Posted on 02/23/2016 4:22:38 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
Donald Trump's account of the Iraq War is all wrong. Why aren't his Republican opponents saying so?
Donald Trump constantly brings up Iraq to remind voters that Jeb Bush supported his brother's war, while Trump, alone of the Republican candidates, supposedly opposed it well before it started.
That is a flat-out lie. There is no evidence that Trump opposed the war before the March 20, 2003 invasion. Like most Americans, he supported the invasion and said just that very clearly in interviews. And like most Americans, Trump quickly turned on a once popular intervention - but only when the postwar occupation was beginning to cost too much in blood and treasure. Trump's serial invocations of the war are good reminders of just how mythical Iraq has now become.
We need to recall a few facts. Bill Clinton bombed Iraq (Operation Desert Fox) on December 16 to 19, 1998, without prior congressional or U.N. approval. As Clinton put it at the time, our armed forces wanted "to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons." At the time of Clinton's warning about Iraq's WMD capability, George W. Bush was a relatively obscure Texas governor.
Just weeks earlier, Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law, after the legislation passed Congress on a House vote of 360 to 38 and the Senate unanimously. The act formally called for the removal of Saddam Hussein, a transition to democracy for Iraq, and a forced end to Saddam's WMD...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
VDH ping ...
CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES
DO NOT BE DECEIVED BY MEDIA MACHINATIONS
Some fundamentalists have a thing against Catholics particularly the Pope. That story the MSM conjured up about the pope singling out Trump being a non christian may have turned this for Trump in South Carolina .
But the pope was responding to a loaded question by a reporter from Reuters news agency. And the pope never mentioned Trumps name in his lengthy reply ,which btw was uncovered by Rush Limbaugh Friday a day before the election show; It was this; expressed here in abstract;
In his reply the pope used the term One, to generalize his example and began with; If actually one said ( but Trumps name was inserted here by MSM ) and Pope Francis continued with : one does, one did, one believes : such and such in his response to a rather lenghty loaded question by a so called reporter.. it was meant to be a generalized position applied to anyone who has those views.
Trump responded to what he thought was a direct personal attack by the Pope which was shared and agreed to by everybody including this Catholic and what they were responding is to Trump in effect tellung the pope to go to hell which made the difference.
If they voted that way because of that reason they were mislead by machinations of the media not the pope. Now the medias anti religious agenda is busy claiming Cruz wont win by emphasizing Christian values in: marriage, planned parenthood, abortion and the questioning of wandering positions on these subjects taken by Trump. Which diverts the attention from the media and its involvement while minimizing the Cruz candidacy.
Urge Ted to stay the course and defeat this conspiracy to elect the blowhard . We want back to the days of the constitution and the government out of our bedrooms, kitchens, gas tanks, back yards, as well as our religions. And pick justices who will keep it that way .
TED CRUZ IS THE ONE WE NEED FOR BRINGING US TOGETHER AS ONE
ONE FLAG.... ONE LANGUAGE . and the end of hyphenations as ONE PEOPLE .
Thanks for the ping
VDH is a brilliant mind, but TRUMPTRUMPTRUMPTRUMPTRUMPLOLGOTRUMPPROVERBSLOLGOTRUMP.
Hard to argue with that.
j/k
Bah, when it comes to the Iraq War, NR is totally discredited.
"Never was so much conceded by so many with such few intellect"
... or something like that ...
We should have kept the oil
“The surge engineered by General David Petraeus worked so well that Iraq was not much of an issue in the 2008 general election.”
Whenever I hear people praise the “surge” that occurred during the Iraqi war, as if it were a cunning new war strategy, I have to think that the war was mishandled up to that point, or in other words, not enough soldiers were deployed to make victory possible.
Isn’t the celebrated “surge” the same thing as what formerly was referred to as “reinforcements”?
So, the left continues to continuously state that Bush lied about Iraq having weapons of mass distruction. But, there’s one question no one seems to have an answer for; where did all of those chemical warfare weapons used by Iraq during the Iraq/Iran war go? It is well documented that Iraq military gassed thousands of Iranian troops during their war. So, did these weapons just turn into air? I think not....
The “surge” is a misnomer, particularly considering the fact that attacks dropped precipitously in Dec. 2006, before the first surge troops even arrived.
Arresting, jailing and deporting the insurgency’s planners and paymasters is what brought peace to Iraq in 2007. Below is 2 of them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6209247.stm
VDH usually has interesting things to say, but he completely misses the point.
Trump wanted to crush Jeb and drive him out of the race. So he reminded everyone of the Bush family baggage: 1) Didn’t prevent 9-11 attacks; 2) war of choice against Iraq, with an aftermath so incompetently executed that the situation is much worse, even after squandering thousands of good men’s lives and immense treasure.
Whether Trump claimed to have opposed the adventure beforehand, or if W believed Iraq really had WMD, don’t matter (Trump should have left it at the criticism — he tends to overreach; I think George Bush did expect to find significant WMD. His actions would have been inexplicable otherwise.)
This might have been mean, unfair, inaccurate, etc., but in terms his goal, Trump accomplished the mission. At zero financial cost too, though his tendency to make enemies might cost him in the long run.
So ....... why does Donald Trump condemn and attack Ted Cruz for similar "strategy"?
VDH is brilliant and he is a good man and he is right about the Iraq War.
He does have that one problem that college professors have.
He can’t admit that he was wrong about something.
Petraeus.
Hansen should be a true scholar and go back and re-examine Petraeus now that more information is available.
One of the saddest sounds in this world is the sound of a hero falling off a pedestal.
Because he’s a shameless bastard who bobs, weaves, and has a knack for exploiting his opponents’ weaknesses. I am for 100% for defeating the Democrats, so I don’t mind some hardball from either Cruz or Trump. The following is offered as analysis, not promotion of either man.
Trump’s advantage is that he is a lifelong shameless bastard, owns it, and therefore to a great degree gets away with it. He uses it as a tactic, and his supporters think, hmm, “I wish America had someone standing up for our interests who isn’t afraid or ashamed to do whatever it takes to pursue them”. They aren’t looking for nuance, and Trump let’s them project their own version of “America’s interests” onto his tough, rambling talk.
Cruz wants to come across as an intelligent, educated gentleman with strong religious values, not a brute. So when he does exactly the same things as Trump, it clashes with this image, and makes him look sneaky and calculating. Trump knows that is Cruz’s weakness, and as a shameless bastard, he pokes at it. Trump reinforces this by bringing up Cruz connections to Wall St., etc. Unlike Trump, Cruz comes across as someone with fixed ideological principles and agendas. That’s admirable in many ways, but fatally limits the projection effect required to attract voters beyond those who share your ideology.
Trump’s weakness is that he defines himself mostly by opposition. Absent something to attack, is there something there? He can vanquish enemies, but can he make friends and sustain alliances? Prediction: Trump cuts deal with the GOPe to pick Rubio as his running mate, possibly Cruz for AG.
Hate and condemnation in 3-2-1...
cassiusking wrote:
We should have kept the oil
That is what GWB promised we would do that when with bi partisan support OK-d that war. But what happend was political correctness and the cry of imperialism set in. Libs felt it would not look right to the rest of the world. I think zero was in the senate at the time.
The war was sold on the ginned-up threat of nuclear weapons, not chemical/biological. That was entirely phony.
I listened to the translation of the popes comments.
He clearly was taking a shot at Trump.
He is the leader of a foreign country trying to influence a US election.
The pope can KMA.
Cruz=VAT=no go for me.
This makes the neocons look stupid as they try and attack Trump for being against the war they were for. It use to be neocons attacked critics of the war - if you were against the war you were on the wrong side of history.
This is just stunningly stupid by VDH - someone who studied Greek rhetoric as a professor of Greek history should know better than to fall for a rhetorical trap like that.
So there we have it folks - even the neocons can't disagree with Trump that the Iraq war was wrong and try to discredit Trump based on how fast he figured out the war was wrong.
It does seem Trump figured out the war in Iraq was stupid faster than the neocons who advocated for the war did.
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