'Construct the best argument to explain why we invaded Iraq. Bear in mind that Paul O’Neill (Bush’s original Secretary of the Treasury, who attended Cabinet meetings) reported in his book that the invasion of Iraq was discussed at the Cabinet level even before 9/11, and also that this conclusion is confirmed in “The Downing St. Memos”. Bear in mind, too, that the various reasons the administration had given to invade Iraq – that Saddam was behind 9/11, that he was aiding al Qaida, that he had nuclear WMDs, that he had chemical and biological WMDs, that he was a vicious dictator, have all appeared to be either false or irrelevant. (In other words, you must come up with a different rationale for the invasion.)'
That is one my assignments this week. Here is my response:
If a doctor has a dying patient on the table, and is 90% certain it is a ruptured appendix, but delays treatment in order to convince a panel of head surgeons for the purpose of validation before acting, the patient will probably die.
That is why we entrust responsibilities of this sort to "experts" and rely on their "judgment" to act when necessary. The president doesn't need anyone's approval to initiate military action. The constitution gives him the power to exercise his judgment freely. If a person is operating ethically, with supreme intelligence (the CIA, etc.), and just judgment, that person should be able to logically make some assumptions and decisions, and to execute (the root word of "esecutive") actions with the expediency that the situation seems to call for. In other words, if a person is a good leader they see the whole picture and anticipate results. They form decisions by assessing the situation accurately. That means they have sought to understand all aspects of the situation, not limiting their action to the immediate situation.
That also means that they are rarely surprised by events, no matter how extreme, because they have familiarized themselves with the situation well before the disaster occurred. They have hopefully studied history well enough to know when, where and how war has achieved the expected results, since they are in fact the commander in chief of the United States military. Good judgment requires objectivity. That means using a telescope, not a magnifying glass. One has to remove themselves and their own interest in the situation from the situation. That is *the* primary purpose of a leader of any sort. That means that Bush is not a good leader. We know this because his mission failed. If he was executing good judgment with all the faculties I described, he would have made a decision that would have brought the results that *he* expected.
I happened to see some satellite photos taken by US and British military of huge factories. It was pretty clear that there were large missiles and other "weapon" looking things.
Photos of the same areas with 72 hours showed flat dirt, nothing to be seen. The theory was that as news of Bush's plan to come sniffing around with the UN got around, Iraq got smart and moved everything underground.
I do not know if those photos were doctored, or if they were even photos of the same place. A friend of mine who has served in the military showed them to me. For all I know they could have been made up completely. Still, I was convinced at the time, and they sure as heck were more convincing than any other "evidence" put forth by the Bush administration. Then again, he may have presented the very same evidence to the UN and they had the same questions and wanted to verify the validity of the evidence.
My initial response to this was, "If Bush had the evidence, and didn't act, but instead chose to appeal to the UN looking for support and approval before moving in, he was being more responsible than Clinton who chose to bomb Serbia in the middle of the night just before Monica held up her soiled dress in court."
Clinton's dog wagging maneuvers worked for him. I respected Bush for trying to go through proper channels before waging a war.
In retrospect, I think that Bush should have just invaded as soon as he had evidence. By waiting for over 2 weeks in an effort to convince the UN to back him up, he gave Iraq more than enough time to cover their tracks. Bush's initial plan was to "inspect" suspected factories and bases. He was not pleading with the UN to back a war, yet. Deliberations of this sort take time. National security should precede formality, in my opinion.
My conclusion is that Bush, while seeming to be doing the right thing, actually let go of the one opportunity he had to truly disable Iraq. Instead, he waged a war based on phantom WMD, since he could not provide the proof the UN was looking for. Had he gone in unannounced in the beginning, and found them, we might have still found ourselves in a war, but at least we would have succeeded in confining those weapons.
History says that Iraq did have WMD:
"Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French Osirak. Osirak was destroyed on June 7, 1981 by an Israeli air strike (Operation Opera)."
"After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries.
During this period, Saddam Hussein publicly maintained that it was in Iraq's interest not to engage with Iran, and that it was in the interests of both nations to maintain peaceful relations. However, in a private meeting with Salah Omar Al-Ali, Iraq's permanent ambassador to the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months.
Iraq invaded Iran, first attacking Mehrabad Airport of Tehran and then entering the oil-rich Iranian land of Khuzestan, which also has a sizable Arab minority, on September 22, 1980 and declared it a new province of Iraq.
With the support of the Arab states, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Europe, and heavily financed by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein had become "the defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary Iran.
Consequently, many viewed Iraq as "an agent of the civilized world". The blatant disregard of international law and violations of international borders were ignored. Instead Iraq received economic and military support from its allies, who conveniently overlooked Saddam's use of chemical warfare against the Kurds and the Iranians and Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons."
"On March 16, 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more.
The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces.
The United States now maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack and US analysts supported the claim until several years later."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein
I honestly wonder where those WMDs are now that Hussein is dead. Has anyone found any?
Incidentally, before Bush Sr. pulled out of Iraq, the US feigned support for the Kurds and promised to back them in an organized rebellion against Hussein. Then the US retreated, leaving the emboldened Kurds at the mercy of Hussein's retribution.
The US had hoped that the Kurds would generate a coup d' etat. That did not happen.
The stated reason for abandoning the cause of incapacitating Saddam was that too much blood had been shed. 149 American soldiers' lives was determined to be too many in comparison to the importance of usurping Saddam Hussein, according to Dick Cheney.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
The US at the time was actually preparing for a presidential election in which Bush Sr. was running. Abandoning a cause that held high priority became more important than the original mission.
So my final answer to the assignment question is, "We invaded Iraq because we had a bad leader, who was incapable of using information effectively, unethically exercising bad judgment because he could not be objective."
Yikes... That was my initial reaction to the line "the president doesn't need anybody's approval to initiate military action." The scary part about this line is that it's true these days. The Constitution specifically states in Article 1, Section 8 that "Congress shall have the power to... declare war." Unfortunately, it seems that everyone has conveniently forgotten that rule, including the presidents (yes, plural) and Congress itself, allowing presidents to illegally enter military action- resulting in such debacles as Iraq. Of course, presidents like to disguise their actions by calling them "police action" or "intervention."
I do agree with your final analysis, though. I heard Colin Powell, obviously a reliable source, say that of all the presidents he had worked with, Bush 43 was the most impulsive, and made decisions based upon his initial gut reactions. Good paper.
To cut Bush a break, maybe he really did act in the interests of protecting America by invading Iraq (forget the blood oil conspiracies and whatnot). But that doesn't make him any less stupid, as you said (albeit slightly nicer).
There's also another justification floating around for the war, one that I, as a human rights activist, find laudable but still questionable. You mentioned Saddam's massacre of Kurds, an obvious crime against humanity. Furthermore, other ethnic and religious minorities were persecuted in Iraq. Some say that the invasion of Iraq can be justified in that it removed a human rights violator. Still, I don't know if it was worth all the blood spilled- American and Iraqi.
Lastly, I just want to clarify my first statement. Technically, Congress voted to indirectly authorize the war in Iraq. But rather than outright declaring war, as is constitutionally required, they actually voted to defer all war declaration powers to the president. You can interpret this as you will, but I stand by my opinion: the President declared war in an unconstitutional fashion, since the Constitution does not allow Congress to bequeath their responsibilities upon another branch of government, and that the Constitution specifically and only identifies Congress as having war declaration powers.
is my reaction. Thank you for your reply. I am enlightened by new information. I did not know that Congress had anything to do with declaring war.
I am limited in my knowledge because I have been out of school for 6 years, and the last class I took related to history, politics, whatever, was Political Science in 2000. That was a long time ago.
I only remember what I have been taught about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Being in school again I am learning so much more than I did.
Anyway, I am someone who does *not* care one bit about partisanship. My objective is to strip away lies in order to find truth. That truth might be slim, but it is worth more than a global history
of lies.
I appreciate your posts in general because they reflect a certain sense of "objectivity" I typically find nonexistent in most Conservative arguments these days. Although, I was excited and impressed when I happened to discover a woman who showed on up FOX Monday morning. I wish I could remember her name, I can't.
I happened to be home because my baby was sick, and I was walking in and out of the room with the TV on. I rarely watch TV at all, and if I do, it is usually cable.
This woman was a tall, thin blonde in jeans. She resembled a 'nerdy" Jennifer Aniston.
She was talking about single woman households. She admitted to being good friends with Bill Maher, but wasn't shy to admit having conflicts with him.
Overall, she seemed to have a very grounded sense of things, and her "conservatism" did no bother me at all.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
How many times in history has Congress formally taken a vote to declare war? How many times have we gone to war? I think you will find that there is firmly established precedent for the formal declaration being skipped. Congress DID authorize the war which is more than they have done in many of our past unauthorized wars and DID repeatedly vote to fund the War. If Congress felt that their Constitutional prerogatives had been stepped on it was within their power to stop the war by withholding funding.
Also, I used to share your respect for Colin Powell but ever since he allowed the Plamegate investigation to proceed and to allow a decent man like Scooter Libby to be hounded in the Fisk witch hunt when he could easily have stopped that charade, I have lost ALL respect for him. Colin Powell is a man without any honor and that is perhaps the harshest condemnation I can lay on a career military man. He knew exactly who exposed Valarie Plame's CIA identity and he remained silent while a decent man serving his country was destroyed.
Okay, I am guessing that your information here is mostly personal opinion or that I did not understand what you wrote. Reason for war or something like this will be my theme here for the most part. May be lengthy.
1) Saddam was a ruthless dictator. Many people know that Saddam kill countless people. The U.S. government knew this and yet they supply Saddam with even more weapon. Why you ask? Saddam was a U.S. dog. Eventually, Saddam started to growl back and the U.S. official didn't like it. Conclusion, Saddam must go.
2) The U.S. invasion of Iraq and occupation of Iraq is illegal. According to law, no country can invade another unless that country is attack. Iraq didn't had anything to do with the 9/11 attack.
3) There was little intelligence on weapon of mass destruction (WMD). In fact, Bush was advice that the WMD intelligence is not trustworthy. Bush completely ignores this. Bush's decision was base on false or untrustworthy information.
4) With respect, applying the doctor scenario is idiotic. Plus, even if you are 100% sure that a patient is suffering from whatever, confirmation is essential. What if you're 100% opinion is wrong? In Bush's cases, he was advised to not invade Iraq but he still did. Why? That is simply for profit at the expense of the people. Not going into detail on this profit thing.
5) Bush's nation wide broadcast of promoting peace and justice, success, improvement in social structure, and all those other crap he told the public about Iraq is simply "crap". Look the hugely censor news about the "Winter Soldier Hearing". "Winter Soldier Hearing" is testimony of Iraq veterans of what is actually going on in Iraq. Also look up the soldier hearing of the Vietnam War if you have time.
6) Bush may possibly be the worst governor in my lifetime. I say governor because he was not truly elected to be president. I don't know if you know about this debate but yeah, "not elected". View "Uncounted" if you have time.
7) Lastly, I am not bashing on Bush or the Republican. I can do this with Obama or the Democrat as well.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
"Okay, I am guessing that your information here is mostly personal opinion or that I did not understand what you wrote. Reason for war or something like this will be my theme here for the most part. May be lengthy."
My information is indeed an offering of my personal opinion based on the information that I have. I do not pretend to have all of the information, and I am known to change my mind when presented with new information. I would venture to claim that I do have a special gift for objectivity because I do not claim any allegiance to anyone but Lady Liberty.
"1) Saddam was a ruthless dictator. Many people know that Saddam kill countless people. The U.S. government knew this and yet they supply Saddam with even more weapon. Why you ask? Saddam was a U.S. dog. Eventually, Saddam started to growl back and the U.S. official didn't like it. Conclusion, Saddam must go."
I have a hard time buying into Saddam Hussein being a terrorist.
According to Wikipedia, he had US support for more than 30 years. It wasn't until he became broke, and looked to his neighbors to forgive debts or to give him money that he became an enemy, rather than an ally. My theory is that we smelled his weakness, and dove in accordingly.
According to Wikipedia:
"Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)."
"After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the countryside, mechanizing agriculture on a large scale, and distributing land to peasant farmers. The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed according to the labors of the individual and the unskilled were trained. The government's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agricultural development in 1974–1975. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standard of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels for which Saddam had hoped."
"Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the Nasser model. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims."
"Iraq was also stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq dependent on outside loans, embarrassing a leader who had sought to define Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction."
"The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam saw his war with Iran as having spared Kuwait from the imminent threat of Iranian domination. Since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Persian Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, he argued, a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Saddam urged the Kuwaitis to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but the Kuwaitis refused."
"As Iraq-Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration *gave Saddam roughly $40 billion* in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. Saddam's Iraq became "the third-largest recipient of US assistance".
"U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that while George H. W. Bush and James Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraq–Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Whatever Glapsie did or did not say in her interview with Saddam, the Iraqis assumed that the United States had invested too much in building relations with Iraq over the 1980s to sacrifice them for Kuwait. Later, Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait. As tensions between Washington and Saddam began to escalate, the Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev, strengthened its military relationship with the Iraqi leader, providing him military advisors, arms and aid"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein
Thus, it might be said that Saddam's biggest crime was joining forces with the Soviet Union, not so much any particular "terrorist" act.
"2) The U.S. invasion of Iraq and occupation of Iraq is illegal. According to law, no country can invade another unless that country is attack. Iraq didn't had anything to do with the 9/11 attack."
I am certain you are right, but would you mind posting a source stating that it is illegal to invade a country unless the invading country is under attack? I believe you are referencing the Geneva Convention? It would be nice to see what the actual text says.
I agree that Iraq *most likely* had nothing to do with 9/11.
"3) There was little intelligence on weapon of mass destruction (WMD). In fact, Bush was advice that the WMD intelligence is not trustworthy. Bush completely ignores this. Bush's decision was base on false or untrustworthy information."
I would like to agree, but I won't unless I see evidence. I am inclined toward disdain re: Bush's *assessment* of the suspected WMD's, but seeing as I am not a member of the US military intelligence, I do not feel qualified to accept or dismiss any claim re: WMD.
"4) With respect, applying the doctor scenario is idiotic. Plus, even if you are 100% sure that a patient is suffering from whatever, confirmation is essential. What if you're 100% opinion is wrong? In Bush's cases, he was advised to not invade Iraq but he still did. Why? That is simply for profit at the expense of the people. Not going into detail on this profit thing."
Sorry, but you are way off. The doctor scenario is completely appropriate. The president is *commander and chief* of the US military. There is no one above him. He needs not answer to anyone regarding his utilization of the military. When a person is in a position of being at the *top,* or in a position of final authority, to stop and ask questions, especially when one has already committed to a specific course of action, is just plain stupid. If he happens to be 100% wrong, he gets to plead his case, making clear his use of his best judgment as the cause of his mistake.
That is a risk one in power takes, the risk of being wrong. Bush sought approval, even though he *knew* he was right. All he did was aid anyone with WMD in covering their tracks by announcing his intention. I argue that if he was so sure, he should not have hesitated. By hesitating, he gave our enemies fair warning and ample time to shift below the radar.
When a surgeon makes a wrong diagnosis, and is found to be wrong, he/she accepts responsibility and does what it can to restore integrity by first admitting his/her mistake.
An on call emergency surgeon knows he doesn't have time to second guess himself. That is why he is most likely highly educated and experienced, and paid the big bucks. His malpractice insurance premiums are also the highest.
"5) Bush's nation wide broadcast of promoting peace and justice, success, improvement in social structure, and all those other crap he told the public about Iraq is simply "crap". Look the hugely censor news about the "Winter Soldier Hearing". "Winter Soldier Hearing" is testimony of Iraq veterans of what is actually going on in Iraq. Also look up the soldier hearing of the Vietnam War if you have time."
I never heard that nation wide broadcast, I was probably sleeping in. I don't need to look up any soldier hearing of the Vietnam War, my father was granted a medal of honor for his service in that war, as well as a purple heart, 2 bronze stars and a silver star.
His story is available to the public in the documentary about Huey helicopters, "In the Shadow of the Blade," aired from time to time on the History Channel.
"6) Bush may possibly be the worst governor in my lifetime. I say governor because he was not truly elected to be president. I don't know if you know about this debate but yeah, "not elected". View "Uncounted" if you have time."
I am starting to feel irritated by your assumptions about me. you know nothing about my breadth of knowledge of anything, and obviously have read none of my blogs. You know nothing about how I use my time, or how much time I spend researching such things. If you wish to challenge, you are welcome to ask questions, and I will gladly answer. I have a hard time with closed ended statements, as I am sure most people do.
"7) Lastly, I am not bashing on Bush or the Republican. I can do this with Obama or the Democrat as well."
My biggest weakness is that I love Obama. If it were not for that fact, I could easily jump on the skeptics ride through this time. I have consistently been most opposed to traditional democrats in my life, until I became aware of the republican need to cling to prejudice in the face of truth.
I find Obama a strong, grounded mind that is capable of grasping the bigger picture that you and I might not be aware of. I trust his judgment to make sound, objective decisions that are in the best interest of all of us.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!
Iraq was not in compliance with the terms of treaty it made ending the first Gulf War and that failure to comply had been documented in numerous UN Security Council Resolutions.
Failure to comply with its obligations made the invasion legal. It was essentially a continuation of the previous War because the Treaty had not been complied with. And as you will recall the previous war was justified by the invasion of Kuwait.
The UN had no legitimate authority to authorize or not authorize said action because they had sacrificed their jurisdiction in that matter by allowing themselves to be bribed on the largest scale in human history via the Oil for Food Scandal. In the words of Al Gore, there was no legitimate controlling legal authority. Any signatory to the Peace Treaty had the right to enforce it.
and well said.
If you like this post, please tip me. All tips will be forwarded to ProgressiveU.org. Keep the site alive!