An Iraq war convert explains his thinking. I suspect there’s lots of this going on.

While I’m on an anti-war kick, guess who said the following:

“You can support the troops but not the president.”

“[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”

“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years.”

“There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today.”

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

Answers: Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, Karen Hughes, Joe Scarborough, Tom DeLay, and George W. Bush, respectively. They were responding to President Clinton’s foolish forray into Kosovo.

They were right then. They’re wrong, now. Amazing how power changes one’s perspective.

Quotes dutifully collected by this guy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2005 at 8:38 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.