TheHonestTruth
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FinnMacCool said:I'd like to see a better source then wikipedia for this kind of info. You can't take anything from there to be fact.
The rest of the article can be found here:All the vice president's men
The ideologues in Cheney's inner circle drummed up a war. Now their zealotry is blowing up in their faces.
By Juan Cole
Oct. 28, 2005 | As Washington waits on pins and needles to see if special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments, the focus falls on Dick Cheney's inner circle. This group, along with that surrounding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made up what Colin Powell's top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, called "a cabal" that "on critical issues ... made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." Cheney is the first vice president to have had, in effect, his own personal National Security Council. This formidable and unprecedented rump foreign policy team, composed of radical hawks, played a key role in every aspect of the war on Iraq: planning for it, gathering "evidence" to justify it and punishing those who spoke out against it. It is not surprising that members of that team, and Cheney himself, have now also emerged as targets in Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press, along with Bush advisor Karl Rove.
Although the investigation has focused on Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a number of other Cheney staffers have been interviewed. Who are these shadowy policymakers who played such a major role in shaping the Bush administration's foreign policy?
Most of the members of Cheney's inner circle were neoconservative ideologues, who combined hawkish American triumphalism with an obsession with Israel. This does not mean that the war was fought for Israel, although it is undeniable that Israeli concerns played an important role. The actual motivation behind the war was complex, and Cheney's team was not the only one in the game. The Bush administration is a coalition of disparate forces -- country club Republicans, realists, representatives of oil and other corporate interests, evangelicals, hardball political strategists, right-wing Catholics, and neoconservative Jews allied with Israel's right-wing Likud party. Each group had its own rationale for going to war with Iraq.
Bush himself appears to have had an obsession with restoring family honor by avenging the slight to his father produced by Saddam's remaining in office after the Gulf War. Cheney was interested in the benefits of a war to the oil industry, and to the military-industrial complex in general. It seems likely that the Iraq war, which produced billions in no-bid contracts for the company he headed in the late 1990s, saved Halliburton from bankruptcy. The evangelicals wanted to missionize Iraqis. Karl Rove wanted to turn Bush into a war president to ensure his reelection. The neoconservatives viewed Saddam's Iraq as a short-term danger to Israel, and in the long term, they hoped that overthrowing the Iraqi Baath would transform the entire Middle East, rather as Kamal Ataturk, who abolished the offices of Ottoman emperor and Sunni caliph in the 1920s, had brought into being a relatively democratic Turkey that was allied with Israel. (This fantastic analogy was suggested by Princeton emeritus professor and leading neoconservative ideologue Bernard Lewis.) This transformation would be beneficial to the long-term security of both the United States and Israel.
None of these rationales would have been acceptable across the board, or persuasive with Congress or the American public, so the various factions focused on the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately for them, this rationale was discovered to be a mirage. And in the course of trying to punish those who were pointing out that the emperor had no clothes -- or, in this case, that the dictator had no weapons of mass destruction -- Cheney and Bush's underlings went too far. Ironically, their attempt to silence critics succeeded only in turning a harsh light on their own actions and motivations.
"Cheney Assembles Formidable Team," marveled a Page One article in the Feb. 3, 2001, edition of the New York Times. It turns out that Cheney had 15 military and political advisors on foreign affairs, at a time when the president's own National Security Council was being downsized. The number of aides who counseled Cheney on domestic issues was much smaller. In contrast, Al Gore had been advised by a single staffer on security affairs.
The leader of the team was Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Libby had studied at Yale with Paul Wolfowitz, who brought him to Washington. He co-authored a hawkish policy document with Wolfowitz in the Department of Defense for its head, Dick Cheney, after the Gulf War in 1992. When it was leaked, it embarrassed the first President Bush. Libby was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century in 1997 during the Clinton years, when many neoconservatives were out of office. The PNAC attempted to use the Republican-dominated Congress to pressure Clinton to take a more belligerent stance toward Iraq, and it advocated significantly expanding military spending and using U.S. troops as "gendarmes" in the aftermath of wars to "shape" the international security environment.
Cheney was also a PNAC member, and his association with this group from 1997 signaled a shift from his earlier hard-nosed realism, as he allied himself with the neoconservatives, who dreamed of transforming other societies. The James Baker branch of the Republican Party had long been critical of Israel for causing trouble for the United States in the Middle East with its expansionist policies and unwillingness to stop the settlement of the West Bank, and Baker was well aware that the vast majority of American Jews do not vote Republican.
Although a staunch defender of Israel, Cheney at one time was at least on speaking terms with this wing of the Republican Party. (The sense of betrayal felt by his old colleagues was summed up by Bush I's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who told the New Yorker he considered Cheney a friend, "But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." As time went on, however, he increasingly chose to ally with neoconservatives and the Jewish right in the U.S. and Israel, accepting them as powerful allies and constituents for his vision of a post-Cold War world dominated by an unchallenged American hegemony that would be backed by a vast military-industrial establishment fed by U.S. tax dollars. He continually promised skeptical Jewish audiences that a democratic Iraq would benefit Israel. His choice of advisors when he became vice president demonstrated a pronounced preference for the neoconservatives.
But Cheney's alliance with the neocons was probably driven more by his Manichaean, Cold War-inspired worldview -- in which the U.S. battled an evil enemy -- and his corporate ties, than by an obsession with Israel or remaking the Middle East. Islamist terror provided a new version of the Soviet "evil empire." And the neocons' dynamic foreign policy vision, their "liberalism with guns," offered more opportunities for the military-industrial complex than did traditional Republican realism in a post-Soviet world, where peer states did not exist and no credible military threat menaced the U.S. Only a series of wars of conquest in the Middle East, dressed up as a "defense" against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could hope to keep the Pentagon and the companies to which it outsourced in the gravy.
Such wars could no longer be fought in East Asia, given Chinese and North Korean nuclear capabilities, and there were no U.S. constituencies for such wars in most other parts of the world. The Middle East was the perfect arena for a renewed American militarism, given that the U.S. public held deep prejudices against the Arab-Muslim world, and, after Sept. 11, deeply feared it.
Would you also like to take credit for the crap I took this morning?Originally posted by GySgt:
Ha ha. Told ya.
Billo_Really said:Would you also like to take credit for the crap I took this morning?
You need to stop with these Gy Daily Show comments. They take me out of my game-face until I can stop laughing (minus a few moments for the conversion).Originally posted by GySgt:
Not if it stank. I have it on good authority that my crap don't stink.
aps said:Bush 1 knew that invading Iraq was a bad idea. I dont' care if Clinton fully supported invading Iraq. It was Dubya who decided to invade. He was obsessed with invading at the time he started his presidency--January 2001. Both Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke have stated that. 9-11 was a distraction, and Bush was furious about that. But then he and his advisers were able to come up with an excuse--saying that there was a connection between Iraq and September 11th.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Buck tooth Condoleezza were saying that NOT only did Iraq have WMDs (which, I agree, many people thought that was the case), they also said that we were in imminent danger of getting attacked by those weapons. They knew that the only way the United States would agree to go to war is if they stated that we were in danger.
As for the lies that they told, we reap what we sew.......
GySgt said:Personally, I don't care if it was a big old lie or not. Saddam needed to go and now he is gone. Iraq was oppressed and brutalized by a dictator and now they are not. Saudi has us by the balls with their oil and now that we have a free Iraq maybe we will cut our ties to the true lords of terror eventually. Saddam would have and probably did finance terrorist acts against America and our allies and now he cannot. With Iran looking to develop nukes and Saddam sitting across the border looking for anyway to secure American absence from his country, our nation and our allies would have been in danger and now we are not.
America is still in danger. You're just looking for a concrete Islamic militant Army instead of the civilization where extremists recruit their "martyrs." The oppressed civilization and the desperation of individuals that adhere to the Korans most brutal scriptures for answers to salvation and escape from their government sponsers is the danger.
128shot said:Sure Saddam is gone who didn't do these three things
1.Fund Osama Bin Laden
2.Build WMDs that could attack the United States
3. Fund international terrorism.
I can name a country that does: SAUDI ARABIA
GySgt said:1) How do you know? I guess all of his money, which was not shared with his people, was spent on his pretty gardens.
GySgt said:2) How do you know? There are still stockpiles of WMD unaccounted for. WMD that the UN inspectors declared in 1998 in which there is no trace of today.
GySgt said:3) How do you know? What does it matter anyway? He harbored Al-Queda personel within his borders after 9/11. Strange that out of the entire world, they went there.
GySgt said:It doesn't really matter anymore does it? We no longer have to waste anymore time dealing with him and all of the funds and personel that Al-Queda has been throwing away on us in Iraq are resources that weren't used plotting further attacks in America.
Napoleon's Nightingale said:Saddam spent it on palaces, cars, televisions, solid gold toilets, etc. Given the available evidence, thats it.
Napoleon's Nightingale said:I doubt Saddam knew every person crossing his borders. Not even we know whos crossing our borders. You assume there was some elaborate plot to protect the remnants of Al Qaeda even though theres no evidence to sudgest one. Al Qaeda went everywhere after we invaded Afghanistan..not just Iraq.
Napoleon's Nightingale said:It's more likely that the Al Qaeda cells that would carry out an attack on America are already here with those resources. Remember, they used our resources to attack us last time.
GySgt said:Personally, I don't care if it was a big old lie or not. Saddam needed to go and now he is gone. Iraq was oppressed and brutalized by a dictator and now they are not. Saudi has us by the balls with their oil and now that we have a free Iraq maybe we will cut our ties to the true lords of terror eventually. Saddam would have and probably did finance terrorist acts against America and our allies and now he cannot. With Iran looking to develop nukes and Saddam sitting across the border looking for anyway to secure American absence from his country, our nation and our allies would have been in danger and now we are not.
America is still in danger. You're just looking for a concrete Islamic militant Army instead of the civilization where extremists recruit their "martyrs." The oppressed civilization and the desperation of individuals that adhere to the Korans most brutal scriptures for answers to salvation and escape from their government sponsers is the danger.
dragonslayer said:No matter who wanted to go with Iraq, We still have invaded an independent nation for no dam reason. A lot of world leaders did not like Saddam after the Gulf war and before. Who cares if Clinton did not like Saddam. He did not attack Iraq. who should we attack next France? or Britain?
The Man with the big lies attacked Iraq. Bush is probably responsible for more Iraqi deaths than Saddam and the Bath party.
aps said:Well, GySgt, I think we are more in danger than we were when we invaded Iraq. We have infuriated the Islamic militants. And I agree with the poster who pointed out that this war is responsible for more deaths than Saddam Hussein caused. Are we supposed to invade every country that has a dictator? Is that what our foreign policy is going to be from now on?
GySgt said:Our issues in the Middle East involve a culture. Bin Laden, the House of Saud, and Saddam are mere symptoms of decay. Until the civilization is dealt with and given the opportunity to climb out of their oppressive states, then Islamic extremism will persist. Saddam Hussein was every bit a part of the problem and had to go. There would be no change with Saddam still in power in Iraq.
Most of the deaths regarding civilians in this war has been from the hand of Muslims..not us. In war...people die. Perhaps you would have liked it better if we invaded Saudi? Maybe Iran or Syria? Would there be less death? We haven't infuriated anybody. These people hated us before Iraq and they hate us now. They hated us before 9/11 and they hate us now. They hated us before Afghanistan and they hate us now. Perhaps we should do our best to not infuriate them. By the way...this is called appeasement. A direct result being 9/11.
Are you one of those that believe that as long as dictators murder, slaughter, rape, and destroy within their own borders, then they are safe because they are "soveriegn?"
cnredd said:Gunny, you once again impress...
For those who like to use the "Why don't we go after the Saudi Arabia or Iran first?" example, may I suggest you go back in time and understand why we invaded Normandy before we went into Berlin...
TheHonestTruth said:HELLO...
The 1998 Act states that we would overthrow him, charge him with war crimes, and put in place a democratic government! He has the motive unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia or North Korea!
Most people here seem to be ignoring the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act. You people that buy into the liberal line, as I once did, that Saddam was not a threat, that is pathetic. Once I learned about the 1998 Act I realized why he was a threat. If you knew about our history with the 1998 Act you would know why.
After that act his vendetta is huge! Were basically telling him his days are numbered and we will invade him sooner or later so we can jail him. He had every reason to sell his weapons he had in 1998. Even if he got rid of them it was only because the U.S. was talking about invading. If we had not overthrown him like we said in 1998, and hadnt done this after 9/11 then that would be a national security risk. What stops him from selling those weapons he had in 1998? When he stopped allowing UN inspections as a result of the Liberation Act-we have no way to account for them and he then has the motive to sell them to terrorists who wish to kill us as he knows his days are numbered since 1998. If you tell someone you are overthrowing them and they have unchecked weapons, how is that not a threat?
mikeey said:GySgt,USMC and BILLO how can we solve this problem,U are 2 good lads
what can we do now,another 6 soldiers have lost there lives today,and
GYSgt i know u and BILLO as the same as the lads on this forum, R sorry
2 see that.I dont no the anwser,but i hope some 1 will come up whith it
before any more lives R lost please
kind regards to all of U
mikeey
TheHonestTruth said:HELLO...
The 1998 Act states that we would overthrow him, charge him with war crimes, and put in place a democratic government! He has the motive unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia or North Korea!
Most people here seem to be ignoring the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act. You people that buy into the liberal line, as I once did, that Saddam was not a threat, that is pathetic. Once I learned about the 1998 Act I realized why he was a threat. If you knew about our history with the 1998 Act you would know why.
After that act his vendetta is huge! Were basically telling him his days are numbered and we will invade him sooner or later so we can jail him. He had every reason to sell his weapons he had in 1998. Even if he got rid of them it was only because the U.S. was talking about invading. If we had not overthrown him like we said in 1998, and hadnt done this after 9/11 then that would be a national security risk. What stops him from selling those weapons he had in 1998? When he stopped allowing UN inspections as a result of the Liberation Act-we have no way to account for them and he then has the motive to sell them to terrorists who wish to kill us as he knows his days are numbered since 1998. If you tell someone you are overthrowing them and they have unchecked weapons, how is that not a threat?
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