And the American people felt exactly the same. As a friend said to me at the time “something has to be done”. And since America could not find the burglar it started kicking the neighbor’s dog instead, without realizing it was just getting infested with fleas. It wa not only Bush. It was America.
It was going to be self-financing:
“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.” - Perle
“The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively small… Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.” - Lindsey
“It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.” - Pollack
Etc.
SOME of the American people felt exactly the same, just like SOME believed the stories about Saddam’s WMD. Those who couldn’t control their own emotions and those who readily believed stories spun by their leaders do not make up ALL of the American people; although those who were angry and fooled would very much like us to believe that they do. They were wrong then, they’re still wrong now.
Did you have a reliable cite for the claim? Elvis’ link goes to premium content, and I can’t see it.
If, as you say, it is uncorroborated, then I will amend my statement to say that Elvis is posting quotes that somebody else made up.
Regards,
Shodan
Since the comment had been published on numerous occasions, making the false claim that ElvisL1ves “manufactured” the statement was inappropriate.
My problem is that with all the partisan sniping in this thread, already, using stupid off-the-cuff one-liners from Bush do not actually address the OP. It is possible that GWB just wanted to “avenge” what he perceived as Hussein’s disrespect for GHWB by “taking him out.” It is possible that he actually believed the Wolfowitz term paper and thought that “taking out” Hussein was the best way to accomplish that goal. It is also possible that Bush was simply maintaining his typical anti-intellectual mode and was just threw a smart-assed remark into a serious discussion.
Your post provided nothing more than a flip comment that was going to get a rise out of Bush supporters, (as it predictably did), and shed no light on the discussion.
Yes, you already said that. I was asking if there is a reliable cite for the quote. It’s not like Time hasn’t ever been less than rigorous in its claims. I know it has been repeated. If you could trouble yourself to read my posts, you might note that I amended myself to say that he is repeating something that somebody else (as far as has been determined to date) made up. What I was asking for is some reasonable verification that Bush actually said this. What is the source for Time? Did Rice attest to Bush making the statement? Did any of the senators allegedly present?
I am getting the feeling that this is like some of the other tripe posted in this thread. Bosda says that Bush hates his son, based on “all (he) has heard”. On examination, this turns out to be either something he made up, or something someone else made up and repeated. Squink bases his idea on all the statements Bush Sr. has made, but when pressed on the subject, can’t seem to identify even one statement that says anything of the sort.
Even you said that Elvis’ quote lacks corroboration, and adds nothing to the discussion.
The idea that Obama is a Muslim has been published on several occasions, but I would be hesitant to use it as a basis for discussing his motives and policies.
Regards,
Shodan
Reliable by *your *standards, that is? You know the answer to that.
Where has that been determined, and by whom?
From where is your (earlier) certainty that he did not?
He said that *before *the cite was provided, with a certainty apparently as solid as your own.
That from a guy who has repeatedly called him “Hussein” in Pit threads. :rolleyes:
tom, if political threads in GD couldn’t have what you see as a partisan tinge, they couldn’t even exist.
Then why are you nattering on? I simply pointed out that your characterization of the statement was false. As I have already noted, I don’t think the statement provides any insight, since it lacks provenace and context, so I don’t really care whether it is true.
I do care about false accusations that statements have been “manufactured.”
Partisanship is just what I have to tolerate to get to the reasonable discourse. I object only to stuff lacking substance posted only to bait other posters as well as the baited posters making mountains out of molehills to derail the thread.
You’ve used the word “ethical” in a reply to Rand Rover. This will not make any sense to him whatsover.
Or at the very least, a large proportion of America. There were certainly voices of dissent, even though they were shouted down for the most part.
In my recollection, the quote about “taking Saddam out” was first passed on by Bob Woodward. What made the quote memorable at the time was that it was not directly contradicted by the Bushivik loyalists, who found the whole “manly, straight-talking, no-nonsense” image very agreeable at the time. They liked promoting the image of the President as a man who relied on his “gut instinct” rather than effete and lily-livered “facts”.
It was only after the shit-storm began to howl that anyone got around to questioning the quote, seeing as that whole “shoot from the hip” thing was looking a bit less like John Wayne and more like “Mad Dog” Coll. At any rate, when first revealed, there was no denial, more like a wink and a smirk.
And, of course, that whole thing about Dr. Rice ripping open her bodice to reveal her pert and perkys while shrieking “Take me now, Mr. President! Now! Now!” is purely a fabrication of DFHs. However, they haven’t actually denied that either, so…
I do believe that W believes this of himself. I bet he believes himself as Chamberlain before WW2 doing the right thing and confronting the Nazis. I bet he thinks that 50 years from now history will judge him as farseeing and one of the best presidents ever.
History can be cruel. You’re tring to be Winston Churchill but history decides you’re Lyndon Johnson.
Its twoo, it’s twoo! So how many divisions does this “ethics” fellow have, then?
It’s really sad and shameful how so many of you get all bent out of shape when you think someone has violated the rules you made up (NB: even if you think you follow an ethical system, you still interpret those rules for yourself, so you are really making up your own rules). It’s even more sad and shameful when a fellow atheist does this. Der Trihs, you don’t believe in a deity, but you believe in some incorporeal set of rules that is supposed to guide people’s actions? Seems strange to me, not contradictory in the strict sense, but just strange.
Good Lord man, is* leadership* too much to ask from our president and elected officials? The 9/11 attack,and the shock fear and anger that resulted, was used to initiate a war that IMO was planned as soon as he got in office, maybe before. That wasn’t America.
I'd lay plenty of blame on gutless politicians in congress who should have refused to give him permission. To a smaller extent I agree the American people should have objected more strenuously. I knew it was a freaking lie before we went in but I wasn't cynical enough to realize just how badly they'd fuck it up and how many lies they'd tell to justify their blunder. Silly me.Oh, we got leadership,** Cosmo**. We got it in spades. Really bad leadership, for sure, but still…
There was a foundation lie, but it wasn’t often directly articulated, it was more like something lying dormant and awakened to a purpose. We Americans tend to misunderstand our enemies, we tend to think of them as being essentially unified. We pretty much assume that everybody who doesn’t like us are in cahoots. Oh, sure, Al Queda pretends to hate Saddam…
That’s why a silly construct like the “Axis of Evil” works so well, it calls upon an assumption already inherent.
Remember the great Saddam statue pull-down? Remember the stories that went with it? One of the was about the unit of soldiers who who central to the pull-down, how they were from New York, how they brought a flag from the Towers with them. On their mission to invade Iraq. They used it to cover Saddam’s statue’s face, a gesture of vengeance, I assume, striking back for 9/11.
Lots and lots and lots. The majority of them, actually. Historically, it’s the “ethics don’t matter people” who tend to end up finding themselves weakened or ruined, militarily or otherwise because everyone avoids them or attacks them. Or simply because they ruin themselves; ethics exist for good reasons.
:rolleyes: Oh, please. First; ethics are hardly arbitrary. They are the end results of millennia of reasoning and experimentation in what makes for a better society. They work; at least, they work far better than the dog eat dog orgy of mutually destructive predation which people like you favor.
And second, a set of human created and defined rules and goals can be simply collectively asserted to be the proper standard of behavior, and to be desirable goals. They aren’t even required to be consistant; different societies can disagree, and neither be right or wrong ( or both right, or both wrong ). Whereas God either does or does not exist, regardless of our opinion or desires. The two situations are not at all the same.
The subject of the thread is Iraq. Not jihadis. So you appeared to be suggesting that the attitudes of jihadis were highly relevant. But perhaps not.
And yet your own quote says “He did not recoil from political freedom”. I don’t think you really understand the very article from which you quote. The sentence I just quoted is the only use of the word “freedom” in the whole article, and it is used to reference something he didn’t hate.
It sounds to me like the guy was a total fruitcake who had some vision of (what he saw as) a utopian non-modern society and which believed would be somehow better. That imposition of such a state would involve the destruction of freedom does not imply that he hated freedom. It’s like saying I think I should make my children go to school because I hate them being free.
Furthermore he was clearly a fruitcake. I don’t know how much notice of him it is appropriate to take.