You can also bet that the Dems would be falling over themselves to show how hawkish and what a key role they played in pushing through the invasion.
I agree, Bush has to take full responsibility for this war since he pushed it through. I’m not sure about the time table thing, but I’m starting to swing around in that direction. I think after the Iraqi formal elections in December would be the time to announce a time table to at least start the draw down, perhaps to some holding level with a full withdrawl left open ended (sort of like what we have done in South Korea, but without keeping the troops there for decades).
It would be nice, and maybe you are right in your hope, but I doubt it. I think the administration is still trying to bull their way through the problems and hoping that the elections in December will stabalize the country sufficiently that they can kludge together a withdrawl starting next year. However, based on something I read earlier today, the Sunni’s are going to milk all the propaganda value they can over the torture allegations of insurgents in and around the capital. They are already implying that these prisons and the associated torture was used to effect the election process…and will be used to effect the ones coming up. Sort of a scortched earth poisoning of the well strategy for when they lose…and a set up for more violence to come perhaps.
I am so sick and tired of this. The same tired spin keeps popping up over and over. Each time, from someone else. Each time it gets refuted, shown to be open to serious questions, or even just shouted down, a few days later someone else pops up with the same damn spin or some “new and improved” version of the same damn spin. It is so damn tiresome at this point.
To everyone. get off the Freeper site, stop listening to Rush and Ann and Billy O. Read the newspapare (the harcdcopy, unalteralbe after the fact version). Keep some of the more “newsy” ones for a few years, or in this case, just a few weeks. Then re-read and compare to the new “news”. This “new” spin is a pack of damn lies itself. It is an amatareuish attempt to go on the attack against people who have the right to ask questions and get answers. How dare Bush call someone ANTYONE else a liar or re-writer of history. That’s all I have to say on this sickening subject right now.
Is it an error, or was it deliberate? I “have problems” with the idea that the same manure keeps coming out again and again. After several repeated “droppings” like this, I don’t think the problem is simple error.
I don’t think anyone, including Bush, disputes that. But we’re dealing with two different, though related ideas:
Bush fucked up, generally and/or in any number of specific ways.
Bush intentionally lied about WMD.
It seems pretty clear to me that what they’re saying is that the first is fair criticism, while the second is dishonest. That’s not an evasion of general responsibility so much as it is a rejection of one specific accusation.
My own feeling is that the Dems would be better off with a “we were all fooled; but we’re willing to learn from that and fix our mistakes and the president isn’t” tack than by trying to deny the past. Since many Americans – and especially the centrist voters the dems theoretically want to win over – themselves supported the war at the time and have since come to be unhappy with it, I would think that would have some resonance. It certainly seems better politics than saying “I told you so” … especially when, in fact, most of them didn’t.
If they ever put out the complete Tom Toles on disc, preferably with some sort of indexing, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. The guy never seems to lose his edge.
Right on, so far as it goes: if the President’s right on something like this, he’s right, and gets the glory; if he’s wrong, he should accept the political consequences, rather than trying to dodge them.
But I think it goes beyond being right or wrong on the wisdom of invading Iraq, because the consequences to U.S. politicians are only that: political consequences. Meanwhile, 2000 American troops have come home in pine boxes, and a large (but apparently untabulated) number have come home without their full complement of arms and legs, or endured other severe injuries. And tens of thousands of Iraqis have died that would be alive today if we hadn’t invaded.
War has real, not just political, consequences.
Accordingly, the moral burden of doing one’s absolute best to make the right decision on going to war is very great. Which is why Bush’s real sin is not having taken us into a war that turned out badly, but rather having hidden the evidence weakening or undermining the case for war from those in Congress who shared that decision - and who were, under the Constitution, the true owners of that decision.
The moral burden was as great for them as for Bush, and he denied them the knowledge to base a wise decision on.
Further, he apparently ignored the moral imperative for his own self: even before Jay Rockefeller’s recent remarks, the evidence is pretty heavily on the side of Bush’s having decided to go to war sometime before the spring of 2002, and he didn’t seem to want to hear evidence against the case for war himself any more than he wanted Congress to.
Okay, here is a very specific question for you: In regards to the administration’s apparent failure to even particularly try to secure potential WMD sites, is this just one of the fuck ups or is this evidence that the administration didn’t believe their own propaganda about the danger of WMDs falling into terrorist hands. Or is it a combination of both or somehow neither (in which case explain why it is neither)?
Bush lied about the certainty of what he knew, and he concealed what he did not know. There was clear intent, on some significant level, to deceive the public and Congress for political reasons. It’s pretty pathetic to argue otherwise at this point.
aren’t we really discussing the Dem’s response to what amounts to a red herring? We have seen so many tactics (successful ones) for promoting propoganda:
-fight the terrorists over there instead of at home
-repeat “September 11” and “terrorism” at the RNC over and over
-make the world safer for our children
-Sadaam was an evil and cruel tyrant
We can go round and round on that, and I can quote what the various investigations have said, and you can tell me that all those investigations were biased or flawed. But the relevant point is that some (though not all) prominent dems were also proclaiming essentially the exact same things with the exact same certainty. It’s pretty pathetic to deny* that*.
I suppose one can try to argue, as Tom does above, that there were some sort of dramatic revelations in late 2002 that changed everything; but politically, I think they’re better off just admitting they were wrong then, and painting Bush as a guy who meant well, but is now stubbornly refusing to admit a mistake and cut our losses. As I said, that’s kind of the way a lot of people think anyway.
Correct, there are moral as well as political consequences. I didn’t mean to imply that the consequences were solely political. And that’s where the Dems like Kerry do share some responsibility, although Bush owns the lion’s share. I stay away from the “Bush lied” debate because I think it’s next to impossible to prove that he did. It’s enough for me that he led us wrecklessly into a war that we should never have fought-- at least not when we did and how we did. Innocent lives were lost on both sides and Bush is responsible.
Agreed- it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Bush would not have chosen war with Iraq.
That’s where you lose me, except in as much as anytime a person does something morally wrong it’s “evil”.
I think that they are admitting that they were wrong. The point being missed is that they were wrong because they were lied to. Why in the world would a democrat want to paint W as a good ol’ boy who meant well, ala That’s Our Bush?
As I pointed out two and a half years ago, the only alternative is that he believed the WMDs existed and constituted a threat, but didn’t give a damn if they happened to fall into enemy hands.
I might also interject this Kevin Drum blogpost which lists, and sources, five specific Administration claims (three about WMDs, one about the al Qaeda-Saddam connection, and one about WMD delivery systems) that the Administration knew were flawed, or flat-out wrong, when they made them during the run-up to war, but made them anyway.
A third alternative is that they were incompetent buffoons. And there is lots of evidence of that also. I go with they lying incompetent theory myself.
Because the people you want to convince already voted for him. They supported the war. Many of them think he’s an alright guy, even if they aren’t sure, in hindsight, that he’s made the best decisions.
Insisting that they must come around all the way to the view of “he’s an evil, horrible liar” is just dumb politics – even if he is indeed an evil liar. Implicit in that is a suggestion that “and you’re an idiot if you even think about supporting him.”
There’s a reason that smart politicians refer to “my distinguished opponent” or even “my freind from across the aisle.” You don’t need to convince people your opponent is satan, and you’re setting the bar too high if you try. You just need to convince them that you’re slightly better.
The problem with those “only other alternative” analyses is that they are never the ONLY other alternative.
No need to convince me on that part. My take is the Iraq War hawks were so certain that they’d find SOME sort of WMDs, that they just played fast and lose with the intel. You know the old saying-- it’s better to ask forgiveness later rather than permission in advance. They figured that few people would care about the particulars as long as something was found. My guess is that they fully expected to find biological or chemical weapons. They also didn’t count on an insurgency like the one that emerged, so all would be forgiven.
If you want to call that lying, I won’t quibble. I suppose it’s close enough for government work. It seems to be working in the court of public opinion, too. I just don’t find it useful, since I never thought the so-called WMDs were cause enough for war in the first place.