Al Gore gave a hideous speech to the anti-war group MoveOn in which he argued that Bush was engaging in a "systematic effort to manipulate facts" over the war with Iraq.
To little surprise, Gore was the one manipulating the truth, and Brian Carnell absoutely nails him on it.
The fact remains that the anti-war left has absolutely no appeal to the American public except for a near-lunatic fringe. They have to make the argument that Saddam Hussein was a brutal murderer, but that no one should have done anything about it. They have to argue that the Bush Administration deliberately lied about the war despite the fact that there’s absolutely no credible evidence that support such a contention. They have to argue that WMDs never existed, even though there’s plenty of evidence from multiple sources that says the exist opposite. They have to argue that these weapons would not pose a threat to the United States even though a few grams of anthrax sent the nation into a panic less than two years ago.
It’s a losing argument, and it’s somewhat appropriate that they get a political loser like Gore to deliver it.
Yes, the left agrees that Saddam was a brutal murderer that America should not have violently removed from power, just as the right agrees that Kim Jong Il is a brutal murderer that America should not violently remove from power. You have a long line of excuses and justifications for the double standard and even if they are credible, they follow the same model of justifications from the left in regards to the unwarranted risks of regime change in Iraq.
Dismissing all those who oppose war in Iraq then and now as “the lunatic fringe” was not an accurate statement at any point, and becomes less accurate with each passing day. The ranks of this “lunatic fringe” will continue to grow with each billion-dollar-a-week occupation bill, each tidbit of information revealing that the war was justified based on administration exaggerations or lies, and each time we see pictures of a soldier’s parents digging holes in the ground to bury their sons who were killed defending those exaggerations and lies.
You made the same argument before the war and it wasn’t true then.
The left makes the same mistake that our enemies have made. They think that this nation is weak and won’t tolerate the costs of regime change in Iraq and elsewhere.
They’re dead wrong.
Most Americans see the necessity of removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist groups who would use them against us. While each death in Iraq is a tragedy in itself, the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost now. They (and our military) understand full well that the price of inaction is millions of bodybags with murdered American civilians.
Iraq had 1 million soldiers massed near a much smaller U.S. force? Iraq had the ability to use artillery and missiles to obliterate a city of 10 million people in the first 48 hours of any potential conflict?
I knew Saddam was a threat, but I never knew he was that big of a threat!
If it were possible to remove the North Korean government in the same way we dispatched Hussein, we should and would do it in a heartbeat. But at the price of civilian casualty levels unseen since World War II? No, it’s just not worth it.
Plus, it’s impossible — no way could you even begin to mass U.S. troops in South Korea without provoking a North Korean first strike. Just announcing such a buildup would likely have North Korean soldiers rolling toward Seoul.
Another reason why the war in Irak was such a bad move:
saddam was a dictator + WMDS= americans attack
north korea is a dictatroship + WMDs (real this time, not only in satellites pictures, and latter, no one can find even a barrel)= no attack
I’m not blaming the “cop of the world” (the US) for not taking care of all nations at a time. I’m just saying, if you were the leader of Iran, what would you do to make sure the US are not gonna try to bring you down?
yeah baby, the race for nuclear warheads is back!!!
“They have to argue that the Bush Administration deliberately lied about the war despite the fact that there’s absolutely no credible evidence that support such a contention. They have to argue that WMDs never existed, even though there’s plenty of evidence from multiple sources that says the exist opposite”
I think we still need time to know who is right, and I don’t want to argue on this point again, but FOR THE MOMENT, if you want to stick to the FACTS, there is still no WMDs in Irak (you even had to talk about the “swedish smoking gun”, when the very article says it’s not really reliable …). So when you say, there’s “plenty of evidence”, just make sure you can have ONE (reliable)!!
the Bush Administration was maybe not deliberately lying, but their british friends admitted they did!!!(exagerate the threat)
Reality checks….
The predictions I made before the war (even though I refrained from too many bold predictions)of a wildly expensive and lengthy occupation that would likely result in more loss of U.S. life than expected and in turn result in dwindling down home support have played out exactly as I expected. The only thing I was wrong about was trusting Bush’s reports that WMD’s existed and that we knew their location.
The price of inaction against REAL threats may be steep, but nobody has sufficiently proven that Saddam had either the means or the intent to carry out any mass murder schemes. Wolfowitz and his ilk have been itching to take out Hussein pretty much since we left Iraq in 1991, and as he said himself, used WMD’s as a cosmetic argument that they thought Americans would embrace, when in reality, they wanted to take out Hussein merely for spite, sport and to deepen the penetration of U.S. talons in the world’s shoulder.
I still don’t buy the double standard of people who insisted that Iraq had nuclear weapons that they intended to use of us…and used that as justification to GO to war, but then used North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons as a justification to AVOID war. Your theory assumed that both possessed nukes and thus posed an equal degree of threat, yet one was too risky to touch while the other was ripe for regime change. That will always be a double standard no matter how slick your talk.
> They (and our military) understand full well
> that the price of inaction is millions of
> bodybags with murdered American civilians.
Actions can have uninteded consequences.
You don’t know the consequences of your actions.
You don’t care about killing innocents, just
innocent Americans.
johnx: I believe you missed the mass graves found in Iraq. Had the United States not acted, they’d still be being filled.
North Korea is different than Iraq for several reasons, the biggest of which is that the region is different. The Middle East is a lot less stable than Northern Asia. China has reasons of self-interest (mainly the desire to avoid nuclear weapons being placed in South Korea and Japan) to help contain the North Korean situation, which is exactly what is beginning to happen. With luck, war can be averted in North Korea – although that option may have to be used if things break down irretreivably.
Iraq was different in that it is smack in the middle of the biggest political powderkeg in the world. It was actively making the Israel/Palestinian situation worse by sponsoring terror, they were training terrorists at Salmon Pak, and they were deliberately deceiving inspectors.
UN Resolution 1441 (which was passed unanimously in the Security Coucil) stated clearly that if Iraq did not comply with the dictates of that resolution and prove that they had disarmed, they would be in material breech and subject to military action.
Even Hans Blix said that they had not complied by the deadline, so they faced military force. They had no intention of complying, and if Saddam Hussein had no WMDs he could have easily avoided war by proving it.
He didn’t, the US acted, and now Hussein is disarmed. Furthermore, because of Hussein’s downfall the Israeli/Palestinian situation has moved forward more than it has since 2000, Iran is nearing collapse, and millions of Iraqs no longer have to fear Saddam’s death squads.
As Joe Lieberman said, if you can’t see that as a just war, you don’t know what a just war is.
They had no intention of complying, and if Saddam Hussein had no WMDs he could have easily avoided war by proving it.
How do you prove that you don’t have something? More accurately, how do you prove that even though you had something, you got rid of it?
I’m not sure exactly what Iraq could have done to prove they didn’t have them, aside from allowing the US to search every cranny of Iraq. Which they’re doing now, anyway, and have yet to turn up anything.
I mean, if you’re like “You have a gun” and I open my jacket and say “nope, no gun” and you say “well, it’s obviously not in your jacket, it must be somewhere else” and so you shoot me dead and search my body and lo and behold! no gun on my person, what’s more likely? Your story that “Oh, he had a gun, but got rid of it right when I shot him, under all our noses” or that I never had a gun in the first place? What could I have done to prove that I didn’t have a gun?
Isn’t the onus on the person making the positive claim? Isn’t it our responsibility to prove that Iraq DID have them, not theirs to prove they didn’t?
Chet: Under 1441 Saddam had to give the weapons inspectors unrestricted access to anywhere in the country.
He didn’t.
He was also to give a full account for all the stocks of biological and chemical weapons that were identified by UNSCOM in 1998.
He didn’t. He gave us a 16,000 page dossier of irrelevent infomation that even Hans Blix said was a smokescreen.
He could have come clean, told inspectors where the weapons were or provided evidence of their destruction.
He didn’t. He was in material breech of Resolution 1441, and he got exactly the harsh measures that it warned him of.
Resolution 1441 provided the exact steps needed to prove his disarmament, and he did not comply.
What if he didn’t know where the weapons are? It is the Middle East, after all – things get lost/stolen. Now, I’m not saying that losing WMD’s is no big deal – but is it justification for war?
If you really think that Saddam Hussein would really just forgot he had 38,000 liters of weaponized anthrax laying around in a bunker somewhere I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you…
Personally, I withhold judgement on this war until we actually find the WMD’s, if ever.