Who Said It?

[rwarn17588]

Krauthammer has little credibility on this issue. He's been repeatedly wrong and contradictory on his stances regarding the Middle East.

The column you cited was written in late 2005, before the mosques were blown up and before sectarian violence began in earnest. In its wake, Scowcroft looks smarter and smarter, and Krauthammer looks dumber and dumber.

And it's interesting that Krauthammer in recent weeks has advocated reployment of troops from Baghdad, saying in effect of, and I paraphrase, "Let Iraq have its civil war. Don't expect us to be a part of it."

I guess that would be Krauthammer flip-flopping.

[aoxamaxoa]

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."


Who said it?

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Krauthammer has little credibility on this issue. He's been repeatedly wrong and contradictory on his stances regarding the Middle East.

The column you cited was written in late 2005, before the mosques were blown up and before sectarian violence began in earnest. In its wake, Scowcroft looks smarter and smarter, and Krauthammer looks dumber and dumber.

And it's interesting that Krauthammer in recent weeks has advocated reployment of troops from Baghdad, saying in effect of, and I paraphrase, "Let Iraq have its civil war. Don't expect us to be a part of it."

I guess that would be Krauthammer flip-flopping.

Hey...it's the political dance of the day, it's called the WaFfLe...just like Hillary calling for more troops 6 months ago, and now that Bush is suggesting it, it's now the wrong decision.  

I wish both sides would stop playing games with the issue.

With that said I still think Scowcroft's position looks good because hindsight is 20/20, not because of any real substance attached to arguments warning of insurgency before the invasion...

[aoxamaxoa]

^"Hillary calling for more troops 6 months ago.."

You took that out of context.

[rwarn17588]

Scowcroft's argument looked good before hindsight.

1) Did Iraq have anything to do with 9/11?

No.

2) Does invading Iraq help our efforts in the war on terror?

No, especially since it had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks.

This ain't rocket science, folks.

Instead, what we had were a bunch of foreign-policy wonks in Washington who took their eye off the ball.

I'm just an ordinary joe. But it staggered me at the time-- and still does -- how much the supposedly smart folks in charge ignored the fundamentals of what we were dealing with after the terrorist attacks.

[iplaw]

1) Did Iraq have anything to do with 9/11?

No. Irrelevant, with or without the war on terror his removal was justified (17 cease-fire violations and IAEA/UNSCUM violations).  Whether it helps the war on terror is another separate issue.


2) Does invading Iraq help our efforts in the war on terror?

No, especially since it had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks.  You can't say that with certainty at this point as we have not reached an endpoint.  Also, the issue in Darfur has nothing to do with the war on terror, but we should be doing something about it shouldn't we?

quote:
I'm just an ordinary joe. But it staggered me at the time-- and still does -- how much the supposedly smart folks in charge ignored the fundamentals of what we were dealing with after the terrorist attacks.

Again, I still don't see where anyone was waiving the flag of insurgency and sectarian violence before we went in...Scowcroft was most definitely against us going it, but it was for various other reasons as your article clearly states.

[rwarn17588]

OK, then, iplaw, your reasoning crystalizes that the Bush administration was guilty of highly dubious priorities.

What mattered more -- going after the terrorists, or going after a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

Like I said, this ain't rocket science.

[iplaw]

First, the war on terror is not soely encompassed by going after those responsible for 9/11, so I think we can put that to bed.  To only go after those directly responsible for 9/11 to the exclusion of other terror groups with similar aims would have been, and still is, myopic, and would place us in constant catch-up mode.  For once, I'd like to be ahead of these goons.

Second, Saddam by all accounts (CIA, FIB, MI6, Putin, Mubarak, Clinton, etc.) had WMDs, flawed intelligence or not, they all believed he did and NO ONE was saying he didn't.  He was paying money to Hamas suicide bombers for killing Jews.  He murdered half a million of his own people.  He was stonewalling IAEA and UNSCUM, so on and so on.  I think that more than qualifies him as a terrorist.  

Was he the right terrorist to go after at that time...only time will tell, but to deny he was a terrorist is an untenable position.  

Bottom line is this war is not said and done.  It can be won and Iraq can be stabilized.  Trying to convince people "Ha, Ha I told you so" when the going gets tough does no one any good.

[rwarn17588]

But, again, priorities.

Shouldn't you go after the ones responsible for 9/11 *first*? Shouldn't you get your "Mission Accomplished" on that end before going after more peripheral targets, instead of splitting up your efforts and thus weakening them? Shouldn't you have some ... FOCUS?

This isn't that hard to figure out ...

[aoxamaxoa]

Since Ipsqueak is an ignoranus (has yours truly on "ignore"), RW might convey to him that many now see the term terrorist applying to the western world as well. When you fight fire with fire you get burned.

[iplaw]

quote:
Shouldn't you go after the ones responsible for 9/11 *first*? Shouldn't you get your "Mission Accomplished" on that end before going after more peripheral targets, instead of splitting up your efforts and thus weakening them? Shouldn't you have some ... FOCUS?

We did, and we still are.  I do recall Afghanistan being a viable military zone.  Obviously OBL isn't their anymore or we'd be pushing harder there.  

According to all the information available (CIA, FBI, MI6) Saddam was NOT a peripheral issue.  BTW, who are you or I to decide that Saddam was a peripheral issue or not?  Neither one of us were privy to the information the prez had before we went in.

More monday morning QB, as if these decisions had such bright lines delineating them before we went in...

And who's saying that we are suffering from any sort of weakness by operating in two theaters?

[Conan71]

RW-

Part of the war on terror was to punish those directly linked to the 9/11 attacks, the other part was to assure it would not happen again.  In other words, retailiate, then go pro-active.

It was generally accepted that the Taliban were recruiting, harboring, and helping to train Al-Qaeda terrorists, as well as harboring their leader.

We went after them, removed the Taliban in short order, and ostensibly successfully accomplished the number one priority of going after those responsible for 9/11.  The fact that OBL has never been brought to justice does not mean we failed.  He is now a relatively impotent terrorist leader with greatly diminished power since the Taliban was a large component to his network.

The next logical country to assist with the terrorist network was Iraq.  They had a leader with an extreme hatred of the United States and Israel, had a score to settle with the U.S., and he was crazier than a s$%& house rat.  All the best of global intelligence said Iraq was suitable to be the next openly hospitable training ground for terrorists.  The two previous presidential administrations were more than convinced Iraq had WMD and stated so publicly.

Saddam was nowhere near exempt from suspicion of having WMD.  If there were no WMD and he wanted sanctions to end, all he had to do was to allow the UN inspectors to do their job.  He repeatedly refused.  If there was nothing to hide, then why act like you are hiding something?  Why not allow open inspections?

It's not a matter of whether or not Iraq was directly involved with the "first" 9/11, it was whether or not they were capable of being the petri dish for the "next" 9/11.  In that light it does fit the plan of the war on terror.

So far, a second 9/11, Cole, Beirut, etc. ad nausem have not happened since we invaded Iraq.  I know you are tired of my old battle cry, but it's proven itself.

[rwarn17588]

<iplaw wrote:

More monday morning QB, as if these decisions had such bright lines delineating them before we went in...

And who's saying that we are suffering from any sort of weakness by operating in two theaters?

<end clip>

That's not Monday morning quarterbacking; it's common sense. You go after the 9/11 perps, and Osama bin Laden is No. 1 on the list. As long as he's still at large, he remains a threat. Everything else is secondary after that. Focus, focus, focus. If you get him, THEN you go after the next-most-important target.

It really p*ssed me off when Bush said a couple of years ago that he really "wasn't concerned" about bin Laden. Well, why the hell not? Shouldn't you be concerned about the organizer of a mass murder?

And there's plenty of weakness showing right now by running two theaters. People in the U.S. military and Afghanistan are profoundly worried that Afghanistan will be overthrown by extremists again. The insurgency remains active there and is much worse than when we first invaded. (I supported that invasion, BTW.)

Then you have Iraq, which is Exhibit A in consequences of not establishing a post-war strategy. You have troops that are on their fourth deployment, and we don't have enough, period, to bring the country under control, much less Afghanistan. The U.S. military's abilities have been weakened by this misadventure.

So, yes, I think the lines of attack were quite clear after 9/11. Why it wasn't clear to others, or why people got distracted by other less pressing terrorism issues, is beyond me.

[iplaw]

Conan: I couldn't have said it any better...


Rwarn:  I think at this point we're talking past one another as we have made the same points to each other about half a dozen times now.  It seems to me that we both have fundamentally different ways of viewing the world and the war on terror, which is fine.

Only time will tell if Iraq will be a victory or not, and no amount of arguing back and forth has any bearing on it.

[aoxamaxoa]

Conman, you sure are short sighted.
Ipsqueak, time will tell. You are correct. But we will all be dead and gone.