Edwards Joins the Iraq War Condemnation Chorus
By Denise Best | Related entries in General Politics, In The NewsJohn Edwards is lending his voice to the chorus, also known as the “I Would Have Voted Differently” group, vocalizing condemnation of going to war in Iraq.
The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president — and that I was being given by our intelligence community — wasn’t the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.
George Bush won’t accept responsibility for his mistakes. Along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has made horrible mistakes at almost every step: failed diplomacy; not going in with enough troops; not giving our forces the equipment they need; not having a plan for peace.
Because of these failures, Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the goodwill our country once enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less.
Yes, Mr. Edwards, Iraq was such a peaceful, non-threatening nation under Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi people were certainly enjoying numerous personal freedoms prior to Hussein’s removal from power – weren’t they?
It would be easier to take these “mea copa” type messages more seriously if there were at least some acknowlegement of what the drivers were at the time the decision was made to go to war, as well as mention of the gains that have been made by the Iraqi people as a result of this action.
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November 13th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
It’s very easy to criticize. It’s quite another to offer a vision for the future and solve present problems.
November 13th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
I have yet to see anyone, anywhere, who has alleged that Saddam was a nice man doing good things. I’ve never seen a less convincing straw man, and yet the fact that absolutely no one disagrees on the issue of Saddam’s evil seems to do nothing to slake the appetite for beating this scarecrow. Denise, everyone agrees: Saddam was evil. Edwards himself has said it a thousand times in a thousand speeches. Kerry said it. Hillary said it. Dean said it. The French have said it. The Germans have said it. Every single person alive, with the possible exception of Saddam has said it.
We’ve all agreed for more than a decade that Saddam was an S.O.B. Some of us even realized he was an S.O.B. back in the days when he was our S.O.B.
There are two Iraq questions on the table: how did we get into this, and how do we get out? Saddam = Satan doesn’t address either of them.
November 14th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Michael,
We got into this because all of our intelligence and that of the rest of the world showed that Saddam had WMD’s and didn’t provide proof that he disposed of them like he was ordered to do by the UN. After 9/11, we decided that we couldn’t just wait and trust Saddam about the WMD’s because he put up the appearence of somebody lying and hiding something. Add to that the information that we had that showed Saddam also had ties to terrorists groups and we decided that we could not wait for any of these WMD’s to be passed off to them to use against us.
We get out of this just the way that Bush has laid out since this began, continue providing security and training Iraqi’s to take over the security of their nation. As they stand up, we can stand down…. It really isn’t too difficult to understand, and yet it seems to be above your head.
I guess I would like you to answer a couple of questions too… Why won’t you admit to any successes in Iraq and through out the Middle East? Why won’t you admit that everyone came to the same conclusion from the intelligence that we had at the time? Why won’t you admit the possibility that Saddam did actually have the WMD’s and they could have been shipped to Syria during the year that we were debating with the UN? Why can’t you admit that while FRANCE and RUSSIA was accepting bribes from oil kickbacks they were also trying to get the sanctions lifted from Iraq? Why can’t you admit that if the sanctions had been lifted that Saddam would have surely gotten more WMD’s and worked on instituting his Nuke program?
November 14th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Y’all act like no one at all was pointing out the flaws in the administrations case for War. People kept on poking holes in the administrations tales, and they would either try to destroy the persons credibility or change the motive for going to war. In the end all anyone was left was that Saddam was EVIL!! Well no shit, so are most all the other dictators in the world, and a good portion them fit the mold that the administration cast for Saddam. So whenever you all say Saddam was evil, I hope you feel better about people in Darfur, N. Korea, China, half of fricken Africa for that matter living under dictators, and you pursue them with nearly as much fervor. But in the end, we also become dictators. So who’s next. Lets go for another country in the region, oh, lets shoot for Iran it’s right next door. Korea is too far away, and besides, they already have nukes. Hey, when did they get nukes anyway, wasn’t while we were gearing up for this whole iraq thing. hmmmm.
November 14th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
John,
Bush has listed many different reasons from the get go, he has never only stated one reason for this war. Show me one speech where he didn’t list about 10 or 12 reasons…. just one speech!
You can’t because it didn’t happen… just because you suffer from ADD doesn’t change the fact that he has always stated many reasons for the Iraq war. One of those reasons was the belief that Saddam had WMD’s and would pass them onto terrorist to use in our country.
Bush has NEVER said anything that the Democrats haven’t been saying for YEARS!!! Were they lying???? Were they just trying to scare us???
Or are they lying now?