Is Bush Solely to Blame for the Death of US Troops in Iraq?

[Gunny]

As a Dove, I THINK these basic principles should be followed before going to war:


Principles of the Just War

A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.

A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.

A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.

A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from
using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.

The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

also, this should be taken to heart by our leaders as well imo...

Proverbs 24:6
For by wise guidance you will wage war....



and then the simple term of war preparation:

Know your enemy before you wage war with them... was not followed in my opinion....nothing was thought through or with wise advise it seems...

So, bottom line, and as mentioned, a devout Dove, the deaths from the Iraqi war does rest on President Bush's shoulders, the buck does stop with him as our Leader and Commander in chief....and the Advisors he picked to advise him.

There still may be a legitimate argument that all the deaths that occurred in the Iraq war can be justified because of yah dee dah reasons to some, but ultimately, those deaths did occur because our leader, with poor advice in my opinion, is the one who chose this war...(and asked Congress to support whatever his decision was regarding going to war) thus responsible for the deaths that occurred, whether justified war deaths or not justified war deaths.

PS
I am hopeless on this topic, there is no "changing me" on my opinion on this so those of you that supported the war, should just not bother!

care

A "just war" is a matter of perspective. Depends on whose side you're on. Too many people in this country take the side of a piece of human garbage for no reason more than support their partisan political hatreds. The facts be damned.

 

[Gunny]

Interesting...is it Bush's fault; you say no. "Further, I consider any assertion that he to be extremist, partisan hatred."

BUT it IS Clinton's fault...and that is NOT partisan hatred.

A wonderful thread of useless garbage Gunny... ALL your points are meaningless, UNLESS you can provide the speech Bush made using THOSE reasons for invading Iraq to Congress and the American people...

Paul O'Neill, Bush's first Treasury Secretary

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001. Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”
Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq? - CBS News

Learn to read. I didn't say it was Clinton's fault. I addressed the double standard. If you want to start holding Presidents accountable for your partisan extremism, there are two sides to every coin.

I've already come to the conclusion your arguments aren't worth addressing. It's a waste of time and effort. Your blind partisanship makes your arguments. Not anything real.

Gee Gunny, is Paul O'Neill, Bush's first Treasury Secretary who said invading Iraq was discussed in the first week of the administration, 8 months before 911 also a blind partisan?

The PROBLEM which you are oblivious to Gunny...Bush LIED to START a war...

SO, he OWNS it...

Non sequitur. Figures you'd want the opinion of beancounter about a war. Related to LBJ are you?

 

[Iriemon]

No, it doesn't depend on how you look at it. I pretty-much go for the straight-up, head-on approach, calling all the spades spades. Things always seem to come out much better than way.

Fine. Say Bush is responsible then.



So you think SA would have let Clinton use the airbase to invade Iraq?



Of course not. I base it on the fact that both before and after the war, inspectors scoured every inch of Iraq in the biggest easter egg hunt of all time.



That is the best argument for it. Though it was Iraq airspace that was being defended. This did not justify invasion and occupation IMO, and the Bush administration did not base its action principally on this.

Bush did nothing more to sell hsi reasons for invasions than any other President does to sell any of their junk. If you're accusing him of being a politician, it's hardly a newsflash on this end.

Don't get your point.

Fine, no. I'm not going to say Bush is responsible anymore than I am going to blame any other President of the US for deploying forces of war.

The Bush administration made the decision to attack, invade and occupy Iraq. As you say, call a spade a spade.

When you lose a war, you are at the victor's mercy. Saddam relinquished his right to defend Iraqi airspace when he signed the ceasefire agreement.

Regardless of you opinion, this was not a key point the Bush administration justified attacking on.

Of course you don't get my point. You wouldn't. It's called partisan blindness. You accuse Bush of misleading us when all he did ACTUALLY was present his agenda in a light most favorable to achieving the reuslts he desired. He's no different than any other politician and pales in comparison to some that YOU agree with. Obama being a perfect example.

Partisan blindness works both ways, doesn't it?

It is a fact that in Mar 2003 large percentages of Americans believed that Iraq was working with AQ, that Iraq had WMDs and that Iraq was involved in 9-11. These beliefs were false. In other words, the public in fact had been mislead.

I agree it wasn't just the Bush administration doing it, the neocons were feeding regular misinformation into the press. But the bush administration lead the rally, because, as you acknowledge, the neocons had an agenda to take out Hussein, well before 9-11.

 

[Iriemon]

You are incorrect. Had Saddam all free and full access, it could not have been used as a basis to justify invasion.

The UN inspectors in 2003 stated they were being given full access.



And that was all in the 1980s, not 2003. The relevant question is whether he had them in 2003.



No. Although certainly if he admitted he had them in Mar 2003 that would have been a different story.

I wouldn't assume he had them at all. But I wouldn't assume he *did* have them after inspectors scoured Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003 and found nothing.

Want to buy some West Texas swampland?

Not interested. How about some nice property in the Keys?

I lived in the Keys. Loved it. Probably no longer the place I remember though.

You're making a circular argument where WMD's are concerned. I will repeat .. Saddam possessed WMDs. He used WMDs. He continued to act as if he had WMDs by playing a shell game with inspectors. Saddam did not account for the WMDs he is on record as having.

Without a time frame your statement is meaningless. The fact he had WMDs (courtesy the Reagan administration) in the 1980s is no justification for war in 2003.

If that would lead you to *not* assume he had them and would use them, I can only hope you are never placed in a position of leadership in the US military. Yours is a completely illogical conclusion.

If he had had them he had had them for 20 years and there is no evidence he gave them to terrorists or used them against us. To say that suddenly in 2003 he suddenly became an "urgent threat" justifying a rush to war is a completely illogical conclusion. Especially when after three months of free access and hundreds of blind inspections, the inspection teams found no trace of the WMDs where our sources said they were.

If that would lead you to conclude Iraq was an urgent threat requiring a rush to war in these circumstances, I can only hope you are never place in a posistion of leadership in the US military ... wait, we did have someone like that in a posistion of leadership in the US military.

PS: The Keys are becoming more commercialized but they are still great, still go down there by car or boat when I can.

 

[editec]

Is Bush Solely to Blame for the Death of US Troops in Iraq?

Not anymore, no.

 

[Bfgrn]

Learn to read. I didn't say it was Clinton's fault. I addressed the double standard. If you want to start holding Presidents accountable for your partisan extremism, there are two sides to every coin.

I've already come to the conclusion your arguments aren't worth addressing. It's a waste of time and effort. Your blind partisanship makes your arguments. Not anything real.

Gee Gunny, is Paul O'Neill, Bush's first Treasury Secretary who said invading Iraq was discussed in the first week of the administration, 8 months before 911 also a blind partisan?

The PROBLEM which you are oblivious to Gunny...Bush LIED to START a war...

SO, he OWNS it...

Non sequitur. Figures you'd want the opinion of beancounter about a war. Related to LBJ are you?

Non sequitur Gunny? Paul O'Neill's opinion ABOUT war is non sequitur! But his FIRST PERSON accounts of WHAT was discussed IS relevant. As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council.

AND...what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime. Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

 

[Iriemon]

jillian....please

Mr. Kerry [along with many other dems], as almost everyone now knows, voted to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq...

About That Iraq Vote - The New York Times

i don't understand how, after all this time, the dems keep harping on the lie that bush did not have approval. it was a major weakness for kerry and hillary clinton...

repeat a lie enough times i guess....

The Joint Resolution, passed in Nov 02, gave the Bush admin authority if diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful

The post to which Jillian responded stated: "The entire congress voted to go in ..."

That was an inaccurate decription of what happened, tho I've seen it asserted a number of times. There was no vote to go in in Mar 2003; that was the Bush Administration's decision.

Jillian's correction was spot on.

You are incorrect. Congress gave away its oversight and authority. Period. There was and is no excuse for that. Trying to play with dates is just a game of semantics and a smokescreen.

You would be right, if you were arguing against my point. You are not. My point is that Congress never voted to go to war, much less invade and occupy. That was solely the decision of the Bush administration. The buck stops there.

Whether Congress should have given Bush that authority is another matter. In hindsight, after seeing the Bush administration misused that authority to start a strategically stupid war, we can say it was a big error by the Republican controlled Congress and the Dems that voted with them.

In Oct/Nov 2002, when the Presidents party brought the Joint Resolution up for a vote, however, the President was trying to coerce Iraq into letting inspectors back in with free access. Giving him authority to use force gave him leverage for that coercion. If the Congress had voted no to that authority, Hussein would have laughed in his face.

 

[Care4all]

As a Dove, I THINK these basic principles should be followed before going to war:


Principles of the Just War

A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.

A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.

A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.

A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from
using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.

The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

also, this should be taken to heart by our leaders as well imo...

Proverbs 24:6
For by wise guidance you will wage war....



and then the simple term of war preparation:

Know your enemy before you wage war with them... was not followed in my opinion....nothing was thought through or with wise advise it seems...

So, bottom line, and as mentioned, a devout Dove, the deaths from the Iraqi war does rest on President Bush's shoulders, the buck does stop with him as our Leader and Commander in chief....and the Advisors he picked to advise him.

There still may be a legitimate argument that all the deaths that occurred in the Iraq war can be justified because of yah dee dah reasons to some, but ultimately, those deaths did occur because our leader, with poor advice in my opinion, is the one who chose this war...(and asked Congress to support whatever his decision was regarding going to war) thus responsible for the deaths that occurred, whether justified war deaths or not justified war deaths.

PS
I am hopeless on this topic, there is no "changing me" on my opinion on this so those of you that supported the war, should just not bother!

care

A "just war" is a matter of perspective. Depends on whose side you're on. Too many people in this country take the side of a piece of human garbage for no reason more than support their partisan political hatreds. The facts be damned.

In the 1991 Gulf war, US Troops destroyed 93% of saddam's weapons and the next couple of years through inspections, we destroyed a remaining 4%, so we accounted destroying 97% of ALL of saddam's weapon and ammunition stock pile that he had prior to Gulf War 1....I had read this information BEFORE we invaded Iraq in 2003, and this is one main reason I was against going to war with saddam again...because I knew he was NOT a big threat to us, or the rest of the world with 97% of his stockpile of chemical and other weapons gone, destroyed already.

I have been searching for the article i read from the intelligence community, back in 2002 for years now, but to no avail...i figured it was taken off the internet.

Today, I found another intelligence community article that supports what I had read in this other article....

Outline for final unclassified report on intelligence related to Gulf War illnesses

we destroyed most all of his stockpile of weapons back in 1991....granted, Saddam was getting money through the Oil For Food program and could have started to persue more chemical weapons with this money, IF WE DID NOT watch him closely...

Care

 

[Iriemon]

read her post again, she said bush did not have authorization to go in guns ablazing....such an assertion and the rest of her post indicates she did not believe bush had authority to invade iraq and remove saddam....as i showed you

i never mentioned anything about "all" congress, her so called correction is a wrong. now that you've read her post again, read my again...

I read Jillian's "gun's blazing" phrase as meaning the Bush Administration did not exhaust diplomatic efforts, which under the JA it was required it to do; not that she meant the Bush Administration did not have an authorization to use military force.

"All diplomatic efforts" were exhausted LONG before Bush became President of the US.

Weren't you just talking about blind partisanship? In March 2003 the UN inspectors were continuing their mission in Iraq. Hussein had let them in and given them free access to the country. The had done hundreds of blind inspections where the WMDs were supposed to be and found nothing.

Tough diplomacy was working fine. There was no reason to go to war in Mar 2003.

Unless, as you acknowledge, the Bush administration had a previous agenda, which the neocons in his administration did, and were afraid that further diplomacy and inspections would deprive them of their excuse to attack Iraq.

 

[Care4all]

Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed

Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed
Bombshell revelation from a defector cited by White House and press

2/27/03

On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that "raises questions about whether the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist," the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims.

Until now, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996, was best known for his role in exposing Iraq's deceptions about how far its pre-Gulf War biological weapons programs had advanced. But Newsweek's John Barry-- who has covered Iraqi weapons inspections for more than a decade-- obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. inspections team known as UNSCOM.

Inspectors were told "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them," Barry wrote. All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected with Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks."

But these statements were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more."

here is the guy's testimony....

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf

yet we had the administration touting that this man said saddam DID HAVE wmd's...simply lies.

But according to Kamel's transcript, Iraq destroyed all of these weapons in 1991.

According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August 1995. If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Their repeated citations of his testimony-- without revealing that he also said the weapons no longer exist-- suggests that the administration might be withholding critical evidence. In particular, it casts doubt on the credibility of Powell's February 5 presentation to the U.N., which was widely hailed at the time for its persuasiveness. To clear up the issue, journalists might ask the CIA to release the transcripts of its own conversations with Kamel.

please go to the first link for the full story....

I don't think people have taken their positions for or against the Iraq invasion based on purely partisan reasons, I think people took their positions from what they read and researched....and both sides are not reading the same info or are reading contradicting information,.....what a wonderful, useless media, we have.....

Care

 

[editec]

The Joint Resolution, passed in Nov 02, gave the Bush admin authority if diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful

The post to which Jillian responded stated: "The entire congress voted to go in ..."

That was an inaccurate decription of what happened, tho I've seen it asserted a number of times. There was no vote to go in in Mar 2003; that was the Bush Administration's decision.

Jillian's correction was spot on.

You are incorrect. Congress gave away its oversight and authority. Period. There was and is no excuse for that. Trying to play with dates is just a game of semantics and a smokescreen.

You would be right, if you were arguing against my point. You are not. My point is that Congress never voted to go to war, much less invade and occupy. That was solely the decision of the Bush administration. The buck stops there.

Whether Congress should have given Bush that authority is another matter. In hindsight, after seeing the Bush administration misused that authority to start a strategically stupid war, we can say it was a big error by the Republican controlled Congress and the Dems that voted with them.

In Oct/Nov 2002, when the Presidents party brought the Joint Resolution up for a vote, however, the President was trying to coerce Iraq into letting inspectors back in with free access. Giving him authority to use force gave him leverage for that coercion. If the Congress had voted no to that authority, Hussein would have laughed in his face.

Congress completely failed to do their job, in my opinion.

They bascially gave Bush carte blache to do whatever he wanted, yet didn't really give him a war declaration.

Very disappointing.

 

[Iriemon]

You are incorrect. Congress gave away its oversight and authority. Period. There was and is no excuse for that. Trying to play with dates is just a game of semantics and a smokescreen.

You would be right, if you were arguing against my point. You are not. My point is that Congress never voted to go to war, much less invade and occupy. That was solely the decision of the Bush administration. The buck stops there.

Whether Congress should have given Bush that authority is another matter. In hindsight, after seeing the Bush administration misused that authority to start a strategically stupid war, we can say it was a big error by the Republican controlled Congress and the Dems that voted with them.

In Oct/Nov 2002, when the Presidents party brought the Joint Resolution up for a vote, however, the President was trying to coerce Iraq into letting inspectors back in with free access. Giving him authority to use force gave him leverage for that coercion. If the Congress had voted no to that authority, Hussein would have laughed in his face.

Congress completely failed to do their job, in my opinion.

They bascially gave Bush carte blache to do whatever he wanted, yet didn't really give him a war declaration.

Very disappointing.

I think the way it was presented to Congress almost compelled a favorable vote for the reasons stated in the last paragraph of my post. It was brought to Congress in a manner such that if it was voted down it would have deprived the President of an effective means of tough diplomacy, which was necessary against Hussein.

That bill should never have been brought up for a vote.

 

[manu1959]

18 resolutions AFTER the language in the authorization?

don't think so.

and if that's what it referred to, then why would continued efforts be a requirment?

answer.... the inspections were being made. iraq was cooperating.

bush didn't abideby the terms of the authorization.

I didn't say the war was illegal. was that the word I used.

How is Obama escalating the war in Iraq? Troops are being shifted to Afghanistan.... WHERE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

so you wanted 18 more un resolutions and 8 more years of negotiation after congress said ok.....

iraq was cooperating ... they had records of everything except what happend to all their "wmds"....

the troops were in afganistan that country was just fine now it is an issue again....what exactly did afganistan have to do with 9/11.....i don't recal the taliban claiming credit for the attack.....

 

[jillian]

Congress completely failed to do their job, in my opinion.

They bascially gave Bush carte blache to do whatever he wanted, yet didn't really give him a war declaration.

Very disappointing.

the dems failed in their responsibility to oversee. no argument.

but I'm afraid that under the circumstances, they did need to give him the apparent authority to wage war in order to coerce the inspections as Iriemon stated.

But I don't think anyone expected the level of bad faith that was shown by the admin in effectuating the grant of authority.

 

[manu1959]

Congress completely failed to do their job, in my opinion.

They bascially gave Bush carte blache to do whatever he wanted, yet didn't really give him a war declaration.

Very disappointing.

the dems failed in their responsibility to oversee. no argument.

but I'm afraid that under the circumstances, they did need to give him the apparent authority to wage war in order to coerce the inspections as Iriemon stated.

But I don't think anyone expected the level of bad faith that was shown by the admin in effectuating the grant of authority.

does anyone know why in the 6 years since the admin " abused the approval to go to war" nobody brought for a vote to withdraw the troops especially in the last two years.........they just kept voting to send money and guns....

 

[jillian]

does anyone know why in the 6 years since the admin " abused the approval to go to war" nobody brought for a vote to withdraw the troops especially in the last two years.........they just kept voting to send money and guns....

because we broke it we bought it. and most of us aren't so silly as to think you just destabilize the region further by pulling out all troops before it was RE-stabilized.

shifting to afghanistan is a good start though.

or should we have allowed iran to take over Iraq?

 

[Iriemon]

18 resolutions AFTER the language in the authorization?

don't think so.

and if that's what it referred to, then why would continued efforts be a requirment?

answer.... the inspections were being made. iraq was cooperating.

bush didn't abideby the terms of the authorization.

I didn't say the war was illegal. was that the word I used.

How is Obama escalating the war in Iraq? Troops are being shifted to Afghanistan.... WHERE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

so you wanted 18 more un resolutions and 8 more years of negotiation after congress said ok.....

iraq was cooperating ... they had records of everything except what happend to all their "wmds"....

the troops were in afganistan that country was just fine now it is an issue again....what exactly did afganistan have to do with 9/11.....i don't recal the taliban claiming credit for the attack.....

That is the gist of the WMD issue. Iraq denied it had WMDs, said it destroyed it all, after hundreds of blind inspections the UN inspectors found nothing. But Iraq had not produced satisfactory documentation of the destruction of the WMDs according to the UN inspectors.

The Bush administration essentially took us to war based on bad record keeping.

 

[HUGGY]

Is Bush Solely to Blame for the Death of US Troops in Iraq?


Yes

 

[sitarro]

so he was authorized to invade iraq

but he wasn't authorized "to go in"

what kind of logic is that?

he exhausted all means, just because you don't thinks so doesn't mean he didn't. he had authority to invade and he lawfully followed that authority. that is a fact. your opinion on the matter is irrelevent.

what means did he exhaust?

hans blix said the inspections were going fine.

it's YOUR opinion that is irrelevant because it isn't based on fact.

no suprises.

Hans Blix?????? You would believe that hack who, like the asshole in charge of the UN, was probably being paid by Saddam along with Germany, Russia and France.

 

[sealybobo]

How do you ask someone to be the last American soldier to die in Iraq for a mistake?" Indeed, today's Washington Post features an article by Christian Davenport and Joshua Partlow about the emerging split among military families over that very question.

All of this has caused me to wonder: Well, who WAS the last soldier to die for the Vietnam mistake?

To my surprise, with a little research, I discovered that there is a consensus on who that individual was. We'll get to his name in a moment, but what's most relevant is that he died almost five years after that "mistake" was widely acknowledged. How many will die from now until the last American perishes in Iraq? Gallup and other polls show that a clear majority of American have already labeled the Iraq invasion a "mistake."

We are at a haunting juncture in the Iraq war. Forgive me for another "back in the day" reference, but I recall very well that the public only turned strongly against the Vietnam conflict with the mass realization that young American lives were not only being lost but truly wasted. Now, a woman named Beverly Fabri says in today's Washington Post, almost three years after her 19-year-old son, Army Pvt. Bryan Nicholas Spry, was killed, "I'm beginning to feel like he just died in vain, I really am." That's because she believes, "We are not going to win this war. And we shouldn't have gotten involved with it in the first place."

The Last Soldier To Die for A Mistake | Middle East > Gulf States from AllBusiness.com