Count Robert Cox among the new batch of Clinton admirers from the right. They’re coming out of the woodwork! Bob makes the ludicrous claim that Operation Desert Fox was a “war”.
I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Bob claims that a four day mission to degrade Hussein’s weapons capabality is at the same level of 150,000 troops invading and occupying Iraq by deposing its leaders and fighting an ongoing insurgency.
From the Department of Defense’s description of Desert Fox:
To strike military and security targets in Iraq that contribute to Iraq’s ability to produce, store, maintain and deliver weapons of mass destruction.
President Clinton was right to degrade Iraq’s WMD capabilities via airstrikes, and if President Bush had authorized a similar action I would have supported it. But he didn’t. He pushed us into a war (something more than four days of missile strikes, Bob) that has left us responsible for Iraq and led to the deaths of over 2,000 soldiers.
I know the right doesn’t enjoy facts, but there you go.
So you would have supported sending missiles and manned aircraft into Iraq in a four-day campaign over faulty intelligence?
OW,
OK.
Dugger
What other ways were there, Oliver?
Lets try to imagine the situation today had we not gone to war and deposed Saddam.
We know now that the sanctions regime agaisnt Saddam was a joke (Oil-for-Food). The Russians, French, and Chinese were pushing for the UN to entirely drop sanctions, and there is no reason this would not have happened. We also know from the Duelfer report that Saddam was intent on rebuilding his WMD capability, including nuclear. With sanctions gone, Saddam would have been left “unsupervised” and free to do what he wanted. From his past we know that Saddam was aggressivley expansionist, and a perennial miscalculator. The odds are very high that we would have had to face him again at some point down the road. Only then, Saddam would have been much better armed.
Our choice was facing a relatively weak Saddam now, or a stronger and better armed one later. WE made the right choice.
scratch: Yes.
Dugger: Yes, I believed up until the war that Iraq had some form of WMDs, but as I’ve said a million times, we had a ton of ways we could have dealt with that besides invading and occupying the country.
“President Clinton was right to degrade Iraq s WMD capabilities”
So in 1998, Iraq had WMDs. And the Clinton military operation against Iraq merely “degraded” that capability. That suggests its quite possible Iraq still had some vestige of WMDs that Clinton’s military strike missed or, at least, that if Saddam could have WMDs in 1998, how hard would it be for him to reinstitute the capability a few years later. I think a self-criticism session is called for. The party ideological purity board awaits.
Dugger, (Oh, and Mr. Rove said to tell you the check is in the mail)
Now THAT is a foreign policy agenda that breaks new ground: “We think all our future diplomatic efforts will suck, so we’re going to blow something up right now!”
You seem to have answered your own question about NoKo. And the answer is because they have nukes. The proper time for military action was during our holiday from history of the 1990’s. Unfortunately, we sent Carter instead.
Its the perfect example of why we can not allow Iran to get nukes.
Not a question of diplomacy. Question of forward thinking.
Then why, nudnik, did we go after the least armed of our current enemies? Our timetable would probably suggest that North Korea, which has nuclear weapons and is more easily capable of reaching our shores with them, was the bigger threat?
Why is diplomacy good enough in that case?
Better to fight on your timeframe than on the enemy’s.
Yes. As in, “We’re going to have to kill us some Eye-rackys sooner or later. Better get to it.”
nudnik said
“What other ways were there, Oliver?”
The only way ow and the rest of the lefty clowns here would have supported US military action in Iraq is if the president had a D after his name, as opposed to the R we have now (and for a long time to come if the left does not come to its senses and get off the anti-US kick).
Bush could have taken Saddam out with a stragecally placed cruise missile right on top of his head. Then Bush could make an appeal to all the other leaders in that part of the world to clean up their own countries of terrorists or they might get the same type of punishment from the US.
When we did capture Saddam, we should have hung him in downtown Baghdad immediately. Instead, he is still alive 2 years later waiting for his fair trial. While our military men and women are still dying everyday. And this war is costing us taxpayers 1 billion dollars a day.
If Clinton had done what Bush has done, the Republicans would have never stood for it. They would be wanting to impeach Clinton for doing what Bush has done.
“a four day mission to degrade Hussein s weapons capabality”
It wasn’t even that according to Mark J. Conversino, a squadron commander during Desert Fox -
“Our knowledge of Saddam’s WMD stockpiles and programs remained frozen in time from 1998 until 2003, since Desert Fox failed to induce Iraq to cooperate with UNSCOM. Indeed, Saddam declared victory–and rightly so, in my view. The sanctions, such as they were, remained, but the inspectors were gone and the tyrant remained securely in power. And for those Dems who claim that Clinton “got it all” (Saddam’s WMD, not Monica) during Desert Fox, they should know that we purposely avoided targeting what we thought were “known” stockpiles. We feared the release of chemical agents and bio toxins that would cause massive collateral damage. Of the 100 targets, 11 were directly WMD-related, and they were nearly all tied to his missile delivery systems.”
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/conversino.html
Wait, wait, wait. So the reason we won’t invade North Korea is because they have WMDs.
Didn’t we invade Iraq because they had WMDs?
Because it sounds like you’re saying that we invaded them because they didn’t have WMDs. Which we didn’t know, supposedly, before we invaded.
Your logic doesn’t represent earth logic.
So in 1998, Iraq had WMDs.
No evidence whatsoever to support such a claim.
The reason our last democratically-elected President struck Iraq was because they were infering with his clearly stated policy of containment. As part of our containment policy, we had total air dominance over Iraq. Iraq ‘painted’ several of our aircraft from A-A batteries; we took those facilities out.
“The reason our last democratically-elected President struck Iraq was because they were infering with his clearly stated policy of containment”
Jade, not to quarrel with your always reasonable and never blindly doctrinaire responses, but I don’t think Bush was worried about any ‘inferences’ regarding ‘his’ policy of containment.
Dugger, Scratching his Head