A running thread for anyone watching this MSNBC special. Rachel Maddow hosting.
Desert Storm callback. Great point to bring up that unspoken justification for the second Iraq war.
Gee,.maybe instead betraying Valerie Plame, the Bushies might have listened to her… ? And why does Cheney get so much TV time during and after his administration?
Wait…there was a war in Iraq?? When did this happen? :eek:
Please don’t threadshit. If no one is inteerested in this rundown, the thread will die on its own. Thank you.
Very disappointed with this. It almost could have been made by Fox News.
IMO an objective person with no previous relevant knowledge would come away from this thinking that Bush and his team had listened to the wrong people, and made honest mistakes. There was a sentence or two about conveying more certainty than was warranted, but that was it.
One example — some scientist nobody has ever heard of said he was disappointed that they ignored his opinion about the aluminum tubes. But since he was the only expert shown on the subject, we have no way of knowing whether his opinion reflected the expert consensus.
Instead of him, why didn’t they show Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA’s director, appearing on the PBS Newshour the same night as Bush’s infamous SOTU address? ElBaradei said during that interview that the IAEA had concluded that the tubes were not suitable for centrifuges.
They also completely ignored the report of Hans Blix, presented to the UN Security council on March 7, 2003, almost two weeks before Bush invaded. Blix said in it that every suspected WMD site, including the Presidential complexes, had been inspected, with the inspectors swooping in by helicopter without warning so that material could not be moved around, and using sophisticated ground-penetrating radar to ensure there were no hidden chambers. He said that the Iraqis, after some initial footdragging, were no cooperating not only actively, but proactively, and that there was no sign of WMD programs or stockpiles.
So when Bush ordered the invasion, he KNEW that there were no WMDs, except maybe some old rusty mustard gas shells left over from the 1980s, somewhere in the desert. Right-wingers like to give long lists of Democrats who assumed that Iraq had WMDs, but almost all of their quotes are from 2002, or even 1998. I don’t fault anyone, including Bush, for erring on the side of caution, and assuming that Saddam was building WMDs while we had no inspectors on the ground. But the inspectors went back into Iraq in November of 2002, and quickly determined that our intelligence was wrong, and the defectors were lying. Some of the suspected WMD factories not only were empty, but had clearly been abandoned for years. A suspected chemical weapons factory didn’t even have running water.
That was known weeks, if not months, before Bush invaded. Bush, Cheney, et al may have been honestly mistaken before the inspectors went in, but they were deliberately lying by December of 2002, when they knew that their intelligence from “Curveball” and his pals were lies, but kept presenting it as fact. And then, on the eve of the invasion, Bush told the greatest lie of all.
The authorization passed by Congress in October of 2002 did not give Bush unconditional authority to invade; it set some conditions, namely that within 48 hours of invading, Bush had to certify to Congress in writing that all diplomatic measures had failed, and that nothing short of war could protect the US from Iraq. Bush signed a statement saying that that was the case, in full knowledge that the UN inspectors had said that Iraq’s only weapons in violation of UN sanctions were some conventional missiles that flew about 111 miles, instead of the 93 miles allowed. The US is 8000 miles from Iraq, and the UN had already begun destroying the missiles, but Bush didn’t care. He invaded anyway, after lying to Congress in writing.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-1.html
May he burn in hell.
The one bright spot in the show for me was Walter Jones, R-NC. He told about how he put politics ahead of truth, didn’t bother to read the NIE, voted for the war, and now prays for forgiveness. It was a nice contrast to those smarmy bastards Bush and Cheney saying they still think they have nothing to apologize for.
Because he’s available and gives good soundbytes.
It’s inconceivable to me that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld haven’t been tried for war crimes. If not them, who? If not now, when?
Not that we haven’t been over this a zillion times before, but what specific statute would you have them tried for?
Is it inconceivable to you that LBJ wasn’t tried for war crimes? How about FDR?
They are Republicans, and therefore held to a different standard. Like Nixon, if necessary they’ll simply be pardoned. Look how Obama has gone out of his way to ensure there will be little investigation and no punishment over the Bush administration’s use of torture. Both the Democrats and Republicans run interference for Republican leaders.
The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact. . . .
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. . . . . And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and** if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression** by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.
**Summation of Robert Jackson in the Nuremberg Major War Figures Trial
**
Thanks to those who have supplied a sampling of the types of laws that the Bush Administration could be subjected to, but it’s also incomprehensible that such laws might not exist. IOW, to refute John Mace’s hijack of this hijack, their behavior should serve as a model of exactly the sort of behavior that should be forbidden under international law (and as **Dick ****Dastardly **and **tagos **have shown, ARE forbidden under international law.) To get off the hijack, the Maddow show provided actual evidence that these men (and Condi–who can forget Condi) searched for false pretexts to begin a war of aggression, and when they had none just made it up. None of them should ever breathe free air again–they should die in shackles for their crimes against humanity.
How can they live with knowing what they have done? More than twice as many American died in Iraq than were killed on 9-11 – not to mention the slaughter and displacement of the Iraqis. Rumsfeld deliberately sat down with talking points about how to start the war. They became terrorists themselves. Why have they not been tried as traitors?
Rachel Maddow hosting. Wonder how she will come down on this :rolleyes:
And Fox gets heat for being “fair and balanced.”
Yea. We want someone who can see the upside of a calculated campaign of lies aimed at starting illegal wars that cost trillions of dollars in a search for WMD’s that didn’t exist and which were known not to exist at the time.
“News” purported to be without bias that is slanted strongly one way is as bad as if slanted the other. Your support of that position doesn’t make it right.
If it was Fox grinding the ax your boxers or panties (as the case may be) would be in a bunch.
