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Explaining Trump’s Appeal

168 Comments

A timely essay on the current state of the nation from Charles Murray.

[Sunday-morning update]

A bridge too far: I agree with Ace that Trump finally damaged himself last night, at least with actual Republicans. It’s one thing to say we had bad intel; it’s entirely another to say that Bush deliberately lied us into war. That’s the ravings of the left, not a leading Republican candidate.

168 thoughts on “Explaining Trump’s Appeal”

  2. IMHO, you can best sum up the majority of Trump’s support as GOPe; without the anger at the GOP establishment (well earned) there wouldn’t be anywhere near this level of support for a Trump type candidate.

    Secondly but related, the GOPe attempted to stack the deck in favor of their preferred candidate, Jeb, fueling the anger. They’ve since tried Rubio as an alternative. They did all they could to paint Rubio’s 3rd place finish in Iowa as a win. Fox News, long a friend of the GOPe and amnesty, darn near became a Rubio SuperPAC, and many even now have no clue as to why. As they say, everything is relative, and in this case, Fox VP Bill Sammon is in charge of the debate and debate related issues at Fox. Marco Rubio’s press secretary is Brooke Sammon, his daughter. What a coincidence! (and of course, this blatant conflict of interest was never disclosed).

    Thirdly, but related; the GOPe push for amnesty plus increased legal immigration, both of which are wage-killers. The GOPe made these attempts (look at Bohner’s repeated rumblings about “immigration reform” as an example) after swearing it would not.

    At this juncture, if you despise the GOPe, who are your choices, realistically? Cruz, Trump, and Carson. (Caveat: I have no idea if Kasich is establishment or not). And Carson is pretty much out of serious contention at this point. I happen to prefer Cruz, but if he wasn’t in the race, I’d be supporting Trump (even though I have grave doubts about him) because of what he’s not (GOPe) more than than what he is. (I won’t vote for a GOPe candidate in the primaries or general).

    Basically, the GOPe created Trump with their perfidy, so it delights me no end to see them freaking out over his rise, even though he’s not my preferred candidate.

    1. Since Trump is essentially an establishment candidate, but with more flair, personality, and pandering skills, why not pick him over the other more traditional establishment candidates? The base isn’t going to get what they want either way.

      I see Trump’s strategy as similar to Hillary’s. Hillary says that everyone is in agreement on the issues but she will be more effective in dealing with them. Trump is doing the same thing as part of his strategy, only more subtly than Hillary.

    2. Thirdly, but related; the GOPe push for amnesty plus increased legal immigration, both of which are wage-killers.

      Thank you for that rare bit of honesty, CJ. It’s a refreshing change from most of the Immigration Warriors here who keep up the pretense that the movement is “Not against immigration, just illegal immigration.”

      1. I hold the position that if other factors impacting the economy weren’t a mess (EPA, ACA, minimum wage, ZIRP debt bomb, out of control spending …) properly regulated legal immigration wouldn’t hurt the economy.

        1. So, because the world isn’t perfect, the only choice is to get rid of what remaining freedoms we have?

          It’s either an ideal, perfect world or complete state control over — nothing in between is even worth considering?

          Because we have an Environmental Protection Agency, we must also have internal passports, brown shirts stopping cars and busses on the highway, a massive seizure of private land by eminent domain, and a fortified barrier that would put China’s Great Wall to shame?

          As for “properly regulated immigration” — companies like Microsoft have thousands of workers who they are not able to bring into the United States. The existing barriers are so high that even Bill Gates couldn’t get employees past them, but Immigration Warriors don’t think the bar has been set high enough?

          1. As one who is familiar with Microsoft culture, I can tell you that there are plenty of Americans who can do the work at Microsoft. The H-1B visa need is just an excuse to get cheap labor.

            Thousands of Americans that have STEM degrees are not able to get jobs in their fields. Why do you call those who advocate jobs for Americans, “Immigration Warriors?”

            Also, one can demand that we put a hold on immigration until we have a better system worked out. One or two years won’t bring in the brown shirts.

          2. Suffering invasion, displacement, colonization, and marginalization by a hundred million unassimilable Third Worlders who despise us and our culture, who make our votes worthless, who force our wages down and our taxes up by their mere presence is “freedom” now?

            I’ve got to look at the Constitution again. I can’t find any of that in the Bill of Rights.

          3. Because protectionism does not save jobs, Jon. It destroys jobs. Economists have demonstrated that time and time again.

            A lot of people say “I don’t believe in economics,” but the laws of economics don’t change just because someone disbelieves in them, anymore than the laws of physics do.

            Doctors used to bleed patients to cure them of disease. Protectionism is the economic equivalent of bleeding a patient. Should we reinstate bleeding, just because some people *think* it cures disease?

          4. It seems you’ve taken an all-or-nothing approach. It’s not protectionism to give jobs to Americans first. I am not saying we should stop immigration. But it is prudent to assess our mistakes. As one who has felt the effects of mass immigration, it’s quite painful. Add to it the desires of our elites to flood this country in order to water down the values of average Americans.

            Would you not agree that giving Visas to foreigners above Americans is dishonest, and, at the very least, unseemly?

          5. Doctors used to bleed patients to cure them of disease. Protectionism is the economic equivalent of bleeding a patient. Should we reinstate bleeding, just because some people *think* it cures disease?

            You’ve made a false comparison. How is stemming immigration, “protectionism?” We have a right to bring in people whom we see fit. It’s not our job to bring in all of the great unwashed masses, it’s our job to bring in those that will bring value to this country. Sorry, but if you’re heart is bleeding, go down to Central America for a year and help lots of kids with your own money.

            And how in the world can you suddenly jump to bleeding? This is such a ridiculous leap that it must simply be ignored.

      2. “It’s a refreshing change from most of the Immigration Warriors here who keep up the pretense that the movement is “Not against immigration, just illegal immigration.” ”

        Can’t help it if you don’t understand the position about legal immigration…live in ignorance if you want.

        But in case you don’t, Legal immigration comes implicitly with the means to meter who and what you want to let in.

        Legal immigration does NOT imply boundless legal immigration.

        1. Utopians don’t care who gets hurt in the pursuit of their delusions. Consider those hundreds of Disney employees who were pushed aside illegally so cheaper foreign workers. They were brought in on H1b visas. The American employees were forced to train their replacements before being shoved to the unemployment line. What does a utopian care that the H1b program specifically says that those visas are only applicable when no Americans are available with those skills? What does a utopian care about immigrants immediately going on welfare at everyone else’s expense? When my wife was going through the naturalization process, we had to sign papers saying she’d be deported if we had to accept any form of public assistance for any reason. My, have the rules changed and we get to pay for it all. To Hell with utopians and their delusions.

          1. Heck, even Plato himself knew utopia wouldn’t work. That’s why he named it Utopia. In Greek, it means “nowhere”.

          2. Heck, even Plato himself knew utopia wouldn’t work. That’s why he named it Utopia

            “Utopia” was written by Sir Thomas More, almost 2000 years after Plato.

            And the word does mean what you and Larry (and most moderns, for that matter) think it does. “Utopia” was never meant to be an ideal society. Sir Thomas More wrote the book as a *satire*. (Don’t feel bad. The Soviet Union made the same mistake and actually honored More for his description of a communist society, not realizing it was satirical.)

            More, incidentally, was very much a believer in natural law (the principle behind the “inalienable rights” found in the Declaration of Independence and scorned by Immigration Warriors today). In fact, he was willing to die for his beliefs. So, this prattle about “Utopia” is rather amusing, to one who has read the book and knows the context.

          3. Whaddya know, I learned something today. OK, Tom More.

            I was referring to Plato’s Republic. We’re still rehashing the same argument Plato and Aristotle had, no matter how may times Plato is wrong and Aristotle is right, no matter how much blood has been spilled, nobody learns.

        2. You are twisting words again, Gregg, as usual.

          “Legal” does not mean “legal only for a few special people.” It does not mean “legal only for those who have sufficient pull with the politicians and bureaucrats.” It does not mean “legal only for Larry’s wife.”

          It means “legal” — period.

          Let me give you another example to help you out here. In the United States, we have substances like heroin which are commonly known as “illegal drugs.” Lawyers would say those are not illegal drugs but “controlled substances.” It is legal to buy heroin, if you have a prescription from a doctor who is licensed by the US government to prescribe it. Of course, no doctor can actually get such a license; the government doesn’t issue them except in rare cases to a few researchers.

          But heroin is “legal,” I suppose, by the Gregg definition which says something is legal if even one person can possibly get one.

          Here’s another example. There are gun-control groups that want to ban the ownership of firearms, except for a few special cases like police officers and the military. By the Gregg definition, I suppose, guns would still be “legal” because the police and military are allowed to buy them.

          But that’s not what the word “legal” means to non-solipsists.

          Legal immigration comes implicitly with the means to meter who and what you want to let in.

          You are showing historical ignorance, Gregg, or at least feigning it. I have explained this to you before, but perhaps you just have a very bad memory. The United States had legal immigration with no “metering” until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 — more than 100 years after the American Revolution.

          This nation was founded on the premise that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights are guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution.

          Now, you believe we should forget about liberty and ignore the Constitution because you think the principles of the Founding Fathers are obsolete in the Modern age. As you argued before, modern society has a complexity that could not be understood or anticipated by those foolish men who did not have Facebook to educate them, and thus requires a much greater degree of central authority and government control over the individual.

          That is an argument which was originally made by the socialists. It’s ironic that those who call themselves “Conservatives” have now adopted the same argument and use it to argue against traditional values. What is it you want to conserve, Gregg?

          Unfortunately, you never stop to question your assumption that the increased complexity of society requires more government control over the individual. If you were familiar with the work of economists such as Freidrich Hayek, or the more recent work of mathematicians on complexity and chaos theory, you might realize that the opposite is true. Every increase in the complexity of society makes government *less* capable of understanding, controlling, and regulating the economy. The problem of central planning is even more intractable today than it was 200 years ago.

          1. ““Legal” does not mean “legal only for a few special people.” ”

            Sorry you’re the one who is twisting words….definitions really. You are giving “Legal” your own black and white definition, which is not shared by the real world, and then using that to say the real world is wrong.

            “Legal” has special cases and limitations all the time. It’s legal to shoot an attacker in self defense. It’s illegal to just shoot someone because you feel like it. Yet the act – “shooting someone” – is the same.

            So you cannot say “It is legal to shoot people” and be correct. There are mitigating circumstances.

            It’s illegal to do a whole host of things with minors whereas it’s legal to do those things with grown ups.

            “Legal” does not imply universally legal.

            Furthermore legal does not imply “you get to do it or have it” bar none.

            It’s legal for you to ride a ferris wheel but illegal if your presence would overload it. You still have the right to ride the ferris wheel – just not this turn.

            It’s legal for you to do 65mph on a highway when the speed limit is 65; it’s impossible if the highway is clogged with non-moving cars.

            It’s legal to drive in the “car pool” lane…but ONLY if you are car pooling. Then it’s not legal.

            The world can not be as black and white as you imagine it could be.

            As for what I’m trying to conserve….since you have no idea of legal and illegal, and the limitations of “legal” it would be a waste of time to try and explain a far more complex concept to you.

          2. “It means “legal” — period.”

            If legal meant legal period then for you it’s perfectly ok to let in a convicted and self-admitted serial murderer and rapist. To you, this person should not be kept out of the country because Ed says “Legal means legal – period”.

            Ed Wright wants to allow this person to immigrate into the country.

            This violates even libertarian principles – not to mention being utterly ridiculous.

          3. The United States had legal immigration with no “metering” until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882

            Which was not without its tensions. But even so, that immigration consisted of peoples (at least outside the African slave trade, while it was still legal) reasonably close in culture and outlook as to be assimilable to U.S. society.

            It’s less clear that this is still the case with much of the immigration we receive today, not least because the assimilation powers of U.S. culture are considerably reduced from what they once were. Therefore, there was usually (not always, but usually) little impulse to start “metering” it.

          4. Aren’t open borders central planning? What government policies are or are not central planning?

            Were earlier administrations motivated by liberty or just wanting to increase the population?

          5. Edward Wright makes a good point about legality. Congress can make something legal. Right now though, open borders are not legal. To be really concerned with legality, it takes an act from congress to make open borders legal. Instead we have government not following the law.

            Also, while the founders believed in unalienable human rights, the right to be an American was not one of them. Rather, they wanted other governments to emulate our country and also recognize these rights for their own populace. American ideology can be implemented anywhere, there is no requirement people come to the USA to do so and coming to the USA doesn’t magically make people want to emulate those ideals either.

          6. Sorry, Gregg, but you are wrong again. It *is* legal to shoot people. It is not legal to commit a murder or assault and battery, both of which are crimes, but if the shooting is not a murder, attempted murder, or battery, then it is legal. That would be what we call “self-defense” or “accidental shooting.”

            That is why Dick Cheney is not in jail.

            You are continuing to twist words to misrepresent your position: you are *not* in favor or legal immigration any more than Handgun Control, Inc. is in favor of legal firearms. You want to make/keep immigration illegal and throw people in jail for attempting to immigrate. Just as Hangun Control wants to make gun ownership illegal,

            If legal meant legal period then for you it’s perfectly ok to let in a convicted and self-admitted serial murderer and rapist.

            You really do go to great lengths to misunderstand simple concepts, Gregg.

            Murder and rape are crimes. If a person has committed those crimes, he should be punished for murder and rape. Not for crossing a border without a permit.

            In the early days of the Republic, immigration was open and legal. Murder and rape were not. The Founding Fathers had no trouble understanding the distinction. It really isn’t all that hard.

            Of course, if immigration were legalized, it would be much easier to identify and catch murderers and rapists, since they could not hide amongst a large group of illegal immigrants who are forced to act like criminals and afraid to cooperate with law enforcement.

            But perhaps you think catching rapists and murders is less important than preventing Microsoft from hiring Chinese programmers?

          7. This nation was founded on the premise that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights are guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution.

            If we let in people and do not give them benefits: welfare, housing, health care, etc, etc, then I will be on your side. Unfortunately, thanks to the left and people like Jim, we subsidize our immigration.

            But you must admit that things are quite different from the mid 1800s to today. Saying that we used to allow anyone in for the first 100 years of the country means that we should do it today ignores the subsequent 100 years. Using your previous analogy, bleeding was popular in 1795, should we go back to it today?

    3. CJ, I urge you to pick up an introductory economics text and read about the Principle of Comparative Advantage.

      Free trade does not drive wages down; it drives wages *up.* In the complete absence of trade, there would be no wages at all. The more trade, the more wealth. The protectionist policies which you advocate to disadvantage foreigners disadvantage Americans as well. Even if you end up with more pieces of green paper in your wallet, you will find those pieces of paper buy fewer goods and services.

      1. Free trade does not drive wages down; it drives wages *up.* In the complete absence of trade, there would be no wages at all. The more trade, the more wealth.

        I see now where your open borders viewpoint comes from. Specifically, la-la land.

        The protectionist policies which you advocate to disadvantage foreigners disadvantage Americans as well.

        Yeah, those Disney Americans forced to train their lower-paid replacements, I’m sure they just needed an econ 101 text to realize their great fortune.

        1. Yes, Curt, I believe in “la-la land.” Just like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe and all those stupid, stupid men who didn’t even have television.

          Not to mention those idiot economists like Von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, etc.

          I’m just not bright enough to get my political principles from a reality teevee star.

          Is namecalling the only form of argument you know? Well, that’s one data point that helps explain the popularity of Donald Trump.

          1. Ah, political principles. The millions of middle-class Americans losing income and employment as a result of their elected representatives placing their own capacity to virtue-signal ahead of the interests of the very people who put them in power… yes, those people can fall back on the warm sense of satisfaction that… there is some kind of principle involved. And… teevee reality stars. Who needs ’em.

            You’re right, your brightness is blinding.

          2. If you can’t stand political principles, that certainly explains why you like Trump.

            People are not losing jobs because we have too much freedom. They are losing jobs because we have too little freedom.

            People lose jobs when voters like yourself think they ignore the laws of economics just because they conflict with personal prejudice.

            People lose jobs when government raises taxes so it can bail out millionaire welfare queens like Trump.

            People lose jobs when government uses eminent domain to steal their property and shutter businesses which they’ve spent a lifetime building, to benefit politically connected businessmen like Trump.

            People lose jobs when products are not developed, because the government won’t allow specialists to bring their knowledge to the United States.

            People lose jobs when *both* political parties want more control over the private sector, reducing the opportunity for innovation and economic growth.

          3. I don’t particularly like Trump. But ignoring the reasons he’s popular is stupid. And it’s interesting that in your litany of “people lose jobs because…” it’s rather hard to fit Disney employees in there. Why do you think that is?

          4. I think it’s because I understand the fallacy of reasoning from a single datapoint, Curt — and, apparently, you don’t.

            You see jobs lost at Disney, but you don’t see jobs created in other parts of the economy. This problem was discussed by Frédéric Bastiat in his essay, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

            I would suggest you read it, but since you’ve already said you don’t believe in economic principles….

          5. No, I don’t believe in a “principle” that would lead to civilizational collapse. I am sure you are fully aware that if America woke up tomorrow morning and decided to stop enforcing its borders, over a billion people worldwide would move here overnight. You can climb on your founding-fathers soapbox and bleat “freedom” all you want, but if you’re going to simultaneously ignore the unimaginable degree of human suffering that would be involved in that endeavor then you are a complete and total idiot and fully unworthy of engagement.

        2. Just so. Free trade between nations with similar economies is beneficial to both. Free trade between a very wealthy nation and a very poor nation inevitably results in that “giant sucking sound” that a fellow named Perot tried to warn us about.

      2. Edward Wright: “pick up an economics text”

        Yeah, because the texts of The Clerisy are “trustworthy.”

        As others have said, who you allow in to immigrate is very, very important. People aren’t creates equal.

      3. Free trade is a bit more complicated than that. Does it drive wages up? Yes but it can also drive wages down. Wages can go up and down with free trade. Equilibrium is a term to ponder, however, there are many factors that influence wage equilibrium for any group of similar workers.

        In the long term free trade is good for everyone but short term it causes problems. This is especially true when the countries engaging in trade are so different. Just because a country engages the market doesn’t mean they are for free trade. There are a lot of ways to game the system.

        1. The benefits of free trade are broadly spread. But the costs are often narrowly focused. Too often, the latter is overlooked. The fact that you can get glassware or blu-ray players more cheaply is little comfort to a factory worker who has been laid off once his company relocates to Mexico (something which was just announced last week, in fact).

          There’s no easy answer for this; but the fact that no one in the establishment has even tried offering one helps explain the Trump revolt.

    4. Arizona CJ, are you by chance the “C.J.” that posts on Ken Anthony’s blog? If so, do you have any news on his status? The last I heard he was very ill and I’ve heard nothing from him for several months on the various forums he frequents like this one. I fear the worst.

      In any event, I apologize to everyone for bringing this up here; I don’t have any way to do this off forum.

        1. Yes, I’m the CJ who co-blogs there on occasion, and no, I haven’t heard anything. I posted a request on his blog, and so far, nothing. I’m very concerned. I’ll try e-mailing again, and will post anything I hear.

  3. Hmm, so Trump’s appeal is that he is viewed as supporting American ideals of being a hard worker, egalitarianism, and individualism? Well, the author at the link says Trumpism is “falling away” from that but I don’t think that is accurate.

    Whether or not you agree with a Trump presidency, he portrays himself as following the American creed as laid out at the link. The author seems to say this is what his appeal is but then contradicts himself by saying Trump supporters don’t follow the American creed as he laid it out.

    Then he says the true embodiment of the American creed are rich establishment Republicans who support open borders?

    So what is Trump’s appeal then? The author claims immigration, racism, and abandoning American ideals about hard work, egalitarianism, and individual freedom.

    It looked like the author came close but didn’t like how positive that looked for Trump so tried to shift it to something he couldn’t give any evidence for but comes off as negative.

    1. Trump is not my preferred candidate but I really dislike the notion that if you don’t like Trump, anything goes in attacking him. It feeds Trump’s narrative, its a poor way to win over Trump’s supporters, and use attacks that usually come from the left. Acting like Democrats to tear people down is the exact wrong way to appeal to people who are sick and tired of Democrat’s race based attacks.

    2. “Then he says the true embodiment of the American creed are rich establishment Republicans who support open borders?”

      Well, yeah. The USA was built by cheap imported labor. Enslaved Africans, starving Irishmen, Chinese in the West and Japanese in Hawaii, and now Mexicans. It’s only occasionally that the interests of free and/or native labor get the advantage.

      1. And in every case (except the slaves), they were literally dying to get in. If someone is willing to die to move into your country, it is doubtful that you are exploiting them.

        (Of course, I think we need to greatly increase immigration just because I understand economics; but we would have to alter some of our laws governing elections… but we should do that anyway to avoid the californication problem)

        1. “If someone is willing to die to move into your country, it is doubtful that you are exploiting them.”

          No, if someone is willing to die to do something, they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Just to be clear, I’ll say it again slightly differently: I’m not arguing anyone was or was not exploited, I’m just pointing out that desperation makes it easier to exploit someone.

          (If you disagree, consider a typical news report about the life story of a prostitute.)

          2. Bob, do you understand the meaning of “anecdotal evidence,” and why it is generally suspect?

            Reading one newspaper story about a prostitute who was an immigrant does not mean that all (or most) prostitutes are immigrants, that all (or most) immigrants are prostitutes, or whatever point it is you are trying to make.

            The government does not bar engineers, computer programmers, etc. from entering the US because of fears that they will be exploited and forced into prostitution. The brown shirts didn’t pull me over by the side of the road because they thought I might be a prostitute. (One look at me and anyone could tell I’m not qualified for that profession.)

            If your concern is prostitution, the logical policy would be to focus the Border Patrol and law enforcement on those involved, or likely to be involved, in that profession, instead of harassing people at random.

          3. A prostitute is actually an excellent parallel:

            What is worse than a women forced into prostitution? Whatever forced her into prostitution.

            If people are willing to die to get into your country, then they are leaving something worse than death. Not letting them in should not be an easy decision.

            (Even ignoring the unseen aspect, that when people immigrate they increase aggregate demand more than the value of the labor they supply. Thus immigration makes everyone better off, if you ignore political effects. Unfortunately, they can’t really be ignored…)

          4. There’s an objective way to find out. Count the rafts. Count the number of makeshift rafts that people have put together out of whatever they would find that would float and could be lashed together, onto which they then placed their entire families from grandma down to infant son, and then paddled across 90 miles of shark infested water to go from Florida to Cuba. Then count the rafts that went the other way, and the ones that didn’t make it.

            Surely if people were being exploited in America and life is hell there, then the number of rafts going from Florida to the socialist paradise of Cuba would far exceed the number of rafts full of people risking the lives of their entire family to be exploited.

        2. Without a doubt people were exploited but not just immigrants. However, many people overlook what life was actually like in the past. They read about X group but without the context of conditions for other people. Rather than compare how various segments of society lived at that time, they compare with their current conditions or assume that aside from X group, everyone lived like the very wealthy.

          For much of our history, life was hard for nearly everyone and yet people came here anyway because it offered the chance to improve the conditions they lived in wherever they came from. Much like knowledge is passed on generationally, improvements in quality of life were because of people engaging in capitalism to incrementally improve the quality of life for all.

      2. you make it sound as if there were no native low skilled low wage workers available when we let in the Irish and Chinese etc.

        Nothing could be further from the truth.

        We didn’t have enough.

  4. I think Murray’s analysis is pretty good. Broadening it slightly…

    If you think government goodies are free and don’t have to be taken from anyone, and you haven’t been getting enough of these goodies, you’re supporting Bernie

    If you think the government is screwing people, and you think you’re likely to be the recipient of the proceeds of that theft, you’re supporting Hillary

    If you think the government is screwing you, and you want to get in on the proceeds of the theft and start screwing OTHER people for a change, you’re supporting Trump.

    If you think the government is screwing you, and you don’t think it should be screwing anybody, you’re supporting Cruz.

    And if you think that everything is just fine except we need minor course corrections, you’re supporting Rubio or Bush … unless you live in New Hampshire, in which case you probably voted for Kaisch

  5. it’s entirely another to say that Bush deliberately lied us into war. That’s the ravings of the left

    It’s also the bipartisan conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which wrote in its Phase II report:

    “the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

    Or look at Condoleezza Rice’s public claim that Iraq’s aluminum tubes could only be for nuclear purposes, after she’d been privately briefed by DOE experts that they probably weren’t for that use.

    It’s a well-documented fact that the Bush administration lied about the WMD threat to build support for the Iraq war. But the GOP has collectively dropped that fact in the memory hole, and so is outraged to hear it spoken aloud.

      1. That’s a straw man. The well-documented fact is that Bush and his senior aides presented intelligence that they knew to be “unsubstantiated, contradicted or non-existent” as bona fide reasons to believe that the U.S. was threatened by Iraqi WMD. Maybe Bush and his aides did think there were WMDs in Iraq. Maybe they thought they were framing a guilty regime. But it’s indisputable that they lied to make the case for war.

          1. Those “remnants of long-abandoned programs” were and are a hazardous waste problem, not an “arsenal”.

          2. They were the weapons we were concerned about after the Gulf War, all through the Clinton years, and also used by the Bush administration as part of the justification for war.

            You went from there were no WMD, to everything about WMD was a lie, to those wmd’s don’t count, despite them being the very ones mentioned by GWB, Clinton, and HWB and Saddam refusing to be accountable about.

        4. I don’t claim to be able to read peoples’ minds.

          Don’t you? Haven’t you peered into the minds of Lois Lerner and her underlings, and detected the criminal motives behind their actions? Didn’t you look into Eric Holder’s mind, and determine that his decision to not prosecute Lerner was politically motivated? Haven’t you repeatedly stated that Hillary Clinton’s statements about Benghazi were lies, based on your reading of what was in her mind?

          Condoleezza Rice said in September, 2002 that the aluminum tubes “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs”, a bold statement that supported the administration’s case for war. We know that Rice had been briefed by the DOE that the tubes “are not consistent with a gas centrifuge end use” and that “a rocket production application is the more likely end-use for these tubes.” They had issued multiple reports to that effect, dating back to April, 2001. We know that the DIA had concluded that “Alternative uses for the tubes, such as rocket motor cases or launch tubes, are possible,” referencing a report issued the month before Rice’s statement. The question of what those tubes were for was one of great interest in the intelligence community, and Rice heard and read multiple times that it was a matter of considerable controversy.

          So if Rice didn’t lie, what happened? Did she — an extremely accomplished, intelligent scholar and analyst — entirely forget the conclusions of multiple briefings and reports, which she’d received over her entire time as National Security Advisor? Clearly not, since she remembered that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes, and that aluminum tubes are used in nuclear enrichment, and therefore might be relevant to the question of whether Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program. If she’d forgotten all those reports and briefings she wouldn’t have mentioned the tubes at all, much less claimed that they were only really suited for nuclear weapons development.

          What possible explanation is there for Rice’s statement, other than the obvious one: she lied to help make the case for the war?

          1. Haven’t you repeatedly stated that Hillary Clinton’s statements about Benghazi were lies, based on your reading of what was in her mind?

            I’ve stated that Hillary’s statements about Benghazi were lies based on the fact that she told her confidants one story, while telling the families of the murdered another. They couldn’t both be true. So if she wasn’t lying, she’s mentally ill.

          2. Was Iraq supposed to be developing rockets under the Gulf War agreements? I know that they were not supposed to be developing certain types of weapons systems and were doing it anyway, another reason for the war, but not if rockets would have been a violation.

            To some people, agreements matter. They are not just for show but considering how Obama and the Democrats don’t care that Iran is violating similar agreements, it doesn’t look like they take deals with Iran any more seriously than they did with Iraq. What message does this send Iran?

            It means the next President gets to deal with an Iran that is continuing its nuclear weapons program as well as missile programs. Iran knows Democrat deals are fake. But not all Americans think agreements are meaningless so the chance for another war is high.

          3. They couldn’t both be true

            So you admit that Clinton’s public statements on Benghazi could have been the truth, as she knew it?

            You haven’t offered an alternate explanation for Rice’s statement.

          4. So you admit that Clinton’s public statements on Benghazi could have been the truth, as she knew it?

            No, but I think it much more likely that she lied to the families on the tarmac (and then later called them liars, when they would have no motivation to lie) than that she lied to her daughter and the Egyptian foreign minister.

      2. Sorry, but everyone who looked even remotely objectively at the ‘intel’ knew there were no WMDs in Iraq worth caring about. I remember even the teams actually on the ground in actual Iraq actually looking for WMDs saying they didn’t exist. And they didn’t.

        And just about everyone who knew anything about the history of the Middle East knew that invading Iraq would be disastrous, regardless of whether Saddam Hussein had a few poison gas shells. Which is exactly what we’ve seen.

        Either Bush was clueless, or he intentionally lied the country into war. I don’t know which is true, but neither is anything to be proud of.

        As for Trump, people who’d not vote for him because of this are people who’d be unlikely to vote for him anyway. And, if he’s nominated, he’s given Democrat-leaning voters another reason to vote for him. They mostly opposed Bush’s War, and are not very happy that Clinton supported it.

        2. Iraq didn’t turn out to be disastrous until Obama took over and it still might come out OK. Fatalism is magical thinking.

          At least you admit there were WMD, even with the who cares caveat, but you don’t provide anyway out of the situation we had been in since the end of the Gulf War. Would you have kept oil for food going? No fly zones? Would you have told Saddam no one cares, you don’t have to abide by agreements you made?

          1. Iraq didn’t turn out to be disastrous until Obama took over

            Are you really going to argue that Iraq wasn’t a disaster in 2003? 2004? 2005? 2006? 2007? 2008? Bush’s approval ratings fell into the 20s and the GOP lost Congress because it was going well?

          2. Bush’s approval ratings fell into the 20s and the GOP lost Congress because it was going well?

            Good frapping lord, are you capable of looking yourself in the mirror while reading that aloud with a straight face?

          3. Post Surge, Iraq looked pretty good. The proxy war run by Syria and Iran had largely been defeated through military and diplomatic efforts. It was so successful Obama and Biden claimed it was one of their greatest accomplishments.

            The problem was that Obama and Hillary stopped any serious engagement with the Iraqi government to keep up the diplomatic efforts needed to keep Iraq on the right path. They also failed to leave troops there as an insurance policy and to use the military as a diplomatic tool. The worst thing they did was to throw Iraq under the bus in an effort to get a nuclear deal with Iran. This lead to Iran mucking up Iraq’s government and leading to the rise of the Sunni ISIS. It got especially bad when Obama used Iranian proxy Shia militias to fight ISIS, who engaged in atrocities just like ISIS did.

            Where was the criticism of Obama during any of this? That last part about using Shia militias to commit atrocities was especially terrible and if that happened under Bush, Democrat would have been rioting in the streets. Instead the “anti-war” Democrats are not only silient but 100% in support of Obama.

            To give Obama credit, he stopped with this policy. Iraq may very well push ISIS back out of Iraq by the end of the year. It would have been quicker with American troops helping and wouldn’t have even been necessary had Obama and Hillary not turned their backs on Iraq.

            It is possible to recognize the good and bad things done by Bush and Obama, at least for some people.

    2. Jim,

      Too bad that the report was a bi partisan ass-covering piece of dreck.

      You still haven’t caught on to that the establishment is the establishment regardless of party affiliation.

      And you conveniently forget that everyone else – Euros etc. all thought the same thing Bush did.

      1. And you conveniently forget that everyone else – Euros etc. all thought the same thing Bush did.

        They thought that Hussein was lying about not having WMDs. They didn’t think the threat of Iraqi WMDs justified a ground invasion, and they didn’t use phony claims about WMDs to justify such an invasion. The consequential mistake wasn’t being wrong about WMDs, it was invading Iraq. The Bush administration alone made that decision.

        2. “It’s a well-documented fact that the Bush administration lied about the WMD threat to build support for the Iraq war. ”

          Ah ok so you’ve changed your argument. First you were arguing that Bush lied (above quote) about WMD to start a war……..

          “They (Euros etc) thought that Hussein was lying about not having WMDs. ”

          Oh but NOW you’re saying the Euros agreed with Bush ( who you claimed was lying) but just didn’t want to go to war.,

          We are not in kindergarten, Jim. You don’t get to slide your position around just because your initial one is provably false.

          Unless of course, you admit your first argument was dreck. But you can’t bring yourself to do that can you?

          1. 1. Bush lied about WMD intelligence to build support for a ground invasion of Iraq.
            2. Many people, including allies, thought Hussein had WMDs, but did not favor an invasion, much less take action to initiate one.

            There’s no contradiction between these two statements, and both are true.

          2. That’s like saying that when a student gets an 80% on a test, they lied on 20% of the answers.

            For all the countries that didn’t favor war, Bush did an amazing diplomatic job getting sooo many to fight with us.

            And you are back to admitting that there were WMD and that the rest of the world thought so too. So it looks like you agree with Bush that Iraq was in violation of the agreements made at the end of the Gulf War. Not sure what you would do to wind that situation down. Oil for Food lead to a million Iraqi deaths and was unsustainable. The status quo was a defacto state of war, which you embraced earlier in this thread.

            You are taking a pro war position but then quibble about the nature that war should take.

          3. You are taking a pro war position

            Nope. It’s possible to believe that Hussein was in violation of UN resolutions, possessing and/or seeking chemical weapons, and yet not support war. North Korea and Syria are in violation of UN resolutions, and possess chemical and/or nuclear weapons, and I don’t support invading them either.

    3. WMD was just one of a laundry list of reasons used to justify going to war. At the time, Democrats were complaining that there were too many reasons and of course, other Democrats were saying what they had for the previous eight hears, that Saddam had WMD.

      In the end, the stockpiles were not as large as thought but we did pull out 550 tons of yellow cake and thousands of chemical rounds. So it isn’t like there were zero WMD.

      The strange thing is that ISIS got access to a lab and possibly WMD when they invaded Northern Iraq. You would think the military under Bush or Obama would have cleaned that up.

      Some of the things claimed about WMD turned out not to be accurate but Iraq did have WMD. The things the Bush administration were saying, were the same things we heard from Bill Clinton and congressional Democrats for nearly a decade to justify the Oil for Food program, under which 1,000,000 Iraqis died, and the no fly zone along with repeated air strike campaigns.

      Our history prior to Bush and the views of Bill and Hillary Clinton among a multitude of other Democrats is something Democrats like to flush down their memory hole.

      1. It’s true that many people thought Iraq had WMD. But the Bush administration was alone in going far beyond that, lying to the public and Congress about what the intelligence said, in order to justify a ground invasion. Only to discover that they’d been completely wrong all along. If they’d made their case honestly, there’s a chance that Congress and the public would have balked, and a disaster would have been averted. By making the case for war with known falsehoods, they assumed responsibility for everything that followed.

        2. Except they were not completely wrong. Your thinking is just another case of Democrats putting party before country. Democrats are not anti-war. They don’t give a rip about any of Obama’s wars.

    4. It’s also the bipartisan conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which wrote in its Phase II report:

      “the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

      No, that quote does not say what you claim it says.

      For me, the evidence that the Administration wasn’t entirely lying is in the actions of the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz who did an abrupt about face on the reasons for the Iraqi War in April, 2003 when WMD teams were failing to turn up evidence of recent WMDs. Suddenly, the war was primarily about freeing the Iraqi people. If he had known from the beginning that Iraq didn’t have WMD (and he would have known), he wouldn’t have been caught so flat footed.

      1. Hell, if they’d been lying liars who hate truth they might have just, you know, faked up some WMDs.

        (This is my argument against the 9/11 conspiracy guys, who claim a super-successful, devious, murderous conspiracy to being us to war in secret… followed by not even the smallest attempt at faking justifying evidence.

        Which makes total sense, right?)

    5. Too bad the final Robb-Silberman report doesn’t agree.

      Note things like “The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) likely conveyed a greater sense of certainty about analytic judgments than warranted.” and “The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion […]”

      And of course, the Phase II report’s actual individual conclusions back up the President’s claims as substantiated by the available intel for Iraq’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and delivery systems, and links to terror organizations, though not statements or implications of “partnership” or weapons training for Al-Qaeda; contacts between the two were substantiated.

      The only vaguely significant thing that was plain wrong that I can see is the idea that Hussein was prepared to give WMDs to terrorists to attack the US – because the 2002 NIE thought it unlikely; of course, the report didn’t cover intel at a lower scale than the NIEs and PDBs.

      (It does say Powell went over the line on hardened bunkers once.

      Lying us into war!!!)

      (Also, statements about post-war Iraq “did not reflect the concerns” expressed in the briefs.

      Horror!)

      You might wish to read the report, and especially the minority report, before telling us it was just lies.

      Hell, the WMD program stuff is what the very report you mention says the President didn’t lie about; not even Rockefeller can spin it that way.

      1. Too bad the final Robb-Silberman report doesn’t agree

        Silberman: “Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry.”

        The Robb-Silberman report can’t exonerate Bush for a charge it did not even set out to investigate.

  6. In my opinion, Trump’s appeal comes from:

    1) He’s willing to say what’s on the minds of millions of Americans and he doesn’t sweat the consequences….

    2) … as opposed to the Establishment and dozens of namby pamby wishy washy cowardly republicans.

    3) And he says it directly without hedging or ass-covering.

    This blinds them to the fact that Trump would disappoint them Yuugely if he ever got into office.

  8. An example of the Bush administration lying by omission about WMD intelligence; I don’t recall reading about this particular one before:

    In September 2002, for instance, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “the Iraq problem cannot be solved by airstrikes alone” because Iraqi chemical and biological weapons were so deeply buried that they could not be penetrated by American bombs.

    Two months later, however, the National Intelligence Council wrote an assessment for Mr. Rumsfeld concluding that the Iraqi underground weapons facilities identified by the intelligence agencies “are vulnerable to conventional, precision-guided, penetrating munitions because they are not deeply buried.”

    On Thursday, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, said Congress was never told about the National Intelligence Council assessment.

    1. Good example of conspiracy theory lunacy. Again, spare us. We all have a lot of experience with this kind of paranoid nonsense, where everything is intentional and everything goes into the theory.

      If anyone wants to know the actual story, he can read Douglas Feith’s “War and Decision”, which provides actual documents, including notes from meetings and including everything, on the process that led to the decisions on the Iraq War. Every document is available in its entirety online; almost everything is declassified by now. Then he will know what they were thinking, every single step along the way. It’s not hard.

      Or he can continue making stuff up, based on Truther-y kind of proofs. Some people prefer that. They like their picture better than cold reality.

    2. So you are bringing up the age old debate about air wars vs ground wars in terms of effectiveness. How are Obama’s air wars working out?

      You seem to be endorsing the arial occupation of Iraq. Not sure how that is morally superior, extracts us from the conditions left behind by Clinton, or is not engaging in war. Its a pretty anti-war position to take, just bomb them in perpetuity.

      1. Wodun,

        This is Jim’s way of diverting the thread to a completely unrelated topic…

        Trump was wrong when he said what he said.

        Jim is wrong…well pretty much all the time.

          1. I think Trump would be a terrible president, and that his success in this race is an indictment of the GOP and a large fraction of its voters. But one of the things that made Trump’s rise possible is the GOP’s institutional denial of obvious facts, including the fact that Bush lied to make the case for the Iraq invasion, and the fact that he did not keep the country safe on 9/11. That denial makes it possible for Trump — an incorrigible fabulist — to position himself as a bold truth-teller.

          2. I think Trump would be a terrible president, and that his success in this race is an indictment of the GOP and a large fraction of its voters.

            A lot of Trump’s voters are Democrats. If he gets the nomination (or runs independent) he’ll get a lot of their votes.

          3. The Trump Sanders debates should be entertaining. Democrats can finally drop the lie they aren’t socialists.

            No tough questions directed at Sanders or the Democrats for advocating a totalitarian system of government responsible for at least 100,000,000 deaths in the last century and hundreds of millions more suffering under persecution on par with the worst abuses ever inflicted on other humans.

            Sanders and Clinton are already calling for stripping first amendment rights from their intended victims and promising to rule by dictate.

            I can’t wait to see Trump goading Sanders into erupting, “You will be the first one up against the wall.”

          4. A lot of Trump’s voters are Democrats.

            They are far, far outnumbered by Republicans. There’s a reason Trump is running as a Republican: he would have no chance in Democratic primaries. According to Gallup his net favorability among Republicans is +30, while among Democrats it’s -74. No other 2016 presidential candidate is as disliked by Democrats as Donald Trump (Ted Cruz is a distant second at -54).

          5. I wonder if his favorability would change if he ran as a Democrat? How much of those numbers comes from the “R”?

          6. Quite a bit, I’m sure. There’s a lot of tribalism on both sides of the aisle, and Trump would find Democrats even easier to hornswoggle than Republicans. But if he’d decided to run as a Democrat (which would be perfectly justified and actually a much better fit by his record and positions over the years) he’d be running a different campaign.

      2. Thing is Wodun, as everyone (but Jim it seems) knows, aerial occupation of Iraq was tried and the Democrats said it was ineffective. Lotta dead Kurds.

        Who were killed by?

        WMD.

        1. Madeline Albright:

          Make no mistake, if we use military force, it will be because Saddam Hussein has refused to accept a peaceful solution. If we do not use force, it will be because Iraq has finally agreed to give UN inspectors —

          First of all, I’d like to repeat and say that the United States does not challenge Iraq’s territorial integrity, nor do we want to see the Iraqi people suffer any further. Our problem, and the world’s problem, is with Iraq’s leaders. Today those leaders have a choice: they can allow UN inspections to proceed on the world’s terms, or they can invite serious military strikes on ours.”

          And of course we know Sadam did not allow unfettered inspections.

          This re-writing of history by Dems and their shills and tin foil accolytes is pretty rancid.

        2. That’s a creative take on history. Saddam gassed the Kurds in the 1980s. We tried “aerial occupation” (i.e. no-fly zones) in the 1990s.

          1. Yes but Saddam was still slaughtering a lot of Iraqis with woodchoppers and such under the aerial war.

            Point is we knew Saddam had WMD. That he used them flies in the face of Democrat’s claims he didn’t have them.

            You never said what should have been done to wind down the war in Iraq nor recognized the Democrat’s positions on Iraq under Clinton and Bush prior to Democrats backstabbing our country.

          2. So in your opinion it’s “creative” to say Saddam had WMD and used them when…

            you admit Saddam had WMD and used them.

            Your brain must be a complicated Escher drawing.

          3. So in your opinion it’s “creative” to say Saddam had WMD and used them

            No, it’s creative to say (as you did) that our “aerial occupation” resulted in a lot of Kurds being killed by WMDs. It’s creative to think that something that happened in the 80s was the result of something that happened in the 90s.

      3. So you are bringing up the age old debate about air wars vs ground wars in terms of effectiveness.

        No, I am pointing to yet another example of the Bush administration lying about WMD intelligence in order to further the case for their preferred policy.

        1. So what is a more effective method of waging war wasn’t important? You are arguing for a perpetual aerial occupation of Iraq, which was also innefffective.

          The Bush admin made the case that the status quo wasn’t sustainable or effective and required other tactics. You can certainly disagree with the path they chose but you also have to recognize the conditions Clinton left behind that required a change of tactics, Clinton and the Democrat’s past positions on the use of military force, their beliefs about Iraq’s WMD, and their support of going to war.

          Its like you blacked out and purged the 1990s from your memory.

          1. You are completely missing the point. The Bush administration told Congress that according to their intelligence an aerial assault would be ineffective because the targets were buried. Then the National Intelligence Council concluded that the targets weren’t buried. The honest thing at that point would have been for the administration to pass the new intelligence to the Senate Intelligence committee, and make the case that a ground invasion was still the best option. Instead they withheld the information.

          2. ” The Bush administration told Congress that according to their intelligence an aerial assault would be ineffective ”

            Aerial assault had been ineffective during the Clinton years. Even Shock and Awe wasn’t entirely effective because the damage was not widespread but rather too targeted. Considering the amount of bombs and cruise missiles used in Shock and Awe, you can’t possibly claim an a war would have accomplished what you claim it would have.

            “Then the National Intelligence Council concluded”

            After the fact, it is pretty easy to pick and choose what intelligence should and shouldn’t have been believed.

          3. After the fact, it is pretty easy to pick and choose what intelligence should and shouldn’t have been believed.

            The point isn’t that Rumsfeld didn’t believe the National Intelligence Council. The point is that he didn’t pass their findings on to the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaving unchallenged his earlier assertion that the targets were buried. Failing to pass on intelligence that doesn’t fit your position is lying by omission.

  9. Jim,

    Please watch this video – preferably with your tin foil hat off….

    https://youtu.be/Cwqh4wQPoQk

    Watch all of it. Note Pelosi and both clinton’s and Rockefeller’s Evan Bayh’s and Harry Reid’s comments.

    “Congress approved it with broad bi-partisan support.”

    Then please stop trying to divert the thread onto your pet tin foil hat conspiracy theories.

    1. I watched the video. Evan Bayh is the only Democrat stating that a ground invasion is a necessary response to the threat of Iraqi WMDs. And Bayh, like the other Congressional Democrats quoted, was on the receiving end of intelligence that the administration knew to be misleading.

      It’s particularly outrageous to cite George W. Bush’s 2005 that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence investigation cleared his administration of distorting WMD intelligence. The committee had decided to put off examining the question of the administration’s use of intelligence until Phase 2 of its investigation, so Bush is claiming to have been exonerated by an investigation that had yet to take place. When the bipartisan Phase 2 report came out in 2008 it concluded that “the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

      1. Uh, you are the one that claims government investigations are the gold standard and unquestionable. I guess only the ones controlled by the totally ethical Democrats.

        1. Good burn there. And that’s a good point. Who are we to second guess a government investigation that absolves G. W. Bush? I too recall Jim’s words on that:

          There’s a really good reason we don’t use the CBO for arguing budgetary matters.

          Both parties in Congress, the White House, and the various debt and deficit commissions all do; the CBO is the gold standard for fiscal debates in Washington.

          Is there a non-partisan budgetary projection of the effect of leaving fiscal laws unchanged for the next decade that you would consider superior?

          That reason is that the CBO has to assume whatever it’s instructed to assume.

          The projection pointed to is not based on anyone’s instruction, it’s based on current law as written.

          1. Who are we to second guess a government investigation that absolves G. W. Bush

            Who is second-guessing an investigation? Every investigation has a finite scope. A government investigation that does not investigate the charge the Bush misused intelligence cannot absolve him of that charge. The bipartisan government investigation that did look into his use of intelligence concluded that he’d misused it.

      2. I see you forgot to take off your tin foil hat before watching the videos.

        Saddam used WMD’s before Bush’s invasion.

        And you conveniently ignored Pelosi’s comment even after I pointed out to you to take note.

        Dense.

        1. Pelosi said Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. She was wrong. She didn’t say we should invade, and she didn’t AFAIK say anything that she knew to be false. The Bush administration did both.

          Yes, Saddam used WMDs in the 80s. That fact wasn’t considered a reason to invade in the 80s, or the 90s. And clearly it wasn’t a good reason to invade in 2003.

          1. Enough! Enough of the bullshit, Jim!

            Pelosi, Clinton, Rockefeller, all had access to the EXACT SAME BRIEFINGS that George Bush did. Even Saddam thought he had WMD.

            And – here’s the important point – nobody could verify the intelligence because Saddam was in defiance of the 1991 ceasefire agreement and wouldn’t allow UN inspectors unfettered access.

            The US had every right to go in there and take him out whether the WMD existed or not, because the 2003 invasion was due to Saddam’s refusal to abide by the 1991 ceasefire agreement. The 2003 war was not a new war, but a continuation of the Persian Gulf war.

            You’re entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to rewrite history.

          2. Saddam had WMD in the 2000’s. Whether or not it was important enough to invade over, it certainly was important enough to bomb their country for over a decade, issue punitive sanctions, and require weapons inspections. You can’t say the WMD, or other violations, were no big deal after we went to such great lengths against Iraq.

            Also, war came after several administrations used both diplomatic and military means to get Saddam to comply. Blame him for not living up to his end of the agreement. Unlike Hillary blaming Iraqis and Libyans for the Obama administrations wars, there is actually merit in blaming Saddam.

            Ed Minchau is exactly right, failing to abide by the agreements put us in a defacto state of war, especially since we had been been engaging them with our military since the end of the Gulf War.

            But since agreements are not important to you, its no wonder you support giving Iran nuclear weapons and think its no big deal when they cheat. To you, its all a sham.

          3. Pelosi, Clinton, Rockefeller, all had access to the EXACT SAME BRIEFINGS that George Bush did.

            Nobody in Congress gets the exact same briefings as the president. Bill Clinton got the same sort of briefings as George W. Bush, and he did not conclude that we should invade Iraq. The invasion would not have happened without Bush’s leadership.

            The US had every right to go in there and take him out

            The question isn’t just whether we had the right, but whether it was a good decision, a decision that left the U.S. better off than we would have been otherwise. And it wasn’t.

          4. “Bill Clinton got the same sort of briefings as George W. Bush, and he did not conclude that we should invade Iraq.”

            There you go again, trying to rewrite history i.e. lying.

            Clinton didn’t “declare war”. He just prevented the Iraq military from using Iraq’s own airspace. Dropped bombs on them willy-nilly. Oh no, not a war, no.

          5. There you go again, trying to rewrite history i.e. lying.

            What are you talking about? I wrote that Clinton didn’t invade. He didn’t. Clinton’s took a number of military actions against Iraq, but one thing he did not do is order a ground invasion.

          6. “Clinton’s took a number of military actions against Iraq, but one thing he did not do is order a ground invasion.”

            No, but he did say that war would be necessary within ten years. Clinton used both the military and diplomacy for 8 years to get Saddam to cooperate, he didn’t. He thought the same thing about Iraq as Bush did. Bush used the tools available to him to get Saddam to live up to the agreements, and he didn’t.

            What course of action was left available? Starving the Iraqis didn’t work because Saddam didn’t starve. Bombing didn’t work because Saddam didn’t care if he got bombed or not.

            It is deeply disingenuous to not recognize that war was the last option after several administrations tried to deal with Saddam and that past Presidents had the same views on Iraq as Bush.

            Feel free to put forward your preferred solution to the war that we were waging in Iraq before Bush even became President.

      3. “And Bayh, like the other Congressional Democrats quoted, was on the receiving end of intelligence that the administration knew to be misleading.”

        Ah ok so every one of those democrats has no brains in their heads and simply took Bush’s word for it and were catastrophic dupes, according to you.

        sheesh.

          1. Quit stalling,prevaricating and avoiding the issue, and the collection of Dem statements (e.g. Pelosi):

            You think that all those Democrats had NO other means of gathering and assessing the intelligence gathered.

            You think the people in the intelligence committee had no way to question, dissect, ferret out lies and exaggerations.

            You think they simply drank down Bush’s words, took them at face value and believed him RIGHT AFTER the Bush Gore election battle.

            You think they were all just terribly misled and they had no means of figuring out the truth themselves.

            You think they were poor misguided victims.

            You are a dunce and are dismissed…..

          2. I don’t let those Democrats off the hook — to varying degrees they were credulous and politically cowardly. The handful of leading Democrats who got the Iraq decision right, like Feingold and Gore, should be applauded for their better judgement.

            There are degrees of culpability. Going along with a bad decision is not as bad as making the decision, and making a bad decision is not as bad as willfully lying in order to make the case for a bad decision. That’s what the Bush administration did.

          3. “Going along with a bad decision is not as bad as making the decision”

            What is worse is going along with a decision and then stabbing your country in the back for political reasons. As much as Democrats like to say it was Bush’s war, it was an American war and approved of by our Congress with many Democrat party leader’s support.

            No one has told more lies about Iraq than Democrats. It wasn’t a war for oil. It wasn’t a war to create a colony. It wasn’t a war for Halliburton. It wasn’t a war to finish what daddy started. It wasn’t war of racism to kill brown people. It wasn’t a war started by the Jews.

            Iraq was in violation of the agreements made at the end of the Gulf War. WMD concerns were just some of many violations. There was a legitimate cause to use military force. None of the Democrat conspiracy theories are true and there were WMD in Iraq.

            The conduct of Democrats during the war was appalling and much worse than anything we have seen since. And we have seen from your own reactions and those of your fellow Democrats that you do not care about anything you claim is important because you do not hold Obama or your own party to any sort of standard. #Fen’sLaw

  10. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread….

    From Trump’s his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve” (h/t/ Ed Driscoll):

    “Consider Iraq. After each pounding from U.S. warplanes, Iraq has dusted itself off and gone right back to work developing a nuclear arsenal. Six years of tough talk and U.S. fireworks in Baghdad have done little to slow Iraq’s crash program to become a nuclear power. They’ve got missiles capable of flying nine hundred kilometers—more than enough to reach Tel Aviv. They’ve got enriched uranium. All they need is the material for nuclear fission to complete the job, and, according to the Rumsfeld report, we don’t even know for sure if they’ve laid their hands on that yet. That’s what our last aerial assault on Iraq in 1999 was about. Saddam Hussein wouldn’t let UN weapons inspectors examine certain sites where that material might be stored. The result when our bombing was over? We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons. I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don’t, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.”

    Then in 2004 – when the insurgency rose and things began to go a little sour, Trump changed his mind.

    2. “I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion.”

      Sounds like the Project for the New American Century could have gotten his signature on their letter if they’d asked for it.

    3. Remember that Trump wrote that book while Clinton was President, and what the consensus among Democrats was at that time up until towards 2004. Had he written the book a year later while Bush was in office, I seriously wonder if he’d have written the same thing? Because Trump seems about as much of a Republican as Michael F****** Bloomberg. Merely a flag of convenience that signifies nothing.

  11. Trump walks back attack on George Bush

    By Dan Friedman • 2/14/16 12:37 PM

    Donald Trump sought Sunday to walk back his statements during Saturday night’s Republican debate that former President George W. Bush bore responsibility for the Sept. 11 terror attack.

    “I am not blaming him,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

    Trump continued to imply Bush erred, however. “The CIA said there was a lot of information that something like that was going to happen,” he said. The attacks killed just under 3,000 Americans.

    During Saturday night’s debate, Trump told former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that.”

    “How did he keep us safe?” Trump said later. “I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe.”

    Trump on Sunday also seemed to walk back his claim that the Bush administration deliberately misled Americans in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

    “They lied,” Trump said during the debate. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none.”

    On Sunday, Trump said George W. Bush “thought there were weapons of mass destruction, maybe, or maybe he didn’t.”

    1. Its amazing when people think the CIA should or shouldn’t be trusted. They take so many positions that its easy enough to find one after any given event to support just about any other alternative.

    2. And they knew there were none

      That’s hyperbole — no one could know to a certainty that there were no WMDs. But he’s on solid ground when he says that Bush did not keep the country safe on 9/11, and that Bush deliberately misled Americans in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. It’s about time the GOP grappled with those facts.

          1. Uh, is Neither a choice? How about we admit that presidents can’t “keep us safe”? They can react afterwards and blow up our enemies, which may or may not be a good idea, depending.
            Gosh, why didn’t Obama protect us from that shooting last year? He should have been out there himself, personally using kung fu on the murderer.
            Ridiculous. Kind of on par with the claims that Bill Clinton improved the economy, because the WWW was invented during his tenure, and that Obama fixed the recession, because if you waited long enough most stuff came back, surprise, like every other recession. Correlation is not causation, and most things are not under a president’s control.

          2. It’s also obvious to any rational listener that, in context, the Jeb!(tm) statement about Trump building a reality show while GWB built a national security apparatus to keep us safe is referring to the post-9/11 timeframe. Most obviously because what national security apparatus was being actively built up before 9/11? It’s a ridiculous kind of “gotcha” cheapshot because someone in the heat of a debate didn’t fully qualify his statements to make it obvious even to idiots. Not that that will prevent those that willfully misunderstand from trying to make hay on it…

          3. By that standard, Obama is a terrible President who couldn’t keep us safe. Just the other day, there was yet another terror attack. How many has that been under Obama?

          4. The terror death toll under Obama (and every other president) looks pretty good compared to Bush. Which is why the unqualified “Bush kept us safe” mantra that the GOP has been chanting since 2004 is such a ridiculous one.

          5. “The terror death toll”

            That depends on how you do the accounting. Less Americans have died in our home country only due to the large number lost on 9/11. However, post 9/11 there were far fewer Americans killed by Islamic terrorism in the USA than under Obama. Also under Obama, there have been far more Islamic terrorist attacks in the USA.

            Obama and the Democrat’s response was an exercise in victim blaming.

            Then you could take a look at the events on other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan or even Libya, Syria, Yemen, and others.

            And once again, Hillary blamed Iraq and Libya for the fallout from the Obama administration’s policies. AKA victim blaming.

      2. Hmm, I have heard many Democrats say with certainty that there were no WMD. You even said that.

        But how does your claim that no one could say there were no WMD fit with yor claims Bush lied?

        1. The lie wasn’t “Iraq has WMD.” Bush, with his aides, lied by saying specific things (e.g. that Iraq’s aluminum tubes could really only be for nuclear enrichment) that contradicted what they knew at the time, in order to strengthen the case for an invasion. Those statements were lies when they were uttered. They would have been lies even if we’d found an operating biological weapons plant in Saddam’s basement.

          1. More goalpost shifting.

            You seem to think the Bush administration should be under the unique requirement to portray everything in the worst possible light rather than put forward their best case. That they turned out to be wrong on some things and right on others, doesn’t mean they lied.

            Lying is what Obama did in taking us to war in Libya and repeatedly in the aftermath.

          2. They did more than put forth “their best case”. They said things that they knew weren’t true. Rice said the tubes were only for centrifuges; she’d been told they probably weren’t for centrifuges. Rumsfeld said that there wasn’t any debate about whether Hussein had WMD; he knew that there was considerable debate, because he’d been part of that debate. Cheney said that there was no doubt that Iraq had active WMD programs, but the intelligence briefings he’d received were full of doubts. Those statements weren’t just false, the speakers knew they were false when they were made. As the bipartisan investigation concluded, the administration repeatedly reported uncertain and even non-existent intelligence as fact. They were like cops who are so sure the perp did it that they plant evidence to ensure a conviction.

  12. “It’s one thing to say we had bad intel; it’s entirely another to say that Bush deliberately lied us into war. That’s the ravings of the left, not a leading Republican candidate.”

    Bingo. Perfectly said, Rand.

  13. It’s not that Trump attracts. It’s that the GOP establishment repels. Consider Frank and Lisa Murkowski: Cronyism escalating to outright nepotism. Lisa is up for election again this year and has the utter gall to run in the GOP primary. And — of course — has the backing of the national party.

    I can’t read minds but if I were Sarah Palin the Murkowski family alone would be reason enough to ignore the field badly led by bad example Jeb Bush and recently mis-led by hereditary son-of-a-governor Governor Romney and I, as she did, would endorse some well financed alternative. Trump repels too, frankly, but at very least in a race presumed to be against the wife-of-a-governor even more corrupt than Texas’s own Ma Ferguson, Trump offers a real choice.

    Otherwise we might as well have acclaimed the Kennedy dynasty kings.

    1. It says a lot that both repell so much but Trump is doing so well. If Trump’s comments about Bush don’t hurt him, it shows how effective 16 years of Democrat’s media assassination has been. Kinda weird the people who claim the media is a wing of Democrat party going along with it though.

  14. Maybe this will help Trump in South Carolina:

    Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is being praised by Code Pink, a group working to end U.S. wars and militarism that has protested the Iraq War.

  16. That’s really strange: the head of the commission that investigated WMD says that President Bush definitely didn’t lie. http://www.wsj.com/articles/laurence-h-silberman-the-dangerous-lie-that-bush-lied-1423437950 He goes so far as to say that no one involved believed that at all.
    But Jim keeps quoting that commission as proof. How odd! Perhaps the head of the commission didn’t read his own report? Or Jim didn’t.
    But that’s how conspiracy theories work. Everything is filtered by how well it fits the theory. This sentence can stay in, ignore that one.

    1. That’s really strange: the head of the commission that investigated WMD says that President Bush definitely didn’t lie.

      Silberman: “Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry.”

      Silberman did not even look into whether Bush lied in his use of intelligence. It takes some chutzpah to proclaim Bush innocent of something you didn’t even investigate.

      But Jim keeps quoting that commission as proof.

      No, I keep quoting the results of a totally different investigation, the only one that actually looked into Bush’s use of intelligence, and concluded that he’d repeatedly misrepresented it.

      1. Huh – that’s the one you’re calling a “bipartisan” report, where the Republican members of the committee disagreed with its results but were outvoted by the partisan Democrats? Once again, anyone who wants to actually know what people were thinking is welcome to read the actual documents; they are all available in Feith’s book and on his website. Anyone else can rely on the partisan groups they prefer.

      2. “No, I keep quoting the results of a totally different investigation,”

        Yes..the aforsaid piece of dreck written by Democrats who – previously – were all for the war because it was politically expedient and who then were all against the war….because it was politically expedient.

        The very same democrats who swore Saddam had WMD before they swore Saddam didn’t have WMD…..

        The very same democrats who had access to all the intelligence that Bush did and who could analyze it themselves and draw their own conclusions – prior to the invasion – and who concluded Saddam had WMD and said so.

        The very same democrats who you claim merely took Bush at his word and so were widdle innocent victims who bamboozled by Big Evil Old Bush.

        Which is it? Did they take Bush at his word and not do the due dilligence required by analyzing all the intel they had equal access to and forming their own conclusions with?

        Or did they have the same intel and draw the same conclusions and went to war?

        Dense.

          1. I did.

            Dreck.

            Poor widdle Democrats all bullied by Bush and couldn’t even do their own due dilligence as they are supposed to.

          3. Those questions weren’t rhetorical? Ok. I think some Democrats took the administration at its word, and didn’t look closely enough at the intelligence available to them. Others did look closely, and some of them concluded to their credit that an invasion was a bad idea (most House Democrats voted against the authorization for use of force, as did 21 Senate Democrats). None of them hold the same responsibility for the invasion as Bush; it was his decision, the Democrats only failed to stop him. And certainly none of them were responsible for the Bush administration’s lies.

            Speaking of which, your turn for a direct question: What explanation is there for Condoleezza Rice’s statement that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs” other than the obvious one, that she was lying to make a stronger case for invasion?

          4. No they were not rhetorical. When I ask a question I’m expecting an honest forthright person to answer it.

            Not dissemble, prevaricate, delay, obfuscate and change the subject.

          5. When I ask a question I’m expecting an honest forthright person to answer it.

            And yet, when I just asked you a direct question, you ignored it.

  17. Interesting Trump Bankruptcy info from Kevin Williamson – 4 Chapter 11’s:

    #1

    “Trump’s first bankruptcy was in 1991 after he borrowed a stupidly irresponsible amount of money to finance that monument to excruciatingly bad taste known as the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Trump is such a good manager that the casino’s slot machines began failing during its first week of business. Never one to let reality stand in the way of his confidence, Trump had financed the $1 billion project largely with junk bonds, which meant very high interest payments. Trump did not make enough money to meet his interest payment and so was forced into bankruptcy. His ownership of the casino was diluted, and he ended up having to give back 500 slot machines to the company that had provided them.”

    #2

    Trump’s second bankruptcy came with his acquisition of New York City’s Plaza Hotel. The great dealmaker did essentially the same thing with the Plaza that he had done with the Taj Mahal: He borrowed too much money, at rates he could not afford. And in much the same way that he has contemplated putting his abortion-loving sister on the Supreme Court, he made his then-wife, Ivana, president of the Plaza. Once again, Trump was unable to make his debt-service payments. Once again, he lost much of his ownership stake — 49 percent went to Citibank — and, once again, he found himself having to run for the doors as parties with deeper pockets and more managerial acumen took over to clean up his mess. In the case of the Plaza, that was CDL Hotels International, of Singapore, and Prince Walid bin Talal, of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi prince laments that he was twice forced to “bail out” Donald Trump, whom he describes as a “disgrace to the United States.”

    #3:

    In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, a holding company for various Trump properties including the Taj Mahal and a riverboat-gambling company in Gary, Ind., went into bankruptcy, having acquired $1.8 billion in debt while raising only $130 million through an initial public stock offering. Same story: Trump had borrowed too much money, at a rate he could not afford (15 percent, in fact, which lets you know how credit-worthy the market deems Trump to be), and once again he was obliged to give up most of his ownership stake.

    #4

    Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts was reorganized as Trump Entertainment Resorts . . . which promptly went bankrupt, filing for Chapter 11 protection in 2009. (That’s right: Trump, who wants to be president of these United States, was in bankruptcy that recently.) Too much debt at an interest rate that he couldn’t afford to pay? Check. Loss of ownership? Check. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, both resigned from the board just before the bankruptcy filing, inviting unkind rodential-nautical metaphors.

    Trump also is lying about self-funding his campaign: Like any other politician, most of his money comes from donors. That famous fund-raising for veterans? The money is going into Trump’s personal foundation.

  18. This is how you handle Trump and win elections:

    “Cruz dares Trump to sue him over abortion ad, vows to run it ‘more frequently’ “

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