Time for Druff to abandon his delusion about George W. Bush and the Iraq War

[MumblesBadly]

Druff has repeatedly said in the radio show how Bush's first term was not that bad, and that the mistakes were made in his second term. Bullshit! George W. Bush going along with Dick Cheney's plan to invade Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, AND following Rumsfeld's plan to do so with far too few troops, and at the same time neglecting Afghanistan, was a collosal fucking mistake. Take the time to hear a knowledgable Bush administration insider -- with decades of military experience, and years of reading thoroughly sourced reports on the matter, discuss how deceptive and fucked up that decision was.

[Sloppy Joe]

Come on Tine, you're slipping..

[GrenadaRoger]

the wars (Afghanistan & Iraq) were stupid, but what made them especially bad was doing that after cutting taxes in 2001 & 2003

so to pay for the war he ran up the national debt something fierce...


if you recall, near the end of the Clinton administration there was talk of someday paying off completely the national debt because with the federal government running a surplus for the year and projected continued surpluses...

Bush cut taxes, there went the surplus, then started a war, which required borrowing, mostly from the Chinese.

The stupid fuck Bush must have bribed his professors of the finance/risk management courses he took while getting his MBA at Harvard.

[Dan Druff]

This guy has been an open critic of the Bush Administration for more than 10 years. He's also a Democrat who has openly supported Democratic candidates during that time, so I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

This isn't some fellow Republican coming forward and revealing shocking material against Bush.

I have said before on radio that I do believe that Cheney and the others saw what they wanted to see regarding the WMD situation in Iraq. But I also said that Saddam Hussein was pursuing WMDs for more than 10 years before the Iraq War of 2003. He was playing a repeated cat-and-mouse game with the US and UN inspectors. It was basically, "I don't have WMDs, but you can't look" and then "Okay, I was pursuing WMDs and that's why I didn't want you looking, but we really don't anymore. But you still can't look" over and over and over again. This persisted from the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 all the way through 2003 when we invaded. So if we happened to invade at a time when the WMD program had really stopped, it was likely that Saddam would have started it again at some point anyway.

Not that I'm saying that everything with Iraq was handled correctly, because it wasn't. But Bush went into it honestly believing that he was doing the right thing, and it wasn't outrageous at all in 2003 to believe that Saddam was building WMDs, because he had spent the past 12 years pursuing them, and was attempting to dominate the region in the years before that.

I think GW Bush made some mistakes and trusted some of his advisers too much, but he wasn't a bad man.

[Dan Druff]

the wars (Afghanistan & Iraq) were stupid, but what made them especially bad was doing that after cutting taxes in 2001 & 2003

so to pay for the war he ran up the national debt something fierce...


if you recall, near the end of the Clinton administration there was talk of someday paying off completely the national debt because with the federal government running a surplus for the year and projected continued surpluses...

Bush cut taxes, there went the surplus, then started a war, which required borrowing, mostly from the Chinese.

The stupid fuck Bush must have bribed his professors of the finance/risk management courses he took while getting his MBA at Harvard.

Don't worry. If not blown on the war, the Democrats would have blown the money on entitlements anyway.

Also the "projected" surpluses wouldn't have continued anyway. The dotcom bust and the economic slump related to 9/11 killed that.

[4Dragons]

[DRK Star]

I just immediately assumed that Cheney told Bush to start the war so his former company could make a shit ton of money


http://readersupportednews.org/news-...on-on-iraq-war

[The_Lurker]

This guy has been an open critic of the Bush Administration for more than 10 years. He's also a Democrat who has openly supported Democratic candidates during that time, so I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

This isn't some fellow Republican coming forward and revealing shocking material against Bush.

I have said before on radio that I do believe that Cheney and the others saw what they wanted to see regarding the WMD situation in Iraq. But I also said that Saddam Hussein was pursuing WMDs for more than 10 years before the Iraq War of 2003. He was playing a repeated cat-and-mouse game with the US and UN inspectors. It was basically, "I don't have WMDs, but you can't look" and then "Okay, I was pursuing WMDs and that's why I didn't want you looking, but we really don't anymore. But you still can't look" over and over and over again. This persisted from the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 all the way through 2003 when we invaded. So if we happened to invade at a time when the WMD program had really stopped, it was likely that Saddam would have started it again at some point anyway.

Not that I'm saying that everything with Iraq was handled correctly, because it wasn't. But Bush went into it honestly believing that he was doing the right thing, and it wasn't outrageous at all in 2003 to believe that Saddam was building WMDs, because he had spent the past 12 years pursuing them, and was attempting to dominate the region in the years before that.

I think GW Bush made some mistakes and trusted some of his advisers too much, but he wasn't a bad man.

I voted for the man twice, and the cold hard facts are that he invaded a country lead by a man that we help install in power. Hundred of thousands of people died. and all of it for nothing.

The man is a war criminal, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq made us more enemies and will cause us grief for decades to come.

[Dan Druff]

I just immediately assumed that Cheney told Bush to start the war so his former company could make a shit ton of money


http://readersupportednews.org/news-...on-on-iraq-war

Left wing conspiracy BS.

Cheney left Halliburton well before the war -- in 2000.

He was given an "early exit" package from Halliburton when he left to run for Vice President. This sort of package is very common for ANY CEO of a major corporation who leaves. Recall the recent discussion of Yahoo owing Marisa Mayer $161 million if they were to fire her now.

Conspiracy theorists say that his $34 million departure package was a bribe to get him to start a war where Halliburton would benefit. There is no evidence of such an agreement, rather just conspiracy theories invented by Cheney's critics who see that Halliburton profited a lot from the Iraq war after he was already gone.

There is no substance to these allegations, and in fact Cheney's package when he departed was pretty standard.

[4Dragons]

I just immediately assumed that Cheney told Bush to start the war so his former company could make a shit ton of money


http://readersupportednews.org/news-...on-on-iraq-war

Left wing conspiracy BS.

Cheney left Halliburton well before the war -- in 2000.

He was given an "early exit" package from Halliburton when he left to run for Vice President. This sort of package is very common for ANY CEO of a major corporation who leaves. Recall the recent discussion of Yahoo owing Marisa Mayer $161 million if they were to fire her now.

Conspiracy theorists say that his $34 million departure package was a bribe to get him to start a war where Halliburton would benefit. There is no evidence of such an agreement, rather just conspiracy theories invented by Cheney's critics who see that Halliburton profited a lot from the Iraq war after he was already gone.

There is no substance to these allegations, and in fact Cheney's package when he departed was pretty standard.

Saying Cheney left Haliburton is like saying that Stephanopoulos stopped working for Clinton when he took the reporter gig at ABC.

[Dan Druff]

This guy has been an open critic of the Bush Administration for more than 10 years. He's also a Democrat who has openly supported Democratic candidates during that time, so I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

This isn't some fellow Republican coming forward and revealing shocking material against Bush.

I have said before on radio that I do believe that Cheney and the others saw what they wanted to see regarding the WMD situation in Iraq. But I also said that Saddam Hussein was pursuing WMDs for more than 10 years before the Iraq War of 2003. He was playing a repeated cat-and-mouse game with the US and UN inspectors. It was basically, "I don't have WMDs, but you can't look" and then "Okay, I was pursuing WMDs and that's why I didn't want you looking, but we really don't anymore. But you still can't look" over and over and over again. This persisted from the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 all the way through 2003 when we invaded. So if we happened to invade at a time when the WMD program had really stopped, it was likely that Saddam would have started it again at some point anyway.

Not that I'm saying that everything with Iraq was handled correctly, because it wasn't. But Bush went into it honestly believing that he was doing the right thing, and it wasn't outrageous at all in 2003 to believe that Saddam was building WMDs, because he had spent the past 12 years pursuing them, and was attempting to dominate the region in the years before that.

I think GW Bush made some mistakes and trusted some of his advisers too much, but he wasn't a bad man.

I voted for the man twice, and the cold hard facts are that he invaded a country lead by a man that we help install in power. Hundred of thousands of people died. and all of it for nothing.

The man is a war criminal, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq made us more enemies and will cause us grief for decades to come.

If you feel this way, why did you vote for him twice?

There was already plenty of criticism of the Iraq War by the time the November 2004 election rolled around.

Regardless of what you think of Bush and the war, there is no denying that Saddam was unpredictable/unstable, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and attempting to dominate/conquer the region. The decade-plus leading up to the war proved that time and time again. Remember, the first Gulf War was because he invaded Kuwait just because he felt like it.

So you can argue that perhaps we should have just stayed out of it, or that the money/human toll wasn't worth what we could gain, but you can't really argue that Saddam was doing just fine and we attacked him for no reason.

[Dan Druff]

Left wing conspiracy BS.

Cheney left Halliburton well before the war -- in 2000.

He was given an "early exit" package from Halliburton when he left to run for Vice President. This sort of package is very common for ANY CEO of a major corporation who leaves. Recall the recent discussion of Yahoo owing Marisa Mayer $161 million if they were to fire her now.

Conspiracy theorists say that his $34 million departure package was a bribe to get him to start a war where Halliburton would benefit. There is no evidence of such an agreement, rather just conspiracy theories invented by Cheney's critics who see that Halliburton profited a lot from the Iraq war after he was already gone.

There is no substance to these allegations, and in fact Cheney's package when he departed was pretty standard.

Saying Cheney left Haliburton is like saying that Stephanopoulos stopped working for Clinton when he took the reporter gig at ABC.

Stephanapulous actually didn't appear very loyal at all to Clinton once he left their camp. I never saw him as a Sandy Berger type.

What do you think Cheney gained from Halliburton after 2000? Secret payments to Swiss bank accounts?

Sorry, but this all seems like unsubstantiated nonsense to me, where people just connect the dots between "Cheney was CEO of Halliburton" and "Halliburton profited from the war" to mean "Cheney started a war to help his old company". And while that's a sensational thing to claim and get people riled up, closer examination shows that it's not that simple to jump to such a conclusion.

[The_Lurker]

I voted for the man twice, and the cold hard facts are that he invaded a country lead by a man that we help install in power. Hundred of thousands of people died. and all of it for nothing.

The man is a war criminal, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq made us more enemies and will cause us grief for decades to come.

If you feel this way, why did you vote for him twice?

There was already plenty of criticism of the Iraq War by the time the November 2004 election rolled around.

Regardless of what you think of Bush and the war, there is no denying that Saddam was unpredictable/unstable, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and attempting to dominate/conquer the region. The decade-plus leading up to the war proved that time and time again. Remember, the first Gulf War was because he invaded Kuwait just because he felt like it.

So you can argue that perhaps we should have just stayed out of it, or that the money/human toll wasn't worth what we could gain, but you can't really argue that Saddam was doing just fine and we attacked him for no reason.

I voted for him the second time because I WAS a conformist sheep.

As for Suddam being unpredictable/unstable, this no justification for killing that many people. Maybe we should invade the poor people of North Korea because their leader is a fucking wack job. Who cares how many people die, their leader had it coming.

How would you feel if any member of your family was killed because of any violent action.


This has nothing to do with "was it worth the price" this is about wrong and right.

[Dan Druff]

If you feel this way, why did you vote for him twice?

There was already plenty of criticism of the Iraq War by the time the November 2004 election rolled around.

Regardless of what you think of Bush and the war, there is no denying that Saddam was unpredictable/unstable, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and attempting to dominate/conquer the region. The decade-plus leading up to the war proved that time and time again. Remember, the first Gulf War was because he invaded Kuwait just because he felt like it.

So you can argue that perhaps we should have just stayed out of it, or that the money/human toll wasn't worth what we could gain, but you can't really argue that Saddam was doing just fine and we attacked him for no reason.

I voted for him the second time because I WAS a conformist sheep.

As for Suddam being unpredictable/unstable, this no justification for killing that many people. Maybe we should invade the poor people of North Korea because their leader is a fucking wack job. Who cares how many people die, their leader had it coming.

How would you feel if any member of your family was killed because of any violent action.


This has nothing to do with "was it worth the price" this is about wrong and right.

The problem was that inaction could have been even costlier in lives than action.

Saddam was pursuing WMDs for over a decade and attacked a neighboring country simply because he wanted its oil.

He also killed about 500,000 of his own people during his regime.

He wasn't a reformed citizen in 2003. More of this was coming if someone didn't stop him.

Was it the United States' job to stop him? That's worthy of discussion, but painting this war as causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people based upon incorrect/false intelligence simply is not accurate.

[The_Lurker]

I voted for him the second time because I WAS a conformist sheep.

As for Suddam being unpredictable/unstable, this no justification for killing that many people. Maybe we should invade the poor people of North Korea because their leader is a fucking wack job. Who cares how many people die, their leader had it coming.

How would you feel if any member of your family was killed because of any violent action.


This has nothing to do with "was it worth the price" this is about wrong and right.

The problem was that inaction could have been even more costly in lives than action.

Saddam was pursuing WMDs for over a decade and attacked a neighboring country simply because he wanted its oil.

He also killed about 500,000 of his own people during his regime.

He wasn't a reformed citizen in 2003. More of this was coming if someone didn't stop him.

Was it the United States' job to stop him? That's worthy of discussion, but painting this war as causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people based upon incorrect/false intelligence simply is not accurate.

WE fucking killed hundred of thousands of people. The only way we could ever justify that is if they were pouring onto our beaches.

Wrong is Wrong

[4Dragons]

Saying Cheney left Haliburton is like saying that Stephanopoulos stopped working for Clinton when he took the reporter gig at ABC.

Stephanapulous actually didn't appear very loyal at all to Clinton once he left their camp. I never saw him as a Sandy Berger type.

What do you think Cheney gained from Halliburton after 2000? Secret payments to Swiss bank accounts?

Sorry, but this all seems like unsubstantiated nonsense to me, where people just connect the dots between "Cheney was CEO of Halliburton" and "Halliburton profited from the war" to mean "Cheney started a war to help his old company". And while that's a sensational thing to claim and get people riled up, closer examination shows that it's not that simple to jump to such a conclusion.

Loyalty. It's out of loyalty. I'm not on board with the part that the war was started to help Halliburton, but the loyalty part kicks in when they hand out contracts.

[MumblesBadly]

I don't buy the money-making conspiracy angle, either. And I do believe that George W. Bush *meant* well. But Team Bush, pushed by Cheney behind the scenes, essentially fabricated evidence to make the public case for taking down Saddam Hussein's regime. Because the intelligence they had *before* cooking the evidence oven with Curveball's unsupported claims showed that SH was bluffing about WMDs. But Bush was, at best, too fucking stupid to critically challenge the bullshit that Cheney was feeding him, but likely knew it was a lie and wanted to take out SH for other reasons.

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/18/...-case-for-war/

[Dan Druff]

The problem was that inaction could have been even more costly in lives than action.

Saddam was pursuing WMDs for over a decade and attacked a neighboring country simply because he wanted its oil.

He also killed about 500,000 of his own people during his regime.

He wasn't a reformed citizen in 2003. More of this was coming if someone didn't stop him.

Was it the United States' job to stop him? That's worthy of discussion, but painting this war as causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people based upon incorrect/false intelligence simply is not accurate.

WE fucking killed hundred of thousands of people. The only way we could ever justify that is if they were pouring onto our beaches.

Wrong is Wrong

Saddam killed 500,000 people during his regime, and I'm not talking about deaths in our war there in 2003.

He was a really bad guy, and he was obsessed with conquering the region.

One interesting thing about Saddam is that he wasn't religiously motivated. So he wasn't one of those fundamentalist religious nutsos in the Middle East. He just liked power.

I'm saying that people were going to die in Iraq in mass numbers whether we invaded or not.

[GrenadaRoger]

the wars (Afghanistan & Iraq) were stupid, but what made them especially bad was doing that after cutting taxes in 2001 & 2003

so to pay for the war he ran up the national debt something fierce...


if you recall, near the end of the Clinton administration there was talk of someday paying off completely the national debt because with the federal government running a surplus for the year and projected continued surpluses...

Bush cut taxes, there went the surplus, then started a war, which required borrowing, mostly from the Chinese.

The stupid fuck Bush must have bribed his professors of the finance/risk management courses he took while getting his MBA at Harvard.

Don't worry. If not blown on the war, the Democrats would have blown the money on entitlements anyway.

Also the "projected" surpluses wouldn't have continued anyway. The dotcom bust and the economic slump related to 9/11 killed that.

yeah, frivolous entitlements like "social security" & "medicare"....as Clinton said, whatever is done with the surplus "save the social security system first"...social security and medicare are the biggest entitlement programs of the federal government and benefit the most people...

there was a potential rescue to both...Bush put them in jeopardy again...eventually the systems will need to be supported from income taxes instead of just payroll taxes if they are to continue

[Sidewinder]

War is a racket, no matter what party is in office:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11236553