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Banned
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Originally Posted by politicophile
.......Thus, Congress' claims that Bush "hyped" the case for war are ridiculous because the Congress had access to the same intelligence as France and Germany and yet they voted in favor of going to war.
The members of Congress who changed their minds are just looking for an excuse to justify voting in obvious opposition to the facts.
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I think that roachboy's posts to you may seem condescending in their tone, but I think that is because you have given him much justification to end any further dialogue with you. His frustration is showing, and it is his responsibility to control his reaction, but your "style" of argument does not include much indication that you've fully considered the facts in the counter argument. I call them "facts" because most of my references are direct quotes that you haven't challenged, and MSM news reports. You have not even indicated that you have read them, and your certainly haven't taken any of them into consideration in your argument.
My post to you here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=42 on another thread on this poltical forum contains a reminder to you that you did not indicate that you had considered my points in a previous post to you.
When I post quotes...for example, from Tenet, Powell, and Rice that all make it clear that, prior to 9/11 these key spokespeople for this administration were of the unanimous opinion that Saddam's Iraq bore continued close scrutiny, but there was a consensus that his military was no threat to his neighbors, that the "no fly zone" and trade sanctions were working as intended to keep Saddam from recontituting his prior, WMD programs, and inventories.
No one from the conservative, "defender of Bush et al" POV, who I have posted the points in the above link, has ever offered an explanation or a rebuttal to my premise that Tenet, Powell, and Rice were all of the same opinion regarding the threat that Saddam and his ambitions posed. No one has been willing to discuss the curious paradox of the above three officials all committing to a policy of "closely watching" what Saddam is up to, yet suddenly being part of a massive "about face", wherein Saddam is transformed almost overnight into a threat that justifies an invasion to stop, not only towards his neighbors, but even imminently to the U.S. mainland itself.
I've posted the contents of the post linked above, politicophile, at least a dozen times in these threads. You ignored the quotes in the contents of the post, and the MSM news reports of CBS news/Rumsfeld, Time's early 2002 report that Rumsfeld knew that Iraq was weak but requested intel to the contrary from the CIA "ten times", Bush's "Eff" Saddam, we're taking him out"
quote, and Wolfowitz's comments to congress that acknowledged that the "no fly" zone had been effective, but that it cost more than an invasion would, going forward.
You've also ignored or failed to refute the clear evidence that there was a one year anniversary of 9/11 propaganda campaign intended to sell an invasion, complete with intended fear mongering that was shameful in it's scope and intent, and the effect that had on legislators who voted the intent of the overwhelming majority of their constituents, an action which is in keeping with the reasons that they are sent to Washington.The overwhelming "intent" of the constituents was a direct result of deliberatley alarmist rhetoric and exaggerated from Bush and his entourage, all at once, at what they perceived, and probably was the optimimum time period on the calendar;
coninciding with the 9/11 attack anniversary and 8 weeks in advance of the midterm elections. All of that mattered and it overwhelmed the feeble oppostion of Bob Graham, a lame duck in his senate position.
If the GOP "video" that you referred me to is so compelling, why did Bush's speechwriter and "re-write" history" "Op" co-ordinators blow it with the weak and transparent distortion of a senator Levin quote, used in Bush's Veteran's day speech to the troops.
Quote:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=lizza111505
....... The problem is that some of the quotes Bush now uses are highly misleading. "Another senior Democrat leader said, 'The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power,'" Bush told his Alaskan crowd. The quote is from Senator Carl Levin during a CNN appearance on December 16, 2001. Here's the full context:
The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power. But that does not mean he is the next target.
And the commitment to do that, it seems to me, could be disruptive of our alliance that still has work to do in Afghanistan. And a lot will depend on what the facts are in various places as to what terrorist groups are doing, and as to whether or not we have facts as to whether or not the Iraqis have been involved in the terrorist attack of September 11, or whether or not Saddam is getting a weapon of mass destruction and is close to it. So facts will determine what our next targets are.
In other words, Levin's full quote shows exactly the opposite of what Bush was trying to say it showed. Levin was laying out the case against attacking Iraq, arguing presciently that there was unfinished work in Afghanistan, that war in Iraq could damage alliances, and specifically cautioning against targeting Iraq absent hard evidence of Saddam's WMDS or his role in September 11. It's ludicrous to argue, as Bush did Monday, that Carl Levin "reached the same conclusion" on Iraq as Bush. Levin didn't even vote for the war resolution. ..........
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You also failed to respond to the unusual reaction by Washington Post reporters to that speech, the reporters judged that the speech contained "less that truthful" statements from Bush.....
Quote:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w051114&s=lizza111505
........The White House's new Iraq strategy entered its second phase this week. The offensive--against critics of the war, not insurgents--was unveiled on Friday with Bush's already infamous Veterans Day speech. Speaking to a military crowd in Pennsylvania, Bush made a pair of dishonest arguments that are notable mainly for the speed with which they were debunked by the press. It is extraordinary and rare for a major American newspaper's frontpage coverage of a presidential address to highlight that the speech's core assertions were false. But that's exactly how Saturday's Washington Post covered Bush's new public relations campaign. Contrary to the president's assertions, Congress did not have access to the same intelligence as Bush, and no investigating committee or commission has yet studied whether the administration misused or manipulated intelligence before the war.
The rapid response fact-checking is one consequence of Bush's recent loss of credibility. Every statement he makes is now suspect. Poll after poll this year has recorded a steady increase in the percentage of Americans who believe that the president is dishonest. This week, the Bush-is-a-liar meme has hit majority status. In the latest Gallup Poll, released Monday, 52 percent says he's dishonest. Even more stunning, a plurality (48 percent) now say they trust Bush less than they trusted Bill Clinton. Only 36 percent say they trust Bush more than the impeached former president whose compromised honesty and integrity served as the launching pad for Bush's own presidential ambitions. ..........
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<b>Here is the article, described in the preceding quote box....</b>
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111101832.html
Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument
By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A01
President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.
<b>Neither assertion is wholly accurate.</b>
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ebriefing.html
Republicans Want Answers, Too
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:42 PM
......The White House also released another of its relatively rare Setting the Record Straight memos, this one in response to Senator Carl Levin's suggestion yesterday morning on CNN that Bush "tried to connect Saddam Hussein with the attackers on us, on 9/11, so often, so frequently and so successfully, even though it was wrong, that the American people overwhelmingly thought, because of the President's misstatements that as a matter of fact, Saddam Hussein had participated in the attack on us on 9/11. That was a deception. That was clearly misinformation. It had a huge effect on the American people."
But the White House memo doesn't actually dispute Levin's assertion -- it simply responds with old quotes from Levin and other Democrats. All those prove is that many Democrats were indeed mouthing many of Bush's talking points in the run up to war. It doesn't prove that what Levin was saying yesterday is untrue..........
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Bush's approval poll numbers won't be coming back, even if you choose to stick to your interpretation of Bush and Co's pre-invasion presentation to justify a choice for war. roachboy rightly describes the conservative reasoning process as "tiny", because so much of what actually happens has to be left out, because it just doesn't fit with the conclusion that the reasoning process arrives at.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...802397_pf.html
,b>What I Knew Before the Invasion</b>
By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B07
In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said.
The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud.
The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth.
As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.
I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.
In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.
In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.
At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.
Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.
The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.
From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.
On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.
The writer is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.
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And...the above item. from Bob Graham, appeared on the web as i was posting this article. I look forward to a response to my questions, and a more thorought response to roachboy's core question, distilled to....how do you come by you opinion and your rock solid belief that this is a matter of how legislators voted on Oct. 11, 2002, and not about the integrity of the information, the sincerity of the president, and the fairness and balance of the assessment that he and those, at his driection, delivered to the American people in the days leading up to the senate vote. I go to extreme lengths to post exactly what influences my opinions and conclusions, and I do not see anywhere near comparable transparency in your posts......... |