You said it yourself. It make sense because Bush could make war without it. And Bush starts offering a third way out of “DO NOTHING” “MAKE WAR” … as were the only two choices being pushed until Bush began offering the “PEACEFUL DISARMAMENT” Route.
Do any of the stooges think Bush was going to agree upon 'DO NOTHING"?
Here is what Bush said when the White House and the House Leadership agreed to the language in the AUMF..
That is for Ravenman too. Apparently Ravenman missed all this run up to the war when he was ‘lurking’.
I’m not sure that Woodward didn’t take a few too many sips of the neocon Kool-Aid after 9/11. But if you are referencing some of Woodward’s writing about the early stages of planning for an attack on Iraq to depose Saddam, I’ll have to see if Woodward shuts down like most journalists have on the period of UN inspections and that significance of the passage of 1441 and the change of attitude by Bush prior to the AUMF vote in October 2002 and what Iraq’s cooperation should have done to all Bush’s planning for war.
As the famed investigative journalist that Woodward used to be, you’d think he’d been screaming for ‘evidence’ on the WMD claims in the paper where he sits on the editorial board, plus been able to see that Iraq was cooperating as never before and scream that on the front page of the Washington Post with blazing headlines. Many polls showed that at least six of ten Americans wanted Bush to let the inspections continue with no need for war.
Woodward could have figured out that 1441 and the subsequent inspections changed the dynamics of that period quite a bit and favorable to a peaceful resolution. But the major change it should have forced was that the focus should have moved away from the potential threat of Iraq possessing WMD… to a focus on whether or not the inspections were working and how much that meant to reducing the threat to the US and our allies in the region.
I suspect there was fear of proclaiming the truth of Iraq’s cooperation by the US mainstream media because reporting anything positive about Saddam Hussein put n journalists and news organizations in the unfair category of working in the interests of an evil dictator who might someday give his WMD to terrorists. The rightwing media, led by Fox News set the standard and the narrative of how journalists were supposed to conduct themselves during Bush’s handling of the war on terror.
A dedicated watchdog journalist would have noticed that in October 2002 there was an argument that Iraq could be a potential threat and its violations of international law on WMD and disarmament matters needed to be confronted and ended. There was an argument that Iraq was a threat and most officials down to Joe Sixpack considered Iraq to be some kind of a threat. Like XT… a threat to the oil in the region.
But it doesn’t take much expertise in military or foreign policy affairs to realize that a couple hundred inspectors scouring Iraq for a few months and not finding evidence of WMD in Iraq in March 2003 provided a tremendous reduction in the potential threat from Iraq to I’d say non-existent.
That huge reduction in threat has been little discussed anywhere. That is absurd.
The comparative level of threat between October 2002 to March 2003 allows anyone to shoot down and reject Bush’s final days decision to end inspections when they only had four months to go to probable conclusion. And long term monitoring would be fully set in place.
No one discusses that. Perhaps Woodward does, I have not read everything he has written on Iraq, but I doubt it.
To me it is fundamental in any discussion about Iraq. That is because Bush was publically stating that regime change WAS NOT necessary if the UN acted to disarm Iraq and Iraq acted properly to be disarmed. Bush put no real deadline on that condition at the time either. So if regime change WAS NOT NECESSARY in October 2002 if disarmament of WMD could take place, then only the most ignorant and unsophisticated buffoon could ever state and be believed that Iraq was more of a threat in March 2003 and that regime change was necessary.
Bush is the buffoon who stated it and no one questions that aspect of his decision.
I ran across these when I tried to figure out what Bob Woodward has to do with the conversation at this point.
Bush locked in to inspections with no completion date set when he told Congress he wanted an AUMF so he could keep the peace but force Iraq to disarm, and when he sought and received UNSC Resolution 1441.
The threat from Iraq compared to October 2002 was reduced at the point where you begin to cite Blix’s uncertainty. The threat is not relative to Blix doing his job in a professional way. The threat is reduced because Blix is and has been inside Iraq with a couple hundred inspectors and infrared planes and ground penetrating radar and more monitoring stuff on the way and most important that you all pretend didn’t happen… is Blix had proactive cooperation from Iraq before an invasion was decided.
The THREAT WAS REDUCED and if it was ok not to have regime change in October 2002 when no inspectors were inside Iraq… it is absurd to accept the need for regime change in March where the inspection conditions were extremely improved and were working.
That is true and it means the threat from Iraq was reduced, not increased from October 2002 to March 2003.
More ammo for my point that Bush came no where’s near to ‘enforcing all UNSC Resolutions regarding Iraq’ when he decided to invade Iraq and piss all over 1441 and the AUMF and the American people, our troops, our Congress and the entire world.
So are you and Bob sympathetic to this rationale for war? I’m not.
Even if inspections went on forever any simpleton could figure out that it was a reduction in threat from five months before, and a cheaper less risky means to further contain Iraq.
So we should not have expected Bush to figure these simple facts out.
If these were Bush’s concerns Woodward should have ripped them to shreds.
He could make war without it, but only with great difficulty. A sensible Congress would have withheld their authorization to invade. That would have placed Bush in a position where he’d have to either a) formally claim that Iraq was behind 9/11, b) hope that Congress wouldn’t end his invasion after 60 days, or c) refuse to confront Iraq on the WMD issue at all, and face the wrath of a frightened, 9/11 scarred electorate.
The choice of “Do Nothing” or “Make War” was a false one, a bluff. Doing nothing would have been ruinous to Bush, and making war without the Iraq Resolution would have been ruinous to Bush.
When the President says that the only way to keep peace is to give him the sole power to decide if war is necessary, that’s what we call a red flag.
Woodward wrote dozens of books. If Woodward wrote anything nutty that was merely based on reading Bush’s mind as you and XT do, then yes I believe Woodward is nutty while I believe he drank a little of the neocon kool laid and writes from a perspective that more justifies what Bush did than is critical of it. He’s protecting his paper and his profession from culpability in the news media’s cheerleader role in making a war happen that did not need to happen.
Now I will ask you a question directly related to the immediate topic and is not a broad and widely generalistic question that leads toward a separate topic.
Do you agree with TomnDebb’s statement that I have cited? And in particular the first sentence, “Had the resolution been legitimate, it would have authorized the U.S. to act with the U.N. to enforce the U.N. resolutions.”
Keep in mind that the AUMF Oct 2002 did direct Bush to enforce all UNSC resolutions with regard to Iraq?
That being the case, is it true that T&D has stated that the AUMF is in fact legitimate, but Bush did not adhere to it?
Was this based on Woodward reading people’s minds? Woodward based the book on interviews with 75 senior Administration leaders, including a three and a half hour interview with President Bush, who “permitted Woodward to quote him directly.” Woodward also “permitted 60 Minutes to listen to tapes he recorded of his most important interviews, to read the transcripts, and to verify that the quotes he uses are based on recollections from participants in the key meetings.”
Sure, you say, that just means that Woodward had access to every single senior Administration official and quoted President Bush directly that the decision for war was made in January 2003. That doesn’t mean that Bush intended war and regime change all along… does it?
See the last cite:
And I’m not even mentioning the Downing Street Memo, in which Tony Blair was advised of the White House push for regime change in July 2002.
Holy fuck, I’d be totally embarrassed by those cites if I held the view that the decision for war happened only in mid-March 2003. Glad I’m not you.
So, if I’m reading this correctly, the person whose name is “NotFooledByW” has currently staked his argument on the statement that he sincerely believed George W. Bush only wanted a peaceful resolution via diplomacy when he signed the AUMF.
That is right. Plus, let’s remember that “Regime Change” was the official policy of the US towards Iraq since the Clinton years (before many of us had even heard the term 'WMD"). Bush’s idea of “peaceful resolution” would have been SH fleeing the country.
[QUOTE=NotfooledbyW]
Another way you run is by not citing my relevant response. I didn’t claim that another and I posted exact words that you are wrong and liar. I wrote that I and another (multiple posters) explained why you are wrong and a liar. Then I posted the cites where you are wrong and being to this moment very deceitful.
[/QUOTE]
Dude, again, it’s almost like you don’t realize that people can scroll up and see what you said. Here, let me help you:
[QUOTE=NFBW, purportedly]
It was explained to XT by multiple posters why XT is not only wrong but lying.
[/QUOTE]
You claimed that multiple posters said I was not only wrong but lying. I asked you for some links and quotes. You failed to provide them. Then you tried to dance around a bit and wave your hands in the air about me running away as well as some other loopy horseshit.
There is nothing to run from, dipshit. You didn’t provide a link and quotes backing up the statement I asked you for a cite for. Instead, you spewed out some other horseshit that, frankly, I’ve already responded to in the past and I see no reason to do so again, since it’s clear you were too stupid to get what I said the FIRST (or hell, in some cases the second or third) time I did so.
The more you respond in this thread the more clear it is to everyone but you that not only don’t you know the first thing about this subject, but that you really are very, very stupid. Some folks are ignorant. Some are stupid. Rarely is someone both ignorant AND fundamentally stupid. You are one of those rare individuals, combining a near text book example of both. Couple that with your reading comprehension issues and your delusions of adequacy and, well, it’s a potent mix, keeping many 'dopers in this thread amused and coming back to continue to point and laugh at you for hours on end. My only concern is that we might be nearly the event horizon where your density and negative brain power causes a black hole to materialize on the board, sucking us all into the singularity of your mega ass-hattery and sheer boneheaded stupidity. Could be bad, but it’s like watching a train wreck in very, very slow motion…you just have to keep watching to see what happens next.
You stooges are a joke. “probably” and “I think” and citing Rumsfeld pointing to a map to Prince Bandhar… smoking cigars… wow? “In Rice’s mind” too efn funny. That woman didn’t have much of mind.
When did Woodword’s book come out?
So did Bush inform Congressmen and Senators that he had decided to invade Iraq before getting the full reports from the inspectors? You’d think he’d given them time to consider that he had been lying to them about wanting to disarm Iraq peacefully.
Come on Ravenman. This is what you got… “Probably” and “I think”…
That’s nothing. ““Probably going to have to..”” give me a break.
More nothing… “I really think I’m going to have to do this.”
Well Ravenman, I ***think ***I am going to win the lottery tonight. $200 million.
And I didn’t know Rumsfeld was the one making the decision.
Here’s the reality that we knew when all this was going down:
Bush hadn’t made a decision on January 28, 2003, the night of the State of the Union Speech.
Check out the use of “IF”. Do you know what “IF” means?
“IF” trumps “PROBABLY” and “I think” every time.
So Bush was lying to us all in the State of the Union Address, including the US Congress whom he standing before, and on such a grave and serious matter as the need for starting a war? Is that what you all believe?
So, you’re saying you aren’t fooled by what Bush said behind closed doors to his closest advisors, because it contradicts what Bush was saying in public, which you believe.
It’s very clear. Bush wanted peace when he thought SH had WMDs, but as more and more evidence surfaced that there were no WMDs, Bush decided to wage war. It’s completely logical!
Ravenman cites a third Party Account in a book published what four of five years after the fact.
I cite what comes straight from the horses’ ass Commander in Chief’s mouth:
Question for Ravenman, Did Woodward address the obvious contradictions between the interviews he got from Bush insiders and what Bush was on record saying to the world all the way through March 8, 2003.
My God If Woodward were on tenth of what he was during Watergate, he’d have sicked some reporters against Bush to find out who the hell was lying.
Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly get more stupid, you do this. We are definitely in uncharted territory at this point.
[QUOTE=NotfooledbyW]
Ravenman cites a third Party Account in a book published what four of five years after the fact.
I cite what comes straight from the horses’ ass Commander in Chief’s mouth:
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, you tell him NFBW! Preach it brother! Who ya gonna believe here, some yahoo dishing the dirt on Bush or Bush himself! If Bush said he hadn’t made a decision yet then clearly he hadn’t, since he was the Decider and all. I mean, politicians NEVER lie, especially this one, right? All he was asking, is give peace a chance!
Who ya gonna believe here, some yahoo dishing the dirt on Bush or Bush himself! /QUOTE]
Why are you asking that XT? At that pivotal point in time we only could know what Bush said publically. And at that point in time you wrote off as Machiavellian ‘peace’ statements from Bush because you were convinced that war was justified and it was either ok for Bush to lie like that as long as Bush went ahead with regime change because in your misinformed mind, Saddam was a serious threat to the region’s oil.
On the other hand, at that same point in time, I was protesting against those Bush lies about the level of Iraq’s cooperation as he claimed he was really for peace. Truly being for peace, meant he would not lie about the reality of the inspections and Iraq’s cooperation.
It was those lies about cooperation that went unchallenged and being unchallenged Bush could claim he was for peace yet secretly could plan on invading Iraq anyway, not because Iraq was hiding WMD or not cooperating, but because Bush could get away with lying about Iraq’s lack of cooperation because there were too many XT’s in the world who efn believed the lying sack of crap while the case of proactive cooperation was out in the news being reported for anyone interested enough in finding it.
And Bush got away with it because of uniformed suckers like XT, who now claims he didn’t give a damn about UN inspections because Saddam was pulling the wool over the inspectors eyes.
XT had the wool pulled over his eyes by Bush in March 2003 and has not taken that wool off as of today. XT still believes the inspections were not working… Just exactly as Bush wants everyone to keep believing.
Did all your protesting the impending war occur between March 7 and March 19, 2003? Because I think you’ve made it clear that prior to early March, Bush had no interest in going to war because Bush told us so.
And since you believed Bush right up until March 7 (or a few days before or after that), there would be no reason to protest a war that you were convinced wouldn’t happen.
How much marching and letter writing did you get done in those two weeks?
If Bush said he hadn’t made a decision yet then clearly he hadn’t, since he was the Decider and all. I mean, politicians NEVER lie, especially this one, right? All he was asking, is give peace a chance!