Whether it's beach footwear, a sewing stitch, or breakfast food that inspires the accusation, it's all the same—flip-flop, zig-zag and waffle are used because the general public is tired of politicians who can't take a stand...and stick to it.
So what does the Democratic Party stand for when it comes to Iraq? Here's the GOP take on it.
Wow! There has to be a lot of "Did I really say that?' going on.
I wonder what Sandy Berger had for breakfast that day.
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5 comments:
Framer,
I am unsure as to your point? Yes, in the mid 90's there were a lot of statements made vis-a-vis Sadaam and his desires.
However, in 2002 there was a great deal of intelligence available which indicated, despite any bluster, the UN sanctions and inspections had, in fact, kept any such development of WMDs.
The current (and, I might note, Republican, not Democratic) administration, however, chose to ignore the weight of evidence in favor a cherry-picking generally questionable information which purported to support it's claims. On such a basis we entered into a war of choice with a nation which did not, in fact, threaten us.
We are still dealing with the consequences of that decision (well, most of us are ... 3500+ are dead from that decision, not including 10s of thousands of Iraqi civilians). We will be for a long time in the future as well.
sirocco,
I didn't make the original post (it was AZAce), but I believe this information is valuable.
There has been a tremendous amount of revisionism concerning what was known concerning the danger of Saddam's Iraq. The consistent narrative was that he was a danger. You can say that Clinton never used that information to make war (if you overlook Desert Fox) but he didn't watch over 3,000 Americans die due to Islamic Extremism. Add that into the mix, who knows what happens. We went to war with Kosovo with far less of a threat, and did so pretty damn unilaterally.
We were technically still in a shooting war with Iraq, they were still defiant to all of their UN agreements, they dealt with terrorists and sponsored terrorists , and our intelligence surmised they were a danger. It was a tough choice to make. All of the blatant revisionism does nothing to help the situation then or now.
Before the war, I read "The Coming Storm" by Kenneth Pollack a Democrat and a former CIA intel officer assigned to Iraq. It made the case for me. I can't imagine what these government officials saw was less convincing. These flashbacks show that they were on the same page as well. It wasn't just Bush who put us there.
Framer,
My bad ... didn't notice it was AZAce who made the original post. :)
Speaking of revisionism, claiming Kosovo intervention was done "pretty damn unilaterally" certainly applies. In fact, it had pretty much full NATO support ... which is more than can be said for our entrance into Iraq.
Having said that, yes, those comments were made .. in 1997 and 1998. As is becoming increasingly clear, in 2002 the weight of intelligence pointed clearly to the notion any threat Iraq posed was essentially ephemeral. The administration chose instead to downplay or ignore anything that didn't fit it's picture, while parading data points which were challenged within intelligence circles, but which bolstered the case for war.
We know how that eventually turned out. Every reason originally given for initiating the conflict has been shown to be wrong (to be curteous).
Of course it wasn't just Bush who got us involved -- there was Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolf ... the list just goes on and on.
I was under the impression that "unilaterally" meant that you didn't have the support of China, Russia, and France. If you mean that having a non-UN majority based group of countries can qualify for multilateralism, then I'm afraid you will have to take that up with others. I don't make the rules.
The preponderance of the evidence and opinion from most if not all nations was that Saddam remained a danger and still held weapons. The danger was that the sanctions were going to be removed. At that point it would have only taken several months for Saddam to reconstitute his chemical and biological weapons, and not much longer to begin his pursuit of nuclear. He had most of the tools, he had the people, and knowledge. He even had centrifuges and yellowcake uranium (but don't tell Joe Wilson).
Going a step further, we all knew that he would and has used WMD, which is something we only suspect with Iran. A Saddam free of sanctions was certainly not in our best interests, especially since he was developing relationships with terrorists.
I'll let you argue that Saddam was not an immediate threat, but to say that he was not a threat is just revisionist silliness.
"At that point it would have only taken several months for Saddam to reconstitute his chemical and biological weapons, and not much longer to begin his pursuit of nuclear. He had most of the tools, he had the people, and knowledge. He even had centrifuges and yellowcake uranium"
Other than there _were_ people in Iran with the necessary knowledge, everything else in this section is now known to be false.
The claim "he was developing relationships with terrorists" is also no longer credibly put forth, not even by the administration.
Saddam most certainly was not any form of immediate threat to us. He was potentially a long-term threat, but certainly not one that merited immediate invasion.
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