I can only speak for myself, but I’ve largely given up on those threads because it’s like banging your head against the wall – I keep arguing the reasons that I think Bush didn’t lie, and guys like ElvisL1ves and Evil Captor keep arguing that Bush is eeeevil, so he must have done something wrong. If they manage to make any traction with an argument that something Bush apparently believed may prove to be false, then they’ll immediately extrapolate that to a “lie” formulated to justify the acquisition of Iraqi oil, lining the pockets of Big (Bad) Business, and killing innocent babies and stomping on flowers, etc.
Make too good a point, and they’ll revert to saying that you’re a mindless subject of the crown (and, of course, Bush is eeeevil). For example, in one recent thread, someone pointed out that Clinton had already decided that he wanted Saddam out of power and even went so far as to make it the official US policy, but that didn’t seem to mean that he had already made up his mind about formulating an “illegal” invasion of Iraq or killing innocent American soldiers. Of course, ElvisL1ves just responded by accusing whoever would say such things of giving “the Good Guys . . . a pass when it comes to the truth.”
. . . Wait, I guess it’s not justElvisL1ves making those arguments, is it?
“In other news, the IRS announced an audit of Paul O’Neill’s tax returns for the following years: 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, . . . .”
“In other news, this week’s West Wing newsletter featured an unflattering drawing of Paul O’Neill, accompanied by thephrase ‘Big Mowth [sic] Dork’ and an arrow pointing at O’Neill . . . .”
“In other news, Paul O’Neill filed a police report today, stating that he answered a knock on his door, only to discover a flaming bag had been left on his doorstep. After stomping on the bag to put out the flames, O’Neill discovered . . . .”
“In other news, this video was taken of Paul O’Neill being accosted by the White House’s Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and Secretary of Education Rod Paige, who are shown here grabbing O’Neill’s arm and then using O’Neill’s own arm to hit him in the head, and repeating the phrase, ‘Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself . . . .’”
John, the “slipperiness” of poll numbers may have a lot to do with the wording of the question. If it’s “Are you for or against the war?” or something similarly simpleminded, then each respondent will have so many ways to interpret it without the opportunity to explain that the numbers become meaningless. So I wouldn’t take any poll by itself as significant, certainly not without a careful reading of the question.
A careful reading, that is, which is beyond the level Age is applying, about which the only question is whether he is deliberately misinterpreting or avoiding what he’s being told, or if he really is on the level he appears to be. Ol’ buddy, it isn’t that hard - you start with basic standards of conduct in a civilized world, compare behavior of leaders to it, and then conclude their own morality based on that - which is what we’re doing with Bush. You do not start with kneejerkingly supporting or opposing someone, and then do things like “look for reasons to conclude he didn’t lie” and so forth (and O’Neill has provided first-hand testimony that he did, which is the subject matter you’re avoiding this time).
If you really do have a point, derived from principles and facts and reasoning, that can withstand even minimal scrutiny, let’s have it (and we’re still waiting, in your case). If you don’t, then perhaps you need to reconsider your views. If you just want to vent, go to the Pit. But this juvenile ad hominem act of yours has become quite tiresome.
No need to throw out a hypothetical poll question and then knock it down. I quoted the exact one I look at, and it’s not overly broad or confusing. If you think it is, tell me why. And there are plenty of other poll numbers to look at, too. Maybe we’ll be lucky and see how people respond to “Did O’Neill’s recent revelations make you change your mind about voting for Bush in the next election?”
Personally, though, I think this item is great for news junkies but will be dead and gone by next week.
John, if you can think of a broader or more simplistic question than the one you quoted, I’d like to know what it is. I said nothing about it’s being “confusing”, though; that’s your word.
This item itself, O’Neill’s own statements, may be transitory, but the view that Bush is a liar and warmonger can’t be, not in an election year. All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall. Read Krugman today for more:
You’re welcome to hope this is the end of it and that it will all blow over somehow. But bet with your head, not your heart.
You’re allowed tospeculate and hope and dream and wish all you like that Bush didn’t lie, but when the facts and evidence and first-hand eyewitness accounts come out indicating that he did… well, that just makes you look more and more like a Dittohead in Denial™.
Fighting ignorance means facing the facts, no matter how unpleasant they may be. And the evidence that Bush lied through his damned teeth about Iraq continues to pile up.
I think that’s a short-term YES and a long-term MAYBE, John.
It’s true that this story almost certainly doesn’t have more than a weeks worth of legs right now. Well and good.
But it is the exact sort of story the Press Corps likes to harp on during the general election campaign. Given that we’re in the primary campaign at the moment and the democratic contenders are busy beating the crap out of each other (and not Bush) it’s a non-starter because the press can’t get anyone on the other side to continue harping on the issue to give it the chance to hit the ‘media frenzy’ level of reporting.
But I confidently predict that O’Neill’s book will feature prominently is the campaign of whomever wins the democratic nomination. Some of those quote and allegations are FAR too juicy to not use.
It astounds me that the American public keeps making excuses for this sorry man that we have as a President. I can’t believe that there isn’t more outrage that we were lied to and mislead about the war in Iraq. :smack:
I hear that our strategic waffle reserve is getting low…
Back to the genuine subject, though…I think it’s pretty clear that Bush wanted to depose Saddam, WMD or no WMD. I recall reading “Bush At War” (by Woodward, IIRC), and Bush was (is?) convinced that Saddam was involved. Let’s face it: Saddam is an evil bastard, Bush does not like evil bastards, and he’s not unwilling to say it in public. And there’s the family history on top of that, no doubt magnifying Saddam’s evilness in Bush’s mind beyond what the ordinary American’s opinion of him is.
The question is not whether Bush would have liked to invade Iraq and depose Saddam, regardless of instigation. Perhaps he even did draw up genuine war plans because he would have liked to grasp at the first possible straw in order to do so.
The key question here is, did Bush set some sort of schedule or timetable for doing this? Is there any indication that Bush planned to actually implement such plans without some sort of excuse, flimsy or otherwise? Without that, I don’t think there’s any sort of “smoking gun” in the O’Neill writings, no more than might have existed before that.
Is the world a better place with Saddam out of power?
As for Krugman’s article: The report that was “published by the Army War College”, was written by a visiting proffessor at that institution and carries a disclaimer that it does not necesarily represnt the view of the Army, the Pentagon, or the US government. So, a visiting prof wrote a damining article. Big ef-in’ deal. You’ve got at least one Democratic Presidential candidate (Lieberman) still saying he thinks it was the right thing to do.
Assuming JL doesn’t get the Dem nomination, I’m sure this O’Neill story will find it’s way into the general election campaign. Wheter or not voters see this as anything other than “Fired employee trashes ex-boss” remains to be seen.
Hmm… it looks like we also planned to attack Afghanistan before 9/11. Wow, it seems like 9/11 gave the Government every tool they needed to wage whatever war they wanted!
Maybe they were on to something when the PNAC stated in September 2000:
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor…” :smack:
The PNAC’s Statement of Principles is signed by:
Jeb Bush - brother of current President
Dick Cheney - current Vice President
Donald Rumsfeld - current Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz - current Deputy Secretary of Defense
John, if you really think those questions are broader or more simple-minded than “Was the decision right or wrong?”, then you’re welcome to think so. May you find some comfort there.
You’re also missing the point Krugman was making, that it is no longer possible to credibly dismiss the backgrounds and motivations who are telling you that Bush lied to start a war, even among those few who think that approach is intellectually valid or useful. You’re wrong even in your quibbles, too - the paper was indeed published by the Army War College, by a professor they thought enough of to invite there, and certainly it very obviously does not represent Administration policy.
Big effin’ deal, you say? That sense of denial could cause you a very wrenching feeling on the morning of November 3.
cmkeller, there’s no incontrovertible proof yet, true, but Bush’s stonewalling of Kean’s investigation speaks even more loudly than the PNAC membership roster.
That’s your argument? “I’m not gonna say anything because the other side exaggerates.” You claim somebody else said something wrong, so that makes you automatically right?
You’re missing the point. Bush tried to get the UN to sanction the war by presenting trumped-up evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” and “direct links to Al Qaeda”. When the UN didn’t go for it, he declared them “irrelevant” and went ahead with the war anyway on the pretext that he was protecting the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 attack. The whole thing turned out to be a bunch of smoke and mirrors, and it seems pretty likely now that the Bush Admin knew it was a trumped-up case when they presented it. In light of that, the revelation that the invasion had been planned before 9/11 just makes it that much more obvious that the war was not necessary, and that Bush is a liar. Had Clinton done all those things, he would be equally deserving of scorn. It’s not just that Bush planned the Iraq invasion; it’s that he told lies in order to make it happen.
According to O’Neil, Bush stated his intention to oust Saddam, and told his staff to “find a way to make it happen”. Other than a signed memo with an exact invasion date, what is it that you’re looking for?
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I’m very comfortable with my assessment.
Wow, that’s a leap. Listen, I agree with the War College article-- that the invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the “war on terror”. I’ve said so since I first joined this board over a year ago. That doesn’t mean that I believe anyone who thinks otherwise is lying. It means that person came to a different conclusion. Happens all the time.
Note his criticism of Bush is not enough to get him to say he’s planning to vote for someone else. We needn’t ask Krugman-- I think we all know he won’t be voting for Bush. So where does that leave us?
No, it’s not. And in fact, I don’t know that I’m right.
My point was that I’m sick of arguing about it because it’s been argued ad naseum in other threads, with absolutely no positive results. The threads almost instantly descend into rants about how Bush is the anti-Christ, or how Democrats are cowardly liars, and then some Dem brings up Clinton’s blowjobs, and some Rep calls the Dems anti-American, and then it becomes a fight about who’s more hypocritical.
Thanks for stating your position reasonably. I’ll try to do the same.
First, there were a number of justifications for the war in Iraq. Admittedly, the ones that stuck in everyone’s mind were “WMD” and “links to terror.” However, that doesn’t diminish the fact that WMD and terror were only two of many justifications for war.
Second, the crux of the WMD justification was not that they were in possession of WMD. Rather, the crux was that Iraq wouldn’t cooperate with our efforts to find out if they had WMD or WMD-development programs.
Third, we thought they had WMD and/or WMD-development programs based on lots of evidence, including the fact that they were resisting inspections. In fact, there appears to have been near-unanimity in the international intelligence community that Iraq had WMD-development programs. That conclusion certainly may have been based on intelligence failures, but that doesn’t mean that Bush knew that he was presenting or basing his conclusions on intelligence failures.
[Here’s where someone will usually say that Bush either lied or is incompetent because he believed obviously false information. I don’t see how the information was obviously false. It seems much more likely that Bush based his belief that Saddam had WMD and/or WMD-development programs on bad and good intelligence.]
In short, even if all the justifications for war were false, I don’t think we must conclude that Bush lied, or that he unreasonably believed certain things were true. When looking at the evidence, everyone seemed to reach the same conclusion that Bush & Co. did. That seems to be a pretty good indication that their conclusions were neither trumped up nor unreasonable.
That was me. It was actually earlier in this same thread, on the previous page, that I presented the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. I cannot see how it is seen as being illegal when it was deemed legal by our then President and Congress.
The article offers more than elucidator is willing to admit. It calls for money to go toward pro-democratic groups inside Iraq, and the setup of a network for these groups to communicate more efficiently. Basically, it promotes Iraqis to commit treason and conspire against their own government, in the hopes of starting a revolution or coup. It even calls upon the UN to form a Tribunal to jail and put Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders on trial, once they are deposed. The article goes into a point by point list on how Saddam Hussein repeatedly rebuffed the UN. The ground invasion may have started in 2003, but we really began invading in 1998.
And Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction? Clinton doesn’t think so.
