“Isn’t this another bad idea fueled by partisanship and little else?”
As for one I hope to high hell it is an example of partisanship.
I would hate to live in a world where grown men really believe that good is evil and evil is good. Better the mindless design of hatred and partisanship than the manifest proof of a World gone mad.
And while you modern day word-witch-hunters are are at it, why don’t you go out and hang the good Mother Teresa. Yes I know she is dead but that never stopped you before in your silly attempts to vilify George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and any other cultural heros that symbolize the inherent rights of all men to live free and not cower under the yoke of muderous tyranny. Even Iraqis.
Well, of course Graham is being partisan. He’s a powerful Senator for an damn-all important swing state and he’s angling for the VP slot in 2004. He appears to define his role and stirring the pot against GWB and carry Florida’s electoral vote for the eventual democratic candidate.
To the Bush Admin argument, which I hope Mace is only advancing for versimiltude.
Absolute rubbish. It was a perfectly rational decision based on extent reality, and worked very nicely in most respects.
Again, rubbish. There is no sign that containment was not working, rather every sign by the absence of the over hyped NBC programs that it was. Assertion without logical support in any analysis.
Impossible? Seems to have worked quite well given the lack of evidence that the inspection regime had not in fact encourntered. I leave aside the hand waving scare description in re Hussien and brutality.
Shrug. The evidence on the ground precludes the scare descriptions of the pre war Bush Hype, which leaves us with something rather un-extraordinary.
As for bullying his neighbors, none were feeling particularly threatened by him for the past ten years, so pehraps one should have followed their analyses, his neighbors being directly concerned.
Plague on his people, surely, the world, that is silly and absurd hyperbole. Mere annoyance.
Not “taking him out” as an error is also absurd exageration based on simplistic maximalist thinking, total victory as the sole form of victory.
The problem was highly manageable.
However, this impeachment drive is premature and exagerated.
Couldn’t Bush resign the presidency before the next election and have his successor/appointee issue a presidential pardon? A pardon for any crimes he may or may not have committed?
I think I would support that action, if it meant getting him out of office.
Seriously, if Bush resigned, Cheney would then be President – according to some intelligence agents and at least one columnist, he’s the one who’s really at the bottom of the Iraq fiasco(es), and thus the one who really needs to go.
Appreciate the reply, but beyond the hyperbole contained therein, I am not sure you have thought this through. Because if you had, you might have noticed that there’s nothing legal about it.
Unlesss, of course, that is a trivial matter to you. Which is why I qualified my question in the first place.
Be that as it may, as it stands now, you were taken into a war of choice under demonstrably false pretenses, does that not bother you any?
BTW, as a related note and for my own edification, when was the last succesful nation-building effort by the United States? I ask because I keeep hearing how “happy” the Iraquis should be now that they are “liberated.” Hopefully they are not looking at the Afghan model as a blueprint for their future. A bit depressing wouldn’t you say?
The last successful nation-building by the United States were post-WWII Germany and Japan.
The US contributed vast resources to those countries to show the world that the American way was the right way, that it was a victor nation’s duty to improve the lives of the vanquished. That fears of a nuclear-powered imperialist America were unfounded. That we had the courage of our democratic convictions.
The efforts were so successful that these two nations are now prime challengers to America’s world commercial supremacy.
So it ain’t never going to happen that way again, trust me, ESPECIALLY under an American oilman.
The Congress that impeached Clinton was soundly and rightly criticized for severely lowering the bar on impeachable offenses.
Lying about a blow job doesn’t even hold a candle to lying about the actions of a foreign nation that made no overt threats to the US in order to justify overthrowing its government and destabilizing the region. Such an act may have had questionable impeachability before Clinton, but certainly not after. All bets are off.
If the lame actions of the Republicans several years ago return to bite them in the ass, boo-freakin’-hoo.
If Bush and cronies continue screwing up over the next year or so as royally as they are now, expect the emergence of a bipartisan impeachment move in the House as congressional Republicans desperately attempt to save their party from itself.
I won’t pretend to speak for Jonathan Chance, but I think there are a great number of diferences between Iraq and the examples cited. Where Japan and Germany were nations with a highly developed sense of national identity, Iraq reminds one more of a hastily put together pastiche of tribal factions, each with their own conflicting agenda.
In fact, IIRC, one of the strongest arguments advanced for keeping Saddam in power post-GWI, was the almost unavoidable fracturing of Iraq that was sure to follow and the unpredictabilty of such an event.
However, I do agree with your other comment regarding the unwillingness of the current Administration to pour funds into Iraq beyond the huge amount already needed to maintain the invasion force. Amongst the stream of miscalculations and piss-poor planning incurred by same, none appears greater than the notion that this was somehow going to become a self-paying invasion. As for private funding, with conditions on the ground what they are, it’s really not too hard to figure why investors are not lining up at Iraq’s door check in hand.
I don’t believe that the concept of what is legal or illegal exists outside of a codified legal system. As much as people might like to think otherwise, that simply doesn’t exist on an international scale. At best, we can say something is more or less acceptable to the international community (that also being a pretty amorphous concept).
You will note that while many countries did not approve of the US’s action in Iraq, not one country officially came in on the side of Iraq. Not one. I think I outlined fairly well what the US’s justifications were, and while Bush did a lousy job articulating things, it does all come down to the Gulf War of the 90s and subsequent resolutions passed to enforce the permanent disarment of S.H.s regime. It was clear to me that S.H. did his best to violate the letter and the spirit of that disarmament plan, and therefore the US was justified in invading.
That being said, I personally would not have voted for an invasion, if it had been put to a vote.
Can you understand what I mean when I say that although I accept the legitimacy of the invasion, I still think it was tactically the wrong thing to do? Mainly because of the potential for loss of US lives and the gross uncertainty of building a civil society in Iraq in the aftermath.
