Ten years ago this week the US invaded Iraq

KarlRove wrote:saddam paid the price...he brought that on himself.

Floridatexan wrote:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/19-10

The US Invasion of Iraq Was a Crime and Its Perpetrators Are Murderers
On the criminology of the Iraq War on its tenth anniversary

by Paul Savoy

"...What did the President know and when did he know it? Wrong question. The proper question is: What should a reasonably prudent president have known about the legal justification for invading Iraq and why didn't the President know it?

We are so used to war and the threat of war as a legitimate adjunct of foreign policy that we easily lose sight of the reality that war consists of acts which, if performed by a private citizen or organization, would constitute serious felonies: mass murder, assaults with deadly weapons, maiming, arson, kidnapping, and the malicious destruction of property. The law immunizes political leaders from criminal liability so long as the war is legally justified. As a matter of international law, this generally means in compliance with the U.N. Charter. In terms of domestic law, it means in compliance with the U.S. Consitution, which requires either a declaration of war or a congressional authorization for the use of military force.

A careful reading of the Authorization for the Use of Force adopted by large bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate shows the congressional authorization was hardly the "blank check" the news media portrayed it as. Congress limited the President's use of military force against Iraq by authorizing war only to:

(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, and

(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."
The use of the word "and" after the first paragraph is critical. While Congress did not require an imminent or immediate threat, it was not prepared to authorize the President to go to war over a violation of a Security Council Resolution involving WMDs unless there was also some likelihood that if left unchecked, Saddam would present a "continuing threat" of using those weapons against the United States in the foreseeable future.

In fact, there was no continuing threat because Saddam did not actually possess any WMDs. Nor were there reasonable grounds to believe at the time of the invasion that Saddam Hussein presented such a threat. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (pdf), prepared for the President by the CIA and other intelligence agencies and made available to him five months before the invasion, made clear that while there were reasonable grounds to believe that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons," Saddam would not use them against the United States unless Iraq were attacked by us or threatened with an "imminent or unavoidable" attack.

The NIE, originally classified as Top Secret and released to the public in July 2003, contained this Key Judgment: "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraq involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war. Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared [that] an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge."

In other words, a reasonably prudent president would have known from reading the NIE that as long as the United States did not attack or threaten to attack, Iraq posed no continuing threat to the United States, as the congressional authorization required. A reasonable president therefore would have known that invading Iraq would have been unconstitutional.

If President Bush knew he had no constitutional authority to go to war, then he knowingly broke the law and a properly instructed jury would have little difficulty in finding him guilty of murder. Even if he was not conscious of any wrongdoing, which seems more likely, a jury would still be warranted in finding him guilty, at the very least, of criminally negligent homicide if it found that his ignorance constituted a failure to perform the duties of his office with due diligence..."

KarlRove wrote:WHo is MOST? Stats? Links? I think it was FUN.

nochain wrote:20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing! The little missive presented above this post is contradictory and misleading since the "author" doesn't seem to think chemical and biological weapons are WMDs. They are and the referenced NIE stated there was credible evidence SH had them (which he did). What a bunch of backward looking armchair quarterbacks.

Lurch wrote:I hope the war criminals are charged for their crimes..

othershoe1030 wrote:

KarlRove wrote:WHo is MOST? Stats? Links? I think it was FUN.

FUN?


Gallup posted a breakdown of respondents. Actually, the only year shown re Iraq is from 2003, which just goes to show how evident the mistake was relatively early on in the Democrats' camp (73%). At the same point in time, only 30% of 'slow to catch on' Republicans had a clue that it was a mistake.



To NoChain, good point about 20/20 hind sight, however the polling for the Iraq War is from 2003, the year Bush went in. I can't tell from the Gallup site if this was before or after the actual invasion but 2003 is not much of 'hind sight'.

KarlRove wrote:WHo is MOST? Stats? Links? I think it was FUN.

Floridatexan wrote:

Lurch wrote:I hope the war criminals are charged for their crimes..

Public hanging would be too good for these slimeballs.

nochain wrote:20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing! The little missive presented above this post is contradictory and misleading since the "author" doesn't seem to think chemical and biological weapons are WMDs. They are and the referenced NIE stated there was credible evidence SH had them (which he did). What a bunch of backward looking armchair quarterbacks.

newswatcher wrote:

nochain wrote:20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing! The little missive presented above this post is contradictory and misleading since the "author" doesn't seem to think chemical and biological weapons are WMDs. They are and the referenced NIE stated there was credible evidence SH had them (which he did). What a bunch of backward looking armchair quarterbacks.

Wonder with the allegations in Syria whether chemical and/or biological weapons use will be considered WMDs...Strange that today if a country posses these weapons they have 'crossed the line' yet there was clear evidence that Sadaam (may he remain rotting) used them against his own people...

nochain wrote:

Floridatexan wrote:

Lurch wrote:I hope the war criminals are charged for their crimes..

Public hanging would be too good for these slimeballs.

I guess you would advocate your hero BHO to be part of that crowd then, after all drone attacks against U.S. citizens (the terrorist kind) sort of falls in line with your thinking. He has also involved us in African countries that are substantially less of a threat to us than Iraq was. What about Libya? BHO can use the military, drones, assassins, nuclear warheads or whatever to whack all the terrorists he wants as far as I am concerned since those actions are not any less "legal" than those of the crew who took this country back to Iraq. It's easy to look back and say "that was wrong" but your ilk conveniently forgets all the runup to the action, including concurrence of intelligence analysis by other nation states, some of whom also supplied troops there, not to mention the bipartisan majority support of Congress. Were they all wrong? Are they all "criminals"? By your thinking and that of your ultraliberal opinion writers the only answer must be yes.

newswatcher wrote:

nochain wrote:20-20 .

The latest news on Syria and chemical and/or biological weapons is that the reports can't be verified and it is doubtful if they've been used. We will have to wait and see on this one. (NPR top of the hour news that I was half listening to).

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:On the positive side, oil production in Iraq has skyrocketed since we deposed Saddam.

Lurch wrote:

othershoe1030 wrote:

KarlRove wrote:WHo is MOST? Stats? Links? I think it was FUN.

FUN?


Gallup posted a breakdown of respondents. Actually, the only year shown re Iraq is from 2003, which just goes to show how evident the mistake was relatively early on in the Democrats' camp (73%). At the same point in time, only 30% of 'slow to catch on' Republicans had a clue that it was a mistake.



To NoChain, good point about 20/20 hind sight, however the polling for the Iraq War is from 2003, the year Bush went in. I can't tell from the Gallup site if this was before or after the actual invasion but 2003 is not much of 'hind sight'.

"FUN?" pd is a "Christian" and he thinks killin is fun..go figure..