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Does Rudy Giuliani Need To Get His Facts A Bit More Straight?
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews thinks so:
12 Responses to “Does Rudy Giuliani Need To Get His Facts A Bit More Straight?”
New rule of thumb: if Rudy says it and an audience applauds, it’s probably wrong?
I can understand why Matthews would take issue with the way Giuliani stated this but I can’t find anything false in what he actually said. The Iraq Liberation Act was signed by Clinton and it’s purpose was to undermine Saddam. The act itself and Clinton’s stated purpose included clear language to support a policy of regime change, even if the method at that time was to try to create the change from within rather than by invasion. You can say that Bush took it in a new direction, but Bush’s policy wasn’t a departure from Clinton’s policy- it was a continuation or extension of it.
I think it’s helpful to remember the rhetoric and policy that was prevalant in the 90′s (a href=”http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/11/01/981101-in.htm”>as in this excerpt), which really set the stage for what was to come. We never got off of war footing with Saddam’s Iraq; the end of the first Gulf War was a cease fire, not cessation of hostilities through treaty.
But there’s a huge difference in promoting regime change from within- which we have historically done in many different countries if we disagreed with their leadership, and carpet bombing and invading a sovereign country to remake it in our own image. Rudi may be telling the truth, but the context is everything. This argument always drives me up the wall, because it fits a neat soundbite, but misinforms in a dangerous way.
Well, Kim, my point is that Matthews argument is no better: he’s also making a soundbite argument that “Rudy is twisting facts”. If he feels that Giuliani’s conclusion is wrong then he should say that regime change through military intervention to oust a dictator is too far removed from the policy of encouraging internal revolution to be considered an outgrowth or extension of that policy. But that’s not what Matthews said- instead he chose to attack Giuliani for not being factual when he actual was factual but drew a different conclusion than the one that Matthews sees.
CS-He was- but its sort of in the half truth region that leads to misinformation. Rudi and other Republicans purposely blur the distinction between the Clinton policy of regime change and the Bush invasion and removal of Saddam. They always make it sound like Bush’s act was just the next logical step in the policy, which it wasn’t. Most people after hearing that line of argument would believe that Clinton would have removed Saddam by force, but never got the opportunity.
I think that’s what Matthews meant, though I agree that he could have said it much better.
Matthews devoted almost the whole show on Friday on the two Hillary bios. He ignored the CIA assessment. I guess this is just BDS and Liberal MSM. Rudy is just another authoritorian, we don’t need another after W. I missed Softball, how much time did Chrissy devote to the Rudy story. Don’t worry I’m not a Hillary fan. When the Michigan primary comes around I’ll vote for Paul.
Kim,
Bush’s invasion of Iraq may not have been the next logical step but there were several intermediate steps- the UN resolutions which said that Saddam must comply or else. Of course to the UN, ‘or else’ seems to mean “if you don’t comply with these resolutions, we’ll…we’ll….we’ll pass another resolution!”
It’s pointless to rehash the arguments- many people feel that the invasion was the wrong decision and I respect that opinion, but there’s just as much “blurring” going on from the other side which tries to pretend that Bush’s decision came out of left field. It was a drastic step but people shouldn’t forget that it wasn’t out of the blue- there was a context of a war which had ended through a negotiated cease fire, and Saddam had been violating the terms of the cease fire all through the 90s.
LMAO!
Is that the same as saying: “bombing an abortion clinic is just a continuation or extension of trying to avoid unwanted pregancies by preaching astinence”?
CS- Insiders like George Tenet and Paul O Neill have claimed that Bush/Cheney planned on invading Iraq from the time they took office. 9/11 was just a convenient excuse. I don’t think its any coincidence that Paul Wolfowitz, who was in Bush I’s administration and disagreed with the decision not to go to Baghdad, ended up at the Pentagon as the #2 man who played a large role in planning the war. If you read the letter that the PNAC sent Clinton the signatories read like a Who’s Who of W’s administration. I really believe that Saddam’s actions had little to do with the invasion, since they had planned to do it all along. The ultimatums that you keep bringing up were just window dressing.
CS- I agree with MvdG. If the next president invaded N Korea, would it be seen as a continuation of the Bush policy? In my mind containment in no way equals carpet bombing followed by invasion followed by a long occupation. And the politicians that keep framing it that way are being disengenous so they can make it look like the fiasco that is Iraq is half Bill Clinton’s fault. Its called spreading out the blame so no one hold’s your party accountable.
OK part 3. I don’t have my thoughts in order, lol. CS do you remember when the Bush administration took over and scrapped all of Clinton’s foreign policies- and his policy on terrorism as well? It was ABC- anything but clinton. That in itself is a very good indicator that it wasn’t any kind of continuation. The PNAC tried to pressure Clinton to take out Saddam, then criticized his foreign policy for lacking direction when he didn’t take them up on it. They had more luck in 2001 when many ended up working for W.
No, I don’t agree with that, Michael. Bombing abortion clinics certainly isn’t an equivalent to a military intervention. Or are you now saying that the Iraq invasion was akin to terrorism? And there’s really no equivalency to the “preaching abstinence” part of your analogy either. It’s not as though Iraq was a democracy and the Iraq Liberation Act was a show of support for political opposition. Since it was a dictatorship, clearly that document outlined our policy of supporting military opposition to Saddam (albeit at that time, we were hoping this would come from within).
And again: we were on war footing with Iraq all through the 90s- the first Gulf War did not end with a treaty and that is a very important point of international law. As long as Saddam continued to defy the terms of the cease fire, renewing the hostilities to remove him was not an act of agression. Even Jeanne Kirkpatrick argued that point, even though she didn’t think the invasion should have taken place (she didn’t agree with the policy but she defended it on that basis).
And yes, Kim, I realize that there were people throughout the 90′s who wished to ‘finish the job’ and take out Saddam, and that Clinton obviously chose not to intervene in that way. I also realize that many of those people played a prominent role in the Bush administration. However, I disagree that Saddam’s actions had little to do with the decision to invade. He continued to defy and to stall for time. If you want to argue that there is little or nothing he could have done to prove that he could be contained, I won’t argue with that point. I think he had proven himself to be incompatible with stability in the region and even without WMD stockpiles he still held the knowledge to create them and the programs could have been reconsituted as soon as the international community turned its attention away from him, or he could easily have sold the information on how to create weapons.