I really can’t believe that after six years, a couple or three Congressional commissions, documentaries, in-depth news reporting, and a horde of bloggers digging up quotes and poring through reports, Democrats are still gnawing on the dessicated bone of pre-war intelligence and the hoary “Bush lied” slogan. Even a junkyard dog knows when the marrow’s out of the bone and finally lets it go in search of a more savory snack. Not so with Democrats. Senator Jay Rockefeller just released another report purporting to prove that “Bush Lied” or at least worked some hypnotic mojo over Congress, the American people, our intelligence agencies, and the governments of most of the free world in order to launch an “unjust” and “illegal” war against Saddam Hussein.
Except his report proved exactly the opposite. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette took one for the team and read the whole report. Then, with a little research into what Democrats were saying pretty much right up to the Iraq invasion, wrote an op-ed that ought to put this whole stupid subject to rest once and for all. It won’t, much to the chagrin of people with working brains and a notable lack of boiling hate for George W. Bush, because, as the newspaper notes, it’s an election season and the silliness has just begun.
The conclusion of the editorial pretty much wraps up my opinion on the matter.
WHAT WE have here is a familiar historical pattern: If a war ends in victory, all the politicians favored it. But if difficulties are encountered, it turns out that many of these same politicians were never for the war in the first place. Or were fooled into supporting it. And what’s more, the war was the result of a deep, dark conspiracy: Franklin D. Roosevelt somehow maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor; Lyndon Johnson conspired to expand the war in Vietnam; and naturally George W. Bush and his many co-conspirators manipulated the intelligence to get us into this war in Iraq. This presidential campaign is still young, and the conspiracy theories have only begun to flow. To quote that great political philosopher, Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Having read the same pre-war intelligence reports as the administration, many of these leading Democrats reached the same conclusion as the administration—at the time. Now they tell us the administration was misleading the American people, conveniently overlooking their own, remarkably similar statements back then.
Surely these members of the loyal opposition were acting in good faith when they warned of the growing danger from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The question is whether they are acting in good faith now. And without good faith in debating the course of American policy in perilous times, divided we fall.
Of course they aren’t acting in good faith. The Democratic Party has been playing silly political games with this war from the very moment it looked like President Bush was going to gain some political advantage from it. That’s when the smears and the lies and the blind purposeful ignorance started and the severe damage to our political process and the reputation of our country began. It will be years before we recover from the wounds the left has inflicted on America. I hope that, one day, there is a comeuppance when the country realizes what a bunch of selfish, cynical, duplicitous weasels the leaders of the Democratic party have been.
(via Ace, who is strangely calm about this)
Tags: Democrats, Fighting the Islamists, President George Bush
Exactly what it is! I have posted numerous times on message boards longs lists of quotes by Dems back to 1998 all saying the same thing that was supposedly a lie from GWB. There are youtube videos out there with compilations of these quotes on video. The info is all over the place….but the willfully ignorant Democrat supporters just cover their ears & sing loudly whenever you bring it up. It is embarrasing actually; that we have to claim these people as our own.
Oh please. Bush lied when he signed the AUMF and said “hopfully no military action”. That was the lie; he had no other intention for it. All this stuff about WMD’s and connections to al Qaeda was just part of the dog and pony show to sell the invasion.
And still the delusion persists…
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 06/11/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
OK then, let me ask you something then Jimmie. When do you think Bush made the decision to invade?
Chen, it doesn’t matter when he made the decision. It is completely immaterial to the discussion. Under the terms of the cease-fire that ended the First Gulf War, Bush could have given the order to invade the day he was sworn in and it still would have been a legal and just action.
That’s something folks who argue like you don’t get. It’s not that you’re not yelling “Bush lied” loudly enough. I get that you disagree with our being there. I get that you didn’t believe there were WMDs (though your party, the entire UN Security Council, and a good dozen other countries did). I get that the genocides of the Kurds and marsh Arabs meant nothing to you. I even get that after 9/11, you were still willing to take the chance on another attack. I get all of that.
What you don’t get is that we did, in fact, have an open conversation on Saddam Hussein. We had that conversation over an entire decade. We spent plenty of time in the Clinton administratino talking about his WMD programs and his genocides and how he broke the cease fire agreement over and over and over again. Your side of the argument lost. That’s what happens in a democracy. Get over it.
Well, it’s not the first time I’ve seen that argument, but the thing I always wonder is why Bush would have bothered with attaining an AUMF from Congress or, even more curiously, sending in inspectors if that was the case? Why not just invade?
Uh huh. Well, that’s a nice assumption. Of course, it’s based on the idea that turning the Middle East upside down would be the best way of preventing another attack, which is something that in the very least is debatable (or borderline crazy, depending on who you ask).
And for the second time, He did lie. He publicly stated on multiple occasions that he was trying to avoid an armed conflict. Sure, I thought it was a dumb idea as well, but you’re stating it as if those two things are mutually exclusive. They’re not.
But hey, I get that you supported the war from the very beginning, and after no WMD’s found, thousands and thousands dead, hundreds of billions spent, and no end in sight, you have to desperately cling to some…any justification for your original position, no matter how far those magic goal posts move. I get it.
Because the advice he was getting from the people around him was that he could afford the time to bring Congress, allies like Britain and Italy, and the UN Security Council into the effort. If we invaded on 9/12/01, or if Bill Clinton had invaded at any point in his administration, it would have been a legal action. It would likely not have been politic, though. Diplomacy, remember?
And yet it has worked.
What you’re telling me is that going back to the UNSC the second time wasn’t an effort to defuse the situation by trying to force compliance out of Saddam Hussein. I’m also supposed to believe that delaying the invasion twice after he had given Saddam Hussein a compliance date wasn’t an effort to defuse the situation either.
The President gave Hussein several chances to do what he promised to do in 1991. He was very public about saying that the invasion did not have to happen if Hussein would only do what he was supposed to do. That is in no way a rush to war. Those are not the actions of a man who was bound and determined to go to war.
The difference between you and me is that the facts are behind me. History is behind me. I am not clinging to any justification. We had ever justification – legal, humanitarian, national security – to depose Saddam Hussein. In fact, those justifications were made quite amply by prominent Democrats like Jay Rockefeller, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Al Gore, and many others. You may have seen the quotes. If not, they’ll make for instructive reasoning.
What I do not understand is how you can, in good conscience, deny that what happened actually happened. You remind me of a Flat Earther or one of those guys who swears the moon landing didn’t happen.
J: “Those are not the actions of a man who was bound and determined to go to war.”
Then why didn’t he let the inspectors finish their job? Only because of the political calendar.
Saddam Hussein was the one who didn’t let the inspectors finish their job, not George Bush. The inspectors were followed and harassed by armed thugs. Their rooms were bugged. They were prevented from inspecting the very places they most needed to inspect. Short of force, they could not ever finish their jobs.
The fact that we haven’t seen another attack since 9/11 could easily be attributable to our actions in Afghanistan or a thousand other factors.
That’s funny. Considering over half the country feels the way I do, maybe you shouldn’t leave the house. There’s crazy people everywhere!
Anyway, you say all that, and then say this:
They were in the middle of doing their jobs when we told them to leave. From the Blix briefing:
I mean really, do you have anything to back up what you just posted there, or is it all kool aid?
BTW- Blix thought that his home was bugged by us.
Uh-huh….and the very next line in the article says he has no evidence for the claim….
So, not sure what this has to do with anything unless you just like to throw out unsubstantiated claims (lies?) about
weapons of mass destructiongovernment wire tapping.This is why it is hard to understand you lefties. Why do you believe and/or require no evidence of claims made by anyone as long as they are against Bush. But Bush can provide mountains of evidence and you question every piece of it and ignore what you can’t explain away as a lie? You don’t hold Saddam accountable for the 4 years he would not allow inspectors in. You don’t hold Bill Clinton accountable for his part in the “run up to war”; nor do you mention that people suspected his administration of using UNSCOM to spy on the Iraqi military, which I would think would bother people like you who are so worried about how the government collects intelligence on our sworn enemies. You also never hold France or Russia accountable for agreeing to sanctions for Iraq to our face; all the while, making serious bank behind our backs and assuring Saddam that he could continue the charade because they would protect him at the UN. Had they not been on the take, luring Saddam into a false sense of security, Saddam may have complied much sooner to the weapons inspections. As it was, he only relented when he realized that Russia & France could no longer protect him. So many shades of gray….
Kind of makes you lefties look like simpletons; unable to pick up on the many “nuances” you claim to be experts on.
I thought that maybe Jimmie was confused about the bugging thing, that’s all. I didn’t state that it was true.
[...] tempted as I was to dissect this over at Jimmie’s place (since it was the second time in a week that an editorial rebutting the ”Bush Lied” meme was featured over there), I figured [...]