(Sen.) Grassley says Iraq criticism emboldens enemy, dampens morale

[sabra]

http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5403137&nav=1LFX

Grassley says Iraq criticism emboldens enemy, dampens morale


DES MOINES, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley says criticism of the Bush administration policy in Iraq, largely by Democrats, "gives comfort to the enemy" even in that's not the intent.

The Iowa Republican says it also damages the morale of U-S troops fighting the war.

Grassley, in a conference call with Iowa reporters today, had a blunt warning for critics of the war, saying "If you embolden the enemy, you are hurting our cause."

...

State Senator Tom Courtney, a Democrat from Burlington, says he spent six years in the military and he has a right to question the government without having his patriotism questions.

[VegasWolf]

1. Yes, and American and innocent Iraqi citizens dying everyday for no

purpose dampens my morale.

[Rambis]

12. He trumpets up now and again

Calls bush out for something then hops back into the fold. He is on the same pug leesh as all the rest of them.
His last campaign was "I'm chuck and I mow my own yard"
Sadly it was enough since his challenger looked like a homeless man.

[VegasWolf]

19. Isn't that a general description of Republicans?

:toast:

[damntexdem]

2. I guess he's right. Iraq criticism certainly emboldens ...

Democrats (his enemies) and dampens GOP morale.

[Jack from Charlotte]

11. Here are Repug quotes on Clinton and War in Bosnia.........

Where was Grassley when these quotes were made?


GOP quotes on Bosnia


http://www.democrats.org/pdfs/gop_kosovo.pdf


"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

" President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)



"But consultations with and briefings of the Congress are absolutely necessary to make sure that the people, through their representatives, understand every phase of this, including the exit strategy, which is so important in the commitment of troops around the world. Rep. George Gekas, R-Pennsylvania Arf!


"...the president must define a mission, a goal and an exit strategy for our troops before sending them into another mess." Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas Arf!


"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country." Pat Buchanan. Barf!



Funny thing is, we won that war without a single death.

That while American bombers were in the air, Delay was leading an effort on the floor of the House of Representatives to oppose the war (pdf), including voting down a resolution supporting the troops S. Con. 21:


That the President of the United States is authorized to conduct military air operations and missile strikes in cooperation with our NATO allies against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
There were a whole lot of "patriotic" Republican Senators voting against the resolution in both the House and Senate:
-Senate Roll Call
-House Roll Call




"It is a remarkable spectacle to see the Clinton Administration and NATO taking over from the Soviet Union the role of sponsoring "wars of national liberation."
-Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID)

"This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem."
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)
"You can support the troops but not the president"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made ... not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"These international war criminals were led by Gen. Wesley Clark ... who clicked his shiny heels for the commander-in-grief, Bill Clinton."
-Michael Savage
e killed in action.

[hadrons]

15. excellent find

[MGD]

16. That was absolutely brilliant.. GW's words were particularly meaningful.

nt

[Auntie Bush]

22. Those hypocrites make me sick!

I really hate 'em. Yes, I really, really hate 'em.

We need to make those quotes very very public and rub it in their faces every time they accuse us of aiding the enemy and criticizing their God... I mean their president.

[karynnj]

25. A far better Senator answered this on April 22, 2006

"I have come here today to reaffirm that it was right to dissent in 1971 from a war that was wrong. And to affirm that it is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a President who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation.

I believed then, just as I believe now, that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves our people and our principles. When brave patriots suffer and die on the altar of stubborn pride, because of the incompetence and self-deception of mere politicians, then the only patriotic choice is to reclaim the moral authority misused by those entrusted with high office.

I believed then, just as I believe now, that it is profoundly wrong to think that fighting for your country overseas and fighting for your country's ideals at home are contradictory or even separate duties. They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin. And that's certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier than 1971.

<snip>
The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Vietnam, and some of us were wrong. The lesson is that true patriots must defend the right of dissent, and hear the voices of dissenters, especially now, when our leaders have committed us to a pre-emptive "war of choice" that does not involve the defense of our people or our territory against aggressors. The patriotic obligation to speak out becomes even more urgent when politicians refuse to debate their policies or disclose the facts. And even more urgent when they seek, perversely, to use their own military blunders to deflect opposition and answer their own failures with more of the same. Presidents and politicians may worry about losing face, or votes, or legacy; it is time to think about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing their lives.

[aquart]

3. What is Grassley's service record? Distinguished?

[9119495]

4. Is he serving?

Than how the phuck would he know?

Go sign up Chuck and teach those soldiers that criticism does not mean we hate them.

Thanks,

I'll await your postcards.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Trying to execute a pointless mission with no strategy, on the other hand

Is fucking-A great for morale, yes?

These douchebags have no shame.

[bdamomma]

6. what BS

what stupid lines embolden the enemy, hurting our cause, now what is exactly that "noble cause" ummm.... that has not been answered yet huh? and WTF is the "mission" or "job". Makes me want to :banghead:

[liberal N proud]

7. Once again the republicans have FLIPPED the mantra

They have done this every time something they do gets criticized of called out as a lie. They will flip it on their opponent or they will flip the whole agenda.
What is actually happening, the Taliban and al-Queda are emboldened by the continued fighting that we are doing on Middle East soil.

Dumb asses, all they can do is flip the mantra.

[rodeodance]

8. oh go graze.

[LeftishBrit]

9. This is so against all the principles of freedom and democracy!

Scary. Scary. Scary.

[jpak]

10. Grassley can go Cheney himself

The invasion of Iraq "emboldened" our enemies - not antiwar activists.

[saltpoint]

13. Grassley has the brains of a sponge.

And half the charisma.

[KansDem]

14. Should've thought about that before you lied us into war...

But then, you Bushistas didn't think much about anything....

[MGD]

17. Thosands of dead American soldiers; tens of thousands wounded,

many horribly so; 3/4 trillion dollars wasted thus far and a resulting deficit that threatens our national security more than Saddam Hussein ever did; no closer to victory today than when we started; No OBL head on a pike; piss poor planning, execution, and leadership at the highest levels; perhaps these things comfort the enemy a little bit too, perhaps these things dampen the spirits of every real American.

[AlCzervik]

18. Grasselys love of tax cuts for the rich are making the poor even more so.

Shut your pie Chuck.

[genie_weenie]

20. I will let Mr. Trumbo's lines answer this bollocks

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously.

They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.

Hmmmm.

But what do the dead say?

Trumbo, Dalton Johnny Got His Gun, 1939

[saigon68]

21. Charles Grassley = Bush Butt Boy

he is a whiner like his mentor Joementum limpmann

[LynnTheDem]

23. What utter bullshit. FUCK OFF, grassley, you traitor.

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

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

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 Army; Strategic Implications of Intercommunal Warfare in Iraq

The scope of this monograph is confined to the Middle East, which is where Iraqi ethnic and sectarian strife will almost certainly have the greatest implications for regional stability and U.S. foreign and military policy. If Iraqi violence erupts along religious/sectarian and ethnic lines, this conflict will have thunderous echoes throughout the area."
http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume3/march_2005/3_05_2.html

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://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush

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

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

"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."

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

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

Nope, no one could have known.

:sarcasm:

[ckramer]

24. Senator Charles Grassley , it's a unjust war, hello!

No sane people should support an unjust war.

[truthisfreedom]

26. seems to me that silencing dissent and putting the fear in Americans are

the two main objectives of the terra-ists AND the rethuglicans.