50-Year Iraq Presence A ‘Realistic Assessment’

[BT]

Still an ass.

Hmmm. And you were on such a roll with your plethora of gems recently.

[gipper]

I don't appreciate the scolding. Were you polite and dainty during your Navy days. Sometimes its best to dispense with pseudo niceties, "political correctness" (?), and to speak plainly and directly. The son of a bitch is being an ass.

[BT]

No scolding intended.

I had been enjoying your new found clarity.

[Universe Prince]

Prince (& Js) the copious amount of quotes you so graciously provided reference the point I was making, about taking quotes out of contect and/or providing quotes so vague, that you could argue an imminent attack on DC itself.  The quotes repeatively document that threat the WMD were, which again, has never neen at issue.

The quotes were neither vague nor out of context.

You have YET to show ANWHERE some quote that provides the threat of an imminent WMD attack, BY Saddam/Iraq, ON U.S. soil.  Please, if I missed it, highlight it for me.       

Again: I don't see where anyone was accusing the President of claiming imminent attack on the U.S. from Iraq. If you do, please show me the the quote, in context and nothing so vague it could be referencing a claim of something other than imminent attack. Good luck.

[sirs]

I don't see where anyone was accusing the President of claiming imminent attack on the U.S. from Iraq. If you do, please show me the the quote, in context and nothing so vague it could be referencing a claim of something other than imminent attack. Good luck.

Let's try again then, for better clarity as to the point I've been trying to make.......You have YET to show ANYWHERE, some quote by Bush & Co. that references the pending threat of a WMD attack, BY Saddam/Iraq, ON U.S. soil.  Please, if I missed it, highlight it for me.       

[Universe Prince]

Let's try again then, for better clarity as to the point I've been trying to make.......

In other words, no, you can't find a quote.

You have YET to show ANYWHERE, some quote by Bush & Co. that references the pending threat of a WMD attack, BY Saddam/Iraq, ON U.S. soil.  Please, if I missed it, highlight it for me.

Wow. We've moved all the way from 'imminent' to 'pending'. We didn't move very far, did we? Okay, let's play. I don't see where anyone was accusing the President of claiming a pending attack on the U.S. from Iraq. If you do, please show me the the quote, in context and nothing so vague it could be referencing a claim of something other than a pending attack. Good luck.

That said, who gives a good gorram whether President Bush said an attack from Iraq was imminent, pending, or even impending in exact words? He argued the case, and again I quote, that "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people." Not "could become a threat" or "someday he might be" but that Saddam Hussein was a threat right then. And I notice that we didn't just bomb weapons factories. We went to war with Iraq and deliberately toppled the government. I don't know what part of "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat" would be unclear. I am willing to give President Bush credit for a number of character traits, but subtlety isn't one of them.

Now, if you really want to argue that we went to war with Iraq without Iraq and/or the then government of Iraq being a threat to the U.S., then by all means, go ahead. I won't stop you. If you do, I'm pretty sure you'd be undermining the case that we needed to go to war. That could be your plan, but I kinda doubt it.

[_JS]

Prince (& Js) the copious amount of quotes you so graciously provided reference the point I was making, about taking quotes out of contect and/or providing quotes so vague, that you could argue an imminent attack on DC itself.  The quotes repeatively document that threat the WMD were, which again, has never neen at issue. 

You have YET to show ANWHERE some quote that provides the threat of an imminent WMD attack, BY Saddam/Iraq, ON U.S. soil.  Please, if I missed it, highlight it for me.       

Sirs, I'm going to be honest but not demeaning or sarcastic, the quote Prince provided is both in context and is not vague. It is in context because he provides the full text and it certainly is not vague. Even if it were, that would be an issue with the speaker, in this case President Bush, not the individual providing the quote. Allowing politicians to take a mulligan because they speak vaguely is demeaning to the people (and an old political trick).

The only thing missing here from your criteria is the component of time. Everything else is there.

Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people.

Notice the terminology. His weapons. Direct threat. This country. Our people. Four very succinct phrases all of which are very powerful. If you say them to yourself and emphasize the first word in each, you can imagine how strong that message is.

Now, think about the time component. He could have added, "maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon." Though I don't think he could do a very good Bogey. He could have said, "we don't know when or even if these attacks will ever take place." But see how much that weakens what was such a strong statement?

You've said yourself that if you are building a case for war, you wouldn't parade around the contradicting evidence. If this was a good faith war effort, and we need to believe that it was, then that's understandable.

Yet, to say that Bush did not claim Iraq and the WMD were a threat to this country, and even an immediate threat is simply falling into bizarre semantics. If anything, leaving the component of time to the imaginations of the people is probably the most powerful way of making the point.

[_JS]

I think we're going to see that sort of thing no matter who is President. All sorts of military actions around the world now have a convenient excuse, that September 11, 2001, proved we are not safe from international terrorism. Boogidy boogidy boo! Yeah, I think we need to take terrorism seriously, but I think it's now another card in the deck of needlessly aggressive foreign policy. And Democrats who "need" to look strong on national security are going to use it. Fear of this and that is all I seem to see from most politicians these days. Fear of vast numbers of criminal immigrants using up all our resources, or fear of poverty or fear of terrorists or fear of fatty food, on and on. I wish the government would stick to the whole bridge building, water testing stuff and stop trying so hard to protect us all from life.

I completely agree with you there (with the exception of the bit on poverty ). In fact, Democrats may even be worse about it than Republicans when it comes down to the rubber hitting the road. Historically this tended to happen with the Cold War where Democrats felt they had to prove themselves as anti-communists whereas the Republicans were already tough on communism hence "only Nixon could go to China." I know that my Democratic Congressman wrote some horrible stuff on immigration and the "criminal immigrants" and missed my vote in 2006 (he didn't need it, but it was still my vote).

Indeed, 9/11 will be a tool for the politicians for a long time to come. Fear has been a trademark of politicians in all forms of governments, probably since the first tribal chief was crowned in some East African plain and there really was a lot to fear!

[Amianthus]

Fear has been a trademark of politicians in all forms of governments, probably since the first tribal chief was crowned in some East African plain and there really was a lot to fear!

Really?

To hear some people (here and other places), Bush invented the concept...

[Plane]

Can one be delusional , paranoid and detached from reality , but really threatened ?



    Our recent experiences include the crash at Lockerbie, where a leader of a state attempted to use anonymous terrorism as a means of harming the USA.

     Is the arming of catspaws while maintaining a plausible deniability an unlikely scenario?

     Saddam Hussein had a history of developing WMD and also a history of supporting terrorists , should a president have been confident that these two things would salways remain seprate issues?

[_JS]

Can one be delusional , paranoid and detached from reality , but really threatened ?

Our recent experiences include the crash at Lockerbie, where a leader of a state attempted to use anonymous terrorism as a means of harming the USA.

Is the arming of catspaws while maintaining a plausible deniability an unlikely scenario?

Saddam Hussein had a history of developing WMD and also a history of supporting terrorists , should a president have been confident that these two things would salways remain seprate issues?

Are you asking if the situation was feasible? Sure.

You need to remember though that this lumping of terrorist groups into one big category is irresponsible. Not all of them are radical religious terrorists. The Baathists had a very poor relationship with the radical religious Islamic terrorists. Just ask Saddam's pal Assad, who fought bitterly with religious terrorism in Syria. Also, don't think that the Shi'a groups would ever have forgotten the Iraq/Iran war and who received the first doses of Saddam's actual WMD (and who received the brunt of Saddam's torture and brutality).

So, would Saddam really simply hand over nasty chemical or biological agents (even if he did have them, which he did not) to a radical religious Islamic terror group?

I think that deserved a lot of questioning by the experts. To simply default to a "yes" answer was to accept a hell of a lot of very debatable assumptions. And I know, here comes the "always err on the side of caution" response. But if we're honest, the intelligence agencies make those decisions everyday and they don't always err on the side of caution. Neither does the administration (any administration). Risk management means you have to take some acceptable risk, and I'm not sure the above question was looked at or put to the American people in a responsible manner.

[Michael Tee]

<<That said, who gives a good gorram whether President Bush said an attack from Iraq was imminent, pending, or even impending in exact words? He argued the case, and again I quote, that "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people." Not "could become a threat" or "someday he might be" but that Saddam Hussein was a threat right then. And I notice that we didn't just bomb weapons factories. We went to war with Iraq and deliberately toppled the government. I don't know what part of "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat" would be unclear. I am willing to give President Bush credit for a number of character traits, but subtlety isn't one of them.>>

That is one sharp and direct rebuttal to sirs' nonsensical claims that the Bush administration did not fear-monger, did not make ludicrous claims that Iraq posed an actual rather than a potential danger to the U.S.A.

The same could be said for Condi's argument about not being able to afford to wait till the smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud.  The unmistakeable inference to be drawn from that remark was that failure to take immediate action (the only action then beng advocated by the administration being the invasion of Iraq) would lead to nuclear strikes on U.S. soil.  Of course, as sirs has tried to do, you could parse the sentence and find, for example, that no one specified where the mushroom cloud was going to be, but in the context of a debate over war or peace, Condi obviously being on the war side, that "mushroom cloud" was obviously intended to maximise the downside of not invading, and could only refer to a mushroom cloud directly over the heads of the non-invaders and their loved ones.

However, I think it's misleading to comment solely on what Bush said, what Condi said, etc.  The manufacturing of consent is a broad-based and sophisticated effort that of necessity goes beyond what members of the government themselves were quoted as saying.  You have to look at the MSM campaign, led by the New York Times and particularly Judith Miller.  The Times was obviously giving voice to the administration through anonymous and/or "leaked" information from government sources directly or indirectly, and the failure of the administration to deny any of the pro-war lies of Judith Miller and the Times is as much a part of the campaign as what Bush and his handlers did say for the record.

[sirs]

Prince (& Js), I simply need to reference the quote you keep providing as the supposed smoking gun, to again make my point..."He argued the case, and again I quote, that "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people." Not "could become a threat" or "someday he might be" but that Saddam Hussein was a threat right then." 

ONE LAST TIME, SADDAM'S WMD WERE A DIRECT THREAT TO THE U.S.  That never did answer my question though, did it. 
ONE LAST TIME, NO WHERE IS THERE ANY REFERENCE/QUOTE OF SADDAM PLANNING ANY SORT OF ATTACK ON THE U.S.  That was the question I asked.  There have been numerous quotes made by Bush and co that put your quote into a more accurate context, that those WMD of Saddam in the hands of terrorists, could use them on the U.S., which was the "direct threat to this country"

THAT has been the point all along, and Bush made that point, WAY BACK WHEN

[Universe Prince]

Frankly, Sirs, your argument in this thread makes no sense. Bush argued that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S. And you can jabber about context all you like, but the context makes quite clear that Bush was arguing Saddam Hussein himself was a threat to the U.S. As I pointed out before, we did not merely bomb weapons factories, but we went to war with the country of Iraq and deliberately targeted the then government of Iraq. So again, if you really want to undermine the case that we needed to go to war with Iraq, I won't stop you, but you're not eroding anyone's position except your own.

[Universe Prince]

Saddam Hussein had a history of developing WMD and also a history of supporting terrorists , should a president have been confident that these two things would salways remain seprate issues?

Of course not. As I said before, I am more than willing to concede that President Bush acted in good faith on what he believed was solid intelligence. The problem is that the intelligence was obviously not solid. Saddam's government having a history of developing WMD was a good reason to keep an eye on it. It was not, however, grounds to assume that he was doing so again in 2003. Yes, we had lots of intelligence that Bush and his administration assured us was solid proof of Iraq's WMD development programs. But again, it was obviously not solid. It was a hollow construction that was apparently built with deceptions and assumptions and suppositions. (By deceptions I don't mean Bush lied to us. I mean other people presented things that were not true in a way that deceived the intelligence agencies.) In other words, we was had. That should not have happened, and I find I am not willing to excuse it. Good men and women were put in harm's way without an accurate picture of what the real situation was.

And now we have apparently committed to indefinitely maintaining troops in what is sure to be, if it isn't already, the best possible training ground for terrorists to learn urban combat and the tactics of getting terrorist attacks past strong security. I have heard some people say that history will vindicate President Bush and his choice to go to war with Iraq as part of the "war on terror", but I don't agree. I think a huge mistake has been made, and continuing it is like trying to correct shooting oneself in the foot by doing it again.