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Timothy, what the Democratic and likely any other Republican President would have done, was to lay the groundwork and red carpet out to the international community and demonstrate to them with hard, valid, realible evidence, why it was in their interest as well as our own, to invade Iraq and acquire their assistance. Absent hard, valid, reliable evidence, any other President would have either obtained it taking as long as it takes to get it, or, pursue some other avenue than near unilateral invasion.

It took Bush to be so reckless with taxpayer dollars and American troops lives to act so rashly, and without foresight or collective deliberation before committing our nation to such a wasteful and inefficient action.

It is disingenuous as all getout to purport that the Democrats had the direct access to the CIA, NSA, and DoD intelligence and having been informed by these agencies, then turned to impart that information to the “poor dumb slob” in the Whitehouse who hadn’t a clue what was going on. The fact is the President as Commander in Chief has the most direct line and responsibility for the quality of information that comes from these agencies, as they fall directly under his, and his cabinet’s command.

The Democrat’s information about Iraq came from agencies directly under the President’s control. So, don’t try to turn the table and make anyone but the President and his cabinet responsible for the information that Congress relied upon in supporting the President’s request for authority to invade Iraq. The information, and therefore, the decision to invade when, how, and with whom, was entirely the President’s responsibility.

BTW, it is good to hear from another perspective at WatchBlog. New voices and perspectives keep the debate and exchange of information lively and fresh. Welcome to WatchBlog.

David,
Thanks for your comments. I must disagree with you that President Bush acted recklessly and without regard for the international community. Our leaders spent “months” in their “rush to war” and based on what they were being told, it was the prudent thing to do. The fact that some nations did not jump on board does not mean that our cause was any less legitimate. It does mean that maybe there were other reasons why they did not want to be part of the liberation. The Oil for Food (terror) program has shown that some nations had huge economic reasons for backing out of the coalition.

President Clinton has been very silent about Iraq’s WMD programs. Many quotes that I listed are from the Clinton years and from people who had direct knowledge of what was going on. You are correct that the president has the best of the best intelligence our government is supposed to have. I did not list all the other foreign leaders who had mentioned Iraq’s WMD, I limited the piece to Democratic leaders.

At the end of the day, President Bush took our nation to war. We must all remember that it is his duty to protect and defend this country, and in a 9/11 world that is not an easy task. We may all disagree as to how much of a threat Iraq was, but at some point and time Iraq would have had to been dealt with. Containment is very costly and only lasts so long.

Regards,
Tim

Timothy, welcome to WatchBlog!

You say “Our leaders spent months” as if it was evidence of the Bush Administration’s perseverence, as if “months” was a long time. I see it as evidence of their lack of commitment towards the internationalization of any action in Iraq.

Also, even the term “months” is exaggerated. We spent a lot of time in 2002 talking about how toppling Saddam was important, but not seriously engaging the international community in coming up with possible solutions. When we did finally propose an international solution, apparently even that was a sham: There was less than one month between the time we submitted a proposed resolution to the UN (Feb. 24, 2003) and the time we actually invaded (March 19, 2003).

For perspective, in 1990 it took 4.5 months for the UN to set the Jan 15 deadline for Saddam to get out of Kuwait.

During the “months” you cite, the Bush Administration never really wanted nor did they intend to actually get international assistance in the invasion… Nor would they have accepted any alternative approach short of invasion.

In the early days of those “months”, however, they made some important achievements that I applauded them for at the time. Using the threat of military action, the Bush Administration essentially reinstated the international inspections which had been stalled for so many years - in fact, they had increased their intensity to unprecedented levels. This accomplishment was a good solution to the problem outlined by all of your Democratic “advisors”.

(The “advice” you quote from these advisors, is likely a far cry from the actual advice being bandied about within the White House by Bush’s advisors. For example, nowhere within your Democratic advice do I see even a remote suggestion that we should invade Iraq.)

See, even the reports of WMDs listed by your Democratic “advisors” don’t add up, to me, to mean that an invasion is the only solution. Your logic rests on that single assumption: that countries with WMDs must be totally invaded — and all the cost, damage, and chaos inherent in invasion: the dismantling of civil infrastructures, the civilian deaths, the enmity of friendly nations, the occupation, insurgencies, loose weapons, porous borders, reconstruction — not to mention the monetary and human cost to the USA. We who opposed the war didn’t oppose it because we thought that Saddam was innocent of posession and development of WMDs. We simply thought that the various costs of invasion, which we realistically assumed would be high, weren’t worth it. Bombings, missle strikes, covert actions, blockades, inspectors, no fly zones, all of these would have been preferable to a full invasion. Saddam deserved to be punished and disarmed, but containment methods existed that would have made him an inert threat.

And as we discovered during and after the invasion, he wasn’t even the threat the Democrats thought he was, much less the armed-to-the-teeth supervillian the Bush Administration was trying to portray him to be.

The overall picture is this: The Bush Administration intended to invade Iraq no matter what. They intended to invade regardless of whether or not the WMDs were really a credible threat to the US or to Iraq’s neighbors. They intended to invade with or without international support. In fact, their efforts towards gaining international support were so inept and halfhearted that I can only conclude that either (a) they can’t negotiate their way out of a paper bag or (b) they intended to invade without international support — that is, that they wanted to invade Iraq alone, or nearly so, in order to ensure that the US alone would have authority over the occupation and reconstruction (which, of course, they thought would be over with in six months).

None of the aforementioned Bush Administration agenda is reflected in the statements or opinions of your council of Democratic “advisors”, so please don’t try to paint the Bush Administration’s unprecedented invasion as something the Democrats might have done if they only had the courage.

-Cf

Timothy,

I haven’t heard a single Democrat suggest that Saddam did not, at one time, possess WMDs. In the days leading up to the invasion, Bush, Congress, and the UN all insisted that Saddam comply with the UN resolutions and destroy his weapons. Saddam claimed he had done so and, with his back to the wall, allowed inspectors to return. The inspectors found no weapons in the short time they were given to search. But as you know, Hans Blix and David Kay both say it’s unlikely that the weapons were there.

The difference between what the Democrats (and I suspect many Republicans) would have done is work to build a better case against Saddam and Iraq so they could secure the support of our strongest allies before taking action. It’s not revisionist history to suggest this; it’s based on their actions and their words.

Recall what John Kerry’s said immediately following your selective quotation from his speech at Georgetown University, January 23, 2003:

“So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War. Regrettably the current Administration failed to take the opportunity to bring this issue to the United Nations two years ago or immediately after September 11th, when we had such unity of spirit with our allies. When it finally did speak, it was with hasty war talk instead of a coherent call for Iraqi disarmament. And that made it possible for other Arab regimes to shift their focus to the perils of war for themselves rather than keeping the focus on the perils posed by Saddam’s deadly arsenal. Indeed, for a time, the Administration’s unilateralism, in effect, elevated Saddam in the eyes of his neighbors to a level he never would have achieved on his own, undermining America’s standing with most of the coalition partners which had joined us in repelling the invasion of Kuwait a decade ago.

“In U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the United Nations has now affirmed that Saddam Hussein must disarm or face the most serious consequences. Let me make it clear that the burden is resoundingly on Saddam Hussein to live up to the ceasefire agreement he signed and make clear to the world how he disposed of weapons he previously admitted to possessing. But the burden is also clearly on the Bush Administration to do the hard work of building a broad coalition at the U.N. and the necessary work of educating America about the rationale for war.

“As I have said frequently and repeat here today, the United States should never go to war because it wants to, the United States should go to war because we have to. And we don’t have to until we have exhausted the remedies available, built legitimacy and earned the consent of the American people, absent, of course, an imminent threat requiring urgent action.

“The Administration must pass this test. I believe they must take the time to do the hard work of diplomacy. They must do a better job of making their case to the American people and to the world.”

Of course it’s easy for the Democrats to say that they would have done it differently and better since they were not in position to make those decisions. However, it’s faulty logic to suggest that the Democrats are Monday Morning Quarterbacking the invasion of Iraq when many, Kerry included, made it clear that their support of the invasion was contingent on sufficient proof that Saddam still had weapons and on a broad-based, multinational coalition of our allies supporting our actions.

Based on Bush’s actions leading up to the war and upon the ouster of Saddam— when he announced that we had prevailed in our efforts despite having not yet found WMDs or links to the 9/11 terrorists— it is clear that he rushed us into this invasion because he feared that further diplomacy and coalition building could have resulted in a missed opportunity to settle a score with Saddam Hussein.

Is it better than Saddam is out of power? I believe so. Could it have been done more efficiently and effectively? Undoubtedly. Would the Democrats have done it more efficiently and effectively? We’ll never know.

Sources:

Hans Blix:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/18/sprj.irq.blix.bush/

David Kay:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/

Bush “We Have Prevailed” Speech:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/01/bush.transcript/

Like environmental policy and tax cut details, invading Iraq was a hidden campaign agenda. Cheney and Powell spent three days in CIA headquarters cherry picking any and all flimsy evidence supporting the war. No White House has ever gone this far to manufacture predetermined conclusions. O’Neill and Clarke document that Iraq war planning began in a staff meeting just ten days into Bush’s tenure. 9-11 became another lame excuse. They also show how White House policy is secretly driven by Cheney-Rove-Hughes-Rice and that meetings with Secretaries and their staff are scripted, not a search for facts or truth. Politics, greed and personal vendettas are everything and the best interests of the nation are irrelevant. But what can you expect from our first appointed President and Cheney Puppet?

Jerome, the Democratic leadership was gung ho for the war while it was popular. As soon as it became less popular, only then they did start raging about how terrible an idea it was and how they always knew so in their infinite wisdom.

Once the war is popular again, as current successes suggest it will be, and the rest of the dominoes start falling in the middle east, they’ll flop once again. Go in whatever direction the wind is blowing—that’s the Democratic idea of “leadership.”

> Jerome, the Democratic leadership was gung
> ho for the war …

Not true. They were gung-ho for putting pressure on Saddam and they supported the plan to threaten invasion as a last resort. Nobody except Bush’s neocon-packed cabinet was saying anything about an invasion-no-matter-what.

-Cf

Nobody in the Bush cabinet said anything “about a war no matter what” and you know it. The Bush administration wrangled for MONTHS to get the UN to put enough pressure on Iraq. I really can’t believe the way absolute untruths get repeated in this way. Since Democrats are never held accountable for any bit of deceit they choose to spread, they can just keep making stuff up like that, throwing mud and hoping a little will stick.

Martin:

Since I’m not a Democrat, but I do support Kerry, I will focus on him, not the “Democratic leadership.” As it relates to this election, they’re one and the same.

On May 19, 2003, Kerry was interviewed by Chris Matthews on Hardball. This was less than three weeks after Bush declared victory, the point at which support for the war and our good feeling about it was probably at its peak. Here is an excerpt from that broadcast:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe the attack on Iraq was decided in the beginning by this president in order to protect the United States against a near and present danger, or was it a geopolitical or ideological campaign? Because the weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found. What evidence is there right now that that country was about to attack us in any way?

KERRY: Well, Chris, you used to raise this issue before when the debate was going on about Iraq. We were presented an enormous amount of evidence by the CIA, the intelligence community, and we voted accordingly and, I think, appropriately.

I think we have to wait and see. I think it is still too early, and the judgment isn’t in yet. We need to debrief more of the people who have turned themselves over. We need to debrief some of those who have been involved in those program. So, let’s wait on that judgment.

I still think it is good that Saddam Hussein is gone, and the question has not ever been can we win war. The question has always been the toughness of winning the peace. That’s why I and others advocated so forcefully that you needed to build a coalition and have a plan in place so that we shared the risks and responsibility and so that we were ready to do what was necessary to move into Iraq and keep order and keep the services in place and deliver it to the people of Iraq, a real transition immediately.

Instead, you’ve had looting, extraordinary destruction of the infrastructure, and frankly, the task has been made even more complicated.

MATTHEWS: Would you, if you had been president the last six months, have brought us into a war on Iraq or not?

KERRY: Chris, I would have done what was necessary, as I said, to exhaust all the possibilities and remedies. I’m glad we have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein…

MATTHEWS: But would there have been a war? And I guess that’s the question the Democrats are going to have to ask you for the next year. Would there have been a war in Iraq if you had been president? Howard Dean said there would not have been a war on his watch. Clearly, Joe Lieberman and the others wanted a war. Did you want a war or not? Do you think there would have been a war if you had been president. That’s the question most voters want to know the answer to.

KERRY: Well, it’s a completely hypothetical question, Chris, which doesn’t lay, you know, doesn’t put the truth of the moment on the table. The truth of the moment is that given the information we have and given what we were dealing with at the time, I think we did the right thing.

But apart from that, leaving that aside, I always said that our diplomacy should have been better. I said our diplomacy should have been more engaged, longer, but it doesn’t do us any good to go back to that now.

If I were president of the United States at the beginning of this, I would have worked through international community, as I said I would have, and built the kind of coalition that I think was necessary, not just to winning the war but to winning the peace.

And now the test is, will they be able to make up the distance lost over the course of the last month? I think it can be done, but it’s going to take an enormous commitment. Much longer. Much more troops. Much riskier. And much more costly than they told the American people.

(End excerpt)

His position and his answers were both appropriate and completely consistent with his previous positions and comments. I’d even say prescient. I don’t see someone crowing and taking credit for America’s victory in Iraq. I see a man who supported the idea of protecting America from the threat of Saddam’s weapons, but who previously had, and who continues to have, serious reservations about how the invasion of Iraq was planned and executed.

No flip. No flop. As much as the Bush/Cheney folks like to taint all their opponents as irresolute and spineless— using the “flip-flop” tactic with great effectiveness, I might add— that charge just doesn’t wash when it comes to Kerry and Iraq. Not to say the GOP won’t keep trying to drill that accusation into the minds of disinterested and uninformed voters.

> Nobody in the Bush cabinet said anything
> “about a war no matter what” and you know
> it.

Their actions spoke for themselves. Their efforts in the UN were perfunctory at best. The invasion clock was ticking even before they put the resolution in front of the security council.

The plan to pre-emptively and unilaterally invade Iraq was openly advocated by the neocons who compose the Bush Administration for an entire decade. Is it really that hard to see that they had no intention of not invading?

> the Bush administration wrangled for MONTHS…

As I pointed out before, the “wrangling” lasted less than one month. A proposal wasn’t even submitted to the UN until well after our invasion force was firmly in place and ready to roll. Nobody on earth believed that Saddam could do anything to avoid the invasion at that point. Which is why almost nobody signed on to the resolution: the Bush Administration was plainly not acting in good faith.

-Cf

Martin, perhaps you should read what the Bush-Cabinet-in-waiting was writing before they (“they” being Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and many other now-familiar name) took power:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqmiddleeast2000-1997.htm

It’s easy to see that these folks didn’t intend to let Bush’s 4-year window of opportunity go by without getting rid of Saddam.

-Cf

*bump*

Jerome? No flip flop? The only even halfway convincing defense against Kerry being a flip-flopper is to point out (as you have done) that he never takes a clear position. How can you change your position if you never really had one to begin with?

In that interview he says “we did the right thing,” but can’t even answer the question of whether or not we’d have gone to war if he was president. Still, he thinks it’s the “right thing,” though he doesn’t really know if it’s what he would have done! Perhaps he would have done the right thing—perhaps not. Can’t pin me down there, Chris!

He actually voted for the war, you know, before he voted against it. Breathtaking statesmanship.

Saying that our diplomacy “should have better” is the only clear point he makes. But I’d say Saddam Hussein’s diplomacy should have been better—he had only to take very simple steps to thwart the neocons and their supposed hellbent desire for war, but he chose not to take those steps and is now sitting in prison. The UN’s diplomacy should have been better. “Better diplomacy” doesn’t mean kneeling before the French and Kofi Annan, deferring to their continnued appetite for fat oil-for-food for kickbacks programs, ignoring all of your resolutions and never meaning what you say if you can’t get Syria, the Sudan and China to go along with “the right thing” (again, Kerry’s words). Saying “diplomacy should have better” is just cheap Monday morning quarterbacking.

If John Kerry were Randy Johnson, I have no doubt that he’d strike out every single batter. If he were F.D.R, he’d have won World War II in two weeks. No matter what it is, in hindsight he could have done it better. After all, he’s John Kerry and he never falls down.

Chris, what the “neocons” said before they were in office is precisely in line with Clinton’s official policy of regime change in Iraq. You may feel that “their actions spoke louder than their words” once they were in office, but it’s the president’s words that mattered—and HE gave Saddam multiple chances to avert war. Powell, the president (and Tony Blair) took the lead in the build-up to war, and when it came down to actually letting Iraq know we were serious, the UN failed big-time. Saddam played the UN like a fiddle for over TEN YEARS, even using bribes we now know, which UN officials willingly accepted.

It doesn’t take a neocon to see that the ball was entirely in Saddam’s court. Saddam, and his allies in the UN are responsible for the so-called “failure” of diplomacy. They could have easily averted war, and there’s nothing the neocons could have done about it.

Martin:

Kerry’s position is clear to me because I choose to listen to what he says, rather than to chant the mantra of the GOP that “he’s a flip-flopper,” the same charge leveled against every other politician who has had the misfortune of being in the Bush/Cheney crosshairs.

His position, as he clearly stated, was, is, and continues to be this:

Saddam is a bad guy, but military action against Iraq is justified only if there is a clear and present threat to the security of the United States AND only if the United States has exhausted all diplomatic means of achieving this goal AND only if the United States takes this action as part of a global coalition to ensure initial victory and ongoing peaceful reconstruction.

His statements on this have been clear and consistent. If one chooses to ignore that, it’s likely the partisan view of someone who desperately wants to buy into the “flip-flop” tag that Bush/Cheney love to pin on their opponents.

What would you have done if you were president Martin? Can you answer that question conclusively? Do you absolutely KNOW what you would have done?

No matter what you answer, the truth is that you don’t know. Because you did not have access to the same confidential information and advice that President Bush had. It’s an impossible question to answer.

What he said was that he doesn’t know what he would have done, but he does know— as does anyone else who takes the time to read his comments— that he believed that more diplomatic effort and more proof of Saddem’s present threat was necessary before our troops went in.

Jerome said:

“His [Kerry’s]position, as he clearly stated, was, is, and continues to be this:

Saddam is a bad guy, but military action against Iraq is justified only if there is a clear and present threat to the security of the United States AND only if the United States has exhausted all diplomatic means of achieving this goal AND only if the United States takes this action as part of a global coalition to ensure initial victory and ongoing peaceful reconstruction.”

That is false, false and false (in that order).

Those may be your positions—and they’re perfectly respectable ones (though misguided in my view and that of many others), but Kerry has never said those things. I wish he would though, because that would put the election out of his overnight—-those positions are political suicide. Kerry’s best hope is that enough people will do what you’re doing, putting an anti-war formula in his mouth and turning him into a Rorasach blot representing the antithesis of everything they disagree with.

Before the war, Kerry did not once invoke the “clear and present danger against the United States” line in regards to Iraq (as Clinton didn’t in regard to Kosovo either). In fact, Kerry voted for war if Iraq didn’t comply with UN Sanctions. Only later during the Dem primaries, driven left by a ranting and raving Howard Dean, did he say, jeez, I never thought Bush would actually use the authority I handed him.

And here’s the part of your post that is most grieviously wrong—you characterize Kerry position as exactly the opposite of what it actually is. Kerry bashed Howard Dean, remember, for insisting that any military action taken by the US would require a coalition. Remember the whole Dean thinks he needs a permission slip to act thing?

Kerry’s positions are clear indeed—if you can figure out what they are! They’re so clear that you’ve apparently mistaken him for Howard Dean.

Martin wrote:
> [Kerry] can’t even answer the question of
> whether or not we’d have gone to war if he
> was president.

Jerome wrote:
> What would you have done if you were president
> Martin? Can you answer that question
> conclusively? Do you absolutely KNOW what you
> would have done?

Good question, Jerome. It’s funny that Martin criticizes Kerry for not being able to say whether or not he would have invaded Iraq, while at the same time he denies that the Bush Administration had a nothing-will-stop-us plan to invade Iraq.

Martin, the reason why Kerry doesn’t say whether or not he would have invaded is because he actually would have had other plans besides invasion, and he would have tried some of them. He didn’t already know ahead of time how the whole process would end up. The Bush Administration, on the other hand, knew exactly how the process would end up: Invasion.

Martin wrote:
> Chris, what the “neocons” said before they
> were in office is precisely in line with
> Clinton’s official policy of regime change
> in Iraq.

Almost, except they constantly berated him for not invading. They never used the word invasion, but read their documents - you’ll see that a full-scale invasion designed to topple Saddam Hussein was their big-picture agenda. To say that the neocons agreed with Clinton is ridiculous - every page on their site criticises Clinton for not going far enough.

It’s so hilarious that before the war Republicans were constantly berating Clinton for not doing enough about Saddam and for not having a tough enough policy towards Saddam… And now that the war has turned out to be unpopular, they are using Clinton’s - and other Democrats’ - policies to try to shore up the steadily weakening foundation of their arguments for war, arguing that the “Bush Doctrine” was actually a simple continuation of Clinton policies! It’s pretty ironic to say the least.

> when it came down to actually letting Iraq
> know we were serious, the UN failed big-time.

You mean the re-institution of the inspection regimes at totally unprecedented levels of access and intensity? That sounds like a success to me. Again, I credit the Bush Administration for this success - a success that they threw away because it stood in the way of their real objective: Invasion.

> [Saddam] could have easily averted war, and
> there’s nothing the neocons could have done
> about it.

That’s an interesting angle. Tell me, what could Saddam have done to have averted the invasion?

-Cf

> In fact, Kerry voted for war if Iraq
> didn’t comply with UN Sanctions.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The October 2002 vote was not a “vote for war”. Such a legislative instrument exists under the Constitution: it’s called a “Declaration of War”. The October 2002 resolution was not such a thing. It authorized the President to try to exhaust non-military options and, failing that, to use intensive military options - including war.

Again, it is ironic that you and other Republicans argue vociferously that the October 2002 resolution was a blank check to go to war, and at the same time you argue that the Bush Administration was willing to try other options besides war. Your whole logic in the first case rests on the idea that the October resolution was effectively a declaration of war, while your logic in the second case rests on the idea that the period of time between October 2002 and March 2003 was a period in which the Bush Administration was, in good faith, seeking to try all non-invasion options before reluctantly ordering the invasion.

Which is it Martin? Was the October 2002 resolution a declaration of war, or did the Bush Administration seriously hope that Saddam would capitulate and that war could be averted? By your logic, both cannot be true. In reality, neither is true.

-Cf

Christopher, even Hans Blix said Hussein was stonewalling, lying, deliberatey misleading and not in compliance with UN Resolution 1441. You make it sound like he was some innocent victim doing his boy-scout-best to follow the rules until he got blindsided by those evil neo-cons.

All Hussein had to do was cooperate fully and stop playing games. Perhaps this would have frustrated some neocons, but with the threat of war breathing down his neck, why do you think Saddam behaved that way? Especially if the religious dogma of the left—that he had nothing to hide—was true?

Kerry would have had other plans than invade? Like what? Another ten years of sanctions? Kissing Chirac’s ring and saying please for the hundredth time? Outbidding Hussein for the illegal favors of UN officials? Kerry has no idea what he would have done because there was nothing left to do but beat an igominious retreat.

Bush tried intense diplomacy for almost a year before the Iraq war. In June and July of 2002 Iraq was refusing to live up to their inspection commitments. The administration got 1441 passed in early November, pushed for stronger enforcement and additional resolutions, and the war didn’t even start until March of the following year. There’s your “rush to war.”

It was a long process that Hussein could have stopped at any point with a simple stroke of the pen.

Chris,

The October 2002 vote was not a “vote for war”.

…It authorized the President to try to exhaust non-military options and, failing that, to use intensive military options - including war.

I’m not a lawyer and maybe that’s why your statement seems plainly contradictory. You’re right that congress has the power to declare war. You seem to be saying that unless it’s title, “Declaration of War” across the top that it isn’t a declaration of war. The title of the resolution says:

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. -congress.gov

Section A actually spells out that this resolution is an authorization for war.

(c) War Powers Resolution Requirements-

(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
-congress.gov

By the way we didn’t take months to remove Saddam, we took years. “Whereas, in 1990 Saddam invaded Kuwait…”

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region: Now, therefore, be it…

…(a) AUTHORIZATION- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

Hmm, so many bills, which one is which…

10/16/2002: Signed by President.

10/16/2002:
Became Public Law No: 107-243.
-congress.gov

I give you credit Martin, you stick to your guns. I’ll add that you’ve invoked the single plausible excuse for supporting Bush’s actions— everyone knows that Saddam deserved this and we waited long enough to make it happen.

But your characterization of Kerry’s words and position on Iraq continues to reflect the assertions of a GOP campaign that feeds the fire of those who want to fervently believe its rhetoric instead of hearing the truth.

The simple truth is that you’re wrong about Kerry. You’ll go down on this issue fighting like the good Republican soldier that you are, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong.

You say “Before the war, Kerry did not once invoke the ‘clear and present danger against the United States’ line in regards to Iraq.” And while he may never have spoken those exact words, the sentiment was unmistakably the same when he spoke from the floor of the Senate on October 9, 2002, just before casting his vote in favor of the resolution:

“If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent—and I emphasize “imminent”—threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.”

While it’s not exactly “clear and present,” I think Kerry’s use of “grave, imminent threat” are close enough. Elsewhere in his speech, Kerry makes clear that “others in the international community” includes the U.N.

In context, the paragraphs that precede and follow the quote above support my statement of Kerry’s position (frankly Martin, I’m not smart enough to come up with that on my own).

“Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

“In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days—to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

“If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent—and I emphasize “imminent”—threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

“Prime Minister Tony Blair has recognized a similar need to distinguish how we approach this. He has said that he believes we should move in concert with allies, and he has promised his own party that he will not do so otherwise. The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. And it is what can be done. If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.

“Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances.

“In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize “yet.” Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.

“The argument for going to war against Iraq is rooted in enforcement of the international community’s demand that he disarm. It is not rooted in the doctrine of preemption. Nor is the grant of authority in this resolution an acknowledgment that Congress accepts or agrees with the President’s new strategic doctrine of preemption. Just the opposite. This resolution clearly limits the authority given to the President to use force in Iraq, and Iraq only, and for the specific purpose of defending the United States against the threat posed by Iraq and enforcing relevant Security Council resolutions.”

Again, it’s clear to me. I have to believe Kerry’s position is clear to anyone reading it with an open mind.

Here’s the link. If you haven’t read Kerry October 9, 2002, speech, I suggest you do. If you have, I encourage you to do so again, but this time with a spirit of objectivity that I’m confident you have.

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/kerry-iraq.html

Well then, back to my guns. :)

I hadn’t actually read Kerry’s statement (thanks for the link), operating as I was under the assumption that if Kerry voted for a resolution he must have actually believed in it and intended to endorse what it said as opposed to his non-ratified vocalized hesitations. Apparently I’m wrong—that Kerry can vote for one thing and mean another. But forgive me—I’m a stranger to this level of Democratic “nuance” and subtlety. If we Republicans don’t believe in something, we simply don’t vote for it.

And anyway, what Kerry says in the quotes you provide is that we should try to achieve more effective inspections. After the Congressional resolution and the UN resolution, Bush tried just that for six more months. All Kerry was asking for was cooperation from “others” in the international community if we went to war. He never said, as you orginally said he did, that only the UN would count as “others.” In fact, he harshly crititized Dean for saying that the UN would have to sign on.

Let’s look at anoter quote, other than those you provide, from Flipper playing unilateralist on Crossfire:

“Clearly the allies may not like it, and I think that’s our great concern - where’s the backbone of Russia, where’s the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity: they’re now climbing into a box and they will have enormous difficulty not following up on this if there is not compliance.”

Well, compliance didn’t occur. The Russians and the French crawled precisely into that box, as Kerry anticipated they would. And surprise! The Democrats moved left in the primaries, and the French and Russians had to move over and make room in that box when John Kerry found it politically expedient to crawl in with them.

Regardless of what Democrats might be using as pretense to their criticism, the critique is still valid.

The al Qaeda argument was known to be baseless at the time* and the WMD argument was certainly dubious. And there are reasonable arguments that this wasn’t the most pressing humanitarian concern (War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention, Human Rights Watch). So the evaluation that Iraq was a critical threat to US security and global stability that required immediate military action with severe long term consequences is, in my opinion, bad leadership. Despite the advice given by the Democrats cited and despite post-911, a thorough administrator should be able to conclude from all available advice that the Iraq situation would be best solved through UN arbitration with the very clear resolution that any discovery of possession or purchase of fissle would be considered an act of war and responded to accordingly. This is the proper behavior of a president who respects international law and wishes to maintain the moral high ground in a potentially volatile situation that may place at risk peoples not under our sovereignty. It’s also the behavior of a president who wants to make available the greatest number of forces for police action in the War on Terror.

I agree that the Democrats should stop with the pretense and go straight at the facts.

*National Security Estimate 2002

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war…

Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa’ida… could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.

- In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.

Clearly, from the advice he was given here Bush should have seen that Saddam was not engaging in terrorist activity and only if desperate he might decide to take the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists. Interestingly, the report suggests this scenario “if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable…” So one might also reason that the advice Bush was given states that a US posture of imminent invasion may very well cause these things to happen, an attack on US soil, allying with al Qaeda. A convenient self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Bush fan’s “We tried going to the UN, but they wouldn’t act” argument is just delusional. It’s crystal clear that any UN solution short of invasion would have been unacceptable to Bush.

Cheney was terrified that the UN inspectors would find nothing, and that there would be no pretense to invade.

Bush did not go to the UN looking for a solution to the problem. He went looking for a UN rubber stamp for his invasion. It also served as a convenient cover for Blair, to keep him in the game.

To hold up Bush’s UN adventure as a failure of diplomacy is just ignoring the story Bush & Cheney have told themselves.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html

—————————

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam’s missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

————————-

Eric: Please open a dictionary and look up the following two words:

1) Authorization

2) Declaration

You’ll see that Congress’s “authorization” doesn’t mean that Congress told the President “We want you to declare war.” They said “You have the power and our permission to declare war.”

The fact that you think the two are equivalent speaks volumes to the reasons why Republicans cannot and should not be trusted with power any more.

-Cf

Timothy,

Very questionable source. Let’s see if this gets reported somewhere believable, then we can discuss what it means.

Martin,

I remember reading the complete transcript from the Crossfire interview after seeing Kerry criticized for those statements and thinking that it was another case of taking a few sentences out of context to prove a point. I can’t find that full transcript now. If you have a link, I would appreciate it.

As for Kerry saying one thing and voting for another, I’ll admit that I had that fear as I read through the resolution a few weeks ago. In it’s “background” section, it paints a picture of Saddam and Iraq that begs the question: “How can you interpret this as anything but a mandate to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam?” But later, in the section of the resolution that outlines Congress’s true directive to the president, Kerry’s words and the resolution come together.

Let’s look at each of these relevant sections separately:

SEC. 2. SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the President to—

(a) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq and encourages him in those efforts; and

(b) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions.

In short, Congress wants the president to use diplomatic efforts to “strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions applicable to Iraq” AND “obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council” to ensure compliance.

The only way to interpret this is that Congress is directing President Bush to work with the UN Security Council to get Iraq to comply. Agreed?

You have argued that Bush did make these efforts, but as someone mentioned in a previous post, Bush’s actions were clearly those of a president only interested in getting the stamp of approval from our allies, not working toward a consensus. His recent “kinder, gentler” (I couldn’t resist) attitude toward our allies supports this argument.

Then comes this:

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.

Here, Congress says that Bush can only invade Iraq to “defend our national security” AND to enforce all UN resolutions against Iraq. Again, the language is clear.

Finally, there is this:

b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.

In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and

(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

In this section, Martin, Congress leaves a loophole that Bush invoked to invade Iraq. Rather than say that Bush can use military force only if further diplomatic efforts would fail to protect our national security AND likely fail to result in Iraq complying with UN resolutions, Congress used the word “or.”

While there is no way that Bush could have conclusively determined that our national security was threatened by Iraq, he could reasonably argue that previous failures by Iraq to comply with UN resolutions proved that further diplomatic efforts were unlikely to result in compliance.

This subtle difference left Bush with the leeway to wage his war on Iraq without it being the “illegal war” that some on the Left complain that it is.

This section also references the 9/11 terrorists connection that was also unproven (and remains so). But it also talks about terrorists in general, a connection that Bush can justify.

The spirit of the resolution, as I see it and as I imagine Senator Kerry sees it, required Bush to exhaust all reasonable diplomatic efforts and to prove that Iraq posed a threat to our national security before military action was warranted. In his statements prior to the war, Kerry made it clear that he expected no less from Bush.

You seem to argue that Kerry voted for this resolution even though it was inconsistent with his position on Iraq. I’d argue that Kerry’s (and many others’) understanding of the meaning of their vote differed substantially from the Bush Administration’s interpretation.

As for why Kerry cast a Yea vote, here’s what he said, quoted from the October 9, 2002, speech I linked to previously:

“As the President made clear earlier this week, ‘Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.’ It means ‘America speaks with one voice.’”

I believe that Senator Kerry acted in good faith by casting his vote to support the president in his efforts to use diplomacy and the THREAT of military action to coerce Iraq into complying with the UN resolutions. President Bush, in my opinion, did not.

You’ll see that Congress’s “authorization” doesn’t mean that Congress told the President “We want you to declare war.” They said “You have the power and our permission to declare war.”

The fact that you think the two are equivalent speaks volumes to the reasons why Republicans cannot and should not be trusted with power any more.

Or maybe the fact that your democratic friends in congress handed the President cart blanche means they shouldn’t be in office.

Let’s examine your statement. They weren’t telling Bush to declare war they were leaving the decision up to him. Ok.

I want you to look a word as well: semantics. You fail to impress me with your circular logic. They didn’t declare war because they authorized Bush to declare war?

Your original statement was that the resolution was not a “vote for war”. It most certainly was. Anyone who understood the bill and did not want to authorize war voted no.

Here, Congress says that Bush can only invade Iraq to “defend our national security” AND to enforce all UN resolutions against Iraq. Again, the language is clear.

Jerome,

You can’t get away with making this into a strict test for declaring war. How did they define “defend our national security AND to enforce all UN resolutions against Iraq”?

The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate…

RE: Kerry’s two sided nuancing…

“As the President made clear earlier this week, ‘Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.’ It means ‘America speaks with one voice.’”

He can say whatever he wants as to what the bill really means, but it doesn’t sound like he even read it if he thought it just meant ‘America speaks with one voice’ and it didn’t give the President power to go to war.

Kerry’s right. If Bush didn’t want UN legitimacy involved with whether he went to war, he could have just tossed it out. Of course, a large section of both the international community and our own citizenry would have then turned against Bush’s war effort, and even Great Britain would have had trouble taking our side. The resolution merely said to Saddam that War, when it came, would be fully backed by the American people. There would be no daylight as far as the invasion went.

Trouble is, Bush built his war and that authorization to wage war on a faulty foundation of cherry-picked intelligence. They used courtroom scare tactics to shape the raw, unverified intelligence to their ends instead of seeking out the real state of affairs through better sorted and verified leads. An overriding belief in what’s right is of no value when one does not have reliable, correct awareness about the situation.

It’s unfortunate that you mistake your candidate’s Jus’folks manner of speaking for a lack of nuance. Bush may not have the talent for extemporaneous verbal tap-dancing that Kerry does, but he sure as hell employs it. If he’s doesn’t have stockpiles of WMDs to speak of, he has weapons of mass destruction related program activities

His speeches are filled with code phrases that raise his profile with his evangelical base. I don’t know how you don’t consider that nuance- it’s a small detail of importance.

Even if his phrasings are relatively simple, often times, what he doesn’t say is just as nuanced, if not more, than anything Kerry says. When Bush accuses Kerry of backing a Gasoline tax, he neglects to tell you that it’s an offhand, off the record remark that hardly anybody can find a verifiable source for, much less a real vote on policy They also neglect to tell you that a member of Bush’s staff is on record advocating a gasoline tax. When they give the impression that he’s voted repeatedly against supplies for troops, They neglect to say that all the different votes they portray are the same damn vote. When they say Kerry supported raising taxes 300 times, they neglect to say that their calculations include every time he didn’t meet their expectations for lower taxes. And that includes times in which he voted for more moderate tax cuts, times where he voted to allow tax cuts to phase out, where he voted to reduce a tax cut, as well as any time he actually supported a true tax hike.

It’s these distortions and tap-danced definitions of these terms which have clear meanings that should alert you to a fact that’s quite obvious to those who have seen the evidence: Bush is just as dishonest as Kerry is, if not more.

The worst part is, Bush stakes his reputation on being a straight-shooter. So to these campaign ads that don’t pass the smell test, we must add the additional stench of hypocrisy.

Grow up. Nuances are just important details, shades of meaning, and just about any candidate who’s gotten anywhere in politics has somebody handling those nuances, if not themselves. You can say, I hate nuanced speakers, but then, if you’re honest with yourself, you should be criticizing Bush’s falseness of phrase too.

> Or maybe the fact that your democratic friends
> in congress handed the President cart blanche
> means they shouldn’t be in office.

I have a lot of sympathy for this argument. It is demonstrably wrong for anyone to trust the Bush Administration at its word. The Democratic members of Congress who voted for the resolution made the mistake of trusting the Bush Administration. Beleive me, that mistake is not something I have forgiven.

> Anyone who understood the bill and did not want
> to authorize war voted no.

If you take the words “the bill” above and replace them with the words “the deceitful nature of the Bush Administration”, then I am in wholehearted agreement: those who voted “No” on the bill understood that the Bush Administration was going to invade no matter what.

Which brings us back to the whole origin of this tangent:

You still haven’t addressed the inherent contradiction between your assertion that this resolution was a declaration of war and your assertion that during the period of time between October 2002 and March 2003 the Bush Administration was actually trying to succeed in disarming Saddam without resorting to an invasion — or that they were even entertaining the possibility that the invasion might not happen.

-Cf

Actually, nobody declared war or delegated that specific power. We had an authorization of the use of force.

I wonder how long would have been long enough to wait for Iraq to comply with the UN? If the time had been one more month, would that be ok? How about one more year? How long are you willing to wait for this man to comply. When your advisors and the best intelligence that you have available is telling you that Saddam is a danger to this country, I submit that waiting for diplomacy and international approval any longer than absolutely necessary is irresponsible. I am glad that there was a president in office who wasn’t willing to wait any longer. Each day that we waited was one more day to hide weapons, both conventional and other. I am glad that the bombing and dying is happening on their streets not ours. Not only that, but it is soldiers that are being attacked, not my children on their way to school. If you are opposed to fighting them there, then they will end up bringing it here. 9/11 has taught you nothing if it didn’t teach you that our enemies need to be confronted. You are all welcome to live in a September tenth, diplomacy and UN world if you wish. I choose to live in the real world, and err on the side of caution when it comes to keeping my family safe.

Mark:

You consider Bush’s actions to be “erring on the side of caution”? I think he could have erred on the side of caution by working to get more allies involved, particularly some from the Middle East to dilute the perception that the Christian West was invading a sovereign Muslim nation. He also could have done more to convince us and our allies that the weapons you speak of still existed in Iraq, which it now appears they did not.

Instead of erring on the side of caution, Bush’s irresponsible actions have put our country in greater danger. The fact that it’s just our “soldiers that are being attacked” gives us the illusion of security here in the United States. But if this invasion has truly reinvigorated the al Qaeda that appeared to be on the run back in 2002, as some experts say it has, then it will be a fleeting sense of security at best.

I agree with you that our enemies need to be confronted. But we need to choose our battles. We chose a good one in Afghanistan, but we abandoned it far too soon to divert our attention to a battle we couldn’t afford to fight. At least not when those who attacked us on 9/11 are still out there and possibly getting stronger.