http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20030930-084108-4555r.htm"For once, George W. Bush has displayed a sense of understatement. His restraint is all the more impressive coming from a Texan. For here is what the senior senator from Massachusetts said about the origins of this war: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. The whole thing was a fraud."
Can this be what Democrats mean by a return to civility in American rhetoric? And if so, how does it differ in any important aspect from plain old McCarthyism, conspiracy theories and all?
Forget the implication that the case for this war was based on Saddam Hussein's being an imminent threat...
All this talk about whether the threat from Saddam Hussein was imminent is a bright-red herring, The question was whether Saddam should have been stopped before he became an imminent threat, and he has been."
So now Kennedy is just like McCarthy because facts the whole world knows are brought forward? The author conveniently left out Bush's lies that Iraq had nuclear. And that Bush linked Sadaam with 9/11 explicitly in his war resolution letter to congress (posted on the White House site.) And if the danger wasn't imminent - if it wasn't nuclear - then he is saying it's OK to just go after anyone because they MIGHT attack? That leaves pretty much the whole world open to attack, then. And I love the way he ties it up, like something has actually been achieved by this fiasco. Experts said repeatedly that MORE terrorism would result from this, not less, and this has been proven to be true, so the threat has INCREASED not decreased.
Here's a famous Republican who wouldn't have bought into his argument: "All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953, upon being presented with plans to wage preventative war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union