sailingaway
03-21-2013, 12:23 AM
The video at the link gives a better impression of what Ron said (the fieriest) than the text but...
WASHINGTON -- When Congress voted to authorize the Iraq War in October 2002, only seven Republicans voted against it -- and they took heat for bucking their party. Looking back now, on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion, many of those Republicans maintained they were right all along and fear that the war wasn't worth the costs, both financially and in human lives.
In interviews with The Huffington Post, five of those seven Republicans explained why they broke ranks and opposed the war resolution, which authorized President George W. Bush to "use any means necessary" against Iraq. Two of those Republicans -- Rep. John Duncan (Tenn.) and former Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) -- did not respond to interview requests.
"To me, it was about growing up in the Vietnam era and not wanting to go through that again," said Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who, in 2002, was the only GOP senator to vote against invading Iraq. "I remember the difficulty the soldiers had coming back here after Vietnam. They had the same issues: PTSD, re-immersion, alcoholism. You have to be prepared to take all that on."
Chafee also didn't believe CIA officials who showed him photos of metal tubes in Iraq and said they were being used to make weapons of mass destruction. He recalled thinking those tubes could have been purchased at a local hardware store and used for a multitude of things.
"More than anything, it was the body language of the CIA that told me it wasn't true," he said.
"There was no threat to our national security, and also the arguments that they were using [for] why we had to go in, I didn't believe them," said former Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), one of the six House Republicans who opposed the war. "I could see where it was going to cost us a lot of money, and I kept saying this even before -- it's going to cost us a lot of money, a lot of lives. It's going to go on a long time."
video and more, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/gop-iraq-war_n_2910618.html
WASHINGTON -- When Congress voted to authorize the Iraq War in October 2002, only seven Republicans voted against it -- and they took heat for bucking their party. Looking back now, on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion, many of those Republicans maintained they were right all along and fear that the war wasn't worth the costs, both financially and in human lives.
In interviews with The Huffington Post, five of those seven Republicans explained why they broke ranks and opposed the war resolution, which authorized President George W. Bush to "use any means necessary" against Iraq. Two of those Republicans -- Rep. John Duncan (Tenn.) and former Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) -- did not respond to interview requests.
"To me, it was about growing up in the Vietnam era and not wanting to go through that again," said Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who, in 2002, was the only GOP senator to vote against invading Iraq. "I remember the difficulty the soldiers had coming back here after Vietnam. They had the same issues: PTSD, re-immersion, alcoholism. You have to be prepared to take all that on."
Chafee also didn't believe CIA officials who showed him photos of metal tubes in Iraq and said they were being used to make weapons of mass destruction. He recalled thinking those tubes could have been purchased at a local hardware store and used for a multitude of things.
"More than anything, it was the body language of the CIA that told me it wasn't true," he said.
"There was no threat to our national security, and also the arguments that they were using [for] why we had to go in, I didn't believe them," said former Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), one of the six House Republicans who opposed the war. "I could see where it was going to cost us a lot of money, and I kept saying this even before -- it's going to cost us a lot of money, a lot of lives. It's going to go on a long time."
video and more, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/gop-iraq-war_n_2910618.html