Heh. A former Deputy Prime Minister, Sheila Copps, had promised to help remove the GST once the Liberals were elected. She didn’t. When the media got a little too hectic, she resigned - and promptly ran in the by-election that ensued. She was re-elected.
(Of course, in some of these ridings, a dead carp could get elected if it won the Liberal nomination, so this may need to be taken with a grain of salt.)
As for the OP: we have always been at war with Eastasia.
It is an odd confluence of the planets that made 1984 so damnably pertinent during George Orwell’s centenery. Well, that and George Bush.
Does anybody have a cite – besides the Globe and Mail’s editorializing – that the Administration claimed they had new evidence on Iraqi WMDs pre-war?
So they were saving all that juicy intel for a rainy day eh?
Man these guys got some cajones.
The Washington Post has some interesting stuff today:
President Bush said for the first time today that U.S. forces in Iraq face a security problem
The Pentagon is spending nearly $4 billion a month in Iraq
Rumsfeld, who usually appears confident in his testimony, repeatedly said he did not know the answers to major questions from committee members
President Bush today brushed aside questions about the accuracy of his claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa
and
Screw this namby-pamby stuff – I want december to show us he’s not a child molester, serial rapist, financial embezzler, and kiddie-porn collector. If he’s innocent, I’m sure he’ll gladly turn over all of his personal documents, tear up his house, and basically upend his life while we establish his guilt or innocence. :rolleyes:
Go back to 9/7/02 (or 07/09/02 if you’re British). Bush & Blair go before the cameras, Bush spouting that this new IAEA report shows that Iraq is 6 months away from having nuclear weapons. “I don’t know what more evidence we need” said Bush, beating the war drums even then.
That press conference started the ball rolling that got Congress to hand over to W its power to declare war, & off we were.
Problem was that there was no new IAEA report. Bad briefing or deliberate lie, who knows? The non-existence of the report was exposed in the Washington Times a month or so later; the story was largely ignored by the “major” media.
I no longer have the cite for this. And don’t have the time to dredge it up again. Sorry for that. A search of the DC Times site ought to turn up something.
Well of course Shrub is rewriting history. Even the most dim-witted American is going to figure that $4 BILLION a MONTH is too much to pay for the liberation of Iraq.
For the mere $48 billion a year that these troops are costing us, we could deliver an $1850 stipend to each of the 26 million Iraqi citizens. That’d roughly double Iraq’s per capita income, give their economy a much needed kickstart, and build goodwill toward America much more quickly than would the continued presence of an army of tired soldiers running around trying to keep a lid on things. 
I always saw it as Bush just champing at the bit to get a chance to beat up Saddam … and he might have actually had the blessings of the world to do it if he would have waited a little while longer.
But no … we had to go now!
*Why now? *
Imminent danger … WMD’s … old evidence, new evidence … what difference does it make? He’s got 'em. He’s gonna use them, and he’s gonna use them soon. Can’t wait. Must go!
Nobody else in the world really wants you to do that … sit tight … let us do our part too … we’ll see what’s warranted.
Nope, nope, nope. We don’t care. Gotta go. Gotta get him now … not tomorrow … yesterday!!
Boom. Bang. Arrrrg. Explosion. Death rattle. Pow.
Actually … what we really meant was that we needed to get him right away because “… we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light, through the prism of our experience on 9/11.”
And where is that evidence that they saw in a new light?
…
No where! That’s where.
That’s what was stupid about the whole thing. If we could have worked with the world body a little closer and got a sanction to go in by force, nobody would have cared about wether or not he had WMDs. But Bush and company had to make that an issue just so we could charge.
That was their fuck up – that they are feeling the repercussions from now. In my opinion.
Fuck it. I would never vote for him any which way.
Oh, and just a quick update from the scoreboard:
Months Since Invasion
3
WMDs Found
0
WMD Factories Found
0
WMD Delivery Systems Found
0
Iraqis, Americans, and British Killed
5,000-10,000, depending who you believe
Ratio of Dead People To WMDs Found
Can’t divide by zero.
Division by zero. Fatal error.
The cynic in me thinks it might have had more to do with the approach of summer than with imminent danger from WMDs. The weather’s too hot to be launching an invasion in during the summer doncha know.
Wait, that would have to mean that that Bush had already made up his mind to go once he got approval from Congress back in October and was just going along with UN inspections for the trappings of respectability. That’s obviously not the case. I must be revising history.
As far as the uranium goes, it appears they have done just that, haven’t they?
Personally, if the Dems nominated a shaved ape with leprosy and a spastic colon, I’d vote for it if the alternative was George W. Bush.
I am completely serious.
That’s like two degrees of separation from being read in a Miss Cleo voice…“I see … whoa, mon. I see planes … four of them. Two, mon, they be heading into the … two big buildin’s. An’ two of them, one in a … block state and another … oh mon. Not even Miss Cleo know where dat be headin’ fer. An’ then, two yars later mon, an’mebbe not even a’that, Bushy be bombing tha’ everlovin FACK outta Ee-rokk. Ya mon, some seeeeryiss shit be goin’ down deya, I tellin’ you what. An’ ya no Miss Cleo ain’t a’lyin’ to ya.”
It’s obvious. The longer the UN were given to inspect places the more likely they were to conclude there was nothing to be found, the less excuse Bush had to invade. And that is the nub of the matter, whatever the outcome Bush had to be able to justify invasion for the benefit of his oil buddies.
Maybe they weren’t sure what the UN inspection conclusions would be. Maybe they did honestly expect something to be found, but rather than take the chance Bush manufactured a false dilema to justify immediate action.
So has this changed any pro war posters mind about the reasons for war. The people that rallied in GD for weeks talking about the threat and how they trusted Bush and his cronies even though they could not see the evidence.
Yes Saddam is gone (but not forgotten) and the Iraqi people have a chance of a better life in the future but your government led your country to WAR for reasons that were not the ones they were talking about at the time.
Remember the French saying there wasn’t enough evidence for them to go to war. Well it looks like they were right as the US pre 9/11 didn’t want to go to war either. No new evidence came up after 9/11 but the reactionary fucks in the White House decided it was time that the US start swinging it’s big dick around a bit.
Well they did and the image of the US has been damaged globally and continues to be with Gitmo etc . If there was evidence the world would have been with you like in Afghanistan.
From Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary…
“I think the burden is on those people who think he didn’t have weapons of
mass destruction to tell the world where they are.”
:smack: We may as well give up now. The morons are in charge.