Jeb Bush Would Have Authorized Iraq War - Even Knowing What We Know Now

So is thrre a Polaroid picture of you jizzing over the '$50 jackpot you won at the Windstar truck stop and bingo hall. Or are you working the Big 6 table?

Most sane and rational people have now determined that the ill fated and ill advised, Spring of 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Apparently, most of the White House hopefuls from both the Democratic and Republican Party are saying something similar.

Of course our resident Idiot's, led by their Patriarch Idiot (LLIdiot) still say otherwise. Perhaps LLIdiot knows where those illusive WMD's are located and he's just not saying!

The Associated Press story follows:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A dozen years later, American politics has reached a rough consensus about the Iraq War: It was a mistake.

Politicians hoping to be president rarely run ahead of public opinion. So it's a revealing moment when the major contenders for president in both parties find it best to say that 4,491 Americans and countless Iraqis lost their lives in a war that shouldn't have been waged.

Many people have been saying that for years, of course. Polls show most of the public have judged the war a failure by now. Over time, more and more Republican politicians have allowed that the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq undermined Republican President George W. Bush's rationale for the 2003 invasion.

It hasn't been an easy evolution for those such as Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, now favored to win her party's nomination, who voted for the war in 2002 while serving in the Senate. That vote, and her refusal to fully disavow it, cost her during her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama, who wasn't in the Senate in 2002 but had opposed the war.

In her memoir last year, Clinton wrote that she had voted based on the information available at the time, but "I got it wrong. Plain and simple."

What might seem a hard truth for a nation to acknowledge has become the safest thing for an American politician to say — even Bush's brother.

The fact that Jeb Bush, a likely candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016, was pressured this past week into rejecting, in hindsight, his brother's war "is an indication that the received wisdom, that which we work from right now, is that this was a mistake," said Evan Cornog, a historian and dean of the Hofstra University school of communication.

Or as Rick Santorum, another potential Republican candidate, put it: "Everybody accepts that now." As a senator, Santorum voted for the Iraq invasion and continued to support it for years.

It's an easier question for presidential hopefuls who aren't bound by family ties or their own congressional vote for the war, who have the luxury of judging it in hindsight, knowing full well the terrible price Americans paid and the continuing bloodshed in Iraq today.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz weren't in Congress in 2002 and so didn't have to make a real-time decision with imperfect knowledge. Neither was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who served an earlier stint in Congress.

All these Republicans said last week that, in hindsight, they would not have invaded Iraq with what's now known about the faulty intelligence that wrongly indicated Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," summed up that sentiment: "Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe for many of us, myself included, to say, we probably wouldn't have taken" that approach.

Rubio, in a long exchange on "Fox News Sunday," tried to navigate the Iraq shoals once again, making a glass-half-full case that while the war was based on mistaken intelligence, the world still is better off with Saddam gone.

These politicians didn't go as far, however, as war critics such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a declared Republican candidate, who says it would have been a mistake even if Saddam were hiding such weapons. Paul says Saddam was serving as a counterbalance to Iran and removing him from power led to much of the turmoil now rocking the Middle East.

Former President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, still maintain that ousting a brutal and unpredictable dictator made the world safer.

In his 2010 memoir, "Decision Points," Bush said he got a "sickening feeling" every time he thought about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and he knew that would "transform public perception of the war."

But he stands by his decision.

The war remains a painful topic that politicians must approach with some care.

Jeb Bush, explaining his reluctance to clarify his position on the war's start, said "going back in time and talking about hypotheticals," the would-haves and the should-haves, does a disservice to the families of soldiers who gave their lives.

When he finished withdrawing U.S. troops in December 2011, Obama predicted a stable, self-reliant Iraqi government would take hold. Instead, turmoil and terrorism overtook Iraq and American leaders and would-be presidents are struggling with what to do next. The U.S. now has 3,040 troops in Iraq as trainers and advisers and to provide security for American personnel and equipment.

For the most part, the public and the military — like the politicians — are focused less on decisions of the past than on the events of today and how to stop the Islamic State militants who have overrun a swath of Iraq and inspired terrorist attacks in the West.

"The greater amount of angst in the military is from seeing the manifest positive results of the surge in 2007 and 2008 go to waste by misguided policies in the aftermath," said retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Monsoor, a top assistant to Gen. David Petraeus in Baghdad during that increase of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Those mistakes were huge and compounded the original error of going into Iraq in the first place," said Monsoor, now a professor of military history at Ohio State University. "There's plenty of blame to go around. What we need is not so much blame as to figure out what happened and use that knowledge to make better decisions going forward."

___

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Robert Burns contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-war-judge...144941788.html

Most sane and rational people have now determined that the ill fated and ill advised, Spring of 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Apparently, most of the White House hopefuls from both the Democratic and Republican Party are saying something similar.

Of course our resident Idiot's, led by their Patriarch Idiot (LLIdiot) still say otherwise. Perhaps LLIdiot knows where those illusive WMD's are located and he's just not saying!

The Associated Press story follows:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A dozen years later, American politics has reached a rough consensus about the Iraq War: It was a mistake.

Politicians hoping to be president rarely run ahead of public opinion. So it's a revealing moment when the major contenders for president in both parties find it best to say that 4,491 Americans and countless Iraqis lost their lives in a war that shouldn't have been waged.

Many people have been saying that for years, of course. Polls show most of the public have judged the war a failure by now. Over time, more and more Republican politicians have allowed that the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq undermined Republican President George W. Bush's rationale for the 2003 invasion.

It hasn't been an easy evolution for those such as Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, now favored to win her party's nomination, who voted for the war in 2002 while serving in the Senate. That vote, and her refusal to fully disavow it, cost her during her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama, who wasn't in the Senate in 2002 but had opposed the war.

In her memoir last year, Clinton wrote that she had voted based on the information available at the time, but "I got it wrong. Plain and simple."

What might seem a hard truth for a nation to acknowledge has become the safest thing for an American politician to say — even Bush's brother.

The fact that Jeb Bush, a likely candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016, was pressured this past week into rejecting, in hindsight, his brother's war "is an indication that the received wisdom, that which we work from right now, is that this was a mistake," said Evan Cornog, a historian and dean of the Hofstra University school of communication.

Or as Rick Santorum, another potential Republican candidate, put it: "Everybody accepts that now." As a senator, Santorum voted for the Iraq invasion and continued to support it for years.

It's an easier question for presidential hopefuls who aren't bound by family ties or their own congressional vote for the war, who have the luxury of judging it in hindsight, knowing full well the terrible price Americans paid and the continuing bloodshed in Iraq today.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz weren't in Congress in 2002 and so didn't have to make a real-time decision with imperfect knowledge. Neither was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who served an earlier stint in Congress.

All these Republicans said last week that, in hindsight, they would not have invaded Iraq with what's now known about the faulty intelligence that wrongly indicated Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," summed up that sentiment: "Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe for many of us, myself included, to say, we probably wouldn't have taken" that approach.

Rubio, in a long exchange on "Fox News Sunday," tried to navigate the Iraq shoals once again, making a glass-half-full case that while the war was based on mistaken intelligence, the world still is better off with Saddam gone.

These politicians didn't go as far, however, as war critics such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a declared Republican candidate, who says it would have been a mistake even if Saddam were hiding such weapons. Paul says Saddam was serving as a counterbalance to Iran and removing him from power led to much of the turmoil now rocking the Middle East.

Former President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, still maintain that ousting a brutal and unpredictable dictator made the world safer.

In his 2010 memoir, "Decision Points," Bush said he got a "sickening feeling" every time he thought about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and he knew that would "transform public perception of the war."

But he stands by his decision.

The war remains a painful topic that politicians must approach with some care.

Jeb Bush, explaining his reluctance to clarify his position on the war's start, said "going back in time and talking about hypotheticals," the would-haves and the should-haves, does a disservice to the families of soldiers who gave their lives.

When he finished withdrawing U.S. troops in December 2011, Obama predicted a stable, self-reliant Iraqi government would take hold. Instead, turmoil and terrorism overtook Iraq and American leaders and would-be presidents are struggling with what to do next. The U.S. now has 3,040 troops in Iraq as trainers and advisers and to provide security for American personnel and equipment.

For the most part, the public and the military — like the politicians — are focused less on decisions of the past than on the events of today and how to stop the Islamic State militants who have overrun a swath of Iraq and inspired terrorist attacks in the West.

"The greater amount of angst in the military is from seeing the manifest positive results of the surge in 2007 and 2008 go to waste by misguided policies in the aftermath," said retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Monsoor, a top assistant to Gen. David Petraeus in Baghdad during that increase of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"Those mistakes were huge and compounded the original error of going into Iraq in the first place," said Monsoor, now a professor of military history at Ohio State University. "There's plenty of blame to go around. What we need is not so much blame as to figure out what happened and use that knowledge to make better decisions going forward."

___

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Robert Burns contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-war-judge...144941788.html Originally Posted by bigtex

This has morphed into the "gotcha" question of the day. Maybe even the entire campain.
I though Marco Rubio did a great job answering it yesterday, he flat out said that given the Intel of the moment, going into Iraq was correct. But, of course, since we now know that he Intel was faulty, the best answer would be to not go in if we indeed at that time knew Saddam had no WSM worth going to war over.

Of course, that still left the question unanswered of "what about Saddam and his a Regime"? It seems now that President Bush 41 had it right when he stopped Our Military from ousting Saddam in Desert Storm. He knew that without Saddam, chaos would erupt, and something even worse than him might spring up. Turns out, as history has proven, he was correct.

Hillary will get the question, sooner or later, and no matter how she answers, the major news media will say......."she nailed it, home run, correct answer", .........even though her answer will be exactly the same answer as Marco Rubio gave yesterday, and of course, is being castigated for.

By the way, your OP is wrong. A president (well, maybe Obama can) can't authorize a war. A president can ask for a declaration of war and it is the Congress (Hillary) who votes to authorize a war. So Tampon doesn't even understand how our Constitution works.

Otherwise you are saying Hillary was the only one who voted for the Iraq invasion judy?

That is true. She is the only candidate that actually voted for the war in Iraq.

That's not what i'va asked, JDIdiot.

Are you ramping up for the Idiot Jihad? Or are you just butt hurt because your ride down to Waco was cancelled and now you can't wear your assless chaps in public?

That is true. She is the only candidate that actually voted for the war in Iraq. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

JDIdiot, you are ignoring an important part of the linked story. It quoted Hillary as making the following statement as it relates to her Spring of 2003 Iraq vote:

"I got it wrong. Plain and simple."

That seems pretty clear to me that Hillary admitted that she fucked up. We all have to admit that at one time or another. Hillary is no different. She fucked up, "plain and simple."

Quite frankly, that "wrong" vote probably cost her the 2008 Democratic nomination. "Plain and simple." I know for a fact, that I did not caucus for her during the 2008 Texas primary's, for that very reason. I suspect there were many, many more, who did something similar.

Had you actually read the entire story, it would have become quite obvious (to anyone other than an Idiot) that Hillary clearly had a change of heart.

Ok, let's break this down to the least common denominator. Shall we?

LLIdiot, are you in agreement that Hillary "got it wrong. Plain and simple." Or are you one of the few Idiot's left in this country who still clings to the misguided notion that Hillary's ill fated and ill advised, Spring of 2003 vote, was the correct vote.

Tell us JDIdiot! Knowing what we know now, should we have invaded Iraq during the Spring of 2003? If so, where are those illusive WMD's located and why haven't we located them during the past 11+ years?

I anxiously await your response!

Knowing what she (Hillary) knows now, I wonder if she would have married Bill. Or would she opted to give him the blowjob... Just a thought... Hey who wouldn't want a BBBJ in the WhiteHouse?