The preliminary report delivered on Thursday by the chief arms inspector in Iraq forces the Bush administration to come face to face with this reality: that Saddam Hussein’s armory appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world.
— The New York Times – October 3, 2003 (Emphasis mine)
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, emerging from a briefing with Kay, said it was “clear to me that there was no imminence of a threat for weapons of mass destruction,” as the White House had claimed.
— The Boston Globe – October 3, 2003 (Emphasis mine)
Michigan Democrat Sen. Carl Levin told CNN: “We went to war because we were told by the administration … (that) he (Saddam) was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and he was an imminent threat.”
— Reuters – October 3, 2003 (Emphasis mine)
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
— President Bush’s State of the Union Address – January 28, 2003
Note that the President did not argue that Iraq posed an iminent threat. Iraq may not have had plans to attack the United States with biological weapons. However, as the President argued almost 10 months ago, by the time a threat is iminent it may be too late. It is simply foolish to assume that someone who has the ability to create weapons of mass destruction, supports terror, and has expressed a desire to destroy the United States would not ever do so. Yet now the media wants us all to believe that the Bush Administration took a position which they clearly did not take. It is clear that the media is acting in a kind of groupthink in which certain ideas are taken as true despite the fact that they are not. The ideas that Iraq is a failure, that Bush argued that Iraq was an imminent threat, and that the Kay Report says there are no WMDs in Iraq. None of these are true, and the more the media accepts these arguments on a prima facie basis the less credible they become.
whatever dude,
You and your fucking money/power freaks are just uncovered now. Just face it, and don’t try your usual tricks with words;
You dreamed it, it was just a dream. dozens have lost their lives, please don’t insult them anymore.
Your approach of the situation is making it worst, whatever which war you’re talking about. If the “war on terror” is as successful as the “war on drugs”, please don’t do it.
Dozens have lost their lives… but tens of thousands were killed under the brutal Hussein regime. The United Nations, the German Federal Inteligence Service, former President Clinton, President Putin of Russia and even President Chirac all stated that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. David Kay’s search has only been able to examine a handful of Iraqi weapons bunkers (only 10 out of nearly 200) some of which are over 200 square kilometers and contain overe 600,000 munitions. Furthermore, the Iraqis had years to hide, conceal, or move weapons and several convoys of trucks moved materials into Syria where they were hidden within Syria and in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
Look at the consequences of your own argument. Giving up the war on terrorism means that al-Qaeda will strike again, and they will strike harder. They want nothing short of the worldwide imposition of shari’a and the destruction of religious freedom, free expression, and human rights.
Perhaps if you stopped letting others think for you and started actually learning about the world you’d understand the real nature of this situation. Islamofascism is every bit as dangerous as Nazism, and just as disgusting. Do you know what the word intifada means? It’s the Arabic verb “to shake off an illness.” That illness is the Jews. Do you know what a dhimmi is? It’s what you would be in a society ruled by shari’a. Do you really think that such an ideology can be appeased? What would such an appeasement be? “You can subject your little part of the world to abject tyranny, kill who you want, rape who you want, as long as you don’t bother me?” Such a solution is morally repugnant – the equivalent of those who remained silent during the Holocaust as long as the Gestapo didn’t come for them.
I find it repellent that so many people have no qualms with arguing that the moral course of action is to leave over 20 million under the bootheels of a tyrant. I find it repellent that so many people can argue that a country that has done more to uphold basic standards of human rights in the face of absolute and reckless hate is accused of being a "racist apartheid state" while those who deny the Holocaust, deliberately target civilians, and summarily execute dissenters.
If you’d bother following through with your own logic you’d see how flawed and dangerous such a philosophy is.
I find it repellent that someone is only interested in the liberation of 20 million oppressed peasants when billions more exist on the globe, but whose dictatorships make less convenient targets than Hussein did for whatever reason. Of course, neocons like yourself are all too willing to suggest that all the world’s dissenters can be effectively wiped out of existence with US military muscle, even though eliminating one drop in a massive bucket has managed to bankrupt the country’s financial and military resources. While the foolishness of the neoconservative dogma is as unpredictable as a kamikaze pilot, one prediction I can make with unwavering confidence is that even if America plunges itself into multiple wars with limitless expense and no exit strategy, Jay Reding will never hold a rifle on foreign soil.
Again, try considering the results of your arguments before you make them and you’ll avoid making an ass out of yourself.
Let’s accept your policy. Therefore the US has an obligation to be entirely consistant and remove every regime that harms human rights. This is is an idiotic argument on prima facie basis.
So let’s take the inverse and say that the US should never interfere with any other country in the name of human rights or national interests. Again, this is idiotic on a prima facie basis and morally unacceptable to boot.
Furthermore, you make an ad hominem argument that America wants to “wipe out” all the world’s dissenters. Obviously this is an idiotic argument as well, and clearly doesn’t do anything to buttress your point. No “neoconservative” (even though you are misusing the term – a “neoconservative” is a former liberal that turned towards conservatism during the Cold War) has or would argue such a point.
I’m arguing a policy of pragmatism. The US cannot intervene everywhere, nor can we afford isolationism. However, we can and did remove the Hussein regime in Iraq, we can and will restore order and promote democracy in Iraq and the effects of that have and will continue to put pressure on terrorist groups and install further impetus to democracy in the region.
If you can’t argue against the actual points being made and need to invent your own straw men to knock down you should save yourself the effort and embarrassment.
“Perhaps if you stopped letting others think for you and started actually learning about the world you’d understand the real nature of this situation”
please teach me lord Reding! Please make me THINK!
and if you could forward this sentence to your president, maybe he’ll think twice before starting a war he cannot handle, and then put a whole region on fire.
“Islamofascism is every bit as dangerous as Nazism”
well maybe it is in theory, but for the moment, the nazis are those who:
-actually declare war
-detain prisonners without a fair trial
-are invading foreign countries unilaterally
-kill people because of their religion
-burn pieces of art against the regim’s opinion
-justify themselves by saying they are superiors
-give most of the national budget to the military
-blame and punish one country after the other
As much as nazism emerged during the financial crisis, Islamofascism also is growing from poverty. It doesn’t help to fight terrorism with guns, and especially not like the State of Israel is doing. When you send missiles for revenge the day of Yom Kippour (“Great Forgiveness”) that means something…
Note that the President did not argue that Iraq posed an iminent threat
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay: you’re lying… Can’t remember the 45-minute stuf??? Can’t remember Powell playing with his variolic tube at the Security Council of the UN??? Tss, tss, tss…
Yom Kippur means "Day of Atonement". Furthermore, if the al-Qaeda and other Islamist movements have met every single one of your eight criteria through actions like the destruction of the Afghan Buddha, the murder of Daniel Pearl, the intifada, and other horrible crimes against all humanity.
There are plenty of poor people in the world, most of whom aren’t sitting on trillion dollars worth of oil. Yet people from Latin America or Africa aren’t blowing up their children in the name of continuing the Holocaust. If poverty is the root of terrorism, there are many places that are far poorer than the Middle East, yet they do not resort to terror to get their message across.
“I find it repellent that so many people have no qualms with arguing that the moral course of action is to leave over 20 million under the bootheels of a tyrant” Jay Reding, October 6, 2003.
If you’re gonna be arrogant enough to wag a finger of moral righteousness, you need to be consistent enough to follow through. Your statement indicates a rock-solid stand on principle that liberating oppressed peasants should be a high, if not primary, priority of American foreign policy. For you to preach the moral necessity of liberation in one sentence and then suggest you’re a “pragmatist” who wants to pick and choose which oppressed people are worthy of liberation and which are simply too inconvenient makes your argument insincere and unpersuasive.
As for ridiculing my definition of neoconservative, I think you better start writing the e-mails now if you’re gonna inform the millions of people, including the neocons themselves, who are using the term in the same context I am that they’re all wrong.
Note that I was referring to the 20 million living in Iraq where regime change would be a valid idea.
I have no problem with the US liberating every bad regime in the world. Take out the Burmese junta? Go for it? Take out Iran, Syria, the corrupt Saudis, Robert Mugabe, Quadafi, etc? Sure, why not? Hell, let’s make a stop in Paris along the way and restore democracy there! (NOTE: FOR THE HUMOR-IMPAIRED – I’M BEING FACETIOUS.)
Of course we can’t do all those things. However, we could help in Iraq, and we did. The effects of a free and democratic Iraq will begin a domino effect of democratization in the region and reduce the funds for terrorism from Hizb’Allah and Hams to al-Qaeda. It has already put pressure on the surrounding states to increase reforms.
By all objective moral criteria, the removal of Hussein was a pragmatic and moral good.