1997 Article Quotes Bush's Opposition To Iraq Invasion

Editor & Publisher :

Sig Christenson, a founding member of Military Reporters and Editors who has worked five assignments in Iraq since the war began, reached back some 10 years for a Veteran's Day piece that noted President George Bush's early opposition to an Iraq invasion.

Christenson, who covers the military for the San Antonio (Tex.) Express-News, penned the piece for Sunday's paper that cited Bush's comments on Veteran's Day 1997 as governor of Texas. He pointed to Bush's defense of his father's decision during the Gulf War not to remove Saddam Hussein.

Read the whole story: Editor & Publisher

Comments

[Dandy12]

SOME people don't understand extreme sarcasm, here in an absurd cause and effect sequence portrayal.

[MikeDu]

This would be more impressive were it not for Bush's uncanny ability to read whatever's placed before him on a teleprompter. Bush giving a speech spelling out reasons for NOT going into Iraq is like a trained chicken doing addition. Sure he did it, but did his chicken-size brain comprehend what exactly he was doing?

[robodweeb]

"Future generations shouldn't be forced to pay back money that we have borrowed. We owe this kind of responsibility to our children and grandchildren." (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 3/3/01)

"I think it's also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn." - G.W. Bush (6/5/99)

[robodweeb]

Bush constantly changes positions.

A few years ago he said he was for timetables (Medicare prescription drug program) because they get people to act. Now he's against them.

In 2000 he said:
"Let me tell you what else I'm worried about: I'm worried about an opponent (Gore) who uses nation building and the military in the same sentence."

He was against sending more troops to Iraq before he was for it.

Sometimes we're going to get Osama "dead or alive" and other times we don't care so much.

[kay]

Some more "fibs" from the Bush Family:

"When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.

"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.

[Dandy12]

Looks like Bush's brain functioned much better 10 years ago... Cheney seemed to understand the realities better too. Maybe they came down with Oil Malarial Fever, a sinister disease that kills brain cells by the millions...

[kay]

The Bush Family have been at this sort of thing a while.

Before we get all nostalgic and teary-eyed over "Poppy" let's not forget that he trumped up evidence and lied prior to Gulf War I:

"More recently, in the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah.

In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."

Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."

But just weeks before the US bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions about the validity of the incubator tale.

Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital.

She had been coached – along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.

"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, said of the incubator story in a 1995 interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper. He acknowledged "it was useful in mobilizing public opinion."

[mtrav]

The headline is a joke, that cretin was never wise(r).

[Beelzebul]

If you Hufftards had bothered to do your research, you'd found out that Sig Christenson is a pseudonym used by Dan Rather.

This is just another example of Rather trying to swift-boat a veteran of the Vietnam war. And a man who brought freedom, democracy, and the good life to the people of Iraq.

Not to mention Saddam started this war when he attacked us on 9-11. Now he's dead and his al Qaeda organization is on its death bed. And no Patriotic American can ask for anything more than that.

[kay]

Ah. The 9/11-Iraq connection.

That old thing.

I personally think US conservatives have gone back to the 9/11 fear-well one too many times. That thing is bone dry.

I think they need another idea.

[LaFeminazi]

Bush does not seem able to remember yesterday.

Let alone ten years ago.

It was interesting watching the right wing spin machine going after Hillary's planted questions.

With Bush, the whole damn crowd is planted.

[Blutus]

Republicans are allowed to change their mind.

Democrats are not.

People need to learn the rules.

[Giordano Bruno]

The only thing I can figure out is that the only way these bastards could hang onto power is to create a need for perpetual war, as Gore Vidal suggests in his book of the same name. In order to capitalize upon the fearfulness and anger which became widespread after the 911 attacks, these pricks basically scapegoated Iraq and now Iran as central to the war on terror while allowing the persons responsible to go Scott free and live happily ever after in a country with a military dictator who hides them. Meanwhile good patriotic Americans who want to believe in the goodness of their president and his administration go along with it, more kids die, and then we have to continue our efforts to make sure they didn't "die in vain." Terribly pathetic scenario, but the only one that makes sense to me. Giordy

[IntelligentDesign]

A human interest story about an inhuman man is such a surreal concept; this will be useful information for the prosecution at the war crimes trials at The Hague.

The only articles of interest concerning the Bush administration at this point are the ones put forward by Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

[Wilbur]

Younger perhaps, but wiser? Not really. He simply was parrotting what Poppy told him to say. Once he stole the presidency after the 2000 election, he simply listened to another voice - that of Dick Cheney. Chimpie can't think; he just does what he's told to do.

Wilbur