I cannot believe how you guys can just brush past that blatant hypocrisy... just stunning.
I'm not defending his taking of the position now v before, I'm just saying that a politician or civilian shouldn't feel compelled to subdue their dissent for the sake of the president or even a war.
I already said Daschle's comments felt like a bad compromise. Byrd's seem genuine though. In either case, I support their willingness to stand up and voice their opinions. Wouldn't you?
"That's just patently wrong. When someone is wrongfully convicted and put on death row, do you stop debate because the courts have already ruled? No. You debate until the switch is pulled. The debate can and should continue even after the fact so as to not let history repeat itself when the present day actions are so horrendous."
"So horrendus"?
"Not let history repeat itself"
Funny, it seemed to me that our President was INDEED trying to prevent history from repeating itself.
And I disagree, bunge. One debates about passing a resolution. One debates when our troops are not engaged in battle. To argue that it is wrong for us to use force when we are hours away from actually using it is wrong. Actually, it is worse than that....Daschle criticized the President personally. He bordered on a delibrate attempt to undermine confidence in the commander-in-chief on the eve of war....a war which he voted to allow. It's just wrong.
And yes, BR, I have changed my mind in my lifetime. Not on this, though.
One debates about passing a resolution. One debates when our troops are not engaged in battle. To argue that it is wrong for us to use force when we are hours away from actually using it is wrong. Actually, it is worse than that....Daschle criticized the President personally. He bordered on a delibrate attempt to undermine confidence in the commander-in-chief on the eve of war.
Good for him. If he really disagrees with it he should criticize it. As the republicans proved while Bubba was in office, the commander-in-chief is in no way immune from criticism, nor should he be. No one should blindly support anything, especially something as drastic as a war.
I don't know how the last two instances of military action in Iraq compare. I don't know if they do compare... Can you honestly say that lobbing cruise missiles at targets from 1000 miles away is the same as doing that plus committing ground troops for an invasion plus taking out the current regime plus replacing it with a new government plus doing all of that after a long debate with the UN who told us we probably shouldn't?
I think it isn't fair to compare the two situations and rabidly attack the Senate Minority leader for apparantly "flip-flopping" on the issues. If anything, you can compare this to the swinging of a hammer, one side dubiously heavier than the other. You're not going to do the same job using the handle as you are using the big heavy metal part. You just can't. Maybe you can bluntly pound something into place with the handle, but you're not going to be taking out old nails and driving in new ones.
Both aims are forced disarmament of Iraq. Read the Iraqi Liberation Act that Daschle supported, SPJ. Educate yourself and then try to make the argument you just made.
I don't know how the last two instances of military action in Iraq compare. I don't know if they do compare... Can you honestly say that lobbing cruise missiles at targets from 1000 miles away is the same as doing that plus committing ground troops for an invasion plus taking out the current regime plus replacing it with a new government plus doing all of that after a long debate with the UN who told us we probably shouldn't?
They aren't comparable. The lobbing of cruise missiles was clearly ineffective - a lot of things got blown up and we didn't achieve our objective. Also, there was no debate with the UN back in 1998. Daschle is now critical of Bush for failing to get from the UN what Clinton didn't even try to get! The two situations aren't comparable. Not only did Daschle fully support President Clinton, he helped the admin in making the case for military force. He's not singing from that songbook today.
THE PRESIDENT mulls a strike against Iraq, which he calls an "outlaw nation" in league with an "unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." The talk among world leaders, however, focuses on diplomacy. France, Russia, China, and most Arab nations oppose military action. The Saudis balk at giving us overflight rights. U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan prepares a last-ditch attempt to convince Saddam Hussein to abide by the U.N. resolutions he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.
Administration rhetoric could hardly be stronger. The president asks the nation to consider this question: What if Saddam Hussein "fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction."
The president's warnings are firm. "If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." The stakes, he says, could not be higher. "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."
These are the words not of President George W. Bush in September 2002 but of President Bill Clinton on February 18, 1998. Clinton was speaking at the Pentagon, after the Joint Chiefs and other top national security advisers had briefed him on U.S. military readiness. The televised speech followed a month-long build-up of U.S. troops and equipment in the Persian Gulf. And it won applause from leading Democrats on Capitol Hill.
But just five days later, Kofi Annan struck yet another "deal" with the Iraqi dictator - which once more gave U.N. inspectors permission to inspect - and Saddam won again.
OF COURSE, much has changed since President Clinton gave that speech. The situation has gotten worse. Ten months after Saddam accepted Annan's offer, he kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq for good. We complained. Then we bombed a little. Then we stopped bombing. Later, we stepped up our enforcement of the no-fly zones. A year after the inspectors were banished, the U.N. created a new, toothless inspection regime. The new inspectors inspected nothing. If Saddam Hussein was a major threat in February 1998, when President Clinton prepared this country for war and U.N. inspectors were still inside Iraq, it stands to reason that in the absence of those inspectors monitoring his weapons build-up, Saddam is an even greater threat today.
But not, apparently, if you're Tom Daschle. The Senate majority leader and his fellow congressional Democrats have spent months criticizing the Bush administration for its failure to make the "public case" for military intervention in Iraq. Now that the Bush administration has begun to do so, many of these same Democrats are rushing to erect additional obstacles.
"What has changed in recent months or years" to justify confronting Saddam, Daschle asked last Wednesday after meeting with President Bush. Dick Gephardt wants to know what a democratic Iraq would look like. Dianne Feinstein wants the Israeli-Palestinian conflict settled first. Bob Graham says the administration hasn't presented anything new. John Kerry complains about, well, everything.
Matters looked different in 1998, when Democrats were working with a president of their own party. Daschle not only supported military action against Iraq, he campaigned vigorously for a congressional resolution to formalize his support. Other current critics of President Bush - including Kerry, Graham, Patrick Leahy, Christopher Dodd, and Republican Chuck Hagel - co-sponsored the broad 1998 resolution: Congress "urges the president to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." (Emphasis added.)
Daschle said the 1998 resolution would "send as clear a message as possible that we are going to force, one way or another, diplomatically or militarily, Iraq to comply with international law." And he vigorously defended President Clinton's inclination to use military force in Iraq.
Summing up the Clinton administration's argument, Daschle said, "'Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?' That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily."
John Kerry was equally hawkish: "If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to enforce those rights," Kerry said back on February 23, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East."
Considering the views these Democrats expressed four years ago, why the current reluctance to support President Bush?
Who knows? But if the president continues to run into stronger-than-expected resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill, he can always just recycle the arguments so many Democrats accepted in 1998:
"Just consider the facts," Bill Clinton urged.
"Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM. In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and chief organizer of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth."
Clinton was on a roll:
"Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability - notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. "
More Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century," he argued. "They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."
What more needs to be said?
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
Saw Byrd on TV the other night...talking like Captain Kirk with these odd long pauses (drama or senility?) waving his hands around like a madman. Whoa, impressively freaky. All those people who have that silly speech of his posted up on their websites (someone actually emailed it to me ugh) need to take a look at the guy who gave it first. Even if I was a hardcore leftist I'd want nothing to do with that guy. What a fruitbat.
Comments
Originally posted by groverat
I cannot believe how you guys can just brush past that blatant hypocrisy... just stunning.
I'm not defending his taking of the position now v before, I'm just saying that a politician or civilian shouldn't feel compelled to subdue their dissent for the sake of the president or even a war.
I already said Daschle's comments felt like a bad compromise. Byrd's seem genuine though. In either case, I support their willingness to stand up and voice their opinions. Wouldn't you?
"That's just patently wrong. When someone is wrongfully convicted and put on death row, do you stop debate because the courts have already ruled? No. You debate until the switch is pulled. The debate can and should continue even after the fact so as to not let history repeat itself when the present day actions are so horrendous."
"So horrendus"?
"Not let history repeat itself"
Funny, it seemed to me that our President was INDEED trying to prevent history from repeating itself.
And I disagree, bunge. One debates about passing a resolution. One debates when our troops are not engaged in battle. To argue that it is wrong for us to use force when we are hours away from actually using it is wrong. Actually, it is worse than that....Daschle criticized the President personally. He bordered on a delibrate attempt to undermine confidence in the commander-in-chief on the eve of war....a war which he voted to allow. It's just wrong.
And yes, BR, I have changed my mind in my lifetime. Not on this, though.
Originally posted by BR
I have only one question for you. Have you ever changed your mind in your life?
So are you saying that Daschle has changed his mind? Ena asked the relevant questions:
Which of you is ready to say the Daschle's comments are purley from principle---and have no political component?
Also---which of you can say that he would be saying the SAME things if a member of his party were President?
Originally posted by SDW2001
One debates about passing a resolution. One debates when our troops are not engaged in battle. To argue that it is wrong for us to use force when we are hours away from actually using it is wrong. Actually, it is worse than that....Daschle criticized the President personally. He bordered on a delibrate attempt to undermine confidence in the commander-in-chief on the eve of war.
Good for him. If he really disagrees with it he should criticize it. As the republicans proved while Bubba was in office, the commander-in-chief is in no way immune from criticism, nor should he be. No one should blindly support anything, especially something as drastic as a war.
Originally posted by bunge
Good for him...
I think it isn't fair to compare the two situations and rabidly attack the Senate Minority leader for apparantly "flip-flopping" on the issues. If anything, you can compare this to the swinging of a hammer, one side dubiously heavier than the other. You're not going to do the same job using the handle as you are using the big heavy metal part. You just can't. Maybe you can bluntly pound something into place with the handle, but you're not going to be taking out old nails and driving in new ones.
Get what I am trying to say at least?
Kind of like this...
Originally posted by ShawnPatrickJoyce
I don't know how the last two instances of military action in Iraq compare. I don't know if they do compare... Can you honestly say that lobbing cruise missiles at targets from 1000 miles away is the same as doing that plus committing ground troops for an invasion plus taking out the current regime plus replacing it with a new government plus doing all of that after a long debate with the UN who told us we probably shouldn't?
They aren't comparable. The lobbing of cruise missiles was clearly ineffective - a lot of things got blown up and we didn't achieve our objective. Also, there was no debate with the UN back in 1998. Daschle is now critical of Bush for failing to get from the UN what Clinton didn't even try to get! The two situations aren't comparable. Not only did Daschle fully support President Clinton, he helped the admin in making the case for military force. He's not singing from that songbook today.
Democrats for Regime Change
By Stephen F. Hayes
The Weekly Standard | September 9, 2002
THE PRESIDENT mulls a strike against Iraq, which he calls an "outlaw nation" in league with an "unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." The talk among world leaders, however, focuses on diplomacy. France, Russia, China, and most Arab nations oppose military action. The Saudis balk at giving us overflight rights. U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan prepares a last-ditch attempt to convince Saddam Hussein to abide by the U.N. resolutions he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.
Administration rhetoric could hardly be stronger. The president asks the nation to consider this question: What if Saddam Hussein "fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction."
The president's warnings are firm. "If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." The stakes, he says, could not be higher. "Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."
These are the words not of President George W. Bush in September 2002 but of President Bill Clinton on February 18, 1998. Clinton was speaking at the Pentagon, after the Joint Chiefs and other top national security advisers had briefed him on U.S. military readiness. The televised speech followed a month-long build-up of U.S. troops and equipment in the Persian Gulf. And it won applause from leading Democrats on Capitol Hill.
But just five days later, Kofi Annan struck yet another "deal" with the Iraqi dictator - which once more gave U.N. inspectors permission to inspect - and Saddam won again.
OF COURSE, much has changed since President Clinton gave that speech. The situation has gotten worse. Ten months after Saddam accepted Annan's offer, he kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq for good. We complained. Then we bombed a little. Then we stopped bombing. Later, we stepped up our enforcement of the no-fly zones. A year after the inspectors were banished, the U.N. created a new, toothless inspection regime. The new inspectors inspected nothing. If Saddam Hussein was a major threat in February 1998, when President Clinton prepared this country for war and U.N. inspectors were still inside Iraq, it stands to reason that in the absence of those inspectors monitoring his weapons build-up, Saddam is an even greater threat today.
But not, apparently, if you're Tom Daschle. The Senate majority leader and his fellow congressional Democrats have spent months criticizing the Bush administration for its failure to make the "public case" for military intervention in Iraq. Now that the Bush administration has begun to do so, many of these same Democrats are rushing to erect additional obstacles.
"What has changed in recent months or years" to justify confronting Saddam, Daschle asked last Wednesday after meeting with President Bush. Dick Gephardt wants to know what a democratic Iraq would look like. Dianne Feinstein wants the Israeli-Palestinian conflict settled first. Bob Graham says the administration hasn't presented anything new. John Kerry complains about, well, everything.
Matters looked different in 1998, when Democrats were working with a president of their own party. Daschle not only supported military action against Iraq, he campaigned vigorously for a congressional resolution to formalize his support. Other current critics of President Bush - including Kerry, Graham, Patrick Leahy, Christopher Dodd, and Republican Chuck Hagel - co-sponsored the broad 1998 resolution: Congress "urges the president to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." (Emphasis added.)
Daschle said the 1998 resolution would "send as clear a message as possible that we are going to force, one way or another, diplomatically or militarily, Iraq to comply with international law." And he vigorously defended President Clinton's inclination to use military force in Iraq.
Summing up the Clinton administration's argument, Daschle said, "'Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?' That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily."
John Kerry was equally hawkish: "If there is not unfettered, unrestricted, unlimited access per the U.N. resolution for inspections, and UNSCOM cannot in our judgment appropriately perform its functions, then we obviously reserve the rights to press that case internationally and to do what we need to do as a nation in order to be able to enforce those rights," Kerry said back on February 23, 1998. "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That is a threat to the stability of the Middle East. It is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis. It is a threat even to regions near but not exactly in the Middle East."
Considering the views these Democrats expressed four years ago, why the current reluctance to support President Bush?
Who knows? But if the president continues to run into stronger-than-expected resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill, he can always just recycle the arguments so many Democrats accepted in 1998:
"Just consider the facts," Bill Clinton urged.
"Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM. In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and chief organizer of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth."
Clinton was on a roll:
"Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability - notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. "
More Clinton: "We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century," he argued. "They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein."
What more needs to be said?
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.