You use the term 'retaliate' loosely. Dropping a bomb or two to deflect attention away from Monica and scare Saddam just didn't work. Clinton failed miserably at finishing the job. Bush did not.
I'm at work so I don't have time to research this. However, my understanding is that Clinton himself had the inspectors removed so he could bomb Iraq. The bombing was due to a lack of cooperation by Saddam during the inspections. So your question should probably be 'Then why didn't Saddam cooperate with the inspectors?' Just helping you with your arguments. Lord knows you need it.
Actually considering we haven't found any WMD, I don't think Clinton failed miserably in the Iraq policy. Giving the loss of life under Bush's plan, the fact that Iraq was handled the way it was by W, the fact that the U.S. credibility has taken such a shot, and the principles of not attacking first has been broken, I would consider George W. Bush the failure.
Thanks, IROC it. I can follow your logic to an extent. He was certainly a horrible egg, and I'm very happy he's not ruling Iraq anymore. My bottom line for the whole operation has been: I'm worried more harm could come of our unilateral action than good. Let me reiterate though that I've always hoped that worry turns out to be wrong; now that we've invaded, I want it to go well. My posts here have been attempting to dispell or question the notion that Saddam was some sort of imminent threat to us (before we started threatening him anyway). To follow the logic train here (even as you state it in algebraic form), I feel you have to make several small leaps. But that's just my take. And basso, thanks for the note about 'god' potentially sounding generic and benign. I hope that's true. ... And it sounds like our better halves are also our smarter halves, no?
the liberal faith in saddam's "the dog ate my proof" defense is quite simply in-credible, but, comme on dit en francais, insupportable.
she's definitely the smarter one, masters from Harvard and Columbia, PHD from the latter...sheesh, and i went to friggin' memphis misstake... i asked her about this and she said Allah is merely the arabic word for god, and that most people, and most scholars agree he's the same dude, the god of abraham. in fact, muslims refer to both the old and new testaments, but see the koran as the ultimate revelation. they also see jesus as just another in a long line of prophets. not all scholars feel this way however. some think the conception of god and the execution of faith is so radically different between christians and moslems that it can't be the same god. a friend of ours who teaches at a jesuit university attached to the vatican, and has a degree in islam, is apparently in the latter camp. i've written him about this and will post his response in a new thread.
The title of the editorial caught my attention. I, too, was pleasantly surprised by Bush's uncharacteristic humbleness in his post Saddam capture speech. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3421-2003Dec15.html When Decapitation Isn't Fatal By Richard Cohen Tuesday, December 16, 2003; Page A37 This is a good news and bad news column. The good news is that Saddam Hussein is in the slammer. All the rest is bad. It's bad news that Hussein was caught in a hole near a farmhouse and was accompanied by only two men. He had a modest cache of weapons and $750,000 in cash, which is about what Paris Hilton burns through on a Rodeo Drive spree. Not only is that far from what it takes to direct a far-flung insurgency but Hussein himself appeared wholly incapable of doing so. If he had surfaced in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have sent him to a homeless shelter. The really bad news is that it now seems likely the insurgency has been operating free of Hussein and his money. Indeed, on the day that Hussein's capture was announced, a car bomb at an Iraqi police station killed 17 people and wounded 33. Suicide bombers hit twice the next day. It's not likely Hussein had a hand in that. Hussein is the embodiment of many things -- the potential threat of weapons of mass destruction, raw aggression and, in his case, evil -- but he also represents much of what has gone wrong with the U.S. effort in Iraq. It was, after all, the attempt to kill him with bomb and missile strikes that triggered the war last spring. The strikes were a failure, and it meant that the United States and its vaunted (mini) coalition of the willing invaded Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division -- rerouted from Turkey -- not yet in place. Among other things, that meant the coalition did not have sufficient manpower to secure its rear or, when Baghdad swiftly fell, to secure the city itself. Looting broke out. Government ministries were trashed -- electrical and telephone facilities, too. The United States could not maintain order or, for that matter, the basic services the Hussein regime had provided before the war. The attempt to take out Hussein evinced a certain kind of thinking, the personalization of foreign policy that held that without him, Iraq would become malleable. It's true, of course, that there were good military reasons to try to decapitate the regime by killing the nation's leader, but we now know that even without him -- even with him in hiding and isolated -- a resistance movement materialized. From all accounts, we still do not know who these fighters are. . . . Bush clearly learned from that mistake. In his speech to the nation on Sunday, he specifically warned that "the capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq." On the USS Abraham Lincoln, he had proclaimed the war all but over and linked it repeatedly with Sept. 11 and al Qaeda. He mentioned Roosevelt and Truman, Normandy and Iwo Jima. This time, Bush was restrained. In fact, Hussein may turn out to be like weapons of mass destruction -- much less there than anyone thought. The good news is that we got the b*stard -- and who cannot cheer? But the bad news -- even as I continue to believe the United States will prevail -- is that we found him, craven, disheveled and, fittingly, in a hole. Because of the mistakes of the Bush administration, that's where we are too.
You just do not understand the situation, judging from this post. The burden was on Saddam to account for *previously accounted for* WMD that the UN inspectors presented. We are not trying to 'find' anything, all we wanted to know is what happened to the WMD that unquestionably existed in Iraq. Saddam did not answer, so we took action. This whole 'we haven't found anything' argument reflects a very poor understanding of the situation.
as TJ has repeatedly pointed out, this line of reasoning reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation and the burden of proof placed on Saddam. The UN documented WMD, and the UN demanded that Iraq produce them, or produce evidence of their destruction. Saddam said the paperwork had been lost, a risable suggestion given his penchant for documenting every evil thing his regime did. that you believe this tripe, that you'd somehow, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, take the word of a genocidal dictator over that of the president of the US, no matter his party, is quite simply astounding.
Sorry basso, I was operating on a practical rational level, not on a manufactured system of burden shifting and presumptions. Bush said they were there, and said that there was clear evidence of peril. We have free run of the place, and thus far they are not. That's a pretty simple equation,really, nothing astounding about it at all.
You are confusing two different time periods of inspections, and even then you aren't entirely accurate. There were inspectors who were there just recently that did not say they had found any WMD. They were still looking when they were called out. Previously when the inspectors were called out because Saddam wasn't cooperating they claimed that they had destroyed about 95% of Saddam's WMD's. Scott Ritter who was a weapons insector at that time claimed all along that Saddam didn't have any more WMD's. Yes, they told Saddam to account for the destruction of all of his WMD, that hadn't previously been accounted for. Saddam submitted a huge document which didn't fully satisfy the UN. The weapons inspectors continued, and found no WMD, and were pulled out as the date for war neared.
I have posted a more accurate description of the UN and inspectors process than TJ's meshing of two different time periods in an effort to bolster the justification of this war.
Not a thing. It's not ambiguous at all. That is a UN resolution and therefore falls under the jurisdiction of the UN, and not the U.S.
Any argument that is based on the war being validated by the US 'finding' anything is inherently flawed. The very fact that we have to *attempt to find* anything means that Saddam did not offer his full compliance. The liberals continue to ignore this very basic premise as they blindly try to find fault with the way operations are being conducted by our servicemen and leaders.
