OK, so why DID Kerry vote against Desert Storm? Who else voted against

[ladybugg33]

Desert Storm? We need to know. The reason it hasn't become a big campaign issue must have to do with who else voted against Desert Storm?

[rpannier]

1. I think former Senator Kerry of Nebraska voted against it

He was a former Viet Nam vet too.

[Gildor Inglorion]

2. Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, who was then the Chair

of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I believe. That war made for some STRANGE bedfellows, indeed. Colin Powell was also opposed to it.

[carpetbagger]

3. Kerry supported waiting and allowing sanctions to work.

So did General Powell, and Reagan's defense secretaries Weinberger and Carlucci.

I think in retrospect Bush's father was right about delay merely delaying the start of the war.

However, it hasn't become a big campaign issue because more than passing mention of the first Gulf War would immediately bring up comparisons between how the two wars were handled differently.

[w4rma]

4. Didn't Desert Storm I only cost Americans about 5 billion? (nt)

[Anarcho-Socialist]

5. The Kuwaiti OIL family told the US that they'd pay most of the cost

Then the US changed its tune.

[Junkdrawer]

6. The Senate vote for Gulf War I was 52 to 47...

It was not a slam dunk like Jrs's vote was.

[Demit]

8. Yes, and we watched them debate it too. Imagine that, actually discussing

whether or not to go to war, before rushing into it...

[Windy]

7. Easy....no imminent threat to the security of the US!

[KC21304]

9. Gore held out his yes vote until the very end.

[NMDemDist2]

10. from what I read, he accused GHWB of a 'rush to war' and later

admitted the vote was wrong

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/2/4/171330/6192

[Zorbet55]

11. I was not allowed to vote against it,

but I would have. Kuwait led to our troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia, which seems to be the toughest pill to swallow for the radical Islamics, because it's their holy land.

At the time, many people thought Kuwait was a city in Lebanon.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. Most Dems Voted Against Gulf War 1

I supported Gulf War 1...

A nation shouldn't be able to change international boundaries by force....

[Old and In the Way]

13. A nation also shouldn't steal another nation's resources by slant drilling

into its oil fields. The US took no position on the Iraqi action until after the fact. 41 fed us and the UN bogus info (satellite photo's that supposedly show Iraq massing on the Saudi border for imminent invasion)....total bullshit.

Why did we invade? I think it had more to do with Hussein becoming independent of US control with respect to Iraq's marketing of their oil. I think we acted on behalf of SA's concern that Iraq was a threat to the Kingdom.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. If Kuwait Was Slant Drilling Which Is In Dispute Saddam Hussein

should have taken his complaint to the United Nation or the Hague...


If nations take the law into their own hands we have the law of the jungle which is what we have now..


If you steal my lawnmower I don't have the right to take over your home by force....

[venus]

15. And don't forget the horrible pictures of babies being slaughtered

by Saddam, which proved to be false, and the "testimony" in front of Congress by Iraqi women that proved later to be false. These were the main reasons many people approved of the Gulf War. I remember many heated discussions about this aspect, less about the satellite photos, which probably were bogus too as your post points out.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. The Fact That Saddam Hussein Invaded A Sovereign Nation Is Not In Dispute

Isn't that what we are opposing now...

[Old and In the Way]

19. A qualified yes.

Frankly, I need to see how Iraq handled the slant drilling vis a vis a UN petition to intercede on its behalf. I suspect that Saddam was boxed out of that remedy. If he was, then he had a legitimate basis to defend and protect the resources of the Iraqi people. Tiny, undemocratic psuedo countries, like Kuwait, shouldn't be stealing other countries resources.

Does anyone know if British Petroleum was the offending party? Thatcher was all over Bush to come in on the side of Kuwait. If the UN did not side with Iraq on this issue, then the DS1 coalition was simply protecting its corporate oil interests.....and preparing Iraq for its future acquisition.

[ladybugg33]

26. But then we did it too, didn't we?

:shrug:

[progressivebydesign]

20. People have forgotten the fact it was much like this war..

The billions in PR fees, the cozy relationship with the Bush family and the Saudis are what got that war going. There's much more to it than anyone realizes.

[blm]

17. At the time, Bush DIDN'T have a coalition together OR the public support.

Kerry said Bush needed to do that BEFORE he went to war. It was only after the vote that Bush really kicked up his campaign to woo public support and allies.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. There's Really No Need To Re Argue The Resolution...

Kerry didn't oppose the liberation of Iraq just the timetable...


Also, what came first, the U N vote authorizing the use of force or the Senate vote...

I don't remember now..

[mellowinman]

21. I supported the Gulf War

and I still do. However, we were duped bigtime as to the extent of what the Iraqis were doing to the "poor innocent Kuwaitis," and the Goebbels-like propaganda about those baby incubators was inexcusable.

As was mentioned, Powell was against the initial attack.

To his credit, Bush41 did build an impressive international coalition. There is probably some truth to the idea that bombing the living fuck out of the Iraqis wasn't as necessary as it looked at the time, but I'm not going there, myself.

Overall, trying to say "shame shame" over Kerry's vote is bullshit, but you probably guessed that on your own.

[Joanne98]

22. Probably because of the FAKE incumbator story.

[HamdenRice]

23. Democrats were against Iraq 1, cause Bush Sr was demented and dangerous

I'm not sure how old you are, but experiencing the Gulf War I was a lot different as it was happening from how we have been brainwashed into thinking about it in retrospect.

First of all, I remember that most progressive or even thinking people believed by 1990 that Bush the first was dangerous and demented. Remember that Bush I had launched the Panama War just a year earlier. I was working in a conservative mostly Republican law firm at the time, and even there people were walking around wondering WTF??!! is wrong with Bush -- is this going to be like a war a year for the rest of his administration??!?!

Also, everyone perceived Bush I's wars as thinly disguised gangland style rubouts. Everyone knew that Panama was all about Noriega publicly threatening to reveal how his buddy Bush had run the Iran-Contra cocaine operations out of South America, to finance the contra war through Panamanian financial institutions and airstrips. Everyone knew and talked about how Bush was risking thousands of American soldiers' lives and Panamanian lives to yank Noriega and put him in solitary (where he has remained ever since) to keep him from talking -- and it had nothing to do with "liberating" the people of Panama who had had dictators off and on ever since the Panama canal was built.

Every thinking person also knew that Bush I had given weird mixed signals to Sadam -- like he was luring him into a war, in order to salvage Bush I's sinking poll numbers.

Also, people generally did not understand how the US military had advanced since the Vietnam era, when the Army had its ass handed to it by third world peasants. Greneda and Panama were of course no challenge or threat and the feeling was, does Bush realize that Iraq is not Greneda??? Iraq had just fought a very long war with millions of casualties against Iran, and it looked like Bush I was leading us into a decade of World War I style trench warfare.

People were mortified and terrified at the prospect of Gulf War I, and there was little support for it and a huge amount of skepticism about Bush I's motives. Unless you were an adult in the late 80s, early 90s, you have no idea just how bizarre, drugged out and out of touch Bush I was -- from vomiting into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister because of too much mind altering drugs, to trying to help end the recession by buying a pair of white socks at Kmart, only to be utterly confused and perplexed by the existence of a checkout scanner. Only in retrospect, after hundreds of hours of the History Channel and CNN glorifying Gulf War I have we forgotten how most Americans actually felt at the time.

If you recall the political analysis before Iraq II, Kerry and the Dems were basically stampeded into voting for the war out of fear of not supporting another glorious victory, and being left out in the cold and being punished by voters, as they were after Gulf War I.

[Octafish]

24. It was a SCAM war.

Saddam massed his forces along the border with Kuwait in an effort to get Kuwait to stop "slant drilling" into his oil fields. Poppy and Baker sent the acting ambassador, April Glaspie, to tell Saddam not to worry, the USA had no opinion on "Arab-Arab" border disputes. That emboldened Saddam to take action. Later on, the White House indicated they had satellite photo showing Iraq now had massed forces along the border with Saudi Arabia. That was a lie. Still, most of Congress and the world believed the BFEE. Kerry didn't.

[Roland99]

25. Cheney LIED about Satellite Photos of Iraqi Troops on Saudi Border

Watch this CBC production of a Cheney biography:
http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/wonk/CBC/UnauthorizedCheneyBiography.mov
111MB

They show that the U.S. gave fake photos to the Saudis to get them to invite us into their country.

It also goes into the Stovepipe and Selective Intelligence articles with an interview of Seymour Hersh about the cooking of intelligence before the latest war.