Our friendy warhawks repeat the mantra “Bush haters.” Not all who think the Iraq war was a disaster from which it will take us years to recover hate Bush. If he were governor of Texas, or a failed oil executive no one would care. What we don’t like are things that GW does as President of the USA. Like deciding to invade Iraq for God only know what private bug up his *** and pass it off as “liberating Iraqis” after other excuses are exposed as bogus. Or proposing elimination of capital gains or inheritance tax to help the “little people.” Or proposing marketable timber cutting to “save the forests.” Or on and on and on.
You’re right about one thing, Milum: it isn’t much of a debate.
One side in this ‘debate’ has piles of cites supporting strong arguments. The other side has ‘these people hate Bush’.
Nope, no debate here. :rolleyes:
A few responses just at random:
Beagle ~
Pathetic, really. Just fucking pathetic.
No, more than pathetic. Stupefying.
The argument that Iraq would give its “WMDs” to terrorists or other nations is just one more unsubstantiated insinuation from the pro-war crowd. There is no evidence that Iraq has ever done so, and in fact no historical evidence that any country would do so. In fact, quite the opposite:
This observation is equally true with regard to accusations that states would freely give such material to other states, especially to regional power rivals. If you don’t believe me, ask Colin Powell:
(Quick thanks to Desmostylus for the link.)
I have become bone-numbingly tired of this particular technique, so often employed by the pro-war contingent in these discussions: take an illogical accusation, support it with a couple of unsubstantiated rumors from the right-wingnut blog factory, and then present it here as if it were unrefutable fact or even worthy of serious debate. The depth to which the American political discourse has fallen over the last 5 years continues to amaze me. But you’ve given me an idea. Although the search function is off line, I happen to have a couple of old debates bookmarked. I therefore invite you to join me in the Pit for a review of the total SHITE your fellow warmongers have been spewing lo these last few months.
Even more pathetic and stupefying. What sort of idiots buy into this lame-ass historical revisionism, I wonder?
Yes, I would have to agree with that assessment.
Ooopsie. You forgot one: the possession by Iraq of “WMDs.” Even if you don’t believe that to be a “real” reason for the invasion, you (I assume) cannot deny the fact that it was given by the Bush administration as one of the reasons to invade Iraq. And as it turns out, that particular reason was bogus. In addition, there exists a mountain of evidence that the administration knew it was making false claims – specifically, mischaracterizing intelligence prior to the invasion as “certain,” when, in fact, it was not; setting up shadow intelligence agencies to produce data that one-sidedly supported the necessity of armed intervention; and pressuring intelligence agencies to skew their conclusions in favor of the administration’s position.
1920’s Style Death Ray ~
You’re right, in a sense. I certainly can’t say, for example, that I know for a fact that Bush lied.
However, I can state that there exists a large body of circumstantial evidence that would seem to indicate that Bush himself, as well as key members of his administration, chose to exaggerate the threat Iraq posed to the US, and embarked on a kind of “smear campaign” to that end. It is no sense irrational to suspect the administration of ulterior motives, given the public record.
There are also some rather tricky questions that both sides of the debate need to address, such as, “What is a lie?” or “How does a lie differ from an exaggeration?” I mean, if I were to say that I believe Bush purposefully exaggerated the threat Iraq posed in order to instigate a war, is that significantly different from claiming that he “lied”? How does one draw a line between “spinning,” “exaggerating,” and “lying”? Is the deceitful employment of misleading rhetoric equivalent to lying?
Magiver ~
No, you’re right: the administration muddied the waters so that they would always be able to backtrack to some sort of rationale for the invasion.
But it is nevertheless the case that one of the reasons the US invaded Iraq was that country’s alleged possession of “WMDs.” And in fact, that is the only reason that would lend US actions legitimacy on the world stage: it is legitimate for one nation to “preempt” a military attack upon its territory by another nation, according at least to one rather broad interpretation of the UN Charter. Under this doctrine of “preemption,” Iraq could be deemed a potential threat to the US only to the extent that it possessed “WMDs.” To claim retroactively that the “WMD” argument was not central to the US justification for war is to give the lie to US claims that the war was not a violation of the UN Charter.
That, on the other hand, I agree with whole-heartedly.
Finally, elucidator ~
I’m stealing it. Hope you don’t mind.
Mr Svinlesha, as usual, a sterling effort.
As usual, it will of course fall on deaf ears and blind eyes, as has already been amply demonstrated, and as former Treasury Secretary O’Neill has already pointed out. The surprise for me when he said it was that anyone was surprised.
Check out this thread guys on claims of the past:
Yeah…sometimes all you gotta do is falsely claim that a bunch of people who are statistically unlikely to vote for you are convicted felons.
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There was no clear evidence that Iraq had any BCN weapons. Remember all those things that Powell said in front of the UNSC? Lo, they couldn’t find any of those.
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When somebody messed up as badly as Dubya did, the responsible thing to do is to admit to the screw up and resign. Did we see W do that?
And? Did he believe Hans Blix and his crew?
Oh yeah, if history were to be a guide, I can’t see how W got elected in the first place.
“The world at large” is way more rotten then we are, never forget that.
We shall never try to improve, then?
And “other people to do that” were led by the President’s hand-picked guy who was going to blow the war doubters out of the water with facts, man, facts and who just resigned saying he doubts that the post-Desert Storm weapons existed.
What the hell does it take to get the message through?
Raises megaphone, yells at top of voice - There were no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons!!! Hence no justification for the claim of imminent danger requiring a preemptive war!!!
Fill in the blanks - Again, based on previous history, _________ had a track record of stalling and misleading ___________.
Poor ** Mr. Svinlesha**! He posts calm, reasoned and coherent statements and gets back things along the lines of; “Yeah, you pinko liberals want to stand around and wait for another terrorist strike at the US.”
Reading the war hawks crap makes me surer than ever that Barnum underestimated by an order of magnitude.
http://my.aol.com/news/news_story.psp?type=1&cat=0100&id=2004012600410001508101
More from Kay:
My two cents: when he says “I don’t think they exist,” I think he means they don’t exist in Syria as well. :rolleyes:
Ah, but he also said that some material that may be related to a WMD program, may have been moved to Syria.
What more proof do you need? He was obviously talking about a screwdriver, a sheet of aluminum, and a rusty nail, which when combined with all of the other parts necessary to make a nuclear weapon, could be used to make a nuclear weapon!!! 
I assume from your response you have yet to read this report.
It may, perhaps, make you think twice on this particular issue. Or not.
Beagle, keep in mind that this is the same David Kay that President Bush used to support our presence in Iraq in his State of the Union Address just this past week! Even the man who has taken Kay’s place at one time said that there was no evidence of WMD.
They are now looking mainly for a paper trail only.
Again, if the President wasn’t lying, why isn’t he holding those who mislead him accountable? Why isn’t there an investigation into our own intelligence sources? How could the information presented by Colin Powell to the UN be so wrong? (And I’m not blaming Powell, here.)
Leave the fascism to the fascists and move to Germany.
Now that’s irony that is ironic.
Aro,
I actually have read that report - what I find so surprising is that otherwise clear-thinking posters can get so completely blinded by their own ideologies. That particular report is essentially nothing more than left-wing-corporate-conspiracy theory disguised as a journalism piece. Can some calmer heads prevail here?? Please…?
Now, I would like to point out that Kay’s statements indicate that US intelligence on Iraq was flawed, which is EXACTLY the point I was making - decisions were made on faulty information. Was the deck stacked in favor of going to Iraq? I’m not 100% sold that it was - I’m also not 100% sold that it wasn’t, and hence the point of debate; present differing ideas and see where it leads.
But I cannot abide the wild conspiracy-theory speculation on voting machines, etc. that’s suddenly started being bandied about here. That’s just ludicrous! CAN they be tampered with? Probably, in their current configuration. ARE they being tampered with? Most likely not…
DirkGntly, I don’t mean to hi-jack this thread away from the central theme with this side issue, so apologies to the OP…
The interesting thing is, I see the report linked as generally covering the centre. I have read many far-left conspiracy theory spiels and would consider this report to be the sane, middle ground on this issue. Of course, this could merely be my European socialist leanings coming into play. 
You initial post seemed to indicate that you found even the possibility of tampering happening as an utterly nonsense idea. I posted that article to show there certainly exists the possibility of tampering in election results via control of the machines. It has flagged up an issue that warrants further regard and suitable action to ensure it never does become an controversial issue. It cannot just be dismissed as the loony-ravings of the far-left or some ridiculous conspiracy theorist. It is something that needs to be addressed.
It is not necessarily far-fetched for people (or corporations) to act against public notions of correctness or morality in order to achieve something favourable to their own narrow interests. To assume it is never a possibility would be to ignore the lessons of history.
My, isn’t it convenient how every time the Pubbies get caught with their pants down its just a delusional left wing conspiracy theory? I guess I’ll use that excuse if I ever get arrested. “Your honor, the things you saw on that videotape were beamed into your head by Democrats because they’re insane! You must wear this aluminum foil deflector beanie to protect yourself from them!”
Although, come to think of it, it’d be kind of amusing, if some third party nobody would win the election by manipulating the voting machines 
Aro,
The initial post about machine-tampering implied that Bush coulnd’t win in '04 WITHOUT tampering with the machines - and that’s what triggered my reaction. I mean, c’mon…is that EVEN logical? Yes, there are/will be some questions/problems with new technology and I won’t deny that, but for that poster to have implied…well, you see where I’m going here.
IF Bush wins in '04, I will be the FIRST PERSON to post a link back to this thread, WHEN someone jumps up and says that Bush only won “because he tampered with the voting machines!” I can easily see that becoming the cry of the far-left, instead of 00’s “he stole the election.” (I’m not wanting to start a debate on whether he did, or not, merely using for example/comparison.)
laigle,
Where did I get caught with my pants down?? To imply that machine-tampering is the only way for a ‘pubbie’ to win IS delusional…irrational…illogical…(see previous 2 paragraphs). It IS possible that a conservative/Republican CAN win an election, folks…if it weren’t so, there would NEVER be any in ANY office (which would be quite the wet dream for some, I’m sure).
Instead of asking, “What did the Democrats/liberals/whatever do wrong?” maybe you should ask, “What did the Republicans/conservatives/whatever do RIGHT?” It is at least REMOTELY possible that some of what the conservatives are preaching is resonating with a significant portion of the population, don’t you think??