GOP congressmen: Everyone agrees Iraq war a ‘horrible mistake’

[mrjarrell]

Yikes! Oh, well. Better late than never, I guess. Too bad so many people have had to die and be maimed because they made a "horrible mistake".

From Raw Story

Two GOP congressmen say most Republicans on the Hill now believe the Iraq war was a mistake, and "more than half the Republican caucus" believes the way in which the US entered the Afghanistan war was also a mistake.Reps. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) made the comments at a discussion panel at the Cato Institute on Thursday.
Going into Iraq "was a mistake because I thought we had to finish the job in Afghanistan," Rohrbacher told the panel, echoing a popular Democratic talking point at the time.
"In retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake," Rohrbacher said. "Now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years, and all of these lives, and all of this blood … all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.”

Read the rest, watch the video and hear their words.

 

[level.eleven]

Did anyone catch this little gem from last weekends round of Sunday morning shows? I remember quite vividly in the buildup to the occupation that we were to use oil revenues to offset the reconstruction of Iraq.

Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstructing the country, i.e. a cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

One month before the war, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Iraq “is a rather wealthy country. … And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Then we get Karl Rove with this little gem. I hear KR is coming to a bookstore in Noblesville. Maybe we should ask him to clarify.

ROVE: No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war. … [T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, “We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resource and pay for the war” is not accurate.

What? So who is telling the truth? The Presidents right hand man or the DoD? I guess it doesn't really matter as we are stuck footing the bill anyway.

Think Progress Rove Falsely Claims Bush Administration Never Said Iraqi Oil Revenue Would Help Pay For War - Think Progress is obviously a left leaning site, but they document themselves well on this one.

 

[djl02]

Didnt he mean Euros? I thought oil sold out of Iraq didnt support the dollar standard.Seems like thats what i read somewhere.

 

[indykid]

Somehow I think we went into Afghanistan because there are a few buildings and a few thousand people who no longer are in New York City, as well as a federal building in DC.

As for Iraq, the excuse was weapons of mass destruction. Tell the Kurds they didn't exist. As for Hussein never attacking the US, neither did Hitler. I wonder how the world would be now if we attacked Germany, unprovoked, in 1938?

 

[Denny347]

As for Hussein never attacking the US, neither did Hitler. I wonder how the world would be now if we attacked Germany, unprovoked, in 1938?

We would have lost. Germany was VERY strong and it was not until Hitler pushed further than they could support that we (Allies) could overpower him. IN 1938, no one in the world other than England would have stood next to us. The Soviet Union lost millions to Germany. If Germany honored the non-aggression pact with the USSR, we could not have won. The USSR would have sat it out and fortress Europe would have been a bloodbath. We would have been fools for jumping in that early. We screwed up entering Afghanistan in 2001 by not jumping in with both feet. We sent in good people but wanted the Afgan tribes to lead the charge...BIG mistake. Instead, we let our top targets slip away. We will never leave Iraq. We will spend Trillions there over the decades with no real return. We should have stuck with Afghanistan and doen a good job there. Instead, we took our eyes off the ball.

 

[antsi]

We would have lost. Germany was VERY strong and it was not until Hitler pushed further than they could support that we (Allies) could overpower him. IN 1938, no one in the world other than England would have stood next to us.

I agree that we would have had no allies going against Germany in 1938, but that is for political reasons, not due to the balance of military strength. To say that Germany had overwhelming military power in 1938 is just flat-out wrong. The Wehrmacht of Barbarossa existed only in embryonic form in 1938; Germany was just beginning the re-armament process. Of course we were even further behind at that time. But any combination of the French, British, and Russians could have defeated Germany relatively bloodlessly in 1938. The relative strength of Germany vs. other countries at different points leading up to WWII is very well chronicled by Churchill in his memoirs of WWII (Volume I, The Gathering Storm).

This is what Churchill was referring to in his timeless quote:

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

"When you can easily win without bloodshed" refers to the time when Germany was violating the Versailles restrictions and re-arming, up to the militarization of the Rhineland. The French and British at this time were treaty bound to take action against Germany for these violations. Had they done so, their forces would have easily overwhelmed the embryonic Wehrmacht.

"When your victory is sure and not too costly" refers to the time of Munich. The nascent Wehrmacht could not have defeated Czechoslovakia in the East and the French and British in the West, simultaneously, at this time.