Ignoring Romney's Iraq falsehood, Wash. Post called Huckabee's Reagan remark the "Gaffe of the Night"
A graphic accompanying a June 6 Washington Post article about the previous night's Republican presidential debate asserted that the "Gaffe of the Night" was committed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who "incorrectly sa[id] [that] yesterday was Ronald Reagan's birthday." The graphic itself, however, contained a much more significant misstatement: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's erroneous account of the events leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Asked during the debate if it was "a mistake for us to invade Iraq," Romney replied, [W]e wouldn't be in the conflict we're in" if "Saddam Hussein had open[ed] up his country to IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction." In fact, Hussein did allow IAEA inspectors into Iraq before the invasion, and they "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." Saddam also allowed the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) into Iraq before the invasion, and its inspectors "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction."
Tom Fahey of the New Hampshire Union Leader led off the debate by asking Romney if the United States had made a mistake in invading Iraq:
FAHEY: Governor Romney, I wanted to start by asking you a question on which every American has formed an opinion. We have lost 3,400 troops, civilian casualties are even higher, and the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?
ROMNEY: Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will. And what I mean by that -- or a null set -- and that is that if you're saying, let's turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction -- had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions -- we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.
Analyzing the debate on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN political contributor Paul Begala said that Romney had made a "huge mistake" and that "if this were a general election debate, [it] would be a disqualifier." Begala then went on to correct Romney's "gaffe":
COOPER: You say that Romney made a big mistake tonight on Iraq.
BEGALA: A huge mistake, a gaffe that -- that's, if this were a general election debate, would be a disqualifier. He said -- we just heard the bite -- he said that, if Saddam Hussein had allowed IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors into his country to ascertain whether he'd had weapons, we wouldn't have had this war. He did.
On September 17 of 2002, the Iraqi government, under Saddam Hussein, allowed IAEA weapons inspectors into their country. Over 250 of them went, led by Hans Blix. They searched the whole countryside and found nothing. While they were still searching, on March 17 of 2003, George W. Bush told them to get out 'cause he was starting a war. And, on March 20th, we started the war.
You can't get something like that wrong. I mean, that's like -- that's like saying the Mexicans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Yet instead of highlighting and rebutting Romney's falsehood, The Washington Post's graphic cited Huckabee's inconsequential remark about "Ronald Reagan's birthday," even though the same graphic contained Romney's comment about Iraq.
As Begala noted, in September 2002, Saddam agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq. The UN Security Council subsequently voted to allow the IAEA and UNMOVIC to travel to Iraq and examine its alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, with the first inspectors arriving in the country in November. The IAEA focused only on Iraq's nuclear weapons capabilities, and on March 7, 2003, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the Security Council that, "to date," the IAEA (through its Iraq Nuclear Verification Office) had "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." Just over a month later, on April 14, in another letter to the Security Council, ElBaradei wrote that the IAEA had again concluded that "[i]n the nearly four months during which the IAEA was able to conduct inspections in Iraq, significant progress was made in assessing the status of Iraq's nuclear related capabilities" and that "as of 17 March, 2003, the IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." Congruent with Begala's claim on Anderson Cooper, ElBaradei noted in his April 14 letter that, "[o]n 17 March 2003, the IAEA ... had to withdraw its staff from Iraq, as part of the decision to withdraw the staff of UNMOVIC and other UN staff, out of concern for their safety following an advisory of upcoming military action."
Similarly, in its May 30, 2003, report to the Security Council, the executive chairman of UNMOVIC wrote: "In the period during which it performed inspection and monitoring in Iraq, UNMOVIC did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items from before the adoption of resolution 687 (1991)."
I saw this event as it unfolded last night.
The two rightwing commentators there with Begala tried to excuse Romney's remarks away. Begala was flabbergasted, and almost jumped out of his chair several times in his disbelief that they would try to act like Romney's comments weren't 100% inaccurate.
THANK YOU MMFA! I was flabbergasted by Romney's lies -- IF he had stated that the inspectors were in Iraq, IF he had pointed out that Hussein had allowed them in, IF he had noted that WWMD were found, IF he had noted that the inspectors were pulled out before they were finished because of Bush's pre-emptive war against -- fantasy weapons! -- I might have begun to call him on his utter ignorance of the term "non-sequitur" and "null set." As of yet, I hadn't seen ANY media condemnation of Romney's out-Right lies. Thanks MMFA, for being my watchdog!
Silly MMfA.
An outright lie is not a "gaffe," not if you're a Republican candidate.
They call it a "job skill."
You're absolutely right, VAL.
It would have been a gaffe if Romney didn't lie about the weapon's inspectors.
I have never seen a group of people who couldn't find their a** if both hands were on it.
They want to re-write history to explain the mess they created in Iraq. Nixon had "selective" memory but these guys take to cake!
Republican viewers probably didn't care anyway. "So what, he got the facts wrong... well, if that Begala guy is SO SMART why isn't HE running for President? I'm glad we went into Iraq so we could stop another 9/11."
And apparently all this campaign will be about is whoever can pretend to be Ronald Reagan the best. My bet is on Romney. He looks like a movie president. Him versus Joe Biden, would be like something out of a Capra movie.
Republican viewers probably didn't care anyway. "So what, he got the facts wrong...- fawltylogic
That's assuming that the average Republican doesn't think he got the facts exactly right.
Facts? We don't need no stinking facts!
About a year ago Romney gave his first (I think) major foreign policy type speech, attacking the the visit of former Iranian President Ayatolla Khatemi, who was something of a (innefectual) reformer. Romney's speech betrayed an astonishing level of ignorance. Clearly, neither he nor his staff was aware of the differences between Khatemi and Iran's Supreme Leader, the hard-line Ayatollah Khameini. What they were aware of, obviously, is that an attack on an Iranian leader, do matter how ridiculous, would go over well with at least the Republican base.
I get a bitter chuckle out of the pundits who take Hillary Clinton to task for being "calculating" in her statements, and give this guy (and most guys, actually) a pass on that score. All they can talk about is how "presidential" he looks. Give me a break! John Wayne looked and acted much more like the public's idea of a warrior than Audie Murphy did, but Duke couldn't carry the little guy's carbine. We're not casting a movie here. We need a little more than a department store mannequin.
Just a thought: Does it ever occur to Tweety et al that Romney doesn't get out of bed looking that "presidential?" Maybe Larry Flynt should pay a bundle for a tape of Mitt combing his hair and knotting his tie.
Romney veered into the truth...but he failed to go back far enough. The failure that led us to this point spanned three administrations and multiple sessions of congress.
Saddam violated the UN sanctions...that he agreed to...for many years. Our elected leaders failed to show the guts and leadership to enforce the sanctions. Only 9/11 changed that landscape.
Our government failed the American people...democrat and republican.
And now...an impotent governmental system and pack of worthless politicians that failed miserably in enforcing the sanctions from Gulf War I...want us to believe that they can control illegal immigration...with a grand new plan...oh my aching ass.
the main thing we were worried about were the wmd. many of the democrats who voted for the authorization of force said at the time they were doing it to get the inspectors back into iraq. we did get them there, they were finding nothing and bush caused them to be withdrawn. romney was nowhere near the truth.
Yeah they violated UN resolutions of course it is arguable if they violated 1441 since El Baradarie said as far as he was concerned they hadnt but we had enough of those scofflaws. Of course Israel has violated about twice as many resolutions as Iraq O wonder when we will invade those scofflaws too. I mean we KNOW they have WMDs and have invaded their nieghbor twice since 82. Then again its only out official enemies that warmongers want to make up excuses to invade. Our friends can do the EXACT same things and dont even get a nasty letter from us. Warmongers dont GET the idea that in a moral world you judge friends, your enemies and yourself all by the same standard
Look up the Koch Foundation...they did a scorecard report on Saddam's compliance with 1441...It's an interesting read.
I agree with your assessment of our ignoring Israeli violations of UN sanctions.
Your position of holding friends, enemies and ourselves to the same standards sounds a little conservative to me...but even you and I have stumbled into agreement on a couple of issues over the years.
HMMM the Koch foundation a conservative think tank on one hand ant ElBaradie the man tasked to do the very work 1441 was based on. I am sorry I think I will go with ElBaradei and at the time even the Bush administration wasnt making the claim Iraq was in material breach of 1441
But senior officials said there was no recommendation the president use the term "material breach" -- the language in the U.N. resolution that is the trigger for possible "serious consequences," including military action -- at this time.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/12/18/sproject.irq.us.iraq.war/index.html
In other words, Wesley always manages to find a way to 1) distribute the blame for Bush's failings to 'Democrats and Republicans'...and 2) is kind enough to inform you that you agreed with him all along. All very Republican and all very Wesley.
careful solon el baradie sounds like one o' dem mooslims your in danger of making terrorists comfortable and making marines cry
"Your position of holding friends, enemies and ourselves to the same standards sounds a little conservative to me..." --wesley
It may indeed be a conservative value, but it has not been in evidence for a long time. Maybe it is only a conservative value when they aren't in power. I think loyalty is the highest conservative value. Maybe attention to loyalty has just been trumping attention to even-handedness into non-existence.
Yeah, Wesley, but what about this item?
I think you "veered into the truth" for a second.
No President before Bush got us involved in an invasion of Iraq.
Sanctions were not perfect, but would have been clearly superior to invading Iraq when he had no WMD's. The intelligence was flawed, but Bush invaded months after we had more than bad guesses by intelligence people and misleading information from partisan ex-patriot Iraqi's.
Romney said that Saddam didn't let the inspectors in, and so we invaded. That's not true. Saddam did let the inspectors in, and we still invaded even though the inspectors begged us to hold off because they didn't think that Saddam had any WMD's to worry about!
"Flawed intelligence" was cherry-picked and stove-piped to Cheny and WHIG, you mean, often before being vetted or even showed to by said intelligence gatherers. Sometimes, they DID get to see it, and would say "no, that's not supported." Of course, these opinions were then ignored. Later, they then pointed back and said "Oh, it was flawed...".
Bush was set on invading Iraq a full year or more before it happened in 2003, and created the case for the public to support the invasion by scaring everyone into thinking that Saddam was gonna nuke/bio-weapon us any second, the next nineoneone, all based on said cherrypicked and stovepiped intelligence.
Read John Conyer's book "GWB vs The US Constitution", it lays out the case very plainly. Even Wesley would get it.
Reagan said trees caused pollution...that mount St. Helens was worse for the environment than cars...that submarine-launched missles can be recalled...that "Nikolai Lenin" forwarded the "ten commandments of communism"...that if you were simply caught with a gun in historic England that you were tried for murder...that he filmed concentration camps and spent four years "in uniform" even though he was making movies and never left the country during the war...that OSHA had dozens of regulations on using a ladder...that a year's worth of nuclear waste was small enough to be stored under a desk...as well as coming up with quotations that historians couldn't find and statistics his staffers couldn't explain, and telling a group of Medal of Honor winners a story about a Medal of Honor winner that existed only in the movies or in the pages of Reader's Digest as if it was true. Plus hundreds of other incidents.
So if this is about who is supposed to be emulating Reagan, then Romney and Huckabee making demonstrably false statements certainly qualify. Huckabee deserves extra irony points for making a reaganesque gaffe about Reagan's birthday.
They all want to bring up Reagan because they can not discuss the current 2 term President. They will distance themselves from him as they tried to do at the debate. Fact is as long as these people continue to say that we need to win the war (which we lost ) they have blood on their hands. Support of this war monger administration is immoral.
What is funny is that we have all of these republicans climbing all over themselves to try and be the next Ronny, when we seem to forget the things that he did weren't so good. Let's see. Recession. Death squads in central america. Arms to Iran. Pulling out of Lebannon. I mean, history has judged him to not be a very good President, but after he died, everyone started taking an idealized version of him during his 2 terms. I will say though, compared to W, I yearn for the days of Ronny.
Not to mention what he did or didnt do for AIDS and his lack of even discussing the crisis. I think we need to go back and model the Clinton years, not the Reagan Years.
Oddly enough, Romney said almost exactly the same thing on Fox's Hannity & Colmes show on May 8 -- he even used his favorite "null set" phrase ... so he's been getting away with this for awhile. Here's the 5/8 transcript:
M. ROMNEY: Well, it's a setting that's almost a null set. Which is, if we knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and if he had complied with the United Nations resolutions to allow IAEA inspectors into his country, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We wouldn't have been having the U.N. sanction him. We wouldn't have had the U.S. angry. So it's kind of a null set. It's impossible.
You can see exactly what they are trying to do, and that is revision. They want to ignore that Bush could of cared less that Saddam let the inspectors in. Bush and his macho Cowboy crap said it was too late , I may be off alitle in my summary but that was the jist of it. It is disgusting what Romney and the other Republicans are now doing.
if we knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction...then we wouldn't have invaded!???
Wow...what simply amazing logic...it boggles the mind. Since proving the negative would be improbable, shouldn't we have established the existance of WMDs beyond a reasonable doubt?
Ooops...sorry, Mr Meter Reader, but if I had known you were not a prowler... But I said I wasn't. I couldn't take your word for it, now could I? Didn't you see my truck? It could be stolen. But did you have to shoot? Couldn't you just run me off? No, then you could have returned and attacked me later. I wasn't here to attack you. I didn't know you weren't going to attack me, did I?
"Null set" = the space between Romney's ears.
I agree. I pointed that out on another thread. Simply amazing "logic".
Romney framed the issue like a man not capable of reasoning correctly on a major issue.
Your example demonstrates the issue very well. The administration framed the debate so that unless the inspectors could (impossibly) prove a negative, we were going to invade. I imagine if the inspectors had actually found large quantities of WMD and destroyed them all, that would have also been spun as a pretense for invasion as well.
The administration had framed the perfect win-win scenario. Any outcome would necessarily result in support for their argument.
This is what happens when fundamentalists are put in charge. They appear to be incapable of a healthy skepticism of any claim (no matter how dubious) that would seem to fit nicely into their philosophy.
Yep, kinda like saying "prove that aliens DIDN'T land on my lawn last night!". Simply cannot be done, thus a moot point.
Well, Romney's partially right when he calls the WMD issue a "null set"...since that's not really why we went in there...it was a lie from the beginning. We're there for the oil, either to steal it or use it as a lever against OPEC...we'll find out when they impeach Cheney....DOH! I forgot myself for a minute; the Democrats, it seems, also have a null set.
Romney should have spoken out.
He was too busy being the genius he is organizing the Winter Olympics.
With Romney, Gulianni, etc bloviating about Reagan and nauseating talking points about Iraq, we still have Ron Paul ...the miracle of the Republican debates...and he's still speaking the truth about Iraq, for those who have ears to hear.
I run into alot of these red,white, and blue consevatives and before long there loyality is selective. They are quick to shop at WalMart and they purchase foreign automobiles and complain about the high gas prices because the american automakers make the all consuming suv's. They are quick to blame the illegal immigrants for all of our social and economic problems. it is so frustrating talking to them because it is like talking to a child who just does get it.
Doris said, "They all want to bring up Reagan because they can not discuss the current 2 term President. They will distance themselves from him as they tried to do at the debate. "
Doris, it has gotten so bad for Bush that I just read in Newsweek that the organizers of the GOP convention are trying to figure out how to host the event without having George Bush in attendance. He may be the first sitting president not to speak at his own party's convention. Wow!!
I am not suprised, I think his own Father is disgusted with him and would rather spend time with Bill Clinton. Bush is the biggest failure in American history.
Likely that Bungle will be given "urgent matters to attend" elsewhere, and may be allowed to "pass through" the stage for a brief photo-op - pix with Prez still sell in some god-forsaken places such as at my near neighbors - but will have to bustle off to protect the country from the latest elevated threat.
That's not a gaffe. That's called the party line. Sure it's a blatant, murderous lie but he knew he was lying, knew he wouldn't get called on it by the 'mainstream' media and he was just repeating what almost any Republican would say. It's the tragedy of our age that this wasn't a gaffe.