First, I won't let you or Frontline get away with what is arguably revisionist history. And when you write the following that is exactly what you are doing:
He (Cheney) clearly stated in the Lehrer interview (five times) that Saddam had “expelled” the weapons inspectors from Iraq… when in fact they had been withdrawn at the order of then President Bill Clinton because he was planning a missile strike against Saddam… four years earlier! I really want this explained to me. When will a GOP apologist defend these statements to me?
What you are doing is inferring that the weapons inspections were still viable and a VP (& by extension his boss) were hell bent on war and misrepresented the circumstances surrounding the inspectors removal from Iraq. That is a misrepresentation of the facts, manipulated by Frontline & bought into by you. As proof I offer the following:
"The U.N. orders its weapons inspectors to leave Iraq after the chief inspector reports Baghdad is not fully cooperating with them." -- Sheila MacVicar, ABC World News This Morning, 12/16/98"
To bolster its claim, Iraq let reporters see one laboratory U.N. inspectors once visited before they were kicked out four years ago."--John McWethy, ABC World News Tonight, 8/12/02
"The Iraq story boiled over last night when the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said that Iraq had not fully cooperated with inspectors and--as they had promised to do. As a result, the U.N. ordered its inspectors to leave Iraq this morning"--Katie Couric, NBC's Today, 12/16/98
"As Washington debates when and how to attack Iraq, a surprise offer from Baghdad. It is ready to talk about re-admitting U.N. weapons inspectors after kicking them out four years ago."--Maurice DuBois, NBC's Saturday Today, 8/3/02
These are hardly right-wing sources. Your claim that Cheney lied about their departure is patently false - it is a lie perpetrated and presented by PBS.
Furthermore, to point to Russia & France's disavowment of the "yellow cake" situation as proof that the world had not come to the same conclusion - that Saddam was hiding/developing WMD's - is again a misrepresentation. The yellow cake was but one point of disagreement and not representative of the overall intelligence communities assessment of Saddam and his weapons. The following is from The Telegraph, a large UK newspaper:
SADDAM HUSSEIN has been illegally stockpiling an arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons in schools and hospitals, Western intelligence reports say.
Among the items listed are 610 tons of precursor chemicals for the production of VX, a nerve agent so deadly that one drop can kill, in addition to large quantities of growth media used to make biological weapons such as anthrax so potent that one teaspoon is enough to dissolve the kidneys, livers and lungs of a million people.
Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister, told The Telegraph: "We have good reason to suspect that Iraq is still hiding chemical, biological and weapons of mass destruction in a range of locations."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/11/19/wsad19.xml
And I could go to dozens of reports filed in France, Germany, and the UK, all pointing to the fact that Western Intel agencies were at a concensus regarding Saddam and his hiding of wmd's. For goodness sake that was the reason they backed inspections over & over because no one thought he had come clean. That Saddam was hiding something was a forgone conclusion, the disagreement was on what to do next - a 20th resolution or actually act on previous ones. For shame on those nations for not acting with us, they knew EXACTLY what "serious consequences" meant when they signed onto the previous resolutions. Furthermore it was later revealed that both Russia and France had lucrative back door dealings with Iraq and it is the opinion of many (including me) that this was the source of their resistance to invade. Add to that the continual violations of our cease fire agreement established at the end of the Persian Gulf War. Both of these reasons - military action being the proper consequence given the litany of violated resolutions and the broken cease fire agreements each gave the US an absolute right to invade. Also, Cheney's accusation that Saddam expelled the inspectors was correct. Whether it was defacto ejection by not cooperating (thus the UN order for their departure since nothing could be gained by staying) or whether Baath secret police tossed Butler on the plane themselves is irrelevant - the point is Saddam caused them to leave. Now I think I have established quite firmly 3 things to date:
1.) The international intelligence consensus was that Saddam was not cooperating with inspectors and most likely it was because he had something to hide - A) he had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program and B) he had NOT demonstrated where his known surpluses of chemical and biological weapons were nor that they had been destroyed. Using the disagreement over the "yellow cake" incident does not constitute proof that this consensus I speak of didn't exist. On the contrary the Security Council's insistence that inspectors return demonstrates their belief that Saddam had not been fully transparent to date. Bush simply saw no point in repeating the same failed strategy of issuing yet another resolution for Saddam to ignore, and remember the US, under Bush himself, authored that final resolution which everyone signed onto with every party knowing, including Saddam, that this was his final chance to avail himself of that transparency the international community had demanded.
2.) Attacking Cheney as being misleading when saying Saddam "expelled" inspectors is itself misleading and highly biased. The fact is Saddam caused their removal, period.
3.) It was 100% legal, justified and necessary to invade Iraq. It is perhaps unfortunate that the most repeated reason for going in - the nuclear WMD program - has to date not held up, but given the Persian Gulf War cease-fire agreement was broken; given that Saddam had violated his 20th UN resolution; and given that the overall intelligence estimate of the free nations in the UN was that Saddam did in fact still have those biological & chemical weapons, and that it was probable (at the time) that he was reconstituting his nuclear program, it would of been the height of irresponsibility on the part of G.W. Bush to not act militarily. He did the right thing. Did Rumsfeld bungle aspects of the actual war? Yes, namely not preparing for occupation, however the decision to invade was just, and based on sound reasoning.
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Cheney said he was advocating the invasion of Iraq to “pre-empt” another attack on the US that would cost another 3,000 or more American lives… and that is a noble sentiment, but more than 4,000 have died trying to accomplish this goal. Does this seem like functional strategy and policy to ANYONE reading this?
I don't even know how to even respond to this. This rationale - that people will die if we go to war - could be used to justify inaction in any conflict. How many died at Pearl Harbor? Surely less then those who subsequently died in the Pacific. Should FDR have made that calculation prior to asking for his declaration of war? According to this strategy we should only go to war if we can be sure that less will die in the subsequent conflicts then those that have died to date. You're better then this statement sir.... and I mean that sincerely.
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To summarize:
It is my opinion that history will show that of all the nations within the UN as represented in their president, and especially on the Security Council, the most honest and forthright, and the one most willing to back up his words with actions against bad actors on the world stage between 9/11 and the 2003 Iraq invasion (and since I might add), and the one most willing to toss aside political expediency in favor of doing what is just and necessary was George Walker Bush. Amidst nations with back door dealings with Saddam, amidst a hostile Europe with the exception of Britain, and amidst voices of opposition at home he had the courage to stand nearly alone and do what was right. To demonstrate to every third world dictator and tin pot despot around the world that when the US signs on to a UN resolution that resolution is no longer to be ignored and laughed at as we intends to enforce it with action - as is our obligation once we vote "AYE."
So go ahead and attempt to parse Cheney's words as untruthful with faulty information from biased new sources, I find it petty. They had the courage to do what was right, and history will remember that in 100 years, not Jim Lerher interviews or PBS documentaries.
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I wanted to add something to the discussion on GITMO. I have discovered McCain's proposal. He wants them sent them all to Levinworth. This would be disastrous. The moment they went into that federal facility lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU, not to mention CAIR would race to represent them. And their first act would be to petition for the detainee's immediate release. And why not? Undoubtedly they weren't mirandized, weren't tried, let alone convicted, no civil habeus corpus. I haven't had one day of law school and I could someone released giving those were the circumstances. And even if they went to trial, precisely for those same reasons any lawyer worth his $2000 suit would get any and all evidence thrown out. They would go free, and even if they were deported, given they weren't convicted of a crime they would simply be flown into perhaps Iran or the Pashtun regions of Pakistan. They could be back on the battlefield within weeks of their release - treated as heroes in their fanatical communities. That's except for those who decide to try and stay while suing the US government for untold billions. Of course Geraldo & Barbara Walters will rush through metal detectors in order to interview them, they'll be able to recite any untruth about their treatment unfiltered - that should boost our world image. Now you can claim, "see, that's why you don't do a GITMO in the first place because you end up with this scenario." Fine, all well and good but that doesn't tell me what to do now - it's like still complaining about WMD's in Iraq, what do we do now? What's this you say? Don't allow them constitutional access to lawyers? Make their cells sort of a "black site" void of journalists and representation? How is that any different then their situation, as you describe it, at GITMO? How well would that go over in terms of our image? We hold people in the continental US with no legal representation, no TV interviews? How about sentencing them before they are sent to Levinworth? OK, what about the appeals process? And what happens when their sentence is up? Deport them only to return to the field of battle? Do you see what a nightmare putting them in the US penal system will cause? You'll take a "bad" PR situation and make it 100 times worse. There are only two options - 1) Keep them at GITMO. 2.) Repatriate them if their nation is allied with us and to the next closest thing if they are not, i.e. you don't repatriate Iranians, they'll get a commendation and be right back at it, so you give them to Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Egypt.
And on that note I want to address an inconsistency considering all this. Your opinion seems to be that any of these options is preferable to keeping GITMO open as a detainment facility. Including the repatriation process. You note your feelings that these detainees, being held without charge at GITMO, are having their "rights" violated, be it human or constitutional (you've assigned them so many rights it's hard to keep up). Yet you're ok with with turning them over to undemocratic regimes (the Saudi's or Egypt for example) whom will undoubtedly employ their inhumane treatment of suspects or criminals once they get their hands on them. It sounds as if you're saying, "Hey Ryan, GITMO is inhumane and unconstitutional so lets hand them over to secret police who torture in nations that have no constitution." I don't see the sense in that.
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I had to mention this about Obama. In regards to abortion he recently said this at a rally... "Now I have two daughters, two little girls 6 and 9 years old. And I'm going to teach them morals, but if they make a mistake I don't want them punished with a baby."
He just spoke of his own grandchild as a "punishment."
I think that Obama is rapidly revealing himself as the most radical mainstream candidate (read: a real chance at winning) that has ever aspired to the office of President of the United States. From the scope and size of government social programs, to cutting defense, to foreign policy to life itself he is on the fringe of the American political spectrum. And that statement just plain DISGUSTS me.
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