What a terrible example. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick defeated the United States. There’s not a chance in hell that Saddam could have done the same.
Good job, Bricker. Post 57 and you manage to associate Iraq and 9/11.
Is it intentional, or do you truly buy that line of crap so completely that you don’t even notice anymore?
-Joe
Well, I for one welcome our new Duchy of Grand Fenwickian overlords.
(Sorry, but I think I’m the only one on the SDMB who hasn’t gotten to use that joke, and I just had to do it, even if it does result in a double post)
-Joe
He and his administration were in possesion of credible scientific opinion that the tubes were not suitable for that purpose and were, in fact, exactly the right size and shape for rocket tubes. That he continued to make the claim makes him a liar.
Had he said, “we’ve got the tubes and we think they’re for centrifuges” and then come back and said, “whoops, turns out they’re for rocket launchers”, I wouldn’t apply the liar label.
My problem is that this administration has a complete aversion to admitting that they might have been wrong about anything at anytime.
Not to get into another debate over whether we should have gone to war in Iraq, but…
Your point, obviously, is that they had motive. Is that enough to justify the invasion? Would Congress and the American people authorize a war based on motive alone?
::cough::yellowcake::cough::
OK. Then instead of making ME come up with lies, why don’t you give me one that qualifies.
Sure.
“You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.” - George W. Bush
No, no.
My point was to refute “…in the absence of WMDs, Saddam’s Iraq had as much ability to effectively attack us as the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.”
I know I’ve seen that quote before, and I don’t doubt its authenticity. But can you give me a cite that would help me tracj down the audience, the context, etc? Thanks.
Seems like a lie to me–not that they were for use in making nuclear weapons, but that we had good evidence that this was the case. We didn’t. We had crappy flimsy evidence that this was the case, and had he been intending to keep his employers informed, he would’ve told us that the evidence wasn’t especially strong.
Instead, he told us false information with the goal of convincing us to believe something substantially untrue. That’s a canonical lie. And it had grave consequences. That’s an evil lie.
Daniel
Saddam could barely attack his own people. What possible means of assault, and for what reasoning, would Saddam attack the United States (meaning the country, not potshots at our fighters patrolling the NFZ)? Radio controlled aircraft with sarin gas? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Oh, and I would like you to please note that this comment was made AFTER we invaded and had been looking for 2 months.
HE SAID WE HAD FOUND THEM.
WE DIDN’T.
==
LIE
Please see my post #64 above for reasons why the aluminum tube statement was a lie.
Bricker, this is getting pretty weak. Now you’re modifying the OP to, essentially, “Boxer didn’t lie, but neither did Bush! Prove me wrong!”
If that’s what you meant to ask, why even bring Boxer into it in the first place?
Daniel
Well, they did find the trucks that they were looking for. It’s just that they were not for BW. And Bush was also wrong about finding the “banned weapons,” as he put it. And he didn’t repeat it again.
So, is that a lie? In contrast to a lot of the statements that people often label as lies, I think it probably stands up to the standards of a real lie.
However, I find the statement about “we don’t want to have the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud” about ten thousand times more outragous, if for no other reason than that it came before the war, and people bought it.
“Let me just say, these were illegal combatants. They were picked up off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban”.
President Bush, July 18 2003
…I trust I do not have to cite the fact that **not all of **the prisoners at Guantanamo were either plucked off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban?
Strangely enough, Paul Wolfewitz, the Assistant (?) Deputy(?) Secretary of Defense was on the PBS evening news on Wednesday night. As I understood his comments he was saying that unspecified WMDs had been found in Iraq, just not stock piles of them. Whether he was referring to the single old, rusty artillery shell that was detonated by an EOD team or to something else, I don’t know. He quickly refused to be interrupted and passed on to pointing with dismay at Saddam’s abuse of his population and something about medical experiments on dissidents. That last one may have been a reference to the son-in-law who defected and then made the mistake of returning.
At any rate, as late as two days ago a big wig in the Administration was working hard to maintain the pretense that there were some WDMs of some sort, some where, some time. Now Mr. Wolfewitz has had many, many, opportunities to mend his fences on the WMD question but has pointedly refused and failed to do so. If this is not more of the BIG LIE it is certainly more of the BIG DECEPTION.
Friend Bricker, just what is your contention in this supposed debate? Is it that Senator Boxer misstated the pretext for the invasion? Is it that she did so deliberately? Is it that Iraq’s claimed possession of chemical, biological and almost nuclear arms was NOT the primary and dominant pretext for the invasion?
Is it your contention that we have done all this, at great expense in national blood, treasure and reputation, to bring the people of Iraq the blessings of freedom and parliamentary democracy? If so, let me remind you of Phillip II sending the great Spanish Armada in 1588 for the avowed purpose of restoring England to the fold of Christianity. Do you get the idea that there may be some connection between the President’s struggle to eradicate tyranny and promote freedom and Phillip’s struggle to suppress heresy and promote allegiance to the Holy Mother Church? Do you suppose either and both might be a blind for some less altruistic objective?
How does that refute it? At best, it might render the statemenet moot.