Posted on 02/18/2016 6:37:53 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Surely, to all but Donald Trump's ardent supporters – which, sadly, probably is all of them – there can be no doubt, after Saturday's Republican debate, that except on the sole issue of immigration, Trump is a Democrat. Space and the need to stay on point preclude listing all of the Democratic talking points Trump parroted in South Carolina, so this essay focuses on the most egregious one – the "Bush lied, people died" libel – and on Trump's view, unfortunately shared by many Republicans, that, the Iraq war was, in Trump's words, a "big mistake" and that "we got nothing out of it."
First, as Powerline's Paul Mirengoff writes, there is no evidence that Trump opposed the Iraq pre-invasion (emphases added):
Last night, Donald Trump repeated his claim that "I'm the only one on the stage that said we should not go into Iraq." As I've pointed out before, however, there is no credible evidence that Trump said any such thing.
Trump voiced public opposition to the war for the first time… in the summer of 2004… [by which time] he was following a fairly large pack.
[O]pposing our actions in Iraq once they went pear-shaped is just Monday morning quarterbacking — a Trump specialty.
Second, the Democrats' (and Trump's, but the writer repeats himself) accusation that Bush ordered the Iraq invasion knowing that there were no WMD is flat-out false. In fact, Bush was skeptical until then-CIA director George Tenet assured Bush that, based on CIA intelligence, Saddam's possession of WMD was "a slam dunk."
As to Trump's criticism that Bush "failed to prevent 9/11" (and was therefore responsible for 9/11?), here is Tenet again (emphasis added):
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The U.N. was complicit in helping Saddam skirt/flaunt the terms of the GW cease fire agreement...Saddam was still able to get funds through the Oil for Food debacle.
In addition, he was still shooting SAMs at aircraft patrolling the “no fly zones”, plus a myriad of other violations of the cease fire agreement and U.N. resolutions.
I forget how many resolutions (worthless words on paper) that the U.N. passed against Iraq, but at some point, some action had to be taken. Given that the U.N. was helping Saddam, does anyone really think that they were going to actually do anything to enforce their worthless resolutions?
The U.N. and the media have a lot to gain by demonizing the invasion of Iraq and painting President Bush as a failure and liar.
I was against the war before it was launched (I caught some grief over it on FR). It was not the biggest blunder. The facts are is that Obama's refusal to negotiate an extension with the Iraqi government and his complete support of the Arab spring which happened almost 3 years after Bush left office has led to what we are seeing now. People forget that Obama ran his re-election foreign policy on Iraq was now stable, you cannot blame Bush for that.
A BIG FAT MISTAKE
I do agree it was a huge mistake. And Bush followed it up with not defending his decision and calling out the libs and media for lying about it. It did lead to Obama's election, which has led to ME being handed over to worst elements of Islam.
Yup.
Heck, I recall the run on the money market in ‘08 that sparked the subprime crash.
Five hundred billion in assets moved in two hours.
Bush made a speech about a financial attack on the US.
Nothing more was heard on the subject.
RE: But, that still does not belie the fact that we shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place.
Then by this argument, we never should have gone to Korea, and Germany in the first place.
Our troops are still in these countries DECADES after the war.
the reason we moved it is because we invaded and owned it.. .. we took control of a lot of scuds too we knew
Saddam had and some we didn’t.. none of those were in violation of the UN mandate.. the UN had been in charge of burying that yellow cake long before the invasion.. it had nothing to do with the invasion and was useless as long as it was still buried,, it was.. he had no WMD nuclear program so it was useless for weapons.. it was just in a hole.. we took it because it could be used for peaceful nuclear purposes and we had a use for it
Doesn’t change the fact that it was there and existed.
The sarin IED existed.
The mustard IED existed.
Mustard and sarin are examples of what exactly?
Trump wrote back in 2000 that Iraq had WMDs and was a threat to the United States. He also argued that we should have taken out Saddam during the First Gulf War.
So, again, he is changing his tune.
How about a 180. The war in Iraq failed. No argument that the Rats and Obama lost it. However, Bush did not calculate the risk/reward of invading - years of occupation, opposition at home. He just saw an opportunity and took it. No matter, he put the US and Iraq in a difficult situation.
Most people, in retrospect, see that it was a mistake. So, I will rephrase your quote:
Amazing. Obama abandons the place KNOWING it will fail. Trump said that we never should have gone into Iraq and is proven right. However, you Cruz supporters will justify the occupation of Iraq so that you can slam Trumps decision to blame Bush.
While it might have been justified, I believe in the end, it was a mistake. That said, we were not “lied” to about it as justification, so Trump can pound sand on that one, but overall, I think we would have been better off with a strongman at the helm, that we could somewhat control. Thats how the ME operates.
“Trump said that we never should have gone into Iraq and is proven right. “
Except he didnt say this at the time. He only started saying it in 2004 and then of course in 2016.
Of course I’m slamming Trump blaming Bush. Bush left office a long time ago. How about Trump bash Obama? Hillary? Bloomberg? Bernie? deBlasio?
Perhaps because he agrees with them.
ISIS is at least partly the result of the Bush decision to disenfranchise all the senior baathists from Saddam’s regime when reconstructing the Iraqi military and government
These Sunnis went home and built an insurgency against the shia- dominated govt in the south and the U.S. occupation. They had no stake in a post Saddam Iraq.
The U.S. never replaced the leadership of the Iraqi army with effective officers ... They were totally inept fighting against their own former top commanders which enabled the insurgency to widen esp when obama pulled out U.S. troops and fiddled with the ROE that was needed to effectively fight
The old Baathists Linking up with the sunni islamic extremists was a marriage of convenience against common enemies: shia and westerners
Then the obama regime bent on “ arab Spring” fed the monster of islamic extremism and supported those who were fighting for sharia and against secularism - which took over leadership of the insurgency and made its goal establishing a caliphate - to be known as IS ( ISIS)
George W. Bush’s decision to occupy Iraq rather than conduct a purely punitive war was gross stupidity, and that is a fact that stands regardless of subsequent sundry political campaigns.
Defending W’s record is not the hill to die on for any candidate.
In order to maintain the GW coalition, Bush I had to state unequivocally that regime change was not the goal of DS/DS.
I shudder to think what could have happened if the Arab “allies” at the time turned on the US, GB and other non-Arab allies if we had gone after and gotten Saddam as a matter of policy.
We were quite dependent on Arab support and infrastructure...
However, if we got “lucky” and got him, I don’t think there would have been much concern.
that small amount of old crap wasn’t what Bush said was in there and certainly wasn’t worth 4,000 dead and 100,000 wounder and two trillion dollars as Bush is telling you here..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soohikNdbWs
Then we shouldn't have gone in the first place, or simply told our "partners" to FOAD.
So your car is no longer a car if it is “old”?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/first-world-war-bombs-still-3862370
Mustard and phosgene still injuring people one hundred years after WWI.
But if you want to believe erroneously that WMD aren’t WMD, fine.
Similar to what the rats did to Vietnam when they, along with Joe Biden, voted to cut off the military aid for S. Vietnam.
The rest is history...the RAT party owns this failure.
We went to Iraq to look for suspected Weapons of Mass Destruction.
No, we did not.
We never found any.
Yes, we did.
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