The Iraq War Wasn't a Disaster -- It Was Necessary

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | September 11, 2014 | Rush Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Peter Beinart's now at The Atlantic, Mr. Snerdley. New Republic, then you go to the Atlantic, then you go to The Hill, Salon, you go to CNN, then you go to Slate, Washington Post. Then you start the cycle all over again. You go to New Republic. One place you're editor. Then you're executive editor. Then you're just a slave writer. You try to get a Fox commentary deal or whatever. It's the cycle.

So right now Beinart and his career is over at The Atlantic. "Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy." An autopsy. An autopsy, as in, there's a body. Right. As in, there's a dead body here. The Obama Iraq policy, and it's Peter Beinart who is the medical examiner here. The opening paragraph here is just so typical.

"Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their own, far greater, failures is infuriating."

Do you know what that's in reference to? Dick Cheney on TV this week. See, right here it is in the first paragraph. The left believes their own drivel. They manufactured, for political purposes, the idea that the Iraq war was illegitimate from the get-go, should never have happened, was impossible to win, was totally unnecessary, and was administered by a Darth Vader named Dick Cheney who only did it to enrich Halliburton. Everybody involved, Petraeus, liars, cheats. It was a waste of American treasure and American life, they said, and it was a total boondoggle.

The reason they did this is that's what got them elected. They did everything they could to secure defeat for their own country in Iraq. And they can't let go of the lie that they manufactured. So in a piece where he's gonna rip Obama to shreds, he has to start out by saying, I don't care how bad Obama is, Bush and Cheney were worse, and it really galls all of us to see 'em on TV gloating now.

Well, Mr. Beinart, I don't know that Cheney's gloating. I think Cheney's genuinely worried that we have people running this country who don't have the slightest idea how to save it, protect it, defend it, nor do they take it seriously. I think Dick Cheney is seriously worried about the country. I don't think Dick Cheney's on TV gloating about anything. There's nothing to gloat about here. We don't gloat over US weakness. We don't seek to disadvantage our own country for our own political advancement like you people do. We never seek defeat in a military conflict so that we can make our political opponents look bad.

We never want this country to be at risk. Whenever we get involved militarily, we want to kick butt now, take names later and end it and come back with a W. And we certainly do not want the country run by people that don't want the same things and don't know how to accomplish it and are not even interested in those things. And that's what we've got. Nobody's on TV gloating. But this whole idea that Iraq was a disaster really ticks me off 'cause it wasn't. It was necessary.

Folks, let me go through this one more time before I get back to this column. I want you to try to think about something, and I want you to put yourself in Bush's place. I know it's very hard for any of us to really do this, but imagine being president and 9/11 happens. You're reading to a class of children as part of an average, ordinary presidential day. One of the stops is a schoolhouse in Florida. And somebody comes to tell you the World Trade Center's just been knocked down, both towers on the way to plummeting. Nobody knows anything other than that.

You scramble, you get out of there. The first time the continental United States has ever been hit. Three thousand people are dead, and you don't know what's coming next. You don't know if they're hitting the White House. You don't know if they're gonna go for the Capitol. You don't know if they're gonna go for other locations. You don't know anything. Nobody knows anything. That's another story. But the point is, you don't and everything now is different, everything's changed. Now we can be hit with our own airplanes. Our own airplanes can take out our own targets.

So you are commander-in-chief. Your oath of office is to defend and protect the Constitution and the people of this country. That's your first and foremost duty. Something like the twin towers going down, the Pentagon being hit, something like 9/11 is, I mean, it's ridiculous to say that it's unique. It's far more than that. It's never happened before. And if around the world other people threaten to do the same thing, how do you not take that seriously?

It's like our old French philosopher, Blaise Pascal said -- I'm paraphrasing -- it's much easier to believe that something that has happened can happen again, something that has been can be again, than it is to believe that something that's never been can be. Well, okay. World Trade Center was hit, our own planes. We were attacked. Okay, it can happen. And the world was cheering in certain quarters, and there were people bragging they're gonna do it again, they're gonna do more. You have to take that seriously.

Going into Iraq was not to avenge an assassination attempt on George H. W. Bush, and it wasn't about Halliburton. It was about somebody taking a threat seriously and taking preventive action and not waiting to be hit again. Saddam was bragging all over the place about all the weapons of mass destruction he had, and they were toying around with creating a nuke, and everybody knew he had and tried to. Now, at the time this is happening, you can't afford to sit around and say, "Nah, he can't do it. Nah, he doesn't mean it. Nah, he's just bragging." You don't have that luxury.

So the decision was made to take him out along with whatever we did in Afghanistan. The Democrats supported it for a couple of weeks, but that's as long as they could go and then they turned it political and that was the end. They spent the next five years trying to delegitimize the whole thing. In my mind it had a valid purpose. Now, the details of the mission, democratizing the place and turning it into a mini-America, that was a stretch. But I don't have one problem with taking out people threatening to do exactly what happened to us on 9/11 before they can do it. If they're gonna brag about doing it they may as well paint a bull's-eye on their target.

Everything changes after 9/11. You don't sit around and wait for it to happen again and then go get 'em and try to find out who did it. Anyway, the idea that Iraq was entirely illegitimate, made up and unnecessary is something the Democrats fed off of for five years. They went to every election on it. It just it sickened me when it happened. They were ripping the military, accusing them being rapists and terrorists and terrorizing women and children.

You had John Kerry, John Murtha, Democrat after Democrat on television every day, every week criticizing their own country, criticizing their own military, accepting any allegation about our military as truth, all for the purposes of discrediting the whole operation so that we would lose, so that the Democrats could win the White House in 2004 and 2008. So that's why, when I read this opening from Beinart, I just get steamed again. "Yes, the Iraq war was a disaster of historic proportions." No, it was not a disaster!

This is a disaster of historic proportions. The Obama presidency, Mr. Beinart, is a disaster of historic proportions. And not just the Obama military. The Obama health care. The Obama economy. The Obama infrastructure. The Obama immigration. The Obama open borders.

We are living the disaster of historic proportions. Iraq was not one. We're living it. We are in the middle of a disaster of historic proportions. "Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their own, far greater, failures is infuriating."

Okay, so he had to get that out of the way to be true to the Democrat liberal reader base.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, I should have mentioned that this Beinart piece is from June. It's not from this week. It makes it even more poignant. The Peter Beinart piece is from June 23rd of 2014. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that. I got so revved up to get into the substance that I forgot to mention it. But it's June 23rd, 2014, not written after last night's speech. So let me just read the rest of the first paragraph. It's really all you need to hear.

"But sooner or later," he writes, after ripping Bush and saying it's embarrassing to see him on TV, "honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the president took office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has grown ever more tyrannical and ever more sectarian, driving his country’s Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama took office, Iraq watchers -- including those within his own administration -- have warned that unless the United States pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to put Iraq in America’s rearview mirror that, publicly at least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass."

So even back in June the libs were writing about what a disaster Obama's policy is, and it's only gotten worse. But here's this word "inclusive." Obama talks about the Iraqi government must be inclusive. That's a crock of a word when we're talking about things like that. Inclusive? Whatever happened to doing what you have to do? These are serious matters. This is not social architecture. This is not a social liberal experimentation laboratory. Inclusive?

"Well, that's right, Mr. Limbaugh, because if the Iraqi government had been inclusive and allowed the Sunnis and the Kurds and the Shi'ites to all participate equally --" It's a crock. Inclusive? That's not how things like this work. I'll tell you, we're veering so far. There are just hard, cold truths and realities about things of grave consequence and you cannot deal with them with political correctness and so forth.

END TRANSCRIPT

[marron]

I remember top Democrats voting for war and then coming straight outside the chambers, literally within minutes of their “yes” vote, to attack the war.

That way they were covered. If the war went well, they were for it. If it went badly, they were against it. And if necessary, both at the same time depending on the needs of the moment.

[zencycler]

Saddam was bragging all over the place about all the weapons of mass destruction he had, and they were toying around with creating a nuke, and everybody knew he had and tried to. Now, at the time this is happening, you can't afford to sit around and say, "Nah, he can't do it. Nah, he doesn't mean it. Nah, he's just bragging." You don't have that luxury.

Exactly right! I've often used the metaphor of someone one the street who is pointing a very realistic, but fake, gun in your direction, and looks like he is getting ready to shoot you. So would you fault a police officer, who is understandably convinced that there is a credible threat to your life, decides to kill this guy before he has the chance?

I think not!

[Frank_2001]

I can’t forget Hillary Clinton screeching “SADDAM HUSSEIN MUST GO!!!”

[gov_bean_ counter]

I guess we (US) would need a peek at those captured Iraqi documents to see if it was all for nothing (at the time).

Oh wait. The Dems insisted they be taken out of public view. Still wonder just who they were protecting.

[colorado tanker]

It's Democrats who gloat when something bad happens to America, not Republicans. I agree with Rush, Cheney is worried about the U.S. with this bunch of damn fools in charge.

What is the regime's plan to deal with ISIS? Air strikes? Seriously? Oh, and reassure ISIS that if they survive the air strikes, which they will, they will never have to fear American "boots on the ground."

Yeah, that'll eliminate the most feared terrorist on the planet. You betcha.

[SECURE AMERICA]

The only thing that Bush did wrong was the same thing Clinton did and Obama is doing. We were not attacked by Iraq, Saddam, Iran, Al-Queda etc. We were attacked by ISLAM.
The driving force across this planet that is killing and destroying is Islam.
Until our Government admits who and what the enemy is we can never win..

[TigersEye]

We were already in a state of war with Iraq, under a cease fire.

Here are some other reasons.

• 1. Iraqi provocation of American planes patrolling the no-fly zone. "More than 42,000 sorties were flown during that time. Iraqi surface-to-air missiles and other anti-aircraft systems targeted ONW aircrews on nearly every flight." (That sounds like 42,000 reasons to me but I'll only count it as one.)
• 2. Saddam defied 17 UN resolutions that were a result of his losing the war. (again, that should count as 17 reasons.)
• 3. Saddam tried to assassinate a former U.S. President.
• 4. Saddam was killing the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq that we had promised protection.
• 5. Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
• 6. Iraq's biological weapons program.
• 7. Iraq's chemical weapons program.
• 8. Saddam's extensive cooperation with terrorists.

I left out the 500,000+ people Saddam had killed because, after all, who cares about those filthy little brown people? Right? /s

[gleeaikin]

I suspect the big mistake made was for Bush I not to continue Gulf War 1 for 24 more hours. Of course, there was Russia to consider, but I think that 24 more hours would not have triggered a reaction.

[marron]

I know it is settled history that Saddam had nothing to do with 911.

But the key people in the first World Trade Center attack were Iraqis. Who fled to Iraq, one of whom was given a government pension for his service.

The technical leader of that attack was cousin of the guy who organized the second attack on 911.

And one more thing. Bin Ladin was recruited by Zawahiri, who was the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was on Saddam’s payroll. Zawahiri and his EIJ then became Bin Ladin’s inner circle, forming Al Qaeda. So Osama’s Saddam connection has been right there, hiding in plain sight all along. But I don’t suppose we’re supposed to take notice of it.

In any case, it would be impossible to launch a world-wide war on terror and leave Saddam in place. He richly needed to hang, and we hanged him. He won’t be the last one we need to hang, or take out with a Predator or a Marine battalion, but he was a good start.

[kabar]

The Iraq Resolution or the Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Pub.L. 107–243, 116 Stat. 1498, enacted October 16, 2002, H.J.Res. 114) is a joint resolution passed by the United States Congress in October 2002 as Public Law No: 107-243, authorizing military action against Iraq.

Introduced in Congress on October 2, 2002, in conjunction with the Administration's proposals, H.J.Res. 114 passed the House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon at 3:05 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133, and passed the Senate after midnight early Friday morning, at 12:50 a.m. EDT on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23. It was signed into law as Pub.L. 107–243 by President Bush on October 16, 2002.

Here are the reasons cited in the resolution:

Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Iraq "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability" posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."

Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."

Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".

Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.

Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq. Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.

Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.

The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.

The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.

The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.

Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

[no-to-illegals]

Talked with my Dad after Gulf War 1 and Dad said we will have to go back. Just watch, we will soon be attacked. Shortly after came the first attack on World Trade Center I, then came 911 and Dad said, ‘dang we have to go back like I said and why didn’t Bush I finish the job ... We are neck deep in muck because Bush I didn’t finish the job we are danged if we do and danged if we don’t go back. This New World Order screwed us and we are screwed for decades.

[Kaslin]

Very well said. Unfortunately there are some freepers here who are in denial about this

[acapesket]

That’s a BINGO! Bush 1 signed Agenda 21 and the SHTF.

[no-to-illegals]

Dad gets all the credit. Dad has since gone on ahead in 2010. Am looking ever toward seeing Dad again and singing some Praises with Dad for the Father. Hope someone made certain Dad isn’t still voting. Dad told me once he voted for a democrat only once in his life. Dad’s vote for a democrat was for Harry Truman.

[Does so]

bfl

[TigersEye]

Thank you! I didn’t realize that the authorization resolution spelled out each and every one of those things I had in my post.

[RedHeeler]

That would be the Saud.