adaher is quite right. The quotation in question refers to Africa, not Niger. Thankfully, GeeDubya was not called upon to pronounce “Niger”, which might have had truly dreadful political consequences.
We must also thank adaher for demonstrating, yet again, that shamelessly disingenuous parsing and obfuscatory nit-picking have been raised to an art form by the Bushiviks.
It is Bush’s opposition that is parsing words and intentionally twisting whatever he said.
Bush said quite clearly in the SOTU that the threat from Iraq was not imminent. In other speeches he said the threat was “growing”.
The only ammunition the Bush-haters have is off-the-cuff remarks, which tend to be a very poor way to judge actual administration policy. Using such unprepared remarks, you can pretty much make a case for anything. Witness Wesley Clark or John Kerry’s position on the war. You can alternately say they supported it or opposed it, depending on which unprepared answer to a question you use.
The greatest danger, that BUsh haters don’t realize, is that the impossibly high standards they set for Bush only make his opposition look worse when held to the same standards.
THey also forget that the Clintons, who know better than anyone what kind of threat Saddam posed, have backed him up from the beginning and have not changed their position on the war and the intelligence that led up to it. So if you want to call Bush a liar, be prepared to call half of the Democrats in Congress liars.
Perhaps then, you will be so kind as to explain to us all the enormous rush to war? Why was it so impossible to allow the inspectors a further 6 weeks* to complete their work?
Can you also then explain the legal authority the decision to go to war had, in international law, if the threat was indeed classed and recognised as “not imminent”?
*Perhaps then, you will be so kind as to explain to us all the enormous rush to war? Why was it so impossible to allow the inspectors a further 6 weeks to complete their work?
**
I don’t see how you can call almost a year a “rush”. Perhaps you want to know why we had to go to war in March 2003? Because if we were going to do it, it had to be done by then or else wait until next year. Keeping 200,000 troops in the Gulf for another year with Saddam still in power just wasn’t a realistic option. We either had to go in March 2003 or withdraw the troops.
Can you also then explain the legal authority the decision to go to war had, in international law, if the threat was indeed classed and recognised as “not imminent”?
There wasn’t any. And I could care less.
Actually, and in truth, the Oct 7, 2002 quopte where Bush said,
was a prepared speech. So, your assertion that the only evidence is “off-the-cuff remarks” is an obvious falsehood. I’m surprised that you didn’t realize it. If you did realize it then the statement isn’t a mistake, but a lie. As far a “way to judge actual administration policy” there is the actual policy document **The National Security Strategy of the United States of America** that contains this in regards to “adapting” the definition of ‘imminent threat’:
Do you have a better idea of how to judge policy other than by official policy?
I’d hoped for much better rebuttal than that. I hope that you try again.
Those of us who are merely patriots concerned abut the strange and dangerous new direction our natl sec policy has taken would be incredibly delighted if the bar for constitutes honesty was raised for all politicians. There’re actually more than two side to issues in American politics. I hope that you grasp that.
As a rule, I believe that ALL politicians are liars until proven otherwise. It’s just a fact of life. But, just because they all lie doesn’t mean that lies have the ability to excuse one another. So, if you don’t mind, can we stick to the debate at hand? If you want to talk about Clinton’s lies, please open your own thread. Thank you.
So we had to go to war when we did because we had the troops deployed.
I’ll bite.
Why’d we have to deploy the troops when we did? Why couldn’t we wait til next year?
What difference would it have made except to postpone the problem for one more year?
Without deploying the troops, there would be no inspections at all.
Since Saddam did not comply either fully or immediately, the decision was made to go to war.
And your Bush quote, along with national security quote, in no way makes your case. THe Bush quote never refers to an imminent threat, and the national security policy was never invoked against Iraq.
No nukes. No vast stockpiles of VX nerve agents. No mobile bio-terror labs. No intercontinental drone aircraft. No connection to Al Queda. D for diddly squat.
If a threat is non-existent, as this “threat” is revealed to have been, why should anyone care whether or not the non-existent threat might have been described as “imminent”?
The man who sells you the Brooklyn Bridge with the prospect of an enormous profit has lied to you. Whether he promised that the profit would materialize next year or two days from now, is immaterial.
Yeah, that’s the question I asked.
So you’re saying that it was never said of Iraq that it was a rogue state inleague w/ terrorists, who would not seek to attack us using conventional means, who would instead rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction —weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning?
adaher, please expound upon this: “Keeping 200,000 troops in the Gulf for another year with Saddam still in power just wasn’t a realistic option. We either had to go in March 2003 or withdraw the troops.”
Why is that? Troops have been maintained in forward garrisons for extended periods since the time of the Romans. Or are you arguing that we had to go to war to give the troops something to do?
What does he mean by “put on notice”?
He was outlining the Iraqi threat. he compared it to our knwoledge of al Qaeda’s plans and designs of which “we had only hints” by saying “…in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined… Saddam Hussein’s actions have put us on notice.”
So what does it mean to be "put on notice?
In this quote, he seems to be equating “put on notice” with imminent threat.
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
If he’s not, what is he saying?
What on earth does ‘put on notice’ mean when the president uses it in these contexts?
Maybe I am the only one who has this point of view, but I feel that the war in Iraq was primarily media driven.
I haven’t yet figured out the cause and effect in this relationship, but I distinctly remember our troops barely being in Afghanistan, when the media started pounding the Administration about plans to go into Iraq. It is my firm belief that the Administration had no plans to go into Iraq at that time, and simply started looking into it at the request of the media to get an answer about Iraq.
Iraq wasn’t a new thing, and there was no shortage of information on Iraq. We had been flying dozens of daily sorties patrolling over Iraq, including from my squadron, all during the 1990s.
All of the above quotes from Condi Rice, George Bush, et al. were made after these barrages of questions by the press.
The media made him do it? Well, you are the first person I’ve heard express this idea, yes.
Bush identified them as part of the Axis of Evil in January, 2002. If you check the link to PBS, he was making statements about Iraq in March and June of 2002. He reportedly mentioned Iraq to his staff immediately after 9/11. And my recollection is exactly the opposite of yours; when Bush began talking up Iraq, as I noticed in August, I thought he was crazy and I laughed out loud because nobody else was talking about Iraq. I thought there was no way he would be able to generate support for attacking Iraq at that point.
I’d love to see anything remotely resembling support for this. Any news analysis, public awareness polls, anything that would suggest that Bush was responding to rather than leading the increased sentiment that Iraq was dangerous and should be attacked.
Frankly, this is beyond the backpeddling I thought we would see from conservatives on the matter. First, it was Weapons Will be Found! Then, It Wasn’t Because of Weapons! Then it was Other People Said Iraq Was Dangerous Too! Then, He Never Said Imminent Threat. The Senate is now going to say Tenet Made Him Do It. But you Chicago Faucet are the vanguard of The Media Made Him Do It!
As a fellow Pittsburgher, I am proud of you! Hoorah!
Don’t forget adaher and the school of He Didn’t Use Those Exact Specific Words So That’s Not What He Said, either. :rolleyes:
(And people wonder why I call Bushistas sheep. Go and graze, kids…)
And here I thought it was those practical jokers at the CIA:
:smack:
So did Wesley Clark support the war or didn’t he? I can prove that he did. And then you can prove that he didn’t.
Same goes for imminence. They said some things that indicated yes, some things that indicated no.
Isn’t moral relativism GRAND ! I’ll bet you can also use it to prove that duck quacks don’t echo.
I’m not trying to make moral relativism. I’m just pointing out that for every Bush quote that seems to indicate an imminent threat I can find one that specifically says there is no imminent threat.
Well, that’s splendid, adaher, truly splendid! The threat that did not exist was not necessarily depicted as being an imminent threat! That certainly clears that up! We weren’t sold a one hundred pound bag of pure, unadulterted horseshit! There are nuggets scattered throughout which, in the right light and if you squint, might bear a vague resemblance to truth!
Gasp! Boy, we “Bush haters” are sure put in our place now, huh?
Please find one, just one, statement made by Bush before the invasion, stating specifically that Iraq “is no imminent threat” to America.