MSNBC News Story

Holy hell... I guess this guy thinks he's got some kind of mandate from the people to do whatever the heck he wants. I can't imagine what the justification is going to be.

--Dave

Well, he's not the only president to engage in military operations without public approval. And actually, the US has been hitting Iraqi air defenses periodically for many years now.

Dave, this has been going on for some time now. Bush did not initiate it. The article never even mentioned his name. Give him a break!

I understand that this isn't the first time, however the timing after the election is a little suspicious, don't you think? I also think he's down in Mexico right now to distance himself from this. Stuff like this isn't planned overnight.

--Dave

The article does mention his name:

--The White House said President Bush authorized the strikes on Thursday, and described them as "routine.”--

It's tempting to say that this is a political case of "like father, like son," but it's true that this has been going on for awhile.

Yes, it does. I apologize. I must have missed that the first time...But that doesn't negate the fact that it was going on long before now. It's practically military procedure at this point, it sounds like to me. Sure, Bush authorized it, but they've been doing this for so long now, it seems to make little difference who signed the papers...

Why is it that it was fine for Clinton to do this, but once Bush does it, he takes so much heat?

"Stuff like this isn't planned overnight"

No, but neither is it planned at the White House, and authorization *is* probably given "overnight." The justification seems quite clear: Iraq has been increasing its attacks on aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone, and the decision was made -- almost certainly by theater command -- that the radar/missile sites in question needed to be struck. Unless I'm completely confused about military planning, Andrew Card and George Bush don't stand over a conference table in the White House planning routine strikes against Iraqi radar sites. You can disagree with the current policy on Iraq, but this policy is (as the article states) simply a continuation of previous Clinton Administration policy to aggressively hit Iraqi targets they felt threatened the US forces patrolling the zone. To ascribe to George Bush a giant conspiracy over this to do "whatever he wants" and then to run to Mexico to hide from the repercussions strikes me as ridiculous.

Central Command wanted to these strikes and they have been working their way up the chain of commnad.

What they hit was 5 radar sites.Iraq has been uograding their radars since Operation Desert Fox in '98.

There has been stikes on Iraq about every 3 days for several years now,they only difference this one was close to Baghdad.

-monkeybutt

>they only difference this one was close to >Baghdad.

Yhea i heard that the only reason they had the shurb aprove it was becasue of its proximity to civilans. Give the guy a break atleast he hasn't tried to debate the meaning of the word airstrike.


It will be interesting to see what develops in the middle east now. Without Slick Willey in there mucking things up the peace talks are getting somewhere (the palistine goverment came out and said this). But Sadam just oredered thousands of men into tranning with the proclaimed intent of thorwing the Isralies out of Jerusalm. If he really intends to it would give us an excuse to frag him once and for all. If not whats he gonna do with them?


May Peace Favor Your Sword
ShiningOne

I wounldn't take that threat of marching on Isreal very seriously.He does that every so often,and besides the Isreali army would chew up those "volunteers" in a millisecond.Or we would cluster bomb them to hell before they even got close to Isreals frontier.

-Monkeybutt