Which has utterly nothing to do with Fooled by W’s claim that everyone, or some enormously large number of people, believe that Bush was desirous of peace right up until he ordered the Tomahawks launched.
There are posters on this board who believe that Bush did the right thing for the right reason, (some think there actually was a reason to believe WMDs existed, some acknowledge that it was only an excuse to get public support), but only our fantasist believes that anyone thought that Bush wanted peace.
As to being “unchallenged,” book tours and promotional library openings tend to not be places where “challenges” occur. Did any of them appear on Maddow’s show or Colbert’s? Publicity flacks pick favorable fora so as to promote sales, they don’t go to serious news outlets or to the opposition.
“Everyone” is an obvious straw man. But if he said “some enormously large number of people,” IMO he’s right, because I would bet there are millions. I concede that as a percentage of the American electorate, it’s probably only 10% or so, but that is still millions, and IMO it’s sad that there’s even one.
Thanks for going even further off the edge. It was ridiculous enough to say you didn’t know anybody who thought that, but it may have been true, so I could only say you need to get out more. Now you are flatly saying that nobody but NFBW thinks Bush wanted peace. I don’t know or care how your pals think that assertion is equivalent to a very restricted comment about the UN resolution, but it is clearly wrong, because I DO know people who think that.
And some of them are not especially right-wing in their politics. It’s more a matter of not being capable of believing a President would act in such bad faith. They may think that Bush had bad advice, or unrealistic standards of proof, but they don’t think he was determined to attack no matter what. They point to his last-minute ultimatum, demanding Saddam and his sons leave Iraq, as evidence that Bush sought a solution short of war right up to the invasion.
Which is exactly what I said about them mostly appearing on Fox News, but thanks for the affirmation. The point is that you didn’t just say you have to be selective to find people who believe that Bush sought a peaceful solution, you said that such people no longer exist, and that is ridiculous.
[QUOTE=TonySinclair]
Thanks for going even further off the edge. It was ridiculous enough to say you didn’t know anybody who thought that, but it may have been true, so I could only say you need to get out more. Now you are flatly saying that nobody but NFBW thinks Bush wanted peace. I don’t know or care how your pals think that assertion is equivalent to a very restricted comment about the UN resolution, but it is clearly wrong, because I DO know people who think that.
[/QUOTE]
There is a word for folks who thought that Bush still was seeking peace after he started moving troops into the ME (which is the time period we are talking about here)…that word is ‘gullible’. Sure, there are folks who thought that. To paraphrase, there is a sucker born every minute.
Again, I’m sure there are folks who still, to this day think that Bush really just wanted peace all along and decided at the last minute, since he had the army over there and all, to pull the trigger (perhaps he had some bad shellfish that night or Barb wasn’t willing to give him that Sunday blowjob she promised). There are people who believe 9/11 was all a government conspiracy and that JFK was killed by a cabal of government agencies and the Jews, and that aliens really did crash land in Roswell in '47 after all. I think Tom was being a bit hyperbolic, since I’m sure he realizes that there are all manner of deluded or gullible folks out there.
It takes a specially sort of gullibility and delusion to still cling to this believe today, 10 years after the events transpired, but to be sure there are folks besides NFBW who believe it still. I have a bridge to sell them in Alaska…
Seriously, is this a whoosh? Are you saying I should have assumed that Tom was excluding gullible people when he claimed that nobody still believes Bush sought a peaceful solution?
If not, I accept your apology.
And yes, there are also people who believe Bush orchestrated 9-11, or that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim. Millions of them.
What is this fascination of yours that my argument has anything to do with my ‘believing’ that bush was really after peace.
And again, you respond in generalities and never come close to my specific point about Bush’s March 7 offer to let S.H. Remain in power based not on what S.H. did, but on what the UNSC would do.
Bush put forth a draft resolution that asked the UNSC to declare Iraq in full compliance within ten days and if not Bush asked the UNSC to declare Iraq in material breach of 1441.
If Bush had the intel he claims he had ten days later he should have shared it and not made an offer to let S.H. stay.
What is wrong with wanting an answer? Bush wasted my tax payments on Iraq.
10%? For people who still believe that Bush was seeking a peaceful solution right up until the war started? I would still put the figure as multiple zeroes to the right of the decimal point.
It would be interesting to see actual numbers on such claims. I have never seen anything to suggest that anyone still believes Bush was seeking peace.
Going with your gullible scenario, however, means that NfbW has spent the better part of six months arguing with people who basically agree with him on Bush’s overall plans in order to “convince” some handful of gullible people, (who are certainly not on this message board), and who are probably unable to even consider his version of history.
Most CTs are promoted by people who are either irrational or hustling for a buck. Where is the Conspiracy Theory that proposes that Bush REALLY REALLY wanted peace until he HAD to resort to war and who is promoting it or making a buck off it? Even Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld never push that sort of silliness. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were both on record within two months of the invasion that the WMDs were a pretext (or were irrelevant). Cheney has made a big deal about trying to tie Hussein to the WTC/Pentagon attacks, (even after GWB admitted they were unrelated), but I do not recall him ever claiming that Bush was striving for peace. And Rice has danced around the errors under her purview for years, but I do not recall her ever claiming that Bush had to be forced to start the war.
Barring real numbers, (from 2013, not March of 2003), we can only agree to disagree on NfbW’s fantasy that hordes of Americans have been fooled into thinking Bush wanted peace.
There is no shortage of either. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice have all had books out fairly recently. More importantly, CTs are believed by people who want to believe them. And there are many, many decent people who want to believe that their President wasn’t a total shit.
But yes, since I can’t give you an exact number, I will agree to disagree that there are precisely zero Americans who think Bush would have attacked Iraq anyway if Saddam had accepted his ultimatum.
I must disagree with Tony Sinclair that I am the only sane person on this thread. Tony is quite sane and so is Clairobscur and that makes three. I am not addressing how many people believed Bush was seeking peace until the Tomahawk missiles started flying.
For Tony, it is at these exasperating points that I ask T&D where he gets these misinterpretations of what he thinks I’m writing about.
Just look at what T&D cited and then replied? The response has nothing to do with what I actually wrote. For God’s sakes I will repeat what T&D cited from me and then went off on this ‘nobody believed Bush wanted Peace’ diversion and misdirection.
The facts are that Bush did not adhere to the actual language in the AUMF about ‘enforcing all UNSC Resolutions’ when he attacked Iraq, and I could care less if nobody believes Bush wanted peace in 2002 or a couple months ago this year. That is not the point I have made.
It is that Bush can still claim, against all the facts to the contrary about the success of the inspections, that his first desire was peace. I know Rachel Maddow had a good expose’ on that Bush Library farce and lies that are the title of this thread, but there is no way in hell that Bush should be able to put forth such a claim without the entire mainstream media deriding him and his legacy managers for doing it.
I agree with Tony Sinclair’s response to John Mace on the Hubris thread:
I have added to that final sentence from Tony, in that I have noticed that Bush did not comply with the language of the AUMF.
If one believes that Bush ‘abused the authority the AUMF gave him’, it is not relevant in the sense if it matters if one ‘believed’ until Bush started the invasion that Bush wanted peace. My view at the time and still is that Bush had lost all ability of a rational mind after the attacks on 9/11. One could not know what the hell that man was going to do. And Tony also I believe brought up the other major point back on the Hubris thread that it was naïve (PollyAnne-ish) to believe that Bush would be stopped had Congress refused in October 2002 to grant him the use of force … with the idea that it would force Iraq to allow inspectors back in…
Bush was in the drivers’s seat even as irrational his entire administration had become in 2002. We were already ‘at war’ with Iraq in the NFZ enforcement. It would have taken little for Bush to escalate it without direct Congressional approval.
And finally to T&D. I was addressing what BUSH is CLAIMING, not what the rest of us in America are believing.
Well, with the goalposts rushing about madly, it is hard to tell.
However, this is still just silly nonsense. The reason no one rushes out to prove that Bush was looking for war is that only some minuscule fraction of the population would believe him if he did make the claim. It is rather like the infinitesimally tiny number of reporters who rushed out to disprove Nixon’s claims that he was not guilty of wrongdoing when he made such claims in the late 70s through the early 90s. Rational people realized he was lying and did not waste time trying to disprove his self-serving claims.
So, you want to debate whether a self-serving publicity outlet* for Bush should be compelled to be less self-serving? That is your whole point?
:rolleyes:
Pretty much all presidential libraries are now self-serving publicity outlets for the retired presidents.
I have not moved the goal posts one iota of an inch. Your latest misdirection to being about what people believe is a perfect example. You cite what I wrote which is where the goal post was set, and you respond with a answer where the game had s home plate.
Still, this is not about setting out to prove that Bush was rushing to war. I guess you can’t get over the misdirection antics that you require to dispute what I’m saying.
That Bush wanted war is not in dispute.
The way Bush has fooled you is by this critical insurance that SH did not cooperate with the inspectors so that means Bush has justified his decision by putting the full blame for Bush making the decision on Saddam Hussein.
That is an historic lie of such magnitude that one can only conclude that Bush gets a pass on that because the main stream news media has bought into it lock stock and barrel or that they have no desire to set the record straight because if their own complicity in cheer leading Bush into this war.
The myth that accompanies the ‘no cooperation’ myth is that poor Dubya was a victim if intelligence failure. That cannot be true based on Iraq’s offer to let the CIA come into Iraq this time around. And Bush never considered it.
Those two key anchors of Bush’s Iraq invasion myths have not been addressed in any significant way by the main stream press including the press and punditry that leans left.
Why you advocate so strongly against vigorously asking these questions is, I must admit, beyond my comprehension and sensibilities. But maybe you can explain it someday better besides continuously repeating that it is silly.
I can tolerate all kinds of nonsense about Bush and the Iraq war, but mixed metaphors? That is something up with which we must not put!!
TonySinclair: I’m kind of with you on the idea that lots of Americans would probably say that Bush was seeking peace all along, but your cite kinda proves the opposite-- Truthers think Bush was in on the 9/11 attacks, which wouldn’t indicate a desire to seek peace, now, would it? Of course, I think you and I would agree that anyone who thought Bush was seeking peace right up tot he point of the invasion was, in fact, Fooled By W. No?
Again, this is not about whether Bush really really wanted peace. Most knew that when Bush was talking the peace talk, his most powerful VP never ever wanted peace or nothing to do with the UN and giving Iraq a final opportunity to comply.
The news media pass I speak of is based upon your point that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz went on record after the invasion that WMD was a pretext or irrelevant.
That is my point too. Because if that was the case then my point that Bush did not adhere to the UAMF that was granted him. He violated it, and he violated UNSC 1441 in the sense that our yes vote for 1441 was tantamount to a commitment that the US would abided by it.
Again, It was known by me and most people at the time who bothered to follow the UN aspect of the drumbeat for war, that Cheney and the neocons were dead set against it.
It was never a matter of ‘believing Bush’. It was a matter of what an irrational President would do when surround by so many irrational advisers and Vice President.
One could hope that Bush would have been his own man enough that once seeing all his intelligence shot down in public, and Iraq declared proactively cooperating within a few months of the new inspections, that Bush would have decided in favor of rationality in the end and given the inspectors a few more months to finish.
He could rather inexpensively (compared to ground invasion) let the troops remain off Iraq’s borders until the Fall if the weather was such a factor in timing the invasion.
That is where the decision was to be made based upon the actual "threat to our national security’ and Bush could not make that argument in my opionion unless he had ‘actionable intelligence’ (not five years old intelligence - proven wrong) that Iraq was actually concealing WMD from Blix.
That comes to my third contention. Why has Bush never been asked that I know of about his claim about intelligence that left no doubt on March 17, 2003 when he claimed he had just decided for war? And on March 7, ten days before that claim, Bush was willing to leave S.H. in power if the UNSC and Dr Blix declared Iraq in full compliance.
My detractors here, will not try to explain that one. They wont’ go near it.
That is a discrepancy in the Bush narrative and myth making about the run to ground invasion of Iraq.
Why can’t we get answers or why do we not deserve to know how that happened. Why could Bush offer to let S.H. remain in power on March 7 but have intelligence ‘that left no doubt’ ten days later that Iraq was concealing the most lethal weapons ever devised from the UN inspectors.
That was the rationale for war, and to allow Bush surrogates to run around saying WMD was irrelevant, is a journalistic crime at least in moral and professional terms.
I just don’t accept all this passivity on the press’s part. What is wrong with that?
And again, T&D… This has nothing to do with Cheney claiming that Bush was striving for peace. This has nothing to do with the public at large believing that Bush was striving for peace. It is about Bush claiming prior to the AUMF that he was striving for peace and making that lying deceiving president be accountable for his words.
And to quit trying to pass off the Bush supportive myth that he wanted peace most of all, but S.H. didn’t cooperate so war was a must. That myth has no business remaining in existence.
Those running the Bush library may want to push it … but there should be push back ten times as strong against that all out lie and fabrication and rewrite of history and reality.
I have not disputed that the AUMF made, Bush the decider. SO you are wrong, and thus you have negated your agreement with me made in (1.). The AUMF made Bush the decider, Ok. Deal with it. I have also made the point that Bush was already the decider because of the previous AUMF for the War on Terror and as Tony Sinclair pointed out long ago in the Hubris thread that the War Powers Act could have been invoked by Bush at any time. So making Bush the decider was not really doing anything other than re-emphasizing that Bush had a power that he already had.
The significant part of the AUMF for Iraq was that Congress put language in that restrained Bush to 'enforce all UNSC Resolutions with regard to Iraq. And Bush did not do that. As you first stated in (1.).
I can’t convince anyone who so willingly and often misrepresent and distort my argument.
It does not matter the reason that the press is passive on this. The elemental point is that they are.
I don’t want the press to ‘report my interpretation’ - I want them to do their job which is to seek the truth and ferret out the facts.
You are one who said that S.H. didn’t cooperate sufficient so it was justified that Bush ‘decided to invade’.
You are also one who said that you didn’t care if Iraq had WMD.
So perhaps the press has satisfied you that Bush did all he could to avoid war. You wrote that it was justified based upon the fact that S.H. defied the UN disarmament policy that international law applied to him.
The press must have done a satisfactory job in your mind.
I disagree. I say S.H. did cooperate sufficiently to avoid war and that Bush is lying to you when he says he wanted peace but S.H. was justifiably removed because of his defiance of the inspections to the present day.
You and Bush are at ‘one’ on the justified reason that Bush the decider had to decide to invade.
I 've seen your position. It is not one to be proud of.
