Bush and Powell are liars

[j_b]

what about this?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm

[iain]

[Bronco]

what about this?:

 

 

who the hell decided on some of these ugly ass colors at pattagucci? I demand answers and I want the truth! What are you hiding?

 

Mattp - I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, everyone knows that anyone who uses the word "obsfucate" in a speech should not be trusted.

[iain]

looks like that coat's seen a bit too much uranium too.

[Fence_Sitter]

yeah after wearign that coat your piss will glow in the dark

[Bronco]

or the designer/material buyer had too much

[Fairweather]

mattp said:

What about this?

 

Senator Byrd's Remarks

 

Mattp,

 

I'm not sure Senator Byrd is "all there" these days. If you've listened to some of his more recent ramblings on the senate floor, you know what I'm talking about. There is much speculation re his mental fitness.

 

And let's not forget his past KKK membership and recent use of the "N" word!

[AlpineK]

Fairweather said:

mattp said:

What about this?

 

Senator Byrd's Remarks

 

Mattp,

 

I'm not sure Senator Byrd is "all there" these days. If you've listened to some of his more recent ramblings on the senate floor, you know what I'm talking about. There is much speculation re his mental fitness.

 

And let's not forget his past KKK membership and recent use of the "N" word!

 

We know about the KKK etc, but what about the speach in question Brian.

 

Where are the chemical warheads that posed an immanent threat to the world? It's been over a month sice we had full control of Iraq. If Saddam was such a threat then where are the fucking chemical weapons?

 

And don't try and change the subject

[Bronco]

HOW BOUT THOSE M'S?

[allthumbs]

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

[Off_White]

As was pointed out elsewhere around here, John Stuart Mill also said, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

 

Besides, no one is asserting that nothing is worth fighting for, just that Bush and Powell were lying about what we're fighting for now.

 

[allthumbs]

I wouldn't necessarily say they were outright lying, perhaps stretching the truth just a skosh. Actually, it's most likely the CIA's fault. You just can't trust those sneaky bastards.

[JayB]

I'm not sure how what the administration did with respect to WMD constitutes lying. The Iraqi's failed to account for all of the WMD in the inventory compiled by the UN prior to Hussein kicking the inspectors out of Iraq. Since they could not account for them, the regime had an established history of using every means possible to conceal such materials in the past, and the lengths they went to in the past to conceal them suggest that they considered such weapons vital vital to securing their strategic interests in the future. Given these facts it was much more logical to conclude that the Iraqis were hiding the materials that they could not account for in any of the scores of sites that the inspectors were denied access to. In the absence of complete access to any site in Iraq that could contain such items in order to verify their absence, the alternative was to take Saddam Hussein at his word. The administration made decisions based upon incomplete intelligence, but most decision makers are not fortunate enough to have the luxury of perfect information prior to making such decisions. If you have a credible source through which you can prove that the decision makers in the administration had concrete evidence proving that Iraq had no WMD at the time of the invasion, then the term "lying" would be warranted.

 

Even if they had no such weapons at the time, given the regime's history, well documented posession of such items in the past, and their strategic value as a deterrent - as per North Korea - it stands to reason that at they would undertake efforts to aquire them as soon as they were able to which, in practice, would be as soon as the world let its guard down. Keeping 250,00 troops on the border indefinitely in order to force them to accept ongoing inspections was untenable for several reasons, as were the ongoing sanctions against Iraq. Even if there were no weapons in Iraq at the time, anyone who says that would be the case several years down the road if the Hussein regime remained in power has an enviable talent for unwarranted optimism in the face of contrary evidence.

 

 

[allthumbs]

exactly

[AlpineK]

While your argument has merit, It was not the stated reason for going to war by the Bush administration.

 

The stated reason by Bush, Rumpy, and Powell was that Saddam had a lot of chemical/biological weapons ready to either lob at the rest of the world or give to terrorists.

 

That was the main reason for war.

 

If the above was true then I think the army should have easily found warheads ready to shoot at them.

 

All those other reasons are nice, but by that logic we better hurry up cause we got about 30 more countries to put down.

Edited May 24, 2003 by AlpineK

[allthumbs]

Kurt, my theory is that Saddam either destroyed, moved to another country, or hid the weapons before we launched our attack. He had ample time; months in fact. Our war machine grew at an agonizingly slow pace.

 

Iraq may be a real mess right now, and maybe we never will find the weapons, but you know what? The world is just a little bit safer now without Saddam and his fucked-up regime. Somebody needed to do it.

[Dru]

[Fairweather]

Thomas Friedman, not known as a conservative by any stretch, recently wrote an op-ed about this very subject. In it, he admits we were "misled" to a certain degree but that the greater good was served. I'll try to dig this editorial up later.

 

Sure GW and Co overstated their case. I would do the same thing if I had allies and world opinion standing in the way of what I knew to be a valid cause. Since when do all of you think you're entitled to the whole story??

 

1) We can now pull troops out of Saudi Arabia since Iraq is no longer a threat. Wasn't our presence there the "stated cause" Al-Queda used to justify the 9/11 murders? (And yet these terrorists killers continue their blood-thirsty attacks)

 

2) We have sent a message to the Arab world in the strongest possible terms; "Get your shit together yourselves, or we'll do it for you".

 

3) Saddam's reign of terror was justification enough to go in. Before you spout off about this one, lets not forget how the UN bungled Rwanda, and let the Serbs slaughter the people of Srebrinica--a UN daclared "safe haven"-- while they stood aside and watched. The UN is inept. In some cases, only power/force will achieve the greater good.

 

4) The weapons were there to one degreee or another. Where they are now is still up for debate.

 

 

And to answer your question Kurt; I wasn't attempting to "change the subject". Mattp asked for thoughts re Senator Byrd. The good senator is a cause-celeb' these days for the anti war left. But before they look to him for their revised morality, they should look at his whole morality. Quoting Byrd as the "conscience of the senate" (as many on the left now do) is akin to a right winger quoting Trent Lott re the future of race relations in America. While both are repentant, they have forfeited their right to preach morality to the rest of us forever. Ditto, Bill Clinton and Bill Bennett.

 

 

[CrazyFlattlander]

I agree with Trask's last. The world is a much better place and there is no doubt the shit was there. Just maybe not as much as we thought.

 

Man, Luna and a few others here could be part of the Dixie Chix with these piss poor atitudes. Conspiracy theory, Huh? At least Bush is trying to do something, even if it is not exactly right all the time. All Clinton did was let his wife run the country and get a blow job under his desk. He even screwed that up and spooged on Monica's dress. Either get it in her mouth or her eye.

[mattp]

Jay-

Over the last year I don't remember reading anything about the inspectors being denied access. Was that really an issue?

 

Fairweather-

You state the case fairly well, but don't you think the message we sent was really more like a general F#&K all of you - we have the biggest military and there's nothing you can do about it? After all, we lied about why we went into Iraq and justified the war by saying they posed a grave threat to the west when we attacked a country that we were counting on to be defended by a rag tag army incapable of putting up even moderate resistence, (let alone threatening anyone). I know, you guys say that even if he couldn't defend himself, Saddam was likely to supply terrorists with those evil weapons but now we can't find any of them and if they did and still do exist, we have even less chance to control who gets them.

 

Even if your reasons are both valid and good ones, you can't really get around the fact that we lied or were extremely careless with the truth in our presentations to the public and to the world, we ultimately ignored the U.N., told Fance and Russia to jump in a lake, and have clearly said that anybody else who gets out of line is going to face the same treatment as Iraq. Some of you think that is good foreign policy. I do not.

 

 

[Winter]

Why would Saddam hide the weapons if he knew his regime was going to crumble and fall to pieces? Either: a) he never had them, or b) they're now on the black market because Saddam and whomever he is working with wants to use them in the future. Either way, how are we better off now? And why would he ship them out of the county and hide them instead of using them to defeat the imperialistic infidels?

 

[j_b]

"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

 

Nov. 18, 2002 in the Washington Post

[AlpineK]

So what you're saying Fairweather is the end justifies the means.

 

It's ok to lie in order to get what you want.

 

Dick Cheney and Halliburton didn't feel rich enough, so they talked GW into starting a war and giving them the contracts to rebuild the country afterwards.

[JayB]

mattp said:

Jay-

Over the last year I don't remember reading anything about the inspectors being denied access. Was that really an issue?

 

Mattp:

 

From what I can remember the inspectors never did get access to any of the presidential palace complexes. There were somehting like 40 of these sites, most of which were quite large.

 

Kurt:

 

I think a condition of holding such an office is that one has to divest oneself of any sizable holdings in a company, or have submitted an irrevocable plan to do so. This policy is in place to eliminate this very type of conflict.

 

Moreover, Cheney was a millionaire many times over prior to taking office, and has in fact lost quite a bit of money by serving as VP, as he could easily be earning seven figures plus stock options in the private sector. There's also the fact that as a lifelong Washington insider

he had no need to serve as VP in order to secure influence there. And there's also the fact that if a cabal of oilmen were behind the war and even a shred evidence ever got out, it would be the end of them, their companies, and the administration. Not a risk any of them are likely to take, given that the President can't even get a hummer in the oval office without the secret coming out eventually.

 

 

[AlpineK]

They only have to divest by putting their stock holdings into a blind trust.

 

Dick still knows he owns Halliburton stock, and he'll probably get a big bonus once he leaves office.