There is one thing about Republicans you can always count on -- everything they accuse somebody else of doing is true of them. It's called, "projection."
From Blog for America:
It was Dick Cheney, but not as you know him. Thirteen years ago, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney gave the keynote address at the Washington Insitute's Soref Symposium. The speech was titled "The Gulf War: A First Assessment" and you're not going to believe some of what he said."Should we have gone in to Baghdad? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no."
"I think the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, and once we'd done that we'd have to put another government in its place."
"It is vitally important for a President to know when not to commit U.S. military force. How many casualties should the United States accept in (the) effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?"
"It's my view that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."
This is the man who makes hopes to win an election by portraying Senator Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Read the entire transcript from the Washington Institute.
Again from Blog for America
This is part two of Policy Shift, an examination of certain leaders (past and present) and how their views have changed over the last decade. Part I featured the argument against invading Iraq made by *gasp* Dick Cheney in 1991.Posted by Diana at September 17, 2004 09:54 AMSix years ago, Time Magazine published an excerpt from A World Transformed, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush's memoir. The article, titled "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam," was published on March 2, 1998. Sometime between September 2002 and April 2003, the publisher contacted Time and asked that they remove the article � presumably for simple proprietary reasons. It has since reappeared on the web, courtesy of The Memory Hole.
"We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed."
"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivable still be an occupying power (seven years later) in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome."
Once again, prominent members of the GOP seem to counter their own arguments better than I could hope to on my own. Thank you, Mr. President, and kudos to the Memory Hole for keeping the article online.
Your comparing apples and oranges. Equating a change in position, with situations changing over a period of years is not the same as telling two groups diametrically opposed positions within a period of hours. The first is ackowledging the reality of a change in circumstances;the second is pandering to get votes.
Posted by: delftsman3 at September 18, 2004 09:00 AMWhat was the change in circumstances? If anything, the reality changed in such a way as to make it even more unwise to invade now than it would have been then. Certainly it has become the quagemire Cheney predicted.
How are Bush Sr.'s words not equally relevant today as they were at the end of the Gulf War?
It's interesting how both Cheney and Pappa Bush perfectly predicted the outcome we see today. Probably the only thing that's changed is that George W. Bush did not heed their advice and foolishly stormed in "where wise men would not dare."
Posted by: Diana at September 18, 2004 10:25 AM9/11 was the greatest change Diane. It changed the whole perspective on the balance in the ME.
We were thrust into war by Osama and his main backers, the Sauidis and Saddam. I believe that it was imperative we stop Saddam before he was capable of providing even deadlier weapons to the Islamofacists than highjacking some airliners.
Iraq is only the first foothold in changing that balance in our favor. This is going to go far longer than Bush's second term.
Posted by: delftsman3 at September 18, 2004 10:49 AMNow who's mixing apples and oranges? Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, and stop lumping him together with Bin Laden as if they're joined at the hip. There is no connection between them, and if you say there is, then you're just repeating Bush propaganda. There is no substantiation for making that connection. None whatsoever.
Saddam had no direct connection in 9/11, thats a fact. But even the 9/11 Commission said that there WERE connections between Saddam and Osama, Hamas, and a number of other terrorist groups.
Two of the highest members of Al Quiada were sheltered in Iraq, after the invasion of Afghanistan. There are confirmed reports of high Iraqi officials meeting with top level Al Quiada members in Paris prior to 9/11, and it's possible, though yet to be proven, that money supplied by Saddam was utilized in the operation. My own sense is that he had no hand in planning the operation, but I do believe that his funding did help A-Q carry it out. I can't prove it, but I do think it's highly likely.
Saddam was the money man and weapons provider for these groups. He was paying up to $25,000 to each family of "Palestinian"(misplaced Jordanian)suicide bombers in Israel. That is not "Bush propaganda", unless you believe the Democrats on the panel are Bush supporters?
The idea that people from some organization casually meeting people of another implies a "connection" is straining a bit, isn't it? But okay. I'll give in to your logic this time. When people meet, they are connected. So the Bush family's numerous meetings with members of Al Qaeda (as when Bush received funding for his company for Al Qaeda's chief accountant) necessarily implies a connection. It follows then that we should get the U.S. military to go into the Bush "ranch" in Texas and round up all the terrorists, take them to Abu Ghraib and torture them until they fess up. Yes, you're right. There's definitely a connection.
Posted by: Karlo at September 19, 2004 07:29 PMThat meme was disproven many times already Karlo. Bush was never funded by Al-Qaeda, the organization didn't even exist at the time in the form it is now.
However it HAS been proven that Saddam was giving huge amounts of capital to many terrorist groups, and training areas to Al-Qaeda in particular. And paying up to $25,000 to families of suicide bombers. You don't "causually" meet with the top echelons of a countries security (intell)forces, especially those of dictatorships. NOTHING happened In Iraq without the express approval of Saddam. Thats why he was called a dictator. Try a private plot, and you were subject to Uday or Qusay and their tender ministrations of paper shredder, acid bath, or worse; and not only the perpertrator, but his entire family also.
My guess is that people in all governments casually meet constantly. In the lead up to the Iran-Contra scandal, for example, people in the U.S. government were "casually meeting" with people from Iran in spite of the fact that Iran had been designated as a terrorist state. Should we then posit a "connection" between the U.S. and Iran during the Reagan Administration?
Posted by: Karlo at September 24, 2004 04:56 PMSure there was a connection, if you mean it in the sense that the two governments were in communication with each other in non-formal diplomatic terms. Keeping a line of communication is vital to resolving differences isn't it?
The differences are in the goals of the contacts.
Posted by: delftsman3 at September 25, 2004 11:14 AMDon't tell me. There's a special mind-reading division of the CIA that is able to discern the "goals" of the contacts. I think I saw something about this in a recent movie...
Posted by: Karlo at September 26, 2004 07:26 PM