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Banned
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Originally Posted by docbungle
host,
for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic.
without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously?
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docbungle, I didn't make the Bush administrations record or reputation, they did.
I've got plenty of company....and frankly, I don't understand why you "raise the bar" so high as to what news reports I should post....how much of what Bush and Cheney have told us in their official statments, turned out to be "proven"? My statements and the links that I've posted on this forum are much more closer to the truth than the crap that has come out of their mouths, especially concerning issues of war and their efforts to uphold the protections specified to protect the rights of the people in the Consitution.
I think that your criticism of me is misplaced. Shooting the messenger is a poor substitute for challenging and questioning everything that our "leaders" disclose to us. Their record for truth telling and avoiding making deliberately misleading statements, sucks. How should I react to what they've done and what they've said. I'm concerned that I've not been nearly critical or questioning, enough, given their breach of trust in matters as serious as war and the handling of intelligence and classified information.
Have a look:
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10000960/
AP poll: Most Americans say Bush not honest
Administration under scrutiny for justifications for Iraq war, CIA leak case
Updated: 5:36 a.m. ET Nov 11, 2005
WASHINGTON - Most Americans say they aren’t impressed by the ethics and honesty of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its justifications for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity.
Almost six in 10 — 57 percent — said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest. Whites, Southerners and evangelicals were most likely to believe Bush is honest.....
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Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904
Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 263382 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.4%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
7.3%
I don't know.
1.8%
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Quote:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10846/
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Professor Cordesman has formerly served as national security assistant to Senator John McCain of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as civilian assistant to the deputy secretary of defense.
(I recommend a quick read of <a href="http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_experts/task,view/id,3/">his entire bio</a>
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Cordesman: Report to Congress on Iraq War Borders on 'Deception'
Interviewee: Anthony H. Cordesman
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor
June 7, 2006
Anthony H. CordesmanAnthony H. Cordesman, a leading military and intelligence analyst of the Iraq war, says that the Defense Department's latest report to Congress on the status of the Iraq war borders on "deception" by painting an overly upbeat picture. He has written that the report is worthy of an "F."
"You cannot have a climate where you lose this much time without seeing the situation deteriorate," says Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We need to assess these risks, and we need to assess them honestly if we are going to organize the kind of U.S. effort that has the highest possibility of preventing civil conflict" and defeating the insurgency, Cordesman says.
You've been quite critical of the latest quarterly report by the Defense Department to Congress on the situation in Iraq. Why so?
We are seeing a pattern in which we have never had realistic reporting to Congress. But this quarterly report has really failed to address the issues in ways which border on deception.
Can you summarize your criticism?
I think everybody needs to understand we are talking about a sixty-page document. Parts of it deal with the president's strategy, and there is some useful material mixed in with problems that range from sloppy editing to massive omissions and conceptual failures.
But essentially, you can break down its failures into four parts. The first is political. The report argues that there is political success because there have been elections, and the Iraqis have finally been able to agree on a government. It does not address any of the political problems with any realism, it does not talk about the fact that the elections showed that Iraq was polarized along ethnic or sectarian lines, or seriously address the risk of a major civil war.
The second is economic. The report provides an analysis of the economy that does not track with other U.S. estimates. It makes no sense in basic econometric terms, provides a misleading picture of "success" in a country with 20 to 40 percent unemployment, and does not address any of the massive problems in the U.S. aid effort and the U.S. use of Iraqi funds. It essentially talks about an economy in Iraq which does not exist.
The third is analysis of the threat. There are some useful aspects of the analysis, dealing with trends in the insurgency. But the report so badly downplays the growing risk of sectarian and ethnic conflict that it produces a totally misleading picture of the threat, and this is compounded by a use of poll data which it does not explain or validate. It uses cherry-picked polling results, some of which contradict each other in terms of other tables or text.
Finally, there is the analysis of progress in developing Iraqi forces. The report does provide some useful data on Iraqi force development, and there has been progress. But the report exaggerates this progress. It does not provide any picture of the level of continued U.S. support necessary to bring this program to success. Finally, at a time when the militias, the police, and the various protection services have reached a crisis point, and where there is truly a major question of whether Iraq is moving toward civil war, the report dodges around all of the problems and simply does not give either Congress or the American people anything approaching a realistic picture.
You say this whole report gets an overall grade of "F." You and I have had several interviews over the last several years, and I have never heard you so negative about anything the government has done. What has gotten you so upset?
There is a lot of very good government reporting in terms of individual speeches, testimony, and reports, if you look at the statements of the ambassadors and senior U.S. commanders in the field. If you look at some of the reporting that comes out in detail from the commands, there often is a very clear picture of what is happening and a lot of insight, as well as critiques and reservations. But this is supposed to be the summary report to Congress. It is supposed to prepare Congress for what we need to do to implement the president's strategy.
It is not supposed to be an exercise in cheerleading. It is not supposed to be something that simply provides a status report without indicating how well the United States is doing or what it has to do in the future. What we are talking about is not the overall war in Iraq; we are talking about one report. You have referred to the summary comments I have made on it, and that is a perfectly accurate statement of the summary. But I think it is important to note that this is a fifteen-page critique. It is not a critique of our policy in the war. <b>It is a fifteen-page critique, which says this reporting omits critical issues, is incompetent, makes basic errors in definition, and hides the nature of poll data, which is systematically misused. I think if you compare this paper against the critique on a line-by-line basis, the grade "F" is not something given casually........</b>
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Last edited by host; 06-11-2006 at 02:25 AM..
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