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://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002133Norman 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=printerCol. David Hackworth (RIP), 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=29786James 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.shtmlTOP REPUBLICANS BREAK WITH BUSH ON IRAQ STRATEGYLeading 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.shtmlGeneral 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 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, 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.htmlUS 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%20Not all Republicans are rightwingnuts;
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.txtBut ALL rightwingnuts are the stupidest MFers on the planet; they believe(d) BUSH over some of the top US military commanders we've ever had? That's pretty damn stupid.
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