Lat's keep the record straight about the war

Sparx

New Member
Keep the record straight about the war By Molly Ivins - 02/11/2004
AUSTIN, Texas - Just for the record, since the record is in considerable peril. These are Orwellian days, my friends, as the Bush administration attempts to either shove the history of the second Gulf War down the memory hole or to rewrite it entirely.
Keeping a firm grip on actual historical fact, all of it easily within our imperfect memories, is not that easy amid the swirling storms of misinformation, misremembering and misstatement. But since the war itself stands as a monument to what happens when we let ourselves get stampeded by a chorus of disinformation, let's draw the line right now.

According to the 500-man American team that spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there aren't any and have not been any since 1991.

Both President Bush and Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now claim Saddam Hussein provoked this war by refusing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into his country. That is not true. Bush said Sunday: ''I had no choice when I looked at the intelligence. ... The evidence we have discovered this far says we had no choice.''

No, it doesn't. Last week, CIA director George Tenet said intelligence analysts never told the White House ''that Iraq posed an imminent threat.''
Let's start with the absurd quibble over the word ''imminent.'' The word was, in fact, used by three administration spokesmen to describe the Iraqi threat, while Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld variously described it as ''immediate,'' ''urgent,'' ''serious and growing,'' ''terrible,'' ''real and dangerous,'' ''significant,'' ''grave,'' ''serious and mounting,'' ''the unique and urgent threat,'' ''no question of the threat,'' ''most dangerous threat of our time,'' ''a threat of unique urgency,'' ''much graver than anybody could possibly have imagined,'' and so forth and so on. So, could we can that issue?

A second emerging thesis of defense by the administration in light of no weapons is, as David Kay said, ''We were all wrong.''

No, in fact, we weren't all wrong.

Bush said Sunday, ''The international community thought he had weapons.'' Actually, the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency both repeatedly told the administration there was no evidence Iraq had WMD. Before the war, Rumsfeld not only claimed Iraq had WMD but that ''we know where they are.'' U.N. inspectors began openly complaining that U.S. tips on WMD were ''garbage upon garbage.'' Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspections team, had 250 inspectors from 60 nations on the ground in Iraq, and the United States thwarted efforts to double the size of his team.

You may recall that during this period, the administration repeatedly dismissed the United Nations as incompetent and irrelevant. But containment had worked.

Nor does the ''everybody thought they had WMD'' argument wash on the domestic front. Perhaps the administration thought peaceniks could be ignored, but you will recall that this was a war opposed by an extraordinary number of generals. Among them, Anthony Zinni, who has extensive experience in the Middle East, who said, ''We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started.'' After listening to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference, Zinni said, ''In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure.'' Give that man the Cassandra Award for being right in depressing circumstances.

Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan was equally blunt. Any serving general who got out of line, like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was openly dissed by the administration.

Suddenly, the administration is left with the only good reason there ever was for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in the first place - he's a miserable s.o.b. You will recall that this is precisely the argument the administration rejected. Wolfowitz said that human rights violations by Saddam against his own people were not sufficient to justify our participation in his ouster.

Now, according to the president, Saddam Hussein is a ''madman.'' Oh, come on. An s.o.b., yes, but crazy like a fox - always has been.

It wasn't even crazy of him to have invaded Kuwait, given that April Glaspie, the American ambassador at the time, told him, ''We have no opinion on your border disputes with Kuwait.''

For everyone who ever cared about human rights and longed for years to get rid of Saddam Hussein, this late-breaking humanitarianism on Bush's part is actually nauseating. All the Amnesty International types who risked their lives to report just how terrible Saddam's rule was always had one question about getting rid of him: What comes next?

I don't think there is any great mystery here about how this ''mistake'' - such an inadequate word - was made. For those seriously addicted to tragic irony, consider that the most likely Democratic nominee is now John Kerry, who first became known 33 years ago for asking, ''How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?''

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
 

Larry Gude

Strung Out
I guess reading...

...the actual Iraq War Resolution is out of the question?

It's the document that both chambers of Congress voted on, by huge margins passing and supporting the Iraq War. Including Senators Kerry and Edwards.

It was good enough then and it is good enough today.

By the way, I love Molly although she doesn't seem to want anything to do with the IWR either.

Now, as everybody in the Pro-Saddam crowd seems to feel we've done some huge wrong, I refer you to Dan Rathers last minute interview with the beloved Hussein.

Is his responsibility, as a leader of a nation at all relevent, or just our leader? Why no "OK, I'll come clean"?

Note to Molly: If "Shrub" sacked Germany (or Japan) and locked Adolph Hitler up in 1933, or Tojo, you'd still be oppossed.

If FDR had done the same thing, you'd hail him as a hero with foresight and the best interests of humanity at heart.

WE KNOW HOW YOU FEEL

As it was, we waited, contrary to, at the time, inconclusive intel and in line with general public apathy un-fed with nowhere near the level of information publicly available today.

Anyone who knew what was going on in 1933 was not the least bit surprised over the next decade and a half.

Please Molly, please, tell me that in ten years you'd be shocked, SHOCKED, if Iraq developed a fully functioning nuclear program and had used it, either as blackmail or actual attack.

The argument is, simply, should we have waited, like North Korea, until the threat was much graver? Not if. When.

That's what the IWR is all about.

You can look it up.
 

ceo_pte

New Member
Originally posted by Sparx
Keep the record straight about the war By Molly Ivins - 02/11/2004
AUSTIN, Texas - Just for the record, since the record is in considerable peril. These are Orwellian days, my friends, as the Bush administration attempts to either shove the history of the second Gulf War down the memory hole or to rewrite it entirely.
Keeping a firm grip on actual historical fact, all of it easily within our imperfect memories, is not that easy amid the swirling storms of misinformation, misremembering and misstatement. But since the war itself stands as a monument to what happens when we let ourselves get stampeded by a chorus of disinformation, let's draw the line right now.

According to the 500-man American team that spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there aren't any and have not been any since 1991.

Both President Bush and Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now claim Saddam Hussein provoked this war by refusing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into his country. That is not true. Bush said Sunday: ''I had no choice when I looked at the intelligence. ... The evidence we have discovered this far says we had no choice.''

No, it doesn't. Last week, CIA director George Tenet said intelligence analysts never told the White House ''that Iraq posed an imminent threat.''
Let's start with the absurd quibble over the word ''imminent.'' The word was, in fact, used by three administration spokesmen to describe the Iraqi threat, while Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld variously described it as ''immediate,'' ''urgent,'' ''serious and growing,'' ''terrible,'' ''real and dangerous,'' ''significant,'' ''grave,'' ''serious and mounting,'' ''the unique and urgent threat,'' ''no question of the threat,'' ''most dangerous threat of our time,'' ''a threat of unique urgency,'' ''much graver than anybody could possibly have imagined,'' and so forth and so on. So, could we can that issue?

A second emerging thesis of defense by the administration in light of no weapons is, as David Kay said, ''We were all wrong.''

No, in fact, we weren't all wrong.

Bush said Sunday, ''The international community thought he had weapons.'' Actually, the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency both repeatedly told the administration there was no evidence Iraq had WMD. Before the war, Rumsfeld not only claimed Iraq had WMD but that ''we know where they are.'' U.N. inspectors began openly complaining that U.S. tips on WMD were ''garbage upon garbage.'' Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspections team, had 250 inspectors from 60 nations on the ground in Iraq, and the United States thwarted efforts to double the size of his team.

You may recall that during this period, the administration repeatedly dismissed the United Nations as incompetent and irrelevant. But containment had worked.

Nor does the ''everybody thought they had WMD'' argument wash on the domestic front. Perhaps the administration thought peaceniks could be ignored, but you will recall that this was a war opposed by an extraordinary number of generals. Among them, Anthony Zinni, who has extensive experience in the Middle East, who said, ''We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started.'' After listening to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference, Zinni said, ''In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure.'' Give that man the Cassandra Award for being right in depressing circumstances.

Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan was equally blunt. Any serving general who got out of line, like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was openly dissed by the administration.

Suddenly, the administration is left with the only good reason there ever was for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in the first place - he's a miserable s.o.b. You will recall that this is precisely the argument the administration rejected. Wolfowitz said that human rights violations by Saddam against his own people were not sufficient to justify our participation in his ouster.

Now, according to the president, Saddam Hussein is a ''madman.'' Oh, come on. An s.o.b., yes, but crazy like a fox - always has been.

It wasn't even crazy of him to have invaded Kuwait, given that April Glaspie, the American ambassador at the time, told him, ''We have no opinion on your border disputes with Kuwait.''

For everyone who ever cared about human rights and longed for years to get rid of Saddam Hussein, this late-breaking humanitarianism on Bush's part is actually nauseating. All the Amnesty International types who risked their lives to report just how terrible Saddam's rule was always had one question about getting rid of him: What comes next?

I don't think there is any great mystery here about how this ''mistake'' - such an inadequate word - was made. For those seriously addicted to tragic irony, consider that the most likely Democratic nominee is now John Kerry, who first became known 33 years ago for asking, ''How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?''

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

To me, it is the FREEDOM that YOU AND MOLLY just exercised, that we were fighting for. It's amazing how people in this country will stand-up(exercising their rights) to condemn our PRESIDENT for giving the same rights to people who have been persecuted, oppressed, and killed for years.
 

Ken King

A little rusty but not crusty
PREMO Member
Originally posted by Sparx
A second emerging thesis of defense by the administration in light of no weapons is, as David Kay said, ''We were all wrong.''

No, in fact, we weren't all wrong.

Bush said Sunday, ''The international community thought he had weapons.'' Actually, the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency both repeatedly told the administration there was no evidence Iraq had WMD. Before the war, Rumsfeld not only claimed Iraq had WMD but that ''we know where they are.'' U.N. inspectors began openly complaining that U.S. tips on WMD were ''garbage upon garbage.'' Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspections team, had 250 inspectors from 60 nations on the ground in Iraq, and the United States thwarted efforts to double the size of his team.

You may recall that during this period, the administration repeatedly dismissed the United Nations as incompetent and irrelevant. But containment had worked.
What world is this person from? If this was the case would UN Resolution 1441 have even been considered? Lots of stuff in breach of resolutions was found during the early inspection after 1441 went into effect. Hussein continued to buck the will of what had been ongoing since 1991 and didn't comply with that final chance resolution. Everyone knew it.
 

SurfaceTension

New Member
This is my recollection...

1. Iraq invades Kuwait
2. UN condems action.
3. Desert Storm/Gulf War
4. Iraq surrenders; terms include documenting weapons destruction
5. UN requests the promised info on weapons
6. Iraq says pizzoff, shoots at planes
7. UN says "Stop it, adhere to terms"
8. Iraq says pizzof, shoots at planes
9. UN says "STOP IT, or else we'll say STOP IT again"
10. For i = 1 to 11, GOTO 8
11. US says enough, insists UN does something
12. UN says STOP IT, or else __
13 US says ELSE.
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
Originally posted by SurfaceTension
This is my recollection...

1. Iraq invades Kuwait
2. UN condems action.
3. Desert Storm/Gulf War
4. Iraq surrenders; terms include documenting weapons destruction
5. UN requests the promised info on weapons
6. Iraq says pizzoff, shoots at planes
7. UN says "Stop it, adhere to terms"
8. Iraq says pizzof, shoots at planes
9. UN says "STOP IT, or else we'll say STOP IT again"
10. For i = 1 to 11, GOTO 8
11. US says enough, insists UN does something
12. UN says STOP IT, or else __
13 US says ELSE.
That's how I remember it too. Sparx? JLab? How do you all remember it? :confused:
 

Holywood_CA

New Member
Ceo_Pete has a very good very valid point there Sparx. Comments? Or are we just going to see another post from another source in a couple more hours complaining about our Commander in Chief?
 
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