Gay. I'm too anti-Bush to look at any of this in an objective way any more, at least I will admit that, but I think Cheney is wrong in an objective sense.
I don't think if you vote to authorize force against Saddam that that means you will blindly agree with all of Bush's policies wrt Saddam for the rest of time. Clearly things have changed during the 3ish years since that have happened, most notably it has been made clear that the foundation for the reasons to go to war was made out of sand. If this is the case, why still support the war?
I think it is quite sad that Cheney takes this and twists it into some sort of an attack on US soldiers. I think this is just Cheney deflecting his guilt because he knows he fucked up and these soldier-people are dying for a useless cause wrt to the USA, and he isn't man enough to capitulate, so it is blame everyone else.
So, the only people I see as rewriting history are Bush/Cheney. This is so completely obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.
At the end of the day I am "whatever" and I will laugh at the Republicans who are creating a giant welcome mat at the White House for 8 years of Hillary. It will be fun times.
Yes, it is about time. And, they had better not let up anytime soon...or we'll continue to have to listen to people like MG who admits to strong anti-Bush bias which precludes any objectivity. But, then (right out of the libs handbook) purports objectivity as the basis for an analysis of Cheney's position. Its laughable and pathetic.
Has anyone heard one single solution for anything come from the Democratic Party?
They are a pathetic group of public leeches.
It IS awfully irresponsible saying that the administration deliberately misled the American people into war.
Misled? Sure. But not on purpose.
Hey Anonymous, no where in your response do you explain why I'm wrong.
And I do not have a copy of this "libs handbook."
You mention the Democratic party in the context of a response to my comment. I am not a Democrat or in any way defending any democrats.
Hey 3000, I don't disagree, but I don't think Bush etc have done a good job proving otherwise. It is all about "selling it." Have they apologized yet for being wrong, has anyone been held accountable? Maybe they have and I'm just speaking from ignorance, but if they did these things, the whole thing would make a lot more sense, and people wouldn't come to the conclusion that they diliberately misled. Not saying it is right for people to say that, but I can understand why they do based on the information Bush has given them, and his failure to clearly come out and say "my bad."
Anonymous says "Has anyone heard one single solution for anything come from the Democratic Party?"
They support abortions of people like you who can't assemble his own talking points.
I haven't asked this yet, but I am curious to acquire responses from different political affiliations but primarily republicans.
For a war-supporting republican, what would make this war a failure? What specific events or lack of events would result in a war-supporting republican actually saying "this was a mistake?"
...and please attempt to answer seriously (i.e. not every answer refering to liberals, handbooks, or whatever)if you approach the topic of war seriously.
I'm not a Repug and can't speak for them, but my honest assessment of the situation is that the Republicans wouldn't admit it was a mistake if one or more of the following things happen:
1. The next Dem prez candidate (most likely Hillary, IMO), who campaigns on a platform to fix Iraq, actually fixes it, and gets a lot of credit for it. That it is a Clinton would be an extra boost.
2. High profile Republicans actually get arrested and go to jail, and basically become indefensible. Likihood of this however is pretty small.
3. A collasal act of terrorism on US soil, but it would have to be really, really bad and would have to be somehow directly attributable to the war. Basically Saddam himself would have to drop a nuke on New York, or North Carolina or something.
4. If somehow true conservatives like Buchanan took over the Republican Party, while (related to point 1) Democrats became the pro-war Party.
...and 5. (from a republican friend) Pulling out before the mission is completed would be a failure.
Which may never happen. So the logic is stay, fight until government is stable...but if they never stabilize, then what?
I've also been told that if you're "American and proud of it" then you support your president. I'll try.
Per Matt's response number 4...a successful democracy in Iraq is necessary for this to the war effort to be a success. I haven't been keeping up as well lately, but what do the "analyst" say about the chances of this coming to fruition? Plausible...impossible?
Responding to Matt's "Update"
1. Well you are saying that because essentially everyone believed their were WMD (which I don't dispute) that the case for war wasn't made it sand. I don't see the completeness of that argument. If there are no WMD, the case for war, as presented to the America, it was made of sand.
I think the reality is that the motivations for going to war went far beyond WMD, and WMD was just the explanation to get the soccer moms, etc on board. Who knows, these other justifications, which I think have to do with keeping Muslims in check and protecting our economic interests, may just be reasonable justifications, but I doubt it. In any case, I just think Bush isn't being completely honest, and I wish he would be.
Of course, the story has changed to "we had to get rid of saddam." That's fine, but I have a real "ends don't justify the means wrt the usa" problem if that's the only reason.
2. I think if say the WMD intelligence is faulty, and that is the basis for war, you are guilty of unintentially misleading. I don't know though, this is really splitting hairs. I do think though there is more than WMD that motivated Bush to do the war-thing, and on that issue, he hasn't been entirely forthright. I think part of it is you really have to dumb things down for the soccer moms, so it might not all be intentional, but certainly by now I think he deserves to be a little more frank.
3. I don't really disagree wrt other anti-war folk, but if we found some bunker with a bunch of nukes, I would support the war. Back when we started this mess, I thought it was a good idea, because I certainly thought there was a clear and present danger situation because that was the only way I could reconcile what Bush was doing.
I think your argument that Bush ain't going to apologize because critics aren't playing fair is pretty lame. It is what it is, and it has always been like that. I don't think Clinton's bj critics were exactly fair either.
4. My 1, 2, and 4 absolutely have to do with the war. The summary point of the three is just that the Republicans won't capitulate until it is politically expedient to do so. Certainly issues like doing the right thing are never going to come into the picture.
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Matt, let me ask you one question. Does the end of "Iraqi democracy" justify the means of us spending a lot of resources and people over there to fight for it? I'm not trying to ask it in a loaded way or imply anything in the question, I just really think that is the central question right now.
As for me, I don't see how it makes much difference if Iraq is a democracy or if Iraq is as it was in 2002. Maybe I'm completely ignorant, but this is the point that Bush is really failing to sell me.
Yeah, an Iraqi democracy is truly great for those people, but unless they become some like zillion dollar trade partner with us, I just don't see how we get a return on that i
One more thing as I think about this some more after not thinking about it for a long time.
Where I think Bush mislead was by allowing the US public to think Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Now, I know Matt is going to freak out when he reads that. I believe during speeches throughout the 2002-early 2003 time frame, he establishes sort of a soft link. The end result is that in polls things, a majority of people felt Saddam was responsible for 9/11. I believe that impression still exists today. However, that is completely false.
Was this intentional? Tough to say, but I think it probably was. It was the only way to generate support for the war.
Bush team certainly knows this impression is out there, and I think they play to it. I think they have a moral responsibilty to be more clear about it.
Basically, my comment (addressed by Update Point Number 2) was about the phrase "intentionally misled" that BC Inc. have been dropping lately.
It seems funny to me that instead of saying, "We did not mislead the nation into war." they chuck in the adverb "intentionally" and make it like "We did not mislead the nation into war on purpose."
Or...
A guy tells a bunch of people they should go to dinner. He says, "Some people have given me directions to this restaurant. How about letting me drive?"
The directions look good, so the group decides to let him drive. After a few hours, though, it seems like maybe those directions don't check out and that they took a wrong turn.
Did the driver "intentionally mislead" the group on the way to the restaurant? Not if the driver believed the directions were accurate.
Is it his fault that the directions turned out to be wrong? Not if they were the result of exhaustive research from varied sources and not based on documents that were proven to be fraudulent in, like, 10 minutes.
Should the hungry people in the back, relegated to eating Funyuns from a Texaco in the middle of nowhere, have taken their own steps to confirm the accuracy of the directions? Maybe, but you'd damn sure hope someone so eager to drive would have checked them out himself.
So...based on this analogy and my current directionally challenged driving style. I would have definitely attacked Utah and probably Sweden. But, luckily driving is not my profession or specialty...unlike the President.
Using the errors of support staff has always been a scapegoat for business managers so I'm not surprised this would occur in the business of government, but ultimately the top dog is responsible for everything under his/her domain. So, good luck "freeing" Iraq and exiting it in a stable condition that will last. Of course, by then they'll be a new President and the terrible ending will be their fault.
3000- I think that the bit about Cheney dropping in "intentionally" is a bit off-base. He's saying "intentionally" becase that's the charge that is being made against them. He's refuting very specific charges in that statement, the substance of which is not that the nation was "unintentionally" led into war. Rockefeller, Levin, et. al. are charging that they and the country were lied to, and Cheney's saying, "Hey, you had the same info we did, pal. And you used to support us. Now you're changing your story." So I don't think it means a whole lot that he's saying "intentionally" or not. He's refuting the charges posited against him.
I'm anti-war (sort of, but I'll get to that in a minute), and I'd admit Bush was right if I believed Iraq had WMDs AND the ability and inclination to do anything with them. I've always thought Saddam wasn't a threat to anyone but his own people. And while perhaps the US should deal with that, I don't see the need for an all-out war to do it. I've heard Republicans make the argument that it IS enough to justify war, and that the need to bring democracy to Iraq also justifies war. China, great leader of all human rights violations STILL has MFN. So I'm not buying that the quality of life of Iraqi people is that important to anyone. I'm also not buying that any administration particularly cares if a country has a schoolbook democracy. The US, rightfully so, wants nations to trade with and nations who aren't trying to take over the world. So Bush wants to control the Middle East because no one wants to let him drill in Alaska. Honestly, that's okay with me. I just don't want him drumming up fear and excuses to justify it. Call a spade a spade.
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