You forget, during the Clinton administration, it was an erroneous position based on faulty intelligence, but Bush was outright lying to the American people.
Although it effectively makes teh point that Democrats are liars (too), this piece is somewhat disingenuous. The GOP has tried to reframe the war as the successful ouster of Saddam Hussein, but that's not how it was packaged originally. The GOP is fighting the rhetorical battle on the Democrats' terms, which means they lose.
I thought that the WMD argument was put forward because it had all of this Democrat backing. Bush figured that they already owned the issue and wouldn't be able to chicken out.
People within the Bush Administration favored different reasons for invasion but most agreed that invasion would be good. Outwardly it makes the message sound inconsistent especially in a sound byte world.
1) Saddam was a regional nussiance in a strategic area of the world. 2) Iraq was a haven for terrorists. 3) Saddam had biological and chemical weapons that he had already used on his people. 4) Iraq was trying to buy or build Nuclear weapons which was concluded by Saddam's unwillingness to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors.
There is another important reason for the invasion that has never been stated but cannot be denied.
5) An invasion of Iraq would also wake up Iran to the seriousness of our fight and give them reason to be sensible. If not, we're right next door where we can take care of them.
The media and Democrats focused on the threat that in the short-term proved least worrisome after the fact and ran with it. They never talk about the other reasons for invasion, many of which they themselves touted in the past.
4 comments:
You forget, during the Clinton administration, it was an erroneous position based on faulty intelligence, but Bush was outright lying to the American people.
Although it effectively makes teh point that Democrats are liars (too), this piece is somewhat disingenuous. The GOP has tried to reframe the war as the successful ouster of Saddam Hussein, but that's not how it was packaged originally. The GOP is fighting the rhetorical battle on the Democrats' terms, which means they lose.
I thought that the WMD argument was put forward because it had all of this Democrat backing. Bush figured that they already owned the issue and wouldn't be able to chicken out.
People within the Bush Administration favored different reasons for invasion but most agreed that invasion would be good. Outwardly it makes the message sound inconsistent especially in a sound byte world.
1) Saddam was a regional nussiance in a strategic area of the world. 2) Iraq was a haven for terrorists. 3) Saddam had biological and chemical weapons that he had already used on his people. 4) Iraq was trying to buy or build Nuclear weapons which was concluded by Saddam's unwillingness to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors.
There is another important reason for the invasion that has never been stated but cannot be denied.
5) An invasion of Iraq would also wake up Iran to the seriousness of our fight and give them reason to be sensible. If not, we're right next door where we can take care of them.
The media and Democrats focused on the threat that in the short-term proved least worrisome after the fact and ran with it. They never talk about the other reasons for invasion, many of which they themselves touted in the past.
Yes. An important element of the Iraq strategy was to smack somebody around as a lesson and message to the rest. How the message has changed.
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