What if we had not been "wrong and strong" about Iraq?

[madfloridian]

What if we had dared to be brave enough to be right and appear to be on the weak side?

Strong and wrong

From 2002 shortly after the vote on the IWR in a speech to the DLC.

"The last point I want to make is we've got to be strong," he declared. "When we look weak in a time where people feel insecure, we lose. When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right." Actually, this was also the first point he made in his hourlong speech, and he repeated it many times throughout. Supporting the war is insufficient, Clinton warned. "I approve of what's being done in Iraq now and the way it's being done, but it's not enough," he said.

What if a firm unwavering stand had been taken on the Iraq invasion before the vote, instead of a former president saying "it depends" when asked about a unilateral invasion.

From a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in June 2002:

Our Shared Future: Globalization

And this is really where the question of Iraq comes in. There's a lot of debate about what should we do with Iraq, and when. And you may want to ask further questions, but I will just make one observation. Saddam Hussein presents no conventional military threat to us, and a much smaller one to his allies than he did before the Gulf War. His military strength, it is commonly conceded, is about 40 percent of what it was before the Gulf War. He did try to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 with the most clumsy terrorist operation I ever saw. The car bombs that we uncovered practically said, "made by the operatives of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad." But after we bombed his intelligence building, as far as we know, he never took another serious terrorist act himself. And the Bush administration has said that Iraq was not involved in September the 11th.

The problem he presents to the world is that he has laboratories working to produce chemical and biological weapons. And they would be working to produce nuclear weapons if they had any weapons grade plutonium. We know that from the people who have defected, we know that from what he's done in the past. We launched a military operation in 1998, after he threw the inspectors out in an attempt to destroy as many of those facilitates as possible. So would it be a good idea if he weren't there? And were replaced by someone committed to a responsible course with regard to weapons of mass destruction? Yes. Would it be a good idea if the people of Iraq weren't siding with him, since he's a murderer and a thug? Yes. Should we unilaterally attack him? Well, that depends. And you may want to ask me more about that, and I'll try to weave that into my remarks later on.

What if our congressional Democrats and presidential candidates had listened to other advisors in the months leading up to the war? Some reveal who they were getting advice from.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1041

A hint: they talked to advisors from the Clinton administration. Three men tell of it...Feingold, Dean, and Edwards.

What if we had just listened to other voices. There were many of them. One office here alone had almoost 3000 calls begging him not to vote for the war...but he did.

[twilight_sailing]

1. If wishes were horses...

[madfloridian]

2. Then beggars would ride....

Where did that originate? I have read or heard it somewhere.

:hi:

[madfloridian]

3. Just think about this.

Three of our major Democrats have said they were advised by Clinton advisors that Iraq might have major weapons.

Really the one time Dean said he felt Saddam might have weapons still was in early 2003. He said this when asked later where he heard it:

During the New Hampshire primary in January 2004, which I covered for
Democracy Now!, I confronted Dean about that statement. I asked him on what
intelligence he based that allegation. "Talks with people who were
knowledgeable," Dean told me. "Including a series of folks that work in the
Clinton administration

Of course the reporter Scahill forgot to mention that Dean also figured it out by himself, and said this in that very same interview:

MR. DEAN: See, I don’t think the president has made the case. I think what the president has made a reasonable case for is that Saddam is moving weapons around in terms of biologicals and chemicals, perhaps. He has not made a case for the three things that I think require or enable us to invade unilaterally or pre-emptively or preventively, as we are now calling it. He has not made the case for Saddam possessing nuclear weapons. He has not made the case that he has any kind of a credible nuclear program. And he has not made the case that Saddam is giving weapons of mass destruction to the terrorists. If he were doing any of those things, I think we would have a right to defend ourselves, and we should go in. That case has not been made, either by the president or Secretary Powell, and I don’t think that we ought to go in, if we don’t want to use the word unilaterally, than preventively or pre-emptively.

Guess who else said the same thing about Clinton advisors.

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know,
we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically
wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton
administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about
what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons
programs. They were also wrong

And who else? Feingold.

Feingold says it’s even deeper - he says this is a battle
between Democrats’ Washington consultant class and the rest of the country -
and he specifically targets the D.C. elites from the Clinton administration,
who he accurately notes largely supported the war from the get-go.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1041