Shodan’s blatant misrepresentations aside (because I have no faith that he will become reasonable in the near future), what are the origins of this faulty intel, in both the Clinton and Bush admins?
I still maintain that the POTUS is responsible for any actions on the intel, but at the same time, I accept that the POTUS is not responsible for the collection of intel.
Where did the intel that determined there was existing WMD come from, in both the Clinton and Bush admins.? We know that the Chalabi fronted INC was in existence from at least 1998 onwards, and the UNSCOM intel from 1998 saw no significant WMD threat. If there was other intel at that time I am unaware of the origin, and hopefully, someone will enlighten. Was it INC related?
The reason I am against “Bush lied”, as it pertains to WMD (because obviously, he lied about many other things), is the strength of “plausible deniability” when it comes to intel. Obviously, the POTUS doesn’t collect intel first-hand, and relies on multiple sources.
What I don’t know, and haven’t been able to find out by precursory google searches, is what intel led Clinton to believe there was a threat of WMD in Iraq. If this is old news, I apologise. I didn’t spend much time in the US in the '90’s, and wasn’t a member of SDMB during the time it might have been relevant.
Was there a thread that dealt with this subject prior to my memborship? Or is it still unexplained? When I posted my “those who originated” assertion, I was thinking of “those who presented the intel”, and not the POTUS. IOW, there’s a chance Bush could claim deniablility on the intel. Regardless of whether we believe that or not, I’d like to know the origin of the intel, even going back into the Clinton admin.
Anyone who has a cite or info on this, thanks in advance (and sorry if it’s old news).
Very quickly and sketchy for time has run out: as far as I recall, the intel consisted of a connect the dots picture between OBL, AQ, Sudan, a chemical factory, Saddam Hussein, and Iraq around the time of the attacks on the two US embassies in Africa.
That was hardly the finest intelligence. After Clinton had the chemical factory in question blown up, independent reports claimed that items like aspirin and other medicine bottles were found in the debris, corroborating the official story that the factory produced drugs. There were no further conclusions or investigations I am aware of, and no apology. I remember being singularly unimpressed.
Clinton (and Hilary, I suppose) did appear to believe in SOME kind of WMD “program” (though not necessarily in Iraq), and SOME kind of cooperation between AQ and Saddam Hussein, but as I said they were playing a connect the dots game with intelligence that was of a largely circumstantial nature (I do remember a factory soil sample that supposedly tested positive for a toxin, and alleged communication between Sudan and Iraq’s government at the time when OBL was headquartered in Sudan – conclusion? Theoretically, none. In practice, Saddam Hussein was plotting and arming). Clinton was planning three potential strike scenarios against OBL towards the end of his term, but never pulled them off – according to some reports because the evidence did not appear strong enough to justify attacking foreign soil.
That’s what I remember off the top of my head, apologies for any errors.
After the 90s decade and into the 2000s, improved and more uptodate intelligence was being gathered by, among others, the UN weapons inspections program. At this point, I am arguing, who necessarily cares what the Clintons thought on the subject of intelligence? They weren’t in power anymore. They weren’t getting daily intel briefings and updates. They weren’t meeting regularly with the chiefs of staff. They were quite simply – compared to the President and his people – out of the intel loop. Everyone in he US, it seems, was out of the intel loop in the days of Bush’s mad convincing. Not so in Europe; aside from valid objections raised by countries like France and Germany, not to mention objections that were fiercely squashed by the governments like Italy and Spain, in the UK Robin Cook, who would have been privy to any intel the prime minister himself had, resigned and stated that he saw no evidence whatsoever that Iraq had or was building up or maintaining WMDs in any conventional sense.
I strongly disagree with distracting from the real issues by attempting to get a “you too” fallacy airborne, as if somehow the Bush and Clinton cases were so identical as to require the genetic fallacy to distinguish them. Clinton, whatever his faults in general and in the Sudan/Iraq/AQ debacle in particular, did not steamroll over evidence that didn’t directly support his agenda, and did not drag his country into a foolhardy war on such poor justification.
Sure you are. I compared Bush to all Presidents since Reagan (and later to the two before him). You are the one trying to say “they don’t count, since they weren’t re-elected”. They do count, if we are discussing who has the better claim to a mandate, and/or who is bucking a trend of the last thirty years or so. Only Bush and Reagan buck that trend, both by being re-elected and by doing so with an absolute majority of the popular vote.
I love this kind of shit. Hilary makes a direct and unequivocal statement that Iraq has links to al-Queda. But talking about what she said is “avoiding the argument”.
Hilary made her statement in 2002.
Because they are practically the same. Except as regards the party affilliation of the source of the statement.
We already covered this one. Bush uses “Iraq” and “9/11” in the same speech, so he is using “deliberate falsehoods”. Hilary very explicitly and clearly states that Iraq gave aid and refuge to al-Queda, but that gets glossed over.
As I mentioned before, if Bush says Iraq had links to terrorism, it’s “Bush lied”. If Hilary says Iraq had links to terrorism, it’s “Bush lied”.
Boy, Shodan you sure are fond of that word, “absolute”. Must update my Shodanese to English dictionary: “absolute” means much the same as “just barely”. So if the perfidious Packers kick a field goal from the 50 yard line in the last five seconds of the game, and win 21-20, this is an “absolute” victory. And if GeeDubya’s approval should eke up to 51%, this is the “absolute” approval of the majority of the American people.
As far as Hillary goes, so what? Do you imagine you can distribute the responsibilty for the disastrous decision to invade Iraq? How many signatures do you imagine there are at the bottom of the orders, where it says Commander in Chief? Five? Twenty?
No. As you well know, Abe explicitly said what he believed was the argument.
Hillary Clinton did make that statement. If you wish to call it a lie, fine. Why would she believe that there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda? I would suggest to you that she made the mistake of believing what the administration told her. She made her statement on October 10, 2002. At the end of September, 2002, there was a concerted effort by the administration to put forth the idea that there were links between Iraq and al Qaeda. I apologize for the length of this post, but the transcript of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon briefing is highly illustrative of the effort put forth by the administration to misinform, shade, be circumspect and lie. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/26/national/main523326.shtml
Further, Shodan, I think part of the point that you keep missing is what the purpose of the statement was.
From the remainder of the speech made by Hillary, with an actual link to the actual speech, and not simply a collection of snips on some not Freeper website.
My point is that the phrase “all the Presidents since Reagan” really means Bush the elder and Clinton. Two Presidents. Comparing one President to two others is not a particularly large sample size, and any point you make in the comparison is not nearly impressive as you seem to think it is.
Wow, Bush the younger had a better showing in his re-election bid than Clinton and Bush the elder. He also did better than Carter and Ford. Well, I guess compared to all the Presidents who have run for re-election since 1972 (which is 5 Presidents), he’s had the second-best showing. Out of six. And he’s better than the third-best by a very slim margin. Well, I’m in awe.
…and quotes Kerry’s statements in full, without the oh-so-conveniently placed ellipses in Shodan’s original citation. Shodan then responds:
…and later continues:
…finally bleating hysterically:
So…let’s take this very slowly, now.
In the post to which Hentor originally responded (#118), there were no links. Hentor was clearly unaware that you had linked to the quotes earlier in the thread, since he asked quite politely for a link in post #127. He even wrote the magic word, “please.”
Hentor never guessed that the second quote from your post was from John Kerry.
Hentor guessed you got the quote from FreeRepublic.com, which was horribly, horribly wrong (AHA!), because you actually got the quote from some other, essentially equivalent, right-wing waste of a blograg.
Hentor has never claimed that the quotes were “inaccurate.” He has argued, quite effectively, that you have taken them completely out of their context, and by doing so, misrepresented their import.
It is rather unbecoming of you to froth on about this so much, especially considering how totally, obviously, gobsmackingly wrong you are.
Now, regarding this:
What bullshit.
It’s not a matter of Democrats being bastions of honor and integrity while Republicans are lying swine. You are the one inserting partisanship into this discussion.
Nevertheless, the point is that you do not have any examples of Kerry, Gore, or the Clintons making the same sort of sweeping, categorical assertions of fact that you find emanating from Team Bush. Hentor has already pointed this out, but allow me to reiterate.
If you can find any statement by anyone in which it is claimed that:
– Then I will cheerfully label that person a “liar,” regardless of their party affiliation.
Just remember, in your own words, the statements must be ”exactly the same”.
Finally, for the edification of other posters in this thread vainly struggling to reason with Shodan, please allow me to remind you that you are arguing with a man who, prior to the war, posted rubbish such as:
…and, in particular, this:
A view, I hasten to add, that he has never publicly recanted.
Putting Shodan’s dodges aside (tip o’ the hat to Mr. Svinlesha there), my take of events is that while Clinton was well-aware of the problem Al Qaeda posed (some would say “obsessed”), the lack fo concrete evidence tying Iraq to them limited his options there. On the other hand, he didn’t want to just sit on his hands and wait for the evidence to arrive, so he split the difference and took some limited moves. Like the aspirin factory bit – if he guessed right, he’d have nipped a problem in the bud; if not, it’d be a minor international incident to apologize for.
Bush, on the other hand, handled the issue by bypassing the matter all together. He didn’t give two toots about terrorism and Al Qaeda (just ask Richard Clarke); he just wanted to go stormin’ into Iraq, on whatever pretext possible. I suspect he felt like a lottery winner when Osama Bin Laden gave him a ready-made excuse on 9/11 – he sure didn’t waste any time milking that cow…
No, he said they were slimy, dirty and misleading, and posting them was an intentionally deceptive hack job. I imagine this is another example of how words abruptly change meaning, depending on the politics of the speaker. At least in the minds of some.
I won’t bother with the rest of your bullshit, because it is, well, bullshit.
Well, I have already posted one from Hilary, but you don’t apparently care to recognize the reality of things that displease you, so I won’t bother to continue.
Right, but since the meaning of statements changes abruptly depending on who makes them, it would not be possible to find such statements. We have already seen that “Iraq has links to terrorism” is false when Bush says it and true when Hilary says it.
I actually bothered to check that I had actually posted this, since you have been known to post direct lies in the past, so I actually found the post. Amazingly enough, you have quoted it correctly.
Notice the date on the post. Notice also that it was posted a few days after Hans Blix had testified that he had found violations of the inspection regime, and all the weapons I mentioned were still unaccounted for, and that Iraq had still failed to fulfill the requirements of Resolution 1441.
Yes, thank you. It is helpful when you put a link in the post in which you refer to the contents of that cite, rather than just assuming that people will know you are getting material from some link you posted well before.
Now, if you could only link to a point. That would be very helpful. Let me know if you find one.
xtisme I am wondering if you find the statements from Donald Rumsfeld that I posted above to be sufficiently deceitful to call them a lie.
And rjung? No props for me? It took me a while to search for the Rumsfeld quote. C’mon, where’s the love?
Did you ever once stop to wonder why no picture has ever surfaced that documented the so-called “trashing” of the White House when Clinton left? I didn’t think so.
Clinton’s margin of victory in his re-election (both popular vote and electoral vote) was much greater than Bush the lesser. Doesn’t that grant him a larger mandate than a man who barely squeaked out a 3% victory?
In all fairness, I would no more argue in favor of your point than I would Shodan’s. Both are views filtered through a very narrow field of vision. In the big picture, Clinton’s margin of victory (8+ points) is probably due to the fact that a lot of people who had voted in '92 decided not to vote at all in '96.
In the really big picture, if you examine the true meaning of the word “mandate,” one person cannot have more of a mandate than someone else who held the same office. A mandate is, literally, the “authorization to act given to a representative.” One representative cannot have more authorization than another in the same position. Anyone who wins an election is thereby authorized to act within the scope of the powers granted to their office. Clinton’s authorization was exactly equal to Bush’s, according to the letter of the law.
Originally posted by Shodan (and quoted now for the second time):
To which I replied, in part:
Now you write:
So which is it, then?
But yes, of course, Hentor did indeed accuse you of making a slimy, dirty, intentionally misleading post. He also provide the full quote made by Kerry, in its context, in order to demonstrate the way in which the snippets you posted, lifted from their context, were intentionally misleading. And as I pointed out earlier, this demonstration was quite effective, but really, that’s not saying that much when it comes to you, I’m afraid.
We call this sort of thing ”debating.” It involves making a supposition and then supporting it with examples and evidence, while in a dialogue with someone of a different opinion. You should try it sometime.
Note as well, dear readers, how friend Shodan simply ignores the other three points of my rebuttal as if they weren’t even there. He cannot even so much as offer Hentor an apology for having accused him of guessing incorrectly.
No, it is not. It is “yet another example of the slimy, dirty, misleading techniques that the right employs so deftly,” as someone once wrote so eloquently. And yes, this does mean that I am accusing you of being intentionally misleading.
Translation: you’re right, and I’m wrong, so I won’t bother to refute it: I’ll just call it “bullshit.” Yeah, that should work.
That is not debating. It is frothing.
You’ve posted one quote, taken out of context, in which Hilary says that Saddam harbored agents of al-Qaida. One quote. Now: if she knew that the intelligence upon which this claim was based to be false, or uncertain, then she would be lying. All you have to do now is demonstrate that.
No one in this thread has claimed that Hillary’s statement is true, except for you, Shodan. No one. Not even me. Hussein’s regime had no connection to al-Qaida, and Hillary is wrong to claim otherwise. But was she lying, or was she misinformed? If you wish to argue that she was lying, you need to demonstrate that she had access to other sources of information in that time frame that cast doubt on the administration’s claims.
You know, as far as that goes, I agree with you that the Democrats were yellow-bellied and allowed Bush to steamroll over them. They should never have given him authorization to use force against Iraq, if that’s your point.
Why Shodan. You know, if I had even a modicum of respect for you I’d be insulted. But please feel free to point to any such “direct lie” I’ve posted, if you feel so inclined.
So as not to continue hijacking this thread, you might want to take to the Pit.
I had a memory of watching Rumsfeld say such things when I was at a conference in New York City, so I only needed to remember when that was and search for the date. I actually thought I remembered him saying something about an al Qaeda member being in Iraq within the past so and so hours, but that doesn’t seem to be included in this transcript, so I could be incorrect in that he said it or when he said something like that.
The transcript turns out to have been more helpful than I realized. One, because it predated the quote from Hillary Clinton that Shodan is so hot about by only about two weeks, illustrating the purpose and effect of the misinformation campaign on the part of the administration. (Remember that the quote he cut and pasted came from her speech about authorization of force in Iraq). Secondly, I was impressed to see that one intrepid reporter was not unduly cowed, and asked questions about the “innuendo,” about the “orchestrated pattern” and about Rice, Fleischer and Rumsfeld using almost the same words over a two day period about this false link between al Qaeda and Iraq.
I want to second Mr. Svinlesha’s point about the Democratic capitulation at that time. It was sad and pathetic, and appeared to give far more credence to Bush administration claims than even a few moderately intelligent posters on some internet message board did. I can only hope that they learned from it, and that Howard Dean keeps providing the spine that they need so badly.
That whole cut and past of the Rumsfeld “interview” looks to me like it was a complete whitewash job. He (Rumsfeld) never actually SAID anything concrete, he just hinted and danced around. A lot of it was variations on the them of “I don’t know”. The beauty part was when he said was all a matter of “semantics”. To me, semantics means you are playing word games to lie without being “busted”. In short, by just making hints and veiled threats without actually saying anything definite, he can make any connections he wants, he can draw any conclusions he wants, and his defenders will always jump to his aid and say “find me a quote or cite where he said it”. He really didn’t say a damn thing.
In my experience, when a person KNOWS something to be true, when a person BELIEVES what he is saying, he will speak plainly and directly. When he is full of shit, he will rely on “semantics”.
If nobody in the administration ever ever said anything, as Shodan seems to be claiming, then how on earth did they convince the country to go to war? What Clinton (either Bill or Hillary) said is irrelevant. They didn’t go to war. What Bush said (or didn’t say?) is relevant. He went to war. He is responsible. If it becomes a glorious victory for freedom and justice he gets the credit. If it becomes an even bigger disaster, he gets the blame. The man at the top made the decision, he is responsible.