Ok, let’s say the Hawks are 100% right and that Saddam Hussein must be taken out of office at any cost.
Why did George W. Bush wait until a couple of months before the midterm elections, and after hope of capturing Osama Bin Ladin floundered to say “we need to attack Iraq”?
Seems to me he could have made this an issue when he was first inaugrated into office. What compelling new developments have happened in the past few months that make Iraq more a threat than they were two years ago?
So, if Bush is so terribly concerned about our national security, why did he wait to push the matter?
Perhaps it took them a year to build up consumer awareness of the product’s possibilities to the point that they felt it was feasible to launch production ?
Well, if you saw his speech he gave, he offered plenty of evidence that Saddam is a threat. He explained that… um… well, something. He talked about Saddam’s “Nucular Holy Warriors,” which is plenty odd, since Iraq’s regime is secular. A ruler like Saddam wouldn’t stand for a powerful religious political faction in his country.
Bush waited until he could market a war in Iraq to benefit Congressional campaigns—that’s what the urgency was. His urgency, you’ll notice, has dropped off some since then. Oh, he’s still pushing for war, but he’s calmed down considerably. President Rove got what he wanted.
Of course, if anyone has access to the Bush administration’s sudden offering of “proof,” I might just change my mind. And I might also change my toothpaste to Tony Blair’s brand.
Maureen Dowd, in her column yesterday, made the assertion that, at least in terms of public utterances, the words “Osama bin Laden” had not passed the President’s lips in four months. IIRC, she’s right.
I think that’s a rather telling point. It wasn’t that long ago that OBL was “priority number one”. Gotta get him, gonna get him. Our Leader loves being seen in assertive, macho poses making flat statements like that. Didn’t happen. Viewed in that light, the Afghan campaign was a flop. As much as was plausible, public attenton was focused on the removal of the Taliban, skillfully evading the original intent. But it was over, there was nobody there left to bomb. Public attention began to drift toward certain unseemly subjects.
Of course, it should be noted, in the interests of fairness, that the existence of intercontinental drone aircraft armed with nuclear anthrax had not been confirmed at that point. Certain less than loyal elements have asserted that this is “embroidering the truth”. This blurs the distinction between “embroidering” and “making up out of whole cloth”.
Well, first of all, Sept.11 happened. That makes some folks believe that Iraq poses a greater threat than it did two years ago.
But here is a press conference from February of 2001, 7 months before the NY tragedy, where Bush states:
[Here](http://209.50.252.70p en/articles/archives/00000010.htm) and here are articles from December of 2001 which make Bushs attitude toward Iraq abundantly clear nine months before the election:
You can agree or disagree with Bush on the necessity of action against Iraq, but suggesting that it is only an election ploy is, at best, silly. He has made his position clear all along.
The reason why Iraq has recently moved to center stage is simply that our first priority, the situation in Afghanistan, has become relatively stable.
His regime isn’t entirely secular, you know. While Ba’ath ideology may be, take note of that Qu’ran Saddam made with his own blood, or perhaps the “Mother of All Battles” government built mosque in downtown Baghdad (3rd largest in the world, IIRC).
Yesterday, as in Nov. 20? She’s using Nexus wrong. Try just “osama.” Here he is on the 18th.
As to your other, equally factually incorrect “point,” administration officials said from the very start of the Afghanistan campaign that it was about more than getting Osama, that it was about breaking up Al Qaeda. ISTR pentagon officials going on and on about ‘maybe we’ll get him, maybe we won’t, but we’re gonna break up al qaeda.’
Oh? So Al Queda is broken up? Well, great! I feel better already!
Said it then say it now: the 9/11 attack was a criminal act, criminals should not be pursued by armies and air forces, but by police. We didn’t accomplish d for diddly squat in Afghanistan except to make a miserable and Godforsaken place more of the same.
“Well, we disrupted thier training camps!” Well, whoop-de-fucka-doo! At least then we knew where the hell they were!
And now, the big operatives being captured? Are being captured by police, intelligence and snitches. Just like we said in the first place.
We are further reassured by Mr. Woodward that Our Leader operates on “gut instinct” (as seen on 60 Minutes). Well, at least he’s playing from his strong suit. No doubt his revelation that he hates Kim Il Jong will go a long way to calming a jittery world. We’re just lucky that Vlad “the Impaler” Putin didn’t launch a nuclear strike when he was called “Pooty Poot”!
Luckily for us our fate lies in his hands, rather than President-elect Gore. You know, all stiff, wooden and intellectual. Oh, happy day.
So you think that letting OBL and his terror network stay in place so they could plan more attacks is a good idea because we would know where they were located?
Well, when the criminals are in a different country with a Government that hides and aides the criminals the local cop really can’t just go arrest someone. When another country attacks the US the only response is war.
At the same time the US took out the base for OBL and his sick little friends.
First, who exactly is ‘we’?
Second, the people being arrested are not in Afganistan. The fact that OBL’s terrorist network is spread through out the world does not invalidate attacking OBL’s homebase. In fact cutting off the head of the network is a damned good idea.
[QUOTE]
We are further reassured by Mr. Woodward that Our Leader operates on “gut instinct” (as seen on 60 Minutes). Well, at least he’s playing from his strong suit. No doubt his revelation that he hates Kim Il Jong will go a long way to calming a jittery world. We’re just lucky that Vlad “the Impaler” Putin didn’t launch a nuclear strike when he was called “Pooty Poot”!
Luckily for us our fate lies in his hands, rather than President-elect Gore. You know, all stiff, wooden and intellectual. Oh, happy day.
[QUOTE]
I trust Bush’s gut reation way more than I trust your rant that has no logic behind it.
Bush and his gut reaction: We will hunt down terrorists and kill them if we have to in order to make the US and the world safe.
Your rant: Well, Bush and the military weren’t perfect, they didn’t capture all of OBL’s men so Bush must be wrong. Attacking Afganistan was meaningless and we should just let the cops deal with this. Oh, and Gore would have done better.
My father is much farther to the right than I am, and listens to a lot of right-wing talk radio. One of the shows he told me about had some military person on it claiming to know that Bush plans to make an assult on Iraq in December if the weapons inspection has any hitches, and that there is already ground assult weaponry and personal gathered in some corded off section of Kuwait that the media has been banned from. The person could be a crackpot, probably is, but if he’s not I guess we’ll see how serious Bush is about this thing in a couple of weeks.
What I find scary is the idea that many people wont even consider the possibility that the existence of a worldwide terrorist organization dedicated to carrying out large scale attacks against civilian targets without rhyme or reason is a good reason to reconsider the way military force should be used.
I understand that people might be suspicious of Bush and his motives. But at least on principle, shouldn’t it at least be plausible that a new kind of enemy demands consideration of new sorts of responses. Sure, police can handle things, and that is how we’ve conventionally delt with them: but every new event in the world should be a time to re-evaluate the rationales behind convention.
He said he was going to get 'em and he meant it, you just weren’t paying attention. We will also be going to war with North Korea (hey, it’s been 50 years) and Iran. And he told you this too.
I seem to have heard something along the lines of “overthrowing the Taliban,” which, in itself, is a noble and humanitarian act. We liberated 20 million people from a group of armed religious extremists. Not a bad day’s work.
Bush said he wanted Saddam gone on October 11, 2000, during the second presidential debate. I can’t get the link to work, but here is the address for a transcript of the debate from C-Span:
But not actually the main purpose, either. The enemy was, and is, Osama bin laden in particular, Al Qaeda in general, and terrorism itself longer-term. Helping the Afghan resistance overthrow the Taliban made the world a better place, sure, although the extent to which Afghanistan has thereby become a paradise is debatable.
But there has been depressingly little apparent progress against the real enemies, hasn’t there?
It depends. We’ve killed hundreds of al-Qaida members (including at least one top leader) and arrested hundreds more (including at LEAST 3 top leaders). Bin Laden is on the run, or dead, and much of their funds have been stopped. More than 60 of their camps have also been destroyed.
In other words, literally every factual assertion you made in your prior post has been shown to be incorrect, so you’ll just make new incorrect assertions.
If you’ll recall (you won’t – see below) we asked the “police,” such as they were, in Afghanistan to hand over al Qaeda. When they failed, then we sent in the military. You think maybe we should have dispatched NYPD to Kabul?
Has it occured to you even for a nanosecond that perhaps the police, intelligence and snitches are picking al Qaeda guys up in other countries because we made their prior abode an unsafe place to be?
We’ll be chasing these guys for years. Some the military will get, some intelligence will get, some will get picked up on a warrant when they get pulled over for running a stop sign. From the very beginning President Bush and his people have said that this war will be fought on many fronts, with many weapons. Military, intelligence, financial, diplomatic, etc. No one has asserted otherwise.
But you continue to assert that people have so asserted. You are so addicted to hating the president and resenting the election outcome that you have lost all capacity for factual analysis.
Well, Manny thanks for the free psychoanalysis. I’ll think that over. Ponder, ponder. Nope. Ain’t so. Turns out I’m the very embodiment of clear reason and unbiased probity.
You suggest that a threat dispersed is a threat diminished. The strategic nuance of that evades me.