http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57988-2003May30.html
So they lied to us. Well, the big lie worked again.
Does this bother you? It bothers the hell out of me. How do you trust the government once they’ve lied? Took our troops into harm’s way based on a lie.
I guess we can look forward to more.
Actually *Vanity Fair * was the one who lied, or least misled the reader. Wolfowitz’s actual quote included 3 reasons: WMDs, support of terrorism, and Saddam’s treatment of his own people. Wolfowitz said that these three reasons were always given as justification. Vanity Fair distorted what Wolfowitz said by including only one of the reasons.
This was just reported on Fox News, so I don’t have a cite yet. I’m confident that it will appear on the web soon.
Note that we have so far found almost no WMDs, but OTOH we have learned that Saddam’s mistreatment of his own people was worse than many had realized.
Reeder. You hit on the problem. It bothered you. And me.
It doesn’t bother a dittohead(or large portions of the US population). It can always be rationalized that the end justifies the means. That’s the final justification. Saddam was a very bad guyjj(which no one disputes). So, even though we may never find those WMD(which were never there), we done good.
:rolleyes:
The unwashed public who is just sitting there waiting for their refund check just doesn’t give a fuck. A minority of the public cares. That minority was able to mobilize during the VietNam war and change things. It will possibly happen again, although it may take more invasions.
Stay tuned.
The unwashed public appears!
No, no, no. The WMDs are around. They were just moved to Syria. Or Iran. Whichever.
I’d sure like to see a cite that says they always gave those three reasons. I was under the impression that Bush used U.N Resolution 1441 for justification. When did he come right out and say that the US must remove Saddam for mistreating his people?
Here’s the full transcript of what Wolfowitz said. The key quote is
You are grasping at straws december. The expressed reason for going into Iraq was WMD. That they made Saddam a threat to the US.
You have a selective memory. One of the reasons that we went to Iraq was WMD. The other reasons are listed in the Wolfowitz quote that some are hell-bent on misquoting. Show me a cite where GW states that the only reason we gave Saddam the pink slip was WMD.
It’s amazing. all those who whole heartedly supported the war and just knew we would find tons of WMD in Iraq. …Now say that’s not reason we went in.
Go figure.
I don’t recall Colin Powell standing before the UN with overhead slides and satellite photos and telling the world with deep passion that we needed to invade Iraq immediately because we were oh so concerned about Saddam’s treatment of the Iraqi people.
(I just double-checked the text of Powell’s speech, and I see that abuses of the Iraqis is relegated to a single paragraph on page 3. No fancy satellite photos or slides, though.)
First, let me state that I was not in favor of the invasion of Iraq.
But if you go back to some threads here BEFORE the invasion, you will see the anti-Bush crowd yelling again and again that the message was muddled. That it was “regime change” one day, “WMD” or “freeing the Iraqi people” the next and “Terror links” the day after that. I myself was confused and called Bush on this several times in different threads.
At any rate, it is clear that no one I know (in real life or in this cyberworld) has changed his or her mind about the whether the invasion was the right thing to do or not. Makes for some long, pointless debating…
WMD were undeniably the main reason Bush used for the invasion. He never would have won Congressional approval without his bullshit about WMD. They have yet to prove either the WMD or the al Queda claims. The rhetoric about the “evil dictator” was just a tactic to help him sell his agenda. If that in and of itself justified invasion, why did he wait until after 9/11 to do anything about it?
And for the record, I don’t believe Bush was the victim of bad intelligence on the existence of WMD. I think he has lied from the beginning.
There you go, slammin’ Bush for his IQ. Shame. 
…and once again we see the inability of large numbers of people to grasp that sometimes, there might exist more than one reason for doing something. Undoubtedly, when these same people buy a house, they purchase only because of the location, or only because of the price, or only because it has a big living room. Surely you couldn’t use some combination of the three - and maybe other reasons, too (GASP!) - to justify your choice.
The people that seem confused that there were always several reasons to go into Iraq - including a likelihood of WMDs, enormous human rights violations, violation of UN charter, and several other geopolitical factors - either don’t pay much attention to the news, or are “conveniently” forgetting as much in order to score a few cheap political points. I’d put my money on the latter. So which is it, folks? Are you ignorant, or dishonest?
Jeff
december, acording to Wolfowitz there were three reasons: WMD, links with al queda, and Saddam’s bad-guy. We all agree on bad-guy. What about the other two?
One out of three ain’t bad? That’s the argument you’re sticking to?
Jeff, what the hell are you talking about? There haven’t been any WMD found yet which nullifies two of your three arguments. No WMD, no al qaeda link, just bad-guy again.
Give me something I can chew on! This is getting too easy!
Jeff You just picked up your date. She ain’t what you imagined, but you’re stuck with her. Keep tellin’ your buddies that your’e doing it as a favor. But don’t try to kid a kidder. :rolleyes:
Maybe you should get a job with Vanity Fair. What I said and what Wolfowitz said was 3 reasons: WMD, links with terrorism, and Saddam’s bad-guy. He did have links with certain terrorism, although his links to al Qaeda were uncertain.
What links with terrorism? Hamas? Is that really a reason for the U.S to go to war? What has Hamas done to the US?