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 ...
If Trump is the nominee, it wouldn't surprise me if the GOP establishment quietly votes for Hillary in the general election. Many of the op-eds from talking heads at NRO and Weekly Standard may as well say as much.
Followed by the howls that Trump isn’t conservative enough btw from the very same folks who brought us Bush 41 Dole Bush 43 McCain Romney
I could never fathom the level of cognitive dissonance necessary for someone to support Bush with one side of the brain while the other side of the brain says that some other Republican lacks conservative purity.
I forgot to mention it. But Democrats attacking former Democratic party Presidents would be BRILLIANT.
Some Democrats might not see it that way, but that’s because they just don’t get it, are Biden-bots, Democrats in name only, are on the take from big labor, or whatever.
You posit a 2006 opinion that there was no plan for stabilization. Maybe not in 2003 but by 2004 there was and by 2007 Iraq was stable. It destabilized After US troops were withdrawn by the Democrats in 2009.
IMO Iraq should have been made sovereign only after it was fully stable via an established provisional government under Coalition oversight. We wouldn’t have had to negotiate bases, personnel troop levels, SOFAs, etc. on their terms after sovereignty. We did that with Japan and Germany but the Dems wanted us out so it was not possible in Iraq. When the Dems got elected majority in Congress, thanks in most part to the media, it was all over.
I used to travel in Iraq in un-armored vehicles and Blackhawks. I never had a problem. I’d read the news and think I was in another universe. I often said if the MSM reported vehicle fatalities like they reported Iraq no one would drive. FWIW we lost more troops to German insurgents following the surrender of Nazi Germany than we did in Iraq following the surrender of Baathist Iraq.
It’s really quite simple...
It’s a basic understanding of what constitutes an ACTIVE WMD Program.
Nothing you have posted demonstrates that.
We were told that Iraq had an ACTIVE program...i.e. they were in the process of producing chemical weapons and working on possibly building a nuke. NONE of which was true. Remember all the nice little aerial images we were shown by Colin Powell and we were told they were mobile WMD labs? Not true. Wasn’t true at all.
Iraq did NOT have an active WMD program. We were told they did, and thus the urgency of the invasion. That was not true.
You can continue to try and tell us that Iraq had an ACTIVE WMD program, which is again what we were told by the Admin, but it will never be true and pointing to decades old munitions as evidence isn’t supporting that claim in the least.
Who cares! They were being shot at - end of story. Someone shoots at American servicemen - they need to die.
The author:
Gene Schwimmer is a New York licensed real estate broker and the author of The Christian State. Impress your friends and get invited to all the best parties by following Gene Schwimmer on Twitter.
So a WMD is only a WMD if it is part of an “active” program when the doors got kicked in?
Why are you covering for the Dems, the media and ISIS?
Iraq’s WMDs are in Syria and being used by ISIS to kill civilians and combatants alike. A simple search will reveal sarin and mustard gas attacks since 2013 after ISIS overran Syrian storage depots. The weapons were shipped to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion. That means: they-came-from-Iraq. Got it?
https://pjmedia.com/blog/satellite-photos-support-testimony-that-iraqi-wmd-went-to-syria/
All public domain documents published YEARS ago.
Because for some people, mindlessly parroting the leftist talking points of 2003-2008 is suddenly “conservative”.
Amazing to see it on FR these past few days.
I recall battling it out with twio of the biggest trolling morons on this very subject back in ‘04: JohnGalt and Burkeman1.
They constantly moved the goalposts, finding WMD was not finding WMD because it was “old” “not part of current production” or “we knew about it already” as well as the funniest statements of “sarin is old technology” and “only nukes are WMD.”
Been seeing those same idiotic and intellectually lacking statements again and again lately.
We’ll see what he does if given the chance.
They’re probably Russians. Seriously. If you read public sources you find they are the main proliferators of WMDs.
Both Sunni and Shia terrorist groups now have sarin and mustard gas rockets and artillery shells. Inevitably, they will find their way into Europe and America. And the liberals will feign shock and incredulity.
It’s quite apparent that you will never admit you were wrong on this due to the fact you have dug in your heels so hard your giant ego would shatter if you were ever forced to.
Let me tell you a little story...
For starters, I was in Iraq when some of these what you describe as “proof of an active WMD program” were discovered. Not just me though...a good friend of mine from the same home station was too. Want to know what his job is/was? CBRNE specialist.
Know what he got to do? Go to some of these weapons caches and determine the agent (blood, blister or nerve) and determine its potency an stability. Want to take a guess what their determination was? That everything they found was at least a decade old or more and due to the conditions it was stored in, most if not all was no longer viable for its original purpose. It posed the biggest hazard to those who had to come in and clean it up due many of the munitions leaking.
Now, lets rewind to what we were told by the Admin, shall we? An active WMD program where they had Mobile WMD labs where they were producing chem/bio agents, Saddam trying to build a nuke, trying to connect 9/11 with Iraq so on and so forth. Now you tell me...What of those things turned out to be true? Not a single one.
The sad part is that my CBRNE buddy called you guys out over a decade ago now over this stuff. After they started finding these things there was no celebratory moment...no feeling of vindication...no “smoking gun” or gotcha moment either. Why not? Because they, you know, the experts, knew what they were actually looking at and how old they were. It was pretty clear what they were looking at was not anything that came even remotely close to what we were told Iraq possessed.
He wanted to find the real thing...the smoking gun...but after awhile, came to the realization and the conclusion that barring a monumental find that had managed to stay hidden for an awful long time, they were not going to find anything that demonstrated an active WMD program. It was at best a long dormant program, or at worst, a completely abandoned program.
After much frustration dealing with these things, my CBRNE buddy tells me one day at the DFAC (dining facility) something to the effect of “the neocons who pushed us into this war are going to try and use this garbage we found and try to say this was the sh** we said would be there”.
You continue to prove him right.
Few, which is the point. Obama pulled us out while the ISF were still getting on their feet. Once we left, three thngs happened:
1) The ISF lost the technical enablers and tactical intel we provided that increased their effectiveness.
2) Malaki was free to start playing sectarian games with the government and army. Competent leaders were replaced with political hacks with the result that competent formations fractured over time, and then broke when pressed by DAESH/ISIL.
3) The Iranians came in and filled the vacuum we left. They encouraged sectarianism to both weaken Iraq by exacerbating tensions and increase their influence among the Shia Arabs.
The Iranians are not Arabs and don’t mind seeing Arabs, even Shia Arabs, kill each other off if it improves Iran’s position in the region.
It is quite apparent that you will never admit that “WMD” are “WMD” regardless.
Probably.
Going into Iraq was stupid to the 10th power.
Once we got there however we should have just killed Sodamninsane cleaned out the worst elements of the Bathest military hierarchy, left the army intact and secured the oil fields for our own profit til we reimbursed ourselves for the outlay. Then left.
I used to believe in it. I supported Bush 100%
Now I feel we were all betrayed
First by 4 Bush critical miscalculations
1) Get the UN behind us by claiming the need to clean out WMD
2) The Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators
3) Saddam’s Old Guard can never be included in a reformed regime
4) The American people will accept the human and financial cost of a very large force deployed in Iraq for a very long time while we rebuild the country with our treasure. And to show how noble we are, we’ll let them sell their oil to China to show everyone we didn’t invade them for their oil
It’s complex but there is/was definitely linkage between the disenfranchised Sadammite Baaathists and the inception of the Islamic State. Just do a search on the terms Baathists and ISIS. Here is just one article of dozens exploring the linkage
I am not sure what Bush could have done to buy off or invest the Baathists into the new Iraqi state, but what they did do, was hugely counterproductive
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