I voted to attack now. However, UN and Congressional approval would help(duh). If developed, Saddam will sell/use a weapon of mass destruction ASAP. Hit him now, hit him hard, and kick him while he's down.
Originally posted by Hammer755 I voted to go in with the support of Congress. Ultimately, the American Government is held accountable by the citizens of one country, the USA. I agree that it's largely a diplomatic gesture to seek the approval of the UN, but I don't feel it's necessary based on the anti-America population that seems to dominate the organization. I also voted to go in with the support of Congress and I agree with you totally. If there is a consensus among all of our leadership then I'm behind it 100%. I don't give a damn what the UN says on this issue, it's our nation that's on the firing range here.
<rant>Screw the UN. If congress is convinced I'm in. If the UN doesn't like it they can take their one world one government idea and cram it. I want no part of it. </rant>
Funny how in 1998 when Clinton was talking about how we need to go into Iraq, the Democrats fell right in line now...? the Senate is playing politics with the security of our nation and I wish I had more than one vote and SCREW the U.N. and their useless weapons inspectors
Looks like Congressional approval was already given almost 5 years ago. Guess Daschle changed his mind: Senate Concurrent Resolution 71 Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Senate, the House of Representatives concurring-- (1) Condemns in the strongest possible terms the continued threat to international peace and security posed by Iraq's refusal to meet its international obligations and end its weapons of mass destruction programs; (2) Urges the President to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs; and (3) Urges the President to work with Congress in furthering a long-term policy aimed at definitively ending the threat to international peace and security posed by the government of Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. Clinton didn't seem to think UN approval was necessary in '98: PRESIDENT CLINTON SAYS HE WOULD CONSULT WITH U-N ALLIES BEFORE TAKING ANY MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAQ, BUT HE MAINTAINS THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT NEED U-N APPROVAL. HE MADE HIS COMMENTS AT THE START OF A MEETING WITH U-N SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN. V-O-A WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT DEBORAH TATE REPORTS. http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/03/980311-iraq2.htm
Let me clear first that I thought Clinton's Iraq attack was a cynical, political ploy. I was against it then and I remain convinced it was a bad deal, politically motivated. I am suspicious of the current proposed actions on the same grounds. Even so, while the broad language of the Senate resolution leaves room for regime change, Clinton did not propose such, and would not have attempted such without an international coalition. Neither would Bush Sr., which is why they stopped when they did and why so many of his people are concerned about this latest effort. How long is that Senate resolution meant to apply? It doesn't have an expiration date on it. Will it still be good for justifying any action at all, say fifty years from now? What a handy tool. Perhaps we could pass such a resolution against all countries, and thereby leave out that pesky Congress in future declarations of war. When Bush first spoke to the nation, after 9/11, and said that our response would include not only the responsible parties but every country who ever gave comfort to terrorists, I knew Iraq was at the top of his list. But this broad declaration is no more instructive than the Senate resolution in justifying unilateral, preemptive, regime changing strikes. If it were, we could use it to take out both Sharon and Arafat. We could also use it to justify regime change in Ireland.
We had one of the big guys from STRATFOR (a relatively conservative defense / strategy policy group) come talk to us today, and he had some interesting comments about Iraq and Al-Queda. I don't agree with everything he said, but some major points: * Al-Queda is ridiculously smart and efficient. They are set up so that blowing off the head (OBL) won't affect their operations at all. They also have timed all of our defense / intelligence reporting very effectively. For example, OBL made a call to his mom 2 days before the attack, because Al Queda knew it took at least 72-96 hours for information to be analyzed and interpreted. According to him, many of the recent alerts (Golden Gate bridge, etc) are helping Al Queda time our response setup. This, I found, very interesting and made total sense. * Al-Queda's goal is basically to provoke the US and force them into action against Islam countries. That will spur a rise of anger in Islam countries, which will lead to revolts and overthrows of their corrupt governments. Ultimately, Al-Queda's goal is not really to destroy the US, but "purify" Islam by getting the West out of that area of the world. The way to do it is to get new leadership through these revolts. Unfortunately for Al-Queda, the mass contempt wasn't there. There were protests against the US, but all of the peaceful kind. Al-Queda's solution is likely to push the US even more to engender a more anti-Islam response. * Hussein is really not crazy - ruthless, dictatorial, yes. Crazy, not at all. From Hussein's view, the US doesn't have the capability to win against Iraq - with interesting reasons. Basically, it's a standoff. The US is hoping to cause enough damage that insiders will revolt and take over the country. Hussein feels he can maintain control -- which he has in the past. According to this guy, the US army doesn't have the military capabilities to take Baghdad. Our army doesn't have any experience or ability in fighting an urban war. We lose all of our advantages - air superiority, intelligence information, etc - when we have to go house-to-house and fight children, women, etc. Of course we would eventually win, but the casualties could be ridiculously high. He actually was against war with Iraq because he didn't think we could accurately predict the outcome and he didn't feel that they have WMD (see below), which surprised me very much from an organization that often seems pro-military / war. * He outlined what he believes is Bush's reasoning to attack Iraq - and it has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. He had one notable point here - the worst thing you can do if we really do believe he has WMD is announce to him that we're going to attack several months down the road. That just gives him time to deploy and prepare said weapons, especially if we get involved in an elongated ground war. He said unless everyone in Washington is nuts, there's no reason to believe Iraq has WMD. If they did, we already would have struck and struck hard without warning. * He linked Bush's push for war totally to the fight on terrorism. Simplified, it's this. Al Queda is an entirely new type of enemy, and we can't "win" a war against them in the traditional sense. Every so often, they'll blow up some American establishment around the world, while we're doing covert ops that never make the news. People here will get restless and upset, thinking we're not fixing the problem. Destroying Iraq is partially to placate Americans and give us something sucessful to focus on. * Another portion of attacking Iraq has to do with the rest of the world. This is interesting logic - I can't say I agree with it, but I can see the idea. Revolts and revolutions (as Al-Queda is aiming for) require both a will to revolt and a belief that you can be successful. Essentially, he says there are people out there who hate us (creating the will), there's nothing we can do about it, so forget about that. Al-Queda's hope was to show the US was vulnerable (creating the belief they can win) and they have done that to some extent, although not nearly as much as hoped by Al-Queda. Iraq also showed that by surviving the first US attack and all of the US's attempts to remove Saddam. Attacking Iraq now re-establishes our military superiority and is basically designed to scare people from the idea of revolting. He said it much better than my attempted summaries, but it was a very revealing and interesting look at Al-Queda and Iraq (more so the former) and how ridiculously smart and efficient the organization is, and why from Iraq's perspective, Hussein would be very confident in his position.
