Bush: …yes, we’ll call for a vote.
Question: No matter what?
Bush: No matter what the whip count is, we’re calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It’s time for people to show their cards, let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam. [Bush News Conference, 3/6/03, emphasis added]
Bush “failed to win explicit [security] council approval for the use of force” in Iraq. Two days before bombs began to fall in Iraq, the Bush administration withdrew its resolution from the UN Security Council that would have authorized military force. Bush abandoned his call for a vote after it became clear that the US could muster only four votes in support of force. [Washington Post, 3/21/03; Los Angeles Times, 3/18/03]
Right. He proposed the resolution before he withdrew it.
Oh, crackers, that’s the other guy again. 
And isn’t that just the way? Bush bravely claims this and that about Iraq. To the dismay of his detractors, one (1) of them is finally borne out:
-
- That he had every intention of developing WMD as soon as possible; *
and wouldn’t you know it. It is the one claim Bush made that is not susceptible to empirical evidence. What jolly bad luck that is.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What about this claim is not subject to empirical evidence? This subject only came up in this thread because evidence of it was being discussed, and the question was asked what it was evidence of.
Take a moment. Let’s think about 2 modern concepts, shall we? I think we should:
- Empirical
&
- Intention
…
Good.
pervert, if it weren’t for the moral bankruptcy you demonstrate in defending a lie used to start an unneccesary war of aggression which has killed thousands, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and distracted the country I love at a time of crisis, your semantic contortions and flip flops might actually be funny. But, unlike you, I still retain a moral compass, understanding of history, and sense of decorum, so I do not find it funny.
Here’s to hope!
IIRC Congressional authority was based on the goal of disarming/verification of disarmament, not ousting the mofo. And again, prior to the invasion we announced (to some of our allies suprise) that we would be occupying Iraq even if Saddam and sons fled the country prior to our invasion.
- Planning for Iraq almost certainly siphoned off Afghanistan war money. Probably illegally.
- How much have they requested for 05? wow, that much.
- The admin is currently trying to shift reconstruction funds to security, most likely to avoid having to ask for more money.
- At least some of the supplemental funding they have sought in the form of a slush fund - which has the reasonable effect of being flexible and the unreasonable effect of being opaque
- Seeking the funding off-budget and not including costs in deficit projections is not exactly being up front about the costs. Rather deceptive I’d say.
Riiiggghht. I will cheerfully agree that post vietnam our forces have been structured in such a way that the reserves and guard components are necessary for any major deployment, mostly to avoid being back-doored into an open-ended military commitment without much national debate and hand-wringing over whether the issues were sufficiently critical for such a mobilization.
Do you feel that the current ongoing mobilization of the reserve and national guard is sustainable over the course of the next 4-6 years and that the administration even hinted that significant portions of the guard would be overseas for those lengths of time?
Actually, the extent, adequacies and/or existence of “THE PLAN” is the heart and soul of the “mistakes were made” issue. I am not sure that going from 30k troops in country by Sept 03 to 150k troops for several years can be considered a mere evolution, a wee tweak in an otherwise adequate performance.
No. It included this paragraph: “Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;” It was the long standing policy of the American government that the Regime of Sadaam had to go.
[QUIOTE] And again, prior to the invasion we announced (to some of our allies suprise) that we would be occupying Iraq even if Saddam and sons fled the country prior to our invasion.
[/QUOTE]
No, we anounced that we would invade unless he acceeded to our demands one of which was that he leave. As I recall he never offered to leave. He offered, or it was suggested that he might offer, to give up power.
No.
They have not done so yet. They are still spending the funds they requested for 04. Again, I agree that the budgetary tricks they are pulling are objectionable. But they are not lies or deceptions.
Possibly because one of the difficulties in spending the reconstruction funds is the security situation.
I don’t know about this.
No, it is simply seeking the funding under a different law. I agree it is not the way I’d rather it would be done. But that is the way they chose to do it. They are not hiding their plans to ask for many tens of billions of dollars.
I don’t understand this point. Are you saying that our current force structure was designed to prevent large troop deployments?
Yes.
I understand that this is the heart of your argument. But you have to realize that the extent of your objection requires elevating the 30K number beyond reasonable proportions. One wildly optimistic estimate was that low. You are now saying that this was the one and only plan. I am saying that the fact that we shipped a couple hundred thousand troops over there in the first place proves that it was not.
Let’s add another shall we? Actions. Actions leave evidence. Actions demonstrate intentions. Now, you may believe that Sadaam was protecting the last of his chemical and biological weapons development program so that he could put them in a museum. But I think in that case it is not me who has their head somewhere it does not belong.
Again, and for the fifth* time. I am not trying to justify the war. I am merely saying that those whose opinion it is that the war was justified are not idiots. It is sophistry to the extreme to think so.
The next time you see Kerry try to explain a complex issue and then you hear Bush reduce it to ridiculously simple attack (to applause often enough) remember this post of yours. It is exactly the same thing. It is the problem which denies this country we both love very much the needed rational debate about these issues.
*for the record I did not count. It just feels like five times.
I’ve lost track – what’s the debate here? Is it the question of whether Iraq is “going to Hell in a handbasket” or not? Or is it the question of whether the Bush Admin is presenting the situation honestly to the American people? Or both?
There’s a step missing.
Intentions are inferred from actions. Sometimes the inferences are correct and sometimes they are not.
I want you to take this post an apply the logic in it to our discussion about incompetence in the other thread.
Meanwhile you are quite correct. I was speaking od demonstration in the sense of inference. That is a strong link. I did not mean demonstration in the sense of logical proof.
Circumstantial evidence and conjecture. In the anti-Iraq case. I consult the archives and I find this not to be a novelty.
Said ‘protected programs’ also lack that happy quality of verification by empirical evidence.
I’m sorry, what the heck are you talking about. The conversation you tripped into started when SimonX and I were discussion a small portion of the 9-11 commission report which said that Sadaam had been able to keep some aspects of his WMD development programs extant. We were arguing a small point about what this was evidence of. Specifically wether this was evidence of the success of the inspection regime or that Sadaam might pose a threat in the future. You tripped in with irelevant attacks and wild ramblings. Would you care to join the discussion or are you married to the practice of loonacy.
I’d advise you, pervert against personal insults like that in the preceding post. Not only are they against the rules, they are also a strong indicator of a weak argument by the person.
In your penultimate post, you in effect agree that there is no empirical evidence available to support claims concerning SH’s intentions. That was my point, so I don’t see why you are arguing.
There is no attack coming from my part, nor rambling. Several other posts show other people clearly and immediately understood my point. Again your wild claims mostly suggest a weak argument on your part.
As to what the recent report’s claims are evidence of: Answer, without objective evidence, nothing at all. I think it is uncontroversial at this point to consider any pro-war claims from the current administration as being due the most acute scepticism.
Look where giving credence to hyperbolic and circumstanial argument has got us to date.
Fair enough, but I was calling your argument loony, not you.
Because I did not and you did not. Seriously, I have no idea what you mean by this. Which penultimate post are you refering to?
Really? It looks to me like I am the only one responding to you. Unless you mean you were kidding or joking in some way. In which case I did not understand you.
he report we were talking about was the 9-11 commission report. Are you claiming that it is false?
Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps you could give an example or some how illustrate what you are trying to say. Seriously, it does not seem to parse correctly to me.
Pervert, what are you going on about? I honestly don’t have a clue.
Yes, we appear to understand Sevastopol’s point, that is probably why it has not been challenged. What we have no clue about is what you are driving at-- including the latest post, which contains no arguments, no information, no evidence, and nothing I can make sense of.
Come on, you’ve been doing this quite a bit in GD and it’s just not a good way to discuss. You’re clearly capable of making good points and have done so already, so I humbly suggest you cease your equivocation and stick to the facts – discussions of hypothetical intent and revisionism aren’t very good materials, especially not when combined with a desire to have the last word.
No-one takes Bush’s word for it nowadays.
Once bitten, twice shy.
This is a circumstantial argument for Saddam’s intentions. It is where pervert allows that the claim does not turn on empirical evidence.
And it is a weaker case than it appears, nonetheless. What is this - “protecting …his…program” - ? The administration has an uncanny knack of making claims independently of any empirical evidence. How is it that this ‘protecting his program’ did not yield any products, plans, equipment, bunkers or any material thing at all?
I’m not saying they are idiots, I’m saying that they are either liars or that they have been so taken in by lies that they can no longer tell the difference between lies and truth. What you are attempting to do is to obscure the facts in qualifications and specious arguments and attempt to blur the line between facts and lies.
Here are the facts:
Bush said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, they were such a great threat that we had to immediately invade.
There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there was no prospect of Iraq developing any. Therefore there was no reason to immediately invade Iraq.
President Bush lied to start a war.
The danger to the republic, Mr. pervert, is no longer in the reduction of complex arguments being reduced to simple one-liners. The danger to the republic is that lies will continue to be given equal weight to truth.