Did you think this was just a very bad dream?

BEFORE:

Dick Cheney in April 1991, then Defense Secretary:

If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein,you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists?

How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2072479

President GHW Bush, 1998;

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

http://www.rense.com/general43/quote.htm

Brent Scowcroft, one of the Republican Party’s most respected foreign policy advisors, and national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush:

Don't Attack Saddam It would undermine our antiterror efforts. "Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/iraq_yang020815.html

Norman Schwarzkopf - Four Star General:

"The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn't seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now. He thinks U.N. inspections are still the proper course to follow. He's worried about the cockiness of the U.S. war plan, and even more by the potential human and financial costs of occupying Iraq….(And don't get him started on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld)"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52450-2003Jan27?language=printer

Col. David Hackworth (ret), America's most highly decorated soldier:

"Should the president decide to stay the war course, hopefully at least a few of our serving top-uniformed leaders - those who are now covertly leaking that war with Iraq will be an unparalleled disaster - will do what many Vietnam-era generals wish they would have done: stand tall and publicly tell the America people the truth about another bad war that could well lead to another died-in-vain black wall. Or even worse."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29786

James Webb, former Sec. of Navy under Ronald Reagan, Decorated Marine Veteran:

"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years? …In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets…. Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall."

http://www.sftt.org/article09302002a.html

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S.:

"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another…We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started."

Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.

"I'm not sure which planet they live on"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni

Republican Dissent on Iraq"
Full page ad in Wall Street Journal by major GOP contributors:

"Mr. President, …The candidate we supported in 2000 promised a more humble nation in our dealings with the world. We gave him our votes and our campaign contributions. That candidate was you. We feel betrayed. We want our money back. We want our country back…. A Billion Bitter enemies will rise out of this war."
- Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2003

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/001444.html

Republicans Who Voted Against Iraq Resolution Tell Why

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/11/194543.shtml

TOP REPUBLICANS BREAK WITH BUSH ON IRAQ STRATEGY

Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/11/194543.shtml


AFTER:

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency:

"Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends…. I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Retired General Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command:

"The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Col. Mike Turner (ret), Schwarzkopf's personal briefing officer during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm:

“The uniformed Joint Staff in the Pentagon strongly opposed this plan early on...The uniformed Joint Staff was overridden, yet in so many horrifying ways this operation resembles Somalia, not Desert Storm...Perhaps we can pull this off, but here's a far worse scenario that's at least as likely...Photos of American soldiers amid landscapes of Iraqi civilian bodies blanket the world press which aligns unanimously against the US. The US is condemned by NATO and the UN...The war ends within a few weeks, but the crisis deepens...”

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2003/mar/030311.turner.html

US Air Force General, Tony McPeak, a four-star general who headed the U.S. Air Force during Operation Desert Storm:

McPeak served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Bush’s father and then President Clinton after flying 269 Vietnam combat missions and participating in the Thunderbirds, the elite aerobatic team.

McPeak believes that President Bush should publicly admit personal failure. He claims Bush has botched the crucial process of coalition-building, has not enlisted the United Nations, and has failed to rebuild Afghanistan as a model of reconstruction.

http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=57303%3Ehttp://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=57303%20

Retired Envoys, Commanders Assail Bush Team
Administration Unable to Handle 'Global Leadership,' 27-Member Group Asserts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46538-2004Jun16.html

Growing GOP Dissent On Iraq
Republican Party ranks are beginning to break and the White House is worried. Longtime GOP critics on Iraq are growing progressively more vocal in their condemnation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/07/politics/main610787.shtml

Republican Rep. Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action. That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," the 1st District congressman said.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."

"Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action," he said.

Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2004/08/18/top_story/10053833.txt

Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, says he might not vote for President Bush.

"There is no secret that on some very important issues I have difference with the current administration," Chafee said, listing abortion rights, the environment and war in Iraq.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222081/posts

Republican senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee;

"No, I don't think we're winning," Hagel told a CBS interviewer. "We're in trouble, we're in deep trouble in Iraq."

http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

Republican senator Richard Lugar, Foreign Relations Committee chairman, was asked on ABC why only $1 billion of the $18 billion appropriated last year for Iraqi reconstruction had been spent.

"Well, this is the incompetence in the administration," he replied.

http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

Republican senator John McCain - who, like Hagel and Lugar, has often criticized administration planning on Iraq - said a key error had been allowing insurgents to keep control of the city of Falluja, after vowing to oust them.

http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

”We have a stronger jihadi presence in Iraq today than in March 2003,” noted Roger Cressey, the former director for Transnational Threats in Bush's National Security Council at a briefing at the libertarian Cato Institute earlier this week.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0911-01.htm

Bush close personal friend, Hilary Cleveland, president of the GOP Women for Kerry Steering Committee.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0912-06.htm

October 2004: Bush, Cheney admit NO WMD IN IRAQ SINCE 1991, NO CAPABILITY IN IRAQ SINCE 1994.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Cx6ROu1uDbMJ:www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-bush08.html+Bush,+Cheney+admit+NO+WMD+IN+IRAQ+SINCE+1991,+NO+CAPABILITY+IN+IRAQ+SINCE+1994&hl=en

Ties between Iraq & al Qaeda?

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."
-Rumsfailed, Monday, October 4, 2004

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10975887%5E1702,00.html

Sky News (London): "One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?"

Bush: "I can't make that claim.'

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030131-23.html

Sept 17, 2003- Bush: No evidence Saddam Hussein involved in Nine-Eleven attacks

http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1447698

Sept 16, 2003- Rice: U.S. Never Said Saddam Was Behind 9/11

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/983821/posts

Sept 16, 2003- Rumsfeld sees no link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-16-rumsfeld-iraq-911_x.htm

Aug 6, 2003- Wolfowitz: Iraq Was Not Involved In 9-11 Terrorist Attacks, No Ties To Al-Qaeda

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4372.htm

Brent Scowcroft, one of the Republican Party’s most respected foreign policy advisors;

"Don't Attack Saddam. It would undermine our antiterror efforts. There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133

Allies Find No Links Between Iraq, Al Qaeda

"What I'm asked is if I've seen any evidence of that. (Iraq links to al Qaeda) And the answer is: I haven't.” -British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who supports U.S. invasion & occupation of Iraq.]

http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-noqaeda4nov04,0,4538810.story

British Intelligence agencies, MI6 and MI5

A dossier prepared by the two agencies “showed no discernible links between Iraq and al-Qaida,”

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=375403

Richard Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who lead an internal review of the CIA's prewar intelligence;

“the CIA has not found any proof of operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.”

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?pid=800

The White House’s own publication, A Decade of Defiance and Deception, makes no mention of Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.html

The 2002 congressional joint intelligence committee’s report on the Sept. 11 attacks revealed that the Bush administration had no evidence to support its claim that Saddam’s government was supporting al-Qaeda.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030723-064812-9491r

MSNBC - No proof links Iraq, al-Qaida, Powell says

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ID/3909150

According to a "top secret British document", quoted by the BBC "there is nothing but enmity between Iraq and Al Qaeda." The BBC said the leak came from intelligence officials upset that their work was being used to justify war." (quoted in Daily News, New York, 6 February 2003).

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html

Iraq-al Qaeda links weak, say former Bush officials

Three former Bush administration officials who worked on intelligence and national security issues have told National Journal that the prewar evidence tying al Qaeda to Iraq was tenuous, exaggerated, and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0803/080803nj2.htm

Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. On Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda

"…analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said."

and…

"At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden|s network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D1EF83E5C0C718CDDAB0894DB404482

This is consistent with what they were saying back in October 2002.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A14056-2002Oct24¬Found=true

"There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever." -Richard Clarke, former terrorism chief under bush.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

Iraq-al Qaeda ties have not been found

Bush administration hyped sketchy and false evidence to push for war
The Bush administration’s claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda — one of the administration’s central arguments for a pre-emptive war — appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration’s claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam’s links with al Qaeda, and several key parts of the administration’s case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/2004/03/04/news/nation/8101079.htm

Iraq and al Qaeda: What Evidence?

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=23816

bush's own hand-picked Republican rightwingnut weapons hunter ISG, Dr. David Kay;

David Kay was on the ground for months investigating the activities of Hussein|s regime. He concluded "But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all."

He called a speech where Cheney made the claim there was a link, as being "evidence free."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/06/16/bush_backs_cheney_on_assertion_linking_hussein_al_qaeda

Israeli intelligence (the Moussad)

“According to Israeli intelligence, Palestinians are still not connected to the global terror network, and neither is Iraq.”

http://www.haaretz.com/

OFFICIAL VERDICT: WHITE HOUSE MISLED WORLD OVER SADDAM-AL QAEDA TIES

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0617-03.htm

No evidence of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties: 9/11 commission

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/06/cheney.911

"CIA Review Finds No Evidence Saddam Had Ties to Islamic Terrorists"

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1005-01.htm

Maybe it was humanitarian intervention?

The vast majority of Americans say "humanitarian" is not justification

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1114-06.htm

Human Rights Watch; Iraq invasion cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0126-07.htm

HOW many soldiers DEAD? 1231. So far.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

How many soldiers wounded? 7532. So far.

Are we safer?

Worldwide terrorism-related deaths on the rise

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5889435%20/

US Losing the War on Terror in Iraq; The invasion of Iraq has increased, not decreased. the threat of terrorist attack

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article2629.html

Occupation Made World Less Safe, Pro-War Institute Says

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/terrorwar/analysis/2004/0526iissreport.htm

Iraq Invasion Hurt War on Terror

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-10.htm

Musharraf: World more dangerous because of Iraq War

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/25/03544/7945

Blix Says Iraq War May Have Worsened Terror Threat

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0319-02.htm

Poll: Aussies, Brits, Italians say Iraq war increased terrorism

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/5027215.html

Iraq intervention increased threat of terrorism

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/c7/9d/200409100845.68f9c878.html

UK Government; Iraq war 'increased terror threat'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3451239.stm

Iraq war has swollen ranks of al Qaeda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1063717,00.html

US State Department Corrects Report to Show Rise in Terrorism

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5264512/

But do the Iraqi people love us? Even a little bit?

Poll: Only 2% of Iraqis View the US as Liberators, 97% as Occupiers

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=7752&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

Iraqis out of patience

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-poll-cover_x.htm

But we're still seen as The Good Guys by the rest of the world. Right?

Amnesty Slams "Bankrupt" Vision of US in Damning Rights Report

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0526-02.htm

Poll: Bush 'Biggest Threat to Justice and Peace'

http://www.twf.org/News/Y2002/1109-Poll.html

'SQUANDERED SYMPATHY': POLL REVEALS WORLD ANGER AT BUSH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1328053,00.html

America under bush; everyone's worst nightmare.

:kick:

:kick:

Kudos.

:)

merlin " a dream to some...to others a nightmare"