Posted on 03/17/2006 9:54:31 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Cheney's tough talk on Iran and an updated report on security sound eerily like the run-up to Iraq invasion
James Klurfeld
March 17, 2006
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debate with President Jimmy Carter: There they go again.
In this case I'm referring to the Bush administration's just-released update of its National Security Strategy statement. In it, the administration reaffirms its belief in war to stop a nation from acquiring nuclear weapons. The review gives almost no indication that the administration has learned anything from the debacle that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq. There is no recognition of the difficulties that come after the strike - the task of nation building, which has been utterly bungled in Iraq. This is mind-bogglingly bad.
There is also an alarming sense of deja vu in this report when it comes to Iran. Combine the review's defense of preventive war - which it terms "pre-emptive war," though there is an important difference - with the recent warning statement from Vice President Dick Cheney that "we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," and you can't help but feel that this administration is ready to go to war again, this time against Iran. It was that same combination of a bellicose National Security Review and saber rattling from Cheney that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq.
Back then, I was willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. All the heavy rhetoric seemed to be part of an overall strategy to intimidate Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction. The threat of force was necessary to convince Hussein to allow the weapons inspectors back into Iraq, I thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
bump
Yeah, or we'll lose just like the (fill in the blank: British/Turks/Russians/Mongols/Macedonians) did.
LOL
My bags are still packed, when do we leave?
What the hell am I going to do with snorkling gear in Iran?
ROFL!!!!
It'll sound "eerily similar" when we need to take care of business in North Korea too.
Iran has always been the main enemy. I have always thought (hoped is more like it) that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were done at least in part to place Iran in a vice with a view to a future attack against them.
Note that this guy, like just about all opponents of the war, argues from the basis that Iraq is a "debacle". It is no such thing. The issue is not in doubt militarily. The only issue in doubt is whether or not the leftists can succeed in so undermining the morale of the American people (and through this effort they will undermine the morale of the Iraqis as well) as to bring about a collapse of the war effort here. If they succeed in this they will be able to repudiate Bush, effectively block and/or reverse his agenda (some of that might be a good thing though I doubt the leftists dislike the things I dislike) and then sit around and celebrate their "victory". And in a few years (maybe months) we will be counting the dead in the Middle East and very likely in Europe and here at home by the tens-of-thousands. If the leftists succeed the war will have to fight as a result of their "victory" will dwarf what we have to do today.
We need to get Democrats on record now about how they would handle the nuclear crisis in Iran!
Would Democrats support a preemptive strike on Iran in order to protect Israel?
If Iran exploding a nuclear weapon on Long Island, this guy would still be attacking the Bush administration.
It'll be interesting to see - one MAJOR difference in favor of invading Iran - Iraq (Saddam) said he didn't have wmd's. Iran has come out said they're getting the ultimate wmd AND that they will use it. No worries about not finding them this time.
Any unilateral actions will be by Israel. Then the "fit will hit the shan".
yep - the biggest similarity is the threat of WMD, which this guy evidently thinks should actually be deployed against us before we try to understand why they hate us and ask them for forgiveness for making it imperative that they kill so many of us. (run on sentence, but it seems to make sense...)
Who was the last Iranian (Persian) to win a war ..... Darius the Great?
Almost just like the outcome of the left's "victory" on the Vietnam issue in the 70s.
Forgive the preface above, this is a defence of 43 and, really, of all leaders.
We -- the U.S. and the world -- have got ourselves in an awful thicket in uncountable ways. So if you try to stop barbarism in Iraq, then you must explain why you didn't try to stop it North Korea, instead. Or, if you try to pre-empt a nuclear nightmare in Iran, we want to know why you didn't FIX Iraq and worry with North Korea. If you go after North Korea, maybe a nuke lands on an American city. Maybe this happens anyway. And, hey, why not smackdown Chavez, while he is still manageable? Maybe because you would be find yourself indicted in the Hague for crimes against humanity, etc. (although not by me).
I wish we had a more thoughtful, confidence-inspiring, conservative leader. But NOBODY is going to manage these problems and come out a winner. It is a good time to be old.
Serious breakdown in the author's analysis. Iraq had a lot of WMD. Most of it went to Syria before the war, but it wasn't a perfect clean-up and some extremely hazardous chemical weapons were left behind in Iraq. We said the intelligence was wrong and Iraq didn't have chemical weapons so the insurgents wouldn't go looking for them and use them on our troops and Iraqi civilians. The White House took a political loss to protect our troops.
This editorial is a very shallow, weak analysis that tries to turn Bush & Cheney into the issue, instead of Iran. Notice how little effort and thought the writer gives to the real threat from Iran. Also notice that he totally assumes away the great difficulty in determining whether there is an imminent threat of nuclear attack from another country. Guess what, they won't tell us when they're about to launch those nuclear cruise missiles, and if we let them build the first few nuclear weapons then how do we stop them from building a full nuclear arsenal? The author is a lightweight who should not be taken seriously.
No, it isn't.
As we can all appreciate now, one of the major problems with the preventive war doctrine is that it doesn't work very well unless you have accurate, credible intelligence.
The case is a non-starter. To equate the two situations is simply to ignore the facts - at one point in this column the author appears to accept that the Iranians are doing what they say they're doing and here he pretends that there is uncertainty. So which is it? And if he has a better idea than to wring his hands and bleat the the situation is "complex" I'd love to hear it.
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