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gilliam
Guest
LOL! While Kerry was giving his speech, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was endorsing Rep. John Murtha’s call for an immediate pullout and saying that most of his fellow House Democrats support it too!
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JSmitty2005
Guest
That’s because they’re the same liberal hippies that whined us out of Vietnam as college students and they’re gonna try and pull the same $*#% now.
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2shelbys
Guest
AND PEOPLE STILL VOTE FOR THEM !!!
I never will understand that .
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JSmitty2005
Guest
Here’s one of my favorite quotes. It seems relavent to this thread:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mill
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mill
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2shelbys
Guest
An excellent quote. As is this one:
“Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin
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MikeWM
Guest
Indeed, there certainly was much doubt. The late and much-missed Robin Cook was confident enough on the eve of the invasion to say
‘Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term—namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target’
in his resignation speech.
Mike
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MikeWM
Guest
One of the best quotes, that one. If only the US and UK governments had heeded it in the last 4 years
Mike
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thestickman
Guest
I can’t speak to the UK. However, in the US the federal, state and local governments have done nothing to restrict our liberties or our freedom.One of the best quotes, that one. If only the US and UK governments had heeded it in the last 4 years
Mike
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2shelbys
Guest
You guys always talk about the things that Bush has said and yet you still ignore statements like these that obviously influenced Bush’s statements:
If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program."
“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
Letter to President Clinton.
–Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
Why is that?
If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
Letter to President Clinton.
- (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
–Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
Why is that?
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walstan
Guest
Wonderful quote as a call to arms etc. but I wonder, how does it square with:
Mt.18:21-22?
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JSmitty2005
Guest
I’m sorry, but I don’t get the connection. What does forgiving your brother have to do with going to war? Are you suggesting pacifism?!
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SamCA
Guest
Actually, you’ll note that I said I don’t see any evidence that Bush lied about WMDs; in fact, I’ve seen more than a little evidence that even behind closed doors, the US and British governments really did believe that Iraq had or was trying to develop WMDs.
It turns out that wasn’t true, it was a colossal failure of our intelligence community. But being wrong isn’t the same as a lie.
My problem is the way the public was manipulated by the administration; the way intelligence already known to be faulty was used to bolster the case for connections between Iraq and Al Queida, and the way the UN resolutions and weapons inspectors were used purely to provide a legal and political justification for a war that had already decided on, but which would have been illegal if they’d just said “We want regime change.”
(Before anyone asks me to provide links yet again, scroll back through my last couple posts – I’ve provided my sources several times and have yet to recieve any kind of substantial response to them. Instead, people keep attacking straw man positions I have not held.)
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JSmitty2005
Guest
If they **really did believe ** it, then they must not have **known how faulty ** it was. If they **really did believe ** it, then you can’t accuse them of manipulating the public to advance their agenda. They were looking out for our safety and I’m am thankful for that. Are you?
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SamCA
Guest
Did you even read my post?If they **really did believe ** it, then they must not have **known how faulty ** it was. If they **really did believe ** it, then you can’t accuse them of manipulating the public to advance their agenda. They were looking out for our safety and I’m am thankful for that. Are you?
They believed Iraq had, or was trying to develop WMDs.
They did not believe there was any connections between Iraq and Al Quieda and tried to make that case purely to make Iraq look like a greater immanent threat than it was (and the leaked British government communications openly discuss this fact). They made that case with intelligence that had already been determined to be unreliable before it was ever included in Presidential speeches and Republican talking points.
Questions like “Did Iraq have/want WMDs?” and “Was Saddam a bad man?” are, in a way, simplistic and emblematic of the way political discourse in America has been infantilized. The world is full of bad men who have or want WMDs. Some of them pose significantly greater risks to us than Saddam did. The deception arose in our government’s attempts to convince the American people that Saddam poses an immediate and greater threat than, say, Iran or North Korea (another fact openly discussed in said leaked communications).
(Beyond that there’s also the question of how the war itself was planned and conducted, which in my mind is the area where the Bush administration is truly indicted, but that is a topic for a different thread.)
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2shelbys
Guest
Actually we do not know this. Tons of something was moved to Syria. Some things were found and not finding more does not mean it was never there.
This is not really true either. The intel (if it was faulty, which we do not know as I said above) was not suspect until later. What you say about the UN resolutions and inspectors is wrong too. That all predates this administration by years. It has never been proven that the decision to remove Saddam had been made from the start of this administration and they certainly had no control over what the UN did before they were elected.
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thestickman
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Error of fact. The links between Iraq and Al-Qeada have been proven time and again.
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SamCA
Guest
You know what? The world probably would be a better place today if Saddam was still in power.
People aren’t saying that because we have fluffy bunny feelings for Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein is… well, I can’t say what I think of Saddam Hussein on this forum because of the obscenity rules. But trust me, I don’t like the guy. Taken purely in a vacuum, the question “Should Saddam Hussein be in power?” is, of course, a no. I don’t think you’ll find a single American who disagrees with that.
But the decision cannot be made in a vacuum. One must ask how Saddam was removed from power. One must examine the long-term ramifications of doing so.
Removing Saddam Hussein from power in the way we did has turned world opinion against us to a degree I would have genuinely believed impossible in the wake of the world’s outpourings of support for us after 9-11, and that alone is, in the long-term, probably a greater threat to America than Iraq ever posed. It has swollen the ranks of our terrorist enemies by inflaming the Arab world against us to a degree dwarfing even what it used to be in an area where we weren’t exactly popular to begin with. It has provided a training theatre in which terrorists are bred, much as the Soviets found in Afghanistan. It has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians even by the most conservative estimates, and turned the nation of Iraq into something which will almost certainly collapse into civil war (although I hope I’m wrong), and worse, has likely taken one of the world’s very few secular Arab nations and replaced its evil dictator with an evil theocracy (although I hope I’m wrong.)
The question isn’t, “Was Saddam bad?” Of course he was. The question is, “Is what we have now better?”
Now, there is an argument to be made that if the initial invasion had been conducted differently, this whole thing could have likewise played out in an entirely different manner. If we’d had enough troops on the ground to wage an effective counterinsurgency; if we had made at least a token effort to secure the borders instead of the oil fields; if we hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi military; if we’d had a plan more realistic than “Go in, beat up the Baathists, put Chalabi in charge, and get the heck out.” Perhaps, with a better waged war, we could have made this work.
But we didn’t. And, despite all the attempts to paint a rosy picture, it’s not working right now. Our army is doing an astounding job. They are fighting like lions, and the fact that Iraq has not descended into complete anarchy is a testament to their skill and bravery. They have played the cards they were dealt better than I would have thought imaginable.
But that doesn’t change that they were dealt some really, really bad cards, and that it has caused a series of events which, as horrible as it sounds, really do look as if they have made the world a worse place than it was back when that evil [expletive deleted] was running Iraq.
(All of which, by the way, are the reasons why George Bush Sr. refused to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam in the first Gulf War.)
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SamCA
Guest
This is patently untrue. The testimony on which Bush’s statements were based had been debunked by the DoD long before Bush (or, more accurately, the people who write Bush’s speeches) began using it to bolster the case. Read the articles if you don’t believe me.
I’m not referring to the UN resolutions themselves. I’m referring to the fact that, according to the high levels of the British government, based on communications with people like Paul Wolfowitz and Bush himself, the UN resolutions were used because an invasion based on regime change is against international law, and they needed an “excuse” because it was “necessary to create the conditions” where the war was legal. (That being a direct quote from a Cabinet briefing document from July 2002.)
Either they had decided on the war at least a year before the American people were told as much, or for some reason the Bush administration was lying and telling the British government that they had already decided to invade, because fairly extensive leaked communications in the highest levels of the British government reference specific meetings with high level US officials where they were told, point blank, that such was the case.
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SamCA
Guest
No matter how often you guys say this, it doesn’t become true. Yes, Iraqi officials met with Al Quieda officials a couple times. That’s it. That’s the full extent of their dealings. Saddam and Al Quieda were openly enemies, for crying out loud – Al Queida is an organization which originally formed in order to overthrow secular Arab dictatorships, just like Islamic Jihad.
“If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the US would now be considering military action against Iraq. In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September.”
– March 25, 2002 memo from Jack Straw (UK Foreign Secretary) to Tony Blair in preparation for Blair’s visit to Bush’s Crawford ranch, covering Iraq-al Qaida linkage, legality of invasion, weapons inspectors and post-war considerations.
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