’)
Skepticism Over Iraq Haunts U.S. Iran Policy
Much as the Vietnam Syndrome dogged the foreign and military policies of a generation of U.S. presidents, the Iraq Syndrome has become an ever-present undercurrent in Washington. “Everyone is reliving the whole thing again in everything we do,” said one administration official, referring to the tumultuous months surrounding the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
“In the old days, if the U.S. government had come out and said, ‘We’ve got this, here’s our assessment,’ reasonable people would have taken it at face value,” the official said of the Baghdad briefing. “That’s never going to happen again.”
Iranians Aid Iraq Militants, Bush Alleges
The president spent much of the hour-long televised session in the East Room addressing skepticism about his government’s assertions regarding Iran and fears of a widening regional conflict. “The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing [explosives] is preposterous,” Bush said. Repeating a reporter’s question, he added: “Does this mean you’re trying to have a pretext for war? No. It means I’m trying to protect our troops.”
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people.
Clinton Warns Bush About Action in Iran
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton warned President Bush on Wednesday not to take any military action against Iran without getting congressional approval first.
“If the administration believes that any, any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority,” Clinton said in a Senate speech.
The most powerful tool of the U.S. presidency is moral authority. It is both a boon and burden to the leader of the free world that his or her words have such amazing strength. But because of the Iraq war, because of the mistakes, lies, and cooked intelligence the administration presented to us and stovepiped through the press, they have squandered that moral authority. The world does not believe us, and neither do the American people save for a few straggling dead-ender conservatives who subsist on a circle jerk of disinformation among themselves. We’ve fallen a long way, and we’re much less safer and secure because of it.
Feb. 14, 2007: Moqtada al Sadr, leader of the insurgent Mahdi army, has fled Iraq and is now living in IRAN.
Oooooh … I question the timing!!
I don’t believe a thing these people say. Including Sadr being in Iran.
As a famous fool once said, “Fool me once, shame on me: fool me twice, um err, um uh, won’t be fooled again”. (smirk smirk)
“The most powerful tool of the U.S. presidency is moral authority. ”
Silliness. ” Mr Hussein II, I am moral Pres J C Carter II and I demand you stop committing genocide against brown-skinned peoples.”
“You have no army, no navy, and no AF and no will to use them if you did. Mr Carter you are an immoral infidel. Please to kiss my *ss and get out of the way. I’ve got Kurds to gas.”
Heed the lessons of 1848.
Oliver how do you continue to ignore the fact that all of western europe agreed with the intelligence assesments pre-war? How about the UN, they agreed as well. “The world” help to develop the faulty intel.
We’re less safe and secure? Huh? That is pure baloney….
Hey Doper, put together that list for us of Iraqi WmD claims Bush & Co. made that were true.
You keep babbling about European countries assessments that mean nothing, because the European countries you are talking about all were waiting for the UN inspection process to finish.. A process that was showing all those assessments (if there were any current ones) to be garbage. On top of which much of those European powers you keep referring to pretty much laughed at the evidence Bush & Co. were presenting.
Bush has ZERO credibility. The world just doesn’t believe him or trust him anymore. Except maybe Blair and Howard who hitched their wagons to Bush with the sinvasion.
It’s funny how wingers always point to the gassing of the Kurds of the greatest of Saddam’s many crimes and as proof that action against him was utterly necessary, while forgetting that this happened during the administration of that most manliest and moral of men, Saint Ronald Reagan. Who, of course, with his strong moral convictions and massive military, proceeded to jack shit about it.
None of those European countries aside from England decided to invade and occupy Iraq though, did they? None of them told their citizens and the citizens of the world that there was an immediate threat of a dictator working with a terrorist organization that had to be stopped ASAP.
“Heed the lessons of 1848.”
Okay, I’ll admit, I have no idea WTF you are talking about. What happened in 1848 that’s relevant to this discussion?
Start of the Gold Rush?
1st Women’s Rights convention
Beginning of Chinese Immigration
Telegraph Lines growing
2nd Republic of France
Italian War of Independence
Franz Josef I
Election of Taylor
Oregon Territory
Slavery abolished in all French territories
Wisconsin becomes 30th state
Gotta be the Gold Rush of 1848 he’s talking about.
I don’t know. I’m thinking it’s Wisconsin becomes 30th state.
I had completely forgotten from high school history the Mad Mullahs of Milwaukee and the infamous Cheese Strike of 1846.
Rheinhard: Reagan’s administration was responsible for the gassing of the Kurds, that’s why he did nothing about it. It’s also why the likes of Pedro do not, ever, get to use it as leverage.
“None of those European countries aside from England decided to invade and occupy Iraq though, did they? None of them told their citizens and the citizens of the world that there was an immediate threat of a dictator working with a terrorist organization that had to be stopped ASAP.”
Nope, they didn’t. They were too busy counting their “oil-for-food” bribe money. But what do you say about a group of people who say “This has got to stop!” for over a dozen years, and do nothing about it?
Democrat I guess. The democrats continue to scream that the war is immoral, yet refuse to shut off the funding spigot…why is that?
Oh and Nimrod, so you would have been in favor of invading Iraq during Reagan’s tenure then?
Do you remember why he gassed the Kurds, Pedro? Remember that? When they were trying to mount an insurrection at the behest of our government-with love and kisses from the CIA? But when it came to back them up, the US was no where to be found.
Absloutely, Saddam’s retribution was pretty fucking heavy-handed, but we had a hand in it.
While I don’t think we should have invaded then, we certainly could have stopped selling him shit to kill his citizenry with.
But we didn’t. Why is that, you think?
Pedro, you stupid asshole.
Pedo misses the point that the UN was doing something about the WMDs they were on the ground with inspectors, a perfect opportunity to check all that US intelligence, and they did and said all the US intelligence was garbage. So much for Pedo’s argument.
Nobody cares about WMDs, come on, that’s old news. The super really real reason (seriously this time) we invaded Iraq is because we wanted to free all of the innocent people from Saddams evil ways. I mean he was killing more people every day then are being killed now. We are helping spread freedom and democracy throughout the middle east. WMDs have nothing to do with anything (chirp…chirp…)
BTW, I hope the warmongers who like to babble on and on about how many people Saddam was killing were so supportive about helping out Croatia and Bosnia when they were getting massacred. Oh no wait, Clinton was president, they didn’t care about other countries freedoms back then…
Incidently, how much money were the French and German and other countries directly receiving from this oil for food bribery thing Pedo is talking about?
It seems there were alot of Texas oil companies involved also before Bush decided to invade and just take over the oil.
How many folks are dying each day in Darfur? Oh, that’s right…they aren’t brown, are they?
Sistani is the Persian Shite, al Sadr is not and has shown no particular love of Iran. This story is not impossible but suspect
You need to heed the lessons of 2003: Bush is a liar and has no credibility.
It doesn’t matter what intel thought because there were inspectors on the ground who were discovering that all the intel was wrong and Bush knew it. That’s why he had to rush into war. The intel now maintains that Bush’s war has strengthened the ideology of radical fundamentalists and anti-Americans everywhere. Thanks, Dubya!
I presume you are outraged by those American companies making bucks on Oil For Food and by stopping something you mean the illegal no-fly zones and sanctions? Since Saints Raygun and Rumdum armed Saddam and supported his war on Iran, are you now going to think of him as a martyr of Bush’s fiasco?
Ah, yes, they are.
Wrong kind of brown.
My family have a term for watching 24: brown people = evil, black people = good.
Curtis = black. The Mummy = brown. Dr. Bashir = brown with aspirations.
Oil for food scandal? Ha, it takes Bush’s buddies to really run a scam. Millions of dollars’ worth of oil is stolen daily in Iraq because of the absence of oil meters. The CPA and the current (Bush buddy Ahmed Chalani) oil minister seem to like it this way.
frame
As Eurpopean history buffs know, the Revolutions of 1848 were characterized by zealous idealism. Idealism that was squashed by power from the ‘barrel of a gun’ – the Concert of Vienna powers. The actions of the Concert of Vienna (major powers suppressing small uprisings post Napolean) probably led to the longest sustained period of peace in Euro history.
Dugger,
I am afraid I still have no idea what lessons you draw from 1848, and I am concerned you really don’t understand the history of the period very well, particularly in that you misspelled Napoleon, who by 1848 had been dead for 30 years. What is the point you are trying to make?
“As Eurpopean history buffs know …”
Um, got anything from, you know, the Middle East? Maybe that might be a little more helpful …
Read z. ‘Post Napolean’.
BTW there was more than one Napolean of importance.
The lesson of 1848 was that hardware beat software.
Napoleon. And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.
Dugger, if you in your dictatorial fantasies are just looking for times when brutal regimes suppressed dissent with the heavy hand of military hardware, you need not limit your value to some obscure reference to 1848. Stalin managed Eastern Europe with similar tactics. This is hardly the model most of us hope to see employed here on the home front or wish to export abroad.
nimmer
Napolean was the name he took after his diet.
(Careful, possible satirisation in my remarks)
z,
My point is the force of ideas, of moral authority (“The most powerful tool of the U.S. presidency is moral authority. “) will not prevail against armed fanatics. OW seems to believe a/the Pres can prevail in places like Iran via moral authority. That set the needle quivering on my Bull-sh*tometer.
Maybe Dugger would be happier with the Genghis Khan method of the mountain of skulls by the city gates.
Dugger, ideas are cheaper than Apache helicopters and significantly more useful. Soviet dissidents didn’t embrace American civic culture because we have bigger weapons, they did so because of the force of American ideals. We never had to invade Moscow to win.
The same applies to Iran. If you want to understand the fury of Persian nationalism and subject America to future of obscurity, keep pushing the military angle.
Z
Well lets do it your way. Jusy go and confront an islamist theocratic government and country that hates us with western textbook ideas and platitudes and see what it gets you. You’ll be handed your head. Our ideals; our moral authority is not theirs. Not at all.
Now there is evidence that EFPs are manufactured in Iraq, and the manufacturer says the Sniper Rifles may not have come from Iran, especially since the US has not asked the company to check the serial numbers.
Stalin. Castro. Pinochet. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Tito. Milosevich. Franco.
Heeding the lessons of 1848?
Yeah, I want America aligned with this group.
/snark.
Dugger, what you will find is that if you wait out evil dictators, they die or are overthrown by their own people. It is a well-established, natural pattern that doesn’t require American wealth and human capital.