Documented: Comments from the Libertarian blogger Willis Hart in which he acts as an apologist for the preznit who lied us into two illegal wars. Not by indicating support for the Iraq war, but by insisting that bush did not lie about WMD and by aggressively playing up the "both sides do it" meme (The "Both Sides Do It" Mentality Favors Republicans).
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 201 AT 7:10 PM
0 For 2... 29 Democratic Senators voted in favor of the Iraq War authorization. I ask you here - how could this have ever happened? My theory pertaining to it is that they were simply being weasels. They all (or most of them anyway) guessed wrong on the first Gulf War and they simply didn't want to be seen as "weak on defense" again.
I mean, sure, the Bush administration wasn't exactly forthright in terms of the intelligence (this, though it also must be stated that the Senate itself was privy to the same NIE - the idiots just didn't bother to read it), etc. but, come on, to have given this neophyte and mediocre intellect out Texas a blank check was absolutely insane.
a) These Senators should have known that Iraq constituted a multi-ethnic country, replete with copious amounts of ancient hatred on the verge of bubbling over. And b) they also should have known that, no matter how much of an SOB that Mr. Hussein was (and, clearly, he was), he was also the only significant counter-balance to Iran (you remember them, right, the second member of the Axis of Evil?). The way that I see it, peeps, if the administration wanted an authorization to take out any Iraqi WMD (if in fact they existed, I'm saying), fine, that would have been an appropriate vote. But for these folks to have given Mr. Bush an open authorization to also engage in regime-change, nation-building, and counter-insurgency, that, me-buckos, was absolute insanity. And, yes, the 29 Democrats and 48 Republicans who voted to do so should forever be ashamed of themselves.
[Paul Pillar, the former CIA analyst in charge of coordinating the assessment on Iraq, in regards to the NIE said "there was an insufficient critical skepticism about some of the source material... I think there should have been agnosticism expressed in the main judgments. It would have been a better paper if it were more carefully drafted in that sort of direction". Thomas Ricks described the NIE as "a political document that made the case for war" and that it "did not accurately reflect the information available inside the intelligence community"].
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2011 AT 8:21 AM POST.
On George W. Bush and War Criminality 2... 1) There was no territorial gain. 2) There was no subjugation. Deposing the worst mass-murder since Pol Pot, dismantling his Republican Guard, and allowing for free and fair elections is subjugation only in the minds of people who hate George W. Bush (and who evidently don't know the difference between interference and subjugation).
3) A case could be made for self-defense. Is it a case that I personally would have made? No. I was against the toppling Hussein because I feared a possible civil war and the fact that we still needed him as a counterbalance to Iran. But I wasn't President. 4) I'm still waiting to hear the precise U.N. resolution which has approved of the sextupling of drone attacks in Northern Pakistan by President Obama and why, if in fact there isn't one, HE isn't a war criminal, too (the fact that there have been thousands of civilian casualties, etc.)
5) The U.N. is a rump organization comprised of, in no small measure, miscreant nations/dictatorships. To cite them as the sole determinant of what constitutes war criminality is something that I reject. I mean, really, where were they when Saddam was gassing the Kurds, and where are they now with all of the atrocities happening in Syria (Assad is making Gadaffi look like a damn piker)? 6) I'm assuming that, if in fact Mr. Bush ever WAS indicted for war crimes, the fellow would also get a fair trial (I mean, they gave one to Adolph Eichmann, right?). OR, is he already considered guilty by a bevy of marginal bloggers and a spate of ivory tower intellectuals? I'm curious.
7) Referencing what Bush did in 2003 (even assuming the most cynical of motivations) with what Hitler did in 1939 is an extremely discomforting comparison and I... Well, I'll just leave it at that. 8) And let's just assume that what Mr. Bush did WAS a war crime, is there not in this area of law a continuum, too? Just as you wouldn't compare a person convicted of vehicular homicide to John Wayne Gacy, you probably wouldn't compare Bush to Hitler, Pol Pot, Hussein, D'Aubuisson, Amin, the Hamids, etc., either. I mean, I certainly wouldn't.
9) Regime change in Iraq, as one of the stated objectives of American foreign policy, didn't originate with George Bush. It originated with Bill Clinton in 1998 and was also affirmed in Congress via the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998 (this, in response to Saddam having kicked out the weapons inspectors). Clinton, not Bush. 10) The Authorization for the Use of Force Bill that passed both houses of Congress in 2002 had 23 whereas clauses justifying the war. Only TWO of them in any way dealt with WMD. Two.
11) The yellow cake and aluminum tubes arguments were never mentioned in either the U.S. Use of Force Bill OR the U.N. Council ultimatum 1441. And they weren't even part of the intelligence report that the Congress saw. They were only used to persuade the U.N. (yes, that in fact WAS a bad thing). 12) Every major intelligence agency in the world; the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Israelis, the Jordanians, etc., thought that Iraq had WMD. Yes, they were wrong but they were ALL wrong. 13) If Bush was so gung-ho about going to war in Iraq, then why did he a) wait a full three months after the ultimatum (U.N. resolution 1441) expired before engaging and b) give Mr. Hussein an 11th hour ultimatum to "leave the country or face war". Hussein could have readily left for Russia and Aziz taken over and war would have been avoided.
14) Yes, the first Gulf War had a U.N. resolution authorizing force. But the only reason that it did was because China abstained, and the only reason that China abstained (as opposed to vetoing the measure, which is what they really wanted to do) was because they were feeling isolated after the Tiananmen Square massacre and didn't want to become even more isolated. Ergo, the first gulf war was almost a "war crime", too. 15) Congress was privy to the same intelligence that the White House was. This, via the N.I.E..
16) No evidence has ever been found of White Hose manipulation of the evidence. This from the 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee (unanimous); "The Committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so. When asked whether analysts were pressured in any way to alter their assessments or make their judgments conform with Administration policies on Iraq's WMD programs, not a single analyst answered "yes".
[False according to phase two of the Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq which concluded that "the [bush] Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent"].
17) And, this, from the bipartisan Silberman-Robb report of 2005; These (intelligence) errors stem from poor tradecraft and poor management. The Commission found no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.
[False according to a 2/23/2003 NYT article that says "CIA Aides Feel Pressure In Preparing Iraqi Reports].
18) In spite of all this, I still think that the Iraq War was a stupid and shortsighted enterprise that could have and should have been avoided. 19) P.S. Just to be fair here, while it's clear that there wasn't any manipulation of the evidence/Congress, a case COULD in fact be made that the administration manipulated the public. There was a lot of doubt in that N.I.E. and none of it was forwarded to the public or the media. Now, whether this fact constitutes a war crime or not, that I might be willing to concede (though, yes, it would also incriminate the Congress).
I truly think that he [Jeb Bush] would have been a much better President than his frequently maligned and older brother [gwb] was.
Maligned was probably the wrong word (though, no, I don't believe that all of the criticisms of Mr. Bush have been exactly fair). I should have said hapless or incompetent. Happy?
And I don't even really dislike the guy [gwb]. I just wish that he had listened more to Powell and less to fellows like Wolfowitz and Perle. And in terms of his motivation, I don't know, I'm not a mind-reader like wd. In Thomas Ricks's book, "Fiasco" (which wasn't exactly a flattering read for Mr. Bush), he states that the regime change advocates were actually LOSING the debate early on and that it wasn't until 9/11 that guys like Perle and Wolfowitz finally started getting some traction. If you were to force me to give an opinion on this, I would say that the decision to invade Iraq was probably more a function of group-think (I believe that this was Scott McClellan's assessment in his book, too) than it was the result of some sinister, diabolical cabal. I'm sure, though, that wd would disagree. [False. In his book McClellan says the bushies engaged in a "culture of deception" to sell the war].
TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2012 AT 9:05 PM
Survey Question - Who's Least Evil?... Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Francisco Franco, Ismail Pasha, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin, Mao Tse-tung, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Leopold 2, Kim Il Sung, or George W. Bush? Me - I'm kinda leaning toward Georgie.
As usual, wd lies about my record. I was against the Iraq War FROM DAY ONE; MEANING that I was against it BEFORE Biden, BEFORE Clinton, and BEFORE Kerry. I'm just not sure that what Mr. Bush did rises to the level of a war crime (the fact that neither did Clinton and NATO get permission from the U.N. for their military action, either, Mr. Obama bombing the snot out of Northern Pakistan, etc.), that's all.
As for Mr. Bush "lying", I don't know if he lied or he didn't. Lying would have been him knowing that Iraq didn't have WMD and then trying to con the American people into thinking that they did. I tend to think more along the lines of what Thomas Ricks, Richard Haas, and Scott McClellan said when they talked about group-think and cherry-picking. No, it isn't as sexy or inflammatory as Mr. Bush being a war criminal but it's certainly a hell of a lot saner.
[Note: WTNPH says "I was against it BEFORE Biden, BEFORE Clinton, and BEFORE Kerry" but these people were never FOR war with Iraq. The bush WH said the purpose of the Iraq war vote was pressure Iraq into agreeing to "complete, unlimited inspections". See SWTD #312].
Give me the full, exact quote [from former WH press secretary Scott McClellan who said bush relied on propaganda "in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option" and engaged in a "culture of deception"].
And I'm still not exactly what these crimes are. Not first having a U.N. resolution? Well, that would make LBJ, Clinton, and Obama war criminals, too. The fact that the enterprise went poorly? You can't get any more poorly than Vietnam. The fact that Bush emphasized certain intelligence and not other intelligence? You say that he lied but maybe he actually believed that Saddam had wmd and was simply wrong. The fact that there have been 100,000 plus civilian deaths? According to Human Tights Watch, only 2,363 civilian deaths have been the result of U.S. air-strikes. The vast, VAST, percentage of Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing other Iraqis. Yes, we opened up the cork and that was stupid, but the Sunnis and Shia despise each other and it would have happened eventually. Bush fucked up but to put him in the same category as Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and Leopold is exceedingly dumb, IMO.
[Dervish Sanders said] "Perhaps Bush isn't as bad as Hitler, but he's still a war criminal". Wow, magnanimous. And according to Thomas Ricks's book, "Fiasco" (hardly a complimentary missive on Bush), the regime change components of the Bush administration were actually losing the argument and it was only after 9/11 that they finally started getting some traction. And in order for Mr. Bush to be guilty of lying in the ACTUAL sense of the term, you would also have to prove that he he knew that Saddam didn't have wmd and then purposefully told the American people otherwise. Yes, he was clearly wrong but you cannot prove that he was lying (or at least you haven't proven it to me). And these are the numbers from reputable sources on Iraqi civilian deaths; Iraq Body Count - 116,000, AP - 110,000, Iraq Family Health Survey - 151,000, and Wiki Leaks Iraq War Logs - 109,000. I mean, I don't know where you got the 1.4 million but it does seem a little extreme.
Sorry, wd, but the evidence is overwhelming that Mr. Voth is lying through his teeth. It's a little something called evidence and a paper trail. Give me something similar with Bush and then we can talk. [Willis is saying bush didn't lie about WMD].
SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2012 AT 3:41 PM POST
Exceedingly... What would be my answer to the question, "So, how wealthy do you think that you'd be if you had 10-spot for every time that wd typed the words, George Bush war criminal, into a search engine?" [Translation: Someone who points out gwb's war criminality is to be made fun of].
Bush never targeted civilians, period. And for you to imply that he did is despicable. And you gave me no evidence that Bush KNEW that there weren't weapons of mass destruction and then lied to the American public that there were some. No testimony. No paper trail. Zero.
It's never good enough to simply say (as I and others such as Les have) that Mr. Bush was a bad President. He's gotta put him in the same category as Bashir al Assad, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, etc. (never minding, of course, that Mr. Obama has in certain regards been even more reckless than Bush). I mean, it's almost as if he's [Dervish Sanders] got some sort of sick pathology about Bush. [Translation: bush isn't a war criminal, only a "bad president"].
And, like I said, Les, nobody here is saying that Bush was great or anything. Just that maybe he [bush] wasn't a malevolent, war-mongering dictatorial fiend... And the FDR insertion was essentially me playing devil's advocate here (you kinda already knew that, though, right?).
I was against the Iraq War (I thought that we has Saddam relatively bottled up) but I also realize that there was at least some ambiguity regarding WMD (Scott Ritter's inconsistent statements alone) and a strong case could have been made for deposing Saddam Husein on humanitarian grounds alone (he attempted genocide on the Kurds,for Christ). And for wd to so shamelessly and moronically go down this road (especially considering that Obmama is a full 90% of Bush) is very unfortunate, I think.
JULY 11, 2012 AT 3:53 PM Afghanistan.
The facts have eluded wd yet again, I see. a) The Afghanistan war was a bipartisan initiative that was strongly supported by every Democrat whose name isn't Cynthia McKinney. IN FACT, the Democrats were extremely critical of Mr. Bush for him not having spent ENOUGH time and effort on it... b) Mr. Obama greatly escalated the war in Afghanistan, not listening to the good advice of his much more experienced Vice President, Mr. Biden (the end result being that more American soldiers have died in that country under Obama than Bush)... c) Obama has SEXTUPLED the number of drone attacks in Pakistan to the tune of thousands of dead Pakistani civilians....d) Obama has continued with the Bush policies of rendition, warrantless wire-tapping, indefinite detention, etc... What, you have some problems with the 90% figure, wd? OK, I'll drop the son of a bitch to 85%.
And you're wrong about Mr. Bush wanting to attack Iraq from the first day of his Presidency. Thomas Ricks, whose book, "Fiasco", is probably the most seminal work on Iraq, says that the regime change proponents (Feith, Wolfowitz, etc.) were actually LOSING the debate in inside the White House to the containment faction (Powell, Armitage, etc.) early on. It was only after 9/11 when the tables started turning and, as Richard Haas has stated in his missive, the regime change folks started winning. You really need to get your head out of your ass and start reading some serious stuff.
JULY 12, 2012 AT 8:40 PMTalking privately with WHO?... And Mr. O'Neill's book was totally discredited by Thomas Ricks and Richard Haas, neither of who had an agenda... Rumsfeld (and second-hand Rumsfeld, no less)? That's what you're basically reduced to now? Very weak research, wd. Learn something and read the Ricks book. It's pretty tough on Bush and, so, you'll probably like it.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2012 AT 4:44 PM POST
Some Thoughts on the Second Iraq War... I was against the second Iraq War (I was actually against the first one, too, but that's another story). I feared that it would destabilize the region and possibly pull us into another quagmire. I also didn't think that it was necessary (I thought that we had Hussein pretty boxed up and he would have never given his WMD to terrorists anyway). And, while I still don't think that it was a good idea (or that it was properly executed), time in fact does heal/allows for some perspective;
a) Saddam Hussein was one of the top 5-10 worst mass murderers of the 20th Century. He brutalized his people and actually attempted genocide on the Iraqi Kurds.
b) A strong case could have been made for deposing this asshole on humanitarian grounds alone. That was the rationale for taking out Gadaffi and Hussein was infinitely worse.
c) Perhaps a better course would have been to simply take out Hussein and his two despicable offspring and then try a negotiated settlement with some of the saner elements of the Ba'athist party.
d) There was going to be a civil war in Iraq eventually anyway (Hussein being toppled and the Shia looking for revenge). Is it not at least possible that the American presence there made it less of a bloodbath?
e) There was at least SOME ambiguity regarding WMD; Scott Ritter prior to his "epiphany", George Tenet calling it a slam-dunk, most of the European countries assuming that Saddam possessed them, etc.. And, besides, Saddam Hussein was a bald-faced liar. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that the son of a bitch could have had something squirreled away and after 9/11 Bush probably figured, why risk it (his malfunction being that he evidently thought that it would all be a cakewalk)?
Look, like I said, I was against it and continue to think that it was boneheaded. But if we're going to give FDR and Churchill slack for purposefully incinerating infants and the elderly, maybe we can give some slack to W, too.
1) There is NOTHING in the Geneva Conventions of 1864 which states that war criminality is allowed if the other side starts the war. And, as Professor Grayling has so eloquently stated, these war crimes did virtually NOTHING to end the war prematurely. If anything, they rallied the opposition to more solidarity.
2) There certainly WAS ambiguity. Your own CIA director (a holdover from the Clinton administration) says that it was a slam dunk and that isn't ambiguity? 3) And you've given me absolutely ZERO hard data that President Bush lied. No documentation, no inconsistent statements (just something from O'Neill that has been thoroughly discredited by a REAL reporter, Thomas Ricks), nothing. 4) And your mind-reading of Mr. Bush and his motives is purely speculation (a specialty of yours).
5) Yeah, the Libya campaign was a lot shorter. But nobody knew that going in and it is more than conceivable that that could have backfired, too. Like I said, I now think that we should have blown to smithereens Hussein and worked with the Ba'athists but Bush didn't choose that. And, yeah, that's on him. 6) And, yeah, we tilted toward Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. government apparently didn't want a Shia crescent going all the way to Jordan.
And there's nothing in that Corn piece which proves that Bush lied, just that he damned cherry-picked AND WE ALREADY KNEW THAT. There's a little something called group-think (you should be aware of that, you do it all the time with your 100% progressive agenda), wd. Maybe Bush did do it for political reasons but maybe he didn't. And it would have been nice if Mr. Corn had also included in his piece that it wasn't just Mr. Bush who didn't read the NIE, that it was also the 29 Democratic Senators who ignored it. That might have made a difference, too, no? [It would if it were true, which it is not].
SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2012 AT 12:32 PM POST
Miscellaneous 134... 1) To all of those folks who say that the Bush administration failed to connect the dots and prevent 9/11 (and I'm not necessarily saying that I disagree with them, mind you), I really have to ask them. Is it also not possible that the Obama administration failed to connect the dots and prevent the Fort Hood massacre at the hands of that Major Hassan (the fact that there were a fair number of tea leaves there as well, begging to be read, etc.)?
2) Here's a fact that just totally blew me away. The British invasion act with the most appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" wasn't the Beatles, or the Stones, or the Animals, or Herman's Hermits. The British invasion act with the most appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" was the Dave Clark Five. Yeah, that's right, folks. Those sons of bitches made a grand total of 18 appearances and pretty much blew the roof off the joint every time (the loudest and rowdiest of the British bands at that time save for possibly The Who). It's kind of too bad that we don't seem to remember them all that much (they eventually did make the Rock and Roll hall of Fame in 2008).
3) My opinion of George W. Bush and the second Iraq War is EXACTLY THE SAME as that of President Obama and John Kerry. a) It was a mistake for the dude to invade Iraq. b) The Iraq War was hugely mismanaged. And c) the whole thing falls considerably short of a war crime. If I'm an apologist for George W. Bush, it seems that I'm in pretty damned distinguished company.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2014 AT 9:45 PM POST
The One Criticism of Bush by the Progressives that I Actually DO Kind of Agree With... It's the one in which they say that the dude went into Iraq for political reasons. Not that I necessarily see it in quite the same sinister manner obviously but, yes, after 9/11, I do think that Mr. Bush wanted to do something big and, being that he thought that Iraq was going to be an easy undertaking (who, after all, would object to the removal of the one of the top 5-10 biggest killers of the 20th Century?), he figured, "Why the hell not and if it helps me politically (the fact that I'd be looking majorly tough against terrorism, etc.) I am more than OK with it.".
Of course the problem with this line of reasoning is that it was as wrong as wrong could be. a) It wasn't easy in that apparently Mr. Bush didn't realize that Iraq was an ethnically diverse country with ancient scores to settle and zero experience with democracy and that Muslim folks in general just don't like being occupied. And b) there weren't any WMD (though, yes, I do entertain the possibility that some of the weapons were shipped over to Syria) in any regard.
Now, this isn't to say that the deposing of Saddam was necessarily an incorrect thing to do (his counterbalancing of Iran, notwithstanding); his genocidal actions against the Kurds alone being sufficient. But you gotta be at least a little bit smart about it the thing. The fact that the Bush administration totally de-Baathified the government and disbanded the military represented to me a huge lack of understanding of the region and a strategy the likes of which we've never really recovered from. So, yeah, at least in this situation, Obama WAS given a lousy hand.
Thank you, Marcus. I was going to mention that (and credit you) but was waiting to see if you would do it on your own. It's a very valid point and while it doesn't necessarily let President Bush off the hook, it underscores some of that murkiness mentioned by BB. As you can probably tell, dmarks, my view on the Iraq War has modified somewhat. I've gone from being completely against it to now recognizing that Saddam in fact did have to go but that it would have been far better to have worked within the existing political framework (cutting a deal with Tariq Aziz and some of those individuals). That way we could have gotten rid of one of the worst war criminals in human history AND retained that counterweight against Iran (I'm basically pissing off both sides, in other words).
SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2014 AT 6:33 PM POST
On the "Who is Worse; Bush or Obama?", Sweepstakes... I honestly don't have a dog in this crap-fest but if I had to say which of the two was more culpable when it comes to the current sorrowful state in Iraq, I would probably have to go with Mr. Bush. I mean, it was W (against the advice of Colin Powell and Dick Armitage) who initially opened up this hornet's nest and I cannot tell you how many times that I've heard it stated that, if in fact Mr. Bush's goal was simply to get rid of Saddam (which, in retrospect, was a noble thing in that the fellow was probably worse than Gaddafi, Mubarak, the Saudi royal family, and the Assads combined), he could have done so relatively easily and in a way that in no way, shape, or form would have strengthened either al Qaeda or Iran (this, in that the army would not have been disbanded and the Ba'ath party would have still retained power).
Now, this isn't to say that Mr. Obama has handled things (in Iraq and throughout the Middle-East) all that swimmingly, either, but the fact of the matter here is that Mr. Bush (much like Presidents McKinley, Wilson, Truman, Johnson, and Nixon prior to him) significantly overestimated the reach of American military and moral power and the results, quite frankly, have been disastrous.
May 16, 2015 AT 10:22:00 PM EDT
And it wasn't just Bush who messed up. Back in September of 2002, every member of the House and Senate was granted full access to the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and WMD. It was a 92 page document and was fully loaded with doubts, ambiguities, and disagreements with Mr. Bush's assertions. The problem? Well, according to Thomas Ricks's stellar book, "Fiasco", not even a handful of these Congressman and Senators (48 lazy Republicans and 29 lazy Democrats) even bothered to read the 5-page summary of it. No sir, these individuals apparently didn't have the time nor the inclination. I mean, it was only war, right?
[Thomas Ricks described the NIE as "...a political document that made the case for war... But it did its job, which wasn't really to assess Iraqi weapons programs but to sell a war. ... That document did not accurately reflect the information available inside the intelligence community"].
| Posts that link here [SWTD #154] Intellectual Honesty Concerning ex-Preznit bush's WMD Lies, 5/23/2013. [OST #113] Willis Hart Lies Re Trump Comments On Iraq War, Downplays, Spouts BS About Left Not Acknowledging Trump Truthtelling, Pats Self On Back, 2/25/2016. |
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