I don’t think they got off on killing brown people, Muslims or American soldiers, but I don’t think they gave a shit when they did.
[QUOTE=TonySinclair;17468092
In the [letter to Congress]
(Presidential Letter) that Bush was required to write before invading, his claim was not that there might be a WMD cache somewhere in Iraq, his claim was that the inspections had failed, and that nothing short of invasion could protect the US. And that was patently false.
[/QUOTE]
In this regard it is also possible to determine the deceit we were fed in order to launch a war of aggression against Iraq. It is simple to ascertain the specific condition of the threat from Iraq over the time frame of the run up to the war. In October 2002 at the time the AUMF was passed with its language authorizing war ‘if’ necessary, there were no UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq. But all indicators are that war was not necessary then - at that moment in time.
But by March 2003 there were a couple hundred UN inspectors on the ground in Iraq and they darn near shot down every but of intel the US and UK could throw at them.
Yet some would have us believe that Iraq was a bigger threat when inspectors were on the ground than it was when there were nine on the ground.
That is not just a lie to seriously state that it is absurd to even suggest it.
I doubt very much that not one soul in the Bush Admin hatched a plot to kill hundreds of thousands for any profit to anyone because it is plausible that they believed in their own self delusions that American forced would be greeted as liberators and Iraq’s oil revenues once liberated also would provide sufficient funding for the war.
I believe Bush was convinced of that and as Rupert Murdoch was saying the overthrow of Saddam could lead to $20 a barrel oil - down from $40 I believe it was at the time. Murdoch says that would be a tax break for the entire world. So it was rightwing ideology and perhaps Bush had convinced himself that he could be greater than Reagan by destroying something evil in the world after 9/11 knocked him on had ass for a bit.
But Bush was lying on March 17 that he had intel ‘that left no doubt’ that Iraq was hiding WMD from the inspectors which left him no choice but to invade.
In the UK, Bush’s best buddy Tony Blair used all of his skills in manipulating the political system to take the UK into this disasterous war.
He did this with a trick: ensure you are given advice from your officials that supports what you want to do. Then you can never be accused of misconduct, you were acting responsibly on the best advice available. So he ensured he got the advice from the UK intelligence service and on the legality of declaring war from the official legal advisor. The officials concerned did not take a stand on principle, despite they knew they had just a few sources or dubious integrity. The legal position was also very uncertain and the official advice changed suddenly to support the governments view.
Blair got his Media Manager Alastair Campbell to create a ‘Dossier’ that made the case for Saddam as a clear and present threat possessing WMDs. This became the subject of some controversy. It was ‘sexed up’ to make it sound more dramatic and sway opinion behind the government. Lots of pressure was put on the BBC.
The UK Prime Minister took the country to war because he thought it was in the countries interest to support the US. There was a huge concern and large protests against the war. But Blair plays the sincerity card very well and he got the vote he needed.
We have government inquiries that go on to this day to get to the bottom of it, but nobbling inquiries is a key skill in UK politics, which is a real ‘House of Cards’.
Democracies like the US and the UK have mechanisms to allow executive power to manage emergencies where the country is under threat from a foreign enemy. These were misused and the regular checks compromised.
The consequences are a shameful waste, two countries invaded, huge casualties their politics turned upside down and now one is teetering on the edge of civil war and we have spawned a generation of terrorists spreading from one poor country to the next.
We did a bad thing.
RickJay: “Everyone who was paying attention knew in March 2003 Iraq had either no WMD or essentially none.”
tagos: *"Sarin has a shelf life of months. You should know that.
As everyone know at the time. For Saddam to have had WMD’s he would have had to have been manufacturing it. There was, as you full well know, not just no evidence that he did but an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that he didn’t."*
. . .
“It was not a ‘reasonable’ belief [that Iraq had huge stockpiles of WMDs].”
Der Trihs:* “They were known to be destroyed, and the Bush administration clearly knew it.”*
Ok, so if it was known back then to anyone who looked at the evidence, where were the mainstream anti-war advocates saying not just “We can’t be sure about the WMDs” but instead “We *can *be sure that there are (essentially) none”?
And you even wrote: *"But the 2002 bill required that in order to use military force, Bush had to write and sign a formal declaration to Congress that all other measures had failed, and that nothing short of military force could remove the threat Iraq posed to the US.
No problem for Bush – he simply lied, and signed a letter to Congress stating exactly that — eleven days after Blix’s report proved that he was lying."*
Proved to whom? My whole point was that there were huge swaths of at least the American population – most emphatically including the Bush Administration and associated intelligence services – that would not be inclined to give any credence to the UN inspections. Hell, from his point of view, the inspections had failed because they hadn’t turned up the WMDs.
Oh, I don’t doubt that the administration carelessly oversold the evidence to the public – in a sense, they oversold it to themselves, too. But the “Bush Lied” accusation is generally not phrased as delicately as you did here. The most common from is essentially that Bush & co. knew or believed that there was no weapons stockpile and was simply lying about that fact. That’s a far cry from saying things you believe to be fundamentally true but giving short shrift to evidence that points the other way.
I also explained in my post that I believed the WMD issue was not the primary motivation behind the war – *that *part was a lie – so, no, I’m not saying that they were going for peaceful disarmament.
Well, ok, I certainly can’t disprove that. But you should realize that that’s *entirely *speculative. You have no basis for that whatsoever, aside from some pop psychology and the axiomatic assumption that Dick Cheney is not just pure evil, but a kind of pure evil whose primary motivation is to look out for the prosperity of former co-workers.
Seriously though, corporate welfare and even straight-up corruption would be so much easier than starting a freaking war so that an already profitable company could have another government contract.
I was reading N.Y. Times every day and assumed Iraq had WMD’s, e.g. nerve gas. (I assumed such would be easy for any industrialized country to develop.) The revelations of bald lying by Bush et al came later.
I opposed the War for other reasons. The nerve gas I thought Saddam had would stay unused (he was too boxed up to try anything) unless we attacked.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
As for the real reason for the invasion, it varied among the players. Kissinger said in so many words that “radical Islam needed to be humiliated.” Iraq was invaded not because it was a threat, but because it wasn’t! North Korea and perhaps Iran were more serious enemies but too strong to attack. For Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld I honestly believe a major motive was … it would be fun!
I wonder if those complaining at the label of “evil” on Cheney would also object to the same label applied to Saddam. There are gradations of evil of course. I’ve heard that Saddam liked to be present when his torturers gouged out the eyes of prisoners’ children. Cheney belongs in a cooler circle of Hell, but I have no problem calling him “evil.”
Those defending, even slightly, the 2003 invasion of Iraq (or as GWB called it, “the War against Gog and Magog”) haven’t read any of several books that expose the gross hypocrisy and incompetence with which that adventure was pursued.
He’s a kind of evil, sure. Just (in all likelihood) not the kind who says to himself: “So, if we lose 1,000 Americans and 20,000 Iraqis, spend a hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money, and wreck the credibility of the U.S. government both at home and abroad … Halliburton’s stock price will go up by 3.25%. Good deal.”
Halliburton’s share price went up a lot more than 3.25%. From $19.05 in January 2003 to $75 in July 2006 when they had a 2 for 1 split..
The hell he is not.
Cool, thank you.
Says you.
Must I assume that because the only two statements that you’ve read from my entire case that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush lied about receiving undoubtable intelligence that proved that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons from the UN inspectors after March 7, 2003.
This is what you chose as examples of my entire point to refute:
"Originally Posted by NotfooledbyW … If you still want to believe Bush did not lie with ‘leaves no doubt’ claim…
If you wish to believe in that then Bush is certainly lying to this day that he did not want war, he wanted to disarm Iraq peacefully [but] Saddam Hussein refused to let the inspectors in."
Have you no comment on the March 7 draft resolution to the UNSC that demonstrated to the court of public opinion that Bush and Blair on that date had no intelligence that could prove that Iraq was hiding anything from the inspectors?
It is interesting to note that you have avoided my key point entirely.
Which they are you talking about?
Like someone who tells truths you don’t like.
Hooefully ‘reading N.Y. Times every day’ in general when the President and accomplices in the news media are beating drums for war is a teachable moment. I was reading the UNSC updates on weapons inspections and I was confident that we should go by what the inspectors on the ground determined to be the best course to take. Bush himself committed the USA to that course in November 2002.
My earliest strong suspicions that Bush was lying about WMD in general came from reading a Fox News report that Saddam Hussein’s top official dealing with the UNSC had made an offer in December 2002 to Bush to allow the CIA, FBI and US military WMD experts into Iraq to search alongside UN inspectors to verify or dispute the Iraqis’ claims that they had no weapons.
The official White House response was that they were not interested and that the UN could handle it.
What the hell? Was my immediate reaction. And then you could see how god-awful the Colin Powell list of evidence was and how the UNSC inspectors shot it all down prior to March 2003.
And I was not in the minority in the US wanting the UN to ‘handle it’
Bush said they did to in December 2002 and nearly six in ten Americans polled through February 2003 wanted to give the inspectors more time. Several months of time that they were requesting.
Those three additional months did not fit a White House timeline for invading Iraq, securing a military victory over a symbol of Islamic Evil just in time for the 2004 election campaign.
It just didn’t turn out as planned. The victory was to make the true reason for the war be forgotten. And it probably would have.
You were aware that UN inspections were in operation at the time just before the invasion? If Bush expected to find them in the midst of an invasion, it makes no sense to stop the inspections which would find them without killing anybody to do so.
Bush had to fear that the inspectors would find Iraq to be disarmed. I can easily conclude that Bush had much uncertainty that the weapons were not there.
But that expectation was not not could have been based on intelligence that left no doubt that a meaningful cache would be found.
Evidence used to start a war should be just that evidence. You are clearly defending a notion that the White House was justified starting a war based upon their hunched and hopes. Nevertheless Bush lied directly in an address to the nation that he had intelligence that
Bush and Cheney.
First, I hadn’t heard that about Saddam. I knew his son Usay was a real piece of work though, maybe the two got conflated in the telling of the tale ?
But I’ll take the torturing, murdering bastard who enjoys a nice bit of gruesome cruelty every now and then to get the Little Dictator hard over the soulless creature who’ll calmly and without a hint of emotion say “go” to the violent death of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of an entire country for the foreseeable future if there’s a quick buck in it and* still smugly feels it was seven shades of a good and moral idea*.
The former is an evil bastard, sure, but the latter is a broken monster.
(BTW the cooler parts of Hell are actually deeper down, according to Dante :p. The 9th layer, where Lucifer himself is bound is all about being encased in blocks of ice)
[QUOTE=VarlosZ]
Ok, so if it was known back then to anyone who looked at the evidence, where were the mainstream anti-war advocates saying not just “We can’t be sure about the WMDs” but instead “We *can *be sure that there are (essentially) none”?
[/QUOTE]
As I recall, they were busy being dismissed or shouted down as America haters and cheese-eating surrender monkeys, fuck yeah.
Not even close.
In my self defense:
- U.S. officials weren’t asking my advice; detailed knowledge of Iraq was a much lower priority for me than changing son’s diapers.
- I lived in reclaimed jungle with no satellite TV, nor telephone lines nor home Internet; the nearest Internet, or English-language dailies, were a long drive away. My subscription to NY Times (or rather its Int’l edition, IHT) was almost my only news source, and it reached my mailbox up to a week late.
- Contrary to claims above that “we did it for Israel”, the 2002 IHT had several comments by hard-line Israelis explaining why the aftermath of an invasion would be painful.
Give me some credit: The NY Times published at least two letters by me calling attention to mistakes in the war and its aftermath.
But you are right that support for the War by NY Times demonstrates the absurdity of right-wing claims that American media is “leftist.” Much American media is caught up in right-wing propaganda, just not as batshit-insane as FauxNews.
My post was a response to that as well. As I said, they oversold the evidence: there was nothing “undoubtable” – but that doesn’t mean they didn’t believe it themselves. I did not say that they claimed to find some new piece of evidence specifically after March 7; as far as I can tell that’s just your interpretation. If you want to get into specifics like that, you’re going to have to post a cite every once in a while. It was a long time ago, and I can’t be expected to be as up on the details as someone with your screen name.
In any event, I’m not going to pick apart every single line of your posts.
If they expected to find weapons (they did), and they didn’t have faith in the UN to root them out (they didn’t), and peaceful disarmament of Iraq wasn’t really their primary goal (it wasn’t), then it makes perfect sense stop the inspections and attack: they weren’t willing to wait another year, and they didn’t want to still be fighting in Iraq in the middle of summer.
If they didn’t expect to find any WMDs, then it would have been idiotic to launch an invasion based publicly on that premise (at the least I would have expected them to plant some in that event).
I’m clearly not. Didn’t you accuse me of not reading your posts? I’ve called it a sin, I’ve said they lied about why they did it. Just trying to rein in some hyperbole.