Happy to. However I don’t see it as digressing based upon the disclosure of facts and views being exposed. i want my viewpoint challenged. I welcome it. The original topic is about Bush’s decision making with respect to Iraq, when he made it, and what was the impact of succeeding inspections toward that decision.
My view is there were three major decisions made by Bush ,
One, sometime following 911 to invade Iraq and tie it to 911 and AlQaeda and bypass or don’t care about the UN. Provoke a military response to justify war. Step up NFZ bombing and other provoking hostile actions.
Two, needing the Brits for legitimacy - Aug/Sep 2002 - the decision was made to seek UN approval because Blair needed it to go along.
Three - purely political - March 2003. - force an end to inspections and screw the UN route as promised and invade Iraq going back to plan one.
This is highly relevant to the OP.
If you or any disagrees or would amend this view I would be more than pleased to hear it if you explain why as well.
Is this thread about Bush’s decision making or is it about how history is presented in presidential libraries? I see them as different topics: Bush gets to put his version of history in his library, and the rest of the world can feel free to disregard it.
Exactly. If it’s the former, then I think we’ve debated that here once or twice before.
So I’m going with the latter. And the answer is… it’s his Library and he gets to do whatever he wants. If NFBW wants to build a separate Library, he can include a third option.
This topic is about Bush’s decision making and how the Bush library does not deal with a critical aspect of that decision making which was the viability and success of the UN inspection process.
It is about Bush’s video taped recent claim that his first choice was diplomacy not war.
It is about should there be opposition to such blatant distortion of reality when the topic is taking this nation to war.
I have conducted myself with non-partisan devotion to facts and an objective observance of what took place during the course of Bush’s near two year process that came to a head on March 17 2003.
That process is being distorted at the Bush Library.
I wish to discuss it in full and so do some others.
I agree with you on most of what you wrote on thus thread,
Above I made a response to your point of view.
It was civil and respectful and I would prefer to get your response to it.
It is my view that this back and forth is what these forums are about, I could be wrong but would also prefer to hear an explanation of why.
SH had a bunch of WMDs at some point prior to 2002. Part of what he was supposed to do, per UNSC Resolutions, was account for how they were destroyed. He did not do that in full. Not trying to be snarky, but did you really not know that?
n.b.: I am and always was against the war. And I think the task of accounting for 100% of WMD disposal was probably an impossible task. But, the fact is, that was what the UNSC resolution said, and SH was not in compliance with it.
The library appears to be accurately reflecting Bush’s view of what he did. For a presidential library, that is what I expect: not a factual, objective, or consensus opinion of experts, but an accurate reflection of how that chief executive saw what he was doing at the time, and maybe even what he thinks in hindsight.
That doesn’t mean anyone has to agree with the view put forward, but for the sake of history it is extremely useful and important that the subjective view from the White House be recorded.
This thread is about Bush’s decision making and how his library presents his decision to invade Iraq. The reason I am objecting is his claim that he tries to sell his version of hustory that he sought diplomacy and not war.
Now if a fifth grade class of kids gets the treatment at the exhibit it could disort their understanding of what went wrong with Iraq. They may never hear the truth that Bush fully disregarded the inspections and thus totally disregarded the use of diplomacy.
I don’t think it is ok just because it is his library.
I hear you but I disagree. I think there should be some degree of standards for the integrity of the message presented about or by former presidents specifically on matters of war where Americans were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice and when the diplomatic way out is the one that should have been taken.
I regret you don’t wish to continue the exchange that was started but not upset.
I think it is important and should be discussed civily and with the idea that it can be constructive. My last comment to you was purely about some events that happened that I do not believe are in dispute or odd or off the wall.
Sure, there’s standards. They can’t make stuff up, like that WMD was actually found after the invasion. But this isn’t the Smithsonian Institution, where one expects to see an academically researched exhibit. It’s a friggin’ computer game that, in a slightly moronic way, is attempting to explain why Bush did things the way he did. The whole building is basically an architectural equivalent of an autobiography, and should be taken as such.
I have devoted some time, not enough, to contacting sympathetic media, on the need to do a documentary that focuses on Iraq’s peace initiative in December 2002 to let the CIA come into Iraq and a documentary that debunks the myth that Bush sought peace instead of way after kicking the diplomatic means out.
I admit here is little support from the anti-war left for a focus on the success of the insoections and Bush’s betrayal of the peace process.
That antipathy towards a focus on inspections comes from the left’s original reaction which is valid too, to Bush’s war hype talk preceding the vote in October 2002.
I get that and I agree on the hype aspect.
Rachel Maddow is good but she shows no interest in a focus on inspections.
She did not mention the in her last documentary.
We need enough people on the left to at least open their mind to a facet of Bush’s decision to invade that he to this day cannot bring himself to tell the truth.
He decided to end the diplomatic means to avoid the need for war.
Until the left decides to pursue and launch an assault on that rewrite of history I recognize there is little we can do.
But a good start would be to examine my message and open up to the possibilty that what I’ve written is at least based upon facts and truth.
Opposing the war as I and you and Raven and others do should bring unity of purpose not mockery and questions if intent.
I’d like to see and educational tax exempt group formed that is devoted entirely to study and telling the truth about the US invasion if Iraq including the great job the UN indoecters did until Bush decided no more if that peace nonsense.
Bush’s library antics demand that a response such as this gets started.
Wow. No offense intended, but that is the weakest cite I’ve ever seen. The headline blares that the CIA and M16(sic) knew Saddam had no WMDs, but the first paragraph says they “knew” this because Saddam’s foreign minister told them Saddam had no active WMDs, as if this nuanced “assurance” from a Saddam subordinate, without any evidence to back it up, should be considered reliable. Incredibly, even that assurance is called a total fabrication by the same former foreign minister a few paragraphs later.
However, it is absolutely true that Bush knew that his intelligence was wrong shortly after the UN inspectors were allowed into Iraq, i.e. months before he invaded, and it is absolutely true that Hans Blix said, in a report dated two weeks before the invasion, that the only prohibited weapons found after several months of inspections and interviews were conventional missiles that flew about 20 miles farther than the 90-mile UN limit; that Iraq was cooperating, not only actively, but “proactively”; that it would just take a few more months to clear up the documentation issues; and that as long as the monitors remained in Iraq, Saddam could not resume WMD programs without their knowledge.
Of course Blix’s report did not guarantee there were no WMDs in Iraq. Given that “WMD” is now applied even to the very crude bomb that exploded at the Boston Marathon, it’s clear that the country is full of them. But when Bush certified to Congress, in writing, that diplomatic measures had failed, and that nothing short of invasion could keep the US safe, he was lying. And when he and Rumsfeld and Rice appear on TV this year, as they do, and claim that the best intelligence they had at the time of the invasion was that Saddam had active WMD programs and stockpiles, they are lying.
So yes, IMO it is a joke that Bush’s Library glosses over the fact that the UN inspectors proved that the intelligence he presented to the American people before the October 2002 vote, and continued to present, in speech after speech, after the inspectors went in, was wrong. But it’s exactly what you would expect from a man with no integrity.
Do you agree that stating that Bush wanted diplomatic means instead of war is ‘making something up?’
Even with 20% less cooperation by Iraq with the 2003 inspectors a President
wanting diplomatic means instead of war would have kept the inspections going.
I think the evidence shows that Bush truly believes that describes his position. I think those statements are accurately reflecting his view of what he did, even though I don’t agree that Bush’s perceptions are in any way accurate.
And his library is fully entitled to present only his view, and not mine.
I agree with the last sentence. And it is possibiy true that Bush fully believes that he is a man who wanted peace not war if possible.
But after making the decision in March 2003 to end inspections/diplomacy to start an unnecessary and unprovoked war that caused tens of thousands of human beings to die for no good reason including 4500 of America’s finest, the mind will work to justify it in some way.
My question was whether the claim of wanting diplomacy to prevail over war was made up.
I understand and agree that Bush may believe what his mind has made up in order to cope.
Now that’s a good question. And I think the answer is that the situation was similar to that of Austria-Hungary and Serbia in 1914. Austria-Hungary presented a list of demands to Serbia that they knew Serbia would never accept. Bush made a similar demand of Saddam. The difference in the two sets of demands is that Bush’s demands were actually justified based on the cease fire agreement that ended the Gulf War. But Bush also knew that Saddam was never going to completely surrender on that issue.
So yes, Bush’s mind was made up, BUT, if Saddam had completely complied, given the level of doubts in the US over the justifications for war, it would have been very hard for Bush to go ahead with it. I think the Bush administration understood the risks of diplomacy, which is why some in his administration didn’t want to go to the UN. What if Saddam had said “yes”? But they also knew that trying the diplomacy route and having Saddam be intransigent would strengthen public and Congressional support for war.
Saddam Hussein did completely comply prior to the invasion. Since Bush went the diplomatic route he was assenting to be swayed by what the weapons inspectors would determine.
Blix said prior to the invasion that Iraq’s cooperation was proactive - inspections were working.
With the fact that in December 2002 Iraq offered to allow the CIA enter Iraq to look for WMD all they wanted makes it fully a stretch if the imagination to declare that Iraq dud not try to cooperate to avoid war and let diplomacy prevail.
And what abolishes I believe your idea here is that the official response from the White House to the offer to bring the CIA in was 'let the UN handle it.
It is a critical statement that I believe those who believe Bush was somehow justified to dump diplomacy and invade need to take into account.
This is allowing Bush to have it both ways- to claim he wanted diplomacy more than war simply to put his failing and deception onto Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein was evil but it does not justify false claims about the events that led to the greater suffering on the people of Iraq.
Grorge W Bush desired war - not diplomacy - he needs to be reconcile to that fact.
It is a dishonor to the truth to shade the truth so we can feel better about the USA invading a soveriegn nation that was not a threat and was in compliance with international law at the time of the invasion.
Problem is, Saddam didn’t even comply completely according to Blix. It may have seemed like enough to reduce the pressure for war in the minds of those opposed to the war, but it wasn’t what Bush had demanded.
You must be referring to Blix’s professional position that the disarmament process was not complete and it would take a few more months to complete.
Neither Bush, nor Congress nor UN Res 1441 set a deadline or timeline for when the inspection process had to be completed.
The demand on SH was to demonstrate a willingness to get to that deadline and have sanctions lifted and a long term monitoring regime set up.
According to the international law in place it would have had to be the UNSC to declare SH in Material Breach of his FINAL Opportunity to comply, not what George W Bush felt or thinking that it had to be finished by March 17 2003.
Bush’s WH said let the UN handle it not the CIA.
Adhering to diplomacy meant letting the UN decide how long it would take to finish the inspection process.
Blix said a few more months of diplomacy.
Bush said he would not let the UN handle it.
Bush wanted war no matter what the diplomatic means produced.
There is no sugar coating that should be applied to that harsh and deadly reality.
“We always thought this was likely to be part of the drip feed of concessions,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said. “This is how Saddam plays the concession game. It is not the full, immediate co-operation that the UN demands.”
I don’t see that Bush is trying to cope with any greater psychological stress that would lead him to evince profound denial of his actions… at least no more so than all that congressmen and senators who voted for a war resolution and still insist that they actually voted for peace. Now THAT is denial.