Posted on 02/15/2016 12:28:07 AM PST by Enlightened1
Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump warned if the Republican Party isn’t willing to admit the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, then the party will be defeated in the upcoming general election.
Trump said, “The Iraq war was a disaster. It was a mistake. We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, thousands of lives, wounded warriors who we love all over the place. What do we have? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Iran is taking over Iraq as sure as you’re sitting there. And that’s the way it is. We get nothing. They get the oil, they get everything. We get nothing. So it was a huge mistake. Whether people like it or not. and I’m the only one with the vision to have said don’t do it. And I wasn’t even a politician when I said that.”
He added, “Something’s going to have to happen with the party or we’re going to lose yet another election. I’m not even doing it to win election, I’m doing it out of common sense. The war was a horrible thing. If we’re not going to admit that, you’re going to have yet another election where the Democrats are going to win.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
We won the war. And then we elected Obama. More servicemen were killed under Obama than Bush. And then King Obama decided to pull back. That’s when we lost the war and all those who died gave their lives for squat.
If anyone is to blame for what happened, its Obama. but Since Trump praised Obama and other democrats we wont hear anything from the trumpster
Sounds like you’ve joined the media in redefining WMD and NBC weapons to only mean “fully functioning nuclear warheads” already mounted in a plane or missile. Talk about moving the goal posts.
Did we? What were we going to do, be an occupying force for the next few centuries? What we won was a whole lot of leeches who benefitted financially, but joined the enemy when they had to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile, our southern border has been overwhelmed by an invasion. No, we didn't win. As long as we were there, we stalled the inevitable while we suffered the consequences of misplaced priorities.
Here's a prediction I wrote on September 13, 2001 about what was going to happen. I didn't know at the time that Vietnam II would be fought in Iraq, but I was pretty sure that we would blow sh*t up, demonstrate we could take casualties (so we looked serious) without conquering the enemy (so we didn't look mean) and wind up worse off, which is exactly what happened.
A punitive expedition (which is how Afghanistan started) was the minimum acceptable response. IF we had killed Bin Ladin and his team at Tora Bora in December 2001, success could have been declared and it would have been over.
The necessary for victory was the conquest of Arabia and Pakistan. Sounds big, I know, but certainly smaller than the conquest of Japan and Germany. Yes, the Soviets did a lot to Germany, but we could have had India's legions for the Pakistan part.
But a 80-division expeditionary force, mostly white and all Western, grinding little brown men to dust and re-educating their children was always beyond the imagination of the Bush family and their crew.
That left him with the need to do "something" bigger than Special Forces on horseback chasing out the Taliban and smaller than a war to extirpate the cancer that is politicized Sunni Islam.
Saddam WAS wearing a sign that said "kick me", and had been for years, but he was an entrepreneur of brutality with a keen sense of survival, so it's certain he and his army could have been bought for the march on Riyadh.
Bush thought small at a time when big thinking was a necessity, and the subsequent disasters are entirely the result of this failure. His pathetic embrace of "enforcing UN resolutions" as casus belli only made failure more certain.
It disgusts me that there are Republican candidates who are not made physically ill by the magnitude of our sacrifices for nothing in Iraq.
For after all, even if the fantasy of a multicultural, peaceful, feminist Iraq and Afghanistan had come true (impossible though that was), our real enemies in Riyadh and Islamabad would still sleep soundly in their beds, as they do to this day.
I absolutely agree with that.
My only point was, the Korean war made a huge difference to the people of South Korea and they wouldn’t count it as failed. Millions of people have had drastically better lives as a result.
Be serious.
Sending 4400 irreplaceable heroes to be killed, and 30 000 to be maimed, and borrowing $4 trillion from our mortal enemies to pursue a ridiculous fantasy of a peaceful, democratic and feminist Islam while using "UN resolutions" as a casus belli was not "being on our side", it was a nearly criminal misuse of our people and our resources.
It was, in addition, the best ever example of what National Review and Fox News and the rest mean by "conservatism™" - that is, globalism wrapped in an American flag.
It's exactly correct that it's the reason we lost the last two Presidential elections, and Congress in 2006.
Any party or candidate who does not wholly and totally reject the Iraq catastrophe and Bush's failed war leadership is unelectable, now and probably for the next 75 years.
Well actually the Battle of Vienna was 1683 and we were fighting the Ottoman Turks, not the Arabs but your point is very well taken. I believe that we should deal with these countries in a way that we go in, root out the offenders and leave. Let them clean up their own mess. And let them know up front that if something else happens, we’ll be back. And the result will be the same if we come back.
Well the only proper response to her is:
???????
BUT
He is 100% wrong about the war.
There were WMD’s, tons of them in fact.
There were MANY reasons we attacked Iraq, and all of them justified.
Where Bush screwed up was not in attacking Iraq, it was in trying to make it a Democracy out of it, rebuild it, ect.
We should have made a glass parking lot of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and Mecca from 30,000 feet and never lost a single soldier in the process.
We were handed the opportunity to rid the world once and for all of these evil countries, and we blew it.
What happened 14 years ago is relevant! Where do you think part of that $19 TRILLION in debt comes from? Where do you think the tarnished “Republican” brand comes from? Why do you think that the GOP has only won ONE popular vote election in the past 26 YEARS? One of the most common traits I’ve seen in successful people is the willingness to admit to OTHERS their mistakes and how they’ve learned from them! The GOP has been a utter failure in national Presidential elections because they can’t admit their mistakes of which the Number #1 mistake was NOT being “Conservative” with the tax payers’ money $$$$!!!
Trump can't do that.... because that would require him to be in the weeds... in the details. Trump is a manager who can never get below 30,000 feet. Every thing he says is at 30,000 feet. He lives there. He has no clue why it has turned into a disaster. He has no way to articulate that. He's just a loudmouth carny .... and he has spent a lifetime spinning garbage.
SO.
You are saying that "UN agreements" are now superior to national sovereignty? When the UN agrees to ban private firearms, and President Trump thumbs his nose at them, you won't object to Russia and China "setting an example"?
Whan Bush decided to go to the UN for authority over Iraq, I almost threw up.
“You are saying that “UN agreements” are now superior to national sovereignty? “
Damn right they are, for Iraq. We left Saddam in power in 1991, and HE AGREED to allow inspections...then double-crossed us. We had EVERY RIGHT to go in there.
I’m not about to defend Saddam’s right to “national sovereignty” and I doubt you do either.
Scoutdad, thanks for the date correction on the Battle of Vienna.
1683—got it.
He’s the biggest fraud running this time. Sanders is at least honest about embracing the wrong ideas. Trump wants to hold his anti-American views and anti-Republican views while pretending he’s suddenly and ultra nationalist and some kind of new fangled “conservtive.” How naive do people have to be to believe his rewriting of his biography, his re-marketing of himself, and his attacks on those who have been conservative for their whole lives. We know Trump was a funder of liberals, a cheerleader of liberals, and a rabid anti-Republican until just a couple of years ago. Right below his very, very thin skin lies the heart of putrid, stinking liberal.
No. It means an individual is beyond the typical binary thought pattern ability of most. In simple terms, there could be more than two choices in life. Try it some time.
you like many generals are trying to fight the last war
there is a new battle and direction of attack that is not bound by the restraints of previous campaigns. that lesson is painfully true to those that have wasted untold millions on a totally ineffective mode and direction of attack.
what you perceive as weakness is actually strength. Charismatic purpose is trouncing wonkish nothingism
meanwhile..... go Dr Ben
Thanks, I rarely get to read something that is so inconsequential and incomprehensible.
He is back peddling now, it was a lie, now it’s a mistake.....which is it Mr. Trump?
Your brain get scrambled?
Come on, I want to hear some more ‘Your Mother’ insults.
If anyone is to blame for what happened, its Obama. but Since Trump praised Obama and other democrats we wont hear anything from the trumpster
BRAVO!!!!! BRAVO!!!!!!! this is the BEST EXPLANATION and the TRUTH.... but many here now are on the side of CODE PINK and will throw eggs at you and grab their protest signs.
How quickly things have changed here on Free Republic.
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