Daschle says Iraq war justified

:mad:

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/8401928.htm

America started its war with Iraq under false pretenses, Tom Daschle said Friday.

But Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate, told reporters during a conference call that the war is justified because Saddam Hussein needed to be deposed. But, the Aberdeen native said, the main reasons President Bush gave Congress and the public for invading Iraq have turned out to be inaccurate...

Whether the war has been worth the cost is an individual decision, he said. He said it has been to him.

Questions on the topic were prompted after Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said earlier in the week that he voted to send his son to war under false pretenses, something that angers him. Johnson supported the president's decision for war while his son was in the Army's 101st Airborne Division, a unit that was likely to be one of the first sent to Iraq...

The other guy makes sense, though.

I bet plenty of politicians wouldn't mind turning back the clock to when Saddam was in charge, right about now.

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That would allow me to kick him in the balls. Over and over and over.

Frankly, even with opportunity, I'm not agile or quick enough to do it in real life. And I have a healthy fear of incarceration.

But a video game......with sound effects......would relieve so much stress.

http://www.urban75.com/Punch/index.html

Warping also available.

He should have just said Bush lied about the reason for war and left it at that. Time for a new Senate Minority Leader...

We're taking it back in November!

be is just too pathetic and weasley for words......

Give us someone w/ cojones.

Given a Kerry victory, we still won't have the House. I'd like to see a different minority leader, and that's an understatement.

Not licking Bush's derriere.

to stand up in the Senate and challenge Trent Lott over his "lack of patriotism", this guy seems to always fire his guns whilst driving 50 miles an hour in reverse. For God's sake man, stand up and fight.

It was OK to go in there and get rid of Hussein because he needed to be deposed. Tom, we're footing the bill on this VERY expensive international clean-up job. To the tune of $100 billion. That's one expensive dude.

Since Saddam needed to be cleaned up, why do we stop there? Why not Kim Jong Il? I could name about 20 countries which have despicable dictators. Are we going there next, Tom?

It's just this kind of mentality that has the rest of the world hating us. We seem to feel that the rest of the world is our back yard, and we'll jump in there wherever we feel like it.

What if India decided Bush was a despot, and they needed to get rid of him? How about that?

The war that we entered under false pretenses is our very best argument for tossing Chimpy out of the White House.

Whose side is Daschle on, anyway?

I believe that Jay Rockefeller is the only Democratic Senator to admit he made a mistake in voting for IWR. Jay gets kudos!

These people should not be in leadership positions!

/sarcasm

Tom, go lie down before you hurt yourself.

make a good case as the Dem "leadership". I'm really dissapointed with the guy. "Saddam had to be deposed" is specifically my point.

Saddam has become the evil fall guy for our failures to address the proliferation of WMD and terrorism in the world we presume to control.

If Saddam was such a threat, I ask, what about Musharraf's regime, selling nukes to the highest bidder, what about the house of Saud, funding worldwide terrorist activities.....

This (Iraq invasion/occupation) is turning out to be a nightmare for all involved.

nt

Sometimes I love Daschle, and other times I want to send him a spin because he has obviously lost his. :argh:

lost now and into the future. untold billions lost in both the us and iraqi economies. all this because little georgie had a hard on for saddam. got to show his dad that he was better than him and that he will "fire" saddam from the company cause his dad didn`t have the balls to. tom- you are a fuck`n idiot.

it's time for you to fall on your sword.do us all a favor and announce that you're not running for re-election,then spend the remaining time in office FIGHTING BACK!!! you don't need the job,you can live off what your wife earns as a lobbyist.

I don't want this coward in my party. Run the bastard out on a rail.

1 (800) 839 - 5276 - and tell him this is NO GOOD! The way is being cleared for impeachment, frankly. THAT is what Daschle should be calling for.

You poor soul. No matter how hard you try to appease with such statements, right-wing superhawks are not going to vote for you. They're just giggling right now when you say such things. All you are doing is alienating the Left. That's not many people in South Dakota, but you need every one you can get.

When the whole politics job fails, Hannity should pick up Daschle to fill in for Colmes.

If he wants to remain a closeted Republican yet pretend he's a Democrat, why can't he just keep his damn mouth shut?

With Democrats like this who needs Republicans :crazy:

And campaign for people more like you. It's the only way to retake the Party. If more liberal Democrats got active locally we could pressure the Party into being more aggressive. Look at what the fanatical right has done. County by county, school board by school board, they've totally conquered the repug party. There's not that many of them, certainly not more than there are liberals anyway. Look at the polls, people shy away from the term liberal but over a third of the country wants to legalize weed. 2/3rds of the country wants single payer universal health care. Similar majorities support all of there "unpopular liberal social policies" like welfare and social security. Hell, half the country was "anti-war loonies". If we liberals band together we could take back this Party and this country. There's not many involved in my town right now, but I'm gonna get out there and see what I can do to fight *.

I suspect that Kerry might be one of us, but do to political calculations is hiding that until he is in office. This is not necessarily a bad thing, remember * and his compassionate conservative garbage. He's quietly reshaping the government in the right wings image. Look at Kerry's anti-war record, he was anti-VN, anti-Gulf War, and only voted for the second Iraq war when * said if Congress didn't give him approval he would take us to war unilaterally without bothering with the UN. Obviously that didn't work out but Kerry has always tried to avoid getting America involved in unnecessary wars. His speach to the Senate during Viet Nam was absolutely amazing, I never thought we'd be in position to get someone like that into the White House. Plus he has a strong liberal record in the Senate, sure it's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than many.

Tryng to build a splinter Party will doom this country to several years of complete repug dominance until you kill off the old Democratic Party and supplant it with a new one. This country is just not setup for a 3 or more party system, only 2 can thrive. I hope we change your mind, we need * out now, and we could always use another pair of hands.

It's a Diebold world, don't put too much faith in voting.

Everything I said assumes we still have a Democracy. If that's gone I'm afraid all of this nonviolent organizing is useless, and bloody revolution will be the only option available. Hopefully we can get paper ballot printouts in the machines before the election. I've been hearing about it on the news lately, and that's a start. If we can only get the Party to care before it bites them in the ass, we'll be a lot better off.

:grr:

From...

http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2003-07-23/cover.html

The firms also maintain platoons of Washington lobbyists to help keep government contracts headed their way. In 2001, according to the most recent federal disclosure forms, 10 private military companies spent more than $32 million on lobbying. DynCorp retained two lobbying firms that year to successfully block a bill that would have forced federal agencies to justify private contracts on cost-saving grounds. MPRI's parent company, L-3 Communications, had more than a dozen lobbyists working on its behalf, including Linda Daschle, wife of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Last year L-3 won $1.7 billion in Defense Department contracts.

I hate to see that he said this. Its BS.

foiled in oil. heil bush.

Sorry - I couldn't resist!

But for some reason he's still our Senate leader.

That means that we still don't get it.

I'm sure he's a fine senator for his area, but he is not a national leader.

How is the base going to go vote for him now?

Umm... no that was some Republican drumming up bidness.

i really wish i could say something nice about him sometime.

all these dems are going back to pre-dean mode. Howard dean, we need you. and i love you. why oh why couldn't we have nominated you? i am sick of all these so-called dems who kiss up to bush without shame.

We will have plenty of time to rue Dean's downfall in the months ahead, I suspect.

I think he is saying there was justification for removing Iraq, but we didn;t need to act unilaterally, and we didn't need to act on false pretenses.

I don't mind seeing Saddam gone, but replacing hinm with civil war and neglecting real security issues is nothing but a sick farce.

I Think that is what he was saying, but Daschle is hard to read --

We need a leader that doesn't have to worry about garnering GOP votes to win re-election. That way the leader can be a leader.

eom

- And why is Daschle still in a leadership role? He should be selling shoes.

I believe this ungainly feeble thing is your spine, senator.

that are for this war. There's probably alot for attacking and conquering Syria. There are probably alot for the neocon blueprint for the world. It's going to drain the US and eventually bring us down. Just hope the violence to our people doesn't become too great.

isn't from my state. what a confusing pile of crap... he's certainly not a student of rove.

-Violence was far from a last resort;
-U.S. did not have international sanction;
-Disproportionate use of force in countering threat of terrorism;
-No evidence linking Saddam to terrorism;
-Lack of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Our actions have been and remain imperial in appearance and purpose.

There are just more of them in the Republican party, I hope. Decent people have to speak out against them everywhere they pop up their ugly heads.

am so tired of him giving Bush cover. We got Republicans turning on the Bush, and Daschle gives him cover.

Bush obviously has pictures of him or something. Good Grief.

after elections

This is ridiculous.

Does this mean Daschle is in favor of invading Uzbekistan because it's led by an evil dictator?

do not put it an already strained national credit card. Put on a war tax before the election. call it a war tax. see what the voters say.

...GOP wannabe.

Let's get the ball rolling. He's no leader. He's a Republican sympathizer. Recall the minority leader and replace his sorry ass with a real Democrat.

Thats Daschle's only valid excuse for this type of behavior....

Hey, my mug was on the front page of that piece of crap paper. Having grown up in Minnesota and then living there for ten years, things like this make sense out there. Dear God, I forgot the first rule I learned out there, don't think too hard about anything you see or hear. It will f*ck you up! Now I need to lay down.

I guess I'm rather slow. I have yet to understand WHY we are coddling and befriending Libya, after Ghadafi ADMITTED to being part of one of the most horrific acts of terrorism, plus.. there is NO way he is any more democratic of a leader in Libya. YET.. we kiss his ass.. Blair flies over to meet with him, etc.. photo op, photo op. In contrast, we decide Saddam has to go (even though he has no history of terrorism), and we kill 10,000+ civilians, and now almost 700 of our troops in the process. Saddam sits in jail, Ghadifi sits in luxury. WHY??? Can Daschle answer that one? Why is one murderer preferred over another? Does Libya not have oil? Or are they more willing to share it? Are they not geographically desirable to the PNAC???

He was alright until "they" mailed him the anthrax. Now we need someone else.

...after 911, he's been paid off.

From Novak's column

Blocking judges

While threatening to block all of President Bush's judicial nominations if he makes additional recess appointments to the federal courts, Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle has effectively prevented such appointments by limiting senatorial recesses.

Daschle is stopping the Senate from recessing for the minimum 11 days necessary for the president to put somebody on the federal bench temporarily without Senate confirmation. However, the Democrats slipped in February by permitting the Senate to recess one day early. That enabled Bush to make his second recess selection, Alabama state Attorney General William Pryor to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The Senate is unlikely to have an 11-day recess before the summer break in August. Bush is loath to use the device then because it would come so close to the election and the judge could serve for little more than four months until his service ends in December.

other stuff…
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak11.html

Fuck these losers. Fuck 'em all.

When will these people wake up!

The former members in Bush's cabinent have more guts and sense than Tom Daschle. Here you have a grand opportunity to blast Bush on 9-11 and the Iraq war and the Democratic leadership is silent.

Bush has lost Spain and troops are dying. Someone besides a Republican needs to point out that Bush's lies got us into this Iraqi quagmire and that we are NOT better off with 630 dead GIs.

The party needs new leadership.

Although I'll vote for Kerry, I can see why people might be inclined to vote for Nader.

after it settled in that he had been targeted for death by the anthrax letter. Just knowing someone had gone to that degree of trouble to scare one, would rattle a lot of people.

From the article:

Daschle said the decision to invade Iraq was premature. The United States should have worked harder for a diplomatic way to remove Hussein from power, he said. Not doing so isolated the United States from its allies, he said. A year ago, on the eve of the war, Daschle was criticized for such comments.

Now, Daschle said, more troops need to be sent to Iraq to maintain peace. But he doesn't think they should all be Americans. More countries need to get involved so the war looks less like an American occupation, he said.
(snip)

There's a lot we aren't being told about what our Senators are saying, however. They're just not getting a lot of press coverage these _Bush dominated years. That can change. We all remember when Democrats in the Senate and House were in the foreground and we saw a lot of them. It'd be WONDERFUL to get that chance again. They have an infinite edge in quality.