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Jeb Bush Says Taking Down Saddam Hussein Was 'Pretty Good Deal'

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SlevinKelevra

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Jeb Bush Says Taking Down Saddam Hussein Was 'Pretty Good Deal' - ABC News

Today, Republican hopeful Jeb Bush uncharacteristically came out in favor of many of his brother's Iraq policies, offering a rare show of vigorous support. While speaking in a national security forum in Davenport, Iowa, the younger Bush defended the change he says George W. Bush's policies brought about in Iraq.


"I’ll tell you though, that taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal,” Jeb Bush said.
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Good deal for who? ISxx? Halliburton? Iran?
:shock:


And he's "the smart one"?
 
SlevinKelevra said:
Jeb Bush Says Taking Down Saddam Hussein Was 'Pretty Good Deal' - ABC News



Good deal for who? ISxx? Halliburton? Iran?
:shock:


And he's "the smart one"?
Click to expand...

The problem with what Bush said and with many other things is that in the public the details are not always well understood and even the basic education requires to analyse complex foreign policy situations are less than adequate. This is certainly the case in Iraq.
Actually it was pretty good. Where we fell down was in the aftermath. We were too humane in our approach and too little harsh in the application of standards, as it turned out.
It was also very expensive. But that would have been a good investment, had the next CIC built on the beginning successes like r2p and gone for a stronger supranational security system. We might be able to readdress this failure, but we have lost precious years.
 
joG said:
The problem with what Bush said and with many other things is that in the public the details are not always well understood and even the basic education requires to analyse complex foreign policy situations are less than adequate. This is certainly the case in Iraq.
Actually it was pretty good. Where we fell down was in the aftermath. We were too humane in our approach and too little harsh in the application of standards, as it turned out.
It was also very expensive. But that would have been a good investment, had the next CIC built on the beginning successes like r2p and gone for a stronger supranational security system. We might be able to readdress this failure, but we have lost precious years.
Click to expand...



Uh, I think it's a lot simpler than that. JEB! was a PNAC signatory member, and there's pretty much no way he's going to ever publicly decry the failures of this "plan", regardless of how much historical revisionism is needed.
 
Jeb insists on saying dumb things once in awhile, but most stupid statements will probably be forgotten. BUT his constant defending of the Iraq invasion, which was based on nothing but lies and deceit, will come back to bite him in the ass.

If I was his campaign manager I'd tell him to distance himself from his brother, and Iraq. He's not doing that, and IMO that's a big mistake.
 
SlevinKelevra said:
Not that I actually agree; but say I did.

So? Who cares if it wasn't a good deal FOR US?
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Who says it wasn't a good deal for US?

Too bad Bush wasn't asked that question, eh?

You need to get after your media...they are letting you down.
 
Mycroft said:
Who says it wasn't a good deal for US?
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When given the chance to:
you didn't say it was a good deal for US.

Instead,
When asked who it was a good deal for, you responded---specifically--- that it was a good deal for Iraq. Not "US and Iraq". Simply "IRAQ". Your omission is damning.
 
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It cost us 1,000's of lives, 10,000's of wounded, $trillions, and got us into a war against ISIS, AQ, whatever we want to call them this week that will last for decades.

Nope, that's not a good deal.
 
The prize it cost in American lives, American dollars and Iraqi civilians wasn't really worth the cost IMHO for the taking down of Saddam.

Saddam should have been taken down in the first gulf war. Then he was left in power.
 
SenorXm/Sirius said:
Jeb insists on saying dumb things once in awhile, but most stupid statements will probably be forgotten. BUT his constant defending of the Iraq invasion, which was based on nothing but lies and deceit, will come back to bite him in the ass.

If I was his campaign manager I'd tell him to distance himself from his brother, and Iraq. He's not doing that, and IMO that's a big mistake.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't be great to see him and Biden be the nominees? Comedy gold. But then one of them would be President. Nah, never mind.
 
SlevinKelevra said:
When given the chance to:
you didn't say it was a good deal for US.

Instead,
When asked who it was a good deal for, you responded---specifically--- that it was a good deal for Iraq. Not "US and Iraq". Simply "IRAQ". Your omission is damning.
Click to expand...

My first post was my answer to your question in your OP.

In your response to me, I didn't realize you were asking "me" if I thought it was a good deal for the US. I was responding to your question...

SlevinKelevra said:
Not that I actually agree; but say I did.

So? Who cares if it wasn't a good deal FOR US?
Click to expand...

Frankly, I don't know who cares if it wasn't a good deal for the US...maybe some people care...maybe some people don't. That's why I asked for more information.

In any case, I don't think it was a good deal for the US. If I did, I would have said so in my first post.
 
SlevinKelevra said:
Jeb Bush Says Taking Down Saddam Hussein Was 'Pretty Good Deal' - ABC News

Good deal for who? ISxx? Halliburton? Iran?
:shock:

And he's "the smart one"?
Click to expand...

As it turns out, taking out Saddam ended up being just another in a series of bad decisions regarding Iraq going well back to the 1980s. More to the point the real winner of taking out Saddam was the military industrial complex.

Don't get me wrong, the world is better off without Saddam in it. However, we see what happens to a nation in the Middle East when there is not a strong government over a strong military running a nation over there. Without those two things... chaos.
 
1) Before the death of Saddam there was relative stability and prosperity in Iraq and much of the Middle East.
2) Almost immediately after his removal this stability was replaced with a return to sectarian violence and warfare.
3) The displacement of authoritarian control was eventually replaced by Totalitarian and brutal Islamic governance in the region (ISIS) which we are currently trying to fight (Again).
4) No lessons seem to have been learned from the Folly of Western interference in ME mentality.

It is high time everyone in the western world abandoned any hope of "Helping" Islamic nations and instead prevented this from spreading to themselves. They do not want our help once we try to give it, and no matter what we upset the Muslims they wish to kill...resulting in them wanting to kill us as well.

No Win Scenario!
 
joG said:
The problem with what Bush said and with many other things is that in the public the details are not always well understood and even the basic education requires to analyse complex foreign policy situations are less than adequate. This is certainly the case in Iraq.
Actually it was pretty good. Where we fell down was in the aftermath. We were too humane in our approach and too little harsh in the application of standards, as it turned out.
It was also very expensive. But that would have been a good investment, had the next CIC built on the beginning successes like r2p and gone for a stronger supranational security system. We might be able to readdress this failure, but we have lost precious years.
Click to expand...

We went into Iraq as "liberators" and you claim we were too humane? The Iraqi's hate us and kicked us out, that's how "humane" we were. The real problem is that we rushed in with no plan for the peace and no comprehension of the problems inherent in Iraqi culture. Given that fact, we had no business invading Iraq at all. I suppose you want Jeb elected do we can continue his brothers mistakes because that is what he will do.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Iraq was in pretty good shape when GW Bush left office and I distinctly remember both Obama and Biden crowing about how they'd won the war in Iraq and brought the troops home.

So what happened? Maybe the Harvard professor and the plagiarizer can fill you in.
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You would have rather they said the war was a failure and that the Iraqi's hate us and kicked us out? That was the truth. Our only victory was that we got out and no more American lives are being wasted on a failed policy. We can thank GW Bush for that.

Bush’s finest moment on Iraq: SOFA, not the surge | Foreign Policy
 
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I'd just note for people that Iraq, led by Hussein, murdered millions of its own people and was ruled by a brutal minority suppressing the will of the majority and other minorities. The atrocities of Hussein are no less gruesome than those of ISIS - they were just better hidden and not part of a propaganda campaign.

I'd also note that under the same principle, Obama joined a French led NATO campaign to take out one man, Qaddafi, in Libya, and the same level of inattention and followup that plagued the aftermath in Iraq has followed in Libya, granted on a lesser scale.

The same is currently happening in Syria, where one minute Obama says Assad must be removed and the next is busy golfing. All the while, inattention and neglect is resulting in much of the Middle East in turmoil, thousands of refugees flooding southern Europe from Africa and Greece/Turkey/Jordan/Lebanon and others from Syria/Iraq.

I can't blame Americans for wanting a little isolationism to kick in - many Canadians feel the same way.
 
iguanaman said:
You would have rather they said the war was a failure and that the Iraqi's hate us and kicked us out? That was the truth. Our only victory was that we got out and no more American lives are being wasted on a failed policy.
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If that's how you see it, it's not my job to educate you.
 
CanadaJohn said:
If that's how you see it, it's not my job to educate you.
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It is easy for you to say, the Canadian Govt. wisely refused to participate in Bush's invasion. You didn't lose a single soldier.

While Canada had previously participated in military action against Iraq in the Gulf War of 1991, it refused to declare war against Iraq without United Nations approval. Even so, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said on 10 October 2002 that Canada would, in fact, be part of a military coalition to invade Iraq if it were sanctioned by the United Nations. However, when the United States and the United Kingdom subsequently withdrew their diplomatic efforts to gain that UN sanction, Jean Chrétien announced in Parliament on 17 March 2003 that Canada would not participate in the pending invasion.
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Canada_and_the_Iraq_War
 
Peter King said:
The prize it cost in American lives, American dollars and Iraqi civilians wasn't really worth the cost IMHO for the taking down of Saddam.

Saddam should have been taken down in the first gulf war. Then he was left in power.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...



Talk to Bush senior about that.
 
CanadaJohn said:
If that's how you see it,
it's not my job to educate you.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...



Before you try to educate anyone you need to do a lot of research and educate yourself.

You can't teach anyone about things that you know very little about.
 
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joG said:
The problem with what Bush said and with many other things is that in the public the details are not always well understood and even the basic education requires to analyse complex foreign policy situations are less than adequate. This is certainly the case in Iraq.
Actually it was pretty good. Where we fell down was in the aftermath. We were too humane in our approach and too little harsh in the application of standards, as it turned out.
It was also very expensive. But that would have been a good investment, had the next CIC built on the beginning successes like r2p and gone for a stronger supranational security system. We might be able to readdress this failure, but we have lost precious years.
Click to expand...

This is bull****, because all we gave, in the planning, was lip service to 'bringing them democracy.' We had no substantial plans for that...and it hadnt even been done successfully elsewhere. It just sounded good.
 
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