When Everyone Agreed About Iraq

[Wehrwolfen]

By STEPHEN F. KNOTT
March 17, 2013

For years before the war, a bipartisan consensus thought Saddam possessed WMD.​

At 5:34 a.m. on March 20, 2003, American, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. One of the most divisive conflicts in the nation's history would soon be labeled " Bush's War."

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime became official U.S. policy in 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act—a bill passed 360-38 by the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The law called for training and equipping Iraqi dissidents to overthrow Saddam and suggested that the United Nations establish a war-crimes tribunal for the dictator and his lieutenants.

The legislation was partly the result of frustration over the undeclared and relatively unheralded "No-Fly Zone War" that had been waged since 1991. Saddam's military repeatedly fired on U.S. and allied aircraft that were attempting to prevent his regime from destroying Iraqi opposition forces in northern and southern Iraq.

According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton, in 1997 a key member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet (thought by most observers to have been Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) asked Gen. Shelton whether he could arrange for a U.S. aircraft to fly slowly and low enough that it would be shot down, thereby paving the way for an American effort to topple Saddam. Kenneth Pollack, a member of Mr. Clinton's National Security Council staff, would later write in 2002 that it was a question of "not whether but when" the U.S. would invade Iraq. He wrote that the threat presented by Saddam was "no less pressing than those we faced in 1941."


(Excerpt)

Read more:
Stephen Knott: When Everyone Agreed About Iraq - WSJ.com

 

[IlarMeilyr]

The liberals, by and large, do NOT approve of your use of facts.

 

[Rozman]

Libs seem to want to make people believe that Bush under the cover of darkness while everyone was sleeping got all the troops in a plane and flew them to Iraq and flew back to the WH.

Then in the morning he declared war on Iraq.

No one else was involved.
Bush did it all by his lonesome.
The Democrat party was powerless to stop him.

 

[healthmyths]

By STEPHEN F. KNOTT
March 17, 2013

For years before the war, a bipartisan consensus thought Saddam possessed WMD.​

At 5:34 a.m. on March 20, 2003, American, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. One of the most divisive conflicts in the nation's history would soon be labeled " Bush's War."

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime became official U.S. policy in 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act—a bill passed 360-38 by the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The law called for training and equipping Iraqi dissidents to overthrow Saddam and suggested that the United Nations establish a war-crimes tribunal for the dictator and his lieutenants.

The legislation was partly the result of frustration over the undeclared and relatively unheralded "No-Fly Zone War" that had been waged since 1991. Saddam's military repeatedly fired on U.S. and allied aircraft that were attempting to prevent his regime from destroying Iraqi opposition forces in northern and southern Iraq.

According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton, in 1997 a key member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet (thought by most observers to have been Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) asked Gen. Shelton whether he could arrange for a U.S. aircraft to fly slowly and low enough that it would be shot down, thereby paving the way for an American effort to topple Saddam. Kenneth Pollack, a member of Mr. Clinton's National Security Council staff, would later write in 2002 that it was a question of "not whether but when" the U.S. would invade Iraq. He wrote that the threat presented by Saddam was "no less pressing than those we faced in 1941."


(Excerpt)

Read more:
Stephen Knott: When Everyone Agreed About Iraq - WSJ.com

THANK YOU for your efforts!
The real people that should be understanding what you wrote are NOT the Obama/Democrats but those that voted out of total ignorance that this President
told our enemies..our military is "air-raiding villages and killing civilians"!

That our present Sec. of State once said:
give President authority to use force..to disarm Saddam because..threat our security"..Kerry 2002
"Without a question, we need to disarm Saddam. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ....
to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ..So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...."Kerry , Jan. 23. 2003

AND then turns around when the political winds turn via the biased Bush bashing media this same "use force" Senator said:
Senator Kerry (D) "American soldiers going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children."
He calls our soldiers "TERRORISTS"!

All for political power!

 

[bucs90]

Anyone with common sense would've thought Iraq had WMD's. I did. And supported Bush in the war.

I want to make a quick comment, though somewhat off topic.

There are 9-11 conspiracy theorists all over the world. And they point to the lack of WMD's as further proof of the plot.

I cant help but wonder....if the govt was so wicked and evil and forward thinking that it planned and carried out 9-11.....how the fuck could that same govt, after overthrowing and conquering a nation, not plant a few WMD's under a sand dune in Iraq to say "AH HA, we found 'em"?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

When Everyone Agreed About Iraq

*

LIES BU$HCO Told Us...

 

[bucs90]

^^^ Hey, leave that horse alone, he never hurt nobody!!!

 

[NYcarbineer]

147 Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq war authorization. Did they know something 'everyone' else didn't,

or did they just get lucky? Because they were right, and Bush, who made the final decision, was wrong.

 

[Mac1958]

.

"Everyone". Talk about denial.

The alternate world remains intact, evidently.

Iraq war 10 years on: mass protest that defined a generation | World news | guardian.co.uk

Protests against the Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cities jammed in worldwide protest of war in Iraq - CNN

BBC NEWS | UK | 'Million' march against Iraq war

Global Protest Iraq War | PBS NewsHour | Feb. 17, 2003 | PBS

HowStuffWorks "What was the largest protest in history?"

February 15, 2003. The Day the World Said No to War. - IPS

Many of us have no blood on our hands.

Many of us were against this horror from the beginning.

.

 

[konradv]

By STEPHEN F. KNOTT
March 17, 2013

For years before the war, a bipartisan consensus thought Saddam possessed WMD.​

At 5:34 a.m. on March 20, 2003, American, British and other allied forces invaded Iraq. One of the most divisive conflicts in the nation's history would soon be labeled " Bush's War."

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime became official U.S. policy in 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act—a bill passed 360-38 by the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. The law called for training and equipping Iraqi dissidents to overthrow Saddam and suggested that the United Nations establish a war-crimes tribunal for the dictator and his lieutenants.

The legislation was partly the result of frustration over the undeclared and relatively unheralded "No-Fly Zone War" that had been waged since 1991. Saddam's military repeatedly fired on U.S. and allied aircraft that were attempting to prevent his regime from destroying Iraqi opposition forces in northern and southern Iraq.

According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton, in 1997 a key member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet (thought by most observers to have been Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) asked Gen. Shelton whether he could arrange for a U.S. aircraft to fly slowly and low enough that it would be shot down, thereby paving the way for an American effort to topple Saddam. Kenneth Pollack, a member of Mr. Clinton's National Security Council staff, would later write in 2002 that it was a question of "not whether but when" the U.S. would invade Iraq. He wrote that the threat presented by Saddam was "no less pressing than those we faced in 1941."

There are two big problems with this article.

First, in early 2001 both Powell and Rice said that Saddam didn't have WMDs and wasn't a threat. What changed?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN_-HTjy-_w]Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: Iraq has No WMDs and is Not a Threat - YouTube[/ame]

And second, I don't recall Iraq ever firing on our planes. The story was always, they locked on with their radar and we fired on them knocking out the installation.

I think what we have here is a piece of revisionist history!

 

[USNavyVet]

147 Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq war authorization. Did they know something 'everyone' else didn't,

or did they just get lucky? Because they were right, and Bush, who made the final decision, was wrong.

The final decision was right. 12 years was more than enough time for Saddam to get his shit in order. He didn't.

 

[kiwiman127]

I always love it when folks bring up what Clinton or one of Clinton's staff are quoted regarding Saddam as a threat. But Clinton had no intention of invading Iraq. It's a pretty well known fact that the US had limited intelligence about Saddam and what he was up to during the Clinton era and the lack of real hard intelligence carried over to the Bush Administration.
The Bush Administration did have intentions of invading Iraq. To come up with evidence that Iraq needed to be dealt with the Bush Administration put in much effort as possible to meet their goals. When they couldn't get the intelligence they needed, they settled for anything that backed up their wishes., This often meant ignoring their own Department of Energy, the IAEA and other countries intelligence. And in the end we all know how that played out.
So in other words, the Clinton Administration had no real hard evidence and never attempted as desperately as the Bushies to discover such evidence. Therefore, using the Clinton Administration as evidence that the Bushies were justified to attack Iraq is intellectually dishonest.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Libs seem to want to make people believe that Bush under the cover of darkness while everyone was sleeping got all the troops in a plane and flew them to Iraq and flew back to the WH.

Then in the morning he declared war on Iraq.

No one else was involved.
Bush did it all by his lonesome.
The Democrat party was powerless to stop him.

Hey.....at least Lil' Dumbya & The DICK ran it......

....like a BU$INE$$!!!!!

*
​

 

[regent]

Republicans are having a problem dumping Iraq onto the Democrats so they are in the process of dumping it on "everybody", not just Democrats. If pinning it on everybody works, later they might try pinning Iraq on just the Democrats.
The thing that is hard for them to change, however, is the war resolution, there it is in section 3 in black white stating that "...the president is authorized to use the armed forces of the United states as he determines to be necessary and appropriate...."
It does not say Bush has to, or must, but as he determines to be necessary and approppriate. It was Bush's decision, not everybody's, not the Democrats, not even Obama's.

 

[Billo_Really]

The legislation was...

...the result of PNAC letters to the Clinton Administration.

 

[Black_Label]

Republicans are having a problem dumping Iraq onto the Democrats so they are in the process of dumping it on "everybody", not just Democrats. If pinning it on everybody works, later they might try pinning Iraq on just the Democrats.
The thing that is hard for them to change, however, is the war resolution, there it is in section 3 in black white stating that "...the president is authorized to use the armed forces of the United states as he determines to be necessary and appropriate...."
It does not say Bush has to, or must, but as he determines to be necessary and approppriate. It was Bush's decision, not everybody's, not the Democrats, not even Obama's.

Exactly. We had a republican house, republican senate, and a republican president. Though when the GOP screws up, they never man up and admit they were wrong, they just pussy out at try to blame the democrats.

W and the GOP screwed up big time, own it.

 

[healthmyths]

147 Democrats in Congress voted against the Iraq war authorization. Did they know something 'everyone' else didn't,

or did they just get lucky? Because they were right, and Bush, who made the final decision, was wrong.

Where was Bush wrong?
There are NOW 28 million Iraqis that are free of fear that Saddam and his sons will put them in prison for NOT voting for Saddam!
Iraqi standard of living as defined by gross national product per person has average 47% increase per year from 2003 when it was $802 to what it is today $4,600!
And you idiots who say "yea that's because there are more wealthy that have most of the GDP.." So f...king WHAT difference does that make?
It is still a far better estimate of how well off Iraq is without Saddam then it would be with him!

Also you idiots keep forgetting...
Saddam forced the world to put sanctions on him and Iraq.
Saddam murdered 500,000 kids by NOT abiding by the UN sanctions!

"Some persons, such as Walter Russell Mead, accepted a large estimate of casualties due to sanctions, but argued that invading Iraq was better than continuing the sanctions regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War."
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, also argued that ending sanctions was one benefit of the war."

On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) appeared on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died.
I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it."

Albright wrote later that Saddam Hussein, not the sanctions, was to blame. She criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda"; said that her question was a loaded question; wrote "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean"; and regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel". The segment won an Emmy Award.Albright's "non-denial" was taken by sanctions opponents as confirmation of a high number of sanctions related casualties.

Albright's answered poorly she admitted so! But the f..king MSM/CBS/Stahl had a narrative an meme the SAnctions killed the kids NOT
Saddam.. totally forgetting all Saddam had to do was comply!!!

 

[healthmyths]

So given the FACT Saddam wouldn't comply with the SANCTIONS and murdered by starvation 500,000 children
AND if he were still there today, still not complying, the sanctions in place, another 500,000 children would starve!
Sanctions began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 2003 (after Saddam Hussein's being forced from power) or 13 years.

 

[healthmyths]

So alone with more then 500,000 children SAVED by the Liberation of Iraq with Saddam being hung, is that not to all you really compassionate concerned Democrats the most important aspect??

I mean you have no problem murdering 50 million babies in the USA so why would you be concerned about 500,000 in Iraq?

 

[Billo_Really]

So given the FACT Saddam wouldn't comply with the SANCTIONS and murdered by starvation 500,000 children
AND if he were still there today, still not complying, the sanctions in place, another 500,000 children would starve!
Sanctions began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 2003 (after Saddam Hussein's being forced from power) or 13 years.

Iraqis say life was better under Hussein.

Iraqis cannot forget what Americans have done here

An impassioned young woman from the middle of the lecture hall spoke up. It was obviously not easy for her. “It is not,” she said, “about lack of water and electricity. You have destroyed everything. You have destroyed our country. You have destroyed what is inside of us! You have destroyed our ancient civilization. You have taken our smiles from us. You have
taken our dreams!”

Someone asked, “Why did you this? What did we do to you that you would do this to us?”

“Iraqis cannot forget what Americans have done here,” said another. “They destroyed the childhood. You don’t destroy everything and then say ‘We’re sorry.’ “You don’t commit crimes and then say ‘Sorry.’”

“To bomb us and then send teams to do investigations on the effects of the bombs…No, it will not be forgotten. It is not written on our hearts, it is carved in our hearts.”

The Iraq invasion was the most cowardly act this country has ever committed.