight derail post.

Many here may think I'm stupid, but let me say something. A forum I have been a member of for the last 11 years had a political subforum. I would argue with the likes of you Liberal shills all the time during the Iraq war. One day I was posting to a guy that was trying to make the comparison to terrorists and patriots of The American Revolutionary War. In my post I ended with the word capisce? Now I don't know if this was a weird Twilight Zone-like coincidence or what. But that night after I made my post on my forum I was watching Bill O'Reilly and he was responding to an E-mail he got. I shit you not, Mr.O repeated every single word I had posted on the forum even including the last word capisce? Now I know this sounds like a bunch of horse shit, I know. All I know is that I heard it. Now whether he repeated my very post or we just so happened to say the same thing, I'll probably walk this rock not ever knowing. But my point here is that people on here may think I'm stupid for being a staunch Conservative. But when I hear the one and only repeat exactly what I said whether he was reading from my post or we just so happened to say the same thing it shows we had the same disposition. Now many on the forum chat rooms and on the Internet seem to not like O'Reilly at all. But he does have the most watched cable news program on cable news in that time slot and is a best selling author.

So I ask you. Has your position or view been echoed by a renowned TV/radio personality?

That's it for this derail. From now on my not responding is my response. I'm a ejecting out of here. You Liberal cackling hens sound like The View.

Capisce?

Many decades ago, a person of Bill O'Reilly's miniscule talent would have been relegated to a TV station in the middle of nowhere, but since then we've lowered our standards so much that people like him are stars of national programs. O'Reilly is hardly Edward R. Murrow, George Orwell, William Shirer, or even Walter Cronkite, and he appeals to the kind of audience that can't tell the difference.

 

[bryanl]

What I like most about the Liberal shills in this thread is that they think Bush was a war monger for riding the planet of one evil SOB. Yet when Obozo releases a bunch of monkey terrorists they bat an eye.

Bush FAILED to rid the planet of one evil SOB, and it was Obama who finally killed bin Laden. All Bush did was make the Middle East worse that it was when Saddam Hussein was in power, which admittedly is quite an achievement.

 

[Blanky]

Yes, I did, and I'm pretty sure many of the people here who said no are either lying or more likely have selective memories.

I feel like the US population at large was knowingly lied to by the Bush administration and the war was the result of this deception, for which suitable punishment would have been and remains criminal prosecution of the key players. This would even include those who have indicated some degree of regret such as colin powell.

The fact that none of this has happened, that the country has not apologized for Iraq or punished those responsible for the false pretenses is why I believe nothing has been learned. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the entire cluster fuck is a beautiful example of the fact that even in the modern age the government still has no problem lying en masse to its citizens. Realize the "evidence" presented by Powell was the capstone no a campaign of encouraging war. It was successful, the end result being the loss of life of hundreds of thousands of people, massive destabilization of a region, and billions upon billions of dollars blown up. It's really a fucking disgrace.

 

[Omar F1]

the end result being the loss of life of hundreds of thousands of people, massive destabilization of a region, and billions upon billions of dollars blown up.

The problem is, when they won the battle and secured Baghdad, the US neglected an important issue - to secure the area borders, which eventually translated to a hordes of Al-Qaeda & other terrorists from multiple regions getting in to a safe haven amid all the chaos back then.

Would any of Al-Qaeda / ISIS mercs dare to announce himself back in Saddam days? I doubt so.
I'd like to imagine, that alleged "khalifa", what would have happened to him on the hands of Saddam .

 

[Bitek]

What I like most about the Liberal shills in this thread is that they think Bush was a war monger for riding the planet of one evil SOB. Yet when Obozo releases a bunch of monkey terrorists they bat an eye.

WTF!

And killed/destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the process. Great cost/benefit. No wonder he was such a shitty businessman.

I would rather have my cousin back. Iraq hardly seems better off as well.

One of the worst days I've had was when my aunt told me (about my cousin) "he's going to Iraq to get them back for what they did to us on 911"

This was the very purposeful deception they created. I'm hearing it, know it's bullshit, but how do you tell your family they are off to die for a lie?

Good Christian my ass. Sounds like what the Muslim fanatics tell each other before they shoot up a school full of children. "We are just good brothers following the will of god."

 

[Londo_Jowo]

So much dishonesty in this thread/poll, even the Clinton administration/UN believed Iraq had WMDs.

 

[Bowfinger]

So much dishonesty in this thread/poll, even the Clinton administration/UN believed Iraq had WMDs.

That's such a dishonest argument. It amazes me how often diehard Bush apologists conveniently ignore the passage of time when they're trying to excuse BushCo's lies. The WMDs Iraq had in 1998 were mostly destroyed during those bombing raids. They are 100% irrelevant to what WMD programs Iraq might have had years later. The alleged 2003 WMDs were the lie used to justify invading Iraq, not the 1998 WMDs.

As I said ...

 

[HomerJS]

So much dishonesty in this thread/poll, even the Clinton administration/UN believed Iraq had WMDs.

They had them in 1988 so Clinton response is understandable. Those WMDs were chemical weapons no threat to the United States. Clinton did not assert Iraq had nukes.

As for Dems support, yes Dems voted for it but the administration controlled the intelligence and which reports were used for justification. Anyone who expressed doubt was destroyed. Remember Joe Wilson??

Also remember Dick Cheney going on Meet The Press and spreading the lie Saddam was involved in 9/11?

 

[Muse]

I would say that while I thought the rationale for going to war over WMD programs was ridiculous anyway, my best guess at the time was that he had SOMETHING. I was fairly surprised that we turned up functionally nothing.

So I'm not sure where my opinion would fit in this. I didn't think it was a good reason to go to war and I thought the Bush admin was exaggerating and just throwing everything they could at the wall to hope some would stick. I figured there was a grain of truth to it, but that turned out to be wrong too. Just a total lie.

At one point the Bush administration said they had absolute proof that Saddam had WMD stashed way, although they declined identify that proof. They never found their WMD, but they eventually did find Saddam under a shabby trap door.

 

[Blanky]

So much dishonesty in this thread/poll, even the Clinton administration/UN believed Iraq had WMDs.

I am consistent in my criticism. I hold Bill Clinton directly responsible and should also be punished for the extensive ground war in Iraq that he launched in the spring of 2000.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I.e., it wasn't Bush fooling anyone. This stuff was going on before he was ever elected.

What? Did you read what you linked to? Back in the 90's there wasn't enough information to begin contemplating a war. Was Clinton in office in 2003?

Inspectors not thrown out[edit]
The claim that UNSCOM weapons inspectors were expelled by Iraq has been repeated frequently. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003 speech before the U.N. Security Council, called for action against Iraq and stated falsely that "Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998".[17] The claim has appeared repeatedly in the news media.[18] However, according to UNSCOM inspector Richard Butler himself, it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British air strikes: "I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be 'prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.' ... I told him that I would act on this advice and remove my staff from Iraq."

That wasn't Clinton.

What about that aluminum tube speech? The Administration was informed (correctly) by Sandia that they were not suitable for the alleged purpose of a nuclear program. He lied anyway. How about the attempted discreditation of Hans Blix by the CIA when he didn't come to the conclusions that Cheney et al demanded? How about those weapons we KNEW Saddam had "around Tikrit"?

Did Clinton get everything right? I doubt it, but who started the war? If you don't know the difference between a bombing campaign and a decade plus multitrillion dollar full blown war then I don't know what to say. The only person I feel remotely sympathetic for is Powell who was used for those "chemical weapons" balloon factory speeches at the UN. Hell, Powell found out the war started by turning on the TV, and was deliberately cut out from the process because he like Blix had understanding and principle which made him a threat to the "We must have a war no matter what" policy of the Bush (not clinton administration) who incidentally saw Al Qaeda as the greater threat, but immediately switched to Saddam when Bush took office. Al Qaeda and allied forces were being pursued in Afghanistan and Bush took a sharp left and instead of pursuing those who attacked us left Afghanistan as an afterthought and went after Saddam with ridiculous assertions of links to terrorist organizations, attempting to destroy anyone who had evidence or influence contrary to the goal of war, yellowcake, mobile chemical factories, and the list goes on and on. Clinton? Please.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

The war was called Operation Iraqi Freedom not Operation Iraqi WMD.

Ink stained fingers ring a bell?

Now because Obozo pulled all troops out ISIS moves in, go figure. Wait till Romney takes over.

Bolded and quoted for posterity and historical reference. Mittens as president... yea, that's gonna happen... bwaaa hahahaahahhahaha

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

And Operation Iraqi Freedom was voted in part by Democrats and Republicans a like.

Yup due to the massive political pressure backing this "Murica! FUCK YEA!" bullshit. "If you ain't agin 'em you're for 'em" mentality as well. Fucking mouthbreathers.

 

[piasabird]

I think it is a fact that in the past Iraq used weapons of mass destruction. I also think it is a valid assumption that the leadership in Iraq would have used weapons of mass destruction if they had them based on their past record. So I think the whole point is irrelevant. I think it was proven during the war that had limited quantities of weapons of mass destruction. However, having a round capable of carrying a chemical or biological weapon and having loaded it with the actual agents and using it are two different things.

 

[ivwshane]

I think it is a fact that in the past Iraq used weapons of mass destruction. I also think it is a valid assumption that the leadership in Iraq would have used weapons of mass destruction if they had them based on their past record. So I think the whole point is irrelevant. I think it was proven during the war that had limited quantities of weapons of mass destruction. However, having a round capable of carrying a chemical or biological weapon and having loaded it with the actual agents and using it are two different things.

When did you serve?

 

[ttown]

I will admit it. I bought into the lies Iraq was trying to acquire yellow cake and build a nuclear weapon.

You mean because Iraq had enough already that they didn't need to acquire more?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/

Or because as Snopes points out, that the mere possession of 500 tons of yellow cake doesn't *prove* Saddam the tyrant would ever think of doing anything bad with it?

I think it's weird that this is considered a "big lie" when in my opinion it boils down to exaggeration. The bottom line is: The world is better off without saddam and I'm glad Obama allowed our military to find him and then have him executed. That's pretty much the only thing I like about Obama.

 

[fskimospy]

You mean because Iraq had enough already that they didn't need to acquire more?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/

Or because as Snopes points out, that the mere possession of 500 tons of yellow cake doesn't *prove* Saddam the tyrant would ever think of doing anything bad with it?

I think it's weird that this is considered a "big lie" when in my opinion it boils down to exaggeration. The bottom line is: The world is better off without saddam and I'm glad Obama allowed our military to find him and then have him executed. That's pretty much the only thing I like about Obama.

Bush caught saddam, not Obama.

Also, having that uranium is the easiest thing about making a nuke. He was nowhere close to one and he wasn't trying to make one. That's a pretty huge lie.

I wonder if the hundreds of thousands of dead people that our invasion caused think the world is better without him.

 

[Bitek]

So much dishonesty in this thread/poll, even the Clinton administration/UN believed Iraq had WMDs.

To be fair, consider the population the poll is asking. It's not going to be representative of the wider population, where support for Iraq was fairly high.

I can tell you this, I was living/working in the NYC area at the time of 911 and then the Iraq war. Being against the war was NOT a popular position. A lot of the towns I drove through had lost lots of guys in the firehouses, and people wanted blood.

Trying to make a nuanced argument of the lack of logic and motivation for war did not go far. Turns out we were right, but little good that does now.

There are a lot of leaders on the left who failed, and have conveniently changed positions. That's not forgotten, and in fact Hillary lost the presidency due to it.

In the end, responsibility lies with Bush. Even if Clinton was against it, would it have stopped the war? Kinda doubt it. It was a steamroller, and the politicos did what they do best, slither out of the way and dodge controversy and responsibility.