Obama calls himself dumb

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-2002-toppling-brutal-dictator-dumb

<Obama argued that deposing Saddam militarily was not necessary, because Iraq posed no “direct threat” to the United States. Obama also cited Iraq’s weakened economy and the fact that it was still possible to contain Saddam’s aggression, repudiating the Bush administration’s rationale that Saddam posed too great a threat to American interests and his own people to be left in power.

“But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history,” said Sen. Obama.

However, as president of the United States, Obama has discounted those same arguments he once made against using military force against brutal dictators.

In his March 28, 2011 speech justifying his decision to attack the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Obama cited Gadhafi’s record of brutality, saying that allowing Gadhafi to continue his brutality was not an option.>

"But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbor"

Kuwait wasn't really under any danger i suppose .

Also i don't get the "brutal dictators" thing , he meant guys who killed over 1.000 Pakistanis in the last few years by using drones ?

We might have you on numbers, but it really lacks the style of burning innocent bystanders, including a pregnant woman, alive in a bank while burning your own country to the ground, doesn't it. We just haven't made it to your level yet.

To topic, I haven't figured Barack's angle on this. It's so tremendously out of character for him to get out front of an action that there's got to be more going on behind the scenes. He's turned himself into a Grade A Prime flip-flopper as you point out, pissed off half his support base, pissed off most of Congress (OK, I'll give him points for good work there), and just doesn't seem to have much to gain from it.

A dictator, oil, and (atleast) one crazy son. What more could you ask for?

dteowner said:

To topic, I haven't figured Barack's angle on this. It's so tremendously out of character for him to get out front of an action that there's got to be more going on behind the scenes. He's turned himself into a Grade A Prime flip-flopper as you point out, pissed off half his support base, pissed off most of Congress (OK, I'll give him points for good work there), and just doesn't seem to have much to gain from it.

Click to expand...

I'll agree with this. It could be posturing for his re-election to sway middle of the road voters. But it's also just as likely that he thought it was good foreign policy after requests from the Arab League and Europe.

Ironic, if we discount the reasons for military action Obama complains about here, we still had more reason for Iraq than Libya.

Personally I think the action in Iraq was a mistake, not the decision to go there, but the execution of it. History has a number of object lessons, dealing with a hostile but weaker nation is one of them. There are two effective militaristic ways to deal with a situation like we had in Iraq.

Option one, lightning strike followed by immediate departure. Trash military materiel, bomb Saddam and family, destroy the nerve gas labs and missile delivery systems (yes they did exist) then simply leave. Not likely to win us any friends, but it achieves the objective while preventing us from getting wrapped up in a religious based civil war.

Option two, domination. For a period of time the province remains under military rule, any and all resistance is crushed swiftly. In a case like this, where the goodwill of the people is an objective, you also begin rebuilding the infrastructure to be better than it was before. Improve the lives and livelihood of the common people while also removing those both obstinate and stupid enough to fight, and you have won the willing loyalty of the nation as a whole. At that point you would either finish integrating, or in our case, set them back up on their own. Not pretty, and far more expensive, but proven dozens of times over to be almost universally effective. Rome crafted an empire of like minded, loyal and happy citizens using this technique. Fortunately, crucifying criminals and displaying the bodies along roadsides won't be necessary.

Instead, our divided government had us trying to do a compromise between the two options, with the result being us trying to police someone else's civil war that hasn't really ended for the past several centuries.

Good summation, but you know what they say about learning from history!!

Well, there is a subtle difference: With or against the UN. It's almost unprecedented (or completely unprecedented?) for the nations of the world to unite like this. Then again, now that NATO is in charge of it all I suppose we're back to square 1 with the Western world going monkey in some other part of the world.

Talking about dumb

http://tinyurl.com/3d7yvz9 (long hilarious article)