Agreed. We may only disagree with how far out of the realm of possibility it is. But please note my first post in this thread, I agree with the conclusions reached by Bricker in this thread (even if not all his arguments).
So George Tenet, the director of the CIA, never told Bush that the case for Iraqi WMD was “a slam dunk”? Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Albright, etc., etc., never said Saddam had WMD?
“He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past.” I think we are seeing a whole ton of history being stuffed down the memory hole.
Regards,
Shodan
Saddam did have WMD during Clinton’s administration, but he got rid of them long before the war started. For the rest – are you saying Bush is not a liar, merely a dupe? That’s a good defense to criminal charges, but not in any other sense. And I don’t buy it. Bush, we now know from many sources (including Richard Clarke, IIRC), had access to good enough intelligence sources that he had no plausible excuse for believing what he said.
From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_production_and_use_of_weapons_of_mass_destruction:
Based on this, I say Bush lied. To Congress, to the people, to the world – and not to himself.
I’ve heard that hear-say. But the accusation that Bush made was more than simple possession, it included both intent and capability. The “slam dunk” was that Bush would be able to rely on finding WMD to substantiate his claims.
Tenet’s position was that Saddam was unlikely to attack the US with WMD unless provoked, hardly a “grave and gathering threat”. Refresh your memory here. What information did Bush have access to that led him to a different conclusion? Was it other intelligence, that didn’t convince Tenet? Or was it the opinion of the deep thinkers in the Defense Department?
I personally don’t doubt that Bush thought Iraq to have WMD - Tenet either, for that matter. I just doubt they truly believed Saddam was a threat, and that the possession of some non-nuclear WMD was casus belli. The administration misled the American people as to the nature of the threat. If they did it intentionally, that’s despicable, and they should be tossed out (if not charged and convicted). It it wasn’t intentional, it was incompetent, and they should be tossed out.
For the third time, do you believe that Bush actually knew, for a fact, that there were no WMD? Or are you saying that he lied because he said that there were WMD and he has been proven wrong?
So, from that I take it Congress could have at the president for any reason if it felt the political landscape supported it (which you do mention you think would require an actual law to be broken).
So, as for actual laws being broken I am not certain but it sure seems like something in the law might be dug up that would do the trick. If not the law is seriously flawed. If, and I know this is not proven, we accept that the Bush administration manufactured ‘evidence’ to present to the public and Congress to get a go-ahead for war against Iraq I do not think that saying Congress approved the use of force against Iraq would cover the president. Is it their fault that they made a decision based on faulty evidence or the people who provided the faulty evidence’s fault?
Certainly the “evidence” provided turned out to be massively wrong. No WMD and no links to Al Queda beyond the most cursory of meetings between the two were found. The Bush administration and Bush himself were using those very points as their primary motivation to go to war with Iraq. When Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and others parrot the administration line to the United Nations and in numerous speeches I do not believe the President can claim they were doind so without his approval making him culpable for what they said…he is responsible for his cabinet. Of course, Bush himself also made numerous references to Iraq having WMD. ( Linkage to a bunch of those quotes )
Then you add accusations from Richard Clarke:
Naturally the administration denies what Clarke says about this and we get into a he said/she said pissing match.
So, does all of that prove anything? Nope…no smoking gun. But considering that the administration tried several angles to go to war with Iraq before settling on WMD when the other motivations weren’t working is suspicious. If the evidence for WMD and Al Queda links was so overwhelming and compelling one would think it would have been trotted out at the outset. That the administration turns away from chasing the known terrorists responsible for 9/11 to go after Iraq who had no link to it whatsoever is strange. To chase an “Axis of Evil” country for suspected WMD when one (North Korea) is already known to have been much further down that road and flaunting it but picking on Iraq is strange again. They already had a boogeyman…why manufacture a new one? Only reason I can see is money. Oil, Halliburton, Saudi connections to the Bush family…
Bottom line is it all stinks horribly. Either our intelligence services had spectacular and stunningly large screw-ups misleading an honest administration or the administration itself was up to no good. If the CIA/FBI/NSA/etc screwed up that badly there should have been massive shakeouts and rebuilding of those agencies because they clearly can’t be trusted as it is and they are crucial to US security but I did not see that happen either.
So, can we say Bush has already done something provably wrong to merit going to jail? Nope.
Can we say there is enough worrisome evidence against the Bush administration to merit a very serious investigation? I think that is an unqualified yes. Hell…the republicans saw to a witch hunt against Clinton which after years of investigation and millions of dollars netted an illicit blowjob. If dragging the country to war and pissing off the majority of the world doesn’t merit deeper scrutiny I cannot think of what would.
As I’ve said before, Bush is either a liar or easily misled. Neither alternative gives me a compelling reason to vote for him.
Is this really the decision the GOP wants voters to make?
Based on what Hans Blix found, or failed to find, in Iraq, and based on other reports prior to his inspections, I cannot see how Bush could have sincerely believed Hussein had WMDs; and, as AZCowboy said, in the unlikely event he was stupid enough and/or stubborn enough to believe that, he could not possibly have sincerely believed that what weapons Hussein had were a threat to anyone but his own people. Nor that Hussein was a supporter of al-Qaeda. I repeat: Bush lied to Congress and the American people to get us to support his war.
Fixed link:
Precisely. And, since Saddam failed to cooperate with the inspection regime for the twelve years after the cease-fire in the first Gulf War, he failed to prove (as he had promised to do) that he had disarmed. Bush (and Tenet) disbelieved in Saddam’s eleventh hour protests, and here we are. And your assertion that it was obvious that Saddam had disarmed is hindsight, and based on distortion and selective perception of the situation before the invasion.
I thought indictment on criminal charges was what we were talking about.
And my point earlier remains. Kerry and Hilary and Edwards and Clinton and a bunch of others, based on the same intelligence, came to the same conclusion. Therefore, if Bush doesn’t deserve to be President over this, neither does Kerry or Edwards. Neither did Clinton. Neither does Hilary. Etc.
december’s earlier thread on “For post-modern posters, truth depends on who says it” made the same point, and remains valid. If Bush lied, then so did Kerry and Edwards. They used the same intelligence, and came to the same conclusion. The only difference is that one side is trying to weasel out of what they clearly said - before the invasion.
Regards,
Shodan
Wrong. The Senate does not have access to the same intelligence that the President does.
You realize, of course, that it was the Senate Intelligence Committee, not the President, that asked the CIA to prepare an updated National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, right? And that NIE was available for all members of Congress to read, right? And, of course, it led many members to make the wrong decision on the war resolution.
Unless you have some specific evidence of some information that the President withheld from Congress, I’d say they got the same bad information.
Its you thats wrong about this. Thats why we HAVE a Senate Intelligence Sub-Committee. It always amazes me how people can come down on Bush but give the Senate/Congress a pass. They were working from the same intellegence. The President doesn’t get some sooper sekret intellegence not available to the Senate/Congress. Nor does the President get to GIVE the intellegence (properly massaged of course) TO the Senate/Congress. They all get it from the same source.
-XT
The same sources. The CIA. The NSA. The FBI. The DIA. Every one of them an executive-branch agency whose director is answerable to the President. They feed the Congress what the administration decides the Congress should have.
Are they routinely dishonest? No, I don’t think so. But to believe that these agencies will always volunteer information to the Congress, information that seriously undercuts their own boss, is just a bit naive. And to believe that they don’t at least spin the information in a way that will please their boss is more than just a bit naive.
Let me back up and disagree with xtisme. Congress does not get all the information that the President gets, as a rule. The Presidential Daily Brief, for example. Information on covert operations is usually held to the Chairman and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees.
But in the case of Iraq, even the strongest opponents of the war, like Ted Kennedy, to those who once supported, but now oppose, like Rockefeller (now ranking Dem on Intelligence) have not complained that they were denied access to any intelligence about Iraq. To the contrary, the intelligence was wrong, and Congress bought into it.
No, the only difference is that the people who generated, interpreted and flogged the erroneous intelligence all work for Bush, not Kerry, yet Bush has taken no action to discipline his people or correct the process. This is because everyone inside the administration knows that the WMD intelligence had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq except for public relations, and therefore it raises no special concerns. The last thing Bush and his people want is accurate, verifiable intelligence, because then they couldn’t create plausible deniability in planning future adventures.
Thats why I said the Senate SUB-committee. The full Congress and Senate aren’t included in all covert material, true enough. And I didn’t say they were btw. However, all the intellegence available to the President is available to a select group of the Senate. Or are you saying this isn’t true??
-XT
If anybody would care to read the news story from back in October 2002 titled, “Why the CIA Thinks Bush Is Wrong”, originally linked by yours truly in post #65, it may help answer some of the questions currently under debate here.
Shodan’s implication that this makes everyone else guilty turns on timeframes. Sure, (almost) everyone believed Saddam had WMD in October 2002. Most also believed Saddam to be a threat. Most wanted the US, and Bush, to do something about it.
But only few felt the threat was imminent in March of 2003, and required the end of diplomatic efforts and the beginning of a military invasion.
Analogous to US law, everyone felt the evidence was strong enough for indictment, but only a few, and specifically Bush, were ready to go to conviction before hearing all the evidence.
Bush, and his administration, misled* the American people regarding the nature of the threat and the need for immediate action. Kerry didn’t. Edwards didn’t. Clinton didn’t.
- I graciously use “misled”, instead of “lied”, because I honestly don’t know if Bush was really gullible enough to believe what he told us.