{"id":2035,"date":"2007-01-25T18:13:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T01:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/01\/25\/but-we-already-knew-this\/"},"modified":"2007-01-25T18:13:35","modified_gmt":"2007-01-26T01:13:35","slug":"but-we-already-knew-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/01\/25\/but-we-already-knew-this\/","title":{"rendered":"But we already knew this…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seriously, take a minute and remember the political climate that existed in the summer of 2002.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bush Administration’s Arrogance was backed up by everything, and they wanted to sell the post 9\/11 Afghanistan Resolution as all the Congressional Authorization they needed to go into Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 At any rate, GQ interviews Chuck Hagel<\/a>, and we get this passage:<\/p>\n

GQ: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incredible that you had to ask for that.<\/p>\n

Chuck Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 It is incredible. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t specific to Iraq?<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 But that should also have triggered alarm bells about what they really wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 Well, it did. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not defending our votes; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just giving a little history of how this happened. You have to remember the context of when that resolution was passed. This was about a year after September 11. The country was still truly off balance. So the president comes out talking about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153weapons of mass destruction\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153madman dictator\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Saddam Hussein has, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153our intelligence shows he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capable of weaponizing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and so on.<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored.<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we were presented with. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But I was told by the president\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe all were\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 You were told that personally?<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

GQ:\u00c2\u00a0 Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father?<\/p>\n

Hagel:\u00c2\u00a0 Yep. He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anything in there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been in there. We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it! So to answer your question\u00e2\u20ac\u201dDo I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seriously, take a minute and remember the political climate that existed in the summer of 2002.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bush Administration’s Arrogance was backed up by everything, and they wanted to sell the post 9\/11 Afghanistan Resolution as all the Congressional Authorization they needed to go into Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 At any rate, GQ interviews Chuck Hagel, and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}