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...
Exactly.
And Megan Kelly need to be called out more for it.
Stupid and illogical question.
Or, we could have invaded the real enemy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
If we knew then what we know now, that periodically American cities would be consumed in riots, primarily by blacks, wouldn’t it have been better to send them to the African continent after the civil war?
I knew the three major religious factions were never going to get along and propsed that a three state solution was the best option with a coalition of Western oil companies managing the oil resources for the three states. If any of them got out of line, those, profits could have been withheld.
Another option would have been coalition of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait operate the oil fields and refineries.
Our essential error has been to not understand the mind of the middle eastern peoples.
First, according the Bible, you will never be able to tame the Arab (Gen. 16:12). So our assumption that if we remove a brutal dictator will result in a free, ordered democratic process was pure foolishness.
Second, islam is islam. Set them free to follow sharia, and they’ll do sharia in the most delightful ways. We somehow thought that they wouldn’t. Either that, or we knew and and we’re enablers.
Third, any tribal or people group feuds or hatreds in the region go way way back. We think we can bomb and kill a few, and they’ll be peaceful. We have no idea how deep the hate is. And now they hate us.
Fourth, we didn’t have a cohesive stable replacement for Saddam and Momar.
If you believe that the God of Israel is sovereign and is going somewhere with this, then this becomes a most interesting series of events.
The goal of every Islamo-fascist is to recreate the Caliphate. In that regard, Mecca, Medina and Islamabad are sideshows. The heart of the Middle East is Iraq and the heart of Iraq is Baghdad. So if we wanted to prevent Al Qaeda from achieving its goal, we did the exact right thing by invading Iraq and having troops stationed in and around Baghdad.
Put simply: No Baghdad, no Caliphate.
Same reason Vietnam and the Iraq wars did split America. We went from the telegraph and some still photography to Television and Internet. When non-soldiers and families of soldiers are confronted with the horrors and realities of war it is devastating. WWII had federal Committee on Public Information to censure things devastating to morale. The first Iraq war was a bit different as we had a clear defined goal - drive iraq from Kuwait - and most of the fighting took place at range ( lobbing missles at enemy positions). I wonder in 1902 how many Americans knew that we even had troops in the Philippines, what the literacy rate was to be able to read such news, and how was it reported? Anyone got any good suggestions for books that compare war journalism throughout American history?
I agree with you.
This idea that emerged in the 60's that one could invade a country and not kill each and every person that holds a hostile view of you, ascertains defeat. Eventually.
And that takes manpower and the will to kill. On a massive scale.
I wouldn’t go into Iraq.
Now, I know that modern Arabs are fundamentally incapable of being good human beings.
So, they’re not worth the blood we spill.
Nuke ‘em from orbit when necessary.
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.
Hear Hear.. Or Here Here!!!
Except for the swearing,
thank you.
You get it.
The Iraq War is a result of Iraq’s failure to abide by the terms of the cease-fire agreement of the Gulf War.
- Shooting at our planes
- Screwing around with weapons inspectors
- Breaking the no-fly zone agreement
He'd been doing that off and on since the first Gulf war. What made it so important to invade in 2003?
Obama didn't have to had Iraq over to the terrorists. The Iraqis are doing a fine job of that all on their own.
Does he mean, if I knew Barry would become president and pull out our troops, leaving a power vacuum for ISIS and Iran?
The lesson of 9/11 was that weakness in the face of attacks is provocative and will inevitably lead to greater and greater attacks. Bin Laden saw that we weren't responding to Hussein's overt attacks in a meaningful way (e.g. Operation Desert Fox in 1998 was a joke) and recognized that as a failure of will on our part. So Bin Laden took our failure of will as a green light to escalate his attacks against us until the attacks were so large and so damaging that we couldn't ignore them any longer.
Apparently, the lesson of 9/11 is easily forgotten because now a lot of Americans, including many conservatives who should know better, wonder why couldn't have just ignored Hussein thousands of attacks against our pilots.
(4) Iran is between Iraq and Afghanistan. I always suspected we would squeeze them, but we ran out of time before the media won the propaganda war.
I like the list on your homepage. “...3 gods which are gubbermint, genitalia, and global warming.” I know it wouldn’t poetically fit, but I’d argue they have a fourth: drugs.
You absolutely get to the ultimate truth of the matter referencing Gen. 16:12
Only He has the solution to all this and it will be on His terms. Currently, in order to hopefully prod/lead us back on track to Him, He is utilizing Ishmael’s descendants as a form of punishment upon our nation until we, as a people, repent.
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