Evidence for why Bolton should not be confimed

It works the other way, too. (Remember those weapon inspectors? Probably the only reason that Iraq didn't have the weapons they said they did.)At the very least, it keeps those countries at the table. If you think that the solution to the world's woes is for everybody to leave the discussion and hole up in their own little corner - isolationism, in other words - well, I'd like to see you defend that position. Because it's stupid on the face of it.Of course the UN is fairly corrupt; the nations that constitute it are fairly corrupt. (How come when all these Oil-For-Food millions come up in conversation, nobody mentions the tens of billions of dollars of Iraq reconstruction money that our government simply can't account for?)

What does that have to do with anything?How long had Bush been President when we invaded? What was the status of protective armor for troops and vehicles when we invaded? How complete were our plans for the reconstruction when we invaded? Those are questions relevant to a charge of rushing to war. Rumsfeld himself famously said "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had", clearly indicating his understanding that our army and government were not fully prepared for this conflict. Since it was the administration who chose when we went to war, how can anyone make an argument that we didn't rush to war?

Bush wasn't in office for 12 years. He had only been in office for 3 years when war was declared.What does this mean:

quote:

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As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

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if not a recognition by the Defense Secretary that we went to war before the Army was ready to do so? And since we went to war on our own timetable, what is that if not a rush to war?Are you using a different definition of "rush" than I am, or something? I don't understand what the UN resolution has to do with anything.

Since their resolutions carry no weight and have no effect, how can they constitute the beginning of a war?

Who knows? I guess they feel like they need to do something. The UN didn't ivade Iraq; the US did. The context of the discussion you are having is whether or not Bush rushed to war (rushed the country to war, technically, since he didn't pick up a rifle and head out), and 12 years of resolutions have absolutely nothing to do with that.AbE: Moreover, since the legal case that Iraq violated Resolution 687 is tenuous at best, the "12 years" argument is even less relevant. 687 provided no basis for the invasion of Iraq.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-04-2005 10:54 AM

Well, he didn't. He had plans to do it from the get-go, we now know. He was just waiting for the excuse he would need to get everybody else - like the media - to go along, and in 9/11, he found it.These are things we know from the administration itself.