<p>I don’t have anything of the sort, sorry. I must admit, with some shame, that I don’t really focus much on the Congressional side of American foreign policy. My area of interest-- and expertise, if I may self-aggrandize for a bit-- is East Asian policy, with a focus on US-Japan security issues. I possess, at best, a bird’s-eye understanding and current awareness of what the Congress is doing in foreign policy.</p>
<p>Gotta love how grad school does a good job of pigeonholing people, huh?</p>
<p>Princedog–your comments have made me rethink everything I was taught in school (back in the dark ages)–every time the US intervened, it was to “make the world safe for Democracy.” Every time the Soviet Union meddled, it was to spread Communism in a “war of aggression.” Wasn’t it?</p>
<p>But then I realize how many times we “destroyed the village to save it,” to borrow a common usage from the Vietnam war, and wonder if our actions have been proper after all. Not that the locals wouldn’t have been fighting anyway, not that Democracy isn’t inherently better than a Soviet dictatorship, but I guess as you get older you have time to rethink everything you have been taught. And the conclusions aren’t always pretty.</p>
<p>I am glad the French intervened to help us in the Revolutionary War. I am glad we intervened to stop Hitler. Other than those cases, I am hard-pressed to justify many of our wars, large or small. Or any foreign intervention in local wars.</p>
<p>
Hillary Clinton has not reconsidered her vote on Iraq becuase she has yet to say it was a mistake. (If she has said it was a mistake, I haven’t seen it).</p>
<p>
So you are saying Bush and Cheney sat down one day and said “Let’s see if we can find some flawed intelligence out there?” Your comment is untrue.</p>
<p>
Did Congress rely on this? It is not in the resolution as far as I can see. Whether Iraq was seeking uranium in Nigeria was an insignificant piece of the many reasons for goning to war with Iraq. </p>
<p>In President Bush’s Jan. 2003 State of the Union address he said a true statement: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html[/url]”>http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html</a></p>
<p>The BIG LIE is to suggest the President lied about WMD. There is a big difference between stating something you know to be untrue (a lie) and merely being wrong (turns out there was no WMD even though we believed there would be WMD).</p>
<p>If we assume for the sake of argument that President Bush lied about WMD, then surely you will state that President Clinton lied about the existence of WMD when he dropped 450 cruise missiles on Iraq in 1998? Right?</p>
<p>I respectfully suggest that you read (or re-read) former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s by now well-known “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” op-ed and then reconsider your statement above that the president, vice-president and other key administration players had not been warned the the Niger documents were a fake. And I would also ask you to reconsider your statement that “seeking uranium” in Niger was an “insignificant” reason for going to war with Iraq. Quite the contrary. It was THE reason: because we needed to stop the "madman Saddam Hussein from getting his hands on nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>If not to stop Hussein from nuking Israel and Europe, why do you think that we went to war? I would really like to know. “To spread democracy in the region” was never the main reason we went to war. By my reading of recent history, it was a cynical afterthought that was trotted out after it soon became apparent after we invaded Iraq that we were not going to find the weapons that the UN (and our very own Scott Ritter) had already informed us weren’t there in advance. </p>
<p>If you choose to seek out the evidence, you will find that the Bush administration wanted this war long before 9/11, long before George Bush assumed the presidency in 2001.</p>
<p>I have to agree with carlmom. The Bush/Cheney/Rove administration wanted this war and sent people out to cook up “evidence” to justify it. Some people do profit from wars while other people lose their children to the fighting. It’s not usually the profit-makers who sacrifice their children.</p>
<p>You really need to read the Project for the New American Century, particularly the sections written between 1997-2000, before Bush was even selected, to see the “Cheney Defense Department”'s strategy, as well as the Defense Policy Guidance. The desire to invade Iraq
was part of the neocon ideology a decade ago.</p>
<p>So they cooked the intelligence to fit the ideology.</p>
<p>
If Joe Wilson is your authority for your conclusions about yellowcake in Africa, then I would suggest you are definately relying on the opinion of a liar. Joe Wilson has no credibility left. He has lied from the beginning. He has lied about minor things for which there was no reason to lie (e.g. who sent him to Africa). If that wasn’t enough, Joe Wilson outted his wife as a CIA operative, according to the Washington Post Editorial page. Here is a little something about Wilson’s lies. </p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007135.php[/url]”>http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007135.php</a></p>
<p>The reality is that Joe Wilson opposed the war so he went out and made sure he didn’t find anythig that would support a war he opposed. And then he lied about what he did/didn’t find.</p>
<p>Valarie Plame should be held accountable for her questionable comments as well:
<a href=“http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com&expire=&urlID=22512034&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fprintedition%2Fnews%2F20070530%2Fa_plame30.art.htm&partnerID=1660[/url]”>http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com&expire=&urlID=22512034&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fprintedition%2Fnews%2F20070530%2Fa_plame30.art.htm&partnerID=1660</a></p>
<p>Why did we go to war? Many reasons outlined in Congress’ resolution to use military force. Here is one piece referencing before President Bush came to office (you remember, back when Pres. Clinton was inoffice):
<a href=“Briefing Room | The White House”>Briefing Room | The White House;
<p>.</p>
<p>So much ideological revision. </p>
<p>The Nuclear issue was certainly a part of the panic; but as I recall, there was far more talk of biological and chemical weapons–which if the despot had them, were more than enough to make an unnerved American public too testy to sit on their hands and wait for the next move. In fact, Ritter, Hans Blix et al, were looking for chem/bio weapons of mass destruction first and foremost if not exclusively.</p>
<p>Weapons that were never found and by that time (during the Clinton bombing raids and extending through Bush’s big idea of a democratic middle east) likely did not exist; though everyone, from far left Dems to far left European governments believed the butcher of the Fertile Crescent had them. It was just a WMD cat and mouse game that seemed to favor a lice ridden mouse. The nuclear issue has only become THE issue ex post facto, and simply because it gives more political vibrato to the caterwaul of our left-leaning moralizers: They’ve barely a word on the bio/chemical WMD that were never found and not there. What’s up with that you cheeky girls!</p>
<p>I opposed the war notwithstanding the possibility that Saddam had the dirty stuff–I figured he probably did have the weapons; and worse we all knew that he’d used them in the past on his own people and on the Iranians. I just didn’t see him taking his savage game out of his back-yard to play with the big-boys.</p>
<p>And now, I will oppose a war with Iran even if it is proven that Iran is arming with nuclear weapons, and for the very same reason: As a conservative, by nature and disposition, I oppose this sort of military preemption–I opposed it then and I oppose it now.</p>
<p>I have also opposed this neo-Trotskyite “conservatism” as practiced by these liberal ideologues in sheep’s clothing (that is to say liberal interventionists co-opting the conservative rhetoric and, sadly, electorate) if for no other reason than the oxymoronic cynicism of the premise: “Neo (liberal) Conservatism.” “NEW conservatism”? Please. Why not “New-fangled Conservatism:” a rhetorically and intellectually impossible construction.</p>
<p>This is and was liberalism being employed for ideological reasons: the tough talk made it seem conservative to the naive. Even more, I do not doubt that the biggest hope and reason–the ideology–behind this war was to spread democracy and market capitalism to the middle east–the WMD was just the facts on the ground that gave the real reason more of a sense of urgency: the time was ripe, it was supposed.</p>
<p>Politically, I don’t care for any of the Republican choices…perhaps Ron Paul, but the neo-conservatives, still in their ascendancy, will likely circle the Republican wagons and keep Paul on the fringes.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, WMD includes nukes, bio, and chemical weapons. There wasn’t a greater emphasis of one to another, and nukes were featured at least as prominently (think mushroom cloud and aluminum tubes) as others. The big problem I had when this was being used as a justification was that WMD as a category puts all this together.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is largely true:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Who’s revisionist now? See above quotes from BEFORE the war, in public to the media. Honestly, what do you imbibe in the evenings? ; )</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, neo-cons themselves describe their own as “liberals mugged by reality.” There is certainly some truth into what you and Richard Cohen yesterday in the WaPo wrote about these people actually being like liberals, almost in the Wilsonian or Kennedy molds. But they were hardly mugged by reality; their ends were good ones and sound – democratically responsive governments do tend to be better members of the team of nations – but the notion that you can invade, occupy, and impose a friendly, democratic government is hardly based in reality. Most of all, it cracks me up that conservatives are now running from the neo-cons by casting them as liberals. Not so long ago, the neo-cons were running from conservatives casting them as paleo-cons. I so much more respect paleo-cons, though I consider myself liberal at least on domestic social issues</p>
<p>While I was originally of the mind that Bush could achieve a coup greater than Nixon’s rapprochement with China by establishing a stable democratic government in Iraq, I was never convinced that WMD was a good reason to invade the nation. We have – to good effect – used other measures to deal with WMD concerns; and, honestly, at the time Congress handed over authority to the President the prevailing view was not “yellow cake” and transactions outlined by Powell at the UN more than 3 months later. </p>
<p>At the time of the Senate vote, the best information available to the public and most (if not all) of Congress was what Hans Blix was reporting. WMDs were a red herring. They weren’t a reason for going in – albeit they were touted by Bush as one of the many reasons he’s proffered over time – and the fact that we didn’t find them had no impact on changing my mind about the war. WMDs were little more than a good catch-phrase to help shape public opinion – among a hyper-skittish, post 9/11 public to boot. As policy goes, it was perhaps the lamest of all reasons on which to base a decision to invade Iraq. And that’s not in hindsight.</p>
<p>Actually, the claim that we’re fighting al-Qaeda is now the lamest reason. The Iraqi resistance movement (or, as Ms. Sheehan calls them, the “Freedom Fighters”) were disparate, disconnected hordes of Iraqis, few of whom had an allegiance to al-Qaeda or, for that matter, could even plug in to al-Qaeda. Gradually there was some coalescing of individuals and one of the most prominent Iraqi movements was “One God and Jihad” which had the since-eliminated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as its figurehead/leader.</p>
<p>In a clever PR move worthy of the Hill-Knowlton crowd who helped shape Bush’s wartime decision making, al-Zarqawi changed the name of his organization to create a more formidable presence. Basically, he took the al-Qaeda trade name – which had gained quite the reputation following 9/11 – and declared his group was a de facto franchisee of that brand. And thus, his insurgent movement became officially known as “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”</p>
<p>You see, it’s not like he took the name Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola objected. He took an informal name of an underground terrorist movement and adopted it for his group. If ever there was a decision made in the war that appealed to the myriad sides engaged within and without Iraq, al-Zarqawi’s decision was it. His group instantly was more impressive to disaffected Iraqis, the remnants of al-Qaeda liked the fact that their crippled organization was getting some attention and credibility as a threat – without actually having to organize again. </p>
<p>And Karl Rove was perhaps the biggest fan of all because from that point on, whenever we engaged an Iraqi insurgent, we could say we were fighting al-Qaeda forces. Nevermind that these are not the same people we went to fight and eliminate in Afghanistan. It just sounds that way all because of al-Zarqawi’s marketing genius. </p>
<p>Millions of Americans who have barely enough time for sound bytes have been duped by al-Zarqawi and Rove – now there’s a winsome pair for the ages – into thinking that we’re fighting the 9/11 al-Qaeda organization on the streets of Baghdad…because, honestly, who can be bothered trying to keep up with news over the course of a war that (to date) has lasted more than 6 months longer for America than World War II did.</p>
<p>Yellow cake…who cares? al-Qaeda…I’m not duped. But, for me, the prospect of a democracy other than Israel in that region was – and is – extremely seductive. However, at this point, one of the WORST things that could happen is for democracy to take root. Not at the price people have had to pay for it. </p>
<p>The seductiveness of a democratic Iraq was its potential to export itself throughout the region. But, tell me, how many people in the region are going to look at a democratic Iraq, see the carnage and breakdown of infrastructure and basic institutions, and cry out, “Hey, gimme a piece of that action!”</p>
<p>That ship has sailed. So now, Johnny Olsen, tell them what the consolation prize is: A new democracy, pretty much confined to Iraq! </p>
<p>However, it’s become clear to me that they don’t want a democracy. At least not a single nation democracy. What they seem to be best suited for is a hard-nosed dictator who can keep them all in line. You know…someone like…um…Saddam Hussein!</p>
<p>So what are we doing there? Well, basically keeping the thumb in the dyke before it all goes to hell in a handbasket. And, more to the point, waiting for a national consensus on what we’re doing there so that we can agree that the mission has been accomplished and get the hell out.</p>
<p>Seriously, I think the key to getting out of Iraq is going to take Americans to come together and reach an understanding – from right to left and everyone inbetween – that we’ve done all we can do in Iraq and the mission was accomplished. We can wink at each other. We can all claim additional moral victories for our political leanings. But, ultimately, I’m convinced that our troops will remain stuck in Iraq until Americans back here in the homeland can behave and reach an agreement that it’s safe and it’s time and our troops can return and be greeted with open arms and a hero’s triumphant welcome of the sort we had post-Desert Storm.</p>
<p>With reference to the quote below, I was going add to my post above add that, yes, many people suspected that he had these things, and these suspicions were across the board. I think that’s what made getting full congressional approval so quickly so easy. But there were people that did call them suspicions – and their were better ways to have due process to suss out the truth. Had we applied something more akin to due process rather than rushing to war, we may still have ended up in war, but would have been more likely to have more burden-sharers and the assent of the world. As it is, the whole thing was handled with much less alacrity than Bush 1/Baker handled the first Gulf War; in fact, it was the rank incompetence displayed by this Administration is most things it touches. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But, in closing, Dorothy_ParkerX, it didn’t take me 2 seconds to find specific quotes on the record by Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rice directly contradicting your assertion that nukes was some kind of plot ex-post-facto by the left to change how these things were viewed. It’s a shame you don’t check your own impulses. There’s much of what you wrote that I could agree with and that I even found entertaining (despite early clashes), but investigate please your own biases before posting.</p>
<p>The following is just utter hogwash, and it demeans your intelligence:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>BH,</p>
<p>The disingenuousness here is telling. </p>
<p>I said that the nuclear issue was a part of the panic. You felt the need to prove my rather bland point by copy-n-pasting in the usual lib-info-drop on the subject. We’ve all seen this splat of bloggery ad nauseum. I’m sure your copy-paste is a copy of a copy of a copy-paste copy in cyber-space. It has been suggested that this splattery is dull and lacking intellectual vitality even if it is a common ploy of limp-limbed-intellectuals. Though not you, of course.</p>
<p>
Is this in any way to be distinguished from “I’m rubber you’re glue”…or “same to you but more of it”. Probably not. Touche!</p>
<p>
BH,</p>
<p>…in that case, would you mind copying and pasting every time anyone mentioned either “WMD” generally or Bio/chemical weapons in particular in this thread. </p>
<p>When you give up looking for these references you will finally get my point…I hope: Ex post facto, the tremolo in the voice is generated by the misuse of the nuclear misinformation. </p>
<p>Who’s cooking the books now? Who’s using the nuclear issue for their own political agenda at this point? …it’s tiresome, repetitious and dull-witted.</p>
<p>I did no suggest that Nuclear weapons were not part of WMD; but as I recall, the emphasis in this inspections and in the failure of the inspections was largely on bio/chem WMD.</p>
<p>As I said, I would have opposed the war in any case, as I will oppose war with Iran if they are suspected/assumed/proven to have nuclear capabilities etc. That is without proof of more than possession. </p>
<p>What will you do…this time?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I googled and got these directly from respected news sources. CNN and Vanity Fair via the AP. I don’t imbibe others talking points readily.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I was only pointing out that you discredited yourself, and your otherwise interesting points, when you made claims that were so counter to the historical record that Daffy Duck could get the distinctions.</p>
<p>But now you are accusing me of playground name-calling tactics. I chalk that up to changing the subject and an inability to accept the record which is so clear a blind man could see it.</p>
<p>I got your distinction about being part of the panic vs. the whole thing. And in the context of a nation that had fairly recently experienced 9/11 saying that our enemy is on the verge of acquiring much more destructive means of inflicting terror on us, via nukes, rather drowns out other facts, don’t you think? </p>
<p>Or am I just “left wing bloggifying” and name-calling?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow, sorry if better information shook up the lies you tell yourself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow, who’s name-calling now? You state something as fact, I find a couple or newspaper accounts that dismiss your contention STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSES’ MOUTH, and then you say I am name-calling.</p>
<p>What a crock.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Here’s what I wrote:
</p>
<p>Here’s your reply:
and…
</p>
<p>Blix was looking for bio-chem. That’s a fact.</p>
<p>Why?
Because that was his mission and mandate. He did not find any. The US still insisted it was there. It wasn’t.</p>
<p>War came after a lot more bluster, including talk of a possible desire to obain nuclear weapons: but it was assumed he already had WMD. Chemical and biological, not nuclear. Thus my point above.</p>
<p>Now, the only talk is of Nuclear misinformation because it indicts fewer of the political class…and of course, most especially those now double-dealing on the issue of why we went to war. </p>
<p>They had already wagered away their innocence on the issue of war and were merely haggling over the price.</p>
<p>This may help you clarify your ex post facto political posturing:
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction</a></p>
<p>.</p>
<p>I’m going to avoid commentary on the Dotster’s musings, and instead note that back a page, on post #90, D’yer Maker has made some superb points.</p>
<p>No, there is no democracy to be had in Iraq, yes, we are holding a finger in the dyke before all hell breaks loose, and absolutely, it will take
</p>
<p>After $300+B and 3500+ potentially how many more thousands of lost lives…was the mess we made worth it?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or, as Hans Blix (who believed he would find WMD when he went to Iraq in late 2002) now puts it so succinctly, Saddam Hussein hung a BEWARE OF DOG sign even though he didn’t have a dog.</p>
<p>Wow, DP, so your information-gathering is witty, interesting, and to the point. Mine on the other hand is a dull-witted lib-info-drop. Ok, gotcha. : )</p>
<p>As I said before:
</p>
<p>I get what Hans Blix was looking for. I get that some people may be trying to justify votes that they wish they had never made and I don’t doubt that they are tying this to some kind of focus on nukes. But if they are making this focus, they have a pretty good smoking gun (that is words about a mushroom cloud on national television and not the mushroom cloud itself ; )) </p>
<p>A couple of years ago I heard Hans Blix lecture on what he was thinking and what he was finding when during this process, and I have no doubt that people across the board were fooled with respect to at least the bio and chem weapons.</p>
<p>What I object to is people trying to accord equal blame for the stupid decisions that were made by each member of Congress that voted for this war as they do to the Administration. It was the Administration that aggressively blurred these distinctions between bio and chem and nukes (and 9/11 and Iraq) when they mentioned all of them together and said we wanted to avoid a mushroom cloud. These things were said on national television at a time when the pain and images of 9/11 were still on everybody’s minds. The Administration sought the war in a hurry with the barest of assent from our allies and without burden sharing, and they stampeded us into it through these kinds of exagerrations and fear tactics. </p>
<p>[As a digression, my contention at the time was we could have done the exact same thing we did if we had just taken more time. Saddam was a stupid, recalcitrant adversary who was blustering and playing brinksmanship and who appeared to believe we didn’t have the guts to do what we did. He would have kept putting his thumb in our eye, I believe, and we could have issued a timeline that said Saddam, if by such and such date we do not have the utmost cooperation with the inspections that has been consistently delivered, we will pulverize you. End of story. As it was, we started our effort by declaring the accused guilty and telling our allies you are with us or you are against us. It was stupid tactically how we did it. Even if our allies never went along with what we did, they’d have had to admit we put a process in place. But this digression detracts from the fact that the whole venture was a giant strategic blunder.]</p>
<p>But it was the Administration, not anyone else, that whipped up a firestorm of fear and concern and rushed us to war. And our feeble politicians – Republicans and Democrats – went along with it. As a matter of record, I am allergic to Al Gore mostly because of his personal style, but I respect that he went out from the beginning and declared these efforts wrong-headed. </p>
<p>You and I agree this war is wrong-headed, but in my opinion, one gets lost in trying to define primary culpability outside a group of people in the Administration not much larger than Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Rumsfeld, and a few others. Yes, Hilary voted for it, and is engaged in contortionist exercises a la “I voted against it before I voted for it” Kerry.</p>
<p>But there is a lot of effort wasted on your part of the political spectrum trying to assert that primary blame is shared by Congress. Congress is complicit, but the Administration initiated this thing and got it done. Primary responsibility falls in one camp.</p>
<p>And if this were the focus, there might be more pressure getting applied to get us out of it. Instead, IMO, a lot of delay and hot air is being applied so that Bush can wriggle out of being president before he has to have “an accountability moment” and actually move to find a solution to the disaster of his making.</p>
<p>If you aren’t focusing on the latter things, IMO, you are focusing on the blame game to the exclusion of supporting a practical dialogue on how we get out of this mess.</p>
<p>But I am sure you find this all lugubrious and thick-headed.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No she isn’t. That’s precisely why she hasn’t “apologized for” or “disavowed” her authorization vote in 2002. She voted for the authorization in 2002, along with 76 other Senators. She accepts responsibility for that vote. To do otherwise would invite getting tagged for a Kerryism.</p>