Oh No He Didn’t
May 9th, 2006 at 7:02 am by Susie
Joe Scarborough is trying to say Al Gore only recently changed his mind about Iraq. Wrong:
The truth is that, on September 23, 2002, in a speech at the Commonwealth Club — long before the invasion of Iraq and before members of Congress voted to give President Bush authority to invade — Vice President Al Gore unequivocally and emphatically stated his opposition to a War in Iraq and set forth a multitude of reasons why.
Among his reasons were that 1) We should focus our efforts on building a multinational coalition to fight terrorism and the enemies who were responsible for 9/11 and not become distracted; 2) A war with Iraq had the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century; 3) Although Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction would continue for as long as Saddam was in power, the existing U.N. resolutions passed 11 years ago were completely sufficient to contain that potential threat; and, 4) We should focus on stabilizing Afghanistan so that terrorists would not be able to slip back across the border and set up camp there again. Al Gore told the truth despite the political costs.
In contrast, members of Congress checked President Bush’s poll numbers before deciding whether to vote to authorize a war in Iraq. Al Gore took the unpopular position, but clearly the correct one. He took no small amount of flak from his own party for raising the pressure on them not to issue a blank check and to at least require the administration to put forth the an assessment of how it thought the course of a war would run. Instead, Congress rushed to vote yes, to show its patriotic bona fides — just in time for the November election.
Not that you would know any of this by reading or listening to the mainstream press such as Scarborough Country. They gloss over or ignore Al Gore’s courageous and insightful (and early) opposition to the War. So it is up to Blogworld to set the record straight. Blog on.
A few items:
1) As of Jan 2006, there are 23 countries contributing forces in Iraq. When Kuwait was liberated, the armies of 18 countries were involved.
2)It also seems that Mr. Gore was willing to ignore UN resolution 660, which stated that Iraq was to be returned to it’s pre-August 1990 territory. Unilateralism didn’t seem to matter much then.
3)The Iraqi regime DID play a part in the 9/11 attack, which makes them an enemy in the war on terror.
4) The Iraq war has made a difference in the ability of the terrorists to carry out attacks against us. Saddam was a major financier of all of this, along with using his country as a safe haven for these terrorists, paying families of suicide bombers, etc.
5) UN resolutions did NOT work. Unfortunately, one of the reasons was Saddam was paying off countries to keep the lid on all this( see UN oil for food scandal).Another is that the UN is well known for NOT enforcing much of anything.
6) How does anyone put together a course on how a war is gonna run, much less believe it? I doubt Washington or Lincoln did this, before they took good men into battle. Why is this different?
OK, have at it!
Would you like a phone number and the name of your local army recruiter? Or do you have flat feet and a hangnail?
Hey Blade:
We’ll head on down to the recruiter together
Hey Kevin:
0 for 5 in truth. And how in the world did you you put together the thoughts that included Lincoln and Washington????
There is a War College for the Navy in Newport, RI. There are War colleges for the other branches of the military. The officers “stratemegize” all the time and it’s only when the politicians tell that what to do and overide the generals that wars are lost by superior forces.
I bet Bladerunner has already served.
Sorry I haven’t served , to many truely things wrong with the body. Brother in the AF 20 years left last year and anouther was in the Navy Reserves for a 4-5 stint. But if I could the answer is no, why would I what to fight for corporations. We’ve turned into the bad guys. So I do alot of volunteer work and knit hats for newborns. Beats bombing people into a democracy.
I thought the hammerin’ would be worse than this!
Sheesh!