I will always consider Bush and Cheney enemies of our country.

Beyond Saving wrote:

digitalbeachbum wrote:

I will always consider Bush and Cheney enemies of our country.

What about Obama and Biden?

Why do you consider them enemies of our country?

No "significant" change? Please explain where the line is drawn between your opinion and mine?

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

digitalbeachbum wrote:

No "significant" change? Please explain where the line is drawn between your opinion and mine?

I don't consider any of our recent Presidents "enemies of our country", you apparently do and I think that is a pretty significant line since enemies of our country are people who should be killed or imprisoned. 

What change have we had in our foreign policy that you consider significant? 

Vastet wrote:

I consider them war criminals, but I don't see why they could be considered enemies of America. That would imply that they willingly and knowingly fucked up the country. Neither of them are smart enough.

They lied to America about WMD and terrorists being connected to Iraq. They knew it was a lie and it wasn't to benefit America, it was benefiting business ventures. It was about greed.

 Welcome, everyone, here this morning to what is the 

beginning of, I hope, for lack of a better phrase, a national 

dialog on a very important question. There are some very 

difficult decisions for the President and for the Congress, and 

we think it's important, the members of this committee, that we 

begin to discuss what is being discussed all over, but not here 

in the Congress so far.

    The attacks of 9/11 have forever transformed how Americans 

see the world. Through tragedy and pain, we have learned that 

we cannot be complacent about events abroad. We cannot be 

complacent about those who espouse hatred for us. We must 

confront clear danger with a new sense of urgency and resolve.

    Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, in 

my view, is one of those clear dangers. Even if the right 

response to his pursuit is not so crystal clear, one thing is 

clear. These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or 

Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power. President Bush has 

stated his determination to remove Saddam from power, a view 

many in Congress share. If that course is pursued, in my view, 

it matters profoundly how we do it and what we do after we 

succeed.

    The decision to go to war can never be taken lightly. I 

believe that a foreign policy, especially one that involves the 

use of force, cannot be sustained in America without the 

informed consent of the American people. And so just as we have 

done in other important junctures in our history, the Foreign 

Relations Committee today begins what I hope will be a national 

dialog on Iraq that sheds more light than heat and helps inform 

the American people so that we can have a more informed basis 

upon which they can draw their own conclusions. 

MR. RUSSERT:  I want to go back to 2002, because it’s important as to what people were saying then and what the American people were hearing.  Here’s Joe Biden about Saddam Hussein:  “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security.”

“We have no choice but to eliminate the threat.  This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

“He must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.” You were emphatic about that.

SEN. BIDEN:  That’s right, and I was correct about that.  He must be, in fact—and remember the weapons we were talking about.  I also said on your show, that’s part of what I said, but not all of what I meant.  What I also said on your show at the time was that I did not think he had weaponized his material, but he did have.  When, when the inspectors left after Saddam kicked them out, there was a cataloguing at the United Nations saying he had X tons of, X amount of, and they listed the various materials he had.  The big issue, remember, on this show we talked about, was whether he had weaponized them. Remember you asked me about those flights that were taking place in southern Iraq, where—were they spraying anthrax?  And, you know, what would happen? And, you know, so on and so forth.  And I pointed out to you that they had not developed that capacity at all.  But he did have these stockpiles everywhere.

MR. RUSSERT:  Where are they?

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them.  The weapons inspectors said he had them.  He catalogued—they catalogued them.  This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream.  This was, in fact, catalogued.  They looked at them and catalogued.  What he did with them, who knows?  The real mystery is, if he, if he didn’t have any of them left, why didn’t he say so?  Well, a lot of people say if he had said that, he would’ve, you know, emboldened Iran and so on and so forth.

But the point was, we were talking then about whether or not we could keep the pressure of the international community on Iraq to stay in the box we had them in.  And remember, you had the French and others say the reason all those children were dying in Iraq, the reason why hospitals didn’t have equipment is because of what we, the United States, were doing, imposing on Iraq these sanctions.  And that was the battle.  The battle was do we lift these sanctions or do we in fact increase the sanctions?  And everyone at the time was talking about—from the secretary of state to even the president—that this was to demonstrate to the world the president of the United States had the full faith and credit of the United States Congress behind him to put pressure on the rest of the world to say, “Hey, look, you lift the sanctions, you’re—we’re going to be on our own here.  Don’t lift the sanctions.  Get the inspectors back in.” That was the context of the debate, to be fair about it.

MR. RUSSERT:  But when you read the national intelligence estimate, which has now been released, there’re a lot of caveats put on the level of intelligence about the aluminum tubes and...

SEN. BIDEN:  Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT:  General Zinni, who’s been on this program a few weeks ago, said that when he heard the discussion about the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had, he said, “I’ve never heard that” in any of the briefings he had as head of the Central Command.  How could you as a U.S. senator be so wrong?

SEN. BIDEN:  I, I wasn’t wrong.  I was on your show when you asked me about aluminum tubes, and I said they’re for artillery.  I don’t believe they’re for cascading.

MR. RUSSERT:  But you said Saddam was a threat.  He had to be...

SEN. BIDEN:  He was a threat.

MR. RUSSERT:  In what way?

SEN. BIDEN:  The threat he presented was that, if Saddam was left unfettered, which I said during that period, for the next five years with sanctions lifted and billions of dollars into his coffers, then I believed he had the ability to acquire a tactical nuclear weapon—not by building it, by purchasing it.  I also believed he was a threat in that he was—every single solitary U.N. resolution which he agreed to abide by, which was the equivalent of a peace agreement at the United Nations, after he got out of—after we kicked him out of Kuwait, he was violating.  Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don’t.  The international community says “We’re going to enforce the sanctions we placed” or not.  And what was the international community doing? The international community was weakening.  They were pulling away.  They were saying, “Well, wait a minute.  Maybe he’s not so bad.  Maybe we should lift the no-fly zone.  Maybe we should lift the sanctions.” That was the context.

And on your show, you had that one Sunday the vice president of the United States saying he’s reconstituted his nuclear weapons.  I was on a simultaneous program, they asked me the question.  I said either the president—either the vice president’s not telling the truth or he did not get the same briefing I have or he fully misunderstands what he was told.  So I did not believe he had weaponized his materials.  But he did have material that, in fact, could theoretically be weaponized.  And to let it sit there at the time, I wanted the inspectors back in to force him that position of having to give it up.

digitalbeachbum wrote:

Vastet wrote:

I consider them war criminals, but I don't see why they could be considered enemies of America. That would imply that they willingly and knowingly fucked up the country. Neither of them are smart enough.

They lied to America about WMD and terrorists being connected to Iraq. They knew it was a lie and it wasn't to benefit America, it was benefiting business ventures. It was about greed.

Almost everything the US has done since 1944 is exactly the same. Cuba. Vietnam. Korea. South America. Israel. Everything. If Bush and Cheney are enemies of America for wasting soldiers lives on greed, then every president since the 40's is equally guilty.

Biden is a dolt.

 

As for Obama, he was saying politics a usual. Do I blame him for the war? No. Do I think he could have done a better job at ending it? Yes, but it's difficult to coach a team in the super bowl if you come in with 2 minutes remaining, 4th quarter and down by 10 points.