Let there be no doubt!!!!

[gtownspur]

For those who have charged president Bush to have mislead us on the WmD charge, i present to you this article by Norman Podhoretz in which he exonerates bush's statements for War.


*Note this article is not set out to prove that WMD's were in Iraq or are, but to prove that the administration exhausted all it's services too reach a conclusion and that even hostile sources were drumming up the beat for war.



Who Is Lying About Iraq?

A campaign of distortion aims to discredit the liberation.

BY NORMAN PODHORETZ
Monday, November 14, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.





The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
This entire scenario of purported deceit was given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."

Now, as it happens, Mr. Libby was not charged with having outed Ms. Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that "this indictment is not about the war":

This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person--a person, Mr. Libby--lied or not.

No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting:
This case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president.
Yet even stipulating--which I do only for the sake of argument--that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and--yes--France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix--who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past--lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km [105 miles] southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
Mr. Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.



So, once again, did the British, the French and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the U.N. in the period leading up to the invasion. Mr. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as secretary of state. But Mr. Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP--Ammunition Supply Point--with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.
Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Mr. Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.
In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about:

Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.
But, according to Wilkerson:

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this rpm, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?
In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Mr. Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.
Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written:


I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that "Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material." (Hard as it is to believe, let alone to reconcile with his general position, Joseph C. Wilson IV, in a speech he delivered three months after the invasion at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, offhandedly made the following remark: "I remain of the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons.") :rolleyes

[ChumpDumper]

It took you nine months to find one of Yoni's sources?

[Ocotillo]

Jeez, talk about fine print. Use a bigger font.

[DarkReign]

You know, theres a certain other member who highlights in color all the time....

[gtownspur]

Here's part II,



But the consensus on which Mr. Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:


If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:


Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:


He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.
Finally, Mr. Clinton's secretary of defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.
Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Mr. Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President "to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs."

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:



Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Mr. Bush succeeded Mr. Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new president, a group of senators led by Bob Graham declared:


There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.

Sen. Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Mr. Bush's benefit what he had told Mr. Clinton some years earlier:


Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:


There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:


We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

And here is Mr. Gore again, in that same year:


Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:


I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Mr. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy:
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Byrd:
"The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons."




Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again."
The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country's salvation."

So, too, the Washington Post, which greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001 with this admonition:

Of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous--or more urgent--than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos . . . show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.

All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Mr. Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam's stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Mr. Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the 16 resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?




Another fallback charge is that Mr. Bush, operating mainly through Mr. Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. Yet in its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.
The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."

Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Mr. Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as "imminent." But this, too, is false: Mr. Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war. Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared that he would "not wait on events while dangers gather" and that he would "not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer." Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point:
"If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long." And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word "imminent" itself precisely in order to repudiate it:


Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

What of the related charge that it was still another "lie" to suggest, as Mr. Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee's report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to "meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives."

[ChumpDumper]

Well thank God we made securing all those WMDs the main priority when we invaded.

[gtownspur]

Part III,



Which brings us to Joseph C. Wilson, IV and what to my mind wins the palm for the most disgraceful instance of all.
The story begins with the notorious 16 words inserted--after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department--into Bush's 2003 State of the Union address:


The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
This is the "lie" Mr. Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Mr. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the vice president's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Mr. Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched." (By the time Mr. Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Mr. Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever "said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent.") And as for his wife's supposed nonrole in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . ., both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.
More than a year after his return, with the help of Mr. Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Mr. Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm.
In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the 16 words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Mr. Wilson's latest iteration of it) "lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq," eventually acknowledged that the president's statement "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary--for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the 16 words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore--and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited--Britain's independent Butler commission concluded that it was "well-founded." The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:


a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Mr. Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was "debriefed" on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing), actually strengthened the CIA's belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Mr. Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium.
And again:

The report on [Mr. Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research--which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons--found support in Mr. Wilson's report for its "assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it--which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Mr. Bush in the famous 16 words.


****The liar here, then, was not Mr. Bush but Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report:


The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment].
More damning yet to Mr. Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Mr. Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, "among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.' " Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.
To top all this off, just as Mr. Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Mr. Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Mr. Wilson "confirmed" for a credulous New Republic reporter, "the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President's office," thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff "knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie." Yet--the mind reels--if Mr. Cheney had actually been briefed on Mr. Wilson's oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
So much for the author of the best-selling and much-acclaimed book whose title alone--"The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity"--has set a new record for chutzpah.

[gtownspur]

Well thank God we made securing all those WMDs the main priority when we invaded.

Am i supposed to thank you for injecting no input whatsoever or for you superior mod skills?

[gtownspur]

ANd Part IV,

it's short.


But there is worse. In his press conference on the indictment against Mr. Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Mr. Wilson--who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated--is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.
And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq--the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy--have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.

[ChumpDumper]

Am i supposed to thank you for injecting no input whatsoever or for you superior mod skills?Am I supposed to thank you for your cut and paste skills which you try to pass off as your input?

[gtownspur]

You know, theres a certain other member who highlights in color all the time....


ANd Nbadan uses black font, so....? What are you getting at?

[gtownspur]

Am I supposed to thank you for your cut and paste skills which you try to pass off as your input?
:blah,

Wow, you're a true bitch and no one can satisfy you.

And where did you get the idea that i am trying to get credit for this?

Stick to being a sarcastic ass and let brighter gems like boutons provide input, atleast he talks about the subject at hand.

Hey everybody, mark it down, Chump is too cool to post sources, if you want to be cool like chump don't post any news sources on a political-news analysis forum because that would be totally uncool and unoriginal.

[Crookshanks]

gtown - that was great information, but you still won't convince the anti-war, anti-bush libs. Their mantra is "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts!"

Also, remember the saying "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth." That is exactly what the libs are doing, and too many weak-minded, ill-informed people are just following right along.

Short of Saddam standing up in court and admitting, under oath, that he had WMD's and telling where he hid them - probably nothing else will convince the libs!

[spurster]

I remember some BushCo lackey telling us "We know where they [the WMDs] are." BushCo lied by making these assertions with far too much confidence. They would not have gotten their war otherwise.

[gtownspur]

Here's my thoughts on the whole matter.

I don't think Bush mislead anyone since he was being given all the info by his intelligence agencies.

He didnt make imminence a sole reason for going to war, and he was honest from the beggining in his SOTU address about how long this war was going to last.


To say that bush mislead everyone into attacking Iraq, you would have to prove that all the sources who led cred to the WMD charge were bush partisans and had stakes in it, but you had many hostile sources like the french and jay rockefeller of the Senate intelligence commitee, as well as joe wilson believe that there were WMD's.

You even had JOhn Kerry believe in the WMD as well as other prominent Demo's citing their past administrations intelligence as proof of the WMD charge.

[ChumpDumper]

:blah,

Wow, you're a true bitch and no one can satisfy you.

And where did you get the idea that i am trying to get credit for this?

Stick to being a sarcastic ass and let brighter gems like boutons provide input, atleast he talks about the subject at hand.

Hey everybody, mark it down, Chump is too cool to post sources, if you want to be cool like chump don't post any news sources on a political-news analysis forum because that would be totally uncool and unoriginal.:lol

You're losing it pretty early today.

[ChumpDumper]

I remember some BushCo lackey telling us "We know where they [the WMDs] are." BushCo lied by making these assertions with far too much confidence. They would not have gotten their war otherwise.That was Rumsfeld. Either he was dead wrong or a treasonous idiot for revealing his intel on TV. Your choice.

[gtownspur]

I remember some BushCo lackey telling us "We know where they [the WMDs] are." BushCo lied by making these assertions with far too much confidence. They would not have gotten their war otherwise.


This is a faulty premise. THat the sole reason for the democrats believing that Saddaam had WMD's was because a bush crony at some conference, that no one watched, uttered such statement.

I thought it was the fact that the french, russian and other hostile sources gave credence along with our own sources, solidified the Democrats approval of the resolution for war.

To say that this one statement was the best proof the administration used to go to war, and was what made democrats decide to go to war makes you and the democrats seem gullible.

If that were so, all the next repug prez would have to do to convince the democrats to go to war is to make a press conference statement saying, " Trust me, i know Kim Jong Il has plans to nuke japan, they're here in my suitcase.." :lol

[Crookshanks]

You know, gtown has a point. You guys jumped all over Yoni for posting information that wasn't his own opinion and then not giving the source. An now you're jumping on gtown for cutting and pasting FROM THE SOURCE! Geeesh, there's just no pleasing you guys!

However, I think it's quite telling that you're attacking the messenger, rather than the message. That's because facts don't lie and you CAN'T refute the truth!

[gtownspur]

:lol

You're losing it pretty early today.

Ok i get it, worse to be someone who is passionate about his belief than to be an OH Gee! protege, with 2 points higher Iq, fully equiped with 2 cent sarcastic remarks and a shiny "Moderator Title".



I said it chump, ***MODERATOR**.

Now go pat yourself on the back for providing yet another post riddled with nothing but dry sarcastic bullshit.

[ChumpDumper]

What are you talking about? He didn't even post his own thought until he was called on it. Hooray for him.

I never bought the "Bush lied" argument. I simply thought he had tremendously bad judgment and half-assed this invasion and occupation for no apparent reason.

[gtownspur]

You know, gtown has a point. You guys jumped all over Yoni for posting information that wasn't his own opinion and then not giving the source. An now you're jumping on gtown for cutting and pasting FROM THE SOURCE! Geeesh, there's just no pleasing you guys!

However, I think it's quite telling that you're attacking the messenger, rather than the message. That's because facts don't lie and you CAN'T refute the truth!


Some of these guys can't help it but to be dismissive, and go on with their same antics.

It's the ones who should no better and just post to get a rise out of their political opposites that are just downright idiotic and stupid for wasting their time.

[ChumpDumper]

Ok i get it, worse to be someone who is passionate about his belief than to be an OH Gee! protege, with 2 points higher Iq, fully equiped with 2 cent sarcastic remarks and a shiny "Moderator Title".



I said it chump, ***MODERATOR**.

Now go pat yourself on the back for providing yet another post riddled with nothing but dry sarcastic bullshit.:lmao Why is calling me a mod supposed to hurt me? Of all the forums, I use mod powers here the least, and never on one of your posts so spare us the persecution complex.

[gtownspur]

What are you talking about? He didn't even post his own thought until he was called on it. Hooray for him.

I never bought the "Bush lied" argument. I simply thought he had tremendously bad judgment and half-assed this invasion and occupation for no apparent reason.


Wow chump, i didn't know there was an unwritten rule that conservative poster's had to give a summary of their thoughts before posting a news article.

WHy don't you put that idea up for a vote so that we can make that rule official.

Random Guy, Octillo, Shacko, and Nbadan will be exempt.

[ChumpDumper]

Wow chump, i didn't know there was an unwritten rule that conservative poster's had to give a summary of their thoughts before posting a news article.

WHy don't you put that idea up for a vote so that we can make that rule official.

Random Guy, Octillo, Shacko, and Nbadan will be exempt.:lmao again. I remark on the date of the article, get bitched at and return in kind, and gtown goes all Dirties_Robbed_Me.

Classic.

[gtownspur]

:lmao Why is calling me a mod supposed to hurt me? Of all the forums, I use mod powers here the least, and never on one of your posts so spare us the persecution complex.


No, I thought it was supposed to give you a grand superiority chubby.

:lol at your reference of me showing a persecution complex.

Dude, you're nothing to me, it's not me who always complains about how hot the heat get's in here. I dish it and can take it.

But be proud of yourself that you have a name for everything.

[ChumpDumper]

Dude, you're nothing to meYes, your whining about my remarks and "title" shows that quite well.

[gtownspur]

:lmao again. I remark on the date of the article, get bitched at and return in kind, and gtown goes all Dirties_Robbed_Me.

Classic.


No, you just told crookshanks that you called me for not putting my own thought into this thread and just cutting and pasting.

[ChumpDumper]

No, you just told crookshanks that you called me for not putting my own thought into this thread and just cutting and pasting.And you finally got around to your take.

http://www.bartcop.com/mission-accomplished.jpg

Really, if I'm nothing to you, you'll let this go.

[gtownspur]

Am I supposed to thank you for your cut and paste skills which you try to pass off as your input?

and later on he posted this..


:lmao again. I remark on the date of the article, get bitched at and return in kind, and gtown goes all Dirties_Robbed_Me.

Classic.
:lol

Classic,

Chump has the shortest memory.

..."But but i was just making a reference about the date of the article".

[ChumpDumper]

Am I supposed to thank you for your cut and paste skills which you try to pass off as your input?That was the "responding in kind."

RIF

[gtownspur]

And you finally got around to your take.

http://www.bartcop.com/mission-accomplished.jpg

Really, if I'm nothing to you, you'll let this go.


To which personality am i speaking to?

One minute your just remarking about little quirks here and there and claiming to take the high ground.

The next you're flinging mud and dismissing people for ridiculous stuff.

And then you go back to having been the one taking the high road all along.

Dude,

I don't have to let this go, i started this discussion. You can not participate if you wish.

Infact, i plead you to stay so that everyone can see you for the ass you can really be.

[ChumpDumper]

Really, if I'm nothing to you, you'll let this go.When I said that, I meant letting go of this little tirade of yours.

Feel free to get back on point.

[ChumpDumper]

Infact, i plead you to stay so that everyone can see you for the ass you can really be.Who doesn't know that?

[gtownspur]

When I said that, I meant letting go of this little tirade of yours.

Feel free to get back on point.


um, i made my point at the beggining of this thread and later on. I'm just waiting to discuss the whole bush lied controversy with anyone who cares, just not with people hell bent on being Poster of the YEar. :lol


Here's my point again in short.

Bush could not have lied about this war, since he did not originate the evidence nor did he organize it.

At that time, everyone was in agreement to the WMD charge by their own intelligence.

[DarkReign]

ANd Nbadan uses black font, so....? What are you getting at?

I meant ShackO. He does the same thing....is he your secret liberal-alter-ego troll?

[whottt]

Gtown...you are arguing with a guy who routinely pisses on US service men and then talks about how their lives would be better used and how expects them to die defending his relatives in South Korea.

Is one of those...we hate you, come save us borderline types.

And give it up on posting quotes by Dems and other world leaders from before Bush was even in office saying IRaq had WMD, and expecting the lefties on this board to have a shred of intellecutal honesty..


I have posted quotes by everyone from Jaque Chirac to Kofi Anan to Hans Blix, to Ted Kennedy stating the very thing Bush said...

That Saddam was a threat that needed to be removed and that they believed, and in some cases even knew, he still had WMD.

They don't care...they are not intellectually honest people...either that or they are dense.

It doesn't matter that John Kerry sat on the Senate Intelligence Commitee for 16 years and said the very same things....


It doesn't matter that the US had intelligence from the Italians that was also believed by Britain's intelligence commitee...

It doesn't matter that they found materials to make WMD in Iraq, that the Dueffler report says they recived WMD components from the countries that were opposed to this war, illegally under the OFF program, it doesn't matter that the Dueffler report and many others also claim it is possible that the WMD were removed from Iraq....since Saddam only had two months or so to get rid of them. It doesn't matter than UN officials have been convicted and are under investigation for corruption in the OFF program.

It also doesn't matter than it's been proven that at the very least Saddam did just about everything in his power to make people believe he had WMD to serve his own national defense needs.

All that matters, is that Bush said it, and they don't like Bush. That's all that matters, it's not a debate on who said what...it's about the opportunity to bash Bush.

[ChumpDumper]

I have never pissed on US servicemen (unless we're talking idiots at Abu Garab or something like that) and if a "better use" for their lives is not dying for a failed policy, so be it.

Bush didn't lie, whottt does.