Out of the top of my head, US Congress 1984. The Committee which also investigated the Iran-Contras affair, I think.
My entire POV is based on the the belief that Iraq was a threat to the US. So you can summarily dismiss anything I’ve said thus far if you don’t believe Iraq was a threat to the US, and I’m obviously going to have trouble seeing your side as well. Mind you it wasn’t this administration that had to sell the that idea to the public, it was Clinton’s originally. Unless he’s come out and admitted that actions taken against Iraq were PR stunts and he was just fooling around, we can assume this has been the ongoing official position - that Iraq posed a threat to the US.
The mobile labs were an interesting find and par for the course. Mobile labs are highly suspicious things by definition; they can be loaded onto ships from the back of trucks and delivered anywhere. They can be sold, traded, moved around easily. According to both Iraq and UNSCOM there weren’t any, this was possibly an example of the “bullshit evidence” offered by Powell - but we found some already. Its a good bet that we’ll find other things of interest.
Bashar Assad has a ways to go yet before we consider him another Saddam. That relates to my points above - we probably do not consider Syria a personal threat (yet), and until we do we will handle things diplomatically, IMO.
I don’t know for certain, this is guessing: Israel specifically could not arrest Abbas for previous crimes per the Oslo accords anyway. He was living in the West Bank for a while and then relocated to Iraq a few years ago. Since then he’s been suspected of being a major player in the Palestinian uprising, directly from Baghdad, which caused us in turn to renew our interest in him.
Clinton’s limited (and usually ineffectual) actions were responses to Iraqi violations of the first Gulf War truce. I do not recall any claim that Iraq was a threat to the U.S., only a potential threat to its own neighbors–the same neighbors that either opposed this invasion or were bullied into accepting it.
Given that Iraq had no means to win a war, given that we had already proven that we would attack a country we believed sheltered genuine terrorists who had attacked the U.S., and given Hussein’s penchant for only attacking when he believed he would win, any claim that he posed a threat has several insurmountable obstacles to overcome. Bush’s diplomatic efforts (including forged claims) never approached the level needed to overcome those obstacles.
But if I recall correctly, Powell spoke of mobile labs for the development of chemical and biological weapons. No such labs have been found. The ones that were found were for conventional weapons development.
No Chem/Bio weapons labs found.
Again, the problem with these stories is that those who want to believe the Bush administration lodge them away as evidence, and fail to attend to the retractions (which of course are not as well featured as the initial stories).
To recap as of today, for those keeping score at home:
NO SCUDS FIRED. NO MOBILE WMD WEAPONS LABS FOUND. NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOUND. NO EVIDENCE OF ANY BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOUND.
This begins the Clinton transcript of 1998:
and this closes it:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
We have been acting in our own defense, and our own national interest, for years now with respect to Iraq.
What is not in dispute is that mobile weapons labs were found. Iraq claimed they had no such thing, UNSCOM claimed they were for food testing and they were clean. This is not very helpful to proving anyone completely wrong, either…this is not helpful to much of anything in fact. Did they miss that the “food testers” were building weapons? Did they miss these particular labs entirely? How many more are there, if any? Etc.
The problem with these stories is that they become “proof” of the “lies” of the Bush administration, when the jury is obviously still out about mobile weapons labs, for example.
Go back and read the words you just posted.
We acted (according to Clinton) in our national interest to defend that region. He claimed that it was in the interest of the U.S. to prevent Iraq from posing a threat to its neighbors. No mention of a threat to the U.S.
In reality, Saddam got very, very few of his weapons from the United States. The chemicals and biological stuff that he received that *could be used to make deadly stuff did not come from the U.S. military - it came from the Dept. of Agriculture and the Center for Disease Control - under a mandate that provides this stuff to almost every country on the planet for the purpose of protecting agriculture and curbing the spread of disease. Opponents of the U.S. have morphed this into the U.S. providing thousands of barrels of nerve agents to Saddam for use in a war.
As for direct military aid to Iraq, by FAR the biggest suppliers were Russia and France. U.S. military aid to Iraq was smaller than the amount of aid given by Brazil. Less than 2% of total aid Iraq received throughout the 80’s.
That’s why it annoys me when I see messages insinuating that Saddam was a monster created and armed by the United States - a Frankenstein that was unleashed on the world by a hapless Uncle Sam. It’s simply not true.
Tom:
“But once more, the United States has proven that although we are never eager to use force, when we must act in America’s vital interests, we will do so.”
“May God bless and protect the brave men and women who are carrying out this vital mission and their families.”
Vital. A threat to any of our interests in that region is a threat to the US.
Sorry, but you are not going to be persuasive by playing at semantics. Given that vital is often used merely as an intensifier and given that his explicit claim was to “threaten its neighbors,” I find both the notion that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. and that Clinton was making that claim to be wholly unproven.
Tom - Given that he explicitly said “Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States”, and that the US is defined not by geographical borders but by the Constitution, and we are, after all, talking about a sworn enemy that we suspect is armed and dangerous, I find your claim that Iraq is not a threat to the US utterly groundless.
That would explain the Iraqi planes I keep seeing over Cleveland.
Hussein had never attacked an enemy that he did not first believe he would conquer. I see no reason to pretend that he would deliberately commit suicide by trying to attack the U.S. (Which is different than his fighting like a cornered animal when we attacked him.)
OK, let’s ask Congress…
etc etc…same idea.
Sorry. We were discussing Clinton, not the mob that rushed to grant Bush unlimited powers based on lies declared by the administration. The current war powers were granted too broadly and for the wrong reasons. Where is their evidence?
On what occasion has Hussein ever launched an attack against a superior force or nation? What evidence has been presented that he would ever change his historical pattern of actions?
Most people where?
(Something tells me this may end up looking an awful lot like those old “New Yorker’s view of the World” maps.)
“You can argue about his motives or whether his beliefs are, but when are you guys going to stop underestimating George Bush? This performance was masterful.”
I do not in the least underestimate George Bush by which I mean that I take him quite seriously as a powerful world figure, capable of exerting his will. But that doesn’t mean than in exerting his will he hasn’t bungled diplomacy, mis-managed the war on terrorism, made the world a more rather than less dangerous place, and set a frightening new precedent in US foreign policy. (And that’s to leave aside entirely his domestic agenda.)
How about the 75% of the people who approve of Bush’s leadership now?
Well, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but fool me twice, and you can’t…can’t fool me all of the time again.
Or something like that.
And what would you have us make of this approval, Sam. Does that mean that the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis, simply because many Americans believe it? Does the fact that a majority of Americans believed that the Japanese-Americans of California should have been interred in WWII, does that make it right? Of course not.
And what do you make of the fact that the vast majority of this planets citizens rather strenuously disapprove. Does that count?
Let me play Cassandra for a moment. This is the high-water mark. As good as its gonna get, save for a possible boost upcoming. The RNC will try to schedule as many troop returns, as many victory celebrations, as can be managed. But sooner or later Fearless Misleader will have to give a speech somewhere else than a military base or defense industry work floor.
One term. Bet me.
Right, so as I suspected, these would be Americans. Not Europeans, or Chinese, or Indians, or Pakistanis, or Saudis, or Egyptians, or even Iraqis (where today about 10,000 residents of Baghdad were out in the streets telling Bush to get lost). Might I venture to say that the opinions of these folk are a better test of Bush’s diplomacy than the opinions of Americans?
But since we’re discussing Americans, let’s consider for a moment. These are Americans who, right now, are impressed with their country’s military might and technical prowess. They’re feeling patriotic and doubtless relieved that their soldiers are no longer dying. They haven’t yet had a chance to see the ramifications of this war: whether in terms of Iraqi stability, wider regional stability, terrorist issues, or the impact on their own economy. So it’s not surprising to me that right now Bush’s approval ratings are as high as his father’s were after the first Gulf war, no?
It’s interesting too that back before the war began, in a thread I think you will remmeber, you were arguing that opponents of the war, especially the hundreds of thousands who protested, were a fringe element, in cahoots with marginal communist organizations. I remember pointing out to you that a majority of Americans (about 60% at that time) only supported the war with UN approval; while a majority of your fellow Canadians opposed the war in even more emphatic terms. I specifically said that I didn’t expect you to conform to majority opinion; I only asked that you reconsider the point about the “fringe” opposition.
I’d like to make a different point. Since the majority of the world is rather less impressed by Bush’s leadership than Americans are, does that not suggest that Americans’ perhaps quite temporary admiration for their president is not the best test of his diplomacy?
That was exactly the issue. The US and the Uk had already decided to go to war, and were merely searching some pretext to do so. They couldn’t care less about the results of the weapon inspections and such things. And that’s precisely what Chirac was opposed to : this “we’re going to wage war anyway” stance.
As for your interpretation of Chirac position, I’ll leave it at that. Several posters including me already told you what was France’s stance, and you choose to ignore us all, ignore the facts and interpret in some weird way some quote (by the way I already posted the exact same quote from Chirac before the war, but to explain…essentially the contrary of your statements!), and obviously, you couldn’t care less about the reality since it contradicts your opinion (and it’s not like it’s hard to find what was France’s official stance…even though, not living in France, you didn’t read it in the papers/watch it on TV, it nevertheless has been widely reported)
75% of the people also believe in astrology. Shall we all fire our consultants and live our lives by star charts instead?