Condi's WWII analogies

[UConn James]

So, on a FOXSNOOZE Sunday morning show, she says the rumblings of revoking/revising the authorization of force in Iraq "would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

 

Nevermind that the sentence structure makes my head hurt.... But WTF?

 

1) Germany's diplomats walked into the State Department and said 'Hey, we're at war with you.'

2) There was a change in the resolution to deal with the post-war environment. It was called the Marshall Plan.

 

Condi, please get a refund for your B.A., M.A., and PhD degrees in Poli-Sci.

 

And stop using analogies to link the current bullsh-- to the nostalgic epic heroism of WWII.

[DC Tom]

So, on a FOXSNOOZE Sunday morning show, she says the rumblings of revoking/revising the authorization of force in Iraq "would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

 

Nevermind that the sentence structure makes my head hurt.... But WTF?

 

1) Germany's diplomats walked into the State Department and said 'Hey, we're at war with you.'

2) There was a change in the resolution to deal with the post-war environment. It was called the Marshall Plan.

 

Condi, please get a refund for your B.A., M.A., and PhD degrees in Poli-Sci.

 

And stop using analogies to link the current bullsh-- to the nostalgic epic heroism of WWII.

 

Condi's a smart cookie. Voodoo legislation to "deauthorize" force that has already been used in Iraq is just plain silly. And nevertheless, that analogy of Condi's is the stupidest !@#$ing thing I've read in a while.

[UConn James]

Condi's a smart cookie. Voodoo legislation to "deauthorize" force that has already been used in Iraq is just plain silly. And nevertheless, that analogy of Condi's is the stupidest !@#$ing thing I've read in a while.

 

It is silly and I don't know what exactly it would accomplish. If Dems want to do something about the war, they should do it with more than a token. Instead, they're tiptoeing around the edges and afraid they're going to be accused of 'not supporting the troops.' Always astride the horse, and never riding, but to be honest, I'd rather have that than people who actively start stupid crap then whistle past the graveyard.

 

At this point, it's been drilled into her so much that Condi actually believes and will further try to defend what she said. I think she needs to go to bed and sleep for about two months.

[Alaska Darin]

So, on a FOXSNOOZE Sunday morning show, she says the rumblings of revoking/revising the authorization of force in Iraq "would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

 

Nevermind that the sentence structure makes my head hurt.... But WTF?

 

1) Germany's diplomats walked into the State Department and said 'Hey, we're at war with you.'

2) There was a change in the resolution to deal with the post-war environment. It was called the Marshall Plan.

 

Condi, please get a refund for your B.A., M.A., and PhD degrees in Poli-Sci.

 

And stop using analogies to link the current bullsh-- to the nostalgic epic heroism of WWII.

I don't see how it's any different than the Liberals comparing it to Vietnam within a week or two of invasion.

[DC Tom]

It is silly and I don't know what exactly it would accomplish. If Dems want to do something about the war, they should do it with more than a token. Instead, they're tiptoeing around the edges and afraid they're going to be accused of 'not supporting the troops.' Always astride the horse, and never riding, but to be honest, I'd rather have that than people who actively start stupid crap then whistle past the graveyard.

 

At this point, it's been drilled into her so much that Condi actually believes and will further try to defend what she said. I think she needs to go to bed and sleep for about two months.

 

All the Dems have is tokens. They're not in the chain of command, so they can't withdraw the troops, and last I checked they don't have the ability to travel back in time required to actually "deauthorize" the use of force. Best they can do is stop funding the war...except that the administration was smart enough to stop submitting supplemental requests with the 2007 budget; now they're rolling it into the entire defense appropriation, basically daring Congress to cut it so they can say "See? They slashed the defense budget by a third! They don't care about the troops! They're anti-American!" and thus making the issue even more politically suicidal than it already is.

 

Face it, the Democrats made promises in the last election about the war that they have no chance of keeping...and they probably knew it as they were promising (I'm reminded of Martin O'Malley promising he'd withdraw all MD National Guard troops from Iraq. I'm pretty sure he knew he's out of the chain of command once they're federalized; I'm equally sure it sounded good to the electorate nonetheless). The only practical thing they can do to end the war is lay the groundwork for a run at the White House in '08.

[molson_golden2002]

I don't see how it's any different than the Liberals comparing it to Vietnam within a week or two of invasion.

I'm not surprised you can't see the difference. And BTW, we we saying that even before the invasion started. So were others who were not liberals at all:

 

WASHINGTON - Not many people foresaw the postwar difficulties the administration has endured in Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.

 

One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.

 

"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

 

"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.

 

"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."

 

The senior Bush's thoughts are outlined in "A World Transformed," published well before his son became president. After Desert Storm, the nation was deeply split over whether Bush was right to bring the troops home while leaving Saddam's regime intact.

 

Although the political context of the region at the time was different from what the incumbent President Bush faced in 2003, the father's predictions about a post-Iraq war situation were eerily prescient.

 

Baker had a similar view on the perils of a regime change policy in Iraq after Desert Storm.

 

In a September 1996 opinion piece, he said, "Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait.

 

"Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power.

 

"Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there."

 

Seven years after Baker wrote those words, in 2003, the political situation in the region had changed dramatically. As the incumbent administration saw it, Saddam had systematically ignored for 12 years U.N. Security Council demands that he eliminate his weapons of mass destruction.

 

Also, the administration believed, perhaps wrongly, that Saddam had reconstituted weapons programs that had been uncovered and destroyed since 1991.

 

So the Iraq war that former President Bush chose not to fight in 1991 was carried out by his son in 2003, and cast by the current President Bush as part of the global war on terrorism that had begun with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks 18 months earlier.

 

Saddam was perceived — at least by the current President Bush — as a far greater menace in 2003 than he had been in 1991 when the senior Bush was content with liberating Kuwait and foregoing regime change in Baghdad.

 

The current President Bush undoubtedly was warned about the possibility of heavy U.S. troop casualties in the 2003 war. But one wonders whether those warnings were as clear-sighted as those of Baker when he wrote about the perils of ousting Saddam militarily.

 

If that had been the policy in 1991, Baker said, it "would certainly have resulted in substantially greater casualties to American forces than (Desert Storm) itself. For this reason, our military and the president's senior advisers were properly dead-set against it."

 

Defense Department figures show that, as of Tuesday, 109 U.S. soldiers died during the 2003 Iraq war as a result of hostile action, compared with 611 since Bush declared an end to major combat actions in Iraq on May 1, 2003.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0825-08.htm

[DC Tom]

I'm not surprised you can't see the difference. And BTW, we we saying that even before the invasion started. So were others who were not liberals at all:

 

WASHINGTON - Not many people foresaw the postwar difficulties the administration has endured in Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.

 

One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.

 

"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

 

"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.

 

"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."

 

The senior Bush's thoughts are outlined in "A World Transformed," published well before his son became president. After Desert Storm, the nation was deeply split over whether Bush was right to bring the troops home while leaving Saddam's regime intact.

 

Although the political context of the region at the time was different from what the incumbent President Bush faced in 2003, the father's predictions about a post-Iraq war situation were eerily prescient.

 

Baker had a similar view on the perils of a regime change policy in Iraq after Desert Storm.

 

In a September 1996 opinion piece, he said, "Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait.

 

"Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power.

 

"Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there."

 

Seven years after Baker wrote those words, in 2003, the political situation in the region had changed dramatically. As the incumbent administration saw it, Saddam had systematically ignored for 12 years U.N. Security Council demands that he eliminate his weapons of mass destruction.

 

Also, the administration believed, perhaps wrongly, that Saddam had reconstituted weapons programs that had been uncovered and destroyed since 1991.

 

So the Iraq war that former President Bush chose not to fight in 1991 was carried out by his son in 2003, and cast by the current President Bush as part of the global war on terrorism that had begun with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks 18 months earlier.

 

Saddam was perceived — at least by the current President Bush — as a far greater menace in 2003 than he had been in 1991 when the senior Bush was content with liberating Kuwait and foregoing regime change in Baghdad.

 

The current President Bush undoubtedly was warned about the possibility of heavy U.S. troop casualties in the 2003 war. But one wonders whether those warnings were as clear-sighted as those of Baker when he wrote about the perils of ousting Saddam militarily.

 

If that had been the policy in 1991, Baker said, it "would certainly have resulted in substantially greater casualties to American forces than (Desert Storm) itself. For this reason, our military and the president's senior advisers were properly dead-set against it."

 

Defense Department figures show that, as of Tuesday, 109 U.S. soldiers died during the 2003 Iraq war as a result of hostile action, compared with 611 since Bush declared an end to major combat actions in Iraq on May 1, 2003.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0825-08.htm

 

Darin was saying that too, moron.

[molson_golden2002]

Darin was saying that too, moron.

Does that make him a liberal? Or is he mocking his own assessment of the pre-war situation, even though he was right? Strange post on his part. Sabres are on, I'm out

[DC Tom]

Does that make him a liberal? Or is he mocking his own assessment of the pre-war situation, even though he was right? Strange post on his part. Sabres are on, I'm out

 

What? Make sense, please.

[Alaska Darin]

Does that make him a liberal? Or is he mocking his own assessment of the pre-war situation, even though he was right? Strange post on his part. Sabres are on, I'm out

Now explain HTF that compares to Vietnam?

 

BTW, I'm pretty sure the guy at commondreams kiped one of my posts.

[molson_golden2002]

Now explain HTF that compares to Vietnam?

 

BTW, I'm pretty sure the guy at commondreams kiped one of my posts.

What? Military occupation? Civil War? Puppet government? No, looks nothing like Nam, no, not at all.