Americans are waking up about Iraq!

I can’t believe no one pointed this out from the original quote

since this discussion appears to be grounded on the re-election of Bush, and not the war in Iraq (thank gawd), I would like to opine the following…

Why the HELL does Bush need so mush fucking money for re-election? $200 million is the figure I have been hearing. Jesus tap dancing christ, what the fuck do you need $200 million for? How many freaking votes are you going to buy?!?! So much for the old axiom that anybody could run for president. Apparently that needs to be updated to “Anyone can BUY a presidency, as long as they have obscene amounts of money to throw at people.”

Any thoughts on that?

It’s a surprise to me that so many are surprised that they were lied to. By politicians and corporate warhawks, no less. Clinton lied to us about sex and was the subject of impeachment hearings. Bush lies to us and kills a bunch of people and we say “the end justifies the means”? Murder=okay, blowjob=impeachment?

I suggest subscribing to www.truthout.org. It’s free and you will actually get some news and opinion from someone other than Disney, Westinghouse or Time-Warner.

The worse his rating becomes, the more money he will need ?

From Yahoo:

Poll Finds Majority of Americans Believe Saddam Involved in 9/11 Attacks

Americans are waking up about Iraq? I’ll believe it when I see it.

Actually, it says

Which is a little bit different than what the headline says.

Yeah, and if you read the next sentence, you would have seen this:

:rolleyes:

I saw that too. That doesn’t specify the 9-11 attacks as the headline clearly does.
Still a little bit different than what the headline says.

Bribes?

And to address the OP, while I wish the majority of Americans would get a clue and realize how badly this Administration is screwing up, the cynic in me is reminded of the old saw – “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public.”

I would like to be a whip of some sort.

Can I be the one who says
“Anyone who isn’t for Reeder is against Reeder. Those who are against Reeder are unpatriotic and un-American. Don’t misunderestimate Reeder?”

Gosh, december, I hadn’t noticed that! Precisely which candidate is engaged in attempting to convince America that Saddam bin Laden is a dandy fellow, sorely misunderstood?

One can hardly escape the conclusion that if an unknown plant had been discovered in the Godforsaken Desert, and said plant proved to have wondrous medicinal properties, the Usual Suspects would be claiming that we went to war to cure cancer!

We were sold this war on the basis of threat. Period. Saddams gonna get yer Momma! It stated with a bang: nukes! Nukes! Saddam’s got nukes! As that slowly fell apart, they segued into WMD’s, then into increasingly desperate claims, up to and including drone aircraft with intercontinental reach! But threat was the issue, every step of the way.

But of course! Nothing else would have done the job!

Does anyone here seriously mean to suggest that if the American people were offered a referendum “Shall we send our children into harms way to rescue the Iraqi’s from Saddam?” the result would have been affirmative?

And yet here they are, saying it doesn’t matter if it was all a bunch of crap, dead soldiers don’t matter, Count Iraqula attached to our fiscal jugular for the next ten or so years, that doesn’t matter, because we’re a nation of born-again Boy Scouts, yessiree Bob! Truth, Justice and the American Way, whether you like it or not.

Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot! I am reluctant to be led to war, but I’m damned if I’ll sit still for being bullshitted into it! And anyone who questions the patriotism of that stand can go pound a pineapple up his Nixon!

I supported the war, and if the election was held today, I would still vote for Bush over any of the Dem candidates I’ve seen so far.

I am quite pleased that the balance of power in the region has changed enough to prod the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table (which I still believe was the main underlying reason for the war itself - to gain the political capital necessary to twist both parties’ arms to get them to adopt the roadmap).

That said, I will say this:

  • I am very disturbed that the weapons have not been found.
  • I am dismayed by the pace of reconstruction, and how it appears to be poorly planned out.
  • I remain disturbed that our diplomatic efforts remain hamfisted and arrogant.

If these situations are not resolved soon, I will think twice before voting for Bush in 2004.

Let’s take it one step at a time. Let’s acknowledge that you won’t be convinced, but try to put yourself into the mind of a centrist. I believe most centrists will think:

  1. Saddam is (or was) evil
  2. Bush successfully took Saddam out of power.
  3. It’s a better world with this evil person out of power.
  4. I wish they found the WMDs, but even without them, see #3.
  5. I’m glad my President did the right thing, even if the reasons were wrong.
  6. Iraq, North Korea, and al Qaeda are still threats. Bush is more likely to deal with them successfully than a Democrat.

Point #4 translates into Saddam not being exceptionally evil. After all, if he’s Satan, then taking him out of power was a great move, regardless of whether the WMD threat was exaggerated and regardless of American casualties.

But, the key point is #6. That’s the one that will lead to a landslide for Bush, unless the Democrats change their campaign approach. Dems are already thought to be not warlike enough. Carping and second-guessing a successful war will reinforce a belief among the American public that Dems will not aggressively pursue the fight against terrrorism and evil. Voters will believe that the Democrats won’t protect them. This may sound like comic strip stuff to you, but the average voter isn’t an intellectua, and s/he is worried.

GoHeels, ** december**,

I notice that neither one of you addressed the concernes that I have as a Republican who unfortunately voted for Bush, ( I tend to vote anti incumbent and Gore seemed the more incumbent of the two). Namely the impression that we as a nation wer hornswaggled into an elective war. The positive results are nice and all, but the misrepresentations for our own good make me cringe. Somehow it seems rudimentarily un-American for the public servants to mislead their masters, the people, to acquire their consent. Now we’re locked into a LARGE commitment of time, money, military manpower and other valuable American resources. If the whole thing had been sold on the rational that is accepted now as the justification for the war thenm I’d have no complaint. However, I’d rather see the umpteen billions go to welfare cheat here in America than to Chalabi and whatever other corrupt player in Iraq. At leastthe money given to Americans in give-away programs gets spent in America.
In short, I think that the whole thing is a fraudulent misuse of my tax dollars and a waste of the lives of our valuable military personel and expertise.

December according to this poll I got somewhere it matters a great deal to at least 50% of the population that Bush lied. About 20% would be in line with your idea.

On #6 well I think you are equally out of touch. People aren’t going to give Bush a break and say well he may have lied to us, but at least he is not a democrat so he will be better on national security. Wesley Clark will be there in some form to hammer that point home I am sure.

You may be right. We’ll find out in 16 months.

I don’t think the people will give Bush a break or not give Bush a break. For most voters the election is about myself.

Do you see Wesley Clark as the VP nominee? Or, as an advertised Secretary of Defence? Either way, he could help some, although he isn’t really a famous a military hero. He’s not like Eisenhower in 1952 nor even Norman Schwartzkopf in 1991.

SimonX, you “think that the whole thing is a fraudulent misuse of my tax dollars and a waste of the lives of our valuable military personel and expertise.”

Apparently you think the war was a failure, whether or not the reasons for it were accurately presented by the Administration. I’d expect those who share your beliefs to vote for Bush’s opponent.

However, Bush’s opponent will have the challenge of showing people like you that he’ll be less warlike than Bush while simultaneously showing others that he’ll be just as warlike as Bush. That’s a difficult path, particularly in these days of rapid communication of statements.

Anyhow, those are my guesses. We’ll know the truth when Bush is swept out of office and the Dems take over both houses of Congress. Or when he carries 49 states and the Republicans get a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We shall see.

That’s not exactly how I see my point of view. I think that we whupped the Iraqis real good if that’s what you mean.

An old joke sorta explains how I feel about the situation.

On a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, (doesn’t matter which one), there’s a fella on the prow a hoopin and a hollerin all night every night. Finally after three nights of this a passenger decides to ask the guy what he’s doing. The guy says, “I’m scaring away the elephants. I keep then from attacking the ship.”
The passenger naturally says, “What elephants? We’re at sea. There are no elephants around for thousands of miles.”
The elephant frightener says, “Yeah. I’m doing a great job aren’t I?”

The threat to the US from Hussein was hypothetical. It was an extravagant waste of life, time and money. Americans are no better off and no safer than we were before Hussein’s regime was toppled. Learned pros in the intelligence field, (Americans no less), like Robert L. Hutchings, chairman of National Intelligence Council have predicted and continue to predict that the invasion of Iraq, the way that it happened, has increased the number of potential recruits for al Qaeda and aQ like organizations.

So not only have we committed valuable resources foolishly, and ill advisedly, we may have even made the world a worse and more dangerous place for Americans.
Yay, we liberated Iraqis. Yay.
But WTF about Americans?

But yeah, it really chafes my ass when my gov can’t be bothered to get its facts straight over such a grave and consequential matter as going to war.

It seems un-American for the presidential admin to mislead the public and Congress. Maybe I missed out on the day in civics class where it was explained that one of the fundamental tenets of a representative democracy is that it’s okay for the consent of the governed to be obtained through irresponsible misreresentations.

Here’s an interesting article in Slate (no right-wing mag) that probably offers up the best explanation for not finding WMD (although it’s still too early to say they won’t be found):

Was Bush Lying About WMD? Maybe not. Here’s how they could’ve misread the evidence.

Basically, here’s what Kaplan says: If WMD weren’t in Iraq, then the likely culprit is a systemic failure of the intelligence community, similar to the ‘missile gap’ of the late 50’s. Basically, the intelligence community comes to the collective belief that Iraq has WMD. New evidence which calls the conclusion into light doesn’t receive the weight it should. In short intelligence makes an error.

If we don’t find WMD, this is a far more likely scenario than ‘Bush lied!’ The fact is, the opinion of all the western intelligence services was that Saddam had WMD. Israel believed it - it spend billions on a defense against Saddam’s SCUDs. France believed it. Canada believed it. The U.K. believed it.

Now perhaps it’s the case that the voices calling the conclusions into question weren’t heard loudly enough. That’s how these failures happen in the first place.

You know, intelligence estimates can be wrong. The left should know all about that, having blown just about every major prediction about the war.

Jesus, Sam, Bush DID LIE. We have specific examples of specific lies. African uranium shipments? Aluminum rods? Hell-o?

I can certainly believe failures in intelligence, but why are you denying dishonesty when it’s already been proven to have taken place?