Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Listen to what the candidates say
From the RoundTable blog
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George Haydt
Haydt resides in Grayson County and is retired from both a telecommunication and criminal justice career.
God, I love politics. I will miss it in 2009. But presently, we have another exhilarating national campaign. Life is good.
I note, with some surprise, from conservative pundits that people are not interested in what has happened in the past. They are interested only in what our proposed leaders will do about tomorrow. I hear it constantly from political operatives.
They scold anyone who questions the wisdom of invading a sovereign nation even when that nation had no connection to 9/11. You're living in the past, they say. You're looking backward, they say. You have to have bold ideas on how to fix our foreign policy moving forward, they say. It is not fair to be an armchair quarterback and judge us on what happened in the past, they say.
Don't judge our past performance. Just listen to what we say we will do. Trust our wisdom to lead this nation to a secure future, void of past judgments. Somewhere in a dark corner of my cerebral cortex those utterances ring hollow. Remember the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" smear campaign, which was successful in derailing John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid about events from 38 years prior.
I pay homage to Sen. John McCain for his stamina while being held captive in Vietnam. I am not sure I could have endured the same grueling torture. However, it appears that strength and his experience since then have not led to wisdom on the proper use of military force.
McCain says the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not a mistake; indeed, was a proper course of action. When asked about the reasons sold to the American populace prior to the invasion, he states that you cannot armchair quarterback those decisions. "You have to go with the best intelligence. The whole world thought Iraq had acquired WMDs, Bill Clinton included."
Well, Senator, the facts do not bear that out. There were red flags all over the assertions of biological and chemical weapons as well as the yellow cake from Niger, the al-Qaida connection to Iraq and meetings with the 9/11 hijackers with the Iraqi government. "Curveball" (the debunked informant in Germany) was proven to be a liar and long since dismissed by German authorities as insane. The CIA was riddled with analysts insisting that we were being duped by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident (indicted by Jordan for fraud and embezzlement of bank funds).
Before the invasion, while all this was going on, the facts were as follows: There was a no-fly zone in southern Iraq patrolled daily by our aircraft; there was a no-fly zone in northern Iraq patrolled daily by our aircraft. We had spy satellites taking detailed pictures of Iraq. (Remember all those pictures Colin Powell used in his presentation to the United Nations to justify our pending invasion?) We had approximately 200 inspectors on the ground in Iraq in the months preceding the invasion. I clearly remember Hans Blitz, after searching the ground in Iraq for several months, stated that they had found no trace of WMDs. He also said that in six months he would be able to answer definitively the question of Iraq's possession of WMDs. "If Iraq has possession of these weapons, we will find them. Six months is all I ask. Six months."
But the Bush administration told the inspectors to get out. Their time was up. Six months was not an option on the table. All but a handful of U.S. senators had already approved military action and, carrying that approval in his back pocket, Bush rushed headlong into the quagmire that we now face.
All relevant information was in the NIE and U.N. inspectors report, Senator, if you would have taken the time to read it and not go blindly into that good night in lockstep with the neocons. That is what you don't want us to look at. Let me tell you what we need to do to win in Iraq, you say. My experience has given me the wisdom to fix Iraq, you say. Sorry, Senator, but you did not have the wisdom to keep us out of Iraq. How have you since acquired the wisdom to fix this nightmare? Oh, I forgot; stay 100 years and then "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," you say.
Lord, how I love the political season. Life is good and six months is a lifetime. Isn't it, Sen. McCain?
