By whom? Bush himself? Okay, so he’s stupid, rather than dishonest. And his aides are liars.
Either way, someone played you for a fool, and you swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
Let’s see what happens next November, and then we can talk.
Actually as noted from one article above Bush’s opponents aren’t committing themselves to this. The biggest commitment was a question of what Bush knew and when.
The democrats have plenty of time right now. Questioning about the WMDs can wait untill closer to election time when Bush is talking about how good he is at national security.
To be honest I think that the speculation that Bush is waiting untill the right time to show the WMDs even hurts Bush. After all isn’t one of his good points that he is a straight talker and not a calculating manipulative politician?
About what? That money and power most often prevail? We can talk now, I’m well aware of that reality. I think Drudge has an recent article on that, how GeeDubya is out right now raising a gazillion bucks. He is beloved of Moloch, those Who Have dote on him, he is one of thier own. He has never missed a meal, never had to choose which child to buy shoes for, never had to wonder if he could catch a bus this late at night.
By his own testimony, his only crisis in life has been giving up a dependence he could easily afford. He gave up single malt scotch, not Mad Dog 20/20, not fortified wine. He is a pampered child of privilege, he hasn’t the slightest concept of how the rest of us live. In his thumb-sucking ignorance, he sincerlly believes that those who have, deserve.
The sooner he is gone, the better.
Scylla:
First, I just want to clear the air about something. As you are no doubt aware, I am not a great fan of the Bush administration. But you should know that I’m considerably more concerned about the truth regarding this issue than I am about “getting Bush.” It is wrong of you to impugn me, at least, with partisan motives. I’ve come to my conclusions on the basis of what I know thus far about the situation, and as far as I can see, it doesn’t look very good for the White House.
You may remember the long, long, long argument you and elucidator had about the Harken scandal a while ago; you may also remember that I was the one who managed to pull that discussion out of its death throes, by explaining why I, as a non-specialist, thought that it appeared as if Bush was guilty of insider trading/ stock dumping. After I read your response, I came to the conclusion that he was not, and never have I brought up that issue since then. I disagree with the current administrations politics, but it would be dishonorable of me to accuse them falsely of things they have not done. But it is also dishonorable of you to insinuate that many of us, who are concerned about the way the White House has manipulated the public into war, are simply “trying to create a scandal where none exists,” because we “hate Bush.”
The purpose of the US military, as I understand it, is to defend the US from attack. That’s it. There exists no authorization within the country that I know of, and certainly no internationally recognized legitimization, for using the US military to depose of dictators simply because we don’t like the way they run their country. The Bush administration sold this war to the public on the basis of “preemptive self-defense,” as defined in his National Security Strategy. As atrocious as Hussein’s human rights violations were, they did not provide the core reason for this action – they were more like the icing on the cake.
Now that the war is over, it is imminently reasonable for the American public to demand a full account of the intelligence which led its leaders to assume that Hussein was such a threat to them. Americans were asked to make dear sacrifices in order to depose Hussein and stabilize his country. Many people have lost their lives already, and many more may in the years to come. The operation is going to cost American taxpayers billions of dollars a year, money that could be otherwise spent on education, welfare, and important domestic infrastructure. All of these sacrifices were necessary, we were told, because Hussein represented a terrible threat to the US, one that could strike at any moment.
Certainly, as you point out, many people suspected that Hussein had some sort of chemical or biological weapons, but the overwhelming majority of the international community did not believe that Hussein constituted such a threat as to justify war. The only thing those who opposed the war requested was a little straightforward evidence that Hussein really was the threat Bush & Co. claimed he was. This was sadly not forthcoming; instead, the US government, and the British government, cobbled together a mass of very inconclusive circumstantial evidence and sought to sell it to the public as it were irrefutably damning. On top of that, they assured us that they possessed much more precise and damning evidence, evidence that had to remain secret for the time being. Many of us were skeptical; we went out onto the streets in protest. Bush and Blair ignored us. Here at the SDMB, skeptics were scoffed at by those who supported the war; we were assured that we would be eating crow as soon as the US military entered the country and began unearthing tons and tons of nerve agent, chemical munitions, and so forth.
Now, several months after the invasion and the fall of Baghdad, no such weapons have turned up. Its worth remembering that even if they had, the case for war would not have been made; in order to justify a preemptive attack of this kind, at the very least, one would also need to prove beyond a reasonable level of doubt that Hussein was intent on using those weapons against the US, and also capable of doing so. But Jesus Christ, man, they can’t even find solid evidence that the Iraqi regime possessed “WMDs,” let alone that it intended to use them, or sell them.
What has happened to all of the secret evidence the US supposedly had? It would appear that, in truth, they knew nothing about what was really going on in Iraq. Why do I think that? Simply because after months of intensive searching, with information that should have pinpointed exactly where these weapons were, US forces have come up empty-handed. Which leads me to conclude, reasonably, that the secret evidence maybe wasn’t so accurate after all. Or maybe all the secret evidence was about as reliable as the evidence they had about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from Niger? Or maybe there wasn’t any secret evidence at all, and they were just making it up to scare us into a war?
And now when we look back at the evidence that was presented to the public during the run-up to the war, we see a long line of shameful, deceitful claims made by the administration. The President of the United States stood up before the nation, made a State of the Union address, and in that address he lied. He lied to you, to me, to the entire world. He has not since taken it back or apologized. And here you sit, defending him! Oh, well, “mistakes were made… it was just a little lie, in the scheme of things… look at how bad Iraq was!”
But it was not just one little lie. It seems now, afterwards, like one little lie in a long stream of little lies, that all add up to one Big Lie.
”Iraq’s weapons programs?” I thought it was Iraq’s “weapons” – you remember, those tons of nerve agent and gallons of botullin and so forth.
Strange that you should mention Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was precisely the Bush administration’s “Chicken Little” attitude – that Iraq was a credible threat to begin with – along with all of their crying Wolf – “look, here’s proof! Here’s the Smoking Gun! No it’s over there! No, over there!” – that led me to be so skeptical to begin with.
And now you accuse us of playing that game?
There are two things I’d like people to shut the fuck up about:
- Anti-war=anti-Bush.
This is bullshit. The same logic would give Anti-war=anti-Blair, when in fact a significant proportion of (UK) anti-war thinkers are left-leaning Labour voters.
So, shut the fuck up with that canard.
- Anti-war=Chicken-Little syndrome
As Mr. Svinlesha said above, and I said in this thread (surely you must have read it?), Bush and Blair have already type-cast themselves in the roles of Chicken Little and Henny Penny when they ran to their respective parliaments and the UN waving an acorn of alleged proof of imminent threat from Saddam’s WMDs.
So, shut the fuck up with that too.
Well, if we’re repealing the right to free speech, I’d like people to shut the hell up about the WMDs until about November or so.
They’re looking and trying to track them down as we speak while also trying to rebuild a country, and while “major hostilities” may be over there’s still fighting going on.
Cries of “liar” and "fraud’ are premature and disingenuous at this point.
You assert that the motivation for the war was the removal of Saddam from power.
Yet, it was played up that the motivation was the imminent threat, when evidence of that failed to materialise the emphasis began to shift to regime change. Consider the source: if Bush lied about WMDs, what makes you think he wouldn’t lie about regime change?
Do you think Bush is so dumb as to not know that wars are always very popular with a certain not-very-critically-aware, gung-ho proportion of the electorate. It is shameful, and hateful, but he is almost certainly going to get elected for a second term.
Meanwhile, reconstruction contracts are being divvied out to his cronies.
Maybe the biggest scandal is that the American public cannot get all excited about a scandal that doesn’t involve cock-sucking.
You fucking tosser.
When Hans Blix requested more time, Bush demured.
When Bush said they had evidence, presumably that evidence named locations, just fucking drive there, find the weapons, hey-presto, all of us “where are these weapons” people shut the fuck up.
At the very least, Bush and Blair exaggerated the quality of their intelligence, that’d still be a lie.
Apparently not one Iraqi has come to the allies to say, “Hey, I can take you to a WMD bunker”, not one. It all rings less true by the day.
If the day comes when evidence of actual, existing WMDs is presented, I, for one, am going to look at it very sceptically – it had better be clear, unambiguous, undeniable and in-your-face, else I’m calling “plant”.
If Bush does not think we will find WMDs why should we? I mean while people like you may be claiming we will find WMDs then why is Bush claiming we will find a weapons program? Does he know something that you don’t?
Also the British think that those WMD trucks were balloon making trucks like the Iraqis said. http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,977853,00.html
Pretty soon Bush will probably stop claiming that there is even a weapons program.
Thanks for the update, Sterra. This deserves it’s own thread.
Or “its” own thread. Whatever.
By The Great Unwashed “You assert that the motivation for the war was the removal of Saddam from power.”
Yes I do. There are many reasons that Saddam represented a threat to the rest of the world.
I’ll also accept that Bush1 didn’t get re-elected because he failed to finish the job back in '91. So for Bush2, there was probably a measure of revenge involved also.
By The Great Unwashed: "If the day comes when evidence of actual, existing WMDs is presented, I, for one, am going to look at it very sceptically – it had better be clear, unambiguous, undeniable and in-your-face, else I’m calling “plant”.
Of course you’re calling “plant”! I don’t think it will be possible to find evidence that satisfies some persons. 675 (nice random number, eh?) nucelar bombs buried in an underground cache, alongside 17 tons of anthrax will be decried as a “plant” by many. And so it goes.
Name one.
Exactly what “many reasons”?
I can conceive of evidence that would satisfy me, BUT, the longer that evidence remains unfound the more sceptical I become – I think that’s only natural.
People have done weirder shit than planting evidence to achieve their aims you know?
From Sterra’s link:
"Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: ‘They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.’ "
President Bush, interviewed in Poland:
“We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/nato/03053008.htm
Contrast and compare.
In fact, where’s the debate?
Bush is a lying fuck. Clearly, unambiguously, undeniably and in-your-facedly a lying fuck.
Saddamscam it is to be.
Nothing to see here, move along now.
Scylla:
I disagree.
Rumsfeld has himself stated, now the war is over, that the US might not find any “WMDs.” He certainly wasn’t saying shit like before the invasion.
Bush has publicly claimed that he possessed a report by the IAEA which showed Iraq to be a mere 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon, stating, “I don’t see what more proof anybody needs” to justify a war. It turns out that the report said no such thing.
He claimed that Iraq possessed “drone aircraft” capable of reaching the US and dispersing chemical agents. Not true.
He claimed that Iraq attempted to purchase “yellow cake” uranium from Niger. According to other sources, the documents upon which he based this claim were “well-known” as forgeries within the intelligence community. In fact, speaking before the UN less that a week later, Colin Powell did not mention the supposed purchase, because he considered the information “unreliable.” (Even so, Powell’s presentation failed to provide convincing evidence that large quantities of “WMDs” existed in Iraq. Not to toot my own horn, but go here for a couple of posts in which I analyze some of the faults with his speech before the UN).
The British intelligence dossier included information literally plagiarized from a 12-year old doctor’s thesis written by an American graduate student, downloaded directly from the Internet.
The list goes on and on and on. You have to admit that the pattern is striking; anyone who seriously does not believe that this issue requires some sort of in-depth investigation is simply living in denial. In fact, if it is all “bullshit,” as you claim it to be, then you should welcome an investigation, as it would serve to clear Bush of the charges and restore the credibility of the administration, such as it is. After all – had we not had that thread about Harken, I might still be of the impression that Bush was guilty of insider trading.
Of course, there is more. There’s PNAC. We know from Woodword’s book, Bush at War, that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz advocated Washington move against Iraq directly in the wake of 9/11. We know that Wolfowitz has advocated military action against Iraq, and the overthrow of Hussein’s regime, for the better part of decade. We know that a full year before the invasion was launched, Bush stuck his head into a meeting between Condoleeza Rice a couple of members of Congress and said, verbatim, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” That was a full year before the hostilities had begun, yet in public he continued to claim that peace would be possible if Hussein would simply “abide by the resolutions.” We know that in the months before the war the Iraqi regime showed an impressive willingness to cooperate with the inspections, all to no avail. We know that the membership of PNAC includes Wolfowitz, Rusmfeld, Cheney, and even the president’s brother, Jeb Bush.
Taken together, all these facts seem to indicate that a small group of powerful men within the government decided to do everything in their power to launch a war against Iraq, that this decision was made long in advance, and that they were willing to do everything in their power – misconstrue intelligence, invent evidence, twist facts and even lie to the American public and the world community – to accomplish their goals.
Are you really sure these are the people you want to have leading your country?
quote:
There are many reasons that Saddam represented a threat to the rest of the world.
Brief bio of Saddam:
Vicious demagogue that had a lot of financial resources and had already invaded two neighboring countries. Also supported international terrorism in his spare time.
By The great Unwashed: "People have done weirder shit than planting evidence to achieve their aims you know?
I don’t doubt that evidence would be planted if there could be a reasonable expectation of success. In this case planting any sufficient amount of evidence would require involving a large number of people. I don’t think a risk/reward analysis will look very good on this one.
By The Great Unwashed: “Nothing to see here, move along now.”
Good idea!
Of course he’s sure. They are Republicans. He is a Republican. All decisions-making thought processes are long over.
Bush could break into his house and anally rape their housepets, and these people would rack their brains to figure out how it for Fluffy’s own good. Their past decision to be Republican cannot be wrong! Every politician with a little ® next to their name when they are on TV could never lie.