I have always said that I supported Bush's invasion of Iraq independant of the baathist govt having banned weapons as of 911. And I have always taken seriously the numerous claims that no such weapons then existed. Will Tom, Nadir, and the other peaceniks just as seriously consider the reports that such weapons got transported to Syria in the year or so prior to the invasion? This claim is a lot less contrived (it's not even contrived at all) than the numerous anti-Bush charges (such as the Valarie Plame episode, or invading to steal oil). The claim here is simple: all the people who believe that Huissein had those weapons were correct, Huissein evaded weapons inspectors because he had those weapons, but he spirited them to his neighboring baathist ally in the year between Bush's announcement of invasion and the start of the invasion.
If this is true, Tom and Nadir, what will your reaction be? "Bush lied about other things, and people died"? Will the people who were wrong in claiming that Huissein lacked those weapons, will you accuse them of lying?
2006-03-09
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Proof that Saddam's WMD were shuttled to Syria and/or elsewhere during the runup to the war will make no difference to your brother and Nadir. They were and are opposed to this war under any and all circumstances, and that's fine. I accept that and it's their perogative to feel that way. But if this (the moving of WMD to Syria) is proven to be true, then the chants of "Bush Lied" should cease once and for all (of course, I won't hold my breath).
You can argue that war is never the answer to anything (obviously, I heartily disagree), but if this is true, then in my opinion the President would be cleared of the "He Lied To Take Us To War" charge.
If the weapons were transported to Syria, there is still no evidence that Iraq was a threat to the US or its neighbors. The Bush and Blair regimes still sexed up the evidence because what evidence they had was flimsy.
I was opposed to the 12 years of bombing that happened during the Clinton administration because Iraq was not a threat then. I was opposed to the beginning of this 15 year war against Iraq in 1991.
I agree for the most part with Nadir that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the borders of the US, or even to its neighbors. I also agree that this argument was rolled out because it would draw more support than the authentic neocon case.
But I think that Bush expected to find the banned weapons, though I believe that he employed perhaps more than the usual cherry-picking (for a president embarking on war) in constructing his case.
In a democracy, I think that the president has an obligation to get approval from "the people" -- via their represenatives in congress -- before embarking on a war. But at least one war we're all enthusastic about manifested via similar tactics: the Civil War.
I agree with the historians who believe that Lincoln fought that war to end slavery. But like the neocons today, he felt that he could not get congressional or popular approval to have federal troops fight the confeds in the name of ending slavery. Lincoln believed that the first step of ending slavery was to prevent it from expanding.
[Important background: *THE* burning issue of the day was slavery's expansion into the territories. The anti-slavery coalition of abolishionists and white racist "free laborers" agreed with their pro-slavery rivals that slavery would either expand or die, though nobody knew how long it would take to die. However, merely calling for a "limitation" on slavery offered shrewd anti-slavery politicians a seemingly moderate position. Lincoln's democratic rival called for permitting the confederate states to "go", which meant that the confederacy would persue an "empire of slavery" encompassing Mexico, South America, and Central America.]
Certainly the confederacy posed no security threat to the remaining union states. And the leaders of the confed states certainly acted legally under the constitution as it existed at that time (prior to the revolutionary Reconstruction ammendments giving full citizenship to all Americans regardless of race). But how did that legal sessession apply to federal military fortresses located in secceded states? Lincoln used this tight legal question to set up the Charleston port showdown at Ft. Sumpter, and coaxed the evil confeds into firing first, handing Lincoln a justification for launching a full scale war.
I don't find that justification to be any more ingenuous than Bush's, nor Lincoln's cause any less noble than Bush's.
Surprisingly, the different results might derive from Lincoln's willingness to, and success in, waging "total war", which involved killing a huge fraction of the adversary's military age men, and its infrastructure. After four years of a hell many more times worse than what the Iraqi's are experiancing (in terms of killed troops, destroyed property, and prisoner mistreatment), there were no significant fractions of crackers ready to fight either the occupiers, or their black adversaries. Nor were any fractions of surviving blacks eager to fight. And so Reconstruction commenced, and worked marvelously.
And today nobody cares that Lincoln was thoroughly disingenuous with his stated reasons for going to war. And Lincoln acted as Tom and Nadir demand Bush act, there would have been no civil war, and we can only imagine how many decades would pass before slavery would have ended, and under what terms.
From the above-linked article:
James Inhofe, R-Okla., recently said, " ... This old argument of weapons of mass destruction, which has always been a phony argument from the beginning, now that we have information that's been testified ... in closed session, by this Gen. Sadas [sic] – all kinds of evidence as to the individuals who transported the weapons out of Iraq into Syria."
What in the world is this supposed to mean? In what sense was WMD a "phony argument"? Who used it to justify war in the first place? The evidence comes from an Iraqi general serving at the pleasure of the US occupation, filtered through a sub-literate GOP congressman? And what precisely is this "all kinds of evidence"?
Here's something to chew on. In 2001, prior to Sept. 11, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force with the express purpose of making energy policy for the US. It was composed (evidently) solely of big-time energy execs (including pre-disgrace "Kenny Boy" Lay). At that meeting the men looked at maps of Iraq--divided not according to political boundaries, but rather by oil-production centers. I'm fully prepared to believe other explanations than that Cheney was planning, pre-9/11, to invade Iraq. All the VP has to do is release minutes--something he has refused to do despite persistent pressure. Why? Why do citizens not have the right to review the policy proceedings of our elected leaders? What is he hiding, and under what principle is he hiding it? How do you guys justify his refusal to reveal the energy task-force proceedings. Is energy policy, like monetary policy in our system, somehow to take place away from the public gaze? As i've asked before, *these* are the guys who have elected themselves to go around imposing democracy at the barrel of a gun?
Let's start with a little openness at home.
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