Well, at least one is. I have to say, I’m floored….literally floored that an editor of The New Republic has the courage to admit something most of the readers of FA already knew. Bush DID NOT lie us into war.
He begins the piece with an earlier example of the flip-flop by Mitt Romney’s father. He had supported the Vietnam war prior to his campaign for President. Once that began he claimed to have brainwashed:
“When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get,” Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.
Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.
Sounds familiar? It does to James Kirchick:
The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration’s case for war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate’s 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: “We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true.” On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that “the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress.”
The problem is that these critics will screech and wail about being duped but when asked for evidence all we hear is crickets:
Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House “manipulation” — that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction — administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.
He doesn’t stop there. He calls out Rockefeller for his partisan report on Iraqi war claims:
Yet Rockefeller’s highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that “top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.” Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.
And then takes them to task for the flip-flopping::
In 2003, top Senate Democrats — not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others — sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month’s report, titled “Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information,” includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees — who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors — many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.
While this editorial is nice to see it’s a bit late don’t you think?
As Wordsmith noted, Scott Malensek has done more work on the dozens of reports that have come out over the years on Iraq then any reporter I know of. Hell, he has actually read the reports while the politicians have not. For some great background on the reasons we went to war with Iraq check out some of his posts:
- KEY Points Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II investigation report on pre-war Iraq Intel
- Senators Remove Their Own Statements from Report on Pre War Iraq Intelligence
- Senators Caught Distorting and Misleading Intelligence Report
- Why America Went to Iraq and What Comes Next
- Democrats Admit: Saddam’s Regime Harbored Al Queda
- How President Clinton Marketed the Invasion of Iraq
- Senate Intell Committee Releases Another Report to Show Bush LIED about Saddam
Meanwhile, guess who is jumping on the “we’re winning in Iraq” bandwagon several years too late. Mr. Obama:
Obama, who secured the Democratic party nomination earlier this month and will run in November against Republican John McCain, said he spoke about improved security conditions in Iraq during a telephone conversation with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.
“I emphasized to him how encouraged I was by the reductions in violence in Iraq but also insisted that it is important for us to begin the process of withdrawing U.S. troops, making it clear that we have no interest in permanent bases in Iraq,” Obama told reporters at the airport in Flint, where he had just arrived for an event on the economy…
Obama says he would begin a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq shortly after taking office. His plan calls for the removal of one or two brigades a month which would allow a pullout of combat troops to be completed within 16 months.
The first-term Illinois senator said he told Zebari that if he wins the White House, “an Obama administration will make sure that we continue with the progress that’s been made in Iraq, that we won’t act precipitously.”
So, does that mean if he were to pull out a few brigades and we started losing some of the progress made he would stop the withdrawal? I don’t think so. He has the nomination pretty much locked up now so the most liberal Senator in Congress is trying to move to the center a bit.
Pure politics.
Obama isn’t the only one jumping on the bandwagon. The AP, that news organization famous for printing anything negative about Iraq whether its true or not, is jumping on:
Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.
Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war’s supporters…
A new sense of confidence has emerged after recent Iraqi-run military operations against Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida, in the northern city of Mosul and against Shiite militiamen in Basra and Baghdad.
Attracting little attention because the MSM stopped reporting on the war once it became clear it was turning around. How else to sell the Bush lied, Bush was wrong meme?
See author page
Strange. I didn’t know James could simply be said to be a liberal; much less, did I know he just “chang[ed] [his] views on Iraq”:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/13169
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/10463
These are from 2005 where he snipes away at Iraq doves. Anyway, he’s just outside of being a boy; what does he know?
James’ recent scribblings are in the Weekly Standard and Commentary; he’s certainly a neoconservative and a Iraq war hawk.
Regarding Obama: “We’re winning in Iraq” does not translate into “Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war’s supporters…”
Your equation of the of Obama’s comments to winning in Iraq is called exaggeration. And no doubt there is pandering in the comments, too. Remember, he is a politician.
But you are right about him being a liberal.
The AP is an ego-driven noise machine; I’m surprised you haven’t joined up with the lefty and righty bloggers in the mutual “boycott” of their stuff by not linking to their pieces:
==========
As an interesting sidebar, if you really want to see some changed views on Iraq, visit McCain’s new updated version on Iraq and look at where the timeline begins. Heck. I’ll save you the hunting and pecking; it begins on August 2003.
Which is pretty strange since it excludes the lead-up to the war and excludes almost half a year of statements at the wars’ conception.
Of course, you’ll never give us an open thread to investigate those “changed views on Iraq” that were excluded prior to August 2003.
so the white wasn’t lying? what a shock. the trueth will set you free and it could be the liberals are learning this. then again maybe they aren’t. we ahve been gaining in iraq for a long time, if they are just now figuring that out then maybe they should leave politics, or their papers or where ever else they are to dumb to be collecting money from.
Poor Doug… he just can’t let go of defeat!
SAD!
Over the weekend I saw a show on CNN that I hadn’t seen before. It was Fareed Zakaria’s GPS. On it, he had Ken Pollack and a guy from the Brookings Inst. They all spoke clearly sans spin on the war. It was very interesting to see three knowledgable people discuss the current situation, the future, and put the decision to invade in it’s place (ie identify that as partisan debate/politicized for political purposes on both sides of the aisle).
Here’s what got me, Zakaria is NOT NOT NOT my favorite commentator. I won’t go into why, but he pressed Pollack and the Brookings Inst guy hard on the future of Iraq and how it relates to the Presidential campaigns. Specifically, the Brookings guy and Pollack both said (as Gen Petraeus will in the next 4-6wks) that American forces can start drawing down beyond pre-surge offensive levels. Pollack, the Brookings Inst, Petraeus (presumably), and Sen McCain all look toward a withdrawal of US forces down possibly to 40-50k by 2013. Zakaria pressed that there was little difference between the Obama and McCain plans for withdrawal, BUT (here’s where it got really interesting-well, at least for me), all three agreed(!!!!!!!) that Sen Obama’s campaign promise to immediately start withdrawing a brigade a month would be dangerous, too much/too fast, and too early.
Why? Because the Iraqi’s elections are coming up. In 2005, the Sunnis boycotted, and as a result the representatives of the Sunni areas are not viewed as true representatives by the Sunnis. That means that things can change very quickly in 2009. Thankfully, even the Sunnis who are expected to get elected will actually be people more supportive of national reconcilliation and of US help (ie moola). Once that election happens, and if it goes as expected, then-repeat….THEN a withdrawal starting in late 2008 and trickling through 2009, can go into a faster pace.
I was amazed at what followed….all three agreed that there is actually a chance for bi-partisan support/plan for the war in Iraq. The difference between Sen McCain’s plan to drawdown and Sen Obama’s are-to specifically quote Zakaria-“infinitesimal”.
Imagine the horror of the left…if Sen McCain and Sen Obama CHANGED the way DC works, and agreed on how to prosecute/successfully end the war in Iraq?
Actually, that seems to be what Sen Obama is positioning to do already. Dare to imagine the unthinkable…Kossacks, Huffpos, DUmmies, and CodePinkerdoodles…all supporting a President who continues the war in Iraq with a plan identical to the Republican nominee’s, as well as President Bush’s? ‘Course, none of the above would dare admit it or face that reality, but boys and girls…it’s about to happen.
The other “scholar” , from Brookings was O’Hanlon (a pro-Iraq surge, invasion hawk)– the three are hardly a group of anti-war doves.
Zakaria stating the differences were “infinitesimal” is plainly a misstep: McCain has strongly opposed, and still opposes, a withdrawal time-line just to mention one huge difference.
Thanks Doug. O Hanlon’s name was on the tip of my tongue, and I just could NOT remember it! 😀
Pollack has been on both sides of the issue, and he addressed that in the show.
Zakaria has also been on both sides of the issue, but more against the war than in support of its success.
I still believe the differences are small. You mention timelines. Depending where/when in Sen Obama’s Iraq-positions-timeline, he has been for them and against them (Youtube vids avail upon req, but I think you’ve probably already seen em).
A “timeline” is an interesting thing. People are for/against “timelines”, but in reality, there have always been “timelines.” Since 2003, the CPA, the DOS, and even the WH have had a series of “plans” for Iraq. Each had dates, benchmarks, and objectives on them including when xyz objectives were to be met (even if ballpark estimates). Ultimately, it’s pure strategic and tactical stupidity to tell the enemy, “American forces that have been gutting your forces will stop doing so and leave on [blank] day.” That kind of a timeline is just not militarily smart…it gets a lot of political “HURRAY!”s from a lot of people, but there’s a difference between doing a job to get it done, and doing a job to get applause. One is real, the other is acting (reference the Film Actors Guild from Team America if one wishes). On the other hand, as I said earlier, many timelines, benchmarks, etc have been put forth in the past, and accomplished (no, contrary to anti-Bush rhetoric, the war in Iraq has not been a 100/100 failure). Some examples would be dates for handing over sovereignty, dates for elections, dates for sending more forces in (prior to sovereignty handover, elections, and the surge) and dates for withdrawing forces from the surge offensive.
Like it or not for either side of the divide over the war, there have been some dates=timelines….and there will be more in just a few weeks when Gen Petraeus is expected to announce further force drawdowns. If that happens, there will be dates issued to units for their withdrawal.
So it is that we need to go the Bill Clinton route of debating the meaning of a word; not “is”, but “timeline” or the phrase “timeline for withdrawal.”
Democratic Presidential candidates were always almost completely unanimous in their desire to keep “some US forces in Iraq” to accomplish the following objectives:
-continue fighting Al Queda
-train the ISF
-protect US forces
This will require tens of thousands of forces. While Democratic candidates told us they would remove US “combat troops” from Iraq by this date or another, that’s a straightup, unchecked lie because the forces needed to continue fighting AQ and to protect Americans in Iraq are….combat forces.
Now, when will the troops come home? That’s often the question associated with “timeline” discussions. Answer: it will be a long time before that happens because there will always been a large contingent of Americans in Iraq doing reconstruction as well as at the embassy, and parallel to that large contingent will be a force of thousands of combat troops needed to protect them. Also, the fight with Al Queda in Iraq will be going on for a long time-as long as the war with Al Queda, and to that end, there will be a need for combat troops in Iraq for a long time.
This doesn’t mean that US forces will be in Iraq forever, but it does mean that a timeline for complete withdrawal is only possible if the three objectives are abandoned. If one asks, “when will the troops come home” they are asking “when will we abandon those three objectives in Iraq?”
It’s gonna be a long time.
When will the bulk of US troops come home? Over the next few years both Sen Obama and Sen McCain aim to reduce the number of troops in Iraq. One says he’ll have a timeline, the other says no, but in the end when orders are issued, they don’t go out to brigade commanders and logistics people saying, “sometime in 2010 you can leave Iraq.” No, there are dates, and if there are dates, then there is a timeline for drawdowns. But the difference between pulling out massive numbers of forces before big events like elections or after is the only difference; not if they will come home, but when, and no matter what-wether it’s sen obama or sen mccain, tens of thousands of Americans will remain in Iraq for years to come.
Everyone likes to say Bush misled us into war with Iraq, but few-especially on the left-dare to ask how Democrats have misled us in opposition to the war, and most shockingly fewer still dare to ask how Sen Obama is misleading people about the future of the war. He will not end it, he will not bring all the troops home, and the timeframe he currently markets for lowering the number of US forces in Iraq is not much different that the timeframe (note, I said timeframe-not timeline) presented by objectives-oriented Sen McCain.
>I’m floored….literally floored
You literally don’t know what “literally” means but you don’t know a lot of stuff so we’ll just toss that on the heap.
And Bush is a liar, that’s been well established from the little things (no more sweets or golf till the war is over!) to the big ones (Iraq has stockpiles of WMD!).
The mystery remains are you really so stupid that you can’t tell when you’ve been lied to or do you just deny it? That you’ve invested so much of your own egos into your Dear Leader and his Iraq adventure that no amount of reality will crack your shells?
Most likely a mix of the two.
Really Salvage? Please show me a bi-partisan investigation that’s found Bush Lied? I’m eager to read it. Till then, all the investigations into the allegation you so fully bought have shown that claim to be little more than a political gimmick to excuse Democrats for making the same claims about WMD etc based on the same-even MORE-intelligence reporting.
Very eager to see the report you’re referring to.
Thanks,
Scott
😀
Scott: You are far too nice to these moonbats like salvage. Anyone so soaked in their own bile isn’t worth the trouble.
Anyway. Here’s more on Obama’s “timetable” for withdrawal from Iraq and later contradictions:
52 seconds.
Of course we all know what will happen if Obama is elected. Iraq will be going so well by then that withdrawals will have begun anyway. Obama will claim that was his plan all along.
There’s a little trick that Democrats like Obama often employ: It’s called demanding action that they know has already been taken or is in the works then taking credit for it.
Salvage, I’m floored that you’re buying into this “Change you can believe in” crap. When you look at how Obama has voted and who he associates himself with, their is no change. It’s politics as usual.
So… you need a “bi-partisan investigation” to figure out that the Bush Administration were lying when all the things they said turned out to be not true?
Well I don’t, I just look at what they said (we know where the WMD are!) and what actually happened (there are no WMD!) and come to the rather obvious conclusion that they were lying.
And yes you can babble about “The Democrats said the same things!!!” and that leads us to the next obvious conclusion; they didn’t invade and occupy Iraq getting hundreds of thousands of people killed while making more terrorists.
That’s kind of an important distinction.
What’s also important is that the only ones who said there were WMD in Iraq were the ones who wanted the war, the UN inspectors and everyone else said there were no WMD.
none.
Bush lied, people died it’s not just a rhyming couplet it’s the truth.
Ah, that’s why you have such a hard time with it, perhaps you have some sort of allergy?
And um… did I even mention Obama?
Mike said:
Invested in Defeat — Part 1
Liberals have been invested in defeat since the day we, (our military) were “bogged down” in the sandstorm during the march to Baghdad. They also fell silent the day Saddam’s statue was pulled down from the pedestal and the world saw a nation liberated from tyranny—-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED # 1.
When the sectarian violence erupted and al Qeada proved to be a force still to be reckoned with, the liberals re-invested in defeat again with the rhetorical “civil war”, “no wmd’s”, and above it all the “Bush lied” while most democrats prior to 9/11 insisted that Saddam had to be removed for all of the same reasons that Bush gave to a congress that overwelmingly approved his removal. While the original rules of engagement retricted our military from overcoming the violence, our hypocritical liberal “friends” insisted (again) that this was an endeavor that was not worth the casualties our forces endured. “Cut and Run”, “Surrender”, and “The war is lost” was the battle cry from the left, (baby-boomer children echoing their pot-smokin’ parents), while the mantra of “another Viet Nam” spewed from the campus’s of higher education.
Bush derangement syndrome also escalated to a fever pitch as the left saw this as an opportunity to make political gains by embracing defeatism as a tool. Historians were already writing epitaphs of not only another defeat by our military, but also questioning this nation’s right to defend itself or if other nations had the right to seek sovereign immunity.
……….to be continued.
Salvage the next time you take a test. Every answer you are not correct on, you were lying. Each time you are wrong on an issue, you are a liar. You’re wrong, that makes you a liar.
In truth you’re just a complete idiot lacking a brain for comprehension.
Yes, Salvage, do bring us the proof of what you are saying.
Bring the links, the sources, the facts.
We can hardly wait.
🙂
You would have been wise to have observed and learned from what happened to Oscar Lewis over the last couple of days here. Perhaps that way you wouldn’t have so eagerly grabbed the tar baby.
Then again, you may not be quite smart enough to learn from the example someone else has set.
I’ll go out on a limb here and go ahead and predict that you will never produce any such thing because it doesn’t exist and because, in the end, the real liar is you.
Of course, feel free to prove me wrong.
Until then you’re just talking out of your ass just like everyone else who says “Bush lied.”.
Sadly you are proof-proof, I could list the endless WMD talk from the Bush Administration and contrast it with the reality and y’all would still gibber endlessly that they weren’t lying they were just saying stuff that they thought was true despite the fact that they were told time and time again that it wasn’t true and they had no reason to think was true.
The UN inspectors said there were no WMD, Bush Admin said there was, UN inspectors asked where the WMD, the Bush Admin. then invaded.
And 100s of 1000s of dead and millions upon millions displaced people later and the BushBots keep marching for Dear Leader.
I gotta go fix my old 82 toyota truck that still gets 32 mpg even with over 450,000 miles on it. Our gas prices here on the coast is at $4.75, (for the cheapest) and rising. Of course, a motor with this many miles on it must certainly be spewing toxics into the atmosphere, (much like Salvage and Doug) but ask me if I give a rat’s ass………….. shades of defeatism revisted.
Funny, I thought Hans Brix had a substantial list of unresolved issues regarding the weapons in Iraq, because they couldn’t find what was claimed to have been there.
Buzz,
As is evident from this thread, Blix is not the only one with unresolved issues.
Rovin (comment #12), you are quite right about BDS reaching pathological levels in many liberals. Salvage here is a perfect example.
All those Democrats from President Clinton on down endorsing Regime Change in Iraq and Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Intell Committee, seems to have forgotten that he endorsed the war because Iraq was an “imminent threat” with WMDs.
These “lies” that Salvage refers to go all the way back to the Clinton Administration.
Did Bush, then Governor of Texas, find a way to fix the Intell even then?
The sputtering of goofballs like Salvage is proof certain that Democrats cannot be trusted with national security. They will do and say anything for political power and that is a dangerous recipe for disaster.
Go out and play Salvage and let the adults handle the hard work.
Yeah, real unresolved:
Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told an NYU crowd last week that he doesn’t believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and thinks the United States made a mistake by going to war on the grounds of “anticipatory self-defense.”
About 1,200 people flocked to the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on March 15, the day Blix’s book, “Disarming Iraq,” was released.
“To me, it was clear as of May of last year that there weren’t any [weapons of mass destruction in Iraq],” Blix said in response to the first question of the evening by interviewer Dr. Richard Grayson, an adjunct professor at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and the New York City bureau chief for British Television News.
Over the course of the hour-and-a-half-long interview, Blix, a Cambridge University-schooled lawyer and a weapons expert, emphasized the importance of critical analysis based on empirical evidence before making decisions.
Blix said that although he thought President George W. Bush and his administration truly believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there was not enough evidence for the United States to use force against Iraq.
“How could there be 100 percent certainty that weapons of mass destruction exist but zero percent knowledge of their location?” Blix wrote in his book and said again on Monday.
A weird contradiction on Blix’s part until you realize that this was the diplomatic way of saying “They didn’t want to know the truth.” and that is about as charitable as one can get when talking about the Bush Admin. and WMD. They didn’t want to know the truth because the truth would have prevented the war.
That’s still lying BTW, the fact that they may have lied to themselves doesn’t change that fact.
>about BDS reaching pathological levels in many liberals.
That would make the majority of Americans liberals.
Everyone now hates Bush, it’s only on wingnut blogs that we find this endless love for Dear Leader.
And I’m no Democrat.
Here’s the money quote Salvage. This statement proves that, in the opinion of Blix, Bush didn’t lie.
Here comes the difficult part for you.
How do Blix’s statements from ’04 mesh with the reports that he filed for years prior to the invasion?
How do his statements mesh with the remaining mound of intelligence available in the lead up to the war?
Anyone can look back later and say “I don’t think they had the weapons.”
The statements of Blix after the fact does not make anyone a liar.
You’re not there yet. Keep working on it.
sanctimoniousness: the quality of being hypocritically devout
Hey Salvage,
You played a Hans Blix.
I’ll raise you a Norman Podhoretz and a Kenneth Pollock.
Georges Sada, The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force, says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”
Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, said that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”
Pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.
“I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots,” Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.
The flights — 56 in total, Mr. Sada said — attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
“Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming,” Mr. Sada said. “They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.”
Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali.” The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe.
Enuf said right there. Facts just get in the way of Salvage’s plain, ol’ fashioned hatred.
_________________________
ICanCut… Sada’s story has the added support of UNMOVIC satellite imagery showing the places where “we know where the WMD are” were cleaned out. It’s the May 2004 quarterly report.
‘Course, I don’t expect Salvage to read that. ‘Cus I don’t expect Salvage to read anything. Thos pesky facts rattle his comfort zone in the perpetual state of BDS.
Sada’s brother (in law, I believe) is indeed Assad, aka the Syrian President. He says he’s been trying to get him to come clean on the receipt of proscribed Iraqi WMD materials. Hard to believe he could, and still live on.
A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites
http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php
Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept.
The truth will set you free.
Is Salvage still here?
Or is he off playing his video game again?
Darned Canucks…they just can’t seem to stay focused.
***
Helloooooo…..Salvage?
Hellooooooooo…….
Salvage, thanks for the courteous reply. Allergies are fine right now-thanks. We had a little rain, and the air’s nice and clear now.
You’ve donea great job of proving some of the Bush Admin pre-war claims were wrong, but being wrong doesn’t make you or him a liar. If your kids tell you there’s a crime being committed, and the neighbors pull you aside and tell you the same thing, and all but a few people agree….ya gotta go with the bulk of the reporting. In the case of Saddam, the bulk of the reporting showed Saddam had WMD. Post-war investigations found no stockpiles, but they went into great detail describing, and showing in pictures that yes, there was a wmd threat from Saddam.
Just because someone is wrong, doesn’t mean they were a liar. To show that, you’d have to show that the preponderance of intelligence was the opposite of what he said, and that he knew that.
Now, as to Democrats making the same comments….yes, I’m sorry to say, they DID promote, authorize, support, and fund the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and many did so based on MORE intelligence (and in particular experience with the issue) han the President had.
SO, do you have any bi-partisan investigation that’s shown Bush lied, or is this just a case of “well, he was wrong, so everyone knows he lied?” based on a lack of reading the actual investigations?
I ask because the matter’s been examined almost a dozen times, with tens of thousands of professionals looking into it, and the result keeps coming up that weak/bad intelligence is to fault. THAT brings us to the most important thing:
clearly there’s a disconnect between what was said about the threat from Saddam, and what was found. How do we prevent such a disconnect in the future?
Now, if the problem is Bush Lied, then such a disconnect will never happen again after he’s out of office. HOWEVER….IF the disconnect between what was said and what was found was based on bad intelligence (as all the bi-partisan investigations have found), then the problem isn’t GWB, but rather the intelligence services, and as such….the next President will get bad intel about the next rogue regime with terror ties and WMD, and they’ll try the diplomatic route (as GWB did, but then they’ll have to go to war based on intel as solid as that of pre-OIF Iraq).
So which is it:
Bush lied=replace Bush and there will never be another war of “lies”
OR
Bad intelligence=update, fund, repair, enhance the intel services and Presidents will never have to go to war on limited, weak, third hand intel
I could care less if GWB gets blamed. All I care about is how to prevent such a disconnect between threat/expectations and results? Replace GWB (done in 141 days), or fix the intel services.
I eagerly look forward to Salvage’s comments.
🙂
Norman Podhoretz and a Kenneth Pollock. they were weapons inspectors for the UN? I thought they were complete morons who have been show to be wrong time and time again.
There were no WMD, they said they knew not only that there were but that they were a threat (stockpiles of anthrax! Mobile weapons labs! Reconstituted nuclear weapons! Remote controlled drones, London buring in 45 minutes!)
All lies, now I can see them maybe be wrong about one or two speicifs but they were wrong about everything. No one NOT ONE single solitary WMD that they talked about was true.
Not one.
So either they’re garden variety liars or they are so incompetent that only complete idiots would think them leadership material.
And I love the whole “Buh buh Saddam had ’em he just moved them to Syria / Lebanon / Russia / Elvis’s basement!”
So if that’s the case than your Dear Leader let lose WMD on the Middle East, all of those weapons are now in the hands of dictators and terrorists. You’d think if that there really were sites with WMD every satellite and spy would have been watching them for any signs of movement until they were secured but weird thing, one of the old regime sites that was secured? All had to do with oil. You had Marines guarding the oil ministry while the rest of Baghdad was being looted included the armories with conventional weapons.
Guess where those weapons went?
No, that would be you.
If you want to try and prove Podhoretz and Pollock wrong you can do that right after you prove that Bush lied.
You’ve got a job to do. Stay focused man!
Again, I’ll ask you for your proof.
Cite the sources.
Show the quotes and the facts that support your argument.
Show me.
If “Bush lied” as you said, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to prove it.
Outside of that, your claims are nothing more than a fart in the wind.
We’ve been through this you appropriately named mutt, it’s like waking a man pretending to be asleep. The Bush Administration’s lies are well documented, there isn’t an debate on that issue save for BushBots still insisting that it was all a gosh darned honest mistake.
It wasn’t they wanted their war, they lied to get it thinking that it would be a “cakewalk” and that no one would care that they lied to get it.
Sad thing is that’s probably what would have happened.
But it didn’t work, America is now the proud owner of a civil war zone and when she does pull out she will be responsible for not only all the blood spilt but the genocide that will be sure to follow.
And by “she” I mean people just like you.
Salvage,
“There were no WMD, they said they knew not only that there were but that they were a threat (stockpiles of anthrax! Mobile weapons labs! Reconstituted nuclear weapons! Remote controlled drones, London buring in 45 minutes!)”
Anthrax, the Bush Admin merely parroted the claims from Blix’ UNMOVIC-not saying there were stockpiles, but “unaccounted for”
Mobile weapons labs. Actually, they found the mobil labs, just not the factories. That bit of intel proved to be false-likely false.
reconstituted nuclear weapons. I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood or misquoted the claim. They said that intel suggested he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. Ignoring the illegal aluminum tubes, the Niger uranium bit and so forth, it’s important to remember that the US didn’t have a single human being intelligence asset inside Iraq for the four years from 12/98-12/02. As a result, they had to rely mostly on satellite imagery-like this one showing that one of many wmd buildings destroyed by Pres Clinton’s innumerable bombing campaigns had been rebuilt:
…and as it turned out-though the IAEA inspectors had finished their job and given Saddam’s Iraq a clean bill of health before the invasion…US forces did find that Saddam had illegally hidden a great deal of his nuclear program with the intent to restart it.
.JPG)
Oh….and let’s not be too dismissive of reports that Saddam moved a lot of illegal “stuff” out of the country in the 15-17 month rush to war. Why? Because the head of US geospatial command (the general that watched the satellites) as well as Israeli and British intelligence all claim to have seen thousands of truckloads go from known WMD storage bunkers into Syria. In fact, there was a noticable amount of traffic going into Syria in the rush to get “stuff” out of Iraq
What “stuff”? Well, all I can say with certainty is that it was
1) something Saddam wanted to hide
2) something Saddam didn’t want the US to get.
I’ll be happy to go on and on. I’ve lots more pics that I cut/pasted from those bi-partisan investigations.
Do you have any evidence President Bush lied vs was wrong; as wrong as Dems who promoted, authorized, supported, and funded the war?
Then it should be easy, even for you, to prove it.
Have you ever taken math class where the instructor wanted you to “show your work”?
This discussion is like that.
You claim “Bush lied”. Now, “show your work”.
Show us how you got to that conclusion.
I have to agree. There’s more documentation and evidence that the intelligence was weak/bad than there is documentation supporting salvage’s claim-at least on this thread.
“It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war,”
-1/28/04 Dr. David Kay testimony to Sen. Intel. Committee
… I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance. And never — not in a single case — was the explanation, “I was pressured to do this.” The explanation was, very often, “The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there’s another explanation for it.”
And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I’m convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, “inappropriate command influence” that led them to take that position.
-1/28/04 Dr. David Kay testimony to Sen. Intel. Committee
Isn’t Hans Blix the guy who was head of the IAEA for a decade, until 1991 — and in that capacity decided in that there wasn’t enough evidence that Saddam was obtaining a nuclear weapon? And then admitted in 1996 that Saddam had been months away from obtaining a nuclear bomb in 1990?
Why yes, he was.
Hmmmmm…..
Here are some examples of what we have found in Iraq.
This is just an abbreviated list:
That’s a whole lot of nothing.
***
Finally, regarding the idea that weapons could have been shipped out remember this?
In April 2004, Jordanian officials seize 20 tons of WMDs from al-Qaeda containing 70 different chemical agents, including Sarin and VX gas. King Abdullah announced on April 17 the stockpiles originated in Iraq. If detonated as planned, they would have killed at least 80,000 people.
Salvage, please, show us some of this proof. We’ve shown pics, links, quotes, and have boatloads more. All you’ve shown is outdated half quotes (half quotes are half truths, and half a truth is not the truth at all).
Do you just go with the flow of public opinion, or are you smart enough to look things up on your own and do the unthinkable: form your own opinion based on facts?
Step up man…
(or will he cut and run-err, I mean “redeploy”)
I think he may have engaged in early withdrawal.
premature evacuation. Oh well, absence/abstinence is the most effective means to prevent a discussion
“Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war’s supporters…”
Um…the success we’re seeing would seem to imply that the optimism was well-placed, not ‘unfounded’… The reason these positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States is the constant drumbeat of negative spin and false news by the MSM. No one HEARS about these positive signs.
*scratching head* These folks are truly clueless.
Orion
Here’s some more:
good stuff, but the absolute, undeniable winner of the dumbest piece of disinformation that is bought wholesale by the left is
[drum roll]
….the envelope please….
YES! It’s the al Muthanna chemical/biological weapons and shampoo/perfume testing and storage facility! Congratulations everyone!
That’s a lot of purty pictures but the fact, the reality, the truth is.
No. WMD. in. Iraq.
That isn’t opinion that is a fact confirmed by the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House and pretty much the whole planet. The former three of course only figuring it out after killing hunderds of thousands of civilians, displaced millions more and made so many terrorists bin Laden must already think he’s in paradise.
And the following is a perfect example of BushBotism:
Anthrax, the Bush Admin merely parroted the claims from Blix’ UNMOVIC-not saying there were stockpiles, but “unaccounted for”
Uh huh:
Oct. 5, 2002
George W. Bush, Radio Address
“Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.”
George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly 9/12/2002
“Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
Sep. 18, 2002
Donald Rumsfeld
His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons—including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox.
And of course there’s more, all honest mistakes that anyone could have made if they just ignored anyone telling them differently and of course the facts. But BushBots don’t want facts they want to wallow in the lies because… well not really sure why you can’t admit the truth. Ego? Plain stupid? Don’t care just as long as Muslims are being killed? I confess your motives are baffling.
Salvage,
WMD in Iraq…where’d the wmd that the UN said remained unaccounted for go then? Poured in the sand? Where’s the contaminted sand? Never had it? Then why’d the Iraqis declare they had it in 1998, and how was the US to know differently since there were no spies inside Iraq from 12/98-12/03?
Ultimately, there were not large stockpiles of wmd in Iraq (though, the entire purpose of a wmd is to not have to have a large stockpile, but a small one since a single wmd can do what a large stockpile of conventional weapons can), but inspectors did find a wmd threat in the form of what they called “breakout capability”; the ability to produce fresh wmd in months, weeks, days, or even hours.
He’s referring to stuff like this that inspectors missed during 12yrs of inspections, but US forces found after the invasion:
(btw, this last one is of a very special New Zealand mole pesticide. It was found at the Iraqi Intelligence Services HQ, and has the same lethality in humans as anthrax).
Now, as to your quotes….
I looked up the 10/5/2002 radio address, and I think you took his quote out of context since the entire paragraph was a review of Saddam’s history. It was not a declaration of then current threats.
[full quote showing he was referencing past history]
I looked up the UN speech, and didn’t find your quote anywhere in there.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html
Are you mistaken? Might I suggest that instead of looking at blood-for-oil conspiracy theory pages for your “facts”[propaganda] you look at the actual text of the speeches and form YOUR OWN opinion?
Donald Rumsfeld’s comments are irrelevant to the discussion of what President Bush said. They are as relevant imo as Vice President Gore’s comments in the same time period:
Now, you make a great point that there was dissent about intelligence assessments, but you ignore the fact that there always is dissent, and the preponderance of opinion was that Saddam was a threat. Remember, the reasons for war were not just to get a pickup truck loaded w WMD that could’ve moved out of Iraq anytime in the 15-17month rush to war. There were a lot of reasons.
Why do you ignore the pictures? What kind of evidence are you looking for?
-captured documents
-captured audio tapes
-detainees
-opinions from Democrats who saw the same or more intelligence?
What are you looking for?
Poor Salvage,
Round and round and round and round he runs.
It’s almost like he’s got one foot nailed to the floor.
Salvage, it’s really simple: You said “President Bush lied.”
We said “prove it” and you have, so far, not done so either due to chutzpah or lack of ability.
You said:
In return we have provided you with quotes from the intelligence community, weapons inspector reports, gov’t information from all over the globe, press accounts, and even pictures to make it easier for you.
Yet you still say:
Did you even look at the pictures?
Did you read what the reports have to say? We even provided links so you can read the entire report which is cited.
Did you see the photographs of the vials that were found in the refrigerator?
The banned equipment that was buried under a rose bush?
Did you see the information regarding human testing of BW and the equipment that was hidden in the mosques?
Over and over and over again your rhetoric and your version of events has been stripped away and you have been left standing there naked hanging on feebly to your empty denials.
Seems pretty obvious that the only person denying the facts is you.
You accuse us of not caring that “Muslims are being killed” and accuse us of torture and all sorts of heinous acts while at the same time denying the proof of human BW testing within the prisons of Iraq.
Unfortunately, as we have demonstrated, there is some lying going on but it is isolated to a single poster on this thread.
So tell me, why do you choose to wallow in the lies? Ego? Plain stupid?
I’ll guess it’s the latter.
I think-if I may speak for Salvage-there’s a desire to see a checklist of WMD allegations followed by a Y/N as to found or not. Given the complexity of the WMD claims by the UN and US, it’s hard to form a checklist (particularly since “wmd” really means “Unresolved Disarmament Issues” or “proscribed items”, but wmd fits in soundbites so much easier, and is so much easier to comprehend). I too opposed the idea of an invasion and did not trust President Bush or the Admin. HOWEVER, I did the research on my own, read the UNMOVIC and UNSCOM reports, the consistently identical claims from Democrats, and the pre-Bush claims of regime ties to Al Queda. That convinced me (not some blood-for-oil conspiracy site or DNC or RNC talking points).
Is that what you’d like Salvage? A checklist of allegations w a Y/N next to them? I can do that if you’d like. Just ask, I’ll be happy to help. Lacking that, please tell us what you need to see to open your mind?
“Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,”
President GW Bush
The End.
Right. “stockpiles” That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a WMD threat or a myriad of other reasons to invade. You’re the one that put up false and misleading quotes claiming there’d be stockpiles-not us. We supplied quotes listing “unaccounted for wmd” (the stuff Pres Clinton talked about in 2003).
I guess I was wrong. Here I thought we had someone interested in forming their own opinion by looking at facts, not half truths and spin; a human-not a lemming.
>That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a WMD threat
Uh yeah it does. See the lack of WMD? Means that there aren’t any WMD and that means no threat.
See how that works?
>or a myriad of other reasons to invade
Alas those are all illegal and are tantamount to war crimes under both American and International law.
See invasion to change the regime to one you like? That’s illegal and that’s why the Bush Administration pushed the WMD angle so hard, no other motive was legal.
Round and round and round and round he goes.
You still haven’t produced one shred of proof for your position.
You’ve been proven wrong on repeatedly on this thread, yet you persist.
It’s becoming almost embarrassingly apparent that no amount of reality will crack your shell.
Oh, well.
As Tater Salad says: “You can’t fix stupid.”