Posted on 02/18/2016 5:54:25 AM PST by Kaslin
It's one thing to disagree with the decision to go to war in Iraq. That, believe it or not, was once a minority view. According to a Gallup poll taken in March 2003, the night after the Iraq war began, 76 percent supported President George W. Bush's decision. Two months after the invasion, a Gallup poll found 79 percent of Americans thought the war was justified -- about half of those said, "The war will be justified regardless of whether (weapons of mass destruction) are found."
But in the last GOP debate, Republican candidate front-runner Donald Trump took things to a new level. He not only called the decision to go to war "a big, fat mistake" (and, post-debate, proclaimed it "a disaster") but also said: "They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none."
That was breathtaking. Neither Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war before later repudiating her vote; nor Barack Obama, who called it "a dumb war" in 2002; nor Bernie Sanders, who called it "the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the country" had accused Bush of "lying."
Trump, of course, is not alone. Former Associated Press Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier, for example, once said, "George W. Bush lied us into war in Iraq."
This claim -- by a reporter, no less -- incensed Judge Laurence Silberman, who co-chaired the Robb-Silberman Commission set up by Congress to examine the intel leading up to the Iraq War. In a Wall Street Journal piece called "The Dangerous Lie That 'Bush Lied,'" Silberman said: "I am ... keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the 'Bush lied' allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact. ...
"Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. ...
"... No one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive -- to the president, to Congress and to the media. ...
"The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact -- with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been 'stabbed in the back' by politicians.
"Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president's credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier."
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, who wrote a book about the decision to go to war in Iraq, also said Bush didn't lie: "I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don't let anyone stretch the case on WMD. And he was the one who was skeptical. And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two. And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months. And so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lying in this that I could find."
David Kay was the "weapons hunter" sent by George W. Bush after the war to locate the expected stockpiles. He did not find them. But Kay said: "I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. ... .And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.'"
Kenneth Pollack, ex-CIA Persian Gulf military analyst and Bill Clinton's top Persian Gulf adviser, disagreed with the timing of the decision to go to war. But he said that all of America's intelligence agencies -- there are 16 -- asserted at the highest level of probability that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMDs.
Accusing a commander in chief, irrespective of his or her party, of knowingly lying to start a war is serious business. In the Iraq War, almost 4,500 U.S. service members died, to say nothing of the war's cost. To claim that the Bush administration knowingly lied to start the Iraq War is to assert that the CIA was behind 9/11 or that O.J. Simpson was innocent of double homicide.
Facts don't matter. Lack of evidence means presence of proof.
Both sarin and ricin were found. It was in two reports. ISIS now has the WMD’s and is using them.
Not a Trump worshipper. Just a poster who FReepers such as yourself have helped decide to vote for DJT in the primary this Saturday.
Not a paid or unpaid operative for any candidate for any office.
Not a Republican either. Never was.
So.
I suppose that Islam is a “Religion of Peace” now—after all.
There is little doubt that folks within the Bush Administration knew they were trumping up intelligence to support the argument. They presented evidence they knew to be unreliable as fact... They are on the record admitting as much. Does that mean Bush personally knew? Debatable, but there is no doubt that some folks in the administration knew they were not being completely honest.
The NEOCONs that Bush surrounded himself with lead this nation down a bad path.
If the scientists said they lied to Saddam who thought he was building a bomb (so that’s where they got the Iron Man in the cave idea) then why wouldn’t the CIA?
Jokamoke wote, “Not at all what Trump said.”
That comment is delusional. What could drive someone to write such a lie?
So you are proclaiming that you were a fool then, if you had access to the same information at the time you would have been against the war?
If you were a fool then, what makes you think you aren’t now?
Have you ever heard, once a fool, always a fool?
I don’t think GWB lied about WMD Intel. I do believe that the decision to topple Sadam with military force had been made, and the WMD justification was just there.
In the sense that WMD was a main driving force when deciding to do it... that might be a stretcher if not an outright lie.
Tactically, if you are a non GOPe candidate running as a Republican and hoping to pick up votes that would normally go to the Dem candidate, bashing GWB and by extension the Bush dynasty makes sense.
I don’t know if it’s a winning gambit, but it does look like a move that’s aimed at positioning for the general, and it puts his GOP opponents in the position of having to defend years of unpopular, and seemingly unsuccessful war.
Larry Elder is right in that fourteen years ago the decision to pull the trigger on Iraq was popular and widely supported, but I’m not at all sure that voters will remember that moment in time alone, and not the years of grinding low level conflict in Iraq that is now associated with the rise of Isis.
“Isn’t Trump bright enough to know he would hurt himself by parroting the Code Pinko line?”
He is, but oops he slipped up and expressed what he really believes in the heat of the moment.
It’s about Trump, not Bush
ISIS In Iraq Find Saddam Hussein’s WMD Stockpiles Of Chemical Weapons… George W Bush Was Right?
But then he REPEATED it later.
Feels good to slander a FReeper, doesn’t it? Listening to the voice of the Dark Side of the Force.
-30-
Thankyou, now some facts from even before Bush became POTUS. I have heard all these before, why hasn’t Trump?
Saddam was very much like Trump, they both believed a fiction greater than themselves....and they got others to believe it too.
Bush/s enormous failure was not looking at the bigger picture...he was sap-happily duped by the pukeneos. He never figured in the horrific consequences about what would happen if strongmen Saddam and Khadadi were deposed.
Bush overlooked the conniving Mideast mindset and its capacity to do great harm to the US. Bush had this flawed vision of Arabs dancing around the Maypole after the US brought them the glories of democracy.
Bush relied too heavily on the pukeneos.....who may or may not be in league w/ the M/B themselves. The pukes agenda does not include the best interests of the USA. They are political whores who will get in bed w/ anybody that serves their hidden agenda.
Just repeating your claims so you can see them in the daylight.
It is called deprogramming.
I really don’t want to go through another 4 years or God forbid 8 really disliking our new President, it will be so bad for my health, I may retire and ditch this country.
What Trump is saying lately is a mystery.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.