He missed a few:
[/quote]
Ha! You know they are too numerous to cite comprehensively!
We liked Saddam a lot in those days.
[quote]High on the Bush administration’s list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an “almost daily” basis in defiance of international conventions.
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait – which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq’s acquisition of chemical and biological precursors – is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy.[/quote]
However, getting back to the present day, it seems pretty kooky for Bush & Co. to allow so much blatant corruption in their colonial administration of Iraq. Surely they knew that the eyes of the world would be on them. Seems like from day one the Bush administration has unfortunately behaved in ways that have only heightened suspicions of their actions. However, all too often, where there’s been smoke there’s been lots of fire.
I am beginning to understand how even in Germany someone like Hitler and Goebels could be so successful. People believe what they want to and ignore the rest of the evidence. Does no one have critical reading abilities anymore. If you want to bitch about Bush, you have ever right as a Republican not as a Democrat. The man has squandered more money on social programs than any Democrat. But that is our beef? What’s really yours?
What social programs? Helpful handouts to unemployable bootlickers like Brownie, whose only qualification for his key post at FEMA (which would deal, supposedly, with the aftermath of terror attacks as well) was that he had the right roomate and some experience dealing with Arabians.
Quick MFGR! Answer this! IF he was our golden boy, why was the embassy downgraded in 1968 and not upgraded until recently? Second, all that coziness and we can only account for less than 1 percent of his conventional weapons sales EVEN when our nation’s greatest fear was the Iranian takeover of Basra in 1982-3! Our trusted friend gets no chemical, nuclear or missile technology from us but some supercomputers so we account for merely 3.5 percent of the total sales of such devices but Germany 50 percent! I suppose you feel that Roosevelt’s meetings with Stalin and Nixon’s with Mao equate both governments with the communist regimes they felt it necessary to deal with? Hmmm?
Education spending up dramatically under Bush, more than any president than perhaps Johnson?
Ever hear of prescription drug coverage? It’s going to cost trilliions. For someone concerned with the $200 billion we have spent in four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, your attitude is very penny wise pound foolish.
Maposquid – please show where any of those people said we should get half the U.S. military resources bogged down into a full-on invasion/occupation of Iraq for years. Please also explain away Bush’s lies about how Saddam wasn’t allowing the inspectors in.
Here’s Bush lying in his own words.
Wow.
Bush is a lying scumbag, and that’s the truth.
So true. What is it with this inability of intelligent people to distinguish between half-truths and the whole truth?
Two of the most prominent half-truths of the Coalition of Revisionists are being shamelessly recycled here on these very pages.
Shameless half-truth #1: Bush and company have been investigated by a bipartisan Senate committee and no evidence of manipulation of intelligence was found:
"Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was “significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration’s “hammering” on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency."
Shameless half-truth #2: everyone had the same intelligence and came to the same conclusion about the threat Iraq posed:
"Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein’s weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president’s access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It’s hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics."
– NY Times
The New York Times supported the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq so it most likely knows what it’s talking about when it says the Bush administration peddled lies to convince the American public to support the invasion of Iraq.
[quote]Ever hear of prescription drug coverage? It’s going to cost trilliions[/quote] Which bears out the fact that Social Security reform is a boondoggle and the real issue as I said before is Medicaid reform.
[quote=“spook”]Shameless half-truth #1: Bush and company have been investigated by a bipartisan Senate committee and no evidence of manipulation of intelligence was found:
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was “significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration’s “hammering” on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency."
[/quote]
spook, there is a world of difference between pressure on an intel agency to find evidence of wrongdoing and pressure to fabricate evidence of wrongdoing.
Would you disapprove of a detective’s boss encouraging him to obtain strong evidence?
Surely you can understand this concept?
That was prior to 911.
911 changed things.
That was prior to 911.
911 changed things.[/quote]
I think this is the main point of this or any other war related thread.
You believe this or do not.
[quote=“Tigerman”]
Would you disapprove of a detective’s boss encouraging him to obtain strong evidence?
Surely you can understand this concept?[/quote]
Strong evidence is good. If I were on a jury though and the prosecution produced ‘strong evidence’ that vanished into thin air once the accused was executed then I would find it all but impossible to believe that the ‘evidence’ was anything other than a prosecutorial hoax if the only explanation offered was that it was all just a big mistake and that “everyone else believed it too.” I would view anyone who was satisfied with this “explanation” as either an utter fool or part of the hoax.
"I was wrong.
Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told – and what many of us believed and argued – was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.
It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake – the men and women of our armed forces and their families – have performed heroically and paid a dear price.
The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth. . . .
The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president – and that I was being given by our intelligence community – wasn’t the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war."
[quote=“spook”]
It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake – the men and women of our armed forces and their families – have performed heroically and paid a dear price.
The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth. . . .
."[/quote]
As part of the rest of the world I say :bravo:
Spook for President of the US
and everyone will cooperate gladly with the US
[quote=“Tigerman”]
Would you disapprove of a detective’s boss encouraging him to obtain strong evidence?
Surely you can understand this concept?[/quote]
spook, that tired old analogy doesn’t work now any more than it did the first time, and the second time, and each time thereafter, that I explained to you that Saddam was not on trial. He had already been convicted over a decade before this invasion… Saddam was on parole or probation… you have already accepted this analogy, if my recollection serves me well.
So, why do you keep raising the above flawed analogy? Its worse, really, than a flawed analogy. Its actually a strawman argument.
[quote=“Tigerman”]
spook, that tired old analogy doesn’t work now any more than it did the first time, and the second time, and each time thereafter, that I explained to you that Saddam was not on trial. He had already been convicted over a decade before this invasion… Saddam was on parole or probation… you have already accepted this analogy, if my recollection serves me well.
So, why do you keep raising the above flawed analogy? Its worse, really, than a flawed analogy. Its actually a strawman argument.[/quote]
The context is no longer UN security council resolutions and international legalities. It’s internal, domestic and has nothing to do with Saddam. Did the Bush administration lie to the American people in order to gain their support for a war?
The Honorable John P. Murtha: War in Iraq
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. . . . The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing,
Bet the Republicans have no recourse but to attack Murtha’s patriotism and to sucker-punch his close relatives in a way that endangers national security. 
[quote=“Tigerman”]spook, that tired old analogy doesn’t work now any more than it did the first time, and the second time, and each time thereafter, that I explained to you that Saddam was not on trial. He had already been convicted over a decade before this invasion… Saddam was on parole or probation… you have already accepted this analogy, if my recollection serves me well.
So, why do you keep raising the above flawed analogy? Its worse, really, than a flawed analogy. Its actually a strawman argument.[/quote]
Uh… no, the context has not changed. Trying to change the context after the fact is like trying to change the rules after the game has started.
Not as far as I can tell. And nobody has been able to prove otherwise.
[quote]
The Honorable John P. Murtha: War in Iraq
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. . . . The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.
General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing,
That was prior to 911.
911 changed things.[/quote]
I think this is the main point of this or any other war related thread.
You believe this or do not.[/quote]
Actually, no, it is not the point. I think we all agree that 9-11 changed things, but the direction of that change is what gives rise to concerns. It’s not like we’re all just being carried away in some sort of fast current with no paddles – the Bush administration has made a wide range of choices about going to war in Iraq, about the conduct of the war in Iraq, and even the handling of U.S. citizens, that have not enhanced our trust.
You can argue whether Americans should trust Bush more, but the current situation is that we do not. The simple fact is that we Americans do not trust him to do the right thing, and whether we don’t trust him because he’s a serial liar on very serious matters like going to war (probably) or intellectually sloppy on those sorts of matters (also very probable) is only a detail in the larger picture of a U.S. president who has consistently blown key opportunities to keep the trust of the American people.
So, at the risk of offering up a simplistic dividing line, I contend it’s not whether people realize whether “9-11 changed things.” You can divide up the nation into those who see the problems in Bush’s handling of our post-9/11 unity and the few folks who think they can sit around and make up a bunch of lame excuses.
Actually I agree with you MFGR. I realize that a lot of people do not trust Bush. The numbers of the polls are on your side. BUT I wonder how we got to this point. I think that the media plays a major role in this and I believe that the media for a variety of reasons and I have previously provided extensive examples has been cheerleading against this war since Day 1. That is irresponsible and if it affects a president’s ability to act (hello Vietnam?) then I think that the media has committed a grave ethical infraction.
I believe that we have already won but we are going to need to be there for a long time. The difference this time is that we have no draft. We have a professional army. That is not going to give the media the same ability to generate support against the war no matter what the polls say. AND that is also where I am pleased that we have Bush. He does not change policy to fit the moods of a fickle electorate and thank God for that. Be sure and have the same Democrat senators take credit for all that goes well when the mood and conditions on the ground switch in two years. Remember the 2008 presidential race will get quite a few selective memories busy in action. I wonder if we will see the same senators who made such strong statements for the war now making them against making them once again for?
It is a pity that more Americans do not have a long-term view of these things or the long-term memory that would reveal the ludicrous posturing of most of the left on this issue.