Dubya's forgery

[RTFirefly]

*Originally posted by Larry Mudd *
**Still no word on the mysterious third country which provided the forgery in the first place.

Rumour has it that it came from usually reliable sources in the Republic of Freedonia. **

It was that damned Chicolini and his friend Pinky who planted the documents here. My government had nothing to do with this.

[RTFirefly]

Which means it’s a Sylvanian plot. And need I remind you which SDMB moderator is from Sylvania? :eek:

[elucidator]

Snowball is in Sylvania. He has always been in Sylvania…

[Skid_Row]

*Originally posted by Tuckerfan *
I heard what gave away the documents was that they were printed on official Dukes of Hazzard stationary!

A Bloom County reference!!!

God bless you, Tuckerfan!! That absolutely made my day!

[Philosophocles]

*Originally posted by cuauhtemoc *
**My visceral, off-the-cuff reaction is :

I can’t wait until we vote this incompetent fucker out of office. The egregious diplomatic miscalculations by this administration are sqandering this country’s political capital with no benefit whatsoever. It becomes more and more obvious every day, with every piece of news, that he never intended anything but a war, despite his pathetic “war is a last resort” line to the public. The decision was made years ago. They shamelessly exploited September 11th, alienated most of the world, and now they’ve presented phony evidence to the UN commission, all as a means to this end.

It looks like the clown’s going to get his war, but it will be up to his successors to clean up the mess. I hope that the damage can be undone, and I also hope this is a lesson to Americans that we need to practice democracy responsibly. It does matter who the President is. We need to elect leaders, not vacuous figureheads.

Now I’ll go over to GD and maybe post the same thing in a reasoned and level-headed tone. Actually, I’ll probably just quote somebody else and go “Me too!” **

No other U.S. President has been such a complete and utter policy failure in every possible way as GWB. The whole world is laughing at America for being stuck with this incompetent, morally bankrupt asshat.

[E-Sabbath]

I’m sure some other US president has been such a complete and utter policy failure in every possible way. Maybe… uh… not Rutherford B. Hayes… I’m thinking of… maybe Grant?

[SPOOFE]

SPOOFE, this isn’t a small mistake.

Never said it was a “SMALL” mistake.

This is document used to justify war that is so poorly forged that someone with access to Google could find a mistake.

Y’know, some of us believe that a war was justified a long time ago. My biggest annoyance is that Bush is trying to sell this “War on Terrorism” crap as an excuse to go into Iraq.

Miller:

Before you go castigating others for not reading, you might want to pay little fucking attention yourself:

My dear sir, did you even read the OP? Did you read others reactions to the OP, such as China Guy’s?

[Protesilaus]

*Originally posted by E-Sabbath *
**I’m sure some other US president has been such a complete and utter policy failure in every possible way. Maybe… uh… not Rutherford B. Hayes… I’m thinking of… maybe Grant? **

James Buchanan, perhaps? When you see that there’s very good chance half your country’s about to break away and you don’t do a damn thing to stop it, that’s a pretty big failure.

[jjimm]

Interesting interview covering the opinions of some ex-CIA men:

Intelligence needs to be as pure as a virgin. When intelligence is pimped, as is now being done by the White House and the Defense Department, it loses its virginity. And, as is well known, nothing is quite the same again once you have lost your virginity.

[Coldfire]

*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
Y’know, some of us believe that a war was justified a long time ago. My biggest annoyance is that Bush is trying to sell this “War on Terrorism” crap as an excuse to go into Iraq.

This isn’t about what faulty reason is more annoying, although the “this is because of terrorism!” angle bothers me to no end as well. I know GWB et al think this war is justified, and I know they don’t really give a shit about what the rest of the world thinks. (A summit in the Azores, with two other countries that already agree? Some summit. Talk to Chirac and Schröder, George. They’re the ones that need “convincing”, not Aznar and Blair!)

What matters is that they passed off fraudulent evidence whilst trying to make a case for a war on Iraq at the UN, no less. It’s irrelevant whether one agrees on this war or not, and it’s only partially relevant whether it was incompetence or malice. The point is, that Colin Powell supplied the UN security council with false information. This is, to put it in simple terms, a very bad thing, and frankly, I’m amazed that you’re not showing any anger towards him for fucking up your side of the debate. I know I’d be pissed if I were in favour of a war on Iraq, only to find out my elected officials were lying through their teeth (deliberately or because of negligence) about something so important.

And alenar, a belated welcome aboard. Excellent post.

[ruadh]

If a forgery this shoddy can fool them, how can we expect them to be able to detect a good one? Why should anybody believe any of the “evidence” they may provide?

[Tuckerfan]

*Originally posted by Skid Row *
**A Bloom County reference!!!

God bless you, Tuckerfan!! That absolutely made my day! **

K-Mart had a sale. You made my day by getting it.

[Revtim]

*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
**Never said it was a “SMALL” mistake. **

I took from your previous statement

**There’s a difference between “lying” and “making a mistake”.

THAT’s why there’s no outrage.**

that you felt this mistake didn’t deserve any outrage. I apologize if I misunderstood. Do you agree that this is an inexcusable error, and whether or not the war is justified on other grounds that outrage is deserved?

[zigaretten]

*Originally posted by cuauhtemoc *
……now they’ve presented phony evidence to the UN commission……

Originally posted by Coldfire
The point is, that Colin Powell supplied the UN security council with false information.

This is a serious question. The CNN article cited by NurseCarmen says “U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the documents directly in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council outlining the Bush administration’s case against Iraq. But here is a transcript of Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council on Feb. 5. I find no mention of these documents, no mention of Niger and no mention of Africa.

So when did Powell present these documents to the UN Security Council?

I’m not fond of the idea that the US made use of poorly forged documents, but I don’t like being lied to by CNN either.

[zigaretten]

Another question…when I try to find out about the history of these documents (and various claims made about them) I found a lot of stuff concerning Britain’s original claim that they had “evidence” that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. At the time, Britain wouldn’t release the evidence or even identify which African counties were involved. Most of the press speculation at the time seemed to center around South Africa.

As is all too often the case, it was a big story at the time but I can find pretty much no follow-up. So…were these forged documents the whole kit-n-kaboodle or does Britain have (or claim to have) other evidence involving African countries?

[beckwall]

Once again, I have to comment about America, the press and “the truth”. We are going to war. It will happen soon. What
I want is true and accurate reporting of the casualties, including women, children and, of course, our own troops. Any chance that will happen? Or will we be fed the dribble that GWB wants us to believe? Call me pessimistic, but I don’t give credibility to any information coming from our government right now. We lie, we torture, we commit atrocities - just like Iraq and everyone else. But we are AMERICA, and somehow we get away with it. Feh.