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

[Yurt]

If so, then BO is responsible for the 84 military members who have since 1/20/09.

In one sense true, he could have called for an immediate withdrawal of all forces from Iraq.

But Obama of course plays a far different role in the Iraq war.

he introduced legislation to have ALL our troops home from in iraq by summer 2008....now he is CIC...nope...so hopefully you will be consistent and of course stop the buck with obama and not pass it on to bush as you so often do

 

[Bfgrn]

I say no. Further, I consider any assertion that he to be extremist, partisan hatred.

Saddam Hussein did not come to power because of Bush. Saddam Hussein came into power because he was a bigger thug than the thug that preceeded him.

Bush is not responsible for Saddam invading Kuwait in attempt to seize Kuwait's oil to pay off Iraq's debt from its war with Iran. Nor was Bush responsible for Saddam invading Iran.

Bush was not responsible for Saddam violating the terms of a ceasefire before the ink was dry on his signature, nor any of the times Saddam routinely violated the terms of the ceasefire from 1991 - 2003.

Bush is certainly not responsible for his predecessor as President allowing the problem in Iraq to fester for 8 years. Had the UN acted to enforce its resolution, the US would not have been left holding the bag. The borders between Kuwait and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Iraq were enforced by US forces at our expense. An unacceptable, endless situation.

Saddam repeatedly provoked those forces with little to no action on the part of the US from 1991 -2003. During that time, Saddam repeatedly was elusive, obtuse and purposefully deceitful to UN Weapons Inspectors in regard to WMD. He is STILL accountable to the UN for several tons of WMDs/percursors.

If he had no WMDs, then he was all the more stupid for pretending he did. He played a high stakes game with nothing in his hand and he got called.

I contend Saddam Hussein is responsible for his own demise. I also contend that the responsibility for the deaths of US service personnel belongs to him, and the religious fanatics that have waged a war of terror against US, UK and Iraqi government forces since Saddam was removed from power.

IMO, Bush's decision to invade Kuwait was strategically the incorrect decision, given the probable results predicted and most of those predictions coming true. Saddam was a secular wildcard and his country divided the Middle East. The resulting factional infighting that has come to pass was predicted. The clash between Sunni and Shia as proxies to Saudi Arabia and Iran was predicted. Only blind, Western political idealism would lead someone to believe Arabs would be grateful to the US as liberators rather than foreign invaders.

However, to blame the deaths of US service personnel on the President is to blame the deaths of ALL US service personnel from George Washington to present date on a US President. It's backwards-assed logic at it finest, used only by blind political partisans in yet another lame attempt to stick shit against the wall on Bush.

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

 

[Iriemon]

If so, then BO is responsible for the 84 military members who have since 1/20/09.

In one sense true, he could have called for an immediate withdrawal of all forces from Iraq.

But Obama of course plays a far different role in the Iraq war.

he introduced legislation to have ALL our troops home from in iraq by summer 2008....now he is CIC...nope...so hopefully you will be consistent and of course stop the buck with obama and not pass it on to bush as you so often do

Sure, Obama is responsible for his decisions, just as Bush was responsible for the attack on Iraq.

 

[IF_Common_29]

You could blame it on Bush, like most of the country is. And begin to believe president Obama is our new savior to this country. But bottome line is, if we had stopped Iraq when we first got involved in middle eastern affairs, we wouldn't be dealing with this today. So it all depends on your perspective of the matter at hand

 

[sealybobo]

Bush is solely responsible for all the deaths until 2005. Then the people who voted him in for a second term can share responsibility for all the deaths that followed that election. And the deaths that happen today, are still on your right wingers hands.

 

[jillian]

You're right, Saddam was thumbing his nose at the UN inspectors and taunting the US, just daring us to do something about it. The entire congress voted to go in and find those WMDs after 9/11.

I disagree. by the time they went in and invaded a sovereign nation for no reason at all, the inspections were being done with little problem. anyone who read hans blix's reports was aware of that.

is Bush the sole person responsible? of course not. he had a lot of help. and he allowed rummy and cheney to make policy and failed to change course until far too late.

congress did not "vote to go in". If you read the authorization, it was clear that miliary involvement was a LAST resort...and that he had to go back to Congress with status reports and engagein diplomacy (lol... ) They gave that authority assuming, properly, that the people we deal with should deal with a united country and believe that the president had, at his disposal. He wasn't EVER supposed to go in with guns blazing...and he wasn't supposed to cherry pick the intel.

 

[Yurt]

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....

 

[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.

 

[Yurt]

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.

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...

 

[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.

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.

 

[sealybobo]

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....

If you went back and relived it, you would remember that we were conned into it. And Bush promised invasion would be the last resort, would exhaust all other option, and would have a coalition of the willing.

It is sad that we even have to remind you how we were lied into that war.

Forget about what Hillary & Obama knew. Who knows. What I do know is that I was lied to, and it was Bush that did the lying.

Did Pelosi know about torture? Who gives a fuck. The GOP tortured.

Here is another GOP mistake that they refuse to take as their own. The economy, not all their fault, the wars, not their fault.

But the DOT Com Boom? All Clinton's fault.

 

[HUGGY]

I say no. Further, I consider any assertion that he to be extremist, partisan hatred.

Saddam Hussein did not come to power because of Bush. Saddam Hussein came into power because he was a bigger thug than the thug that preceeded him.

Bush is not responsible for Saddam invading Kuwait in attempt to seize Kuwait's oil to pay off Iraq's debt from its war with Iran. Nor was Bush responsible for Saddam invading Iran.

Bush was not responsible for Saddam violating the terms of a ceasefire before the ink was dry on his signature, nor any of the times Saddam routinely violated the terms of the ceasefire from 1991 - 2003.

Bush is certainly not responsible for his predecessor as President allowing the problem in Iraq to fester for 8 years. Had the UN acted to enforce its resolution, the US would not have been left holding the bag. The borders between Kuwait and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Iraq were enforced by US forces at our expense. An unacceptable, endless situation.

Saddam repeatedly provoked those forces with little to no action on the part of the US from 1991 -2003. During that time, Saddam repeatedly was elusive, obtuse and purposefully deceitful to UN Weapons Inspectors in regard to WMD. He is STILL accountable to the UN for several tons of WMDs/percursors.

If he had no WMDs, then he was all the more stupid for pretending he did. He played a high stakes game with nothing in his hand and he got called.

I contend Saddam Hussein is responsible for his own demise. I also contend that the responsibility for the deaths of US service personnel belongs to him, and the religious fanatics that have waged a war of terror against US, UK and Iraqi government forces since Saddam was removed from power.

IMO, Bush's decision to invade Kuwait was strategically the incorrect decision, given the probable results predicted and most of those predictions coming true. Saddam was a secular wildcard and his country divided the Middle East. The resulting factional infighting that has come to pass was predicted. The clash between Sunni and Shia as proxies to Saudi Arabia and Iran was predicted. Only blind, Western political idealism would lead someone to believe Arabs would be grateful to the US as liberators rather than foreign invaders.

However, to blame the deaths of US service personnel on the President is to blame the deaths of ALL US service personnel from George Washington to present date on a US President. It's backwards-assed logic at it finest, used only by blind political partisans in yet another lame attempt to stick shit against the wall on Bush.

A lot of talk about Saddam, Iraq, Iran, Whatever... Why exactly is/were any of that the responsibility of the United States?

Were any of these situations a threat to us? I mean any more than the oil cartels raising the price of oil which they do anyway? And PUUULLLEEEEZZZZZ don't say terrorists.. that whole thing was and is a police/fbi/cia matter. The war on terror is so bullshit. Just tell me how us being involved over there has helped the U S.

Bush promised he would capture Ossama dead or alive. He did not. He lied and went into Iraq.

Was the last Iraq war on Bush?...Yes. Lets hear why I'm wrong.

 

[Yurt]

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.

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.

(yawn)

and thats why congress kept giving him money for iraq...

bush was authorized, exhausted all options, just becuase he didn't do things exactly they way dems wanted doesn't mean he was not authorized...

alas, i'm so tired of that argument, no amount of truth will ever convince the dems otherwise as it destroys your ability to form your unreasonable arguments about bush and iraq...you won't even listen to the NY times tell you that kerry et al AUTHORIZED bush to invade iraq...

 

[Yurt]

LMAO...even cindy sheehan admits the dems authorized bush to invade iraq

In 2002 the Democrats authorized Bush to invade Iraq (or any other country he deemed to support terrorism, for example Iran) in hope he would become involved in an unpopular war which would produce a Democratic White House. The Democrats 2007 policy is equally political, and may have the paradoxical effect of producing Republican victories in 2008.


http://www.bringtheguardhome.org/ne...ocratic_congress_has_betrayed_american_voters

 

[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.

(yawn)

and thats why congress kept giving him money for iraq...

bush was authorized, exhausted all options, just becuase he didn't do things exactly they way dems wanted doesn't mean he was not authorized...

alas, i'm so tired of that argument, no amount of truth will ever convince the dems otherwise as it destroys your ability to form your unreasonable arguments about bush and iraq...you won't even listen to the NY times tell you that kerry et al AUTHORIZED bush to invade iraq...

Please don't twist my words around.

I've never claimed he wasn't authorized. Congress, including half the Dems, gave him authorization.

That is different than saying that Congress "voted to go in".

 

[Yurt]

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.

 

[jillian]

Please don't twist my words around.

I've never claimed he wasn't authorized. Congress, including half the Dems, gave him authorization.

That is different than saying that Congress "voted to go in".

If one looks at the actual language, instead of the partisan blather of the right, it's easy to see that a) all possible diplomatic efforts through the U.N. were supposed to be made. They weren't.

Bush was also required to REPORT TO CONGRESS before any military action. He didn't do that either.

http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

 

[jillian]

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.

 

[manu1959]

Please don't twist my words around.

I've never claimed he wasn't authorized. Congress, including half the Dems, gave him authorization.

That is different than saying that Congress "voted to go in".

If one looks at the actual language, instead of the partisan blather of the right, it's easy to see that a) all possible diplomatic efforts through the U.N. were supposed to be made. They weren't.

Bush was also required to REPORT TO CONGRESS before any military action. He didn't do that either.

http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

there were 18 un resolutions.....how many should there have been.....

how man un resolution were written before obama decided to send 20,000 troops to afganistan....

did he report to congress before sending those troops....

why are we allowing obama to continue and escalate an "illegal war".....

 

[jillian]

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.