what is dean's reason for supporting the first gulf war?

[Pez]

the first gulf war was more of an outright cover-our-oil-assets than this one was; before 09.11.01 our national security was not the issue it is now other than our serious need for oil.

it strikes me as a major policy inconsistancy.

[La_Serpiente]

1. We had the support of the world

that's the only thing I could infer

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. A sovereign nation was invaded.

Was there other bullshit involved? Absolutely. Both sides can be right on GW1. There was a compelling event that led to a decision. In GW2 there was no compelling event. If you say "9-11," you'd be wrong.



On edit: In GW2 a sovereign nation was invaded, too. Guess who the invader was?

[E_Zapata]

3. Dean "supports" anything that he thinks the masses are okay with

Didnt you get the press release: "It's all about getting the votes"

he's a friggin carpet bagger -- on the backs of the liberal wing of the party..............

[a_lil_wall_fly]

4. Carpetbagger as a whole word ...NOT 2.....

Plus that and Dean phone call to Bush for disposing nuclear waste by a Latino city in Texas.....

[foo_bar]

5. originally two words, hyphenated

http://users.erols.com/kfraser/confederate/songs/carpetbaggers.html

[redqueen]

16. Um, WHAT?!

I live in Texas and somehow managed to remain unaware of this until now.

Care to expand on that? Perhaps just some keywords to search with, please?

[SahaleArm]

40. Link.

http://www.politicsus.com/presidential%20press%20releases/Kerry/100503.htm

[redqueen]

52. I'm about *this* far away from actively disliking Dean.

Up to now I've just written him off as another $#$&*()@# corporate kiss up centrist.

Now... :mad:

Oh, can't forget he's all about the MIC!

:puke:


Edit - I'll have to be sure to print this information about Dean's environmental friendliness when it's a Hispanic area out to hand to all the Hispanics as I campaign for Kucinich. Apparently it's only important to keep VT clean. :mad:

[Padraig18]

53. logic?

Dean was complying with a Federal law by signing the compact, and had zero control over the Texas decision on where the site would be.

By all means, it makes complete sense to be angry at Dean, rather than the federal government or Texas' state authorities... :eyes:

[redqueen]

55. Logic

Dean is supposedly environmentally considerate. He knew where it would go, and didn't care. While I expect this from Texas, he and his supporters keep trying to portray him as somehow different. IMO, he's clearly no different. Another compromising centrist. :puke:

From the link:

David Frederick, a Texas lawyer who represented opponents of the waste-storage plan, said Vermont and Maine officials entered the agreement knowing Texas lawmakers had chosen Sierra Blanca as the site two years earlier.

"It was a case of picking on the weakest among us to receive their trash," Frederick said. "Now that's not the whole argument, but if either Vermont or Maine felt sufficiently strong about it, they could have weighed in. But they did not. They explicitly supported Texas' decision."

Vermont environmentalists lobbied the state geologist and nuclear engineer, both of whom supported sending the waste to Sierra Blanca. Vermont Sierra Club President Lea Terhune said activists met with Dean's staff but believed they would have had to influence a small number of experts to sway Dean.

"I was annoyed at the time and was kind of bothered by the fact that he didn't seem to care," Terhune said. "But he was never cozy with environmentalists. He's not really cozy with anybody. He wasn't our boy, but he wasn't anybody's boy."

[LuminousX]

11. Yeah, because Congress was SOOO against the second war when Dean spoke out

[RevolutionStartsNow]

15. You mean the 70% who supported the latest war?

Oh that's right, Dean took the UNPOPULAR stance that the war was illegal and wrong, and had himself cast as a major long shot to win the nomination because the war had so much support in the polls.

[mandyky]

6. because Iraq had invaded Kuwait

and we had support

[LuminousX]

7. Iraq invaded Kuwait

Big difference

[Meshuga]

8. Not a Dean supporter here...

The first gulf war had legitimacy because it was an UN effort. Unlike the current.

[KaraokeKarlton]

9. We were right to get involved in that

Iraq invaded Kuwait and it ticked all of America off to see that horrified little American boy being held hostage and shown on TV with Saddam Hussein standing beside him. It makes perfect sense that Dean supported the first Iraq war. What makes absolutely no sense at all is why Kerry was against the first one, which was obviously justifiable, and then in favor of this one. He's got it totally backwards.

[no name no slogan]

14. Actually, it was a BRITISH boy

and the reason Iraq invaded Kuwait was because Kuwait was "slant-drilling" under Iraqi territory and stealing its oil. IOW, threatening Iraq's territorial sovereignty, which has often been used as a justifiable act of war.

Iraq had tried to negotiate with Kuwait, but Kuwait ignored its overtures. Saddam Hussein also asked Ambassador April Glaspie if the US would intervene if Iraq invaded its neighbor, and was given a virtual green light by BushTheElder to do so.

However, global opinion was against Hussein after the invasion, and the Bush administration, not wanting to get caught on the wrong side of yet another international dispute, rattled its saber and told Iraq to leave Kuwait.

Iraq was retreating from Kuwait, after it had offered to unconditionally withdraw from Kuwait on the eve of the invasion, when coalition troops kicked them out. Don't believe me? Than ask those retreating Iraqi conscripts on the schoolbuses who were napalmed by the coalition on "Thunder Road" out of Kuwait City.

Of course we all know what happened after Kuwait was "liberated": democracy was NOT "restored", Iraq was heavily sanctioned and 1/2 million people died because of it. Saddam Hussein was still in power and a regional bully was turned into an unintentional martyr because of Bush Sr.'s hard-on for war.

Also, the presense of US troops in Saudi infuriated many of our Muslim Fundimentalist "friends" like Osama bin Laden. In fact, bin Laden got so mad by the presense of "infidel" troops stationed in the land of Islam's two holiest sites that he began a campaign of terror against US citizens and targets, which resulted in two embassy bombings in Africa and 9/11.

Note, however, that I'm not defending Saddam Hussein-- it's pretty common knowledge that he's a brutal thug. However, if we hold him to the same standards we hold our allies and ourselves to, he was completely justified in invading Kuwait.

Unfortunately, most of the details of that "War" have disappeared down America's collective "memory hole".

The US invasion of Iraq was no more justified than the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Neither one was justified, especially since negotiated settlements were possible in both cases.

Justifying EITHER of these little excursions is an exercize in futility.

[Padraig18]

10. Probably the same reason 90+% of America supported it.

Iraq invaded a sovereign nation. Totally different situation than the current war.

[Zynx]

12. A sovereign nation was invaded and annexed.

Enough said.

[Romulus]

13. a better question to ask

is why Kerry supports the *current* war. :shrug:

[lastliberalintexas]

48. Yes

but that doesn't play into the bash Dean at all costs mentality. Hmmm, a war that, although I didn't support it, *was* fought under the auspices of the UN versus a war that was fought as a unilateral invasion of a sovereign country against the will of the great majority of the people of the world..

Yep, I can see why certain candidate's supporters would want to focus on Dean rather than their guy bending over for Shrub on the IWR.

[Padraig18]

50. Surely you wouldn't mean...

Sens. "Grab Your Ankles" Kerry and Edwards, and Congressman "I Love My Dubya" Gephart? *shock and horror* /sarcasm off

[redqueen]

17. Once again, media complicity.

Remember the incubator lies? Why would they lie if we had such a good reason? Just because the world supported this war, does not mean it was justified. Perhaps it could even be argued that the world was schooled on the machinations of war, the lessons of which were put to use just recently.


This program on Link TV (Formerly WorldLink), hosted by Studs Terkel, does a great job of showing how the media was able to 'manufacture consent' for the Gulf War, among other things.

Fear and Favor in the Newsroom
page where you can order the program, or find out if it's on this week

[Egnever]

18. Agreed

While I dont have a big problem with Deans support of the first war.
He is wrong on this.

Unfortunately the truth of that war is as burried as the whole truth of the sanctions that came afterwards.

We remain duped about the true events surrounding Iraq to this day. It pains me to see it.

But posts like yours give me hope that eventually the truth may come out.

[redqueen]

19. Wow I thought I'd get flamed.

:)

There's a good book which touches on the subject, by PRWatch, called "Toxic Sludge is Good for You" - Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. You can find reviews & ordering info by clicking the link. Molly Ivins says, "Terrific! Don't Miss it!"

Here's a bit from an excerpt which you can find here:

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops led by dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-producing nation of Kuwait. Like Noriega in Panama, Hussein had been a US ally for nearly a decade. From 1980 to 1988, he had killed about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least 13,000 of his own citizens. Despite complaints from international human rights group, however, the Reagan and Bush administrations had treated Hussein as a valuable ally in the US confrontation with Iran. As late as July 25 - a week before the invasion of Kuwait - US Ambassador April Glaspie commiserated with Hussein over a "cheap and unjust" profile by ABC's Diane Sawyer, and wished for an "appearance in the media, even for five minutes," by Hussein that "would help explain Iraq to the American people."69

Glaspie's ill-chosen comments may have helped convince the dictator that Washington would look the other way if he "annexed" a neighboring kingdom. The invasion of Kuwait, however, crossed a line that the Bush Administration could not tolerate. This time Hussein's crime was far more serious than simply gassing to death another brood of Kurdish refugees. This time, oil was at stake.

Viewed in strictly moral terms, Kuwait hardly looked like the sort of country that deserved defending, even from a monster like Hussein. The tiny but super-rich state had been an independent nation for just a quarter century when in 1986 the ruling al-Sabah family tightened its dictatorial grip over the "black gold" fiefdom by disbanding the token National Assembly and firmly establishing all power in the be-jeweled hands of the ruling Emir. Then, as now, Kuwait's ruling oligarchy brutally suppressed the country's small democracy movement, intimidated and censored journalists, and hired desperate foreigners to supply most of the nation's physical labor under conditions of indentured servitude and near-slavery. The wealthy young men of Kuwait's ruling class were known as spoiled party boys in university cities and national capitals from Cairo to Washington.70
Unlike Grenada and Panama, Iraq had a substantial army that could not be subdued in a mere weekend of fighting. Unlike the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Hussein was too far away from US soil, too rich with oil money, and too experienced in ruling through propaganda and terror to be dislodged through the psychological-warfare techniques of low-intensity conflict. Waging a war to push Iraq's invading army from Kuwait would cost billions of dollars and require an unprecedented, massive US military mobilization. The American public was notoriously reluctant to send its young into foreign battles on behalf of any cause. Selling war in the Middle East to the American people would not be easy. Bush would need to convince Americans that former ally Saddam Hussein now embodied evil, and that the oil fiefdom of Kuwait was a struggling young democracy. How could the Bush Administration build US support for "liberating" a country so fundamentally opposed to democratic values? How could the war appear noble and necessary rather than a crass grab to save cheap oil?

"If and when a shooting war starts, reporters will begin to wonder why American soldiers are dying for oil-rich sheiks," warned Hal Steward, a retired army PR official. "The US military had better get cracking to come up with a public relations plan that will supply the answers the public can accept."71 Steward needn't have worried. A PR plan was already in place, paid for almost entirely by the "oil-rich sheiks" themselves.

[no name no slogan]

20. I own that book, and it's AWESOME

It's on the top shelf of my favorite current affairs books at home. IIRC, it's right next to "Deterring Democracy" by Noam Chomsky, which I feel an overwhelming need to refer to whenever I hear a politician claim that the US is bringing "freedom" to some other oppressed nation in the world. There's always an ulterior motive or so it seems...

[Egnever]

23. Not by me

When this build up to war began I started sloging through all the information I could find on Iraq and it quickly became apparent that we have been using them as we see fit for years.

From the start when we helped to install Saddam as the leader there to fight Iran to the time we turned on him after the invasion of kuwait something we allowed to happen and did nothing about for quite some time untill thatcher convinced popy bush to change his mind and go after Iraq. The US has been using him to our own ends. Once we had a surender treaty to hold over him we took even more controll over him and used it as an excuse to rape Iraq for thier oil dollars.

I had someone tell me in a post here recently that he tended to side with kerry on the Iraq thing when kerry described Iraq as a growing threat because Bill Clinton said they were a threat before. It saddens me to see this because Bill as good as he was on a lot of issues was a part of the problem when it comes to Iraq and used Iraq heavily to divert attention away from his own problems here at home.

The truth is out there. I dont hold a lot of hope though that many will ever see it.

Howard is wrong on this one.

I was wrong on this one too though till this whole thing came to a head again. The proopaganda has been very effective.

[no name no slogan]

24. Wholeheartedly agreed

I remember protesting Desert Shield/Storm in 1990/91, and being threatened with physical harm by many people because I didn't believe what the mighty Wurlitzer was playing to the crowd.

We did manage to get a few people to take a look at what was going on: the ties to Bush, the unconditional withdrawal offer, the history of the region, the crediblity of the Kuwaiti gov't etc. It was very difficult to do this.

Unfortunately, like a lot of things, we're only learning the truth about it now-- thirteen years too late.

Another good source on what was "missed" is Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org). They run a top ten list of the most neglected and ignored news stories of the year. IIRC they had a number of Iraq-related stories for 1990 and 1991.

Clinton did some things that were okay, but he completely blew it on Iraq. The last thing he should have done was continue the Bush/Quayle policy. However, if I was put in his position, I'm not sure I would not have done the same thing.

:hi:

[blm]

31. Iraqgate was a big story, too that went away.

Major coverup in that one.

[blm]

21. He supported EVERY war and had "mixed feelings" about IranContra.

What does THAT tell you about his genuineness on Iraq?

[redqueen]

22. Oh please....

I know, I know -- people should know -- but can you cite a reference? A URL perhaps?

That's just SO freaking awful. I almost can't believe it. Almost.

A reference would be nice.

Great, now I feel nauseated. :(

[blm]

26. JohnKleeb posted the quote a while back. I think it was in TIME.

I'm sure he knows where it is.

I was shocked as hell that ANYONE could have "mixed feelings" about IranContra. Even Dean.

[blm]

27. Bump for JohnKleeb.

Please repost quote from Dean on IranContra. TIA

[JohnKleeb]

29. You just did

No problem. I honestly dont get what he means by the "peace people". Kind of an odd way of putting it, I guess. I am a peace person :D, sorry my inner smartass had to come out, actually I am equally smartass/serious.

[blm]

30. Just typical derision from Dean against the left.

He did it throughout his tenure in politics and as governor. Likely a habit he won't be able to keep under hat for too long.

[Padraig18]

25. Citations? Proof? n/t

[blm]

28. Here ya go....thanks John.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,464429,00.html
"Such sentiments have been misinterpreted by assorted Beltway savants as a leftward lurch by Democratic Party activists; it seems more a reaction to the rightward lurch of the Republicans. Dean, who has been mischaracterized as the reincarnation of George McGovern, is certainly no traditional liberal or even a traditional dove. "I told the peace people not to fall in love with me," he told me over breakfast in Manchester, N.H., last week. He said he had opposed Vietnam, but he had supported the first Gulf War, the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the war in Afghanistan. In the 1980s he had "mixed feelings" about Ronald Reagan's support for the contras in Nicaragua and opposed a unilateral nuclear freeze.

[Padraig18]

32. Grenada? Panama?

Seems to have missed a few wars in there, now doesn't it? :eyes:

[blm]

33. Roll your eyes all you want.

You think you know your candidate so well, but, I doubt you imagined he wouldn't take a stand against Reagan and Bush on IranContra.

[Padraig18]

35. What about that blanket statement of yours?

The incorrect one, I mean? Do you think that makes your position more credible?

[blm]

37. He has said he was for all the wars except this one....

Others have heard it, too, not just me. I can't place it but it doesn't make it a false statement.

You're satisfied with a man who couldn't find IranContra to be something to stand against. And THAT'S who you trust.

[Padraig18]

41. Citations? Proof? n/t

[blm]

43. I said I heard it here at DU awhile ago.

I can't recall who posted it or the link.

Do you have proof he didn't? Anyone who wouldn't stand against IranContra could hardly be depended on to atand against Reagan and Bush's other wars. Those illegal wars in Central America that Kerry exposed at the time were all part of IranContra, too.

[snoochie]

39. Oh, man...

That is bad. :(

[blm]

44. Yes...it is. And indicative of his real rightwing bent

that so many of his supporters refuse to see as being part of Dean's ACTUAL CORE.

[snoochie]

45. Reminds me a little of Bush campaigning as a moderate...

and nobody bothering to look at the man's record.

:(

[blm]

47. EXACTLY, snoochie.

I've thought that myself many times. Why is the press doing this? It's been 11 months they've focused on Dean with few real articles that scrutinized his real record, while they push this fighting populist dog and pony show on the public.

[redqueen]

54. I completely agree.

Dean didn't think there was a big fight about, because there wasn't.

It was just part and parcel of the Dem party's shift to the right.

"Congress passed the compact (to give state's title to ship nuclear waste to other states) in 1997 and President Clinton signed it, over the objections of Wellstone, environmentalists and the nuclear power company that would have been the main contributor to the site. Kerry and Wellstone were among 15 senators who voted against the measure."

Thanks, Clinton! :mad:

[genius]

34. Dean's a hawk

His call for a sixty day delay in the current war gave the press the mistaken idea he was anti-war. If he were anti-war, he wouldn't support the occupation.

[Padraig18]

36. You're right.

He would support immediate withdrawl and civil war. :eyes:

[genius]

38. With the UN troops that would be there under Dennis's plan, there

would be no civil war. You need to listen when those with a plan speak about what steps they would use to make sure everything turned out okay.

[Padraig18]

42. When so much as a single nation...

... indicates even the slightest interest in committing troops, even theoretically, then we should talk; so far, no nation has indicated that it will *ever* commit troops to Iraq, aside from the nations who are already there.

We've had this same discussion before, about a week ago, in a Kucinich thread.

[snoochie]

46. Except they HAVE said that.

Both the UN, and several member states, have all indicated that THE REASON they won't supply more aid is BECAUSE OF OUR CONTROL.

F---, pay attention. :|

[helleborient]

49. Why would Kerry supporters attack Dean about the first gulf war...

When it was thoroughly explained here by Kerry supporters that Kerry's opposition to the first gulf war was only because he didn't feel a clear mandate from the public existed.

Otherwise, he was fully in support based on the invasion of Kuwait...at least that's what Kerry supporters have said here.

Is this a mis-characterization of Kerry?

If he was firmly opposed to the first gulf war, what happened last year?

[Padraig18]

51. How *dare* you bring logic into it!

They're exhausted from their Houdini-like rhetorical contortions as it is! :P