If those reasons were so justified, why didn’t Bush simply lay them out before the American populace, instead of throwing up the “we’re gonna get attacked by Iraq any day now” bogeyman?
I’ll let Age Quod Agis give his own answer but its a softball question so I’ll just give my two cents on it. Why didn’t Bush lay out either the real reasons for invasion of Iraq or the whole Saddam is a bad guy, he kills his citizens and does other bad things and we should get rid of him arguement to justify a war with Iraq? Simple. They wouldn’t have worked. The American people aren’t going to be enthusiastic about going to war to get rid of a bad dictator…and neither is Congress. Oh, we might participate in a small war as a bit player like in Bosnia, or we might be cool with tossing a few tomahawks or sending in some bombers, but a full invasion? Not going to happen unless there is a clear threat to the US directly. Even strategic threats to our interests aren’t going to fly if they are layed out like that…you have to tie it back to a direct threat to get people worked up about it.
Certainly the American people weren’t going to go for the REAL reasons for invading Iraq which were strategic…to establish a secure base of operation in a strategically vital region, to assert US power in the region and to hopefully at least discourage forcefully other nations who might be covertly supporting terrorists or other threats to US security…and secondarily perhaps to draw out terrorists in the region to fight the US there instead of here at home. In other words to distract them. Its too vague to get people excited about, or get the kind of support from Congress needed to really push it through…as opposed to laying out a real tangable threat directly to the US.
Was it wrong for the administration to mislead the American people as to the exact reasons for the war? No, probably not…at least not IMHO. They weren’t lieing (again, IMO) but merely not telling the whole truth as to WHY the US was going to war. We elect these people to make the decisions, and sometimes they have to do things for our own good that aren’t too popular. And if they fuck up we USUALLY toss their ass out…at least we have that option.
If the war would have been a wise and necessary one then that tactic would have been justified IMO. There really is no other way to GET the US to go to war in a major way without a direct threat to the US…and sometimes that might not be such a good thing. Take the Sudan for instance, or various other situations in the last few decades where America COULD have done something but didn’t because they couldn’t get the popular support needed. (yeah I know I’m an isolationist and don’t believe the US should normally do ANYTHING militarily out in the wider world, but some of those situations just cut me to the core).
My problem with the war wasn’t how the administration initially sold it. Part of my own anger is that they were wrong about key elements of WHAT they sold to the people (i.e. it was a major intellegence failure that there were NO WMD in Iraq, and that failure appearently went back to at least one previous administration…what ELSE are they missing?? And more importantly why and how are they missing it?). But mainly my anger is that strategically it seems stupid to invade Iraq at the time and in the manner we did…we might NEED those troops somewhere REALLY important in the not so distant future. Iraq just doesn’t seem worth it to me to expend the amount of capital and resources, the lives, and to tie down our military so throughly. In addition, I see it as a distraction from going after the various terror organizations and doing more on that front.
Anyway, thats my two cents. I’m sure you’ll have a blast picking it apart rjung. 
-XT
Thanks, xtisme, for admitting that the Bush Administration and the GOP are a bunch of manipulative bastiches who hold the American populace in utter contempt.
“We can’t tell the people the truth! If they knew that, we’d never have our way!”
“UN inspections should continue because we aren’t certain”
“No need. We’re certain.”
Wow, just simply, Wow
You still don’t get it, do you?
They weren’t wrong or missing anything, they just led you to believe things that were wrong.
You were mislead, Xtisme, whether you want to keep in denial by repeating ‘technically there were no “Lies”’ over and over, you were still mislead.
I know it can hurt when you’re starting to suspect youhave been successfuly fooled by someone, it feels like a direct insult to your intellect. You feel ashamed that you hadn’t spotted it.
Denial is, of course, a quick way to feel better about yourself. No need for self-reflection, no admitting you were stupid (or duped, if you prefer) and no need to get angry.
Because when you get angry you would actually have to follow up and do something.
Nono better to not get angry, to much hassle and change. Better to downplay what has been done.
You are still in denial.
You are downgrading what has been done to you , the American people, the world (and espescially the Iraqi’s).
You should be angry
Does all of that not run entirely counter to the principles of democracy upon which your republic was founded, xtisme?
Team Bush is profoundly un-American on a number of different levels.
In 1998 the Clinton Administration said that Iraq was pursuing WMD and its government needed to be removed.
Please factor in and recalculate.
And this was the complete and utter extent of Bush’s information of the subject, with no other credible sources saying otherwise, yes?
Did Clinton invade Iraq proclaiming their imminent threat to apple-pie snarflers everywhere? Did he send his Secretary of State to the UN with mickey-mouse intel to be publically humiliated in front of the entire world? Did he invent in his own head reports on Iraq nuclear capabilities and use that as evidence of a real and enduring threat? Please factor in and recalculate.
OBL was deemed the primary target and the very reason for aggression against Afghanistan. The Taleban, as an evil dictatorial fundamentalist regime, was also deemed a primary target, thanks partly to OBL who was said to be sheltered by them. What is the logical approach then? Send a few dozen special forces to “interface” with a bunch of warlords while said warlords tear up after the ruling elite?
Nice. The NA’s direction and impetus was, obviously, from the countryside towards the cities where the Taleban maintained seats of power. OBL’s direction and impetus was most likely from the centres of civilization towards the countryside and subsequently to get the hell out of Afghanistan. The prey is moving one way, and the hunter (an unreliable hunter at best) is sent in the precise opposite direction.
No wonder OBL got away so easily. The Northern Alliance didn’t give two figs for OBL, they wanted the despotic Taleban out of their country. So, rather than devote their attention to catching OBL, the NA (very justly) focused on fighting the Taleban, since they were doing the job largely on their own and suffering all the casualties.
The US limited itself to air support. Now, aside from flying jets, what was masterfully done in this whole affair? The Taleban was not defeated by the NA, but merely driven out of the major urban centres into the countryside, where they remain to this day. A number of the top Taleban administration members remain at large. OBL was not caught. Of the primary objectives, one was a complete failure and one was at best a partial success.
Looking for Osama would have required troops in the thousands, not hundreds of thousands; not an army to overrun an entire country but limited forces to patrol, in conjunction with the few Afghanis assigned to that task, likely mountainous spots in the hunt for small groups of fugitives – not armies. Supplying such forces of men would seem relatively easy to do when you control 100% of the air; tactically speaking, it would seem identical to dropping bombs, which never seems to be a problem for the USAF.
No one is saying bin Laden would have been caught for sure in this manner, but it would have jacked those measly chances up quite a bit.
Standard nonsensical but convenient apologetics. “The prez being the politician that he is”?? Am I reading this right??? The prez is barely a politician, he’s a serial bully, fanatic, self-righteous, never-wrong man of substandard intelligence with not much in the way of political skill. I’ll admit he has some very shrewd people on his team, but that is about it. Otherwise he is the strictly average kind of guy – or below average actually. Indeed, this image of a regular guy was probably a highly important factor in both elections, since he won against a set of men who were clearly superior in experience, brainpower, and skill.
OBL’s importance, even if we assume it is merely symbolic, is still enormously significant. Not just for Americans, not just for OBL’s followers, but for the entire world: here is the man responsible for the single greatest act of terrorism in history, and he’s STILL free in spite of having the mightiest nation and most of the planet after him. Additionally, there is no telling the wealth of strategic intelligence that could have been gathered had bin Laden and his top lieutenants actually been captured.
I agree that Afghanistan was handled rather more intelligently and maturely than Iraq, which was an exercise in abject idiocy; but to go the extra distance and claim Afghanistan was masterful simply does not follow.
The exception is if you are willing to accept action without fixed goals, and if you have no problem with the dishonest practice of establishing goals after actions are played out. Dante reserved a special place in hell for such people. I merely call them dishonest assholes.
Let’s not even get into the matter of how upright it is to mislead with systematic inaccuracies and blatant falsehoods your country, its population, and the democratic exponents of your country so as to win their support in the process, all the while spitting at the UN and at any individual nations that might cry foul. The leader of the free world, we have learned after 9/11, is not accountable to anyone: as long as you can pander to a support base of ignoramuses, morons, and bigots, and add to the mix the millions easily deceived by propaganda, you too need never again deliver on your stated goals.
As for OBL being dead “for all we know”, well, for all we know he actually isn’t dead, and has, it seems, issued messages in the last year.
Furt, don’t make me laugh so early in the thread. The evidence you refer to, would you care to present it for us? Then we can (yet again) analyze it and show how Bush took inadequate evidence, inflated it, manipulated it, added to it, mispresented it, stridently insisted on it even when it was debunked, and deployed politics of fear in order to coerce support for it. I’m used to that happening where I live – hell, it is practically expected – but it seems ridiculous and unacceptable to have the standard-bearer for democracy engage in such behaviour.
And here’s where people come in and point out that Kerry’s campaign was “Wrong war, wrong time” and repeatedly describing Bush as having made the wrong decisions at every turn.
Then xtisme and Age Quod Agis come back to say, “No no no, not the campaign. It was the people here at SDMB and at Move On who swung the whole thing! Of course, even though I find the argument that Bush consistently made the wrong decisions to have merit, I still voted for him [or didn’t vote for Kerry], but I blame the Democrats.”
xtisme, your opinions about whether the Democrats should call Bush a liar, coming so soon on the heels of your assertion that the Swift Boat Veterans simply shaded the truth, are exceptionally ill-informed. You are nothing more than a partisan who can only make the barest step away from his party (“Hey, I didn’t vote for Bush, even though I didn’t make the vote most likely to get him out of office”).
This administration lied on many occasions (IAEA reports that don’t exist, the famous 16 words about African yellowcake, the aluminum tubes that were only suitable for nuclear applications, Bush’s statement in Poland that “We’ve found the weapons of mass destruction”). If they weren’t intentionally misleading people, WHY WOULD THEY NEED TO GET BACK AT JOSEPH WILSON BY OUTING HIS WIFE, VALERIE PLAME?
Just because you want to impute a cover of ignorance doesn’t make it the most parsimonious explanation.
It is disturbing that some can be comfortable with the an American government thwarting the gorverned’s ability to withhold consent.
The just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. When the ability to withhold consent is denied then whatever is given is not consent in any real sense. Deceptive practices, especially of the gravest of issues and magnitude like war, are injuries to the sovereign electorate of free people.
Fundamentally and profoundly un-American.
IMH Patriotic O.
YMMV.
And unfortunately for the rightness of this stance, the only one shouting this very fact from the rooftops for the marginalized Left is Michael Moore, who I certainly don’t want representing me.
Face it - when 51% of the population is represented with a majority or outright control in all 3 branches of government, then it is no longer a representative democracy. The 48% of the US that doesn’t support Bush or his administration or the Republican agenda not being represented is indicative of a deeper issue.
Unless anyone is honestly trying to claim that someone who didn’t vote for Bush would vote for a Republican congressman or Senator…
Do you not know what is meant by ‘representative democracy’?
Ah, I see.
So those who talked about " the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program" and who claimed that Saddam Hussein “has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country” first are the real liars. Those who repeated the claims are merely misled.
According to your definition, the original deceivers who made the claims first.
These nasty, deceiving liars, in other words.
Or, to apply rjung’s “standards” -
If someone made the following statement:
and no WMD (or rather few) were found, the maker of the original statement is a proven liar.
QED.
Of course, we could always vote the rascals out.
Which we did.
Regards,
Shodan
I imagine you were even more upset when 43% of the population was represented with majorities and control of the three branches.
Or is it only when majority rule is implemented that democracy doesn’t work?
Regards,
Shodan
What a nasty liar. Right?
Same here - see if you can guess the author:
Darn that Bush for telling all those nasty lies about Iraq’s links to al-Queda!
Regards,
Shodan
YOU don’t seem to be getting that you claim the larger picture is more “truthfully” told by falsehoods than by facts. That is pure nonsense. You might try explaining what the “true larger picture” is, IYHO - oughta be amusing.
For chrissakes, we’ve been over that and over that, and you cannot expect it to be spoonfed to you. I’ll indulge you for a moment: http://swiftvets.eriposte.com/ has the best overall summary.
No, when you tell factual falsehoods intentionally, it’s called “lying”. What Moore does, sticking to factual truth, is “spin”. Your disdain for the difference between truth and falsehood is disturbing, but more to the point, it invalidates anything you say based on it.
Gorblimey. See above.
You have said exactly nothing deeper.
You are a Bush apologist, as your excusing his strings of lies demonstrates. Do you like that word better?
If Kerry was as detailed as he could be, where do you find room to criticize him for not being even more detailed? Only through ardent Bush apologisim.
It was up to YOU to use your vote responsibly, not as a gesture of disdain for anyone who’s actually gotten his hands dirty trying to accomplish something, despite any ideological impurity you think that stains him with.
Yes. Yes, it was. You were willing to allow the greater evil to win because the lesser evil wasn’t pure enough for your ivory tower.
Cite? None of the major Dem candidates, certainly not Kerry, made pro-SSM a campaign plank. It was made a campaign issue by the Republicans only. But someone with your level of regard for fact and your intensity of partisanship might easily make the statement you just did.
But you not only excuse them, but support them. Sad.
As long as there is no hope that they’d ever get elected and have to take some real-world responsibility, that would inevitably involve compromising that masturbatory ideology of theirs, then yes, you did throw it away. The real world is less well off because of your choice. You share the responsibility for that.
And that is exactly what’s been going on. Do you see that? There is no other way to do it than activism - and you oppose it, and yes, you excuse the bigotry and ignorance behind that opposition. More simple nonsense from one at odds with the world of fact.
I said Bush called the imagined Iraq threat “grave and gathering”. He did. I made no misstatement of fact.
:rolleyes: Bush said it. It was a lie. People who believed him and repeated his statements were misled by him. Thousands of people are dead because of Bush’s lies. No, apparently you don’t get it this time, either.
You have no regards. That too is a lie.