“In the face of this new challenge from Saddam, however, the President’s public response has been only to say that he is “encouraged” by Iraq’s compliance with the UN inspections and to begin reducing U.S. military forces in the Gulf region. Unwilling either to adopt policies that would remove Saddam or sustain the credibility of its own policy of containment, the administration has placed us on a path that will inevitably free Saddam Hussein from all effective constraints….Now that the administration has failed to provide sound leadership, we believe it is imperative that Congress take what steps it can to correct U.S. policy toward Iraq.”

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqletter1998.htm

They certainly didn’t believe then that Clinton was in favor of invading Iraq.

Clinton was not in favor of invading Iraq, if he was he would have proposed it or done it. He does however deserve credit for successfully eliminating Iraq’s WMDs at a very low cost to the United States. It will be a cold day in hell before any of the so-called “former Democrats” on the right give him credit for that.

The unpatriotic right is out in force today, prioritizing the internal consistency of their ideological fantasies over the well-being of their country.

Yeah, because Bush is a RINO. Albeit, one annointed by Republican Party leadership as their guy, which causes all sorts of weird effects for the partisans. I’m sure the same thing could easily happen for partisan Dems.

Andy: “Dudes! Liberals! We’ve got them, if we’re smart. We’re on the side of small government, conservative spending, respect for individuals, and avoiding overseas adventures.”

Um, liberals on the side of small government? New Deal? Great Society? What you’re describing isn’t liberal. It’s the space vacated by the Republicans who have politically outmaneuvered the Dems. And the Dems are now struggling to redefine themselves because they can’t claim that space without alienating their base. The Republicans don’t have that problem because they are winning, which their base loves.

And that vacated space is not liberalism, but libertarianism. Should the Dems recede into irrelevance (not a given, but a significant possibility), I think it’s pretty clear who has the best shot to take their place.

Editors:

Mr. Brooks Mick letter of March 13 and his obfuscation of Bush�s bloody Iraq adventure must be answered.

Without evidence, I must take at face value his claim of vigorously debating a Bush plan to democratize the Middle East leading up to the war. It must have surely been a lonely debate as it reeks of Monday morning quarterbacking. His lament on the failure of the Bush Administration to enunciate this grand strategy is in fact his answer. It was not offered in the public debate. We remember being told of the gathering threat of Iraq�s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. We remember the morphing of Sadaam into Bin Laden and their misleading linkage of Iraq to 9-11. We remember Bush eventually bypassing the UN to invade Iraq to enforce UN resolutions. As reality inconvienently proved all the bellicose fear mongering to be lies, Bush and his apologists moved on to a smorgasbord of other reasons. The ability to pick and choose your casus belli for war, after the fact, makes for easy debating points on Mick�s part.

Unfortunately, history also renders this latest reasoning false. Bush was governor of Texas when the Palestinian Authority were holding elections and choosing Arafat. Bush was an infant when the Lebanese people were holding elections and the scheduled one in May has nothing to do with Iraq. Bush had to be dragged to the table of broad democratic elections in Iraq by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Maybe Sistani knew a secular Iraq might now give way to an Islamic state aligned with Iran with some form of Shariah as its principal law. The countries in the Middle East on which Bush is most reliant in combating terrorism, I will remind you, are some of the worst dictatorship on this planet. And shamefully, the ranks of Muslim terrorist have swelled due to our Iraq invasion.

Mr. Mick�s bait and switch may have resonance with misinformed and blind Bush loyalist. But American men and women in our armed forces are paying the bloody price for their misplaced loyalties and the gross incompetence that followed that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration. His obvious underestimating the actual death and destruction occurring in Iraq angers me the most. Mick asserts 1000 casualties, which as I write, omits an additional 521 families suffering a dagger to their collective hearts. An additional 12,000 are severely wounded, and not to mention over a hundred thousand innocent Iraqi men, woman and children killed, wounded and even tortured by the Bush government.

Whoa, Bob, read a freakin’ history book.
World War I–U.S. entered under Woodrow Wilson (D)
World War II–U.S. entered under F. Roosevelt (D)
Korean War–U.S. entered under H. Truman (D)
Vietnam War–U.S. entered under Johnson (D)
Bosnia–U.S. entered under B. Clinton (D)

I’m not saying all of these wars were a good idea–WWI and Vietnam come to mind. However, Bush and his merry band of chicken hawks certainly can’t compare in any way with the mighty warriors of the left. Your hero Cheney had what, five deferments? And where the hell was big-talker John Bolton when the war was being fought?

As much as you may care to bitch about U.S. troops bombing the Chinese Embassy by mistake, it’s pretty clear that Clinton’s involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo was a. remarkably successful at ending what seemed an intractable problem and b. didn’t kill or maim thousands of Americans. Which–ahem–you can’t say of what’s happening every day in Iraq. And by the way, Bob, bad news. THERE WERE NO FREAKING WMDs.