Was the IWR vote really a bad one for the Democrats?

[Ravy]

Sure, it turned out badly. But did it have a chance of success?

If I recall events correctly, it allowed the weapons inspectors to re-enter Iraq and begin their work. They destroyed some weapons that were marginally outside the boundaries set forth in the ceasefire (like some missles that could arguably fly a very few miles longer than Saddam was allowed to posess). Saddam allowed surveilance oversites. He attempted to issue some further reports on the destruction Iraq and weapons inspectors had done on WMDs, although it was incomplete. He actively sought asylum in foreign nations.

The UN Security Council voted 15-0 to seemingly endorse this strategy.

What went wrong? Bush and the rest of his cronies.

The way that the administration handled matters AFTER the UN and Senate votes headed us to one result. Unprovoked war.

The fact that the UN Inspectors could not find non-existant weapons was because the weapons were, well, non-existant. Bush claimed it was evidence that the UN Inspectors could not do their jobs.

The fact was that the French and the Germans wanted a bit more time for the inspectors to do their jobs, and to use further diplomatic efforts. Bush claimed it was because they hated America and that they were to be treated as enemies rather than allies.

As further evidence that Bush not only distorted at the time the evidence supporting war, he also distored what his strategy was for resolving the conflict. That is why they could not go back for a second UN resolution. They did not even have a majority of the UN Security Council votes a mere few months after the first unanimous vote.

Perhaps the IWR vote, had it not been for Bush, put forth a strategy that would have placed Saddam in exile, verified that Iraq had no WMDs to lead to the lifting of the sanctions and its return to the world community as a secular and soverign country in the middle east.

We now know that Bush wanted war with Saddam well before he stole the presidency the first time, and that it was a priority of his administration on day one, and was a driving force for the administration even in the immediate days after 9/11, when he should have been focused on other things.

A vote for the Senate resolution did not necessariy have to result in war. If someone other than Bush was at the helm, it may have resolved the Iraq situation without the massive loss of life and America's prestige in the world.

A realization of that puts the blame squarely where it belongs. An administration who would not take "no-wmds, no Al-Quaida, and yes to exile" for an answer.

[wuushew]

1. I am a carrot man, not a stick man

The IWR and the following war crime was all stick. Stick/club foreign policy is not anything I want our leaders to remotely consider.


Force is only legitimate in situations when actual self-defense is demonstrable.

[Ravy]

2. I agree, but force wasn't necessarily the end.

There was carrot there, too. The lifting of the sanctions and allowing Saddam to seek exile.

There was a stick there too, but Bush didn't have to use it. He *WANTED* to use it.

The point is that it seemed to me, in the days leading up to the eventual war, that the policy was working. The inspectors were determining that there were no WMDs, and Saddam was seeking exile.

Bush didn't let it succeed.

[sandnsea]

3. Bush said it was a vote for peace

Everything he said about that vote at the time has been completely lost. He's been allowed to rewrite history and reframe it as a vote for war, when he said he hadn't made a decision to go to war at the time. Had he or hadn't he made a decision to go to war? Did he make the decision in Oct 2002 or in March of 2003? Or before he was elected? Is he lying about the vote now or was he lying about it then?

And yes, without that vote and the inspections process, we wouldn't have any evidence that Bush was determined to go to war regardless of whether WMD were in Iraq or not.

There wasn't a thing in the world wrong with that vote.

[Ravy]

6. The only thing I see wrong with it is ...

they "delegated" their power to declare war to the President, but since the War Powers Act that hasn't been working exactly as I think the founding fathers had planned anyway.

[blm]

4. IWR would have prevented war administered by any other president - even

Reagan.

[Ravy]

5. I agree. I wish we heard more about this from the media/Dems. (n/t)