That’s the image that came to mind reading this swill from Glenn Reynolds and former Christian Right architect Marshall Whitman.
Here’s the facts of how we were led into war:
The Bush administration tried to sell the threat of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties, but that didn’t sell well. Then they said we were under threat of WMDs. Many people – including myself – believed Iraq had WMDs of some sort, but it was the coupling of this with the terrorist threat that the Bush administration used as its main justification for the war on Iraq. I did not support the war because I felt that inspections and flyovers had rendered Hussein as a non-threat to America or 
our allies, while the actual terrorists that killed us remain priority one. I tried to be persuaded by the administration’s claims that Al Qaeda worked out of Iraq, but it just wasn’t compelling. When Colin Powell made his presenation to the UN, I said out loud “that’s it?”.
All of this happened at the same time that the weapons inspectors said that Hussein’s WMD capacity had been essentially depleted, and the Bush administration had information in their hands that said as much — and continue to stonewall the release of how they manipulated that data, all the way up to yesterday.
It wasn’t until they thought England might not join in that the Bush administration also tacked on the idea of “liberating” the Iraqi people. This is an argument that could only have worked on Europeans, because us Americans are generally not in the liberating business, especially not when we have a larger threat to take care of (aforementioned terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on George Bush’s watch).
It was only after we had invaded Iraq, defeated the Hussein army, and found that whoops – there were no WMDs to speak of – that folks like Reynolds began yammering on about how great it was that 2,000 Americans died so we could build a school in Tikrit.
And it’s why the war is increasingly unpopular. The Bush administration and their enablers threw s*** against the wall to encourage support for the war, and now that folks have called them on it, they claim that weapons of mass destruction just weren’t a part of the justification for the war and that Democrats claimed they were there all along (pray tell, where is this newfound reverence for Bill Clinton coming from, and why did we see none of it when he was actually our nation’s Commander In Chief?).
When the two groups of people most wrong on the Iraq war – Right wing blogs & the DLC – agree on something, you can be most assured it stinks to high heaven.
UPDATE: Let me add Scott McClellan to the steaming pile of garbage.
Q Isn t your statement in error when you say that the previous administration came to the same conclusion? The previous administration did not come to the same conclusion
MR. McCLELLAN: I said the same conclusion, that Saddam Hussein
Q to intervene militarily.
MR. McCLELLAN: that Saddam Hussein s regime was a threat.
Q But they didn t go to war.
Q But isn t the point of the
MR. McCLELLAN: You want to talk about their comments? Let s talk about their comments.
Q But the point of what they raised yesterday is the President s decision to move militarily into Iraq. Are you saying
MR. McCLELLAN: There s no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein s Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us President Clinton, remarks to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff, February 17, 1998.
Q But he didn t take us to war.
Q But isn t the specific issue
MR. McCLELLAN: The conclusion they came to was that Saddam Hussein s regime is a threat and a destabilizing force in a dangerous part of the world.
Q But he didn t take us to war.
I saw a link on another blog to an undergraduate thesis where the researcher found that there were no less than 27 reasons enunciated for war at one time or another. Anyone have that handy?
To defenders of this war, I’d ask this: if you are so sure that the decision to invade Iraq was the right decision, that freedom is on the march and schools are being painted, etc., then why the opposition to an investigation that seeks to uncover the deliberations that led us to go to war.
In other words, if the cause to invade Iraq was so noble, why not uncover the truth that should, if you’re right, give us naysayers insight into what the Administration was thinking? What are you afraid of?
Remember, any given Clinton official speaks for the entire administration. But any given Bush administration official speaks only for himself, especially when he criticizes the Busheviks.
Amen to that, Oliver. The administration never would have gotten the Congressional resolution without the threat of nukes. Period. This was a war of choice sold as a war of neccessity. Everyone knows it, and that’s why Bush’s numbers are as bad as they are. The con’s attempts to rewrite history (OMG HE MENTIONED FREEDOME LIKKE THREE TIMES BEFORE WE INVADED!!1!1) aren’t washing with anyone anymore.
Any threat that N. Korea is now, belongs at the feet of Bill Clinton for the most part.
It has been five years since Clinton has been President, i.e., the current President has had five years to sort them out. What, exactly, is the statute of limitations on what can be blamed on the man?
Clinton didn’t take us to war because Saddam was being “contained.” After 9/11 we recognized (Bush, Powell, Clinton (both of them), John Kerry, etc) that allow Saddam to remain “contained” while siphoning off billions from Oil-For-Food money was not a good idea.
Oh, and it was the Left that was decrying the sanctions and the continued “containment” of Iraq prior to Iraqi Freedom. And it was US troops in Saudi Arabia that were used to contain Iraq that put OBL’s panties in a bind.
Oliver – Get with the program… radical Islam and dicatorships in the Middle East Safety for the American people. Democracies do not attack each other (with armies or terrorists), precisely because they learn the art of compromise. It’s time that the Middle East join the 20th 21st century.
Regards,
St Wendeler
So, in your mind, it’s better to declare that another country is a threat to national security and then … do nothing?!?
No wonder the country doesn’t trust you with National Security.
To make the case that Bush “lied”, you have to stipulate that Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Albright, et. ALL were “lying” too. To say otherwise is nothing short of delusional.
“The Bush administration tried to sell the threat of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties”
Umm, actually you are grossly exaggerating. Cheney said there ‘ties’. Thats it. And he was right. Democrats and Republicans voted tog go to war for multiple reasons – one of which was WMDs. You can try and try to rewrite history, but it wont work. There is a sane argument to be made against (and for) the war, but not the paranoid one so prevalent of the left.
“Hofstadter argued that sometimes people who are dispossessed, who feel their country has been taken away from them and their kind, develop an angry, suspicious and conspiratorial frame of mind. It is never enough to believe their opponents have committed honest mistakes or have legitimate purposes; they insist on believing in malicious conspiracies.”
Dugger , At Your Service
And if Clinton, et al, did lie, how does it get Bush off the hook?
We have plenty of countries that are a threate to national security. We didn’t go to war with North Korea, which has nukes, or with Iran, whose WMD program is at its beginning, or Saudi Arabia, where many of the 9/11 hijackers came from.
This is your idea of “doing something”? Spinning the intelligence so that we could attack the country that didn’t have WMDs?
Exaggerated, hyped, overstated, stretched, are what I usually say. The lies come in when Bush says “we know,” when they refer to Saddam’s highly questionable programs as an “immediate threat,” and when they go after Hans Blix and the UN. If we’re going to make sweeping claims about the country’s trust, look to how a majority thinks Bush was dishonest in his presentation of the WMD threat in the run up to war. A majority certainly doesn’t trust Bush on the issue any more. Will they ever trust Republicans again?
Too bad it turned out Saddam was being contained after all. Too bad Hans Blix was right about that. Too bad Iraq is turning into another Lebanon. What a fucking waste.
Saddam was so contained, Dick Cheney wanted to business with him. As the post war has shown, Hussein was much less of a threat to us than the insurgents currently are to our troops. But its easy for the right to MSU from the comfort of your desktop.
Truth just broke Godwin’s law. And his analysis doesn’t fly, because Hitler wasn’t being “contained,” he was being “appeased.”
Did Clinton offer up Israel to Saddam, the way Europe allowed Germany to have Poland? No. Not in the slightest.
And how did Saddam not comply with inspections, in the months before the invasion? How could he have, anyhow, when the response to Blix and company from Washington was “You’re wrong. From Baghdad, you can’t possibly see what we see from the White House. He’s hiding them very, very well from you. After we invade, we’ll find this huge stockpile. In a talking cave, shaped like the head of a tiger.”
Oliver, the only flaw I see in your argument is that we dont know what Saddam really had. He very well could have had WMDs and moved or sold them abroad. And regarding claims that Saddam was “contained” by the Clinton Admin, I might refer you to another little conflict in the 1940s… when the World allowed Hitler to take over 3 countries then decided that containment was merited. Regardless of the fact that he had WMDs or not, and I believe he did, Removing Saddam was good for the world and the region. If anyone mislead the World about Saddam having WMDs, it was Saddam whether thru pride or his scared, lying-to-stay-alive scientists. He was the implementor of his own destruction. Saddam should have complied with inspections and he would still be the leader of IRAQ today.
You are the one grossly exaggerating Dugger. Cheney, Bush, and others are all on the record as saying that Al Qaeda was working with Hussein. Not that an Al Qaeda operative once hung out in northern Iraq beyond Hussein’s control, but that the two groups were pals. The primary reason we went to war with Iraq was WMDs, and not out of an altruistic desire to “free” the Iraqi people.
Is it prudent to believe in honest mistakes when your opponents repeatedly promise a close examination of the facts and keep making excuses for not delivering?
And OW, I have to disagree with you on this:
WMD were the rationale offered to convince the American people that a preemptive strike was justified. The real reasons remain a mystery.
No kidding, it’s simply demented to go back and review the body of speeches and talk show appearances by administration officials and not conclude that far and away the most dwelled upon reason was 1)WMD, particularly nukes, and 2) ties to al-Qaeda — all this really being one reason: Saddam will give his WMD to al-Qaeda. It’s not like we’re arguing about shit that happened in the 20s. This was during my lifetime, when I was reading the papers, watching the talk shows, parsing the state of the union and the Cincinatti speeches. When the fuck are you cons going to stop blatantly lying about history we all witnessed? And as for Hofstaedter, he was writing about conservatives who believed the world, liberal elites, the UN, and the media were all conspiring against them. Now those paranoid conspiratorial weirdoes are called “the Republican establishment.” Little Green footballs, Drudge, and Instapundit are calling…
Some food for thought, from this post:
Now the prevailing “line” coming from Washington is how U.S. troops are fighting to establish “democracy” in Iraq. So let’s assume (hold on to your hats, this is going to be a big assumption) that everything in Iraq is going grand. Milk and honey, candy and flowers, freedom and prosperity are flowing freely in a democratic Iraq. Electricity, water, jobs, and health care are just around the corner. So here’s the question — who on earth gave George Bush (or the U.S. Congress, if you think they had any say in the matter) the right to say that bringing those rewards to Iraq was worth tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and hundreds of thousands of casualties? Besides for Ahmad Chalabi, what Iraqi asked them, or gave them permission, to make that exchange? By what moral code does one group of people have the right to condemn tens of thousands of another group of people to death, even in the supposed service of improving the lives of that second group?
Not by any moral code I subscribe to, that’s for sure.
The cons arguments are typical ends justifying the means. You know that Bush could have all done the world a favor and just said, “I don’t take to kindly to that Sadd-am, I think we should get rid of im’”. Of course, noting his impecable oratory skills, Texas bravado, and his “connected” aura in debates, surely somebody would side with him? This fiasco is so childish. My students at school have more patience and restraint than Good Ole boy George not to mention ethics. After Reid and the Dems call continuos closed sessions and effectively cause the good doctor Frist to actually diagnose his fellow cons failing tickers(only this time, he can actually be there to see it in person…oh joy!) Look I will give the rest of the ego bruised Republicans on this site more ways to rationalize the war:) :
1. Its been close to a decade and if we don’t kick somebodies ass, then the (insert current annoyance)win
2. If we didn’t liberate the Iraqies, then how would the rest of the world see that America’s democracy kicks so much ass! They don’t know what they are missing
3. If we don’t deal with Iraq now… I mean Syria, China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Africa… damn do we have that many people to kill until our country gains total enlightenment or for us christians, deliverance?
I look for Bushco to have a new reason by the end of the year for why we went to Iraq, of course he could just invade another country and do that whole ADD shell game motif. Nothing lifts the American peoples spirits like more dead Non-Americans and in Con talk American sacrificies “for the cause of freedom”
Something like the moral code that allowed us to reduce Europe to rubble — twice in one century.
Jeez, who was it that brought up Hitler? I thought on lefties made those comparisons. Anyway, both Condi and Colin stated publicly in 2001 that Saddam Hussein posed no meaningful threat to the U.S. or to his neighbors. Were they lying in 2001, or when they started pulling ‘facts’ out of their asses a couple of years later?
The allegations that Saddam “might” have had WMD were dismissed long before the war. Also, Iraq was complying with the inspections; it was the CIA under Clinton and Bush that was violating the terms of the UN mandate by attempting to use the inspections as cover for espionage. The inspections were working, so save that bullsh-t for LGF.
Also, the reason Hitler’s Germany ran roughshod over Europe is because the militaries of France and Britain were equipped and deployed to ‘defend’ their colonial holdings against the less technologically advanced indigenous brown people. France and Britain ‘appeased’ Hitler because they didn’t want to risk their ill-gotten overseas booty in order to face down a local tyrant. Toss in Stalin’s utter stupidity, and you’ve got WWII. Not to mention that Germany’s war machine could never have been built without massive investment from abroad, including from the U.S. Hitler had a lot of wealthy friends in the Land of the Free (Henry Ford and Prescott Bush, to name two).
Conversely, Saddam Hussein was surrounded, hounded, and contained. His military was a joke, and his fearsome arsenal of WMD a memory. The only reason he stayed alive is because he was able to do a lot of business (much of it illegal) with Big Oil and its representatives and friends (like Dick Cheney). The reason the Bushies went after Saddam is not because he was a danger. They went after him because he was weak and defenseless. That’s why Rummy ‘went to war with the Army he had.’ The Bushies, chickenhawk geniuses that they are, thought they could conquer Iraq with an underequipped skeleton crew.
We all know how that’s turned out. A couple of bogus elections, thousands of dead Iraqis, civil war, and 2,000 dead U.S. troops.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BITCHES!
I think they’ve come up with a solution as to what to do with detainees after they are done with them, or if they are going to testify against an abuser.
FORT BLISS, Texas – A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in
Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday.
Escaped, never to be seen again. (Since July 10th)
“No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent – that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons.”
” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
“This is about imminent threat.”
” White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
“Absolutely.”
” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an “imminent threat,” 5/7/03
“There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.”
” President Bush, 10/7/02
How did the left lose the “immediate threat” argument? Rumsfeld said that, verbatim, to Congress. You want a cite, revisionist?
The left lost this argument some time ago – same as “immediate threat”. Cheney noted ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. There were ties. A simple Google will prove that. Your paranoia, eveidently electro-jolted into consciousness by the Libby’s apparent mis-recollection of his conversations with Russert et al, has you off and running, turning those ties or links Cheney spoke of, into a huge false conspiracy. OK by me. Its just leftists feeding other leftists paranoia. Keep going with it and we get another president. meanwhile, in other worlds, adults are talking about the pros and cons of the iraq war.
Dugger
Libby is going to court today, and apparently will not do a perp walk. More country club treatment for white- collar indictees.
Since the same lawyer who represented Mark Rich is with Libby, all you conservatives who were screaming about the injustice will notably be silent as Libby is allowed to keep his passport. A flight risk? You be the judge.
error. with Libby should be just …Libby
TomY,
From Spinsanity (taking on the whole issue):
This evidence is paltry, however, when compared to the times when Bush specifically argued that Iraq was an enemy for which the concept of “imminent threat” was insufficient.
From Bush State of the Union:
“Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.”
If you want to argue Fleisher was uncareful or too brief in a response or that Rummy hinted at things, fine, but rather than a deep dark secret the open, nationally public words of the preseidnt suggests otherwise.
Dugger
Dugger,
I am dissappointed that you fall for these rationalizations. Notice how Bush and company have said crap like “some have said” which sets up his classic retorts. An example: “some say that preferential parking for women in parking decks will makes things safer, but I cannot side with pussies that will infect and demolish our freedom.” As a side note, I am interested what post in Spinsanity you are using. I believe that site is defunct? Not matter. I think this issue is so important to Cons because without it, all other policies crumble underneath. Is Iran an iminent threat? Thier weapons programs were far more advanced than Iraq’s. What about North Korea? Can I venture to say thier weapons programs are more advanced than Iraq? Hell they could hit the West Coast right? Please explain how the left lost this argument, because every single day seems to only bolster the Lefts argument to the point that moderates and conservatives won’t touch this topic anymore.
WW,
I fell for no rationalizations (is your current position yours or have you ‘fallen’ for somebody’s rationalizations?). Spinsanity is defunct, but for a while they were a decent mostly non-partisan source for debunking spin by both sides – the kind of source one points to and says “see a non-biased source agrees with me”. BTW, Spinsanity didn’t completely absolve the Rs on this issue, but by and large says the major charge is false.
Iran – like Iraq, no (if we are talking about ability to inflict major damage on US homeland – Israel may be diffrent). North Korea – probably.
You’re confused a little. Bush said that Iraq was not an imminent threat. So yes, a few other countries probably have more strike capability against us than Saddamite Iraq. But the Admin argument was that Saddam was so murderous and vicious, that we couldn’t afford to wait for him to get (if he didn’t already have) various types of WMDs or weapons that could strike us. This, however, was just one of many reasons Repubs and Democrats voted to go to war. I suppose the intelligence assessment of Kim Jung Il in NK is that he is less inclined to act precipitously outside Korea than Saddam outside of Iraq. In addition, a war with NK would be much more costly (lives) to us.
Dugger
I asked about Spinsanity, because I used to enjoy that site but I thought it was defunct. Saddam was the most murderous? He is a dispicable murderous dictator, but is he the only one? THis argument is filled with paranoia. Kim Jung Il and countless other dictators are just as depraved, so how do they have more incentive to attack us? And why isn’t this still about terrorism? In that case, we get back to the this boards classic about Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran etc….. This whole “war” is neverending and ridiculous just like its justification.