Hopefully, if the phone rings at 3am in the White House, Jeb Bush won’t have to give four different answers to whatever questions he gets before he can arrive at one that people won’t reject as ridiculous.
Now, there is a very simple IF>THEN logic to why Jeb was reluctant to say that he wouldn’t have authorized the invasion of Iraq if he had known that Saddam was armed with soggy spit shooters. That works like this:
IF we invaded Iraq based on the faulty assumption that Saddam Hussein was armed with dangerous weapons
THEN everyone who died as a result, died for a mistake.
Jeb understandably did not want to go there, but that’s actually putting a whitewash on what actually happened.
When George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq, he hadn’t even received the intelligence on Saddam’s weapons yet.
May 05, 2002
Two months ago, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators went to the White House to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the President’s National Security Adviser. Bush was not scheduled to attend but poked his head in anyway — and soon turned the discussion to Iraq. The President has strong feelings about Saddam Hussein (you might too if the man had tried to assassinate your father, which Saddam attempted to do when former President George Bush visited Kuwait in 1993) and did not try to hide them. He showed little interest in debating what to do about Saddam. Instead, he became notably animated, according to one person in the room, used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and concluded with four words that left no one in doubt about Bush’s intentions: “We’re taking him out.”
This is the sanitized version. What Bush said was, “Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out.” To date this, two months before May 5th, 2002 was approximately March 5th, 2002. Let’s march forward a bit in time.
I’m going to rely on a bit of Bob Woodward’s reporting here, which I do with obvious reservations. But the basics have been corroborated by many other reporters:
As the war planning progressed, on December 21, 2002, [CIA Director George] Tenet and his top deputy, John McLaughlin, went to the White House to brief Bush and Cheney on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Woodward reports.
The president, unimpressed by the presentation of satellite photographs and intercepts, pressed Tenet and McLaughlin, saying their information would not “convince Joe Public” and asking Tenet, “This is the best we’ve got?” Woodward reports.
According to Woodward, Tenet reassured the president that “it’s a slam dunk case” that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
In his CBS interview, Woodward said he “asked the president about this, and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, ‘slam-dunk’ is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed.”
About two weeks later, shortly after New Year’s Day 2003, Bush — frustrated with unfruitful U.N. weapons inspections — made up his mind to go to war after consulting with Rice, according to Woodward.
We see some confusion here about what it means to “make up your mind.”
Bush had clearly made up his mind to fuck Saddam and take him out nine and a half months before he received the CIA’s totally inadequate (as even Bush immediately saw) case for Saddam having weapons of mass destruction.
So, forget about other complications like whether George Tenet really made such a strong assurance or the roles of Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby in orchestrating a pipeline of false intelligence. What we know is that Bush didn’t base his decision to attack on the intelligence, faulty and fabricated or not. When he saw the flimsy case for war, he wasn’t dissuaded.
So, the proper question to ask Jeb is not whether he would have gone to war knowing that the intelligence was bad. The proper question is whether he would have committed our nation to war without even consulting the intelligence.
And the obvious follow-up is, what do you tell the parents, wives, husbands, and children of the people who died for an compulsive act of recklessness?
Intuitively, Jeb understands that you can’t give an inch on this, or the whole thing unravels on you. IF his brother acted the way he did THEN people died in vain.
That’s what happened, and it’s sad and uncomfortable to admit. So, Jeb doesn’t want to talk about it.
[Cross-posted at Progress Pond]
I have long believed that the whole “slam dunk” remark has been misinterpreted all these years. I think Tenet was arguing that the evidence was a slam-dunk for convincing the public, not as evidence of the actual presence of WMD.
I have yet to read any detailed account that convinces me otherwise.
Regardless, the decision had been made way before Tenet briefed him. The vote authorizing the war had already happened.
“He tried to kill my Daddy!”
Why not target Saddam and his inner circle directly?
There were ways to “Fuck Him, We are Taking Him Out” that would not have required a full-on ground invasion and conquest of Iraq. We had total air-superiority over Iraq and could have adopted a policy of systematic bombing of Presidential ‘Palaces’ and ‘Compounds’ and targeting of any clearly official vehicle convoys that included the kind of armored limos that might contain Saddam. Indeed we did a significant amount of that in the opening stages of the war and if the goal was to actually revenge the attack on GHWB by decapitating the Iraqi regime that could have been done.
But instead I guess we did the Iraqi people the ‘favor’ of ‘liberating’ them with armored and infantry divisions that prioritized troop safety over all else and ended up killing thousands of Iraqi’s directly and hundreds of thousands indirectly. But even by twisting ourselves into pretzels logically you can’t sustain the “We invaded Iraq to avenge my Daddy narrative” whether you are Dubya or JEB. You don’t crack a walnut with a bulldozer.
Exactly right, Friend in a Cellar. And look at the context. Bush wasn’t disappointed he didn’t have evidence for a war. He was disappointed he didn’t have enough to convince the public. He’d clearly already made up his own mind. The rest was all just a matter of fixing the intelligence around the policy.
None of this would be happening if the USA had the balls to hold accountable our own for War Crimes that we tried others for after WW2.
USA or Obama? He made the conscious decision to ignore Bush/Cheney’s war crimes, possibly because he was planning a few of his own.
That’s funny. Given that when JEB forgot the other day that he hasn’t announced his candidacy, he said
He must have learned the meaning of “make up your mind” from his brother.
Finish Daddy’s botched war.
Have the extra-ordinary powers of a war President with regard to surveillance and freedom of action.
I wonder where he learned about those.
OT: Right-to-work goes down in flames in Illinois House with zero yes votes
Posted: 05/14/2015, 04:17pm | Natasha Korecki
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desires to have right-to-work in Illinois went down in flames in the House on Thursday gaining zero yes votes in a fiery debate Democrats aimed squarely at the governor.
The vote tally was 0 yes votes, 72 no votes and 37 voting present, offering a blistering rebuke to Rauner’s anti-union agenda. A handful of Republicans went for a walk during the vote, not publicly falling on one side or another.
Republicans dismissed the vote as political theater even as Democrats pit workers’ rights against corporate greed and called Rauner “divisive” for touring the state and essentially asking local towns to kick unions out.
“Don’t be afraid, stay with us, vote no!” state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Belleville, said.
Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, lambasted Democrats for moving what he said amounted to “sham bills” in the House. The legislation voted on Thursday was not drafted by the governor’s office. Last week, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan had urged Rauner to give him language for a bill, needling Rauner that he had talked about right-to-work for 100 days.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/607377/right-work-goes-flames-illinois-house-zero-yes-votes
Thank you for posting this! It made me the happiest that I’ve been in weeks!
Interestingly, Jeb’s initial answers (not the clarifications) seem consistent with mishearing in the question. But the subsequent waffling destroyed any magnanimity he might have had.
Hopefully some college student will ask him if revenge war still has that same appeal after all these years.
If Steve Martin was still on SNL, he would say that Jeb’s reply “it is unbeliveable”.
You said it. But how many of our fellow citizens are willing to follow your sound logic if the inevitable conclusion is so uncomfortable and contrary to the sentimental ethos of exceptionalism in which we seem marinated?
It’s funny; I’ve thought for a long time that there was no way I could hate any politician — or, almost, any person at all — as much as I hate George W. Bush.
But now here’s Jeb. And, well, at least George Bush had some personality, you know? (A horrible, cretinous, loathsome one, to be sure, but still.) While this guy’s just, like, nothing…just a figment of wealth, nepotism, imperialism, and everything the world hates about America in one bland, dull, dumb package.
Absolutely right. Bush, for his faults, took a position, and justified it. By lying, cheating, whatever.
JEB, on the other hand, does not seem to have any idea what the fuck is going on. Plus, he does not seem to be able to think on his feet. As the words leave his mouth, he seems surprised. If you cannot plan ahead in speaking as a politician, you are toast.
They knew there were no WMDs. To me, it seemed as if the military invaded as if there were no WMDs, not in a manner as if they expected any.
Karl Rove declines to endorse Jeb Bush
That may be the best news Jeb has gotten in a while.
Thanks for posting this, as Jeb’s hilarious struggles with history have generated a sort of reckoning with the whole sordid saga of our patently illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
Of course, space did not allow you to reference the whole god-awful mountain of evidence that it was Cheney’s WH dragged the country to war, NOT the intelligence community. The Downing Street memo, (where the head of British intelligence advised Blair mid 2002 that the “facts and intelligence were being fixed around the [decided] policy”), the observation that the an intelligence assessment had not even been made by late 2002, the endless pronouncements by Cheney of the certainty of Saddam’s WMDs during all of 2002, long before any intelligence assessment, the refusal to take seriously the ACTUAL findings of the Goddam UN inspectors on the ground in early 2003 and the wildly insane decision to pull them out (before they found ever more nothing!)—all make irrefutable that intelligence did not drive the war in any way. It was used merely as a cover for a long decided policy. One hates to defend the CIA, but this was not their war, it was Cheney’s and von Rumsfeld’s and junya’s baby. Let’s just say the historians have all they need to determine the origins of the invasion of Iraq.
So yes, it’s irrefutable (to the rational) that literally millions of people have died in vain (or had their lives turned to irreversible shit) by Bush’s War, mostly Muslims. But while today’s “conservatives” may have concluded that “knowing what we now know” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean) the invasion was a “mistake”, they are not likely to think the dead died “in vain” because of the supreme wonderfulness of ousting a [tin pot] dictator and establishing a (failed) “democracy”. “Freedom isn’t Freee!” “Watering the Tree of Liberty!” etc, etc ad infinitum. “Conservatives” love death and destruction, to be frank.
Of course a strategic assessment of freeing Iran of a perennially hostile neighbor and setting up a new Shi’ite satrapy cannot even be spoken of by today’s bonehead prez candidates. How’s about asking Jeb if his brother’s war turned out to benefit Iran, what’s his assessment of that one? I thought this guy was supposed to be the Bush crime family’s star player, the one who was “really” meant to be prez, not Dubya the Doofus!
So surely Jeb! has an opinion on the strategic ramifications of Bush’s War? But as DG notes, it sure seems he can’t think one move ahead on the chess board. Real prez timber.
The entirety of his campaign only makes sense when viewed through the lens of Bush family dynamics.
First of all, what I am about to say does not represent my personal POV, because I was against going into Iraq from the beginning.
However, an answer that I could almost see as appropriate for Jeb to say is “Yes, I would have still authorized the invasion. However, to me the mistake was not invading Iraq but how we handled the post-invasion period. I would have handled that very differently and avoided many of the problems that resulted.”
Still wouldn’t have been acceptable to me, but it would have made more sense to a lot of people.
When 9/11 happened I was totally disconnected from politics and barely engaging with the world at large. But I knew with total certainty, as soon as I saw the towers burning, that they were going to invade Iraq.
It was only later that I learned that basically every top foreign policy or defense official in the administration was in the New American Century cabal.
Iraq was an absolute done deal within days of 9/11 and I believe there are documents that prove this, I just don’t have time to look them up.