Nah, Bush can now shut up those critics who say he went to war with no plan for the post-war rebuilding process…
Whether Bush could have sold an invasion without 9/11 occurring is beside the point. O’Neill said that Bush wanted to invade Iraq since day one, and that Bush asked his administration to come up with a way to make it happen. 9/11 obviously made it easier for him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t want to do it before 9/11. Knowing Bush, I really don’t have a hard time believing it.
Just to be clear, O’Neill did not suggest any kind of conspiracy regarding 9/11. Seems pretty unlikely to me - if Bush were trying to justify attacking Saddam, it wouldn’t make much sense to engineer a terrorist incident and blame it on bin Laden.
By the way, I’m noticing that, even though it was pointed out early in the thread that O’Neill was NOT talking about a contingency plan, but rather an actual desire by Bush to invade Iraq, several of you are still suggesting otherwise. Please stop saying that; it’s incorrect. If you think O’Neill is a liar, and invented the story out of whole cloth, that’s one thing, but don’t say he was talking about a contigency plan when he wasn’t.
Thats what I thought when I read that part. Though I do think they did have a plan for the post war rebuilding process. It just was one that they had to scrap the moment they realised that installing Chalabi as the new dictator was a bad idea.
You haven’t earned my support quite yet. That Bush has much to be bashed for is a given.
YOUR job is to indentify and put forth a reasonable opposition candidate in the next election. So far it ain’t lookin’ too good.
Yeah, luci. Try and find an opposition candidate who hasn’t lied about the need for war, who hasn’t caused needless deaths of US servicemen, who hasn’t pissed away a coupla hundred billion of taxpayers funds, who hasn’t lined the pockets of campaign contributors, who hasn’t been caught lying about using cluster bombs on civilians. Go on, I dare you.
You should write for one of the new Indymedia splinter cells. What personal gain are we talking about?
Exactly so. Yet as such eyewitness testimony begins to accumulate, I believe it’s only a matter of time before we all discover that the 9/11 attacks were allowed to “slip through” in order to help advance the prior agenda of the Bush administration. I was excoriated for saying so at the time but so far there’s been nothing that proves I’m wrong.
RTA I’d like to prophesise that when it eventually does come out to the extent that most of the people who will not accept that the war was based on lies change their minds they will just come up with something along the lines of “Hey, it’s all history now. Get over it” :mad:
I don’t believe that the revelations are going to have much apprecialbe effect - those of us who loath Bush with the heat of a thousand suns can’t dislike him any more than we already do, and those that support him aren’t about to change their opinion of him as a result of the story.
A few weeks ago a OP/ED piece appeared in the local paper that discussed just how polarizing Bush is and how the term “hate” keeps popping up in discussions of him - and how that is a new development in American political discourse. No one seems to have a lukewarm opinion of him - he’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or he’s something you have to scrap off the bottom of your shoe.
I don’t think it’s a new development. Sounds like FDR actually.
Never said it was the same. I think the question of whether to remove SH by force has been around for a while though, so the decision to do so is not very surprising.
Uhm…I’m a Democrat who doesn’t hate Bush. I think he’s done a few good things and a lot of bad ones, but I understand where he’s coming from and I think he’s made a lot of bad mistakes out of ignorance, not malice or evil. I guess I’m all alone.
Sorry if I mislead you about the sense of my post. **DtC ** got it right.
I don’t think Bush is trying to hurt the country; I have no doubt that in his heart, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. He’s just incredibly stupid and foolish.
My four-year-old thinks he’s improving our home when he hammers at the walls with his toys, but that doesn’t mean I let him carry on…
No, actually, this is a HUGE boost for those who feel that Bush is a lying warmonger. The struggle in politics is never for the committed, it’s always for those who are in the middle. This is a powerful proof that Bush liked about WMD in Iraq because it was simply a pretext for a war he already planned to instigate. Reasonable people are going to have a much harder time accepting Bush defender’s lies and prevarications now. This helps move the center away from Bush and toward Goodness.
Would that I could agree. Doesn’t look that way. At this point in time, about the only people who could be “undecided” about the Glorious Liberation are those who simply haven’t been paying attention. It has long since become entirely obvious that the justifications for the invasion were a crock, even here, the Usual Suspects only make passing efforts in that regard. We are left with the argument that it doesn’t matter that they lied, because they are the Good Guys, and Good Guys get a pass when it comes to truth.
You can just barely hear the ancient echoes, still shrill with porcine rage, “He LIED to the American people! He LIED to the American people!” Of course, that was different. That was about the Presidential Winky, not trivial concerns like blood, death and pain.
"“The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear – like the previous administration, we were for regime change,”
See? It was Clinton’s fault! Oh, September 11! September 11!
"Bush “exhausted all possible means to resolve the situation in Iraq peacefully” before launching the invasion in March, McClellan said. Saddam defied a “final opportunity to comply” with U.N. demands to disarm, prompting Bush to take action “in the aftermath of Sept. 11th (because) it’s important to confront threats before it’s too late.”
(Quotes from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/156352_bushsummit13.html)
He “exhausted all possible means”? Is there anybody here dumb enough to buy that? Anybody? In light of the revelations about peace overtures from Saddam that amounted to virtual surrender of every point of “contention”?
And “confront threats before it’s too late”. Excuse me, Prime Whore McClellan, what “threats”? Saddams military machine was a shadow of a ghost of a military threat. Saddam had no weapons remotely capable of presenting a “threat” to America. How was he going to threaten America? Voodoo rites in the Presidential Palace? Does he mean that it is important to confront threats before they even exist, on the presumption that they will exist?
No, I don’t see many people changing their minds due to this revelation, its stuff we already pretty much knew. The people who didn’t care last week don’t care today. And if there is a sadder commentary on the state of the Republic, I’m at a loss as to what it might be.
’luci got it right this time. (I guess the blind squirrel story has some truth to it afterall.:))
Of course, we can throw out conjecture all day long and it’s not worth a hill of beans. We might be able to tease some meaning from the poll numbers, but even that might be difficult. In particular, I like to look at this poll by the Pew Research Center:
But even those results jump around quite a bit if you look at trend over time. The “wrong” column has been in the upper 20s/lower 30s for about six months now, so if we suddenly saw this jump to upper 30s or lower 40s the next time it is measured, I suppose that would be significant. Let’s see if we get an update next week.
What got me was this: it was at the top of the agenda at the first cabinet meeting. Which means it had a higher priority than even his beloved tax cuts.
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3925358/
It don’t get any more damning than that.