Posted on 06/17/2014 4:41:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war "the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General's assessment absolutely correct.
In September, 2002, arguing against a U.S. attack on Iraq, I said the following on the House Floor:
"No credible evidence has been produced that Iraq has or is close to having nuclear weapons. No evidence exists to show that Iraq harbors al-Qaeda terrorists. Quite to the contrary, experts on this region recognize Hussein as an enemy of the al-Qaeda and a foe to Islamic fundamentalism."
Unfortunately, Congress did not listen.
As we know, last week the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, fell to the al-Qaeda allied Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Last week an al-Qaeda that had not been in Iraq before our 2003 invasion threatened to move on the capitol, Baghdad, after it easily over-ran tens of thousands of Iraqi military troops.
The same foreign policy "experts" who lied us into the Iraq war are now telling us we must re-invade Iraq to deal with the disaster caused by their invasion! They cannot admit they were wrong about the invasion being a "cakewalk" that would pay for itself, so they want to blame last week's events on the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq. But the trouble started with the 2003 invasion itself, not the 2011 troop withdrawal. Anyone who understands cause and effect should understand this.
The Obama administration has said no option except for ground troops is off the table to help the Iraqi government in this crisis. We should not forget, however, that the administration does not consider Special Forces or the CIA to be "boots on the ground." So we may well see Americans fighting in Iraq again.
It is also likely that the administration will begin shipping more weapons and other military equipment to the Iraqi army, in the hopes that they might be able to address the ISIS invasion themselves. After years of U.S. training, costing as much as $20 billion, it is unlikely the Iraqi army is up to the task. Judging from the performance of the Iraqi military as the ISIS attacked, much of that money was wasted or stolen.
A big U.S. government weapons transfer to Iraq will no doubt be favored by the US military-industrial complex, which stands to profit further from the Iraq meltdown. This move will also be favored by those in Washington who realize how politically unpopular a third U.S. invasion of Iraq would be at home, but who want to "do something" in the face of the crisis. Shipping weapons may be an action short of war, but it usually leads to war. And as we have already seen in Iraq and Syria, very often these weapons fall into the hands of the al-Qaeda we are supposed to be fighting!
Because of the government's foolish policy of foreign interventionism, the U.S. is faced with two equally stupid choices: either pour in resources to prop up an Iraqi government that is a close ally with Iran, or throw our support in with al-Qaida in Iraq (as we have done in Syria). I say we must follow a third choice: ally with the American people and spend not one more dollar or one more life attempting to re-make the Middle East. Haven't we have already done enough damage?
Yes we have, there are some people you just cannot help, it is counter productive.
If we do not fight them now, we will have to fight them in the future....when they are far stronger.
But, even when we fought them now (Iraq, Afghanistan) we did not fight to win and to destroy the islamists. We tried to play nice.
So, unless this nation’s resolve changes, fighting them now is useless.
If our resolve does not change in the future, we will lose to them and all suffer under the caliphate.
Sorry, Ron, but nobody ever accused Iraq of having nuclear weapons. (The closest was an alleged attempt to purchase "yellow cake" uranium.)
They were thought to have chemical weapons, which the used on both the Kurds and the Iranians, and threatened to turn them over to Al Qaeda for an attack on U.S. soil.
Or so when the justification for the invasion.
War: not necessarily a bad idea at all.
BUTTT........
This ‘touchy-feely’ BS is OUT. Stomp ‘em in a coupla weeks (like we did), then take over and reorganize THEIR army and use it to run the place.
Fer how long? Well, how long ya got?
I'm sick of this old line. People treat our Intelligence community like idiots. Of course there was evidence, we just don't know where it went. The media distorts so much we no longer know what's true or not.
Having said that, do I think we need to die for people who have been at war for eons? NO! Let them fight their own, and if they don't and are taken over by radials, oh well, that's their choice. BUT, I do believe we need to protect those who want no part of this war (those on the fringes).
uh let’s see know yo yo
were you aware or were you not that not only was it “rumored” that Saddam had chemical weapons that he had in fact used chemical weapons on the Kurds?
Are chemical weapons just toys in your mind or are they weapons of mass destruction?
No wonder we haven't had any competent intel for decades, with idiots like this in charge.
I know everyone points to ‘weapons of mass destruction’ for the big justification for invading Iraq....nevermind that they were violating UN Resolutions. Still, the hook that got me from President Bush was that “we need to offer the people of the Middle East an alternative to radicalism (IE-democracy) because without any, radicalism will win out.”
President Bush may have overstated the weapons argument, but it sure looks like in the absence of democracy, radical Islam is the popular choice.
Also, once we went in (regardless of the wisdom of the adventure), it was irresponsible to leave when the fragile Iraq democracy was just getting started. We stayed in Japan for 17 years. We are still in South Korea. We are still in Germany. Why? Because we didn’t want the lives and money to have been used up in vein. Obama is an ass for not finishing the job after such initial effort was made. PERIOD!!! And, he’s reaping the rewards of his sloth right now.
More to the point, they were in material violation of their 1991 cease-fire agreement with us.
I still believe, based on people I have talked to who were in country, that the WMD were there and the “good” stuff was taken to Syria. There were caches found of older chemical weapons, particularly mustard gas, that no one ever talks about.
The biggest mistake in the prosecution of the war was we didn’t commit more troops at the get go and deal immediately with insurgents using looser ROE. We had already been soft shoeing it a while before the surge. Which would never have been required if we had sent a larger force to begin with and prosecuted more forcefully.
The vast majority of Iraqi’s are not adverse to allying with the U.S., had we stayed on they could have become as strong an ally as Japan, Korea, and Germany have been. But the ‘bamster wouldn’t allow that so now we have this mess.
My two cents
And 550 metric tons of yellow cake found was sold to a Canadian company.
You better do a research, because we are still in Japan. Other than that, great reply
Demagogic Putin supporter Ron Paul is playing with words.
WMD,is an acronym meaning weapons of mass destruction it’s a weapons classification which does not just mean nuclear bombs. It also includes poison gas which Saddam Hussain used against the Kurds. And a stockpile of it was found.
While he presents half truths to support his position he fails to mention the real reason we went into Iraq was Saddam’s association with Russia, his invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting threat to Saudi oil.
I have respected Ron Paul off and on over the years for his calling out abuses of our personal deeply valued American freedoms.
But his ignorance of history is astonishing.
Saddam Hussein was a brutal savage vicious dictator who invaded Kuwait for its oil and committed unspeakable crimes to innocent people while there. GWH Bush as leader of the free world had to respond to this barbaric aggression. He did not act unilaterally. He acted by making the case for action and uniting world bodies to that action. He acted as a leader of the free world should act. And this was before the invasion of 2003.
I am no fan of the Bush family because of their failure to police the banking and financial industries of which they are an integral part of. That's another issue altogether.
But in foreign policy, the Bush presidents had it right.
Saddam Hussein was driven back to Iraq and was forced to abide by an agreement with the United Nations.
After 911, Saddam Hussein violated the UN sanctions from the first Gulf War and GW Bush needed to respond, again as leader of the free world. GW Bush took nearly a year to unite the first world in an agreement to take out Hussein. The invasion was not about weapons of mass destruction, it was about responding to a brutal dictator who had violated UN sanctions.
The idea was to rid the world of this mad man and allow Iraqis to elect leaders democratically and it worked. The fact that it is not working now is not the fault of the Bush family or Cheney or any person serving during the presidency of GW Bush. The fact is that this failure in Iraq is all under the presidency of Barack Obama.
Whenever Ron Paul opens his mouth about Iraq all the above history and the many details behind it seem lost on him. He is truly a very strange man and I am glad he was never elected president and I am glad he is out of office.
There sure was evidence, but Saddam kept moving the WMDs around from one hiding place to another, and then just before the war to Syria
His son is cut from the same piece of cloth, but Rand Paul is just a little better at lying about his true beliefs.
Rand Paul would be a foreign policy disaster as a President.
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