A couple of things got me thinking about this, including Pizzaman's references to the PNAC. Back in 1998, while Clinton was in office various members of the infamous PNAC wrote Clinton, this letter: Of those signees of the letter the following became members of the Bush administration and in the following roles: Elliott Abrams National Security Council Representative for Middle Eastern Affairs President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Richard Armitage Department of State (2001-2005) John R. Bolton Department of State (2001-2006) U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations(2005-2006) Previously under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs(2001-2005). Zalmay Khalilzad Department of State U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq(6/2005 - 3/2007) and prior to that U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (11/2003 - 6/2005) Richard Perle Department of Defense (2001-2003) Chairman of the Board, Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee Resigned as chairman in March 2003 Peter W. Rodman Department of Defense Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Donald Rumsfeld Department of Defense (2001-2006) Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Department of Defense (2001-2005) Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert B. Zoellick Department of State Deputy Secretary of State Office of the United States Trade Representative (2001-2005) Nine years later, with a quasi country that is Iraq that is in shambles and an even greater target for further Mid-East turmoil, almost 4,000 dead American soldiers, 10's of thousands of injured American soldiers, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, an incredible erosion of American power, good ole Osama Bin Laden still alive and generating terrorism, I hope these guys are happy with their plans.
I can't understand this, are they many of the so call brilliant people out of their minds all at the same time?
So we can describe Bolton (in his own words) as a guy who felt we should attack Iraq in 1998, believed we were right in targeting Iraq post 9/11/01, supported attacking Iraq in 2003, still believes it was right to attack Iraq and take out Hussein, but acknowledges the US has made serious mistakes since defeating the Iraq army and capturing Iraq. He was one of those true believer neo-cons that helped drive this war.
there is another interesting point Libby and Armitage now in palmer case Armitage was the one that leaked her name and he was supposed to be the super dove still it comes back to PNAC now what make me sure they are wrong is that the list includes Dan Quayle.
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998 "This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others "Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002 "Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998 "(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998 "Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002 "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002 "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002 "The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998 "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002 "I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003 "Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." -- Tom Daschle in 1998 "Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002 "The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002 "I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -- Dick Gephardt in September of 2002 "Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002 "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." -- Bob Graham, December 2002 "Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction." -- Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002 "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002 "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002 "I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002 "As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998 "Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." -- Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998 =========================================== Bush simply gave the democrats what they had wanted in the 90s. Forget a few names there, earl? I have some more, if you'd like!
Scott Ritter has since written that the evidence that was provided, the intel so to speak, was false. Bush, Colin Powell and others have admitted that either Iraq had no links to Al Queda, or that there were no WMDs and that was a mistake. So the question, so poignantly posed by Ron Paul is, should we be re-examining our foreign policy, given that the path we set out on was based on a series of false premises? Demagogues like Giuliani, chicken hawks with an aggressive mentality will say yes. Might is Right. Mike Huckabee trying to save a sinking campaign and position himself for a VP position thinks that "we" broke it, so "we" bought it. Dr. Paul has rightly pointed out that following a failed policy is wrong, and that the American people didn't buy Iraq, the politicians with defense and oil corporate interests in their pockets did. It is, by international law, an illegal war, one that the primary players have admitted was started under a false premise.
Not much of a way to dismiss all that truth. Of course, scott ritter is also a pedophile. Not that that necesarily has anything to do with his report back then. It was so simple and accepting, when democrats were calling for war with Iraq. Of course, a liberal pretending to be a republican to vote for a libertarian might expose themself if not careful. Not naming any names, just sayin'
More far right name calling. You're correct, Ritter's personal life has nothing to do with the fact that the evidence was trumped up, and has been proven to be wholly inaccurate. But that's a typical far right tactic. Change the topic, and humiliate the witness. Just like the Congress chose to do with the SCHIP kid. Attacking the witness, where have I read about that before. Oh yeah, fascist Italy, Germany and Stalin's Russia. Fits handily with your take alluding to forum posters being traitors. That's what the intellectuals were called when the SS rounded them up for torture in secret prisons. Oh wait, more deja vu... The founders were Libertarians. They were also some of the earliest Republicans. I realize that you have not had the benefit of an education in civics, but perhaps you should one day learn about the Founders, the Constitution, the establishment of the Republic and a little bit of pre-WWII American history.
he also said that he thought iraq should have been turned over to iraqi from the beginning. why can't we do that now. if you see power of nightmare [youtube has it] it has a good history both with neo cons and alqada. it is very very interesting and a must see .
the issue that i see with this is not that these people have this idea, it is the amount of influence that any group of people can have over the administration. there is also the point that they have been wrong. end of the story. but they are still pushing the same agenda. if you have a list of PNAC group that are in media, that would be nice. have you seen the Power of Nightmares? what do you think about it?
There is no doubt that most leaders in the Western world, the mid-eastern world and elsewhere assumed Saddam Hussein was building WPM's during the 1990's. There is no disputing that. In fact most Iraqi's and Iraqi military believed it. When the actual war between armies started the Iraqi military was waiting for counterattacks with chemical weapons which didn't occur. The differences are several fold. 1. Not one, NOT ONE, not even one of the people to which GTech provides quotes was in the ADMINISTRATION in 2001-2003 and thereafter. Ascribing the war to anyone else, to what Democrats wanted is one of the big lies of the Radical element of the Bush administration and its supporters. It is a simple effort to avoid responsability by twisting history. Who was in office in 2001-2003 a bunch of circus clowns? 2. The effort to prove actual development and existance of WPM was undertaken by the Bush administration to back its claims. One of those efforts involved claiming that Hussein was importing Uranium from Niger. They took that claim, first publicly asserted by Great Britain and heavily promoted it as EVIDENCE of an effort to build nuclear weapons. That evidence was significantly DEBUNKED by the very person assigned to check into the facts, Joseph Wilson. He saw the evidence, promoted by the Bush administration and made efforts to investigate why the administration was promoting this piece of "evidence" when in fact, his own fact finding mission, as he understood it, promoted and requested by the Vice President's office, TOTALLY DEBUNKED that idea. His findings were supported by the then Ambassador to Niger, from the US. In the face of this dramatic and significant factual disagreement with claims by the Bush Administration, of course we ended up with the whacko Plamegate affair, during which Bush administration members spent considerable time twisting and turning this story. As the case was being made to investigate whether or not their were wpm under current development, a simple piece of this Bush administration evidence was ripped apart. With the evidence of such development of wpm under question, what did the Bush administration do? Did it question its goals for regime change? Did it intensify efforts to get better intelligence? No it attacked the messenger. Of further interest Wilson describes his efforts here: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm , which followed from his op ed piece. The first part of the last paragraph of this article is as follows: 3. The administration built a BS case on Hussein interaction with terrorists. Back in 1998, and during the following years, all before 9/11/2001 nobody was seriously looking at connections between Saddam Hussein and terrorists. Terrorists were admittedly under the US radar for the most part. The very idea that Hussein was in cahoots or connection or working avidly with various terrorists was and is so absurd, that even as the Administration and Cheney were making the case for various meetings between the Iraqi regime and Al-Queda, it is a claim that virtually everyone realizes has NO MERIT at all. Hussein, was and remained an independant, non-religious, mysterious, highly secretive, dangerous Dictator. His connections with any nation or terrorist group were so remote and so non-substitive as to be absurd. He had an ongoing dispute with Iran, he was at odds with oil rich Arab neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (which he had previously attacked), he ruled with an iron fist in his own land, he had a peculiar non-fundamentalist, non-religious regime that had nothing in common and had ZERO connectivity to the fundamentalist Al-Queda. He had no connectivity to any of these elements. Prior to the war in Iraq there was a lot of wisdom from a prior Republican administration why NOT to attack Iraq. Surprisingly, it came from Georgie Bush's own dad. In early 1998, Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft allowed an excerpt from their book to be published in Time Magazine. Strangely , Time deleted the article in 2002, but here is a comment and excerpt from the former President, describing why he didn't attack Iraq: Interesting stuff. Seven years after Desert Storm, Bush Sr, suggests that invading Iraq back then might have resulted in 7 years of being an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land! Of course there is the now famous Cheney interview from 1994 that references that invading Iraq would have been a quagmire. Oh--Cheney was Secretary of Defense back in 1991 during desert storm.... A copy of that video is referenced...http://video.ezberim.com/oynat__che...would_create_quagmire_cspan__6BEsZMvrq-I.html Regardless of the lack of hard data, regardless of the specific repudiation of specific claims that were seen as false, regardless of the baseless absurd claims of connections between madman Hussein and terrorists.....the Bush administration and its hard headed members decided to push this war forward. It continues to promote its singular twisted, non verified promotion of the war, and it has simply distorted our ability to move forward. It would be a huge positive --going forward if the distortions coming from this administration, were widely and significantly debated to develop positive programs going forward that were not based on such a harmful and destructive set of policies that were never based on reality.
This is dishonest and untrue. The quotes I provided clearly show this to be false. This is dishonest and untrue. Democrats called for and urged Clinton to go to war with Iraq in the 90s. In fact, Clinton did strike in Iraq over WMD. http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/ One could take out Clinton's name and insert Bush's name, and never know the difference. Democrats were claiming WMD (which clearly saddam had) and sounding the war wagon long before Bush was in office. Bush simply gave democrats, those that I quoted above, what they had been wanting for years. Twisting this historical fact and others, into denial and outright dishonesty is what leftist liberals do. They make up their own facts with no regard to truth or honesty. Agreed on both counts. Someone is avoiding responsibility and severely twisting history. One person presents well documented quotes and sources, the other offers partisan hackery untruths. Many of those same democrats that had been urging and calling for war with Iraq, were also in office during 2001-2003. These were proved long before Bush was in office. Again, reading the quotes and the sources provided would easily establish this, if someone were not in denial of the truth. “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .†Actually, Joe Wilson was debunked as the partisan hack that he was. Of course, this is a red herring to divert attention away from the fact that democrats wanted war with Iraq long before Bush was ever in office. Anything to protect the democrats from their responsibilities, though! This is a false assertion of which history paints a different picture. Of course, on this subject too (as we spent time over in the past), it's a dishonest assertion. Regime change for Iraq was a US Policy implemented by Clinton. It was their administration's policy that was carried over to the Bush administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act Again, replace Clinton's name with Bush's and one would never know the difference. Liberate, regime change. Once again, all before Bush was ever in office. Facts. Sourced facts, not long winded dishonest opinions and distortions of history. Joe Wilson and his wife are both discredited hacks. Source Joe Wilson is like sourcing alex jones. Further, there were significant ties between al qaida, other terrorist groups and saddam. I've documented some of these here. Again, I offer documented sources where some offer nothing but distorted opinions that are clearly discredited by facts. Are you sure about that? Sources always trump made up opinions. Likewise, prior to the war, there was a lot of wisdom from a prior democrat administration (in fact, on the very same level) why TO attack Iraq. In fact, said democrat chastised said current President's father for NOT doing so. Don't you love the irony, earl? What did the democrats say? The only person providing hard data here is myself. Again, sourced, factual references, versus hot winded distorted opinion. The distortions coming from the OP are being debated right here, with references to counter said distortions and untruths. When one relies on made up history, distortion, dishonesty and a complete lack of respect for the truth, it's easy to counter. A honest man would debate on the facts, the sources and discard partisan opinions to distort the truth of history. That history may not be popular and fashionable today, but it's no less factual.