Posted on 05/18/2015 11:06:25 AM PDT by Starman417
Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.
Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false. The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.
The lies come from the liars like Krugman:
Excerpt from the Silberman-Robb Report:
The Commission also found no evidence of “politicization” even under the broader definition used by the CIA’s Ombudsman for Politicization, which is not limited solely to the case in which a policymaker applies overt pressure on an analyst to change an assessment. The definition adopted by the CIA is broader, and includes any “unprofessional manipulation of information and judgments” by intelligence officers to please what those officers perceive to be policymakers’ preferences (p. 188).We conclude that good-faith efforts by intelligence consumers to understand the bases for analytic judgments, far from constituting “politicization,” are entirely legitimate. This is the case even if policymakers raise questions because they do not like the conclusions or are seeking evidence to support policy preferences. Those who must use intelligence are entitled to insist that they be fully informed as to both the evidence and the analysis (p. 189; footnote omitted).
Excerpt from the SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence:
The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgements related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities (p. 284).The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq’s links to terrorism. (p. 363)
The gift of 20/20 hindsight can make liars of us all. However, the question being fielded to GOP presidential candidates is a bogus one.
Mike Morrell (previously quoted):
I think it’s a totally unfair question, right, for somebody to say knowing what we know now, would you do something. That makes no sense, right? You never know what you know how when you’re making a decision. You only know what you knew then. So I think it’s a much more reasonable question to say if you knew then what President Bush knew, what you would do, and then it gets really tough, right? Because again, it’s all about the context, Hugh, and the context was, again, 3,000 people had just been killed, the CIA telling you that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, including restarting a nuclear weapons program that he had once and had stopped, the CIA telling you that he supports Palestinian terrorist groups, and not al Qaeda, but Palestinian terrorist groups, and the President sitting there thinking you know, I can’t afford to take the risk of this guy use those weapons of mass destruction against me directly, or I can’t take the risk of him giving those weapons to a terrorist group. So when you put the context around anything, right, you look at it in a different light. So I think people have been completely unfair to Governor Bush here. The question is not given what you know now. The question really is given what you know then, that’s the question I think he thought he was answering. And given all the members of Congress at the time who voted to go to war in Iraq and given what the President thought, I think the Governor is on solid footing.
An interesting email sent to Hugh Hewitt from a radio listener:
From December of 1998 to April of 2000, I was an operator, as the job description says “Listening to routing foreign language communication” in Arabic. In this time, I heard regularly, not through hearsay or second hand, but personally, that Iraq (and Syria) were maintaining chemical weapons. I would on occasion hear that Iraq was doing rocket tests for rockets designed to carry nuclear payloads. From April of 2000 to October of 2002, I was a cryptanalyst, breaking codes in addition to listening. In this job, we heard the Iraqis regularly lock on or attempt to lock on SAMs against our planes patrolling the no fly zone. There was no doubt in our minds that Iraq still had the WMDs it had used against its own people in the 90s and against Iran in the 80s.I have heard enough of this said publically, that I do not think it is still classified. But the fact is, even at my very very low level, we heard multiple confirmations that the chemical weapons Saddam used in the Iran-Iraq War and in the early 90s against his own Kurds still existed and were being maintained. We heard references to other WMD types (specifically Nuclear). In the year I served post 9-11, there was massive amounts of truck traffic from Iraq into Syria. All of this was known. All of this has been said elsewhere. And yet high level intel people from that era now say there were no WMDs and our intel was a mistake. These statements are what lead to the pressure for people to say “Knowing what we know now, I would not go into Iraq.” As your guest stated, that question is kind of irrelevant and unfair, but it also is incomplete. There were WMDs. They may have been old and poor quality, but they still existed and the military was still training as if to use them.
Will goes on to list several thoughtful reasons as to why executing the Clinton-era official U.S. policy of "regime change" in regards to Iraq was a mission worthy of respect. Please take the time to go read them.
He concludes with this:
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
God dammit. Hussein was firing missiles at our pilots. That should end this whole line of questioning. Firing missiles at our pilots was an ongoing act of war that had to be responded to by going to war against Hussein. End of story.
If I knew then what I know now I would had left it a glass paved parking lot!
It was a mistake to invade Iraq only if one compares it with the better alternative of invading Iran. Iraq had lots of WMD but was not going to have a home built nuke. It is close enough to Israel that that was taken care of as it arose.
Pakistan we could entice and we needed that base. In the end, Pakistan is its own enemy.
Iraq has become the stage because our absence has given ISIS the key to the door. Obama made the mistake...not Bush.
And I was POTUS I would have Nuked the Capital City of Saudi Arabia less than a week after 9/11...
then I would I have cut off all foreign aid to all middle east countries that hate us or harbor groups that hate us.
Then i would have opened up all of the US public land fro drilling.
The USA should not fight such wars in the future.
Not because they can not be won (although certainly Iraq was probably more costly and difficult than expected). No - because the USA is too politically fractured and increasingly dis-unified in terms of common culture and sense of national identity to commit to the sacrifice needed for such long-term projects. Because of this, the expected costs of such wars are also unstated by policy makers.
The USA fought a war in the Philippines in 1899-1902, which killed over 6100 Americans - yet did this war split America, as the left did to the USA in 2004-2008? Why not?
If I knew then what I know now, not only would I have taken Hussein out, I would have done it in 1991. In addition, in 92 I would have taken out Bin Laden.
After that, everything else is irrelevant.
Paul Krugman: “Thanks to Jeb Bush throwing his brother and the GOP under the bus for our team....”
It’s a stupid question. You can’t logically use today’s knowledge to argue yesterday’s battle.
Our pilots who were over there doing the UNs bidding (even while the UN was smack-talking Americans every chance they got).
I don’t get your point. Are you saying that we shouldn’t have cared about American pilots being shot at because they were enforcing a no-fly zone pursuant to a UN Resolution?
If I knew that Obama would come along and hand Iraq over to terrorists I might have done things differently.
It was a stupid question and Megan Kelly should be called out for it.
NO ONE gets to make decisions in hindsight.
NO ONE.
EVER.
The question she should have asked is: If you knew what your brother knew AT THE TIME, would you have made the same decision. (Same question to Hillary)
And even that question is of questionable value. But at least it would have been logical.
Logical fallacy of “it begs the question.”
No, I’m saying we should not be the UN’s lackeys all the time (especially where it concerns the Middle East).
I would not invade any country, any time, for any reason.
My reasons are based on a first hand experience called Viet Nam. We could go anywhere we wanted, take anything we wanted, and keep anything we wanted - yet we ‘lost’ the war.
As a nation we have lost our willpower to finish anything that is even the least bit hard or distasteful. The people that fought World War II had it, and understood it - but somewhere shortly thereafter it was lost.
Invading anyplace with the current attitude of the American public just means we will get some of our very best people killed to accomplish nothing. Give me great pain to type that, but sadly it is true.
NOW "they"'ll start to say ... "we should'a ... "
And I'll throw my keyboard ...
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