All Republican hopefulls now agree Iraq war was a mistake

Thank God we have the blessed Republicans to ask the tough questions regarding Obama and Hillary's war crimes in Benghazi.

 

Actually Iraq was in control until Bush decided to remove the Republican guard resulting in an epic civil war cost thousands of lives.

 

At least the libs on here own up to mistakes. Obama isn't perfect by any means and had made many mistakes for sure. But he isn't crazy and didn't dive us into a war and massive deficit that destroyed our economy and took us half a decade to get out of.

What Bush & Co did was idiotic. That war, and to lie to get a country to war using 9/11 as a pretext to attack a country that had no threat to America was a shame that should go down in history.

Now you put another of these fools in power and they will attack Iran and once again cut taxes for the rich which will tank our economy. Don't make the same mistake twice. It took us 8 years to undo the damage of Bush. We're still paying for the mess he made in Iraq.

I think this country has had enough of radical republicans.

 

The "aid and comfort to the enemy" accusation thrown out there by Cheney and others incensed me more than anything else and was a turning point. After favoring them over Dems all of my life, that's when I decided the Republican party was an unsalvageable pile of trash.

 

The real traitors are the Republicans are guys like Cheney and Bush, and the ones who continue to paint a narrative that benefits them over the country.

I would never describe myself as a liberal (except on social issues because it's stupid to be against giving people liberty - another reason Republicans are traitors to their own values). If Republicans weren't so messed up and pathetically stupid and hypocritical, I would be one.

Modern day republicans serve corporate and religious interests. They especially play on fears and misconceptions about how the world works. Dems are not much better but at least they still realize and believe in some sense of trying to use Gov't to make America a better place.

 

Facts don't matter for most of these guys, but why not try. Many Democrats asked and received the correct answers from the experts outside the carefully selected neo-cons. Sadly about five -- all of the Dem Senators who saw themselves as potential presidential candidates voted for that POS disaster as they thought it made them look unpatriotic to do so.

The vote.

215 (96.4%) of 223 Republican Representatives voted for the resolution.

82 (39.2%) of 209 Democratic Representatives voted for the resolution.
6 (<2.7%) of 223 Republican Representatives voted against the resolution:


126 (~60.3%) of 209 Democratic Representatives voted against the resolution.


United States Senate[edit]
Party Yeas Nays
Republican 48 1
Democratic 29 21
Independent 0 1
TOTALS 77 23

58% of Democratic senators (29 of 50) voted for the resolution. Those voting for the resolution are:

42% of Democratic senators (21 of 50) voted against the resolution. Those voting against the resolution are:

1 (2%) of 49 Republican senators voted against the resolution: Sen. Chafee (R-RI).

The only independent senator voted against the resolution: Sen. Jeffords (I-VT)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution#United_States_House_of_Representatives

 

You guys are assigning way way too much complicity to the US in Iraq. We are a peripheral, temporary player to the Sunni/Shia conflicts. Iraq was never under control, they were just waiting us out. We were never going to coerce peace among the people there, they've been at it 700 years and they will be at it for 700 more. They are no better or worse off than they were under Saddam, murderous dictator or murderous chaos.

It's going to be the way of the world now that the arms races have equally empowered every tribe, family, gang, sect and madman. There will be no more great armies sweeping in and taking control because they won't kill with impunity and they can't ever be safe from guerilla groups. No great powers will risk nuclear confrontation. The world will devolve into a thousand small, endless wars thanks to Mr. Kalashnikov.

 

Agree. Attempted to rep you for a concise, astute observation.

 

Peripheral and temporary? What exactly are your definitions for those 2 terms? I mean I guess in the grand scheme of things we haven't been involved in Iraq for too terribly long, but it has still been more than a few decades that we have actively been involved in their country.

 

This is the key. What will they do facing conflict. Given history and recent actions, Republican largely still think military as one of the first method. In the Iran case, it seem to be to the point of not giving peace a chance. That's still the crux of it when it comes to who will likely get us into the next mess that cost lives and treasure.

 

Good post, which, although possibly accidental, also touches upon the root cause of the conflict: Islam.

 

In the same way Christianity is the root cause of things like Protestant/Catholic in Ireland. Tribalism is a natural phenomena of the human animal. We organize for self-interest into symbiotic groups based on genetics, social order and shared interest. It's the fight for dominance in shared lands that produces the conflict. Peace comes through homogeneity or shared rule.

The actual organizing philosophies have little to do with it other than their capaability to recognize the legitimacy of others. There you may have a small point.

 

I am not disputing anything you (eloquently) said, but content matters. Some ideologies are compatible with shared rule, others are not. Christianity at present is certainly more compatible with shared rule than Islam, relatively speaking (not saying that Christianity is perfect, or "better than Islam" when it comes to the spiritual aspects). The reason for this is that political Islam still demands for itself to be the all-encompassing be-all and end-all. It demands homogeneity under its rule. It is therefore not compatible with democracy, secular societies, and peace. Therefore, while I agree with what you say, one ideology, in its current form, is not like the other, and the potential for one to be a cause of conflict, unrest and wars is bigger than that of others.

 

Now that the tyrant is gone... Maybe we see why he had to be sadistic.

All of this shyt going on over there today wasn't happening under Saddam... At least not to the point that the rest of the world was concerned about it (which probably has to do with media propaganda as well).

Fact remains there was still no reason to invade (other than for money), and republicans don't get a cookie for saying it was a mistake over a decade later.

 

By golly gee, that solves that.

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Now if we'll only ask the candidates for both the Republicans and Democrats if they can admit that knowing what we now know if pulling out of Iraq the way we did, creating a power vacuum that was filled by ISIS, was a mistake. It's okay, we can blame pulling out of Iraq on Bush as well so that the Democrats might be willing to answer.

 

At the time, Saddam's **** was the ****. There were countless stories of genocide and torture. Few envisioned the future sectarian conflict.

 

So what... There are stories like that in other countries as well. Other than a few mindless peps, you don't hear to many banging their drums about invading places like NK... How many threads have been started about going into Africa and stopping the genocide that goes on there... Personally, I think the Iraq war was just a cover up to get that dope out of Afghanistan.

 

The power vacuum was created by the aftermath of the invasion itself. The disbanding of the Baath party and the Iraqi military practically guaranteed civil war for decades.

The war itself was the problem.