On Hindsight

Lots of people are fond of asking lawmakers, about the Iraq War, "Would you make the same decision knowing what you know now?" This is a completely irrelavent question. It doesn't matter how lawmakers would react with the proverbial 20/20 hindsight. It matters how they would react with the knowledge they had THEN. We are never going to be facing threats with PERFECT intelligence. There is simply no such thing. Since we are never going to have perfect intelligence, the only relavent question is how are you going to react to threats with imperfect intelligence. Are you going to sit back and hope the threat isn't as big as the intel suggests? This is what we did prior to 9-11. Do we want to go back to that?

Democrats are fond of saying when it's pointed out that they all described Hussein as a threat, "Clinton never took us to war over it." They actually proclaim the fact that they saw the threat but did nothing about it.

Lorie Byrd wrote a great article today on this subject.

After 9/11, we all asked why the dots were not connected. We vowed that never again would our refusal to take action against known threats result in the slaughter of innocent Americans. The points made by Vice President Cheney in 2003 are ones that Republicans must make now. It is necessary, first, to lay the foundation by reminding the American public of what was known in 2002 and 2003, and refuting the big lie that has taken hold as a result of Democrat mantras parroted by a liberal media that Bush "lied" and "misled" the country into war. The administration has made a good start in that effort.

After the record has been set straight, it must be pointed out that Democrats are not to be trusted with the nation’s security. They have shown that not only will they endlessly debate until it is possibly too late but that after a military action has been initiated, in the face of difficulties and waning public support, many will back out and abandon the mission and the troops. The approach of the Democrats to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein as outlined in all of the intelligence reports available prior to the war in Iraq stands in stark contrast to that of the Bush administration.