"F.O.A.D." wrote in message
m...

On 2/26/13 5:48 PM, Eisboch wrote:


wrote in message ...

On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 15:50:06 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:



"jps" wrote in message
...


And everybody in the room was signed up for the other's objective.
It
all made sense to them but it was a giant miscalculation. They
were
all looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, long before 911.

-----------------------------------------

Indeed. The stage was set back in 1998 when then President Clinton
signed the "Iraq Liberation Act" which passed the House by a vote
of
360 to 38 and by the Senate by unanimous consent. The Act
essentially
established a policy for regime change in Iraq. Here's what
Clinton
had to say back then:

"Iraq admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare
capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes
botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud
warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say UNSCOM inspectors
believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its
production....
Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] have come
closer
and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam
has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions by
imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring
key
sites which have still not been inspected off limits.... It is
obvious
that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this
operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity
to
produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them,
and
the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors
believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological
munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to
restart quickly its production program and build many, many more
weapons.... Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to
comply
and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which
gives
him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of
mass
destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions
and
continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he
will
conclude that the international community has lost its will. He
will
then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an
arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I
guarantee you he'll use the arsenal...." .... President Bill
Clinton,
1998

One could say that Clinton talked the talk but Bush walked the
walk.



People want to forget that.

----------------------------------------------------

Some people also want to forget that Clinton ordered the bombing and
cruise missile strikes on targets in Iraq in 1998 based on "Iraq's
failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions
as
well as their interference with United Nations Special Commission
inspectors."

And he also ordered the famous strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan.
The
cruise missiles fired at suspected terrorist camps were an attempt
to
kill bin Laden, who was thought to be connected to the bombing of
the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Problem was, bin Laden wasn't
there.
It was also later determined that the strikes in Sudan at a
pharmaceutical plant was based on bad intel or just bad decision
making:

"the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile
strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed."
Indeed,
officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been
manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the
Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident
of
Khartoum in the 1990s."

This is why I don't automatically buy into the "Bush lied us into
war"
routine, favored by many. Seems there were enough mistakes and bad
intel to go around for everybody.


Once again, Clinton was smart enough to not invade Iraq with a huge
military force and depose Saddam Hussein. G.W. Bush was not that
smart.

---------------------------------------

One might say that Bush was successful whereas Clinton was not. :-)

We will never know what "could have been" had Hussein remained in
power. We can only speculate.
Not to dismiss or minimize the price paid in American or innocent
Iraqi lives, but the reality is that it is a price that sometimes has
to be paid and a pain to be borne. Dismissing it all as "lies" serves
nothing but to make those who lost a loved one (who was doing his/her
job) even more painful to bear.

It has happened before and will certainly happen again.