Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Apparently Mitt Romney has either forgotten his talking points on Iraq or changed positions. In an interview today he said, "If we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction, if somehow we had been given that information, obviously we would not have gone in." However, four years ago he was adamant that invading Iraq was the right course of action when he said, "It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now."
I hate disparaging our candidates. I wouldn't even bring this up except that Romney supporters are so steadfast in their defense of him even when he appears less than steadfast in his positions. Yes, he does put some qualifiers in the recent statement where there were none in the previous, but if you read the context of the previous statement it reasonably appears to be a change of position.
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Comments:
Dec '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
I still like the Jim Harbaugh for President movement.
Jul '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Just dumb. Intelligence regarding wmd's, like all other intelligence not overtly obvious, is based on percentages. Mitt better understand that calculated guesswork is sometimes all you get and choices have to be made.
Aug '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Who says there weren't WMD in Iraq ? This is a continuing mythology.
Aug '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Disturbing
Jul '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
There certainly were items found that could have had no other purpose than being part of wmd's. Why these findings were not pressed in the news I have no idea.
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Well if David Frum can change his mind on Iraq...
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Diane Ellis, Ed.: Well if David Frum can change his mind on Iraq...
Dec 21 at 3:46pm
David Frum has changed his mind on almost everything.
Mar '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
"I'm Mitt Romney, and I approved of this message. Check back tomorrow though, because you never know."
Jul '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
I see no flip-flop here.
If we had different information we might have acted differently.
This is bunk.
Feb '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Everyone including Mittens is looking at this from the perspective of a history in which we invaded Iraq removed the Hussein regime.
If we had not invaded Iraq just what would be going on there now? Keep in mind that the sanctions were unraveling by the time of the invasion and certainly would have disintegrated by now.
I think Hussein would have resumed the weapons programs as soon as he was able and by now if left unmolested he would have nuclear weapons. And since Hussein had the amazing ability to guess completely wrong about the consequences of his actions by now he would have used nukes, likely against us. And in that case either we would have turned Iraq into a collection of glass-bottomed craters or we would have invaded.
What does this have to do with Mittens?
Either he doesn't understand this or he is pretending not to for political reasons. Neither speaks well of him.
Aug '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
We just killed the guy who accepted the combined assets of equipment and thousands of workers and scientists from Iraq. Having a guy named "Chemical Ali" doesn't mean anything else.
May '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Agreed.
Isn't Romney just saying he was right to support the war based on the information available at the time, and perhaps also that we should finish what we started? To say he would have made a different decision with different information isn't backtracking.
That said, his answer in the latest interview is poor. We did not invade Iraq only to secure WMDs.
Dec '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Aaron, by the 2008 debates we had the better information. A few seconds later in his answer to the question "was the war in Iraq a good idea worth the cost in blood and treasure we have spent?" he said:
Edited on December 22, 2011 at 1:43amAug '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
The King Prawn:
I wouldn't even bring this up except that Romney supporters are so steadfast in their defense of him even when he appears less than steadfast in his positions.
Maybe some of us are but I'm completely willing to admit that he's a panderbot. I support him because he's one of the least worst options. For instance, I'd rather go with him than a thrice divorced lobbyist who talks like a Bond villain. However this just means that Romney is the tallest midget, not that he's great. Certainly I'd drop him in a heartbeat if Mitch Daniels entered the race.
Jan '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
I don't read this as a change. I think the parsing is getting out of hand. Given what we knew it was right to go in. With hindsight, its reasonable to argue that it was a mistake. We didn't have the benefit of hindsight when we committed, though, and once we committed, we had a duty to see the job through and do what we could to see that a stable, decent government that wouldn't support provocative anti-American actions was in place. I don't think the statements by Romney are necessarily inconsistent, nor unreasonable.
Apr '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
Xennady: Everyone including Mittens is looking at this from the perspective of a history in which we invaded Iraq removed the Hussein regime.
If we had not invaded Iraq just what would be going on there now? Keep in mind that the sanctions were unraveling by the time of the invasion and certainly would have disintegrated by now.
I think Hussein would have resumed the weapons programs as soon as he was able and by now if left unmolested he would have nuclear weapons. Since Hussein had the amazing ability to guess completely wrong about the consequences of his actions by now he would have used nukes, likely against us. And in that case either we would have turned Iraq into a collection of glass-bottomed craters or we would have invaded.
What does this have to do with Mittens?
Either he doesnt understand this or he is pretending not to for political reasons. Neither speaks well of him. ยท
Having lived and worked in Iraq, for the Iraqi government, I'm very sad about his lack of vigor in supporting Bush's decision here.
I completely agree with you, although in his defense, it is a near universal non-understanding.
Mar '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
DocJay
There certainly were items found that could have had no other purpose than being part of wmd's. Why these findings were not pressed in the news I have no idea. ยท Dec 21 at 3:38pm
I know why they weren't. They didn't fit the narrative, and therefore couldn't be reported.
Jim Lacey has a good article on what was found. This stuff was presented in the Duelfer Report, but it isn't in the summary, so therefore you had to read waaaay into the report to find out much.
Apr '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
This is his answer from the June 5th debate, 2007.
It's not a flip flop today, although, again, it is regrettable that he did not support Bush on the 2003 question (he was good on the surge, though, and it's more important to support Bush when Bush was weak than to retrospectively support him when he was strong).
FAHEY: Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?
MITT ROMNEY, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS: Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that -- or a null set -- that is that if you're saying let's turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening 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.
I supported the president's decision based on what we knew at that time.
May '11
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
OMG, I saw Romey order lunch today and he ordered a salad. Yesterday he ordered A SANDWICH. Is there no end to this man's flip-flops????
Seriously, the Romney Derangment Syndrome is just getting kind of stale.
Dec '10
Re: Sigh. Another Romney Flip-Flop
The justification for the war to depose Saddam Hussein went far, far beyond the issue of WMDs. It was only after the invasion that the anti-war Left invented the concept that because there were no WMDs, the entire invasion was based on "Bush's lies."
WMDs were discovered in Iraq after the invasion. More important, there's ample suspicion that in the days before the invasion, Saddam sent his WMD stockpiles and development materiel into Syria.
But Saddam was in violation of a host of UN Security Council resolutions and therefore was in violation of the terms of the armistice that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam was a clear and present danger to world peace and to the Iraqi people, and removing him was a good thing for the world. And if Iraq's new government manages not to implode, that will be an even better thing, because it will show that Arabs don't have to have dictators to lord over them.