Gotta admire ol' dubya

[x0847Marine]

Originally posted by Shuckins

Every major intelligence agency in the western world believed that Saddam's regime possessed and was preparing to deploy weapons of mass destruction against his enemies.  Clinton believed it.  Gore believed it.  Tony Blair and Chirac believed it.  Yet Bush is condemned as a dunderhead for being the only western leader to advocate military action.

Assumptions about intelligence aside...

Yes, Bush is a dunderhead to advocate US military action, and nation building, in a region of the world where "the people", armed to the teeth and pissed-off at the great satin for generations, won't stand for it.

[Rolex]

And sometimes the experts charged with finding the facts as they are at the time are right. Hans Blix was right. Scott Ritter was right. Two people vilified here were right, but you don't see any of the blowhards who vilified them doing the stand-up thing and saying "Hans Blix was right. I was wrong."

Bush is a dunderhead. It's becoming a real race against time now. Will he serve out his final term, or will he be removed via impeachment? I doubt he'll resign, but even Nixon resigned for the good of the nation. But even Nixon was honorable enough to not say something like "Don't throw the constitution in my face. It's just a ****ing piece of paper."

It's like supporting a dunderheaded relative beyond reason. Sooner or later, you have enough of the dunderheadedness and have to cut them loose. Your support is charming, but he's not your relative or even your friend. I don't think he even likes you.

[Shuckins]

The House of Representatives in the 103rd Congress, which met from 1993-1994, was controlled by the Democratic Party, by a margin of 276 votes to 156.

Largely because of the backlash against the passage of the Brady Bill, the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the elections of 1994, after four decades of unbroken control.

The Republicans have controlled the Senate since Reagan was in office.

So, at least as far as House membership is concerned, it is not revisionist history.

[Shuckins]

Hans Blix was right, but because of Saddam Hussein's actions, that was hardly obvious at the time, was it?

The U.N. inspectors were prevented by Hussein from going into certain sections of Iraq.  This was a deliberate action on his part, according to his own testimony and the testimony of some of his top officials, to maintain the appearance of having wmd's so as to intimidate his regional enemies.

In addition, previous U.N. inspections had concluded that Hussein's regime had produced large quantities of chemical agents and thousands of rockets capable of delivering these agents which could not be accounted for.

You can argue that the administration over-estimated the threat or extent of Sadamm's arsenal, but the threat itself wasn't just pulled out of thin air, nor was it unsupported by outside sources, as indicated by the U.N. reports mentioned above.

[Guppy35]

Originally posted by SteveBailey
Nice try but DENIED.  clinton cut the defense budget several times.  Are you going to deny this?

And the Republican Congress did what?  Don't they handle appropriatons etc?  Did they approve the budget?

The implication is that Clinton as President could do what he wanted.

You can't have it both ways.  You can't blame the Democratic Congress for all the troubles now, if you aren't going to hold the Republican Congress to the same standard.

So who is calling the shots?

If we're going to agree that the President gets his way regardless, then we have to throw out the idea that Congress regardless of the party in control, has any power.

Which is it?

Did Clinton ask for budget cuts including military spending?  Yes.  Who approved it?

[Shuckins]

Clinton's administration proposed large military budget cuts for the year 1993.  The House of Representatives for that year was controlled by the Democrats.

It's doubtful he could have gotten it through Congress without his party controlling at least one house.  The Department of Defense itself was not averse to a trimming, or streamlining, of the military after the fall of the Soviet Union.

All that excess money was just too tempting a target for Congressmen and a President lusting to use it for reelection ensuring pork-barrel spending.  

The result;  the lowest levels of military spending, compared to the overall size of the federal budget, that the country had seen since the 1930s.

While there's plenty of blame to go around, the fact remains that the President submits the budget to Congress.  Congress may amend it, but the president has the option of vetoing it if it is unsatisfactory in any way.

Since the line-item veto has been denied the president, how often, if ever, will he veto an entire budget?  Answer:  not very often.

[Saxman]

First, don't blame the actions of the previous president on the total ****-up we're left dealing with now under the CURRENT one. If we do that, then let's blame George Sr. for not ousting Saddam during Gulf War 1.0 when we arguably had greater justification than anything Dubya could come up with in Round Two.

Or hell, let's blame Reagan because Iran-Contra went a LONG way towards building on the anger and hatred of the Middle-East region for the United States.

What about Carter? HE was the guy in charge during the beginning of the 1979 Revolution in Iran which LED to Iran-Contra.

Then there's Harry Truman, who backed the creation of Israel in the aftermath of WWII.

But why stop there? How about 200-odd years of British colonialism? Oh! Oh! It's the CRUSADERS' fault! YEAH! If it wasn't for those superstitious zealots having to go and "liberate" the Holy Land we probably wouldn't even be in the mess in the FIRST place.

We can, and HAVE, gone around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and playing this same damn blame game over who payed for what and when.

At the time (1994) decreasing the defense budget MADE SENSE. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the effective end of the THEN ONLY COMPETING SUPERPOWER to the United States there WAS no need for runaway military spending. The end of the Cold War meant what appeared to be the end of the likelihood of a major military confrontation on the scale of the First and Second World Wars.

What's happening now is NOT the same type of war. Even at its reduced size, US and Coalition forces outright overwhelmed the regular Iraqi army in BARELY over a month (March 20 - May 1). The failure afterwards has NOT been a matter of funding as some people are trying to suggest (even after the cuts in the late-90s, the United States STILL has one of the best-funded and equipped armed forces in the world, which is PRECISELY what allows them to function effectively in decreased numbers). It's been pure command bungling by THIS administration.

The US had generally unanimous support for the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. This was NOT the case in Iraq, where the US acted largely unilaterally during the initial invasion, with the strongest pledge of assistance coming from the British. France, Germany and Russia (all with trade ties to Iraq) refused assistance.

The Bush administration OUTRIGHT FAILED to provide sufficiently irrefutable evidence to support his position. It wasn't like the Cuban Missile Crisis where there was clear and undeniable photographic evidence of missiles, launch equipment, fuel storage, warheads and a Soviet military presence. All we had was Saddam's stalling tactics, a few MAYBE hints (which IIRC DID NOT HOLD UP TO SCRUTINY) and Dubya's set intent. Evidence was stretched and skewed and dissenting intelligence summarily dismissed.

Bush was warned BEFORE HAND the scale of the insurgency they would face after the completion of the conventional ground war (which DID come to pass). He was told what would be needed to combat, if not prevent, such a situation, and he DISREGARDED IT. It's not a matter of the US military lacking the funding, equipment or personnel to do it--we HAD it--but that they ignored what the experts told them NEEDED to be done to prevent it from so rapidly escalating out of control. It's NOT that the US military DOESN'T have the blast-resistant armor, or the armored fighting vehicles, or personal body armor to do the job in its inventory, it's that the administration COMPLETELY disregarded that threat, and now it's all stacked up in warehouses while American men and women in the combat zone are having to fight their OWN bureaucracy at home to get the equipment over there (should I also mention that some of this equipment is substandard AND PROVIDED BY CONTRACTORS WITH DIRECT BUSINESS TIES TO MEMBERS OF BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION).

In the early phases of the insurgency Bush relied on glorified Rent-a-Cops provided by contractors who ALSO had direct business connections with members of the administration. The same is the case with the construction contractors involved in rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure. Rather than turn things over to organizations who are properly equipped to handle these sorts of projects, Bush instead decides to reward the friends of his friends.

And sadly, it's NOT solely the fault of the Conservatives, but the sickly Democratic Party who for the last 8-odd years has been an ineffectual shadow of what it used to be, caving in on issues. Of course, it doesn't help that the Conservatives ALSO are too busy bending over so Dubya can jam the Party Line up their asses.

[-tronski-]

Originally posted by Shuckins

Every major intelligence agency in the western world believed that Saddam's regime possessed and was preparing to deploy weapons of mass destruction against his enemies.  Clinton believed it.  Gore believed it.  Tony Blair and Chirac believed it.  Yet Bush is condemned as a dunderhead for being the only western leader to advocate military action.

You answered your own question.

I believe the argument was always about the immediately threat of WMD, and what to do about it. Bush will always take the lions share of blame for the fallout over Iraq because it was his adminstrations insistance that military action was the only solution when most other powers believed containment was the preferable action. As a self proclaimed war president, his subsequent presidency was always going to hinge on the success of the war in Iraq once he had expanded it away from the internationally supported invasion of Afghanistan.
This is also been the case for Blair - but he has had the advantage of being not completely tainted and consumed by the mismanagement of the Iraq war.

 Tronsky

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Shuckins
Clinton's administration proposed large military budget cuts for the year 1993.  The House of Representatives for that year was controlled by the Democrats.

George Mitchell, (D)-Maine was majority leader of the Senate in 1993.

Both houses for the first two years of Clinton were controlled by Demos.  Reps took it both in the election of 1994.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by 0thehero
 Admittedly, economic sanctions frequently only solidify the position of tyrants, but they can't hold out interminably.  And it's much cheaper than war.



That's painfully clear now, isn't it?  Is anyone really, seriously arguing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US?



We didn't deem it necessary to be involved in Rwanda, the Congo, or today in the Sudan, and rightly so because there was no clear national interest in doing so.

Sanctions were beginning to fall apart at the seams.
It was only a matter of time before they were completely ignored.
Sanctions hurt the Iraqui population the most (See oil for food scandal)

Not to mention sanctions simply dont work. Case in point. North Korea

National interests... OIL
Oil just inst in our national interest oil IS our national interest.
Sadam remained a threat to the region.
It has been widely reported by just about every news media well before the war that he stated goal was to dominate and be the leader of the middle east.
So long as he remained in power he was a threat to the region. And thus was a threat to our national interest.

Even if it were known for certain he didnt have WMDs
The time we attacked was the best time to attack.
It has also been widely reported (Dilfer Report)that once sanctions were lifted Sadam wanted to bebuild his weapons programs.
And odds are he would have.
Tigers dont suddenly become domesticated sheep. a Tiger remains a tiger (just ask Roy Horn )

Should we have waited untill he rebuild his military and weapons stickpiles.
should we have waited until he again tried to force his will on the region?

Just what would the casualty list be then. when they really did have WMDs to deal with?
Safe to say we would have alot more mothers crying over the loss of their children then we do now. And it woudl cost us alot more financially as well

No we attacked at the right time. When our enemy was weakest

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by x0847Marine
Anyone who knew even a little bit about the long history US foreign policy failures in mid east knew there were a-lot more mid-easterners willing to violently reject US troop "occupation" AND any "Western" puppet govt, than we could ever hope to kill / capture or control using the military.

Bush apparently figured generations of hatred would be forgotten and "the people" of the mid east would just fall in line and treat the great satins troops like illegal aliens offering them sanctuary.

And they would still be trying to kill us anyway.
So nothing has changed.

Would you rather have them going after our soldiers there?
Or our civil population here?

I always thought one of the US doctrines was to fight our wars overseas. So they wouldnt have to be fought here

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by x0847Marine
Anyone who knew even a little bit about the long history US foreign policy failures in mid east knew there were a-lot more mid-easterners willing to violently reject US troop "occupation" AND any "Western" puppet govt, than we could ever hope to kill / capture or control using the military.

Not according to Curtis LeMay...  Nuclear overkill is still available.

Just consider this: We could solve two or three global problems simultaneously:  Reduction in the nuclear stockpile, reduction in global temperatures (Nuclear Winter), and reduction of the terrorist threat.

[Shuckins]

Holden, you're right.  My memory isn't what it used to be.  

So much for the "revisionist history" accusation.

Tronski, the arguments for containment put forward by several nations were hollow and self serving, seeing as how many of their corporations and government officials were hip-deep in under-the-table dealings with Saddam's government.

The Oil-For-Food program in particular was so rife with corruption it was laughable.  The thievery was so widespread as to encompass individuals in almost every major western nation, including the United States.

You're also right about Bush's administration hitching it's wagon to the Iraq War.  How his administration would be seen depended on the success or failure of that conflict.  I have always thought that the war was justified, for humanitarian reasons if for no other.  It's a foible of mine.  For some strange reason I believe that the civilized nations of the world have a duty to intervene in nations where civilians are subject to genocidal massacre by their own governments.  

The continuing tragedy of Darfur casts a stain on western civilization, and lends weight to the old argument that the people of the west are unwilling to shed their blood for people of color.  Darfur is a prime example of a situation in which economic sanctions do not work.  Hundreds of thousands die while the west dithers, and wrings its hands, or argues about what action is "appropriate."

Until the civilized nations of the world can present a united front to the evils of massacre and genocide then it will continue to grow.  We cannot afford the simplistic argument that it does not effect us, and continue to bury our heads in the sand.

Regards

[Guppy35]

So for 6 of his 8 years Clinton had a Republican Congress to deal with and for 1 of his first 6 Bush has had a Democratic Congress.  Hmmmmm  But this is all Clinton's fault

[SteveBailey]

Originally posted by Guppy35
So for 6 of his 8 years Clinton had a Republican Congress to deal with and for 1 of his first 6 Bush has had a Democratic Congress.  Hmmmmm  But this is all Clinton's fault

Please show me where it is said that it is all Clinton's fault.