What will actually change if Romney wins the election?

[Derka]

Originally Posted by bagelred

Yes, because if we had 8 years of Al Gore vs. 8 years of George Bush, things would have been exactly the same, right?

It's good to be skeptical, but c'mon.....there are still big differences.

Exactly the same? Perhaps not.

More or less the same course? Absolutely. 9/11 happens regardless and Gore receives the same piss-poor intelligence that sends us to Iraq.

[KevinNYC]

Originally Posted by Derka

Exactly the same? Perhaps not.

More or less the same course? Absolutely. 9/11 happens regardless and Gore receives the same piss-poor intelligence that sends us to Iraq.

How old were you in 2002 and how closely did you pay attention to current affairs? The campaign to invade Iraq started well before there was any intelligence to support it. There was a specific manufactured public campaign to prepare for war with Iraq starting early in 2002. I remember at the time being baffled as to where this was coming from. You started op-eds about the threat of Saddam and why we needed to change the focus from Bin Laden. It never made sense to me at the time. There was absolutely nothing logical or natural about it. Now we realize there was a group that probably included Pres Bush himself for whom taking out Saddam was a long-standing goal that predates 9/11.

Invading Iraq was not a preset position for any president, hell it wasn't even a preset position for any Republican president. Plenty of Republican/right-leaning folks opposed it including the first President Bush, Colin Powell, General, Codoleeza Rice's mentor, Brent Scrowcroft. Gen Zinni who had endorsed Bush practically spent most of 2002 talking about why the Iraq War was a bad idea.

You need to read about how the Bush White House actually worked and how it routinely perverted the normal decision-making process. You need to read about how Rumsfled ran the Pentagon specifically guys like Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans The guys pushing for the Iraq war hated the CIA, because the CIA wasn't gving them enough bogus intel, that Feith started to cook up some on his own.

Congress famously asked Bush for the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, so they could see why the administration was so hell-bent on invading Iraq. Well the probably was they never asked the intelligence community to write one. Their push for war existed BEFORE the intelligence supported it. So they rushed an NIE in just a couple of weeks to build a case for war and it turned out to be junk (unless you carefully read the footnotes.)


The Federal Response in the months before 9/11 in questionable as well, because it was the main threat Clinton's team warned Bush's team against, but they again famously pretty much ignored Al Qaeda.

[TheMan]

No way Gore lies us into Iraq, he wouldn't have surrounded himself with the Neocons W had. Kevin is dead on. Cheney wanted the CIA to come up with something, anything to link Iraq with 9/11. They purposely lied about WMDs and viciously went after Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame when they refuted their bullshit...

In reality Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove and a few others should be in prison right now.

[MavsSuperFan]

Originally Posted by TheMan

No way Gore lies us into Iraq, he wouldn't have surrounded himself with the Neocons W had. Kevin is dead on. Cheney wanted the CIA to come up with something, anything to link Iraq with 9/11. They purposely lied about WMDs and viciously went after Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame when they refuted their bullshit...

In reality Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rove and a few others should be in prison right now.

The chances of war with Iraq were significantly low with Gore, but I wouldn't say it would have been impossible. For a purely self interested perspective (arguably evil) it makes sense for America to topple an uncontrollable Saddam and install a pro American government in Iraq, because of many strategic reasons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JE48XHKG64

Gore talking about Iraq

For a similar reason if the war with Iraq had gone better and the economy was stronger there would be no doubt in my mind that we would initiate a war with Iran. It just makes sense for us to put the middle east under American and American allied middle eastern nations control. As long as dictators of the middle east sell oil to us and are reasonably predictable we will support them (House of Saud, Mubarak, the Shah, Sultan of Bahrain, UAE, etc) no matter how brutal they were. We have also shown that we are willing to topple democratically elected presidents (Mosaddegh) just because he wanted to nationalize Iran's oil.

Super Powers invade nations, its what they do

Edit: another video of gore talking about this issue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h6ge...eature=related

[ALBballer]

Not much will change. Maybe a bit more aggressiveness in foreign policy but that's about it.

[KevinNYC]

Originally Posted by MavsSuperFan

The chances of war with Iraq were significantly low with Gore, but I wouldn't say it would have been impossible. For a purely self interested perspective (arguably evil) it makes sense for America to topple an uncontrollable Saddam and install a pro American government in Iraq, because of many strategic reasons

First off, Saddam was not uncontrollable. He didn't even control his whole country which why Kurdistan was the best place to live in Iraq. Containment against Iraq was working quite nicely and that was the view of Colin Powell and General Anthony Zinni, who had command of that theater in the 1990. The folks who wanted war against Iraq kept comparing him to Hitler which was a complete absurdity, since Hitler did have the power to overrun Europe and we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait in a matter of weeks and by all Saddam was weaker in 2003 than he was in 1991.

Secondly, here's Al Gore arguing against the Bush march to war in September 2002 arguing that taking the focus off Al Qaeda is the wrong move

I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another.

If you read that whole speech he comes out against The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war and argues for dealing with the threat of Saddam by working with the UN Security council and other international partners. If you remember Bush went to the UN (Because the UK would not have joined us without it) and they authorized inspections to verify if Saddam had weapons. They were never allowed to finish their job and Bush never went back to the UN to authorize the invasion, because he wouldn't have gotten the vote. Had Bush let the weapons inspectors finish their job and used the threat of war to ensure that Saddam wasn't a danger to his neighbors, Bush would not have the reputation he has today. Al Gore seems to be arguing for this method in his 2002 speech.

This was the bait and switch game that Bush played with the Democrats in 2002. That bait was Saddam is violation of the UN resolutions and has WMDs which are a threat to US, so you must vote on a resolution to give me the authority to go after him he doesn't comply.

A lot of people could support that. However, it turned the UN did not find any WMD and Bush pulled the switch and said well I'm invading anyway and you gave me the authority.