I never had any issues with going after those bad guys who attacked you guys. But why did you attack them where they weren’t? And please don’t say that everyone knew that Iraq was the aggressor, because we in the Rest Of The World knew that the the only meaningful physical target was Afghanistan. Even our Parish Priest told us that from the pulpit when war was being discussed just after the 9/11 events. He told us the terms and conditions of a “Just War”, and clearly implied that Iraq did not qualify in any way. That was a month or so after we had signed a condolence book at the entrance to our church. We were all so sad for the USA. I am genuinely overwhelmed right now with that recollection of the tragedy, and the deep sympathy we all had for the USA.But … we couldn’t tell GWB anything, because if we weren’t with him, we were declared as being against the USA.The original tragedy has now compounded many times by your incompetent leaders. How many Iraqi civilians died? Is there ever going to be compensation for them?Also, lots of your Servicemen have been affected, I grieve for that loss as well.
It has been quietly reported over the last week that LBJ knew that Richard Nixon had deliberately sabotaged an impending peace treaty with North Vietnam. Even though this info came to him three days before the election that put Nixon into office, Johnson remained silent because the information had been discovered through illegal listening devices in the SV embassy. The war continued four more years and 14,000 Americans died, billions were wasted, and tens of thousands came home wounded in body and mind.^http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/03/lbjs-x-file-on-nixons-treason/^Fast forward to 2003. In order to oust a man hated by his people, Saddam Hussein, the USA took evidence that was circumstantial at best – contrived at worst – and convinced Americans of both parties to go to war. The fact that Hussein was evil and did terrible things to his people is a hypocritical reason since the USA has supported people like the Shah of Iran, who – while an ally of the USA – was just as bad as Hussein and where the foundation of the storming of the embassy and our current political intransigence was laid.^The losses of life in our current wars has not been on the scale as Vietnam, but the wounded bodies and minds coming back looking for work not being created by Congress or the “Job Creators” is a drain on the spirit of our nation, not to mention our tax dollars. ^I have come to believe Mr. Bush was a victim of trust in people who betrayed that trust. He released Rumsefeld even though Bush had won the election, and he refused to pardon Cheney’s friend, Libby, who we now know outed a covert agent for the CIA and endangered her assets/friends in harms’ way. There were no WMD’s, there were very few signs of chemical weapons, and Halliburton and other contractors made billions providing inadequate services in an incompetent way. There’s also the issue of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and good will lost to the USA around the globe.^Mr. Wuerker’s cartoon is a bit harsh. The D’s, convinced by the information campaign of the Bush administration, voted in a bipartisan to give Mr. Bush the power to declare war if he felt it necessary. They did not give the power casually in that they VERBALLY admonished the President not to use this power without a CLEAR and IMMINENT threat before us. As patriotic Americans, they trusted their leader had good intentions and would not callously start a war without real cause. They were wrong, but they were wrong for the right reasons.^The GOP has learned from the D’s mistakes. It’s the only reason I can think they refuse to cooperate with Mr. Obama on any point. They won’t pass his nominees to courts, gov’t positions, and are very resistant to each of his cabinet nominees. Are they expecting that if they agree to ANYTHING the president wants he will do to them what Bush did to the D’s?Richard Nixon was also a member of the GOP and we now know a D allowed him to keep a war going. Our gov’t appears to be unable to learn from history, and our people are too overworked, divided, and confused to respond in a way to force these cannibalistic parties to cooperate. The Dem’s, if given too much power, have shown the ability to abuse it, but the GOP has shown an ability to abuse power as an art form.Sadly,C.
C: Your last sentence should be a bumper sticker/poster and be plastered all over this country. Unfortunately, when it came to Vietnam, that would apply to the Dems as well’
if you live to be 1000 years old, and looked back to this period, you would ask what was the point? where are the wmds? the casualties, the money wasted, for nothing.
They didn’t vote for the war. They voted to give away their responsibility for declaring war to Bush-Cheney. There’s a big difference (in this case, tragic).
My “Democratic” Senators—Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer—both voted to give up their sacred responsibility and for that will never get a vote from me.
A lot of people knew at the time that the whole case for the war was full of holes — but too many Democrats fell for it, for one reason or another. It was a shameful action. I’m afraid we won’t have learned anything, just as we didn’t learn anything from Vietnam.
I don’t let the Dem’s off so easy for allowing Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/et al to invade Iraq. Sure, the info provided was cherry-picked, but the Dem’s knew it was cherry-picked. I think they were afraid to be branded as ‘weak on defense". That’s no excuse.*No thinking adult should have been surprised that a bunch of neocons wanted to go to war in a country with huge oil reserves, regardless of the facts to the contrary. It would have been surprising if they didn’t.
I totally agree, Night Gaunt. Mster and you are totally correct in comment and blame. It wasn’t until I heard Richard Clark’s interview after the war began that I realized the depth to which we had all been manipulated. I didn’t trust Mr. Bush but I did trust Colin Powell who now says he was also a victim of lies. ^ Mr. Clark said that he had been summoned to the Oval office by the President and the President took him into a side room and told Clark, tell me how Saddam Hussein is part of this. Clark began to tell him Hussein wasn’t a part of it, and he said Bush interrupted him and said, “Tell me how this sticks to Hussein.” By the time that story came out, we were already in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Bin Laden, were being set on a back burner.^Just as Nixon apparently wanted the war in Vietnam to continue so he could be the ‘hero’ who ended it, Bush and Cheney wanted to be the ‘heroes’ who saved Iraq from Saddam and who profited from that rescue.^ The only justice we will ever see is that neither can ever leave the United States of America without facing possible arrest for war crimes.Even now, people are trying to write history to show the courage and boldness of action taken by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice coalition.^I am sorry I was not as intuitive as you appear to have been, but wonder what we could have done to change the outcome. I wrote letters at the time reminding my legislators that Napoleon and Hitler had both lost their wars by fighting on two fronts instead of just one, and advised they work to finish in Afghanistan before starting another one.^I’m sorry for what these greedy arrogant people have done to our nation; and how they’ve divided our people in their effort to escape responsibility.Respectfully,C.
Here’s how one could have known that we were being led astray by the Bush administration (besides a gut feeling, which is sometimes the best):
In October, 2002, John McCain was a guest on Dave Letterman’s show. Dave started the conversation: “How goes the war?” McCain’s response was that the real problem we were going to have was not with Afghanistan, but with Iraq.
Foreshadowing, anyone? I could see that one a mile away, without my glasses.
The biggest blunders came after the government fell. Think of all the stores of weapons looted while our soldiers were told to stand by and watch. Court records disappeared. Tables, desks, computers, the copper wiring in the walls of state buildings and colleges, all damaged and stolen. Rumsfeld’s response: “Freedom is untidy.”
The worst part is that Iraq was ready to collapse anyway. Their buildings and roads were a mess. Water and sewage systems were breaking down. The electrical grid was put together with duct tape and chewing gum. If we had waited 6 – 12 months Saddam Hussein would have been out of office, and it wouldn’t have cost us a dime. This is why Paul Bremer, whose job it was to sell utilities and construction to the highest bidder (see the definition of “plunder”) was unsuccessful. Anyone who knew anything knew that this country was too broken to fix, and would have to be started over.
If you want to be depressed/know the truth of that first year of occupation, I recommend “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” (the Emerald City is the Green Zone) by Chandrassakian (I may have spelled that wrong). Anything that could be botched was, and in the worst way for PR. For instance, the existence of the Green Zone itself said. “We wouldn’t stand for your food and your way of life. We’re going to build a little piece of America here so that we don’t have to get our hands dirty working with the nationals.” We had Pakistanis handle our food, because we wouldn’t trust the Iraqis. And what foods did we have the Pakistanis handle? Texas-style pork barbecue, of course. Think that made those Muslims happy?
Recruiting for Al-Qaeda, anyone?
And so it goes.
But, according to some posters on this site, Bush is gone. Nothing he did matters. Tell that to the Iraqis.
Not with Grumpy McSane as President! He’s been as bad a flip-flopper as Romney, even on torture. He’s now the “Get off my lawn” old man, and has said he will not run again. Good.
Iraq pales beside the Vietnam war and the lies told by LBJ and the democrat warmongers that kept it going. I’m tired of hearing about how horrible Bush/Cheney were/are. How many dead in Iraq as opposed to Vietnam? Civilian and military.
Grimmer: I expect, since it’s been two days, that this will be the last comment. Having said that, Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the war. How did that work out out? HE expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, and it wasn’t ‘just Dems who supported the war. I certainly remember “Love It or Leave It” plastered on t-shirts, stickers, posters, etc. I doubt if only Dems were wearing/flaunting them. In fact, by the end of LBJ’s presidency, many Dems were opposed to continuation.
Dtroutma about 11 years ago
My Senator did NOT! Not a dunce, and on the Intelligence Committee, one of the few WITH intelligence!
Ottodesu about 11 years ago
I never had any issues with going after those bad guys who attacked you guys. But why did you attack them where they weren’t? And please don’t say that everyone knew that Iraq was the aggressor, because we in the Rest Of The World knew that the the only meaningful physical target was Afghanistan. Even our Parish Priest told us that from the pulpit when war was being discussed just after the 9/11 events. He told us the terms and conditions of a “Just War”, and clearly implied that Iraq did not qualify in any way. That was a month or so after we had signed a condolence book at the entrance to our church. We were all so sad for the USA. I am genuinely overwhelmed right now with that recollection of the tragedy, and the deep sympathy we all had for the USA.But … we couldn’t tell GWB anything, because if we weren’t with him, we were declared as being against the USA.The original tragedy has now compounded many times by your incompetent leaders. How many Iraqi civilians died? Is there ever going to be compensation for them?Also, lots of your Servicemen have been affected, I grieve for that loss as well.
chazandru about 11 years ago
It has been quietly reported over the last week that LBJ knew that Richard Nixon had deliberately sabotaged an impending peace treaty with North Vietnam. Even though this info came to him three days before the election that put Nixon into office, Johnson remained silent because the information had been discovered through illegal listening devices in the SV embassy. The war continued four more years and 14,000 Americans died, billions were wasted, and tens of thousands came home wounded in body and mind.^http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/03/lbjs-x-file-on-nixons-treason/^Fast forward to 2003. In order to oust a man hated by his people, Saddam Hussein, the USA took evidence that was circumstantial at best – contrived at worst – and convinced Americans of both parties to go to war. The fact that Hussein was evil and did terrible things to his people is a hypocritical reason since the USA has supported people like the Shah of Iran, who – while an ally of the USA – was just as bad as Hussein and where the foundation of the storming of the embassy and our current political intransigence was laid.^The losses of life in our current wars has not been on the scale as Vietnam, but the wounded bodies and minds coming back looking for work not being created by Congress or the “Job Creators” is a drain on the spirit of our nation, not to mention our tax dollars. ^I have come to believe Mr. Bush was a victim of trust in people who betrayed that trust. He released Rumsefeld even though Bush had won the election, and he refused to pardon Cheney’s friend, Libby, who we now know outed a covert agent for the CIA and endangered her assets/friends in harms’ way. There were no WMD’s, there were very few signs of chemical weapons, and Halliburton and other contractors made billions providing inadequate services in an incompetent way. There’s also the issue of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and good will lost to the USA around the globe.^Mr. Wuerker’s cartoon is a bit harsh. The D’s, convinced by the information campaign of the Bush administration, voted in a bipartisan to give Mr. Bush the power to declare war if he felt it necessary. They did not give the power casually in that they VERBALLY admonished the President not to use this power without a CLEAR and IMMINENT threat before us. As patriotic Americans, they trusted their leader had good intentions and would not callously start a war without real cause. They were wrong, but they were wrong for the right reasons.^The GOP has learned from the D’s mistakes. It’s the only reason I can think they refuse to cooperate with Mr. Obama on any point. They won’t pass his nominees to courts, gov’t positions, and are very resistant to each of his cabinet nominees. Are they expecting that if they agree to ANYTHING the president wants he will do to them what Bush did to the D’s?Richard Nixon was also a member of the GOP and we now know a D allowed him to keep a war going. Our gov’t appears to be unable to learn from history, and our people are too overworked, divided, and confused to respond in a way to force these cannibalistic parties to cooperate. The Dem’s, if given too much power, have shown the ability to abuse it, but the GOP has shown an ability to abuse power as an art form.Sadly,C.
edward thomas Premium Member about 11 years ago
C: Your last sentence should be a bumper sticker/poster and be plastered all over this country. Unfortunately, when it came to Vietnam, that would apply to the Dems as well’
vwdualnomand about 11 years ago
if you live to be 1000 years old, and looked back to this period, you would ask what was the point? where are the wmds? the casualties, the money wasted, for nothing.
Chillbilly about 11 years ago
They didn’t vote for the war. They voted to give away their responsibility for declaring war to Bush-Cheney. There’s a big difference (in this case, tragic).
My “Democratic” Senators—Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer—both voted to give up their sacred responsibility and for that will never get a vote from me.
lonecat about 11 years ago
A lot of people knew at the time that the whole case for the war was full of holes — but too many Democrats fell for it, for one reason or another. It was a shameful action. I’m afraid we won’t have learned anything, just as we didn’t learn anything from Vietnam.
Rickapolis about 11 years ago
And bend over to accept a good swift kick in the ass. War mongering, whipped up by GOP and Bush, has caused so many thousands of wasted deaths.
Marty Z about 11 years ago
I don’t let the Dem’s off so easy for allowing Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/et al to invade Iraq. Sure, the info provided was cherry-picked, but the Dem’s knew it was cherry-picked. I think they were afraid to be branded as ‘weak on defense". That’s no excuse.*No thinking adult should have been surprised that a bunch of neocons wanted to go to war in a country with huge oil reserves, regardless of the facts to the contrary. It would have been surprising if they didn’t.
chazandru about 11 years ago
I totally agree, Night Gaunt. Mster and you are totally correct in comment and blame. It wasn’t until I heard Richard Clark’s interview after the war began that I realized the depth to which we had all been manipulated. I didn’t trust Mr. Bush but I did trust Colin Powell who now says he was also a victim of lies. ^ Mr. Clark said that he had been summoned to the Oval office by the President and the President took him into a side room and told Clark, tell me how Saddam Hussein is part of this. Clark began to tell him Hussein wasn’t a part of it, and he said Bush interrupted him and said, “Tell me how this sticks to Hussein.” By the time that story came out, we were already in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Bin Laden, were being set on a back burner.^Just as Nixon apparently wanted the war in Vietnam to continue so he could be the ‘hero’ who ended it, Bush and Cheney wanted to be the ‘heroes’ who saved Iraq from Saddam and who profited from that rescue.^ The only justice we will ever see is that neither can ever leave the United States of America without facing possible arrest for war crimes.Even now, people are trying to write history to show the courage and boldness of action taken by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice coalition.^I am sorry I was not as intuitive as you appear to have been, but wonder what we could have done to change the outcome. I wrote letters at the time reminding my legislators that Napoleon and Hitler had both lost their wars by fighting on two fronts instead of just one, and advised they work to finish in Afghanistan before starting another one.^I’m sorry for what these greedy arrogant people have done to our nation; and how they’ve divided our people in their effort to escape responsibility.Respectfully,C.
I Play One On TV about 11 years ago
Here’s how one could have known that we were being led astray by the Bush administration (besides a gut feeling, which is sometimes the best):
In October, 2002, John McCain was a guest on Dave Letterman’s show. Dave started the conversation: “How goes the war?” McCain’s response was that the real problem we were going to have was not with Afghanistan, but with Iraq.
Foreshadowing, anyone? I could see that one a mile away, without my glasses.
The biggest blunders came after the government fell. Think of all the stores of weapons looted while our soldiers were told to stand by and watch. Court records disappeared. Tables, desks, computers, the copper wiring in the walls of state buildings and colleges, all damaged and stolen. Rumsfeld’s response: “Freedom is untidy.”
The worst part is that Iraq was ready to collapse anyway. Their buildings and roads were a mess. Water and sewage systems were breaking down. The electrical grid was put together with duct tape and chewing gum. If we had waited 6 – 12 months Saddam Hussein would have been out of office, and it wouldn’t have cost us a dime. This is why Paul Bremer, whose job it was to sell utilities and construction to the highest bidder (see the definition of “plunder”) was unsuccessful. Anyone who knew anything knew that this country was too broken to fix, and would have to be started over.
If you want to be depressed/know the truth of that first year of occupation, I recommend “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” (the Emerald City is the Green Zone) by Chandrassakian (I may have spelled that wrong). Anything that could be botched was, and in the worst way for PR. For instance, the existence of the Green Zone itself said. “We wouldn’t stand for your food and your way of life. We’re going to build a little piece of America here so that we don’t have to get our hands dirty working with the nationals.” We had Pakistanis handle our food, because we wouldn’t trust the Iraqis. And what foods did we have the Pakistanis handle? Texas-style pork barbecue, of course. Think that made those Muslims happy?
Recruiting for Al-Qaeda, anyone?
And so it goes.
But, according to some posters on this site, Bush is gone. Nothing he did matters. Tell that to the Iraqis.
corzak about 11 years ago
here’s an interesting list . . . The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers
edward thomas Premium Member about 11 years ago
Not with Grumpy McSane as President! He’s been as bad a flip-flopper as Romney, even on torture. He’s now the “Get off my lawn” old man, and has said he will not run again. Good.
mineresidents about 11 years ago
I’m SethsDad and I approve this message.
grimmer about 11 years ago
Iraq pales beside the Vietnam war and the lies told by LBJ and the democrat warmongers that kept it going. I’m tired of hearing about how horrible Bush/Cheney were/are. How many dead in Iraq as opposed to Vietnam? Civilian and military.
edward thomas Premium Member about 11 years ago
Grimmer: I expect, since it’s been two days, that this will be the last comment. Having said that, Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the war. How did that work out out? HE expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, and it wasn’t ‘just Dems who supported the war. I certainly remember “Love It or Leave It” plastered on t-shirts, stickers, posters, etc. I doubt if only Dems were wearing/flaunting them. In fact, by the end of LBJ’s presidency, many Dems were opposed to continuation.