The Removal of the Taliban, the Removal of Saddam Hussein, and Libya abandoning its WMD programs are three that come to mind.
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Impeachment
- Thread starter stelow
- Start date
The Removal of the Taliban, the Removal of Saddam Hussein, and Libya abandoning its WMD programs are three that come to mind.
While wikipedia isn't the best source, it does give a good summary, plus links to other sites that give more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme
Keeping us safe is a Constitutional Duty (Bush being the Commander-in-Chief). Gaining popularity points in the world is a side issue.
Saddam Hussein was in material breach of several UN resolutions (http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/01fs/14906.htm). President Bush enforced the consequences stated in those resolutions. Congress voted to give Bush the authorization to invade Iraq ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html ). In the post-9/11 environment, ignoring the potential threat of Saddam would have been irresponsible. He was mistaken in his evaluation of the intelligence, but that does not constitute an impeachable offense. He was given the authority to deal with Iraq by Congress and international assent by the UN resolution 1441.
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You are correct in stating that wikipedia is not the best sourse, and as a matter of fact, I didn't see where any country was
Do have any proof to this accusation?
Well, now we may have no safety and popularity....thanks to Dubya.
I see, Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions, so this gave America the right to invade. Gotcha.
Ignoring the potential threat of Saddam? We already had him pinned down. What threat was he again?
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The Report:
http://www.iic-offp.org/documents/IIC%20Final%20Report%2027Oct2005.pdf
And commentary on the Report:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm913.cfm
And that's why we've had so many terrorist attacks on our own soil since 9/11
That's what they done did said (in UN resolution 1441: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/18252.pdf)
He kept kicking out the weapons inspectors. It turned out he (apparently) had no WMDs, but his actions indicated he was trying to hide something. In a post-9/11 world, when 19 guys can take over planes and kill 3,000 people, the potential that Saddam was making even small amounts of WMDs and passing them to terrorists had to be dealt with. Sometimes sanctions just aren't enough.
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Perhaps you have misunderstood what I am asking,
you stated " Every other nation seemed to be getting oil bribes from Saddam. Of course they're mad we invaded, because a source of funds has been cut off." Your are implying that America's invasion of Iraq stopped a flow of illegal bribes and kickbacks, and people are angry about losing the income. Please provide evidence to validate your accusation.
Considering we have had so few terror attacks at all, this statement is laughable....and worn out.
But Chertoff has a gut feeling one is coming
Appeal to fear.
After your own admission that there were no WMD's you still cling to the fear that he might have had some....
Amazing.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
The one that was exaggerated by misleading, cherry-picked intelligence that was provided to Congress and thus brought about quotes like the one you posted? Yep, that'd be the one.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
That really doesn't change my point; regardless of whether or not Pelosi made that quote due to insufficient intelligence in 1998, or purposefully misleading intelligence in 2002-03, it was still made to the best of her knowledge. That doesn't excuse the Executive Branch - President, National Security Council, Defense Secretary, et all - from invading a country based on flimsy, politically-filtered intelligence.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
It's tough to call that a success when right now they seem poised for a comeback.
An unmitigated failure of the Bush Doctrine. Saddam was a militantly secular leader who would not have tolerated religious extremist groups in Iraq because they were a threat to his regime. Now that he is gone, nobody can keep the Islamist fanatics from running amok.
Qaddafi was already scrambling to find ways to endear himself to the West. His only motivation was to secure his position in power, and he knew that a nuclear weapons program was not going to contribute to that security anytime soon, but would rather pose a liability. In reality, the Bush Doctrine didn't have much of an effect upon his decision at all.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
Because the President told everyone that the evidence was compelling, and everyone figured that he must have an ace up his sleeve, as far as intelligence is concerned. Besides, the idea that the President would first claim that Saddam was going to wreak WMD-based havoc on the U.S., then invade Iraq and put many lives at risk, all based upon such flimsy evidence, seemed patently absurd. Nobody outside of the fringe left thought that George W. Bush could be that unbelievably stupid.
Boy, did he prove us wrong on that one.
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It's only a failure if/when we give up. Establishing a democratic government in Iraq is a new paradigm in the Middle East, and is worth the risk. It's a chance to get out for good once we've won. Otherwise, we will be going back in there every few years, to deal with whatever problems keep popping up.
But it takes time to do it right, and we have to expect major mistakes and setbacks. Eighty years after we started our Republic, the only solution the politicians had to deal with the problem of slavery was to kill a million Americans. And we had centuries of democratic traditions behind us (from the English).
Dealing with a dictatorial strongman is not morally superior to the project we are attempting now.
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MachZer0
Caught Between Barack and a Hard Place
I'm sorry but I just demonstrated to you that the evidence was believed before Bush ever came to be President. One thing I appreciate though is your willingness to give such grandiose credit to one whom so many of our left leaning friends claim is stupid. Wonder how they feel since they believed they were duped by him. I know I wouldn't want to have to admit I was duped so thoroughly by someone I claimed was so stupid.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
Bull. It's already a failure because there is no way the situation is going to turn out profitably for the U.S. in either the short- or the long-term.
No, it's not. Democracy in the Middle East doesn't mean that it turns into Nebraska. It means that, in countries that are made up of religious and ethnic groups that hate each other, and lack strong government institutions, the likely outcome is civil war. Which is, shockingly enough, precisely what we have in Iraq right now.
The notion that it will have to be us and only us to go back in is another example of how hideously flawed the Neocon attitude towards foreign policy really is. The reason why the rest of the world isn't with us in our quixotic little adventure is because the Bush Administration has taken on a policy of unilateralism and complete disregard for the interests of other countries - even those we claim as allies. If our government could just bring itself to renounce this half-witted unilateralist policy, then we wouldn't have to go it alone in stabilizing Iraq.
I absolutely and categorically reject the notion that the American Civil War was the only possible way for the slavery dilemma to be successfully dealt with. By the 1860's, it certainly was, but that doesn't mean that American leaders in both the North and the South acted irresponsibly with regard to the slavery question during those eighty years in the interim.
In the meantime, the civil war we are dealing with in Iraq is worlds apart from our own; it's a completely different animal. In our Civil War, the goal of the South was to exhaust the North so they could secede, and the goal of the North was to exhaust the South so they could keep the Union together.
In the current civil war in Iraq, the goal for all sides is to take control of the country and exact bloody revenge upon everyone else. This is no hope that that war will end in any shorter amount of time, with any less casualties, than our own Civil War.
I think it is. Saddam was the lesser of two evils. He was a horrendous man who committed many atrocities against his own people, and who had previously menaced the region with his military and his WMD programs. But order kept at the expense of a few thousand lives is better than complete and utter disorder at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives, which is where Iraq is currently headed.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
By "the evidence", I'm sure you mean "some evidence." The evidence that was available to Pelosi in 1998 was not necessarily the same evidence that was spun towards Congress in '02 and '03. For example, the evidence to which Pelosi was referring in 1998 wasn't being used to justify a near-unilateral invasion of Iraq. That's the most important difference between these two sets of circumstances - one which you seem to fail to appreciate.
I didn't. I gave it to his Administration.
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Perhaps you have misunderstood what I am asking,
you stated " Every other nation seemed to be getting oil bribes from Saddam. Of course they're mad we invaded, because a source of funds has been cut off." Your are implying that America's invasion of Iraq stopped a flow of illegal bribes and kickbacks, and people are angry about losing the income. Please provide evidence to validate your accusation.
Considering we have had so few terror attacks at all, this statement is laughable....and worn out.
But Chertoff has a gut feeling one is coming
Appeal to fear.
After your own admission that there were no WMD's you still cling to the fear that he might have had some....
Amazing.
The reports in the links deal with bribes given to French and Russian politicians (among others). They had an incentive to oppose the Iraq invasion, because they would lose their bribes. Also, there was the problem of being found out and ensuing scandal. Unfortunately, UN officials apparently can't be scandalized by taking bribes from a murdering dictator.
We haven't had any attacks since 9/11 partly because we have taken the war to the terrorists. The argument that we are less safe because we are less popular was the statement in question. We had several terrorist attacks throughout the 1990's, and I believe we were considered popular during those days. We are unpopular now but we've had no terrorist attacks (anyway none thus far, as the link you posted states).
Well, others appeal to fear that Bush is taking away our rights and trying to install some sort of dictatorship.
We didn't know for sure that Saddam had no WMDs until after the invasion. I no longer cling to the fear that he had them. I was explaining that in the atmosphere of the time, it made sense to err on the side of caution, that is, invade a country that was ruled by a man who supported terrorism, who was aggressive (invading Kuwait), and who we know had a WMD program (we ordered him to dismantle it after the first Gulf War).
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MachZer0
Caught Between Barack and a Hard Place
Actually, Pelosi's statement was a precursor to Clinton's near unilateral attack on Iraq called Operation Desert Fox. You seem to keep getting your history wrong
Well, here is exxactly what you said.
No mention of the administration, so you appear to be remembering your own comments incorrectly, as well as history.
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KomissarSteve
Basileus
Ridiculous. The political capital that France and Russia would have gained from the U.S. in helping invade Iraq would have far outweighed what they were gaining from bribes from Iraq. The reason why they didn't invade with us was because the case for it was insultingly flimsy, and because they didn't approve of American unilateralism.
No, we haven't. We've taken the war to a country filled with sectarian tensions and led by a militantly secular dictator. If we had taken the war to the terrorists, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia.
In the U.S.-proper? We had two. One was domestically-based, and one ended up with us catching and jailing the perpetrators.
Yet recent reports from the intelligence community pretty clearly indicate that al Qaeda has used our foreign policy as an effective recruiting tool. The reason why they haven't attacked within the U.S. recently is because it's so much easier for them to harm our interests in Iraq than it is here.
No, but we did know that the case for it was weak, which, to any responsible leader, would indicate that we needed better intelligence on the issue, and different perspectives on the issue as well. (ie: that Saddam's WMDs program was nothing more than a Potempkin-village constructed to deter invasion by the U.S.).
Invading a country is not erring on the side of caution.
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