The Al Samoud-2’s?
Israel would have been a real stretch for those babies:
Have it your way, Dr. Deth.
Really.
If you honestly think that’s worth 3000 American lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, all of it borrowed, losing in Afghanistan, and, above all, letting Osama go, you’re welcome to think whatever desperate silliness you’d like.
In Bush’s defense (Jesus, I can’t believe I’m starting a sentence with that phrase), one could argue that the policies and culture already existed in the CIA, NSA, and the military, and naturally emerged when the “CEO president” took office. In my mind the whole “CEO president” meme is the biggest fuckup of the entire presidency, the idea that a corporate executive type could run the country when empirical observation indicates that such people delegate all knowledge and awareness to underlings and do their best to help themselves to their own greatest possible reward before the end of their term. And whatever happens after that… somebody else’s problem. Bush is precisely what his constituency expected him to be, so the blame for his colossal fuckup of a presidency is, as the tenets of democracy dictate, the sole fault of those who voted for him. You know who you are.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a president that sucked the life and meaning out of the Constitution as much as GWB. Members of his administration has been able to exploit the weaknesses of the system to empower and enrich those of their choosing. Further, they have worked at disempowering those who opposed them.
I’ve never seen citizens in this country so vulnerable to their public servants. I never dreamed that so many would go along so willingly.
Indeed I don’t. In fact many, *many *times I have gone on record here to say that the Invasion was wrong, as Iraq did not pose a “clear and present danger to the security or safety of the Unitd States”.
BUT- just because GWB was wrong wrong wrong doesn’t mean SH wasn’t a lying sack of shit evil war criminal. Both are true. Lying about how evil SH really was will not make GWB any more wrong, nor will it make him right either. This is the SDMB, where we present the facts no matter how much we don’t like them.
The facts are- SH had illegal weapons.
However, those weapons did not justify the Invasion.
Or you could just read the entire thread, including my post #12.
Long ago. Which long ago ceased to become a threat to anyone. So it’s a completely useless point.
The Saddam Was Evil strawman is already ingrained so deeply in the popular conscience that people against the war still feel it necessary to start their arguments with phrases like, *Saddam was evil, but . . . * I don’t see what point you’re serving by trying to further assert it.
Read the thread. All the thread. Although WMD were illegal for SH, other weapons were also illegal, such as his modified Missles.
A poster claimed that SH had “disarmed”. I pointed out this was false, which is correct. Another poster jumped on me for the factual correction becuase “the war is Eviiiiil”. :rolleyes:
The point remains that facts are facts, political considerations aside.
Not really. The weapons you mentioned were not the ones GW was looking for when he kicked the door down and stormed in with guns blazing.
Sure they are, but some facts aren’t germane to the problem at hand.
The claim was that Saddam had banned weapons that were a menace to his neighbors and the US, especially if they should be given to terrorists.
Mark the day for Quiddity finally hits the bullseye. I mean, seriously, WTF are you talking about, DrDeth? What “illegal weapons” did Sadamm have? And, moreover, seeing the brutal and relentless American invasion under way – which clearly spelled D-O-O-M for his iron-fisted rule over Iraq, why did he refuse to use whatever imaginary WMDs he had? I mean, think about it. The insurgents with home made IED’s and rotting AK-7s (or whatever Kalashnikov’s they use) have inflicted a hundredfold damage to the American forces than did Saddam and his useless forces in spite of all the pre-war hype…which you appear to be buying into.
Occam’s Razor. He had diddley squat. And even worse, that’s precisely why Iraq (and its oil. Let’s not forget the world’s second black gold reserves) was chosen first from the so-called Axis Of Evil.
Fuck with N Korea, or even currently non-nuclear Iran, and the US goes down – barring nuclear war – as one of the shortest-lived empires in history…not unlike the Spanish Empire, BTW. In fact, way things are going in Iraq, it may not even matter. Again, barring nukes, Iraq has already shown that the US is a giant with clay feet.
PS-Read Squink’s post regarding the so-called “illegal WMDs.” Which, BTW, Saddam was in the process of destroying to appease BushCo, literally days before your country’s clearly imperialist invasion.
And it’s not a fact that Iraq had ‘illegal’ weapons. It’s an argument, or position.
Redfury: Tag.
If ever there was a statement that the Usual Suspects deny with every fiber of their being, this is it.
We went over this in a previous thread. The syllogism boils down basically to this:
[ul][li]No WMD were ever found in Iraq.[*]Ergo, the mustard gas, sarin, missiles, etc., found in Iraq are not WMD.[/ul]There tends to be a lot more verbiage thrown around, but this is the gist of it. [/li]
“Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
Regards,
Shodan
Andrew Jackson’s open defiance of an explicit Supreme Court decision did LESS to “suck life and meaning” from the Constitution than this President’s actions which have not defied a Supreme Court decision?
How do you figure that? You may not agree with Bush’s interpretation of the Constitution, but that’s simply your opinion. The Supreme Court is the institution that’s charged with ultimate interpretation of the Constitution, and Bush has not defied any of their rulings. So what Bush has done is interpret the Constitution in a way that you, personally, feel is unwise… but is not definitively wrong.
Jackson, on the other hand, was told definitively and explicitly by the Supreme Court something that he explictly and directly countermanded.
Would you care to explain how you can say “I don’t think we’ve ever had a president that sucked the life and meaning out of the Constitution as much as GWB?”
Nor is he the only one. How about Lincoln, and his suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens within the country? How do you square that against Bush?
There is more to “sucking the life out of the Constitution” than defying the Supreme Court.
For example, foreclosing the possibility of getting a case before an impartial authority by denying habeas corpus.
And as to Lincoln, I think that was a bad thing, but he did have at least a fig leaf. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus in case of rebellion, which the attack on Fort Sumner and the subsequent Civil War was. The problem with Lincoln’s action, as I see it, is that the provision for suspension of habeas corpus is in Article I dealing with the powers of Congress, not in Article II. The clear intent, at least to me, is that Congress and not the President makes the suspension.
As is the case now after 9/11 feelings were running high and apparently no one thought to challenge Lincoln. Had they done so, I think he would have lost, or should have.
John Corrado, I am curious about your position that “interventionism based upon noble, humanitarian ideals when possible - has defined American interventionism for nearly one hundred years now, and is such a powerful image in American minds that they’re willing to join along with the idea even after it continually fails”
Are you talking about these events?
World War II, Korean war, Vietnam war, Gulf War I, Gulf war II?
Trying to broker the peace process in the Middle East?
Intervention in “banana republics” in Central America to support capitalist regimes?
Attempting to prevent socialist regimes in South America (e.g. Allende in Chile)?
Intervention in the former Yugoslavia?
Also, are you saying that " setting up legislation and Justice Department policy that expanded upon the trust-busting and consumer protections that Theodore Roosevelt had established" is something that he did right or something that he did wrong?