I haven’t been playing the “Bush liar” card because I’m frightened he actually believes this crap. Either way, even if the British vouch for them, the evidence wasn’t there, and there were reasons to believe along the way that (as some complained) the evidence was being politicized. There were always questions being ignored. After the IAEA said the notorious aluminum tubes were unsuitable for uranium refinement, Bush went ahead and kept saying they were evidence of a nuclear weapons program. In important situations, you don’t let someone else do the fact-checking and then go “not my fault!”
I’m sorry, but that’s a lame analogy. Clinton lied in court and should have been punished. Not impeached, but punished. Bush has either lied or been completely wrong, potentially because he WANTED to believe, about a number of things. Neither gives me any confidence in him and neither is becoming of a President.
Hear hear. Someone is only lying if they know what they are saying is false. Calling Bush a lier is a bit over the top. Sure he was wrong, but he was relying on what other people were telling him. He may have been guilty of choosing to believe the people who were telling him what he wanted to hear, but I think he probably believed it when he said it.
As far as I know, there’s only been two instances where this claim has been made, and in both cases subsequent tests showed no evidence of chemical or biological weapons material.
The absence of outrage at the time was probably due to two factors, at least in the Halabja incident that Bush was always talking about -
a) the assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency was that it was done by Iran, not Iraq.
b) the DIA’s assessment that whoever did it, it was probably accidental. Iran and Iraq were attacking each other at the time, and probably didn’t even know that the Kurds were there.
That’s a far cry from the “deliberate genocide” claims that seem to have become accepted as truth, much like the “Saddam threw the inspectors out” lie that the Administration used so often.
I hope I can get the quote thingy to work in the new format…
Actually, that’s EXACTLY what you do, whether you’re a CEO, Military General or the President of the US. You take information presented to you from what are hopefully reliable sources, and you make a decision based on that information. What is expected, that the President is going to personally head an inspection team for months on end? No, there are other people to do that.
Again, based on previous history, Iraq had a track record of stalling and misleading UN inspectors. If you are stalling and misleading, then it’s logical that you are hiding something…
It’s is also not logical to question an intelligence report from a third party (Britain) that also happens to agree with the majority of the findings of your own intelligence. Yes, there were probably other indicators, but they apparently didn’t outweigh the other types of intelligence we had. Of course, we’re all armchair-presidenting here, with 20/20 hindsight…which is ALWAYS more accurate than whatever you are working with at that moment…
…I think I’ll go play YESTERDAY’S lotto numbers, based on information I have now…
Since I seem to be in the wager business these days (see the Election Predictions thread), I’m open to one here, if you think the odds favor Syria coughing up same by a date certain.
Well, I must admit I don’t think you invade another country over some notes on the backs of envelopes.
You don’t know George W. Bush, but you must know of him. He’s the President, and all that. Here’s his words from his speech to the nation last March 17:
If Bush lied to us, and Congress, and the UN about his reasons for going to war, then this was, in effect, a use of the US military to conduct a war for personal and private reasons. Impeachment and criminal trial would be the appropriate response.
If he had wanted to justify the invasion of Iraq strictly on human-rights grounds, he had every opportunity to make that case. As others have pointed out, that was not the case that was made; getting rid of Saddam the human-rights violator was never presented as more than a fringe benefit.
I’d disagree. But it’s your assertion. Got any cites?
There’s a reason this is important. There are lots of countries that still have lousy human-rights records. If it’s a justification that we trot out for invasion when we’re in the mood to do so, then it’s the international equivalent of selective enforcement of the law, just another ‘gotcha’ device that ultimately erodes the credibility of our opposition to human-rights abuses by the mounting evidence that we only care about it when we damned well feel like caring. If we’re going to invade countries based on their maltreatment of their own citizens, we might want to keep lists of just who the worst offenders are, and work our way through the lists from the top down. I’m sure groups ranging from the UN to Amnesty International could help us out.
Don’t worry, I pretty much get all that out of my system in this forum. Besides, I don’t hate him; I just regard him as a morally worthless human being, and the worst President since WWII. Including Nixon.
Bush raised this one in his SOTU address, about using the criminal justice system to deal with those who tried to blow up the WTC in 1993.
The question is, who was suggesting alternatives back then? Was the GOP hollering for war against somebody? They may have been, but I don’t remember; feel free to refresh my memory. I bet Bush’s official reaction at the time was along the lines of, “we need to sign another left-handed starter. Any free agents available?”
Quiet beforehand.
Lybia was trying to get back in the good graces of the West well before 9/11. I can dig you out a cite if you want.
Which they wanted to do all along, and were pissed at us for our refusal to engage them diplomatically.
Whatever.
And al-Qaeda still quite at large. Been to Istanbul lately?
I didn’t say the President personally. I said you have to have some sort of intelligence agency - I think we have a few of them - investigate the claims as well. The CIA doesn’t seem to think the claims are true, so ignoring them and saying “the word of MI5 is good enough” doesn’t cut it.
Where is it, then? Oh, it’s a logical assumption. I thought the thing to do is do your best to find out if it’s true so you don’t have to assume in the first place.
It’s not logical to check things out for yourself? Hoo boy. The Nigerian uranium claim wasn’t just false, it was laughably false. That, among other gaffes, says to me that people picked and chose the intelligence to support what they already thought instead of making a reasoned appraisal. That’s a pretty terrible thing to do when you’re leading a country. Finding excuses to go to war? Yipes.
I was making all the same complaints before it was 20/20, and I think George Bush has been wrong more often than I have in this regard.
It might not be logical to question it, but it also wouldn’t be logical to use it in the first place. You’d use your own intelligence, which presumably you had more confidence in.
Trouble is, the US’s own intelligence flatly contradicted the UK’s, now didn’t it?
And when the Director of the CIA tells you to take it out of the speech, I suppose you’d think it’d be logical to sneak it back in again, yes?
Saddam was publicly writing checks to the Palestinian families of the dearly exploded. Prior to his check writing campaign, he launched missles at Israel. He attacked Kuwait. His regime repeatedly threatened Allied aircraft in the agreed upon no-fly zone. He attempted to murder a US President. Any of these reasons qualify as an attack against the US and her allies.
He had warheads designed for chemical weapons and he buried chemical weapons left over from the war with Iraq in a manner that suggested he might like to use them again sometime. He spent over 20 billion on a nuclear weapons program and the scientists who worked on it hid information.
If OBL is to be believed, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was the catalyst for 9/11. The UN never lifted a finger to correct that fact. The countries who had the most to gain by maintaining the former regime were also the countries who were least involved in keeping the region stable and also the loudest critics of any change in responsibility.
That’s what the war is about. You can type WMD until your fingers fall off but President Bush never gave that as a single reason for going to war. He threw a whole list of them on the table. He did that for a reason. Just as the UN resolutions were worded (by the United States) the way they were, so the United States could finish the job if it became necessary. If you wish to argue that the United States could successfully stay in the region in perpetuity then you can make a case along those lines. I think 9/11 would counter that argument. If you want to put forth the notion that the United States could leave the region without causing chaos then make the pitch.
And any politician who can stand in front of a camera and say they voted for the use of force but didn’t think it should be used is a BS liar. The same people who voted for use of force in Bosnia and again in Kosovo knew what they were voting on. And the United States had no vested interest in those wars. None. You can’t spin that any other way but to say we intervened in 2 nations and killed thousands of people because we wanted to intervene in a civil war. And we did so because European nations wanted us to. Any justification for those 2 wars can also be used for the removal of Saddam’s regime. He was a mass murdering thorn in the world’s ass and the United States was taking all the lumps for it. That’s why people support the war.
All you lefties, just repeat out loud, “Death to dictators!” Do it few times. Does it bring back memories? You used to believe in that, didn’t you?
As far as I’m concerned, US can take out a dictator somewhere every year and under any guise. There may be fiscal objections to that, but not moralistic ones.
The game seems to be headed toward pinning the tail on the intelligence agencies. This seems to be the administration ploy even though many reasonable people doubted that the intelligence that was revealed supported a preemptive war. The administration’s claims about the intelligence ignored the caveats that such agencies always put on their output.
As far as Saddam’s history of deception goes, GW’s history of deception is closing fast.
I guess David Kay now saying that there never were any such weapons after the first Gulf War is the January “Big Bang” surprise that was supposed to come last September.
I still don’t understand how so many members of Congress went to sleep and let the blank check war resolution get through without a fight. A sickening case of political cowardice in my opinion.
Ah, the willful ignorance defense. But are you really so whacked out on prescription medication that you think Bush’s underlings told him nothing other than that it was an iron-clad lock that Saddam had tons and tons of Bad Shit just waiting for him to push a big red button? Really?
'Cause if you think there was any serious suggestion to the shrub that the guys who know weren’t really all that sure, then I submit that he’s a reprehensible piece of shit for not caring enough to delve deeper than what the nice Mr. Wolfowitz was telling him.
So the best defense of Bush’s honor is that he was given bad/false info ?
So how come not a single high level Pentagon or CIA official was fired and publicly humiliated for giving Bush the “info” he asked for ? I understand the notion that Bush didn’t “lie”, that he instead just parroted what was given to him in “good faith”. He isn’t an expert in Middle East or anything else… so granted he didn’t know jackshit about the subject. Why is Dick Cheney then REPEATING that WMDs exist ?
The other typical answer is that Saddam had to be taken down anyway.
So why did Bush mention WMD and Al Qaeda in Iraq ? If Saddam deserved it so badly why bring in terrorism and excuses into it ? Maybe to convince reluctant voters or congressmen ? Why didn’t Bush just come forward and say “Saddam needs to go”. Just because he is “evil” and we are tired of staying in Saudi Arabia… we want to go to Iraq.
He fed the US and the world cherry picked info… that is lying or misinformation… call it what you want. Now his administration insists in pushing these reasons. Its lying now if it wasn’t lying before.
A few names for you. Trujillo, Batista, Samoza, Syngman Rhee, Pinochet, Duvalier, Reza Pahlavi, Uguarte, Marcos,…the list goes on and on. However you wish to slice this thin bologna, the US has installed and maintained far more bloody dictators than it ever dislodged. Many “lefties” died fighting these men, and the bullets that killed them were manufactured, bought and paid for by the USA.
We have little enough to be proud of, let’s not don the mantle of noble purity too quickly. The world at large might regard us with some plausible skepticism, to see us present ourselves as the paladins of virtue and liberty, armored in righteousness.
Recent virtue, like new wine, sets the teeth on edge.
So we went to war for a check writing campaign? We went to war for the SCUDS he launched against Isreal during a war that happened over ten years ago? IIRC, we went to war to restore the MONARCHY in Kuwait over a decade ago, and were successful. How many of those Allied aircraft did he actually hit and shoot down in the no fly zone? Did he actually murder the Elder Bush? Were his actions ever actually a threat to the Elder Bush? Refresh my memory.
If, as you assert, any of these actions were enough to invade Iraq, why did the administration feel compelled to claim that Iraq possessed chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons when in fact they did not? If, as you claim, there were plenty of reasons for war against Iraq without invoking weapons of mass destruction, why invoke them? Why even mention weapons of mass destruction? Why not just make the case based on things you don’t have to lie about?
Are you referring to the mortar shells filled with unidentifiable goo they found leftover from the Iran Iraq war? How exactly do you think they were a threat to the United States? If these 10+ year-old abandoned “weapons” were so potent, why weren’t they dug up and used against our troops as they raced through Iraq? Do you have any proof that Sadaam Hussien had “warheads designed for chemical weapons” or do you, like George W. Bush, say things that aren’t true?
Ooh! Over $20 billion? That’s news to me! I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for some kind of confirmation on that. Plus, the evidence now indicates that the “information” the scientists were “hiding” was that there was no nuclear weapons program. If you believe there was a nuclear weapons program in place, please produce some evidence. Because David Kay, whose job it was to find evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq, says there weren’t any and there weren’t any prospects for making any. I’ll take his word over yours.
So what, exactly, does this have to do with Iraq? Was the UN supposed to demand that the US withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia to please Osama bin Laden? Why won’t you admit that the reason most of our Euopean allies were against the war was because we failed to produce enough evidence that there were, in fact, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as we claimed in front of the United Nations? Or is perpetuating this lie just easier?
I don’t know what war you’re talking about, but I have a very clear memory of George W. Bush telling me that the reason he was invading another sovereign country was because they possesed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which they could use to kill lots of Americans. And why do you persist in connecting Sadaam Hussein and the attacks of September 11, 2001? Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Iraq had anything to do with it? You can type that until your fingers fall off, but it’s still not going to make it true. And do you really think that this invasion is going to allow us to withdraw our troops from the Middle East? In fact, we’re going to be in Iraq for a long, long time.
Gee, that’s funny. I seem to remember this time last year a certain person saying in the State of the Union address that we should invade Iraq because they threatened us with weapons of mass destruction. But it turns out that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Who is the “BS liar” again? Is it bad to be a “BS liar”? It seems from this post you think it is bad to be a “BS liar”. I think that if you’re a “BS liar” you’re a bad person, don’t you? What constitutes a “BS liar”? Saying something is so that is not so? Saying you have proof that something is so when in fact you do not have proof that something is so? Does that make you a “BS liar”? Do you want a “BS liar” as your president? I don’t.
I’m confused. What are you proposing? The UN should have gone to war against America to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia? Should have imposed sanctions on the US until we withdrew? That’s absurd. You can’t blame Europe that America was attacked. The government knew damn well that keeping troops there was NOT going to be popular among the religious nuts and chose to do it anyway.
Is this to say America is keeping the Middle East stable?
Yes. If Saddam had conquered Kuwait it would have destabalized the region.
At the beginning of the Gulf War he had the 3rd largest standing army in the world. He tried to conquer Iran. He successfuly put down 2 civil wars in his own country. If he had succeeded with Kuwait it is likely he would have gone after Saudi Arabia. They were obviously afraid of this senario. Since they are the keepers of the Islamic flame, all hell would have broken loose. Then there would have been a worldwide energy crisis. Oil is currently part of a every country’s energy grid. If you remove it, for even a short period, there d be economic chaos.