Iraq War a Mistake

[ponderingturtle]

Precisely. It's like Iraq was kept out of the equation entirely !

They would just muck it up.

 

[Polaris]

Well the media needs something to rage about. If there are no stories, they need to manufacture them. Do any of us think that any serious Democrat or Republican voter is going to change their position based on Jeb's answer?

"Remember the Maine!"

 

[Fast Eddie B]

I do. I was just pointing out that some Democrats supported regime change long before Bush was president, and that they and their supporters don't get to point fingers at Republicans only.

If, in fact, it's known that the Iraq War was based on lies, and was a "mistake"...

...what do you call the last seven years?

Not attempting to make it political, but massive amounts of blood and treasure have been spent in those seven years, and to what end?

I would love to see how things would have played out if the current President had simply said "War is over!" on his first Inauguration Day and begun an expeditious troop withdrawal.

BTW, I represent one of the "changed minds", originally accepting the rationale for our involvement, but coming around after years of "drip, drip, drip" of gradually increasing evidence from the "other side". So it can and does happen.

 

[The Big Dog]

Seriously Monketey, are you fooled by that propaganda slight of hand?

That so-called bad information was almost entirely manufactured by Bush/Cheney et al.

Well Bogative, and everyone else, finally! Rachel Maddow covers the truth, the intel was a product of Bush/Cheney et al.

Madow plays the Daily Show interview with Judith Miller where Stewart calls her on the fact the data was rigged. Miller sticks with the party line, it was an intelligence failure. I suppose she cannot face the fact she played a role in the worst policy disaster this country's Presidency has made since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

What in the sam hell are you talking about?

Poll: Half of Republicans still believe WMDs found in Iraq

President Bush Admits Iraq Had No WMDs

Rove Admits: No WMD Found In Iraq

GOP watch: Bush: 'Sick about' no WMD.

Certainly not what you think we are talking about.

We are responding to SG's partisan belief that Bush et al conjured up all the evidence and that the Democrats were their patsies. I (and others) have endeavored to show her the errors of her ways (example, the fact that Bush relied on Clinton era intelligence supporting Operation Desert Fox), only to be met with "OMG."

 

[Bogative]

If, in fact, it's known that the Iraq War was based on lies, and was a "mistake"...

...what do you call the last seven years?

The right thing to do. We went in and created a huge disaster, it was our responsibility at least try and fix it.

Not attempting to make it political, but massive amounts of blood and treasure have been spent in those seven years, and to what end?

I would love to see how things would have played out if the current President had simply said "War is over!" on his first Inauguration Day and begun an expeditious troop withdrawal.

We are now seeing what would've played out, but to a lesser degree than what would've happened if we pulled out in early 2009. Staying that extra couple of years to train and equip Iraq's military may help the situation from getting worse than what is happening currently, at least that's how I try to justify it to myself.

Just like people saying invading would be a mistake prior to the invasion, some people were saying withdrawing all the troops would be a mistake also. Both were correct.

BTW, I represent one of the "changed minds", originally accepting the rationale for our involvement, but coming around after years of "drip, drip, drip" of gradually increasing evidence from the "other side". So it can and does happen.

We are of like mind. It just took me longer than most to come to that conclusion.

 

[Travis]

How could they possibly have well-executed it ? They'd have to leave with a very strong government in place, nothing short of a military dictatorship, to keep the sectarian feuds in check.

It is possible, we'll never know for sure, that if the country had been kept stable the sectarian feuds might have dissipated.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Firing the entire Iraqi Army without securing the weapons and failing to secure the borders.

 

[RandFan]

Certainly not what you think we are talking about.

We are responding to SG's partisan belief that Bush et al conjured up all the evidence and that the Democrats were their patsies. I (and others) have endeavored to show her the errors of her ways (example, the fact that Bush relied on Clinton era intelligence supporting Operation Desert Fox), only to be met with "OMG."

This is incoherent.

1.) She did not say "all". That's a lie. She said, "That so-called bad information was almost entirely manufactured by Bush/Cheney et al." True.

2.) Clinton was not in favor of an invasion. Clinton never claimed the intelligence justified an invasion. Bush could have relied on information from George Custer. That means absolutely nothing.

Let me ask you one more time, what in the Sam Hell are you talking about?

 

[Upchurch]

I also want to point out an additional position to the "it was a mistake to go to war/it wasn't a mistake to go to war" dichotomy. The position being "it was a mistake to carry out the war in the manner in which it was carried out, but not necessarily a mistake to go to war". Not saying that's my position, just throwing it out there.

I think how a war is executed is an entirely separate question from if it should be waged. As a matter of fact, I think that was at the heart of the whole "Support Our Troops" false dichotomy. Not agreeing that the war should be fought is not the same thing as not supporting the men and women doing the actual fighting.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think how a war is executed is an entirely separate question from if it should be waged. As a matter of fact, I think that was at the heart of the whole "Support Our Troops" false dichotomy. Not agreeing that the war should be fought is not the same thing as not supporting the men and women doing the actual fighting.

But you have to support what they want, they want battle not body armor!

 

[Monketi Ghost]

There really was no solid evidence for the weapons being there. The lack of a "smoking gun" led me to believe it was a mistake before the shooting really started.

My thread about it here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2653

Don't get me wrong, I thought the war was a bad mistake and didn't believe the WMD's would ever be found.
In fact I thought I was a sage when it all went so badly. But how hard is it to predict a poorly planned occupation of a country held together by a brutal dictator and subsequent power vacuum would lead to chaos?

... Looking at you, Dubya...

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Of course it was an intelligence failure, none of the people listening to the spy's had the intelligence to try to look into any disconfirming data. That is what you get when you put a bunch of yes men there.

It went well beyond intelligence failure. It was purposefully manipulated intelligence. Has everyone forgotten? Allow me to refresh some memories:

Downing St Memo

The memo recorded the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as expressing the view following his recent visit to Washington that "[George W.] Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
It quoted Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as saying it was clear that Bush had "made up his mind" to take military action but that "the case was thin."

Outing of Valerie Plame to discredit Ambassador Wilson's report that there was no evidence of an attempt to buy yellowcake in Niger.

After President George W. Bush stated that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson published a July 2003 op-ed in The New York Times stating his doubts during the mission that any such transaction had taken place. ... A week after Wilson's op-ed was published, Novak published a column which mentioned claims from "two senior administration officials" that Plame had been the one to suggest sending her husband. Novak had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage.[2] David Corn and others suggested that Armitage and other officials had leaked the information as political retribution for Wilson's article.

Leaking false information to the NY Times' Judith Miller, then having Cheney go on the talk circuit and claim "it was reported in the Times".

The New York Times later determined that a number of stories she had written for the paper were inaccurate.[3]

Miller continues to invoke the party line, everyone thought the information was valid.


Cheney said the aluminum tubes were for nuclear weapons production when he had to have known they weren't.

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many questioned the validity of the claim. After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group determined that the best explanation for the tubes' use was to produce conventional 81-mm rockets; no evidence was found of a program to design or develop an 81-mm aluminum rotor uranium centrifuge.[1]

They used Ahmed Chalabi's claims he saw WMDs and al Qaeda operatives in Iraqi when they knew the information was false.

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), with the assistance of lobbying powerhouse BKSH & Associates,[6] provided a major portion of the information on which U.S. Intelligence based its condemnation of the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, including reports of weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Most, if not all, of this information has turned out to be false and Chalabi has been called a fabricator.[7] ...

The CIA knew Chalabi was lying:

Before the war, the CIA was largely skeptical of Chalabi and the INC, but information allegedly from his group (most famously from a defector codenamed "Curveball") made its way into intelligence dossiers used by President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to justify an invasion of Iraq. ... despite warnings from German intelligence that "Curveball" was fabricating claims. Since then, the CIA has admitted that the defector made up the story, and Powell apologized for using the information in his speech.[18]

There are all sorts of right wing claims that this evidence of a fabricated case for war was flawed. But come on, all of it? At some point you can't claim everything here was an intelligence failure. It was an intelligence fraud.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

"Shut Up And Sing" is an interesting snapshot of what happened when the Dixie Chicks began to question our involvement in the war.

Worth a watch if you can find it somewhere.

 

[The Big Dog]

This is incoherent.

1.) She did not say "all". That's a lie. She said, "That so-called bad information was almost entirely manufactured by Bush/Cheney et al." True.

2.) Clinton was not in favor of an invasion. Clinton never claimed the intelligence justified an invasion. Bush could have relied on information from George Custer. That means absolutely nothing.

Let me ask you one more time, what in the Sam Hell are you talking about?

**** bro, never mind.

Nothing like a bomb thrower entering into the middle of a conversation and acting all bewildered by what is going on.

I do not know why I waste my time with garbage arguments like this.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

**** bro, never mind.

Nothing like a bomb thrower entering into the middle of a conversation and acting all bewildered by what is going on.

I do not know why I waste my time with garbage arguments like this.

I know, right? How dare that bomb throwing radical Randfan come in here and litter the thread with facts. For shame! Can't he see you're busy reaffirming preconceived notions here? Very rude.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, you didn't. You just went to an article in which Hans Blix engaged in a bit of revisionist history and posted it because it fits the narrative you want to push. Here's what he said to the UN Security Council less than two weeks before the invasion began. Remember, this is a few months after the UN passed resolution 1441, itself a last-ditch effort to force Iraq into immediate cooperation with inspectors after refusing to allow them in country for several years:

The CNN article you linked earlier has a link to a report made by a journalist embedded with the weapons inspectors prior to the invasion. He says the same thing Hans Blix did in March 2003. That I Iraqi officials "obfuscated" weapons inspectors regularly during the lead up to the invasion.

You can choose to believe Hans Blix 10 years after the fact or you can believe what he said two weeks before the invasion along with what journalist reported at the time, that's up to you.

There is no need to keep going over information that has been done to death on this board. I just wanted to point out that people are sadly mistaken when they call it "Bush's war." Democrats are up to their eyeballs in it as well.

Dude, you joined this forum in 2013. Why don't you go back to our discussions of this topic 10 years ago and see what I posted before you claim to know what I said back then.

As for Blix, you don't know what you are talking about. He criticized the Bush lies about Iraqi WMDs from the very beginning.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It went well beyond intelligence failure. It was purposefully manipulated intelligence. Has everyone forgotten? Allow me to refresh some memories:

I was making a joke about multiple meanings of the word intelligence and how surrounding yourself with yes men is not something that shows a person is terribly intelligent.

 

[RandFan]

**** bro, never mind.

Nothing like a bomb thrower entering into the middle of a conversation and acting all bewildered by what is going on.

I do not know why I waste my time with garbage arguments like this.

Rhetorical. No rebuttal. No argument. No idea what the sam hell you are talking about.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Hans Blix interview on Democracy Now

HANS BLIX: Well, at the time, we were saying that we had carried out a great many inspections and that we did not find any weapons of mass destruction, and we also voiced some criticism of the some cases that the US Secretary of State Colin Powell had demonstrated in the Security Council. My colleague, Mr. ElBaradei, who was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had revealed that the alleged contract between Iraq and the state of Niger in Africa for the import of uranium oxide was a forgery and that the — also the tubes of aluminum, which had been alleged to be for making of centrifuges to enrich uranium, they most likely were not for that purpose.
So while the evidence that had been advanced from the US side and the UK side had been very weakened, we had carried out some 700 inspections without finding any evidence at all, and we had actually been to something like three dozen sites, which were given to us by intelligence, and had been able to tell them that, no, there was nothing in them, so that all allegations had been weakened very much, but not to the point of saying that there is nothing, because to prove that there is nothing is really impossible.

 

[The Big Dog]

Rhetorical. No rebuttal. No argument. No idea what the sam hell you are talking about.

Yes, I already pointed out that you have no idea what is going on.