blatham, that was an excellent link from Slate. I look forward to the next part. I wish the entire thing could be alongside GWB's breakfast plate but I hear that he does not read newspapers or magazines. I guess that helps him keep the facts at arm's reach and out of sight.
blatham posted Monday's link. Here is Tuesday's continuation of the discussion.
Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War
Getting rid of Saddam was U.S. policy long before Bush[/u]
By:Kathleen Parker
January 14, 2004
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had barely cleared his throat for his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night before the "gotcha" e-mail started filling my mailbox.
Anti-war constituents apparently felt vindicated by O'Neill's assertion that President Bush was mapping out strategies for ousting Saddam Hussein soon after taking office and months before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," said O'Neill.
I gathered from the electronic deluge that I was supposed to be shocked by this revelation and writhe like a salted slug in self-contempt and shame for supporting the war in Iraq. To think: Bush knew all along that Saddam was a bad person and wanted to get rid of him.
Also interviewed on the show was Ron Suskind, whose new book "The Price of Loyality: George W. Bush, The White House, and The Education of Paul O'Neill," relies heavily on O'Neill's testimony as well as documentation O'Neill spirited from the White House when he was fired in December 2002.
Suskind said that Saddam was topic "A" for the Bush administration. "From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime."
And his point would be?
The question isn't how could Bush have been so focused on Saddam, but how could he not be? Getting rid of Saddam had been U.S. policy for years and was ratified not by Sept. 11, but by the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998," which President Clinton signed into law on Oct. 31, 1998.
The Act was predicated upon Saddam's ignoble career highlights, which, briefly summarized, include the:
- 1980 invasion of Iran.
- 1988 relocation and murder of between 50,000 and 180,000 Kurdish civilians.
- 1988 use of chemical weapons against another 5,000 Kurds.
- 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
- 1993 attempted assassination of former President George Bush.
- 1994 posting of 80,000 troops near Kuwait, posing a threat of renewed invasion or attack.
- 1996 beginning of trend to deny weapons inspectors access to facilities and documents as required by the United Nations.
Call me zany, but I'm inclined at this point to stipulate that Saddam Hussein was, indeed, "a bad person." The U.S. policy that evolved from that understanding - that he needed to go - was articulated in the act as follows :
"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."
Clinton's focus was on helping Iraqis overturn Saddam rather than on invading Iraq, but that's where Sept. 11 becomes a factor. Simply put, Sept. 11 underscored our vulnerability and the reality that the United States could no longer afford a wait-and-see attitude in an environment of global terrorism. Strategically, the Bush Doctrine is working.
One day Saddam is crawling out of a spider hole, and shortly thereafter Libya's Col. Gadhafi is inviting inspectors over for tea. For a complete list of ripple effects, read William Safire's Jan. 12 column in The New York Times.
And though Bush gets credit for toppling the Iraqi dictator, using force against Iraq as a pre-emptive measure wasn't a new policy. The purpose of Clinton's 1998 Operation Desert Fox was to force Saddam to comply with weapons inspections and to thwart his continuing to develop WMD.
"Mark my words," Clinton said on the eve of the 1998 bombing. "(Saddam) will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them and he will use them."
Clinton subsequently came under fire from congressional leaders for allowing U.S. policy toward Iraq to "drift." In a letter dated Aug. 11, 1999, several congressmen, including Democratic presidential contender Sen. Joseph Lieberman, wrote:
"There is considerable evidence that Iraq continues to seek to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction. The whole point of Operation Desert Fox was that we could not afford to wait until Saddam reconstituted his WMD capabilities."
In other words, concern about Saddam's unconventional weapons program was consistent and serious long before Bush reached office. As it turns out, we may have been wrong about those programs based on flawed intelligence, but belief in those programs preceded Bush's inauguration.
For Bush not to have looked for ways to oust Saddam or a plan for a post-Saddam Iraq in our new connect-the-dots world would have seemed negligent to irresponsible.
(January 14, 2004 -- 12:32 AM EDT // link // print)
Some things are worth listening to again and again ...
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) When you take a look back, Vice President Cheney said, "there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Not programs, not intent. There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction. Secretary Powell said "100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons." And now the inspectors say that there's no evidence of these weapons existing right now. The yellow cake in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn't have been in your speech. Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs. Again, the intelligence, the inspectors have said they can't confirm this, they can't corroborate. Nuclear, suggestions that he was on the way on an active nuclear program. David Kay, "we have not discovered significant evidence of ... "
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Yet.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) Is it "yet"?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
But what David Kay did discover was they had a weapons program. And had that -that -let me finish for a second. Now it's more extensive than, than missiles. Had that knowledge been examined by the United Nations or had David Kay's report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in material breach of 1441, which meant it was a causis belli. And, look, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person. And there's no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that. And there is no doubt that the President must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) Again, I'm just trying to ask, these are supporters, people who believed in the war who have asked the question.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Well, you can keep asking the question. And my answer's gonna be the same. Saddam was a danger. And the world is better off because we got rid of him.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
So what's the difference?
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) Well ...
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's, that's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with. And it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger. And so, we got rid of him. And there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) But, but, again, some, some of the critics have said this, combined with the failure to establish proof of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there's just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Yeah. Look, what, what we based our evidence on was a very sound national intelligence estimate.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) Nothing should have been more precise?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
I, I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that this country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.
DIANE SAWYER
(Off Camera) What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.
What's the difference?
That says it all.
-- Josh Marshall
(January 13, 2004 -- 10:17 PM EDT // link // print)
I could also acquire a handgun. What's the difference?
All the numbers are from
Harper's::
Percentage change between 2001 and 2002 in G.I. Joe sales:
+46 [Hasbro (Pawtucket, R.I.)]
Percentage change since 1999 in the number of desertions from the U.S. Army:
+36 [U.S. Army (Washington)]
Average number of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq each day since the invasion began:
9.2 [U.S. Department of Defense]
Average number killed:
1.6 [U.S. Department of Defense]
Average number of Iraqi civilians killed by gunfire in Baghdad each day last August:
17 [Iraqbodycount.net (London)]
Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water a year ago and today, respectively:
92, 60 [Coalition Provisional Authority (Baghdad)/World Health Organization (Geneva)]
Percentage of Baghdad's citizens asked to participate in a Gallup poll last September who agreed to do so:
98 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.)]
Average percentage of Americans asked to participate in Gallup polls who do:
40 [The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.)]
So, if 3 people deserted before, 4 did now? thus a 36% increase?
The American public deserves clear goals and a definite exit strategy in Iraq. It's not enough for our political and military leaders to make vague references to some future time when democratic rule and a civil society somehow will emerge in Iraq. It's patently unrealistic to expect that nation's various warring factions to suddenly embrace representative democracy and accept the outcome of a western-style vote. Even if open elections could be held, the majority might well choose an anti-American fundamentalist regime. This puts Washington in a Catch 22: The U.S. clearly will influence the creation of a new Iraqi government to ensure it is friendly to America, yet the perception that we installed the government will create further hostility toward America. There obviously are no easy solutions to the dilemmas we face in Iraq, and the complexity of the political and social realities begs the question: How do we ever hope to get out? If real stability and democratic rule simply cannot be attained in Iraq, are we prepared to occupy it for decades to come?
Ron Paul, Republican Congressman from Texas
McGentrix wrote:So, if 3 people deserted before, 4 did now? thus a 36% increase?
Well, McGentrix, that's really a very low number - especially considering e.g. that in World War II, the U.S. Army reported 40,000 deserters.
McGentrix wrote:So, if 3 people deserted before, 4 did now? thus a 36% increase?
What a moronic statement.
Neither your numbers nor your percentages are
close to accurate.
I
think you know this, but you post so many stupid things that sometimes it's hard to tell.
(Please note: I am not calling
you a moron, or stupid. I
am calling some of the things you post moronic and stupid.)
You need to bring your 'A' game to these discussions, McG.
My point is that using percentages is a fruitless effort. Statistics can be made to indicate anything.
Sorry you missed that.
McGentrix wrote:My point is that using percentages is a fruitless effort.
Only when they invalidate your beliefs, McG. :wink:
They invalidate EVERYONES beliefs one way or another.
McGentrix wrote:They invalidate EVERYONES beliefs one way or another.
Evidence? Proof?
Or just your opinion?
FWIW, you have a
huuuuge case to make. Any acceptable proof would invalidate every single political poll ever taken, for example.
(My advice is to quit while you're behind.)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" - Benjamin Disraeli
An engineer, a physicist, and a statistician were moose hunting in northern Canada. After a short walk through the marshes they spotted a HUGE moose 150 metres away. The engineer raised his gun and fired at the moose. A puff of dust showed that the bullet landed 3 metres to the right of the moose. The physicist, realizing that there was a substantial breeze that the engineer did not account for, aimed to the left of the moose and fired. The bullet landed 3 metres to the left of the moose. The statistician jumped up and down and screamed "We got him! We got him!"
This speech was given by Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga)
___________________________________________
...In fact, I spent this past week in Iraq meeting with some of those soldiers, not only from Georgia but all over the country, who have fought so brilliantly and so bravely for our country.
Let me give you a just a few facts that you may not have seen in the media for some reason.
General Paul Eaton, who not long ago was the commanding general at Fort Benning in Columbus, is in charge of training and organizing the new Iraqi Army. He told me that he had graduated his first group, more are on the way, and that he is optimistic.
There are over 60,000 Iraqi policemen already providing security to their fellow citizens. I went up one afternoon and visited a sparse but brand-new training academy in northern Iraq. It reminded me of the early days in the 1970s when we started ours at Forsyth. Saddam's old police were corrupt but there's a lot of new young Iraqis who seem to want to learn the profession the right way.
Also, this old educator was interested that all 22 universities are open and some of them are unbelievably huge. The agricultural college in Mosul has over 30,000 students.
Also, 43 technical institutions are open. And nearly all the primary and secondary schools are up and running. Many are being renovated and teachers already earn 20 times their former salaries, but they are still very low.
All 240 hospitals and more than 1,200 clinics are open. Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from zero to over 12,000 tons. And more than 22 million children have been vaccinated.
Business seems to be flourishing, and commerce is humming. There is a single unified currency for the first time in 15 years. And the central bank is fully independent. Loans are being made to finance businesses. And many who were distrustful of banks are opening new accounts daily. It's called capitalism.
A constitution will soon be written. And workshops are already being conducted on how to hold elections. It's called representative government.
Religious festivals are no longer banned. Huge numbers of people move freely to places of worship and celebration. It's called freedom of religion.
Millions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual fear. Children are no longer murdered - nor young girls raped - when their parents disagree with the government.
Critics of the government are not fed to the lions at the local zoo or buried by the thousands in mass graves.
Because, you see, Saddam is gone.
Uday and Qusay are dead. I saw where they were killed. And I saw their ill-gotten gains in warehouses. The gold-plated AK-47s and the $8,000 bottles of wine they enjoyed while their people starved and suffered.
And yet we have the anti-military crowd - not just anti-war but anti-military crowd - wringing their hands and fretting, What good can come of this?
What good can come of this?
We've just given 26 million people the greatest gift of all: their freedom. That is the good that has come from this.
Iraq has come further in seven months than Germany did after World War II in seven years. And don't forget: Our occupying soldiers back then were often killed by fanatical Nazis.
When will that greatest lesson of history ever be learned? That there is always the ongoing struggle between tyranny and freedom, between good and evil. And one must make a choice between the two.
It always exacts a terrible toll, but thankfully, it also often results in the most glorious of payoffs when freedom wins.
It was as true as far back as 490 B.C. The citizen soldiers of Athens, Greece, turned back on the plains of Marathon a Persian army three times as big and much better equipped. And a man named Phidippides ran the 26 miles back to Athens with the news of the great victory.
Marathoners still run that distance, but a far greater significance of this battle was that free men defeated the hired soldiers and slaves of a king.
And this victory led the way to Athenian democracy and all the good things that came with it: equality among citizens, individual rights, trial by jury, freedom of speech.
The glorious payoff also was true that April day in 1775, when the local militia of the American colonists stood up to the British Redcoats at Lexington and Concord and fired that shot heard 'round the world.
Two weeks later, George Washington took command of the Constitutional Army against the tyranny of George III.
And then still later, our Founding Fathers made that statement, "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
The payoff was gloriously true in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln made his famous address at that Gettysburg ceremony where 7,000 men had died and their bodies lay rotting for months after the battle.
President Lincoln's few words explained better than anyone else ever has what the Civil War was all about. "A test," he said, "of whether a new nation conceived in liberty," - conceived in liberty - "can long endure."
It was true in 1917, when within just a few months more than 9 million Americans volunteered to fight the Germans in World War I and turned the tide from possible defeat into an allied victory on the Western front.
My father was among them. He died when I was 2 weeks old. I never knew him, but I can remember wearing his coat with those sergeant stripes on it when I was so young; it dragged on the floor, and my arms did not extend more than halfway down its sleeves.
The glorious payoff was true that late spring of 1940, because of a single strong voice, a magnificent and eloquent voice that would not let up in his opposition to Adolf Hitler, as evil a man as ever lived.
As the clouds of war threatened, Winston Churchill repeatedly warned against the dangers of appeasement and pleaded that the evildoer be toppled and destroyed. But nobody would listen.
Then, finally, when only Britain was left, in desperation, they turned to Churchill as their prime minister. And with stirring oratory and unflinching courage, he led them out from under the heel of Hitler during Britain's finest hour.
I had come to believe that unless America found its own version of Winston Churchill, that the same spirit of appeasement, the same kind of softness and self-indulgence was turning my country into a land cowering before the world's mad bullies.
I remember with disgust when we did nothing after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 Americans.
I was amazed in 1996 when 16 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers, and still, we did nothing.
When our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were attacked in 1998, killing 263 people, our only response was to fire a few missiles into an empty tent.
And then came September 11, 2001, "the worst day in our history," David McCullough has called it.
Nineteen men armed only with box cutters, the skill to pilot a jet aircraft, and a fanatical zeal changed forever the meaning of keeping our citizens safe. In two hours, thousands of Americans were killed on our own soil and before our very eyes as we watched in horror.
I went to the floor of the United States Senate and said our response should not only be swift; it must be sustained.
That our will as a country was being tested. And that too often in the past, terrorist attacks have not been answered as forcefully as they should have.
My exact words were, "Bomb the hell out of them."
Later, I was the only Democrat in the Senate who supported President Bush on Homeland Security and still later gave him my full support for the regime change in Iraq. And I told this true story to my colleagues: I was doing some work on my back porch in Young Harris, Georgia, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden, I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes.
Now, a copperhead is poisonous; it will kill you. It could kill one of my grandchildren. It could kill one of my four great-grandchildren who play around there all the time.
And, you know, when I discovered those copperheads, I didn't call Shirley, like I do about nearly everything else. I didn't ask the city council to pass a resolution. I didn't even call any of my neighbors.
I just took a hoe and knocked them in the head and killed them dead as a doorknob. Now, I guess you could call it a unilateral action. Or maybe a pre-emptive strike.
I took their poisonous heads off because they were a threat to me, and they were a threat to my home and to my family. They were a threat to all I hold dear. And isn't what this is all about?
By the way, have you noticed that suddenly Muammar Kadhafi, the Libyan dictator who has supported some of the worst acts of terror in recent memory, suddenly "got religion" after we captured Saddam? And he announced that he wanted to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction?
One of our goals in invading Iraq was to demonstrate to rogue dictators everywhere what their fate might be if they pursued such a policy. Kadhafi got the message. And I have no doubt others will, also.
Few of freedom's soldiers have understood the lessons of history as well as Churchill, who not only was a brave and daring soldier and not only a great political leader; he also won the Nobel Prize for writing history.
Perhaps then in these times, we should remember the question that Churchill framed to the world when he made his famous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946.
He first reminded his audience that war and tyranny remained the great enemies of mankind. And then he asked these questions. "Do we not understand what war means to the ordinary person? Can you not grasp its horror?"
The bluntness with which Churchill spoke about the threat at that time did not go over well in many quarters. The American media did not want to hear this kind of talk. They called Churchill a warmonger. Even the usually gutsy Harry Truman denied knowing in advance what was in that speech and even suggested that Churchill probably should not have made it.
But you know, Abraham Lincoln was just as blunt and just as realistic. He once said, "You don't fight a war by blowing rosewater through cornstalks."
These two men, each the greatest man of his century, knew the horrors of war. But they also knew that war is sometimes necessary, that there is more to civilization than just comfortable self-preservation.
There are some of our citizens who believe war is politically pointless and that foreign policy is just some kind of fuzzy-feeling social work. I reject that.
Sometimes, a short war must be fought to prevent a longer war. Sometimes, hundreds must die in order to save thousands. Sometimes, the long view of history must be taken.
You hear people say that we must win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people in order to achieve our objective. Frankly I'm not so sure we can ever win their hearts and minds. That culture has run too deep for too long.
But I do think that we can win the trust and confidence of most of them. It will not be easy, but if we can do that, along with having removed Saddam, we will more than have achieved our objective. We will have made the world - especially that part of the world - a safer and better place.
In my Senate office in the Dirksen Building in Washington, I have a three-by-five-foot painting of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. I had it behind my desk at the State Capitol in Atlanta when I was governor.
To me, that image of six men raising an American flag on Mt. Suribachi in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought is one of the world's most vivid symbols of the price of freedom.
Those flag-raisers were very, very young men. They were just boys, really, from all corners of our country. There was a coal miner's son from Pennsylvania; a tobacco farmer's son from Kentucky; a mill worker's son from New England; a dairy farmer's son from Wisconsin; one came out of the oil fields of Texas, and one was a Pima Indian at an Indian Reservation in Arizona.
Three of those boys would never leave that island and would be buried in that black volcanic ash; one would leave on a stretcher; and two would come home to live miserable lives of drunkenness and despair.
As one looks at this image of courage and sacrifice, it is easy to miss what I consider to be one of the most important things about it.
There are six boys in it, but unless you look very, very closely, you see only five. Only a single helping hand of one is visible.
Most significantly, they are all virtually faceless. If you are like most Americans who have looked at this famous scene time and time again over the past six decades, you may have missed that: You cannot really identify a single face.
But isn't that really the way it has always been with most of freedom's soldiers - unknown and all-too-often unappreciated, faceless, nameless grunts who fight our wars to keep us free?
I cannot help but marvel - and especially have this past week - where do we keep getting these young men and women? Where do they come from? Four out of 10 come from the South.
It's amazing that our country produces them when we consider how many do not have this kind of love of country nor a willingness to die for it. I'm telling you, I'm fed up with those Hollywood weenies like Martin Sheen and Sean Penn who make millions of dollars playing soldiers in films, and then in real life give the finger to those who really wear the uniform and make the sacrifice.
In the Marines, we had a name for folks like that. We called them, among other things, "all gurgle and no guts."
Someone once said that in the long course of world history, freedom has died in many ways. Freedom has died on the battlefield, freedom has died because of ignorance and greed. But the most ignoble death of all is when freedom dies in its sleep.
As Americans, as lovers of freedom, we must not allow that to happen. We owe it to those who bore the burden and paid the price before us, and to those who are doing it now and to those who will come after us.
Over and over again, as I had a chance to talk with our troops, look them in the eye, put my arm around them or shake their hand, I told them how proud we are of them and how honored I was to be in their presence. And I told them that they are loved and appreciated back home.
Their morale is unbelievably good. I wish you could see it. I wish you could look into their faces. Even among those who have been wounded and who were in the hospital I visited.
One day when I was meeting with General Dempsey of the 1st Armored Division, a unit with a proud history known as Old Ironsides, we were discussing the morale, which he had just said was top notch.
By the way, he also said two things that have caused the morale to soar were President Bush's visit and Saddam's capture.
I turned to the Division's Sergeant Major, the top enlisted man in the division, a big, burly, 6-foot-3, about 240-pound African American with a shaved head, and I said, "That's good, but how do you sustain it?"
Without hesitation he narrowed his eyes, and said "The morale will stay high just as long as these troops know the people back home support us." . . . As long as the people back home support us.
I believe that the next five years will determine the kind of country that my four grandchildren and four great grandchildren are going to live in. And I don't know about you, but I want a commander-in-chief who is strong and relentless, a leader who will make a decision and not suffer from analysis paralysis.
Nothing has pleased me more than seeing President Bush boldly making the central theme of his presidency the idealism of American foreign policy in areas where, as he put it, "Freedom does not flourish."
I think it shows the same kind of boldness that Ronald Reagan showed toward Communism in the Cold War. And we all know what the results were with that.
