How soon we forget,
when we practice the art of selective memory and exploit the war and our troops
in battle for political gain.
On October 11, 2002, one year and one month to the
day after September 11, 2001, the U.S. Senate voted on whether or
not to authorize use of military force to affect the official
U.S. policy
regarding Iraq.
That policy was established by the
Clinton administration in 1998,
after being rejected along with UN inspectors and 16 broken resolutions, by the
Hussein regime.
In 2002, 77 Senators
voted to authorize use of force to depose the Hussein regime in
Iraq and
liberate the Iraqi people. They did so believing that the Hussein regime was
continuing to develop and pursue bio, chemical and nuclear war technologies that
could be shared with a vast international network of terror organizations,
making the next attack on
U.S. soil
potentially much worse than that of 9/11.
In modern politics,
77% agreement is a firm consensus
In the Senate, only
66% is required to over-rule a Presidential veto. This means that 77% solidly
believed that they had enough valid intelligence to commit American soldiers to
battle, the most important decision any senator can ever make. They would never
have committed troops to battle on any less, would they?
Did they make this
decision strictly on Bush’s word - Without doing any of their own homework? I
sincerely hope not…
Among those 77 Senators were none
other than Hillary Clinton (D-NY),
John Edwards (D-NC), Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Joe Biden (D-DE), all of whom are
asking for your vote for President of the United
States in 2008, all of whom have denounced
their vote since and worked to undermine the mission they approved. (Barack
Obama was not a Senator until 2005 and had no access to intelligence reports at
the time.
But he
claims 20/20 hindsight.)
Over in the People’s
House on October 10, 2002 –
with 136 sponsors
The vote was
affirmative, 296-133. 68.5% of House members were also
convinced that they had enough valid intelligence to commit troops to battle in
Iraq, again a
consensus of more than 2/3. Was their vote cast on Bush’s word
alone?
In 2002, they were
following expert advice
Democrats believed
that Bush was an “invalid President” who stole the election in 2000, with the
help of a then liberal Supreme Court. They trusted his word or opinion on
nothing.
But before Bush took
office in January 2001, all of them had made their own assessments of Hussein
and Iraq for
years. All of them are on record with those “expert” assessments - all
of them! All of these assessments were based on the same intelligence
reports Bush would soon see as the incoming President in January of
’01.
The pre-war
Intelligence
The international
intelligence community among trusted allies had reached a consensus regarding
Iraq as well.
The vast majority believed the same thing 77% of the Senate and 68.5% of the
House believed, along with the Bush administration. Hussein was simply a risk
not worth taking after 9/11. Opinion was not unanimous. But it was as close as
it ever gets.
In 2007, campaigning
for 2008, they claim expertise, but no
responsibility
Many Democrats have
changed their minds since 2002. They claim their 2002 vote was an error and
blame that vote on Bush, claiming to have been misled into those votes by faulty
intelligence, specifically Bush intelligence
reports.
If it’s true, that
they were misled by faulty pre-war intelligence on
Iraq, then they
were misled by the same intelligence reports Bush used to make the same
decision. Bush was misled as well, by intelligence gathered, assembled and
assessed by agencies still under the direction of
Clinton appointed heads. Or, was
anyone “misled?”
-
Democrats trusted the pre-war intelligence because it was all but
unanimous and it was collected, assembled, assessed and reported by
Clinton appointees, not Bush.
Both Freeh and Tenet
have spoken and written about the failures of the
Clinton administration and the
improvements made by the Bush administration since. Hayden is Bush’s new
Director of the CIA.
Looking ahead in
2007
House Democrats led
by Nancy Pelosi, left for Thanksgiving break without passing a resolution
funding the troops in combat. They passed a base budget for the Pentagon which
does not include funding for troops in harm’s way.
The House bill passed
tying combat funding to troops withdrawal, retreat, or surrender, depending upon
if you are a partisan politician exploiting the war for political gain or a
soldier in combat waiting for funding, was rejected by the
Senate.
The difference
between 2002 and 2007 is this…
In 2002, after the
events of 9/11, most Washington
politicians were more concerned with the next 9/11 than the next election. As a
result, they trusted the experts who told them Hussein was a risk not worth
taking.
In 2007, hungry for a
return to power in the oval office, the people telling you that they did no
homework of their own before committing troops to battle in 2002, now tell you
that they are the experts you can trust on intelligence, war planning and
national security strategies.
Do you believe them? How could
you?
