There’s the perfect example of a poster that cannot relate to anything resembling a fact or use common honest and decent reason. All because he has been suckered by Bush into believing that Iraq did not cooperate under 1441.
Well, I’m with Blix on this, and it’s clear he didn’t think SH fully complied with 1441. Whether or not he “cooperated” is beside the point. 1441 required more than “cooperation”. You can cherry pick all day long and show there was partial compliance, but Blix’s own words refute full compliance.
John Mace’s venture into questioning the ‘wisdom’ of invading Iraq while believing that overthrowing the government of Iraq by military force was justified, brings to light my original impression after the 9/11 attacks that the entire Bush Administration had become dangerously irrational on how to deal with Iraq in a post-9/11 world.
No one here wishes to discuss the ramifications of the excess of irrationality and inconsistencies and deceptions coming from the White House early in 2002 with regard to Iraq.
But I will further explain why Bush’s irrational behavior may have led to some Congress members to decide that an irrational president could very well actually decide to start a war with Iraq without finding a way to peacefully disarm Iraq.
Signaling to an irrational President that it would be justified to overthrow Iraq’s government by military force as Mace did, and then expect that irrational President to act wisely before using that force, is quite absurd.
More on that later. Here are Mace’s actual words.
At what point in time did Bush think a Iraq was such a threat that it required a ground invasion and occupation? Bush was also calling for removal of the threat by peacefully disarming the Baathist regime through the UN. If you claim to think for yourself Mace, you must think of all aspects of what Bush said and did.
You make no sense. According to international law the only justification for overthrowing a regime like the Baathists in Iraq would be for self-defense or to stop genocide or at the request of the UNSC to enforce a violator of international law such as Iraq was in 2002 until 1441 was passed and implemented. There was no actual threat or imminent threat coming from Iraq in March 2003 when Iraq was complying with 1441.
So the overthrow of SH’s regime could not be justified, and therefore it could not be wise to start a war for an unjustifiable reason.
And if you insist that invading Iraq was somehow justified it could not be unwise to react to the threat in a justified way because preventing an attack would have to be considered in America’s best interest.
Out irrational and lying President decided to invade Iraq probably thinking that wisdom and US best interests were on his side.
But Bush was nuts.
If you accept that doing regime change in Iraq was justified then that regime change would be in America’s best interest. It would be hard to argue against doing what is in our best interest. And the unwise and irrational decision prevailed in the end. Bush attacked.
No, because my position on the justification had nothing to do with 9/11. As noted, I believe we would be justified in overthrowing the Kin regime in NK, not because of 9/11 but because they are brutal dictators who are killing or otherwise causing sever harm to a large portion of the populace of that country. But I don’t think it would be wise to do so and I would not advocate for that action to be taken.
You need to stop projecting your own prejudicial thoughts onto other posters here.
Here is more of Human Action constructing a false reality beneficial to Bush.
There was no “initial non-cooperation” on access to sites, HA. It is false reporting you do that favors Bush’s overall ‘cooperation’ lies when you state it that way. And besides the offer to let the CIA come in came in Mid Dec 2002 which was very early in the inspection process.
If Bush had claimed prior to the AUMF vote to be so certain that Iraq had WMD and could hide them so well that UN inspectors and the CIA on the ground could never find them, there never should have been an offer to Iraq that the Bush White House was willing to avert war in order to allow Iraq to be disarmed peacefully. There could be no ability to disarm Iraq peacefully if Iraq had this extraordinary ability that you think Bush may have abscribed to the SH regime.
And think about the fallacy of your (hide WMD so well) argument HA. How did any intelligence agency honestly and faithfully, and supposedly tell truth to power on the eve of war that they ‘had no doubt’ Iraq was concealing the most lethal weapons ever devised from the 1441 inspection regime in March 2003, if indeed Iraq could actually hide the so well that the CIA and UNMOVIC could never find them.
I think you are making that up HA based upon some crazy reason to defend Bush’s irrational decision to invade Iraq instead of allowing peaceful disarming to continue.
Do you have a source where Bush explained why the Iraq initiative to let the CIA into Iraq was never tested or evaluated or accepted?
I’d love to see it if it exists.
I did not say your justification had anything to do with 9/11. Who are you responding to now?
I wrote that I saw Bush behaving very irrational after 9/11.
Why not respond to that?
Ah, the humor. Pointing that Bush and his innecer circle might have been just badly mistaken and indulging in confirmation bias is “beneficial” to Bush?
1441 was passed on November 8th. Until February 10th, Iraq refused to allow inspectors to use U-2s and helicopters. If you were convinced they were hiding WMDs, wouldn’t that make you all the more certain that they used that time to, say, bury everything in the desert?
This is undisputed.
Well, that’s just it. I’m not suggesting that Bush et al believed all along that the inspections wouldn’t find much of anything. I’m suggesting that once they did fail to turn up much of anything, this was rationalized as being Iraq skillfully concealing what they had. This could well have been supported by various crumbs of information: Iraq stalling on the spy planes, the initial dump of 12,000 documents that contained no new information, Curveball’s intelligence about mobile labs, Iraq’s problems with documenting that their weapons had been destroyed, etc. A narrative could be and was constructed in which the weapons were hidden, as opposed to the real narrative in which they didn’t exist.
You mean the argument I called “fallacious thinking”? I’m not saying it was a logical or defensible argument, just that there’s a decent chance that it was motivating Bush et al.
Bush said, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
Did that mean he had new information? Possibly. Or, it meant that the (erroneous) intelligence he’d had since before the inspections started wasn’t being backed up by the inspectors finding things like mobile labs, and instead of interpreting that to mean the intelligence was faulty, he interpreted it to mean the inspections were faulty, and that Hussein was deceiving the inspectors. While this is, again, fallacious thinking, Hussein did himself no favors with his past (meaning 1997) behavior, or the immediate reaction to inspections being resumed.
I defended Bush’s decision by not defending it, indeed, attacking it?
Bush? No. Here is the reaction of “a White House official”:
Note the ominous use of “we are now entering a final phase in how we compel Saddam Hussein to disarm”, on December 23rd.
Human Action had a serious flaw in his facts regarding when helicopters had begun flights inside Iraq.
Read more:
http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/security_council_briefings.asp
No he didn’t.
Then why put it int the same sdntence saying it rdmi ded you of Bush? You might as well have posted: I saw a beautiful flower today and was rdminded how crazy Bush was.
That was the event that caused Bush to be irrational. It was not my seeing a beautiful flower that caused Bush to become irrational with regard to Iraq.
Get your brain into the game Mace. My God.
Do you have different facts, Drunky Smurf? Or does February come before January?
I present the facts:
Who do you believe Drunky Smurf? Bush and Human Action that Iraq did not cooperate or the UN reports that I posted?
I will be also explaining the U2 situation in more detail to Human Action shortly, since Human Action wrote:
It took UNMOVIC about two months to mobilize the infrastructure for maximum inspection capacity. It was not Iraq holding things up during those two months.
And UNMOVIC reports they were still in the planning stages through Mid-January for putting U2 flights in place over Iraq. Yet Human Action sides with Bush on the U2 constraint point.
Human Action helps Bush maintain his lies about Iraq’s lack of cooperation by falsifying the date that rotary winged aircraft began flights in Iraq by five weeks.
Human Action uses similar propaganda techniques that the pro-Bush/pro-Iraq invasion types use when H.A. tossed out the dates “November 8” and “February 10” and suggests Bush could have considered that duration was sufficient to hide all Iraq’s WMDs. We know H.A. missed the Helicopter start date by five weeks, but you will also notice in the UN.org excerpt I posted above that Blix states that the “planning to commence high-altitude surveillance over Iraq” will happen “in the near future.” UNMOVIC had not started the ‘planning’ for U2 flights as of mid-January and Iraq the flights began on February 12th.
Human Action does not report the whole truth about the U2 mobilization and the so called Iraq conditions or obstructions. The planes were being provided by the U.S., the French and the Russians. Iraq supposedly was concerned about US and UK patrols in the NFZ’s and wanted a suspension of raids by those aircraft while the U2 planes were in flight. And Iraq also denied that there were conditions…
But Human Action’s choices on anything to do with Iraq’s cooperation to either believe Bush’s version of events or to explain how Bush could have believed his phony and false version of events by providing some rationale. But even there H.A.'s story-making is not based on the reality and the facts. He can’t even get a simple date right when the helicopters started flying.
And to suggest that Bush could have fairly led himself to believe that Iraq could have hidden all traces of WMD from all these inspectors and these U2 flights just goes to show that so many here want to protect Bush’s lies about Iraq’s failure to cooperate.
It is quite pathetic when you think about. … If any of you had the capacity to think about it.
So Bush would not have claimed such irrational nonsense prior to the AUMF vote would he?. He may not have gotten the vote he wanted at least from Democrats.
But then you cite certain triggers after the AUMF vote that may have caused Bush to adopt an irrational position on the status of Iraq’s alleged concealing of WMD from UN inspectors. Bush went from rational (seeking to disarm Iraq peacefully) to irrational seeking war with Iraq despite all evidence mounting to the contrary that Iraq had WMD.
You brush off that Iraq offered to let the CIA come in prior to your cited events with the exception of the document dump. Isn’t it interesting that you must not know that Blix disputed the Curveball claims within a week or so of Bush /Powell and Tenet putting that one out there.
It is not rational to draw conclusion that you are right when the evidence you put up was hideously debunked without too much effort. The hidden garages for mobile trailers in the facility that Curveball identified did not ever exist. Our news media did not act rational and do their jobs and press Bush and Powell for putting up bogus intel to drive for escalating the Iraq situation into a full scale ground invasion.
You cited Iraq stalling on spy planes. Wow! If stalling happened at all it was perhaps a week or two… if you count from the date that UNMOVIC completed planning for it. It was not all Iraq’s hold up. But you give Bush the benefit of the doubt on that one.
The unilateral destruction of chem/bio weapons in 1991 or 1992 is such a bogus issue. That issue was known for years and it was certainly known prior to the AUMF vote. Your logic is quite flawed and falls apart when examining the precise facts on that one. No rational human being would accept Bush to be able to justify war on that old longstanding issue. It did not concern WMD of the moment in time that mattered. It was mostly an accounting problem.
And to further the absurdity of trying to give Bush a fake rational (but irrational) way out and an excuse for making war is that the U2 Flights started on February 12 which was five weeks before the start of the war. Five weeks and they saw nothing.
You do agree that it was Bush that was acting irrationally. The Inspectors, the French the Germans the Russians and Canada and even Iraq were acting rationally and all were cooperating toward peaceful disarmament by the first week of March 2003? I hope you agree with that.
Fooled by W: Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my brain. Do you ever wonder why not one single person on this highly left-leaning, strongly anti-Bush MB agrees with you? Not one person. You have failed to convince some of the most rabidly anti-Bush people you can find on the internet. Does that ever rattle around in your brain and make you wonder if maybe it’s you, not us?
All those people do not agree with facts. I can do nothing about that if that is the way the wish to function.
Has any one of them explained how Bush could have possibly been enforcing UNSC Resolutions including 1441 when he pissed on 1441 and invaded Iraq in total opposition to 1441?
Have any of these so called anti-Bush MB members explained why they agree with Bush’s most critical set of lies about the failure of Iraq to cooperate? And that includes you Mace, taking Blix entirely out of context when he said a few Iraq initiatives on longstanding disarmament issues from 1991 were not immediate. And you absolutely ignore that Blix said very early on that cooperation on access was in fact immediate.
You have written on the record that Bush was justified to use military force to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
I have not heard one of your fellow stooges express solidarity with you on that absurd endorsement of Bush’s 2002 “anticipatory self-defense” policy where self defense is justified although there is no imminent threat involved. It is sort of like a man killing his wife because he feared she might poison him someday and the court says… OK… that was anticipatory self defense.
Bush was not justified to attack Iraq knowing there was no immediate threat. I’d hope some here agree with me on that. But you think Bush was justified.
Meh, my mistake. February 10th was when the condition on U2 flights was dropped, but not when the condition on helicopter flights was dropped.
I’m sure you will.
Reality doesn’t have “sides”.
Senators urge new UN resolution on U-2 flights
Hey, Bush paid me good money for that. He’s rebuilding his reputation, one message board at a time.
Again, my mistake on the helicopter date. It doesn’t change the fact that Iraq tried to impose conditions on the inspections, two of which were U-2 flights and the use of helicopters. Which you notably failed to address or refute. Hmmm…
So…you’re saying Iraq did, in fact, have plenty of time to hide WMDs if they were so inclined?
Well, if Iraq denied it, that settles the matter.
I got the U-2 date right. And the fact that’s actually important, which is Iraqi efforts to impose conditions on inspection, regardless of exactly when they occurred or how successful they were.
“Fairly”? I only called it fallacious, said that it wasn’t logical or defensible, and that it was erroneous. :rolleyes:
I seriously think you have psychological problems. Paranoia and a persecution complex just seeps from your posts. You turn “Bush was wrong, here’s why he may have been wrong” into “Bush was right”. That’s not normal.
He could have feared that inspections wouldn’t work, sure. They hadn’t worked the last time.
Right. That’s how confirmation bias works.
If you’re convinced Iraq had WMDs, an offer like that would only come if they had been well-hidden. Therefore, they must exist and be well-hidden. If the man in charge of UNMOVIC doubts your intelligence, that makes him less capable of carrying out effective inspections, since you know your intelligence is solid.
This is how confirmation bias works.
Ding! That’s my argument. It may have been irrational, but not deceptive or malicious.
I’m not defending Bush. That’s your paranoia acting up again. I’m remembering that you have no empathy whatsoever, no ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes or ponder what sort of thinking might make someone else reach different conclusions than you from the same data. Which makes this whole exercise pointless.
It could also have allowed weapons to escape destruction and be concealed, if you were sure weapons were being concealed.
What, the argument I called fallacious isn’t logical? That’s news to me. People aren’t nearly as logical as we’d like, and that isn’t unique to George W. Bush.
Accounting for WMDs being destroyed or not absolutely concerns WMDs. Some of them become useless over time, but not all.
If you were convinced Iraq had WMDs, you’d conclude that they saw nothing because everything had already been hidden. Is any of this sinking in at all?
Reason /= excuse. Irrational reason /= good reason. Reason /= justification.
No shit he was irrational! I only wrote it about a dozen times between the Hubris thread and this one. It wasn’t just Bush who was irrational, though, it was also his team, Blair and his team, the CIA, most of Congress, most of the American press, and Hussein.
If you actually want to debate people who think that Bush made good decisions, that the war was justified, or that Iraq kicked the inspectors out, you are in the wrong place. What you are doing here is splitting hairs with people who agree with you on all those fundamentals, for no reason.
But you are defending Bush/s major rationale and justification for deciding to invade. That is Iraq did not cooperate under the UNSC 1441 inspection regime. You cite the same things Bush defenders cite which is perhaps 2% of the negative reporting mostly by Blix on Iraq’s cooperation and you ignore or dismiss the 98% that reported good, solid, unprecedented and even eventually proactive cooperation. And it is not that you are defending Bush, in the context of wearing his shoes, you are passing along the deception and the lies that Bush made regarding Iraq’s cooperation with the inspectors.
I won’t wear Bush’s shoes and tell the lies he told. Sorry. If that is your method at achieving understanding of something you can have at it. That is bogus.
You admitted making a mistake on the helicopters, but you did not retract your argument that was based upon that error.
If you have ‘FACTS’ that support any idea that Iraq was not cooperating sufficient to avoid war then you should make them known, then I will put Bush’s shoes on and hold back on my commentary.
But Mace today has shown the reason that all the stooges here arguing against me are guilty of what you accuse me of doing. You claim I am unable to understand how people can “reach different conclusions … from the same data”
I saw Bush as being irrational with regard to Iraq after the attacks on September 11, 2001. I did not see any valid reason during the summer of 2002 and towards the Mid-term elections. No one here seems to be willing to accept that an irrational Bush, determined to take out Saddam Hussein by military force was going to get his way because although irrational he still had a high approval on national security matters and was likely to get his way. I believe he was justified prior to September 2002 to remove Hussein from power because he was basically an international outlaw and was therefore a major threat to peace in the region and because of the presence of oil, that could be as XT used to believe a threat to the world’s oil supply. I am not saying I agreed with that assessment, that would be as you put it, wearing Bush’s shoes. I do not believe that assessment that Iraq was in violation of international laws and the UNSC Resolutions was a lie or fraudulent in any way. And there should be no dispute that Iraq was situated in a geographic location where oil has to be a consideration of national security interest.
So because of my view at the time and a view I continue to hold that Bush was behaving irrationally up to September 2002, I felt that Bush could start a war with Iraq without any further action to authorize it by Congress. Bush had what he needed to start a war as he saw fit. Again I didn’t agree with that, but it was a general perception of the time and I considered it to be absolutely Irrational for Bush to think there was a need to start another front in the War on Terror outside of what was going on in Afghanistan. Like most Americans I supported toppling the Taliban and I agreed with those who said we needed to finish the mission there before moving on to anything else in a major way.
All the stooges here accuse me of being fooled by Bush at this point because in September I did notice that Bush began to speak as a ‘rational’ man with regard to Iraq. I was not fooled in to believing that he suddenly become sane; I had then become confronted with the dilemma that the irrational President hell bent for war was now being rational and stating he wanted peace.
All the stooges here on this forum reject the irrational/rational Bush view. They reject that it is possible to look at the run-up to the invasion of Iraq within three major perspectives.
(1) The Joe Lieberman and other Republicans perspective that Iraq needed to be taking out no matter what. Who cares about peacefully disarming Iraq? The XT attitude.
(2) the Senator Bob Graham Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul perspective that there was no reason to topple the Hussein regime or authorize the use of force no matter what. Most of the stooges here hold this one dear.
(3) The View that Bush was as an irrational man was dangerous to world peace and could start a war with Iraq in many ways or more realistically escalate the continuous hostilities that had been simmering for the past four years without UN inspectors inside Iraq having a first hand look at what was going on.
It was not a matter for me to agree with the need for the AUMF vote that took place in October 2002 - I doubt that any ordinary concerned citizen could do anything about what they came up. But when the vote was passed and it could be understood… WEARING the SHOES of all the Senators that had to make a tough call in my mind… it was not a result to be thrilled about … but it was a result that could be dealt with and I did have a sense that war could be avoided IF Iraq and the UNSC came around… which they did.
My view is not radical, fact starved, or crazy. In fact it matches what a majority in Congress and the majority of Americans were inclined to support. But for holding that view on this forum… it brings nothing but ridicule and attack. You supported the VOTE FOR WAR…
Stooges here cannot grasp the third perspective. It is not accepted as part of the dogma that has become entrenched on this forum by those opposed to the war and opposed to Bush.
That is fine.
But When I bring up the facts about what the AUMF actually says in written language that is not that difficult to understand I don’t get any sense that the entrenched dogma was ever decided or came into existence based upon the facts plus the political reality at the time of the AUMF.
And when I bring up the facts about Iraq’s cooperation with the 1441 inspections regime… this board is a joke. All the Bush lies about lack of cooperation are repeated here as if every writer were a ditto head who supports the invasion.
I know you are not… but this phenomenon of citing such trivial comments as proof that Bush was right about Iraq not cooperating just to shoot my perspective down is absurd.
I expect it from the those who hold the Joe Lieberman perspective… but come on.
Why must I put Bush’s shoes on and tell lies about Iraq’s lack of cooperation.
That makes no sense. Cant you hold the Kucinich Perspective but then realize you lost that round due to the fact that politics sometimes must submit to the art of the possible.. and then take what reality has handed you and move on.
forget the Bush Lies about WMD prior to the AUMF, and there were plenty, but the justification for war was not based upon those lies. The ultimate justification for war was based upon the lies about the failure of Iraq to cooperate by early March 2003.
So what is the bias against admitting that Iraq actually cooperated extremely well by Mid February 2003?
Does it harm the dogma that prevails here in some way?
It was deceptive and malicious to play the rational role when asking for an AUMF as Bush did by declaring that he wanted peaceful disarming of Iraq and Congress showing solidarity with the President was the best means to achieve removal of the threat without war.
In context the above is much more rational than Bush proclaiming that SH must be removed and Bush was already authorized to do it.
The Levin Amendment may have had a more rational appeal to some but there were not enough in the House, and Bush was not likely to accept it. And also the Levin Amendment put the decision for national security not in the President’s hand, but in the UNSC and the veto dead end trap. I don’t believe the Levin Amendment ever had a chance … When Joe Lieberman and others similar were in the Dem Controlled Senate.
This shows the difference between the stooges here and me. You just wrote that Hussein, Most of the American Public and Most of Congress were all irrational with Bush. You are saying that in ignorance of the full reality of what happened and in the context of a shifting and changing situation.
Prior to September 2002, it was Bush alone who was acting irrational. Iraq and the UNSC were in the beginning stages of acting rational. (I consider working toward peaceful disarmament to be rational thinking and working toward violent overthrow if Iraq’s regime to be irrational. So prior to September the UNSC and Iraq were showing signs of rational thought but Bush, and mostly Republicans in Congress were broadly and without any reservation showing irrational thought that an attack by the US was going to happen against Iraq. You are wrong about the general public. The Public was for confrontation on the WMD matter but not sold on war as the means to do it. So let’s say the public was split with one half but probably less was irrational favoring war. The other have favored a broad coalition and UN sanction before going to war. I was in the latter, rational population group.
Then in September the situation changed. Bush began speaking in rational terms. He claimed he preferred that the UNSC settled the matter of disarmament through peaceful means of diplomacy and a resumption of inspections. That was a 180 flip from an irrational position to a rational, at least in public, position. But remembering just one month earlier the man who had a lot of power and huge megaphone and the bully pulpit and pretty much control of current intelligence on the threat was acting highly irrational and it was a very clear possibility that this most powerful man in the world could do the irrational act and start a war with Iraq at any time he wanted.
And here is where all you stooges part from me perspective on the war. Now all members of Congress including Democrats like HRC and Kerry had to make a rational choice.. Should we let the pre-September Bush run amok in the world and possibly start a war without a resolution prior to the November mid-term election or shortly thereafter he gets a real AUMF for war with an all Republican pro-war Congress, or do we accept Bush’s conversion to a new path to disarmament that involves a new strong UNSC resolution that demands immediate resumption of inspections and Iraq’s full cooperation toward peaceful disarmament.
You have a limited narrow minded view of events from 2002 to March 2003. I have accepted that members of Congress on the Democratic side made the best choice they could and that going along with the newly defined rational Bush, (because he could possibly start an irrational war at any time without an new AUMF) was a fair and rational choice. Those Democratic Senators who saw it the other way were generally inclined to vote anti-war no matter what. There vote was not wrong or irrational either because it was Bush and Republicans who were using Saddam Hussein as an election prop in a post-911 world.
And for having that difference of perspective up to that point… the vote for the AUMF than what has become the dogma on this forum, I am called stupid and crazy, but no proponents of that dogma have challenged credibly my use of facts and the history and the reality of what went down.
And all of you that defend that dogma are distorting the truth about Iraq’s cooperation with UN inspectors to the point that your misinformation and lack of facts and use of half truths and emphasis on the miniscule negatives that happened - are all helping Bush sell that ‘cooperation’ set of lies that Bush and war supporters need.
The problem with facts about Iraq’s cooperation are all on you. And that is what I am proving here.
Sigh. Post 818:
Not only am I not defending anything Bush did with regard to Iraq, I am agreeing with you that Iraq cooperated by all reasonable definitions of the word. That 2% non-cooperation is not a rationale for war, and I never said it was.
What I did suggest is that that 2% was enough of a crumb for someone already convinced Iraq was hiding weapons, and already predisposed to toppling the Hussein regime as an end in itself, to maintain belief that Iraq was, indeed, hiding weapons. That someone’s name was George W. Bush, the one man authorized by Congress to invade if he thought it was necessary.
I didn’t ask you to tell any lies, and I didn’t tell any myself.
You seem bewildered that Bush would declare that the inspections were not working, and launch a war, when by all lights the inspections were working. I am proposing a hypothetical line of thought that might have lead him to that decision. I am not defending the decision, I have already and repeatedly stipulated that it was wrong.
Let me repeat that: the war was not justified, wise, or legal (under international law). That is a given.
The only interesting thing I see left to discuss is, why did it happen? Not, was it right? Because it plainly wasn’t. But we can still learn from it if we know why it happened.
Compare it to the Columbia shuttle disaster. In the aftermath, careful study was made of NASA’s internal structure and decision-making process. One example is “normalization of deviance”, where NASA management became accustomed to and unconcerned with dangerous occurances when they didn’t cause a disaster (until they did).
If I wrote that “normalization of deviance”, a cognitive error, might be behind the disaster, as opposed to malicious negligence, would that be defending NASA management or defending the disaster? To you, seemingly, yes. But, that is ridiculous.
Because the argument is sound. Iraq’s efforts to impose conditions on inspections, weak and ineffective as they were, could be interpreted through confirmation bias as evidence that they were hiding something.
Their cooperation was sufficient to avoid a war, in my opinion.
I don’t disagree with any of that, except possibly for the “was going to get his way” part. Congress could have passed the Levin Amendment and thus greatly constrained Bush’s ability to start a war.
He could have, but at great personal cost. Which the AUMF removed.
And with good support, such as the Woodward excerpts about the decision for war, and the PNAC influence on Bush, which all suggest that war was the desired outcome all along.
But, it can certainly be debated.
And IF the man authorized to make war didn’t either want war for non-WMD-related reasons, or choose to trust really bad intelligence over the UN inspections. Sadly, that one didn’t come around.
The Senators aren’t solely to blame, of course, but they deserve a fair chunk of blame.
Not to speak for others, but they probably find it humorous that an anti-Bush crusader with a user name of NotfooledbyW admits that he found Bush’s overtures for peace to be credible, and thus favored vesting him with war powers.
Those who were convinced that war was inevitable whether or not Iraq cooperated with inspections have the better claim to being “not fooled by W”.
To be fair, that third perspective lead directly to a war, wheras the second one, if it had the numbers and more political will behind it, would not have.
Your intepretation of the AUMF, that the passing of resolution 1441 barred Bush from using the AUMF to declare war without the UN’s blessing, is incorrect.
This is that hairsplitting I referred to. They aren’t saying that Iraq defied the inspectors or flatly refused to cooperate, they just take issue with your declarations that they factually were cooperating enough to avoid war, when that is a statement of opinion.
If anyone in this thread thinks the war was justified by failure to cooperate with inspections, except possibly adaher, I’d be shocked to hear it.
They aren’t saying Bush was right, they are, indeed, saying that he wasn’t. Multiple perspectives are possible, one can believe that Iraq’s cooperation was imperfect without believing that it justified war, especially a nearly unilateral one. I believe just that, for instance.
Which may have been just cognitive errors, rather than lies, as I’ve noted. Neither make Bush out to be anything but a failure.
I don’t think that’s been contested. The dispute has been whether compliance that was less than immediate could be called a violation of 1441, and whether Iraq could factually be said to be complying with it or not in the absence of a ruling.
The dogma here is anti-war, so I rather doubt it.