What the hell are you talking about?
Yeah, those nutty loyalists:
“What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act? Or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? … Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal.”
Bill Clinton, December 16, 1998
“It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capability to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East which, as we know all too well, affects American security. This much is undisputed.”
Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
“Mr. President, when I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein, [it is] because I believe a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region.”
John Kerry, October 9, 2002
How many of these countries had their own independent intelligence gathering sources in Iraq? As compared to those who took and accepted intelligence reports from others? Us, primarily.
Remember Scott Ritter? A guy we assigned to the task because he was eminently qualified and his patriotism was beyond doubt? Remember how he was slandered and vilified for doing his job? Remember how we shit on Hans Blix for his “failure” to find what wasn’t there in the first place? Note well: in the face of uncomfortable reports from reliable sources, the Bushiviks refused to accept the information, relying instead on the rock-solid reliability of Chalabi and “Curveball”.
The Admin had no doubts because it would not see doubt, not because no such doubt existed. Remember when Blix called our bluff, saying “OK, you got this massive intelligence, share it with us and we’ll go right there and look.” And we hemmed and hawed and made slanderous innuendos about “trusting” the inspectors with this crucial intelligence.
And then when they finally caved and gave them the “intelligence”, it proved to be one-hunnerd percent pure-D horseshit!
And no alarms went off? Cheney didn’t say to Fearless Misleader “Hmmmm, maybe we’d better double check our sources, this doesn’t look as sure as we thought?” Why? Wouldn’t you?
Is there a better definition of incompetence and malfeasance? That the most poweful single nation in world history is led by this pack of goons is a threat to us all.
Because, there were even more people that weren’t convinced with their evidence. He had a choice, do some more research and come up with the truth (BY THE WAY WE WE’RE RIGHT, THERE WERE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WMDS), or he could just rush in with some pretty big question marks still unanswered which makes him incompetent. So either way you cut it he’s not fit for office, he’s either evil or stupid depending which way you look at it.
Has WMD is factual, developing WMD is subjective, and is a hell of a slippery slope. Developing them in his fantasies and developing them in a factory still fall under developing.
The only one that comes to mind is the incompetence and malfeasance of the body charged with oversight of the agencies that gave the president the information.
Gee, Lib, i thought that someone who’s a libertarian, and who frequently professes disdain for both major parties, would have the political acumen to realize that a criticism of the Bush administration is not automatically a defence of the Democrats.
For what it’s worth, i believe that the Democrats were far too credulous and uncritical of the Bush administration during this whole process. And plenty of other people believe that, too.
Lately I’ve wondered if the Dems weren’t guilty of caving to public perception. Or maybe they watched a little too much network news? Because the Bush admin had half of America believing the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis. The Dems should’ve worked harder to get the truth out, instead of being caught up in the Bush media onslaught.
No so. Not at all. In Bush’s opinion, and in mine, we couldn’t afford to play the wait-and-see game. Hussien had been playing hide and seek with his weapons program for years. The threat of Iraqi WMD falling into terrorist hands was just too great to risk. We can agree to disagree on the liklihood of this happening if you want, but Bush couldn’t afford to wait and see which of us was right. Hussein brought our action upon himself with his continual game-playing and brinksmanship. As a result, he could not be believed and he could not be trusted.
As far as Ritter and Blix are concerned, they were only two men in a vast country. The odds of their finding anything, should Hussein have wanted to hide it, was remote at the very best. It’s easy to hide things in a country like Iraq. If you recall, during the Gulf War our entire military was unable to locate Hussein himself. Additionally, there was nothing to prevent Hussein from shipping his WMD, if any, to a friendly neighboring country for safe-keeping and then having them brought back if and when he might need them.
Given the horrendous consequences to this country in terms of human life, it was just too great a risk, and Hussein was just a tad too clever and provocative in his machinations, to hold off and wait for weapons inspections, and weapons inspections that would never prove conclusive at that.
I would submit trying to obtain information and technology from other countries would fall under that definition as well.
Of course, Bush didn’t have the stones to come out and say, “Hey, we’re not certain, but with this guy we can’t afford to play the wait-and-see game.”
Instead, he and other cabinet members (e.g. Powell, Rumsfeld) came out and said that we not only had incontrovertible proof of Saddam’s WMD progreams and capability, but we knew exactly where such WMD-related stuff was located.
Quite a different sales pitch.
I hate to say this, but…cite?
I’ve never heard anything remotely like this. When did the adminstration ever contend, let alone convince anyone, that the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis?
That is ridiculous.
You people are so wrapped up in your hatred of Bush and your disdain for this war (which, after all, is being fought to protect you) that you’re loosing rationality and grasping at non-existent straws.
I was responding to ElvisL1ives’ post about “Standard fare from the loyalist side”. The Republicans and the Democrats both go on and on about gnats while the room is filled with the stench of a camel’s ass.
That is a fair question, so I will do some digging for a live cite. I guess we weren’t living in the same country last spring - I remember polls (in newspapers and on TV) showing that that’s what the American people believed, and I remember members of the Administration making statements linking “9/11 terrorists” and Iraq. Shit, even my own sister thought so for a while. Hasn’t Jon Stewart made fun of this only about a zillion times?
Sheeit - that was easier than I expected:
Christian Science Monitor
from the March 14, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
The impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq
American attitudes about a connection have changed, firming up the case for war.
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11.
Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was “personally involved” in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago.
Sources knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda. Yet the White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate seriousness of purpose to Hussein’s regime.
“The administration has succeeded in creating a sense that there is some connection [between Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein],” says Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.
The numbers
Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. **But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either “most” or “some” of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. **The answer is zero.
Okay, nearly half.
I see your point and how you arrived at it based on what I just said, but I don’t think from Bush’s perspective it went down quite like that. In my opinion, he felt he had absolute proof of Iraqi WMD based on the information he had been given. (And remember that this was a belief held by most of the world’s intelligence agencies, the U.N., and our own President Clinton.)
But there were still dissenters in this country advocating for more time, as was France, Germany and the U.N. itself (prone, as it is, to any action but action). Bush would have known it would be better, under less urgent circumstances, to hold off and try to placate those who wanted to give it more time. But he felt he couldn’t afford to play the wait-and-see game I referred to in order to do so.
In other words, I think he believed the proof he was given was absolute, but politically it would have been wiser to hold off. He felt he couldn’t hold off any longer, political consequences notwithstanding, and had to take action immediately in order to assure no Iraqi WMD fell into the hands of terrorists.
As far as the “he should have known” argument, which is usually followed by “he’s either a liar or stupid,” no president ever “knows” these kinds of things incontrovertibly. Imagine for a minute the Cuban missle crisis. Kennedy was shown photographs taken by a spy plane that showed silos intended to hold Soviet missles. Both Russia and Cuba denied at the time that Cuba had or was going to be furnished Soviet missles. Kennedy nearly brought the world to nuclear destruction in order to prevent Soviet nuclear missles being deployed in the Western Hemisphere.
Now, what if we had sent a force into Cuba and discovered that it was actually grain that was being stored in those silos, and that the whole thing was a ruse to try to make the U.S. believe Cuba had Soviet nuclear missles in order to try to assure that the U.S. would not invade Cuba, and to make the U.S. more amenable to Soviet demands and agression throughout the world for fear that the Soviet Union could strike us before we could strike them.
In such a scenario, people could easily claim Kennedy lied to them or he was stupid. After all, he had no real knowledge that Cuba had no nuclear missles. How could he bring the world to the edge of destruction when he had no real knowledge that such missles existed?
Well, he knew in the same way Bush knew. He was given intelligence reports and photographs that purported to show the threat was real. There is no way Bush, or anyone anywhere in the world, could possibly know of their own incontrovertible personal knowledge whether Iraq had WMD or not. Even being there personally wouldn’t have proved anything as WMD could be moved around and hidden. He had to rely on intelligence and the pattern of Hussein’s past behavior, just as Kennedy had to rely on intelligence and Cuba and Russia’s past behavior. Kennedy took the action he felt necessary to protect America, and Bush took the action he felt necessary to protect America. And they both came to their decisions not based on their own personal knowledge (or stupidity), but based upon what their best intelligence told them was the case.
wooosh
:turns around in surprise:
Huh?
What?
Are you actually saying that your belief today is that the war in Iraq is protecting American citizens?
bolding, mine, BTW.
Tell you what, Starving, I do appreciate your tone and arguments, because for once I’m gaining an understanding of the opposition’s view. Your civility is admirable. But I think you’re naive. If you take a look at that “Blueprint for America” or whatever it’s called from that Wolfowitz think-tank, you’ll see that they wanted to go into the Middle East long before 9/11. The terrorist attacks merely provided an excuse - once the administration succeeded in selling a twisted reality to the American public.
If you want to make an argument for deposing dictators, there are plenty of them to go around - but the U.S., acting alone, does a lousy job of it. Should we prioritize based on the number of people being killed right now? How about the Sudan then?
If you want to make an argument for engaging enemies, there are plenty of them out there. A real enemy isn’t going to fall as easily as Iraq did - Bush chose an easy target.
If you want to make an argument for preventing terrorism then invading and occupying a country whose culture we don’t understand is hardly the best method. Abu Ghraib.
There’s that old saying - follow the money. A lot of people in and close to the Administration stood to make fortunes based on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. That’s the real reason we acted.
Thank you for providing the cite, but I don’t believe it quite proves what you allege. You claimed that Democrats caved in because the Bush administration had half the country believing the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. Your cite does nothing to substantiate this. It speaks of one press conference and nowhere in it does Bush contend the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.
Also, one press conference does not public opinion make. I would be far more inclined to think American beliefs in regard to Iraqi involvement in 9/11 would come from the mass media itself. News magazines, cable news and talking head shows do much, much more to create mainstream day-to-day beliefs than any presidential news conference, which are usually aimed at specific issues. I doubt that presidential news conferences or speeches in general influence anywhere near half the country to think anything. Public opinion takes a long time to form, and is usually based on snippets of information coming from a wide varity of sources.
You’ve led a mighty sheltered life, then. A good index to that particular subset of lies. This is a good resource for you, too. This is a broader list. That’s just from Page 1 of Google. How deluded do you want to look?
Now, why on earth would he do that?
:shrug: Who has the facts on their side? What we do here is called *fighting * ignorance.
Liberwhateverthefuck, your turn now. Remember that we’re referring to the difference between the declarative and the subjunctive mood, between reality and the world of imagination that is. Your own cites, bolding added:
But the Clinton administration didn’t fail to act (ref. the no-fly zones and support of the sanctions), even if Saddam’s compliance was in question. He wasn’t unchecked. And the use of force wasn’t necessary.
What did you think of his 1/9/04 interview with Diane Sawyer?
Here’s your signs, you two.
I’m sorry, I must leave for now. Life beckons. But you are saying two different things and claiming they are the same. Bush saying there may have been (or was) a connection between Iraq and terrorism, or Iraq and al-Qaeda, is not the same as claiming (and convincing half the country, as fessie said and you appear to agree with) that the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis.
Till next time, regards.
You know, those toothpaste commercials never actually come out and say that whiter teeth and fresh breath will get you laid, either.