Lindsey Graham: The Iraq War Was Not A Mistake
I must say, since tpm forgot to turn on the comments, This gives Miss Lindsey a whole new meaning.
Yes, Bush and Cheney belong in jail, but we all know that will never happen.
But what is more troubling to me is that while I and millions of others world-wide were on the streets protesting both the Afghan and Iraq invasions, there was virtually no coverage of this in the press and the typical American labeled us as traitors, hippies, clueless and worse. We were shunted off into âfree speech zonesâ where there was further taunting from our fellow Americans, many telling us to âleaveâ if we didnât like Bushâs policies. Please recall that at their onsets, these wars were popular with a country that seems not to mind invading other countries.
Since WWII, we have attacked by bombing, sabotage, invasion or attempted government overthrow fifty-one other countries, ranging from Indonesia to Peru to Somalia. From the end fo the 19th century through WWII, we invaded scores of countries, primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean. All of this was done to âprotect our interests.â
I do take a small amount of grim satisfaction knowing that I was ârightâ about the illegality and foolishness of the Afghan/Iraq debacles, but until both the press and public recognize and reject future illegal invasions, I am sure Iâll continue to protest, write letters, and call my representatives and have it all be for naught once again while watching, years later, people realize they were complicit in thousands of deaths, created millions of refugees and wasted trillions of dollars.
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Yep------Saddam was keeping Iran on a short leash.
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Weâve all seen this one, from Rebuilding Americaâs Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event â like a
new Pearl Harbor.
Sort of sends your mind off in a lot of unfortunate directions, doesnât it?
Of course. Because Perle, Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Max Boot had been selling Bush I and Clinton (unsuccessfully) on:
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Answer the following series of questions:
-Should we have supported the Allies in WWII?
-Should we have fought against Communist forces in Vietman?
-Should we have supported UN troops in Bosnia?
-Should we have invaded Iraq?
I think it shows that it is possible to answer this type of question with an unequivocal âYESâ and an unequivocal âNOâ and that the question itself is not a trap.
Never Forget
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well you dont expect them to blame themselves for the major clusterphuck the invasion of Iraq was do ya âŚthat would mean taking responsibility for there actions and they cant have that now can they
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No. Iâve heard hundreds of people reference Pearl Harbor as a huge event that changed history. Does not mean they did 9/11 And that sentence was cropped by conspiracy nuts. The beginning of that Chapter says:
âTo preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies,in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminenceâ.
Also in that Chapter:
âAbsent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor â as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier ageâ.
So they were referencing information technologies and defense budgets being increased accordingly.
Serious question now: Do you think the PNAC would put something out in the PUBLIC domain about how they wanted to do an attack on America as the new Pearl Harbor? Wouldnât you want that to be a secret?
What the PNAC did was EXPLOIT 9/11. Aside from the fact that 9/11 conspiracy nut shit defies physics, science and logic, do you really think they would have done 9/11 and then forgot to put at least ONE Iraqi hijacker on the planes? Instead, Bush the next day had to try to sell the idea Iraq was involved to Richard Clarke? So they did this big elaborate plan, but the next day said âoh man, we forgot to put an Iraqi connection in, damn!!â.
Also, these people could pull off 9/11, which would involve thousands according to the nuts (and NO ONE has talked), but they could not do a SIMPLE thing like plant WMD in Iraq, which would have been easy? Just put some stuff in a truck, stick it in a warehouse, then have troops stumble on it. Hell, they could not even forge the yellowcake documents right, they had numerous mistakes on them. Clear forgeries. Yes, they could not even forge a document.
The PNACâs expertise is propaganda and smear. When it comes to actual logistics, they are an inept bunch of fools who could not blow up a dog house if they tried. Thatâs why George HW Bush called them âthe craziesâ.
So no, that quote does not make my mind go into crazy land, not at all.
Good analysis. So firmly inside their bubble, the GOP didnât see this coming? My God, these people are suppose to be professionals? That is what is surprising, not that the American public would reject Bush, but that ANYONE would think they wouldnât. Republicans are no longer competitive on the national stage. They are a regional party of grifters.
The Clinton plan in the 90âs was to fund a coup and take Saddam out, but keep the Sunni in power. That would have kept the region stable but also got rid of Saddam. Even a lot of Sunni hated Saddam and his kids, but that does not mean they wanted Islamist extremists running the place. Instead, we got the biggest blunder in history.
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This has been the shift in narrative for a while. âThe war was justified and was going fine until Obama screwed it up.â
Which is really no surprise. Not just in a political sense of blaming it on the other party, but when you consider their attitude towards Vietnam - while the articles refer to a Democratic reckoning with Vietnam, Republicans (or rather, conservatives) have never had theirs. Many of them still believe that the lesson of Vietnam is, as Bush put it, âweâll win unless we quitâ. In other words, American power is so overwhelming that we will always prevail unless we give up too soon; being tied down in counterinsurgency in a completely alien country where were not wanted is just a minor detail. Thatâs the real reason they genuinely believe things were on the right track until Obama took over with his âdefeatist attitudeâ.
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Itâs not the big bad media that stirred up the Iraq hornetsâ nest for Republicans. It is the GOP propaganda arm Fox News, right at the opening of the GOPâs quadrennial âFox Primaryâ!
So whatâs the play? What is Fox up to?
Is the rational inference that they want to eliminate Bush and any other candidate who will stand in the way of what they see as a winning message âWe arenât offering Clinton, Bush, Obama, we are the party for the futureâ?
Or perhaps they just want to exhaust the publicâs interest in the subject so that theyâre candidate can answer Iraq-based critique of their War Partyâs ME policies with âLetâs move on. Weâve already debated this ad nauseumâ?
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âLyingâ being the operative word here.
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Egypt is the prize???
Hulegu Khan called from 1220, he wants his war plans backâŚ
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When youâve screwed up so badly that the next president gets the Nobel Peace Prize basically for not being youâyeah, history has pretty much weighed in.
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Yes, I do believe the cherry picked stuff revealed was probably the best, or most compelling, stuff. But they did play the âoh, this is just the tip of the icebergâŚwe have much worseâ card quite often. So when each of those cherry picked items were debunked (AFTER it was already released and the damage was doneâŚsee the SOTU speech in particular), they just fell back to âwell, the rest of the iceberg is much worse, believe usâ. And the press and the public did.
Which is mind boggling, I agreeâŚbut there you have it. When caught telling a lie, they were given full credibility when then saying âTrust Meâ. I mean, look at the Powell presentation to the UN. Freaking drawings of made up mobile biological labs?? And, keep it in context, this was right after the SOTU speech and the press was already pointing out that Bush lied about the yellow cake and tubes. But, sure enoughâŚPowell got up their with make believe drawings and said ârest of the iceberg is worse, but I cant show youâ and it was accepted as gospel by and large by the media.
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.[quote=âacme, post:41, topic:20497â]
âA nation that doesnât remember history is doomed to repeat it.â
[/quote]
Thatâs why the right has been systematically cutting education for 40 yearsâŚ
Well, just remember, he wasnât invited to the 2012 convention. That speaks volumes.
But they have to at least try to rehabilitate his image (remember the billboards, Miss me yet?), because with Poppy getting so long in the tooth, W. may very well be the only living President they have for a long time. So they canât have him stay a pariah in their own party forever.
The Iraq War has finally become the rotting carcass of an albatross that is hung around the GOPâs collective heads. It doesnât matter whether or not they voted for the war, or whether they were senators or congresscritters at the time. The very basic fact is that no matter how hard they try to pin this on Obama or Hillary, it was THEIR war. No matter how hard they try to spin the lie that the intelligence was faulty, it was THEIR decision to invade despite ALL the evidence and intelligence stating otherwise.
The Iraq War was sold on a lie. And that lie has finally reached the upper echelons of the GOP. And EVERY SINGLE person who opposed the war, who was branded as a TRAITOR, who KNEW that Bush and Cheney were lying through their bloody teeth, WE ALL knew it was a lie, and WE are vindicated.
This war is now a concrete block that is tied to the ENTIRE Republican party. Their arrogance, their hubris, their sneering pundits on Fox News, CNN, and every other mainstream media outlet are now the petard on which they are being hoisted. They can try to run away, they can try to shift the blame, they can try to revise history, but they CANNOT and WILL NOT escape the fact that it was THEIR war and THEIR massive clusterfuck that has turned the Middle East into a raging conflagration. They didnât just burn the house down, they blew up the entire fucking neighborhood and danced on the graves of the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Dead at THEIR hands. The GOP. THEY did this and they cannot escape that very fact.
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