I have expressed what I believe and have made no mistakes, you may believe they are mistakes because we do not have the same views on this issue and we probably never will, I’m not going to change anybody’s mind and my mind will not change over this. I am glad we are all able to live in a place where we can have our own opinions. I don’t believe I have accused anybody of anything if I did im sorry, I just questioned whether or not people think the same today as they did when the war started and its obvious that people did and thats great for them. Without truely knowing what everybody thought back then you can why its easy to think people have flipped flopped and hopped on the bush bashing bandwagon. I cannot recall exact conversations about what was said but we have a base here in montgomery where alot of high ranking military that attend my church say that they have no regrets and see that we are doing good over there and saw a reason for going and still do.
A bit like ‘debating’ gonzomax…but without the drive by links.
Have fun guys!
-XT
I think you did. Saying ‘we need to do something right after September 11’ and then talking about Iraq, which came a year and a half later, certainly sounds like a mistake to me - if something had to be done right away, why discuss Iraq and not Afghanistan? You also didn’t seem to be aware that Bush appointed Michael Brown to lead FEMA, but I could be wrong.
A lot of people have definitely changed their minds about the war. Why describe that as flip flopping, though? This appears to be another instance of you buying into Bush-era terminology. In politicians, “flip flopping” used to mean changing your opinion whenever the prevailing winds shifted so you could tell your audience whatever they wanted to hear. It meant you were spineless and dishonest. Now apparently it means any time you change your mind instead of showing courage by sticking to your mistake.
Same thing with the bandwagon idea, for that matter: it suggests people are only criticizing Bush because it’s popular. It’s unthinkable that he did anything wrong.
No particular surprise there. It also doesn’t change anything.
It is quite possible for a person to sincerely believe that Hussein was sufficiently a bad person as to require removal and that once he was gone, the U.S., (primarily through its “boots on the ground” military), has done a lot to build up Iraq and establish a representative government, there.
I would not necessarily agree with that position, but it can be defended to some extent.
HOWEVER, the fact that it was an unnecessary war, sold with lies, undermanned and originally under-prepared over the protests of the top military officers, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with the WTC/Pentagon attacks is simply fact. If a soldier who was ordered into that country chooses to see his efforts among the poulace as a good thing, I will not challenge or condemn him, but that will still not change the facts regarding how we got there or its irrelevance to the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
auburntiger11 what do you think about the Valerie Plame incident?
Why did you start this thread with a question if no information will change your views? What were you hoping to learn from this thread?
My father was a career officer, I recognize that a military is sometimes necessary, and ours is very good at what they do. But we have always held the position in this country that the military answers to civilian leadership. The decision to go to war rests with civilians, and should be debated on civilian terms.
My own view at the time was that Bush was staking his credibility on the claims that led us to the war in Iraq. In essence, his argument was “Iraq is a threat. Iraq has banned weapons. I can not share the sources of this information without compromising their effectiveness. The public can’t independently evaluate the case for going to war. Trust me.” That’s a lot to ask. The stakes for Bush should have been as high as the stakes he was asking of everyone else. I thought at the time that if no weapons of mass destruction were found, he should resign.
To answer the OP, would it have been different with anyone else in office, clearly the answer is yes. The case for war in Iraq was made entirely by Bush and people who answered to him. I doubt anyone else would have done things the same way.
The whole “is Iraq related to 9/11” debate is really beside the point.
Before even entering office, the Bush folks had decided to invade Iraq[1] – they were just waiting for political cover to do it. 9/11 just gave them a (flimsy) excuse to do it.
[1] 1998 letter from PNAC to Clinton:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
There is an exact record of what was said here.
Do an “Advanced” search on the word ‘Iraq’ in the title of threads in the Great Debates forum. Search through “any date”, and have the results sorted ‘oldest first’.
There’s a lot of interesting war with Iraq threads starting in mid 2002.
What an odd way to go through life! If someone demonstrates to you that you’re mistaken about something, why wouldn’t you change your mind?
Military leaders don’t decide to attack. The president sets the mission and the military carries it out.
That, and the abject failure to discover anything resembling nerve gas bombs or mobile Anthrax production facilities really put the lie to this whole cult of ‘secret government knowledge’ which is used to assert that us mere civilians can’t know and are thus unqualified to form our own opinions.
If the president is an asshat, he will try to entangle the nation in asshat missions.
Here’s a good thread, from 2002: Do you think the U.S.A. should go to war with Iraq?
From the very first post:
Plenty of people saying “no” then.
The original reason given was WMD and the 16 words controversy RE: uranium in the 2003 SoU address. Wanna know a secret about that address? That part about uranium was supposed to have been stricken out of the damn thing because it couldn’t be substantiated. Unfortunately, humans being humans and making mistakes, the person whose job it was to review that portion of the address for accuracy let that one accidentally slip. He had stricken the uranium claim out of a stump speech given earlier, the year before. This information directly from Scott McClellan in his book. Read it.
FTR - when we went to war, I said that if WMD were found, Bush should be given the nobel peace prize. If nothing was found, he should be tried for war crimes against humanity.
It was all about the pretense. From people I’ve talked to who still say it was a good thing to do, it was mostly because they just didn’t like Saddam and are glad to see him gone. The whole WMD issue gets tossed aside, and it has become a means to an end.
Yes and no. Saddam made us think he had WMD. It was a bluff, but we believed it, as did his neighbours. It worked so well because we wanted to believe it. Unfortunately Saddam didn’t think we’d invade, but we did.
And let’s not forget that Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism. For instance, he sheltered Abu Nidal and paid the families of a number of Palestinian suicide bombers.
No, we ( meaning the government ) didn’t believe it. Everyone paying attention knew that at most he had a few shells buried somewhere. And we invaded in a hurry to keep the inspectors Saddam let in from proving that we were lying.
And we also sponsor terrorism, should we invade ourselves ? And at any rate, Saddam was an ENEMY of Al Qaeda; attacking Iraq for 9-11 wasn’t like attacking Mexico or Brazil for Pearl Harbor. It was more like attacking Britain for Pearl Harbor.
That’s more or less true, but it was nonetheless clear that he was bluffing. Had things gone differently, you could’ve even said the threats of war in 2002 were a good thing because they made it clear there were no weapons.
Abu Nidal was killed before the war, and I’m not sure any of those payments were ever made, although I remember they were promised. I’m not sure that really counts as sponsoring terrorism anyway, but it’s academic.
Want to buy a bridge?
Bush named the “Axis of Evil” in 2002. They were Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Of those three Iraq (at the time at least) was not sponsoring terrorists nor seeking WMD. North Korea however was developing nuclear weapons and missile technology to deliver those nukes and Iran is considered one of the leading sponsors in the world for terrorism (and today…and probably then…we know Iran is seriously after nukes).
So which of those three would you focus on? Glorious Leader went after the one schmuck who was no threat at all.
Brilliant (sarcasm alert)
That is what is so strange about the whole thing - especially N Korea. Iran at the time was quite a ways away from nuclear capabilities, but while Bush was drumming up support for war with Iraq, Kim Jong Ill was like the trouble making kid who was jumping up and down claiming ‘LOOK AT ME! I’M DEVELOPING NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES AND BEING BRAZEN ABOUT IT! I’M A BAD PERSON!’ So what was the response? Six party talks, or whatever diplo solution was put in place.
That was me. I’m the one who made the Brazil analogy. But I feel it did serve a useful purpose. The OP (and other people) seem to still believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks so invading Iraq was a legitimate response to those attacks. I used the “Japan attacks us; we attack Brazil” to point out the absurdity of that idea. Over the top, yes, but you need a big stick to wake some people up.