Can't the USA live without (cold) war?

2003 HILLARY VS. 2007 HILLARY

One of the pitfalls of being the smartest woman in the world means that people hang on your every word. They also make note of the things you say. In the case of Hillary Clinton, this is not good. You know that she was all in favor of deposing Saddam Hussein in 2003 prior to the invasion, but now she is squarely against the war. What you may not know is just how different her statements on the subject are some 4 years later.

For example, from 2003: "I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted, tried to discount the political or other factors that I didn't believe should be in any way a part of this decision." Oh really? You carefully reviewed the information? Carefully reviewed the intelligence? So you didn't make your decision lightly, Senator Clinton?

Well, sometime in the last four years she must've fallen and bumped her head.

Now in 2007, things sure have changed mightily: "So he took the authority that I and others gave him and he misused it, and I regret that deeply. And if we had known then what we know now, there never would have been a vote and I never would have voted to give this president that authority." But wait, Ms. Rodham! We thought you carefully reviewed the information? That means you didn't just take Bush's word for everything. So ... wasn't your fact-finding exercise every bit as faulty as was the president's?

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Bill,

Quote:

I don't wish to be offensive, MsOlga... but that is utter nonsense. The link I provided you was to the very document that granted Bush his War powers. One need not read more than a few paragraphs to see the error in you assumption.

OE, whether or not people chose and continue choose to be ignorant of the facts is a personal choice. Said choice doesn't change the facts. The Joint Resolution by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America is the single most important document regarding America's choice to go to war and I don't believe for one minute that's the first time you read it. It matters little who chose or chooses to remain ignorant of the FACTs, whether foreign or domestic, the FACTs remain the same. Repetition of Nonsense, by individuals and Newspaper Editors matters not at all. The government of the United States laid out their intentions in no uncertain terms and it has ALWAYS been available for anyone interested in the truth. No matter how much you may disagree with the contents, or even the veracity of same, the contents remain the same.

Of course, I was paying attention at the time.

You must realize that the case presented for war, and the justifications that Congress came up with allowing it, are two seperate things. The AUMF threw in each and every reason that they could think of, why we had the right to attack Saddam and why Bush should be granted the power to do so. A grab bag, a Shmorgas board of reasoning. It is not a document which was representative of the things the President was saying on a regular basis in order to try and rally public support.

MSloga is right that WMD is the reason we went to war. Not for humanitarian reasons, not to spread democracy, not to hunt Al Qaeda. The fact that the gov't found a whole list of reasons to justify the war doesn't change the fact that the Admin used WMD to push for the war.

You are playing historical revisionist if you think any differently now, Bill.

Cycloptichorn

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Nonsense Cyclops; any one of those whereas lines could have been stricken in debate by Congress. They were not. Attempts to say Bush took us to war for WMD alone is utter nonsense. The war powers could have articulated that goal alone. They did not. Now that things aren't going well it's tempting to put it all on Bush and pretend there was only one reason givin... but it simply isn't true. Congress shares in Bush's responsibility and their reasons remain available for all to see. It is you who are trying to change the historical FACT. Check the date on the document if you doubt it.

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Bill,

Quote:

Nonsense Cyclops; any one of those whereas lines could have been stricken in debate by Congress. They were not. Attempts to say Bush took us to war for WMD alone is utter nonsense. The war powers could have articulated that goal alone. They did not. Now that things aren't going well it's tempting to put it all on Bush and pretend there was only one reason givin... but it simply isn't true. Congress shares in Bush's responsibility and their reasons remain available for all to see. It is you who are trying to change the historical FACT. Check the date on the document if you doubt it.

You don't seem to realize that there was no reason to take any of the 'whereas' lines out, and every reason to put in as many as possible. The truth of them is immaterial; the AUMF did not build the case for war or present the case for war. It presented a list of reasons that war was justified. Not reasons war was thought of or initiated. Reasons why we could later go back and say 'look, here's our justification for it.'

I have never sought to remove responsibility from those in Congress who voted for the war; far from it. I think they should own up to their decision, say why they made the decision at the time, and repudiate their former decision by voting to revoke the AUMF.

NONE of this however has anything to do with the fact that Bush and his crew built up the case for war on WMD. You are lying to yourself if you don't think that's true.

The document is meaningless. It doesn't present anything of use to a historian, other than a list of what Congress thought would be good justifications for war. It has no relation whatsoever to the reasons we actually went to war.

Do you honestly want me to start culling speeches of Bush's? I can do so, yaknow... I guarantee that the WMD issue is by far the most prevalent issue, with a little democracy and freedom sprinkled in for taste. I understand that you have some strange humanitarian mission inside you that calls for the salvation of all those who are oppressed, but this has no relation to why we went to war in Iraq!!

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

You don't seem to realize that there was no reason to take any of the 'whereas' lines out, and every reason to put in as many as possible.

You don't seem to realize that this erroneous statement is repugnant to your own position. Congress had EVERY reason to strike 'whereas' lines that didn't fit their intention. No Bush speech quote can remove this fact from the record... and the document is congressional, not executive. No one is denying Bush focused the world's attention on WMD potential... but that doesn't make that single justification a comprehensive look at the facts. The facts for the justification were clearly laid out and approved by The Joint Resolution by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America. Pretending this doesn't matter is ludicrous, aside from being repugnant to your position. While second guessing with the benefit of hindsight; you should be extremely focused on the where and the why of the permissions and how they came to be. Bush said WMD; simply isn't the totality of the facts, and while considering the very results you disdain, you cannot reasonably deny where the War Powers came from nor their stated reasons why. This type of selective reading of history serves neither your purpose nor mine. How an anti-war person can state the language in the document that granted the war power is immaterial is beyond me. Think it through and spread your blame.

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Quote:

How an anti-war person can state the language in the document that granted the war power is immaterial is beyond me. Think it through and spread your blame.

Read closely! I did just that!

Quote:

I have never sought to remove responsibility from those in Congress who voted for the war; far from it. I think they should own up to their decision, say why they made the decision at the time, and repudiate their former decision by voting to revoke the AUMF.

The language in the AUMF is immaterial to the understanding of why the country went to war. It was a document which was created far after the decision to go to war had already been reached! My argument has consistently been that the decision to go to war was based upon different factors than the justifications for going to war.

Congress in 2003 had one intention and one only: to cover their asses after 9/11. You must recall that the decision to go to war as soon as possible was due to WMD. Bush pushed the war as fast as he could. None of the reasons listed in the AUMF show a pressing and immediate need to go to war, except for the WMD justifications which were all false.

It is highly erroneous of you to presume that we went to war in Iraq in the March of 2003 for any reason other than the fictitious threat of WMD. If it had not been for those lies, we would either have delayed the start of the war or not gone to war at all. If it hadn't been for the WMD lies, I suspect that no AUMF would have been granted whatsoever.

An example: lets' say that I am angry with a fellow and punch him in the face. When asked, 'why did you do such a thing? He didn't punch you,' I answered:

- He's a jerk
- He hit me a long time ago
- He's in violation of his parole
- He tried to hit my dad a while back
- He's bad to his family and friends.

etc. This is all a good list of my justifications for what I've done, but none provide the reasoning about why I actually hit the guy: I was angry at him. Same with the Iraq war - a bunch of reasons justifying a decision which had already been made don't give any conclusive evidence of why the decision was made. They exist only as a comprehensive defense of actions later on.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:
How an anti-war person can state the language in the document that granted the war power is immaterial is beyond me. Think it through and spread your blame.

Read closely! I did just that!

Quote:
I have never sought to remove responsibility from those in Congress who voted for the war; far from it. I think they should own up to their decision, say why they made the decision at the time, and repudiate their former decision by voting to revoke the AUMF.

The language in the AUMF is immaterial to the understanding of why the country went to war. It was a document which was created far after the decision to go to war had already been reached! My argument has consistently been that the decision to go to war was based upon different factors than the justifications for going to war.

Congress in 2003 had one intention and one only: to cover their asses after 9/11. You must recall that the decision to go to war as soon as possible was due to WMD. Bush pushed the war as fast as he could. None of the reasons listed in the AUMF show a pressing and immediate need to go to war, except for the WMD justifications which were all false.

It is highly erroneous of you to presume that we went to war in Iraq in the March of 2003 for any reason other than the fictitious threat of WMD. If it had not been for those lies, we would either have delayed the start of the war or not gone to war at all. If it hadn't been for the WMD lies, I suspect that no AUMF would have been granted whatsoever.

An example: lets' say that I am angry with a fellow and punch him in the face. When asked, 'why did you do such a thing? He didn't punch you,' I answered:

- He's a jerk
- He hit me a long time ago
- He's in violation of his parole
- He tried to hit my dad a while back
- He's bad to his family and friends.

etc. This is all a good list of my justifications for what I've done, but none provide the reasoning about why I actually hit the guy: I was angry at him. Same with the Iraq war - a bunch of reasons justifying a decision which had already been made don't give any conclusive evidence of why the decision was made. They exist only as a comprehensive defense of actions later on.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn...

...this is an exceptional post in a series of exceptional posts by you.

Thank you for your advocacy.

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Thanks, Cheers!

Cycloptichorn

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The bottom line of this whole dirty business is, "the invasion was illegal and unwarranted", neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq posed any threat to the US, Britain or Australia, further more the citizens of Iraq were far better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now under the US occupation, it was a secular society with no link to terrorism.

There was a solid civil infrastructure in place with a medical system that was the envy of many of the neighboring countries, they had a reliable electricity supply, access to clean drinking water and they weren't being slaughtered at a rate of 100 per day.

As it is now raw sewage is running in the streets, there is hardly any clean drinking water, hospitals can't get the basic necessities and the electricity supply is spasmodic, if available at all, and a US authority is investigating the missing $20 billion of Iraqi money that was that was given in trust by the UN to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) after the invasion.

This US administration has turned a developing country into a "basket case" with thousands of Iraqis leaving daily; Bush is prolonging the death and destruction to save face, he has no concern for the young people putting their lives on the line, or the innocent men, women and children who face death by the hour.
Nothing can excuse the slaughter and mayhem created by the Bush regime.

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anton wrote:

The bottom line of this whole dirty business is, "the invasion was illegal and unwarranted", neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq posed any threat to the US, Britain or Australia, further more the citizens of Iraq were far better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now under the US occupation, it was a secular society with no link to terrorism....

First of all, had Hussein been developing WMD, and no one at the time of the invasion really knew whether his programs had been discontinued or merely hidden better, he would have posed a very large danger to the world.

Secondly, I don't know whether or not the Iraqis were better off under Hussein than they are now, and I don't know whether they were better off under Hussein than they will be in a few years, but I do know that they weren't very damn well off.

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Cyclops; I did read what you wrote and was essentially asking you to live up to it. You cannot exclusively blame Bush on the one hand, and still blame the balance of government that gave him the power on the other. Further, the original portion of what I quoted is precisely what you should be pissed off about... and it didn't come from Bush. Inconvenient as it may be; the facts have been sitting there for years, for anyone interested to see.

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The following is an extract from a comment by Scott Ritter that appeared in the Guardian Newspaper January 27 2005 which I believe answers the question whether Iraq had, or was developing WMD:

quote*The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.
This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in which the issue of WMD and the war in Iraq played a central role. In the lead-up to the invasion, and throughout its aftermath, President Bush was unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a threat to the US and the world. The failure to find WMD should have been his Achilles heel, but the Democratic contender, John Kerry, floundered, changing his position on WMD and Iraq many times.
Ironically, it was Kerry who forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that it was WMD that solely justified any military action against Iraq. Before the US Senate in 2002, secretary of state Colin Powell responded to a question posed by Kerry about what would happen if Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return and they found the country had in fact disarmed.
"If Iraq was disarmed as a result of an inspection regime that gave us and the Security Council confidence that it had been disarmed, I think it unlikely that we would find a casus belli."
When one looks at the situation in Iraq today, the only way that it would be possible to justify the current state of affairs - a once secular society now the centre of a global anti-American Islamist jihad, tens of thousands of civilians killed, an unending war that costs almost £3.2bn a month, and the basic principles of democracy mocked through an election process that has generated extensive violence - is if the invasion of Iraq was for a cause worthy of the price.
The threat to international peace and security represented by Iraqi WMD seemed to be such a cause. We now know there were no WMD, and thus no justification for the war. And yet there are no repercussions.end quote*

As for Iraq being better off under Saddam Hussein I suggest you read some of the reports in the unbiased foreign press, overwhelmingly the fast majority of the America public now recognize the invasion was a mistake, this was made clear with the result of the recent US election; they now want their troops home from what is fast becoming an embarrassment.

As for being better off in the future I believe Iraq will be a Theocracy under elements of Sharia Law, all thanks to the Bush regime.

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Has anyone notified Anton that Saddam is dead and he can stop kissing Saddam's ass?

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Quote:

unbiased foreign press

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McGentrix wrote:

Has anyone notified Anton that Saddam is dead and he can stop kissing Saddam's ass?

How low can he go? How absolutely inane can he be? You ain't seen nothin' yet, folks!

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McGentrix wrote:

Has anyone notified Anton that Saddam is dead and he can stop kissing Saddam's ass?

Your answer speaks volumns about your intelligence, I hope you find bliss in your ignorance.

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Quote:

February 19, 2007

JUST LIKE OLD TIMES
A New Arms Race Between US and Russia?
By Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Uwe Klussmann, Georg Mascolo and Christian Neef

The specter of a new military rivalry between Moscow and Washington has been looming since Vladimir Putin delivered a speech highly critical of the United States at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. Is it the birth of a new arms race between the former arch-enemies?

... ... ...

Washington's actions show signs that the US is "partially losing touch with reality," writes Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung: No one in the West had enough imagination to realize Putin might actually interpret the missile shield on his borders as a provocation.

In Washington, on the other hand, Putin's Munich speech is more likely to bolster the arguments of those who have long warned against a new threat coming from Russia. Sources say that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has never trusted Putin, a former KGB agent, and influential Senator John McCain has been calling for a tougher stance on Russia for years. Indeed, when the Russian president launched into his verbal attacks at the Munich conference, McCain, who was seated only a few meters away from Putin, became visibly enraged.

From the standpoint of the White House, the self-confident Russian's list of sins is gradually becoming intolerably long, not because of fears of a direct Russian military threat but because Moscow is seeking allies among the US's enemies. Russia's delivery of advanced surface-to-air missile defense systems to Iran is seen as an especially serious offence.

And hardliners in Washington see themselves vindicated by Putin's offer this week to help the Saudi royal family develop a nuclear program -- proof, they say, that a new conflict between the former arch-rivals is unavoidable.

Full report at Spiegel online

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anton wrote:

McGentrix wrote:
Has anyone notified Anton that Saddam is dead and he can stop kissing Saddam's ass?

Your answer speaks volumns about your intelligence, I hope you find bliss in your ignorance.

So, no one mentioned that to you then? Sorry, I thought you knew.

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probably your voice is so muffled by bushs' lower bowel that he didn't understand you. that's what I'm thinking.... :wink:

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Can't the USA live without (cold) war?

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