REPUBLICANS spoke out OPPOSING bush's invasion of Iraq.

[LynnTheDem]

Just a friendly (hah) reminder to freeping rightwignnuts who seem to think only Democrats & Indies opposed bush's illegal little war of aggression.

Dick Cheney in April 1991, then Defense Secretary:

If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein,you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists?

How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2072479

President GHW Bush, 1998;

"Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

http://www.rense.com/general43/quote.htm

Brent Scowcroft, one of the Republican Party’s most respected foreign policy advisors, and national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, and close personal Bush friend:

Don't Attack Saddam It would undermine our antiterror efforts. "Our pre-eminent security priority--underscored repeatedly by the president--is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/iraq_yang020815.html

Norman Schwarzkopf - Four Star General:

"The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn't seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now. He thinks U.N. inspections are still the proper course to follow. He's worried about the cockiness of the U.S. war plan, and even more by the potential human and financial costs of occupying Iraq….(And don't get him started on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld)"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52450-2003Jan27?language=printer

Col. David Hackworth (ret), America's most highly decorated living soldier:

"Should the president decide to stay the war course, hopefully at least a few of our serving top-uniformed leaders - those who are now covertly leaking that war with Iraq will be an unparalleled disaster - will do what many Vietnam-era generals wish they would have done: stand tall and publicly tell the America people the truth about another bad war that could well lead to another died-in-vain black wall. Or even worse."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29786

James Webb, former Sec. of Navy under Ronald Reagan, Decorated Marine Veteran:

"Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years? …In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets…. Nations such as China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next generation by the turmoil of the Middle East as a glorious windfall."

http://www.sftt.org/article09302002a.html

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S.:

"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another…We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started."

Hawks in the Bush administration may be making deadly miscalculations on Iraq, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's Middle East envoy.

"I'm not sure which planet they live on"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni

Republican Dissent on Iraq"
Full page ad in Wall Street Journal by major GOP contributors:

"Mr. President, …The candidate we supported in 2000 promised a more humble nation in our dealings with the world. We gave him our votes and our campaign contributions. That candidate was you. We feel betrayed. We want our money back. We want our country back…. A Billion Bitter enemies will rise out of this war."
- Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2003

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/001444.html

Republicans Who Voted Against Iraq Resolution Tell Why

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/11/194543.shtml

TOP REPUBLICANS BREAK WITH BUSH ON IRAQ STRATEGY

Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/11/194543.shtml

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency:

"Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends…. I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Retired General Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command:

"The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091704Y.shtml

Col. Mike Turner (ret), Schwarzkopf's personal briefing officer during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm:

“The uniformed Joint Staff in the Pentagon strongly opposed this plan early on...The uniformed Joint Staff was overridden, yet in so many horrifying ways this operation resembles Somalia, not Desert Storm...Perhaps we can pull this off, but here's a far worse scenario that's at least as likely...Photos of American soldiers amid landscapes of Iraqi civilian bodies blanket the world press which aligns unanimously against the US. The US is condemned by NATO and the UN...The war ends within a few weeks, but the crisis deepens...”

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2003/mar/030311.turner.html

US Air Force General, Tony McPeak, a four-star general who headed the U.S. Air Force during Operation Desert Storm:

McPeak served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Bush’s father and then President Clinton after flying 269 Vietnam combat missions and participating in the Thunderbirds, the elite aerobatic team.

McPeak believes that President Bush should publicly admit personal failure. He claims Bush has botched the crucial process of coalition-building, has not enlisted the United Nations, and has failed to rebuild Afghanistan as a model of reconstruction.

http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=57303%3Ehttp://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=57303%20

Retired Envoys, Commanders Assail Bush Team
Administration Unable to Handle 'Global Leadership,' 27-Member Group Asserts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46538-2004Jun16.html

Growing GOP Dissent On Iraq

Republican Party ranks are beginning to break and the White House is worried. Longtime GOP critics on Iraq are growing progressively more vocal in their condemnation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/07/politics/main610787.shtml

Republican Rep. Bereuter: War in Iraq not justified

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action. That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," the 1st District congressman said.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."

"Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action," he said.

Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2004/08/18/top_story/10053833.txt

Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee

"There is no secret that on some very important issues I have difference with the current administration," Chafee said, listing abortion rights, the environment and war in Iraq.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222081/posts

Republican senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee;

"No, I don't think we're winning," Hagel told a CBS interviewer. "We're in trouble, we're in deep trouble in Iraq."

http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

Republican senator Richard Lugar, Foreign Relations Committee chairman, was asked on ABC why only $1 billion of the $18 billion appropriated last year for Iraqi reconstruction had been spent.

"Well, this is the incompetence in the administration," he replied.

http://www.iht.com/articles/539563.htm

Roger Cressey;

”We have a stronger jihadi presence in Iraq today than in March 2003,” noted Roger Cressey, the former director for Transnational Threats in Bush's National Security Council at a briefing at the libertarian Cato Institute earlier this week.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0911-01.htm

Bush close personal friend, Hilary Cleveland, president of the GOP Women for Kerry Steering Committee.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0912-06.htm

Congressman Ron Paul (R) U.S. House of Representatives
Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:S2Nf8-xsSawJ:www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr091002.htm+Questions+That+Won%27t+Be+Asked+about+Iraq%3B+Ron+Paul&hl=en

Wow. Lookit all them "treasonous libruls"!

[tk2kewl]

1. nice job...

this one is getting emailed to some freepers i know

[tk2kewl]

7. kicking this up again

too important to have just been seen on a sunday night

[eleny]

2. Is that the odor of hair burning?

:evilgrin:

[KaliTracy]

3. I used the Cheney

quotes in all my letters to the House and Senate prior to the war.... fat lot of good that did, 'eh?

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Excellent compilation. WIll save and use to convince blockheads.

...and thanks!

[rfranklin]

13. Reminds me of a strikingly similar compilation re Vietnam...

back in 1970 that we handed out to "educate" the populace. Never made a bit of difference. Which was frustrating then, as it is now.

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. I think it DID make a difference

I think you underestimate what you accomplished with those handouts and your other efforts to get the truth out. Maybe you changed the minds of only a few people, too few for you to realize that you had. You might have planted seeds of doubt that took a while to grow into something more. The thing is, there is nobody who is a better spokesperson than someone who has "converted" from beliefs that they now see were founded on falsehoods. These few people would have told more people and so on. This subtly changes the way people perceive the news they receive. They become more open, less blindly accepting of the Kool Aid. Gradually the tide turned.

I do believe that the turnaround that we are working for in this country is not going to be a quick affair. That's why I've posted repeatedly NOT to drop into despair if events on Jan 6 and Jan 20 don't go the way we believe that they should. Things will change as more and more people open their eyes, but it wouldn't be surprising if it took more than just two months (Nov 3 to Jan 6) to reach enough of them to accomplish our goals.

I would think that the majority of people in the US today believe that the war in Viet Nam was a mistake and that the US government was not straight with the people about it. If polls are to be believed, a majority now believe that invading Iraq was a mistake. We know that a majority elected Kerry. It will take more time for more people to realize just how corrupt the administration has become. They can't wrap their minds around the idea that in America, Beacon of Deocratic Freedom, the national election was stolen by fraud and racist voter suppression. Nor do they want to shoulder the heart-wrenching grief and shame that comes with admitting that not only was the invasion of Iraq a mistake, but that inhumanity and horror on the level of what the Nazis used is being used in our name in Iraq, and it is ultimately being done to promote power and wealth of corrupt politicians and their corporate cronies.

The evidence exists, and I still believe that if enough people in this country keep working for it, eventually enough of the corruption will be exposed that changes will be made.

[indepat]

28. Almost all blockheads are brainwashed if not brain-dead and will not be

convinced of anything antithetical to what this Administration does.

[Tinoire]

5. Yes they did. I'm glad you brought this up because there are

decent people in the Republican party and it's a mistake to think that all Republicans are our enemy on the issues important to us.

There are people in the Democratic party I HATE more than pro-war Republicans & hate them especially more because they betrayed the majority of the people they were pretending to represent.

Thank you. I've book-marked this.

[LynnTheDem]

6. You're welcome.

:)

[BeFree]

8. Thanks, Lynn

Nominated for home page. Folks need to understand there is a great deal of opposition to the nation building, Iraqi death machine, march into hell, a small group of republicans have foisted on the world.

[gratuitous]

9. And their stock response

"Wull, 9/11 changed everything!"

Of course, 9/11 changed nothing, except for the consciousness of a few people who had deluded themselves into thinking that the United States was beyond the reach of any negative consequences for the conduct of its affairs. Some folks realized that 9/11 had a root cause, and that part of that root cause had to do with the way we treat the rest of the world. Other folks surmised that the 9/11 attacks were a horrific act, unconnected with anything else that has happened up to that time. I would liken the latter group to people who think that something "magic" or coincidental happens when you flick the switch and the light goes on.

[w4rma]

10. Col. Hackworth isn't a Republican. Gen. Zinni isn't one either.

I think there are probably some other military folks you've listed who are Democrats or Indies, also.

[LynnTheDem]

15. That's incorrect.

General Zinni is indeed a Republican;

General Anthony Zinni, formerly chief of Central Command, who voted for George W. Bush in the last election and describes himself as a "Hagel-Lugar-Powell Republican," has been among the most vocal and visible of the military critics of the Iraq war.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j010204.html

General Zinni has made deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, ...election and describes himself as a "Hagel-Lugar-Powell Republican",

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:pT3PjNaRgO0J:www.warstories.cc/syndication/rss/createRSS.php%3Fversion%3D2.0%26personId%3D7915%26haveSearch%3D1+General+Zinni%3B+Hagel-Lugar-Powell+Republican&hl=en

Zinni is a registered republican and voted for Bush in 2000:

Reminded that he endorsed Bush in 2000,...

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=4594&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

Hack is not a Democrat.

[w4rma]

17. I'm correct.

But Zinni vows that he has learned a lesson. Reminded that he endorsed Bush in 2000, he says, "I'm not going to do anything political again -- ever. I made that mistake one time."
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=4594&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

And Hack is either an Independent or a Democrat, now.

[LynnTheDem]

18. Zinni is still a registered Republican.

And he was a registered Republican when bush appointed Zinni the mid East envoy and when Zinni spoke out against bush's bullshit invasion.

That's fact. He says so in your link, and his "not going to do anything political again" was in referance to his speaking out, not voting. See the preceeding paragraph in your link.

And from YOUR link:

"I think he ran on a moderate ticket, and that's my leaning -- I'm kind of a Lugar-Hagel-Powell guy," he says, listing three Republicans associated with centrist foreign policy positions.

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=4594&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

"Zinni says his 2000 vote for Bush was in hindsight "a mistake," he opposed going to war with Iraq as far back as 2002, and says he will only vote for Bush again if Bush first fires Rumsfeld and his Pentagon neo-con allies."

http://www.politics1.com/blog-0604.htm


He's still a registered Republican.

Hack is not a Democrat. Email him, ask him yourself. :)

[ashmanonar]

23. does it matter if he's not indie or democrat?

as long as he's not enamored of bush? if he's critical of bush, he may be an ally that opponents of bushco can count on...removing bush isn't going to be a democrats-only party, it's gonna have to be everyone that believes the man is dangerous to our country...

"don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

[giant_robot]

11. Great job!

Here's a kick and a nomination for the homepage.

[wicket]

12. If you haven't already put this on Demopedia....

....you definitely should. Lots of great quotes!

:kick:

[ClintonTyree]

16. All of these opinions.............

voiced by all of these very intelligent people, fell on deaf ears.
What the entire action hinged upon was a pissing contest between Bush the dumber and Bush the smarter. Baby Bush was convinced he had to beat his father for myriad reasons. He's just a spoiled little rich boy who can't stand to hear the word, NO!
The down side of this Sophomoric exercise in futility is that the entire world will ultimately pay the price for Baby Bush's idiocy.
The Iraqi people and our soldiers will pay the highest price; their lives. The rest of the world will pay with uncertainty and the chaos created.
Thanks Baby Bush. You will go down in History beside the cruelest, sickest, and most heinous World Leaders ever.

[Democrat Dragon]

19. About the Cheney quote

Keep in mind that Cheney said it before he was CEO of Halliburton. It reminds me of a pre-911 quote by Ashcroft in which he called things like phone-tapping "Orwellian".

[AgadorSparticus]

20. now why wasn't this plastered EVERYWHERE when the whole

john kerry flip flop meme went into overdrive? surely kerry's people could have come up with this too, no?

[LynnTheDem]

21. Yes, because I sent it to them. Several times.

I also posted it all on the msg board.

Several times.

As well as to blogs and US Stenomedia outlets.

And the silence still echos.

[Virginian]

22. These are flip-flops, Kerry was nuanced.

Just try to get that across to the sheeple after the GOP propaganda machine has had its way with them.
They won't think for themselves, they like the brainwashing. Do it for them, make it simplistic and they will buy in every time.

[outrage]

24. REPUBLICANS spoke out OPPOSING bush's invasion of Iraq.

"Sigh" just shows these wingnuts up for the lying flip-floppers they are. I despise these people. I'm so tired of the lies.

[mattclearing]

25. You forgot Pat Buchanan.

Eom

[nickshepDEM]

26. Awesome... I have to use this on some Republicans I know...

Talk about a deer in headlights.

[Swamp Rat]

27. Excellent post! The resulting cognitive dissonance will make their little

heads explode. :D

[nickshepDEM]

29. I posted this on my local newspapers message board and...

The Democrats are loving it and the Republicans... Well.... their hiding...Not much to say I guess... LOL