Ex White House Press Secretary: a Key Witness to Impeachable Offenses & War Crimes? - Page 3 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Willravel · 06-02-2008, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

And I still don't see how a person, who says he cares about people, like Obama, unconditionally say that he will remove the troops from Iraq without consideration for a power struggle that could lead to who knows what. Prior to the surge I felt our national commitment to "fixing it" was lacking. Now that conditions are going well, I think we need to let the occupation run its course.

Conditions continue to worsen. The only reason we're seeing violence starting to drop of is due to a combination of mass exodus, high fatality rates, and certain gangs finally having cleansed the areas they're in. The problem is each of these conditions is going to eventually result in further instability. Worse yet, the coalition forces are still targets for the frustrations of the insurgents, which means further violence but more violence concentrated on our troops. BTW, there was just a report of a suicide bombing that killed 16 people.

Leaving Iraq will lend to stability. It's that simple.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I understand the view of those who did not think we had the right to invade Iraq and then occupy the country. I also understand the dilemma with reconciling the concept of preemptive war with national defense as outlined in the Constitution. I think these two issues are still very compelling for discussion. We just can not seem to get off of the question about Bush being deceptive or not.

They're linked.

host · 06-02-2008, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

Conditions continue to worsen. The only reason we're seeing violence starting to drop of is due to a combination of mass exodus, high fatality rates, and certain gangs finally having cleansed the areas they're in. The problem is each of these conditions is going to eventually result in further instability. Worse yet, the coalition forces are still targets for the frustrations of the insurgents, which means further violence but more violence concentrated on our troops. BTW, there was just a report of a suicide bombing that killed 16 people.

Leaving Iraq will lend to stability. It's that simple.

They're linked.

A follow on from my last post....here is Bush's "last dance" with this lie, on August 21, 2006:

Quote:

.....Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. .....

You have to see it as a deliberately misleading statement, and....since it wasn't true and was conjured up by Doug Feith, what else would you call it ace????? If it wasn't Bush's "go to" justification, and Cheney's...over and over, for nearly four years, why did they so often lead with it, in their responses to the question of why we went into Iraq?

aceventura3 · 06-03-2008, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Then, ace, you asked if your data was accurate:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ta#post2459482

I did not include the entire article, I did include the link, but there is a paragraph were the author qualifies his data. I focused on the broader point of the article. Here is the full article.

Quote:

BY JOHN HINDERAKER

Posted 5/28/2008

The debate over Iraq and the war on terror rages, even amid signs we're winning. John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com recently posted a blog entry answering the perennial question, "Are We Safer?" We rerun it here with his permission.

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer."

It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the U.S. and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.

Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful.

What follows is a partial history:

1988

February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, chief of the United Nations Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.

December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.

1991

November: American University in Beirut bombed.

1993

January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.

February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.

1995

January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.

November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.

1996

June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.

June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.

1997

February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.

November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.

1998

January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.

August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.

1999

October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean.

2000

October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.

2001

September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill about 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.

The Sept. 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al-Qaida, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow.

In fact, though, what happened was quite different: The pace of successful jihadist attacks against the U.S. slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq War, and has now dwindled to essentially zero.

Here is the record:

2002

October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.

2003

May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for Westerners in Saudi Arabia.

October: More bombings of U.S. housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed 26 and injured 160.

2004

There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.

2005

There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.

2006

There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.

2007

There were no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.

2008

So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the U.S. or against American interests abroad.

I have omitted from the above accounting a few "lone wolf" Islamic terrorist incidents, such as the Washington, D.C., snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd.

These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the lone wolves were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore couldn't have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al-Qaida leaders.

It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field.

Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.

There are a number of possible reasons why our government's actions after Sept. 11 may have made us safer.

Overthrowing the Taliban and depriving al-Qaida of its training grounds in Afghanistan certainly impaired the effectiveness of that organization.

Waterboarding three top al-Qaida leaders for a minute or so apiece may have given us the vital information we needed to head off plots in progress and to kill or apprehend three-quarters of al-Qaida's leadership.

The National Security Agency's eavesdropping on international terrorist communications may have allowed us to identify and penetrate cells here in the U.S., as well as to identify and kill terrorists overseas.

We may have penetrated al-Qaida's communications network, perhaps through the mysterious Naeem Noor Khan, whose laptop may have been the 21st century equivalent of the Enigma machine.

Al-Qaida's announcement that Iraq is the central front in its war against the West, and its call for jihadis to find their way to Iraq to fight American troops, may have distracted the terrorists from attacks on the U.S.

The fact that al-Qaida loyalists gathered in Iraq, where they have been neutralized by American and Iraqi troops, may have crippled their ability to attack elsewhere.

The conduct of al-Qaida in Iraq, which revealed that it is an organization of sociopaths, not freedom fighters, may have destroyed its credibility in the Islamic world.

The Bush administration's skillful diplomacy may have persuaded other nations to take stronger actions against their own domestic terrorists. (This certainly happened in Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason.)

Our intelligence agencies may have gotten their act together after decades of failure. The Department of Homeland Security, despite its moments of obvious lameness, may not be as useless as many of us had thought.

No doubt there are officials inside the Bush administration who could better allocate credit among these, and probably other, explanations of our success in preventing terrorist attacks.

But based on the clear historical record, it is obvious that the Bush administration has done something since 2001 that has dramatically improved our security against such attacks.

To fail to recognize this, and to rail against the Bush administration's security policies as failures or worse, is to sow the seeds of greatly increased susceptibility to terrorist attack in the next administration.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/e...96864997227353

Quote:

ace, over on the "Obama Must Go to Iraq" thread, directly above this post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ta#post2459604

....I posted this:

....So ace, I replied with what you said you wanted...I specifically challenged one of your data points....and you ignored my challenge. Now, I'm back ace, and the deal is....We Agree to Play, "Stop Me When You Think You Can Establish That I Am Wrong...."

If I had read the IBD editorial you posted ace, and I saw the attempt in it to link al Zarqawi to Saddam and his government, an alarm would have gone off. The following is what we know ace. We know enough to firmly state that only an extremist would write that "data point" in that IBD editorial, because only an extremist, Cheney, has even recently tried to make that connection. Bush himself was stopped cold...he's never attempted it again....watch the video in the bottom quoite box. I've detailed all of their lies that I can locate and link on this one subject ace, but you might call them "misleading statements". I've detailed findings on how they came into being....the WaPo provides a nice explanation in the lower part of the following quote box.

I am expecting ace, that you will stop me, too when you can establish that my posted facts are not in order. Also, ace, notice that, in the first few sentences in the following quote box, the SSCI establishes that congress did not have access to "the same intelligence" that the white house was privy to, before the October, 2002 congressional vote to authorize presidential authority to use military force:

2004 Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq:

Cheney, on the very next day:

History of Bush's lies and distortions about al Zarqawi and his relationship with Saddam's government:

Lastly, ace....if the rationale for invading and occupying Iraq is as strong and straightforward as you maintain, why do you think they spewed all the disingenuous bullshit of the example of Zarqawi....it seemed be the "go to" example, offered by both Bush and Cheney, for invading and occupying Iraq.

Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attack. I agree with that. Bush Stated that.

Congress did not have all of the intel the WH had. I agree with that. The Intel over Clinton's and Bush's administrations pointed to Saddam having WMD and a desire to obtain nuclear weapons. Intel from England further supported this. Saddam lead his own military that they had WMD.

Members of the Bush administration had a desire to remove Saddam from power prior to 9/11.

Iraq became a key military front in the war against terror. We don't know the full extent of Zarqawi's travels. We don't know the full extent of who he talked to or who gave him aid and assistance. All we can rely on is intel, the same kind of Intel that proved wrong regarding WMD in Iraq. You can not prove any points regarding Zarqawi, all we can do is speculate based on published Intel that may be right or wrong.

It seems you want me to say that Bush lied. I can not do it, nothing you have posted shows that he lied.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

I can tell you haven't actually read Obama's position on Iraq and the Middle East. Whole lot more to it than just pulling troops out. I know the sound bytes you've heard, but that's NOT all he's said.

Why not show me how I am wrong. Isn't that the point of an exchange like this? I hope I am wrong. I don't spend a lot of time listening to Obama speeches, I did watch the debates, and he clearly said he would withdraw the troops unconditionally.

Quote:

"Let the occupation run its course", hunh? The term "run its course" comes from the world of medicine--we say that about fevers. When a fever runs its course, it's because the immune system has risen up and driven the invading virus out of the body. Seems an apt analogy...

What about the issue of a premature withdrawal and the ramifications, wasn't that the main point of my post? Do we have an obligation to the Iraqi people to help them re-build their nation? What is your view on that question? Isn't that an important question worthy of political discussion? The "apt analogy" - shouldn't we in fact leave once the Iraqi people can stand on their own and defend their country from threats internal and at least to some degree external. Isn't "running it course" a good thing for Iraq?

host · 06-03-2008, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Iraq became a key military front in the war against terror. We don't know the full extent of Zarqawi's travels. We don't know the full extent of who he talked to or who gave him aid and assistance. All we can rely on is intel, the same kind of Intel that proved wrong regarding WMD in Iraq. You can not prove any points regarding Zarqawi, all we can do is speculate based on published Intel that may be right or wrong.

It seems you want me to say that Bush lied. I can not do it, nothing you have posted shows that he lied.

Why not show me how I am wrong. Isn't that the point of an exchange like this? I hope I am wrong. I don't spend a lot of time listening to Obama speeches, I did watch the debates, and he clearly said he would withdraw the troops unconditionally......

ace, I know you "can not do it"....that is why we go over this, again and again.

One more time, you asked what was wrong with "the data" in your IBD editorial I explained it to you...it's in the 2002 line item....you last posted some qualification that has nothing to do with that 2002 propaganda centerpiece:

Quote:

Originally Posted by IBD Editorial

2002

October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.

Again. ace....there is no basis for that "perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government." ....but the IBD editorialist inserted it in there, anyway. It just happened to be Bush and Cheney's LEAD justification for invading Iraq, and for "staying the course in Iraq".

How do I know it's bullshit, ace? Because the senate select committee on intelligence found that it was not fact based, and the later Pentagon report, both documented in my second to last post here, says the same thing.

How do I know Mr. Bush lied about it? I know ace, because he could not back his four years of false statements, saying al Zarqawi had "realtions" with Saddam and his government....an assertion Bush said was a prime reason to invade Iraq and to remove Saddam his government, and neither could his press secretary back the statement, when he was asked, just 22 days after the last time that Bush said it:

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
Press Conference by the President
August 21, 2006.

the President:...... who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060912-2.html
Press Gaggle Spetember 12, 2006

.....Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?

MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.

Q There was a link --

MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. Zarqawi, for instance, directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. But they did they have a corner office at the Mukhabarat? No. Were they getting a line item in Saddam's budget? No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.

Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?

MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it. ....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060915-2.html
Press Conference by the President September 15, 2006

Watch the video: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/15/bush-zarqawi-iraq/

THE PRESIDENT:....Martha.

Q Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And, yet, a month ago you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?

THE PRESIDENT: The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. I never said there was an operational relationship. .....

So Bush himself could not back his own accusation....he demonstrated that it was empty, misleading bullshit, a twist of the truth for four long years, and....he has never said it again....since that August 21, 2006 quote.

I've shown you, ace, that a key piece of IBD editorial "data" was wrong, key because Bush and Cheney used that very same reference about Zarqaqi to justify taking out Saddam and "fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here, and I've shown you that Bush and his press secretary could not back up Bush's longstanding, al Zarqawi accusation....and I've noted that Bush has never said it again.

But you need more, ace....more than Bush on video, folding his Zarqawi "card", in response to this line from Martha Raddatz:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martha Raddatz 09-15-06

A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall.

Quote:

Originally Posted by the President 08-21-06

......Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. .......

Quote:

Originally Posted by the President 09-15-06

The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. I never said there was an operational relationship. .....

But he had said that there was "a relationship", just the way IBD snuck it in your editorial ace...he said it over and over, see my second to last post....and when he didn't clearly say it, he implied it.....

Why ace, haven't you and IBD folded your Zarqawi "card"?

This persuades me that there is nothing that could convince you that Bush lied and that 2002 portion of the IBD editorial is intentionally misleading bullshit.

aceventura3 · 06-03-2008, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Why ace, haven't you and IBD folded your Zarqawi "card"?

First there is intel that allegedly supports the report that Zarqawi was in Iraq. Two of the people convicted of the murder indicated there was a link with al queda and that they received orders from Zarqawi.

Quote:

A statement from the Jordanian government said the two men, identified as Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian, confessed to their membership in al Qaeda and that they received their orders from a senior al Qaeda leader.

According to the statement, "bin Suweid and Ibraheem confessed that they are members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, and are affiliated with bin Laden's lieutenant, Ahmad Fadeel Nazal Al-Khalayleh, known as Abu Musa'ab Al-Zarqawi."

Zarqawi left Jordan in 1999 and has been convicted in absentia of a plot to bomb tourist hotels in Amman during the millennium celebrations.
Treatment in Iraq

He reportedly fled Afghanistan after U.S. operations began there, going first to Iran, then Iraq, where he was said to have received medical treatment. President Bush referred to him -- without mentioning his name -- during a speech in Cincinnati in October.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/m...ordan.killing/

There are also reports that the men convicted of the murder talked about the links to Iraq.

Quote:

The CIA also looked into the possibility that the Iraqi regime was involved in the al-Zarqawi network murder of USAID official Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan in December 2002. [Redacted] two suspects in the Foley murder, indicated that Iraqi territory may have been used to facilitate travel and the supply of weapons to the al-Zarqawi group in Jordan. But, neither of the two suspects provided any information on links between al-Zarqawi and the Iraqi regime. [Redacted] one of the two suspects in the Foley murder stated that al-Zarqawi directed and financed the operations before, during and after his stint in Baghdad between May and July 2002. The other suspect mentioned that weapons for their operations in Jordan had come from an unspecified place in Iraq. [Redacted] an associate of Foley's killer left Jordan to join al-Zarqawi in Iraq after the murder to obtain weapons and explosives for future operations. Both of the suspects [redacted] mentioned that one member of the al-Zarqawi network traveled repeatedly between regime-controlled Iraq and Syria after March 2002."

http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2...nce-foley.html

It is possible these men lied. It is possible that the intel is wrong. Perhaps there was a link to Iraq and Saddam did not know that his country was being used, which I doubt.

But, regardless the author of the editorial stated that "perhaps" there was a link. I don't think we know with certainty either way. You speculate, just like the author of the editorial. So, what does that prove?

host · 06-03-2008, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

First there is intel that allegedly supports the report that Zarqawi was in Iraq. Two of the people convicted of the murder indicated there was a link with al queda and that they received orders from Zarqawi.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/m...ordan.killing/

There are also reports that the men convicted of the murder talked about the links to Iraq.

http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2...nce-foley.html

It is possible these men lied. It is possible that the intel is wrong. Perhaps there was a link to Iraq and Saddam did not know that his country was being used, which I doubt.

But, regardless the author of the editorial stated that "perhaps" there was a link. I don't think we know with certainty either way. You speculate, just like the author of the editorial. So, what does that prove?

ace, your http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2...nce-foley.html piece, is dated three months before Bush himself folded his al Zarqawi "card".

Your http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/m...ordan.killing/ citation, is nearly four years before....

Ace, read what I've quoted from you.....I'm not challenging the notion that "Zarqawi was in Iraq"....it's a bullshit move from you to word it that fucking way.....I am challenging this LIE:

Quote:

Originally Posted by the President 08-21-06

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
......Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. .......

Do you comprehend that the question was not whether "al Zarqawi was in Iraq", or whether Saddam knew that he was, because our own Pentagon Inspector General's report of Feb., 2007, tells us:
[quote]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502263_pf.html

....The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups......

[quote]
WHAT CHANGED IS THAT BUSH AND TONY SNOW FOLDED THE "al Zarqawi was in Iraq", "card", as a means of justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

After that happened, it became unreasonable...."fringe", to continue to refer to that as a reason to invade Iraq and remove Saddam and his government. Only Cheney continued to cite that as a reason, after Bush folded, and even he hasn't said it in a year, now. Bush never used it again, ace, after 9-15.06.

Before 9-15-06, I documented the fact that he used it as justification, frequently, over a nearly 4 year span.

Neither any page on IBD and you, ace, cannot attempt to advance "al Zarqawi was in Iraq and may have had a relationship with Saddam and or his government, before we got there", and expect to be taken seriously when you do it, ace......at least not since 9-15-06 !

Do you want to be taken seriously, ace? Bush apparently does, and most pundits and publications apparently want to be....that is why they have stopped making that reference....cold...done....it's relegated to a tiny denialist fringe, because:

ace, I've shown you....with linked statements, dated 9-12-06 (Tony Snow), and 9-15-06 (George Bush), and with a video of Bush actually reciting the words....that neither was willing or able to state what you inserted into your last post.

Bush did not challenge Martha Raddatz, when she asked:

Quote:

THE PRESIDENT:....Martha.

Q Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi and al Qaeda. A Senate Intelligence Committee report a few weeks ago said there was no link, no relationship, and that the CIA knew this and issued a report last fall. And, yet, a month ago you were still saying there was a relationship. Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?

THE PRESIDENT: The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. I never said there was an operational relationship. .....

White house press secretary Tony Snow did not challenge the conclusion that there were no ties between Saddam's government and al Zarqawi:

Quote:

Press Gaggle Spetember 12, 2006

.....Q Well, one more, Tony, just one more. Do you believe -- does the President still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to Zarqawi or al Qaeda before the invasion?

MR. SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq.

Q There was a link --

MR. SNOW: Well, and there was a relationship -- there was a relationship in this sense: Zarqawi was in Iraq; al Qaeda members were in Iraq; they were operating, and in some cases, operating freely from Iraq. Zarqawi, for instance, directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. But they did they have a corner office at the Mukhabarat? No. Were they getting a line item in Saddam's budget? No. There was no direct operational relationship, but there was a relationship. They were in the country, and I think you understand that the Iraqis knew they were there. That's the relationship.

Q Saddam Hussein knew they were there; that's it for the relationship?

MR. SNOW: That's pretty much it. ....

ace, is it just a coincidence, that, after this.....after August 21, 2006, Bush stopped telling this lie?:

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/wa...9intelcnd.html
Senate Panel Releases Report on Iraq Intelligence

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: September 8, 2006

As recently as two weeks ago, President Bush said at a news conference that Mr. Hussein “had relations with Zarqawi.’’ But a C.I.A. report completed in October 2005 concluded instead that Sadddam Hussein’s regime “did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward Mr. Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the new Senate findings.

The C.I.A. report also directly contradicted claims made in February 2003 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who mentioned Mr. Zarqawi by name no fewer than 20 times during a speech to the United Nations Security Council that made the administration’s case to go to war. In that speech, Mr. Powell said that Iraq “today harbors a deadly terrorist network’’ headed by Mr. Zarqawi, and dismissed as “not credible’’ assertions by the Iraqi government that it had no knowledge of Mr. Zarqawi’s whereabouts.

In fact, the Senate investigation concluded that Mr. Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat rather as a potential ally, and that the Iraqi intelligence service “actively attempted to locate and capture al-Zarqawi without success.’’

The C.I.A. report also directly contradicted claims made in February 2003 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who mentioned Mr. Zarqawi by name no fewer than 20 times during a speech to the United Nations Security Council that made the administration’s case to go to war. In that speech, Mr. Powell said that Iraq “today harbors a deadly terrorist network’’ headed by Mr. Zarqawi, and dismissed as “not credible’’ assertions by the Iraqi government that it had no knowledge of Mr. Zarqawi’s whereabouts.

In fact, the Senate investigation concluded that Mr. Hussein regarded Al Qaeda as a threat rather as a potential ally, and that the Iraqi intelligence service “actively attempted to locate and capture al-Zarqawi without success.’’....

aceventura3 · 06-03-2008, 02:41 PM

Host,

The problem is not in the citations, it is more fundamental than that.

How is it that you selectively have seemingly blind faith is intel that supports your premise and then can totally ignore intel that may contradict your view? I acknowledge that intel can be correct or it can be incorrect. If a view is formed based on intel and then the view is changed based on intel - how is that a lie?

It is not possible for us to come to an agreement, because I don't think we know one way or the other with certainty if there were direct links with Zarqawi and Hussein. There is evidence that suggests that Zarqawi could have had "relations" with Hussein.

Your conclusions often don't directly support your premise, for example you point to the fact that Hussein publicly looked at al qaeda as a threat, as if that would be proof there was no contact or "relations". That logic is flawed. That logic suggests that you think Hussein would be open and honest about a relationship. That logic assumes that al qaeda and Hussein could not view the US as a common enemy, a greater threat and reason to collaborate.

Also, you are arguing a point that is not material to the editorial. The author of the editorial, if proven wrong - did not present the link as a fact. If you think IBD lacks credibility because of that point, you have a right to that view. On the other hand I have been reading IBD for about 10 years and I have confidence in the information I read in the paper and enjoy the opinions writted on the editorial page.

Willravel · 06-03-2008, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

How is it that you selectively have seemingly blind faith is intel that supports your premise and then can totally ignore intel that may contradict your view?

This sounds like a question I might ask of a member of the Bush Administration, especially the president.

How about we look at what's verifiable:
- A complete record of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell building up the case for war in the media.
- After the invasion, no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction was found.
- Before the invasion, it was verified that Saddam Hussein had no links to the 9/11 attacks.

These three things alone paint a magnificently simple picture. Either all the intel they were getting was incorrect, some of the intel was incorrect, or none of the intel was incorrect. If all of the intel was incorrect, we should close the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all other intelligence services, starting from scratch. If some of the intel was wrong, then the intel that supported the war was clearly cherry-picked by those mentioned above. If all of the intel was correct, then those above lied.

I'm not trying to present a false choice, so please let me know if I've missed something.

host · 06-03-2008, 04:40 PM

ace, are you saying it is just a coincidence that Bush allowed himself to be humiliated in the video of him being asked, by Marth Raddatz on 9/15/06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martha Raddatz 9-15-06

....Why did you keep saying that? Why do you continue to say that? And do you still believe that?....

....when he was forced to admit that Saddam had no "relations with Zarqawi". made to look like a liar....and the fact that Bush has never made the claim again, a claim he had made again and again, for nearly 4 years?

If you're correct ace, what would your answer to Martha have been?

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
August 21, 2006

Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. ....

(Read the quote in the box above again, ace, and then watch the video
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/15/bush-zarqawi-iraq/ .....again...)

If the following answer was not a lie, ace...what was it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by the President 09-15-06

The point I was making to Ken Herman's question was that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terror, and that Mr. Zarqawi was in Iraq. He had been wounded in Afghanistan, had come to Iraq for treatment. He had ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen in Jordan. I never said there was an operational relationship. .....

Check it yourself, ace....search for a more recent instance
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...ov&btnG=Search

....than 8/21/06, of Bush making the claim "Saddam.....who had relations with Zarqawi...."

Bush has never made the claim since....but you're still making it, and you posted an IBD editorial that made it:

Quote:

Originally Posted by IBD Editorial

2002

October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.

I'm asking you to stop.....it's not a reasonable thing to do anymore. It's tantamount to posting that the WMD we all thought were there....were there..... Who do you see making that claim, who is interested in being taken seriously?

Quote:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/05/105281.htm

....QUESTION: Yes, Madame Secretary. Now it’s on. Okay, now it’s on. How can you lead a new international consensus on rebuilding Iraq when there are these new charges from Scott McClellan detailing that the Bush Administration misled the U.S. and the world into an unnecessary war in Iraq?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I’m not going to comment on a book that I haven’t read, but I will say that the concerns about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were the fundamental reason for tens – for dozens of resolutions within the Security Council from the time that Saddam Hussein was expelled from Kuwait in 1991 up until 2003. It was not the United States of America alone that believed that he had weapons of mass destruction, that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction that led him to throw inspectors out, effectively to so limit them that they left in 1998, leading the Clinton Administration to take military action against Iraq. It was not the United States alone that knew that Saddam Hussein had, of course, used weapons of mass destruction both against his own population and against Iranians. And it was not the United States alone that asked why Saddam Hussein would not answer the questions of weapons inspectors even under the threat of serious consequences after Resolution 1441 in 2002.

So the story is there for everyone to see. You can’t now transplant yourself into the present and say we should have known things that we, in fact, did not know in 2001, 2002, 2003. The record on weapons of mass destruction was one that appeared to be very clear. Now, if the world did not believe that at the time, then I would ask: Why was Iraq under some of the most severe sanctions that the international community has ever imposed? I think it is because the world knew that Saddam Hussein was a threat; he was a threat not just because of his appetite for weapons of mass destruction, but he was a threat also because he continued to flaunt the terms of the armistice which he had signed in 1991to end that war, he continued to threaten his neighbors, and of course, he didn’t just threaten but, in fact, tyrannized his own people, including 300,000 Iraqis in mass graves.

So the threat from Saddam Hussein was well understood. You can agree or disagree about the decision to liberate Iraq in 2003. But I would really ask: Do people really believe that he was not a threat to the international community? And if you believe that he was not a threat to the international community, then why in the world were you allowing the Iraqi people to suffer under the terms of Oil-for-Food?.....

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../29/le.00.html
National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice, date July 29, '01:
"(Larry) KING: Still a menace, still a problem. But the administration failed, principally because of objections from Russia and China, to get the new sanctions policy through the United Nations Security Council. Now what? Do we do this for another 10 years?

(Dr. Condoleeza) RICE: Well, in fact, John, we have made progress on the sanctions. We, in fact, had four of the five, of the permanent five, ready to go along with smart sanctions.

We'll work with the Russians. I'm sure that we'll come to some resolution there, because it is important to restructure these sanctions to something that work.

But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

This has been a successful period, but obviously we would like to increase pressure on him, and we're going to go about doing that."

Serial liars, ace....war criminals. I only had to post about 30 times, McClellan's Jan. 12, 2005 concession that the WMD "were not there", to stamp out assertions posted here that they WERE there.....I guess it's going to be the same way with your "Zarqawi had relations with Saddam" assertion. Sooner or later, ace....no WMD, no "relations" with Zarqawi, and no

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070502-2.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 2, 2007

President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America

the President:.....For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11. I strongly believe it's in our national interest to stay in the fight. (Applause.).....

...and McClellan will be proven correct.....Bush led us into an "unneccesary war in Iraq"....how do we know? Because none of the principle reasons for invading and occupying Iraq, were true. How do we know they knew, beforehand? Because they set up PNAC's Doug Feith to counter and to twist intelligence findings....to fix the facts around the policy, ace!

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 07:39 AM

Bush stated that he never said there was an operational relationship. I think he came to the conclusion there was a relationship based on circumstantial evidence. I accept the fact that there may have been occasions when he did not make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence and other times when he did. Hussein had a standing offer to the families of suicide bombers, that is having a "relationship" with terrorists. Zarqawi was a terrorist leader who was in Iraq and managed operations from Iraq, I would assume Hussein was fully aware of that, and if nothing else that is enough for me to conclude there was a "relationship".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

This sounds like a question I might ask of a member of the Bush Administration, especially the president.

How about we look at what's verifiable:
- A complete record of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell building up the case for war in the media.
- After the invasion, no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction was found.
- Before the invasion, it was verified that Saddam Hussein had no links to the 9/11 attacks.

These three things alone paint a magnificently simple picture. Either all the intel they were getting was incorrect, some of the intel was incorrect, or none of the intel was incorrect. If all of the intel was incorrect, we should close the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all other intelligence services, starting from scratch. If some of the intel was wrong, then the intel that supported the war was clearly cherry-picked by those mentioned above. If all of the intel was correct, then those above lied.

I'm not trying to present a false choice, so please let me know if I've missed something.

I think we know they emphasized the intel that supported their case. That is my point to Host, he does the same thing. Why is it o.k. for him but not the administration. I also admit that I will "cherry pick" to support my case, I assume everyone does. Because of that I don't accept anything on face value. If anyone listened to Bush and became 100% in favor of war, without question - don't they have a problem rather than Bush?

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I think we know they emphasized the intel that supported their case. That is my point to Host, he does the same thing. Why is it o.k. for him but not the administration. I also admit that I will "cherry pick" to support my case, I assume everyone does. Because of that I don't accept anything on face value. If anyone listened to Bush and became 100% in favor of war, without question - don't they have a problem rather than Bush?

Why is it okay when Bush does it an not when host does it?

ratbastid · 06-04-2008, 08:14 AM

So, Bush lied, but America's to blame because it wasn't cynical enough, and should have known he's a fucking liar.

It's like saying, "If I punch you in the nose, it's your fault for not moving in time."

Cynthetiq · 06-04-2008, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

So, Bush lied, but America's to blame because it wasn't cynical enough, and should have known he's a fucking liar.

It's like saying, "If I punch you in the nose, it's your fault for not moving in time."

well yeah. duh. move faster next time. didn't you have any siblings?

dc_dux · 06-04-2008, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I think we know they emphasized the intel that supported their case. That is my point to Host, he does the same thing. Why is it o.k. for him but not the administration.

WTF! comparing members of an internet politcal forum to the Commander in Chief..or the Secy of Defense...or the National Security Advisor? and I thought I've seen everything possible rationale of those supporting the Iraq invasion.

When you do it, or I do it, or host does it....no one is asked to put their life on the line!

For an interesting time line on Iraq and the Media....particularly in the lead up to the invasion.

ratbastid · 06-04-2008, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

well yeah. duh. move faster next time. didn't you have any siblings?

Well that's exactly it. This is 8-year-old politics. Politics of the family road trip back seat.

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

Why is it okay when Bush does it an not when host does it?

I am indifferent to it. I just acknowledge it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

So, Bush lied, but America's to blame because it wasn't cynical enough, and should have known he's a fucking liar.

It's like saying, "If I punch you in the nose, it's your fault for not moving in time."

I don't conclude he lied.

If I tell you I am going to punch you in the nose, it is certainly my fault for punching you, but you feel the pain of the punch. You might have avoided the pain if you had taken some kind of action. Given the intel available the possibility of me actually hitting you in the nose and the possibility of me not hitting you - you have to "cherry pick" your intel and take an action or inaction. Whatever you do, I would not call you a lier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

WTF! comparing members of an internet politcal forum to the Commander in Chief..or the Secy of Defense...or the National Security Advisor? and I thought I've seen everything possible rationale of those supporting the Iraq invasion.

When you do it, or I do it, or host does it....no one is asked to put their life on the line!

For an interesting time line on Iraq and the Media....particularly in the lead up to the invasion.

The nerve! Food for thought - at what point in life does one develop the decision making skills that they may have to one day apply to a life or death situation?

For me I developed those skills as a very young person. I understand how I would make my decisions. When I have studied history I have given much thought to what I would do if I were in situations making life and death situations. So for you it is outlandish for me to compare Host to the President. In my view it is not. I expect that the people I interact with, including Host, may one day be in a situation of great power, including the power of life and death, I sincerely hope that they have a thorough understanding of the impact their actions will have, and approach those situations understanding their biases, principles and how they arrive at conclusions.

That is WTF!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Well that's exactly it. This is 8-year-old politics. Politics of the family road trip back seat.

World politics is not much more complicated than that, it is just the stakes that are higher. What are the fundamental motivators of human behavior? How do those motivators change as we age? Do they change? I am really interested in knowing your view on these questions.

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I am indifferent to it. I just acknowledge it.

Indifferent to the president cherry-picking evidence, but mad when host does it? Does that strike you at all as odd? Or perhaps biased?

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

Indifferent to the president cherry-picking evidence, but mad when host does it? Does that strike you at all as odd? Or perhaps biased?

I don't make moral or character judgments based on a person making a decision when the information available is incomplete or imperfect. I stated several times that I simply disagree with Host. I don't think Bush "lied", he does. Given the discussion, I am just curious on how he reconciles the use of selective intelligence for his purposes and the use of selective intelligence by the Administration.

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 12:11 PM

Ace, maybe changing the frame of reference could shed some light on this.

Let's say you're just starting out in college and that I'm your school counselor. You come to me in order to get the right classes for your major in order to graduate. I only name the classes I like, and you don't graduate.

Was the act of purposefully omitting all of the classes I didn't like a lie?

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

Ace, maybe changing the frame of reference could shed some light on this.

Let's say you're just starting out in college and that I'm your school counselor. You come to me in order to get the right classes for your major in order to graduate. I only name the classes I like, and you don't graduate.

Was the act of purposefully omitting all of the classes I didn't like a lie?

No, I would not consider that a lie. First I would see it as my responsibility to know what classes I need to graduate. Second, I would assume you would have a bias and direct me to classes you thought were best.

If you knowingly mislead me, and knew the advice you gave would mean I would not graduate, yes - you lied. However, if you believed the courses you recommend would actual lead to my graduation, but in-fact they do not - you were either uninformed or incompetent.

I think the intel the administration used was incorrect.

dc_dux · 06-04-2008, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

If you knowingly mislead me..... yes - you lied. However, if you believed the courses you recommend would actual lead to.... but in-fact they do not - you were either uninformed or incompetent.

Man....I wouldnt want to be a Commander in Chief and have to tell a young war widow...

"I meant well, but I was either "uninformed or incompetent" and as a result, your husband died and your young child will never know his/her father."

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

No, I would not consider that a lie. First I would see it as my responsibility to know what classes I need to graduate. Second, I would assume you would have a bias and direct me to classes you thought were best.

In the case of the Iraq War, many people didn't have access to the whole story. Those who did knew that Bush was misleading people.

As for directing you to the classes I think are best? It turns out that my opinions were quite simply wrong. Now you're ending up taking 6 years to get your BA in business.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

If you knowingly mislead me, and knew the advice you gave would mean I would not graduate, yes - you lied. However, if you believed the courses you recommend would actual lead to my graduation, but in-fact they do not - you were either uninformed or incompetent.

We've arrived back at the Bush conundrum: he either lied or is quite incompetent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

I think the intel the administration used was incorrect.

I've already covered this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

If all of the intel was incorrect, we should close the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all other intelligence services, starting from scratch. If some of the intel was wrong, then the intel that supported the war was clearly cherry-picked by[Bush]. If all of the intel was correct, then [Bush] above lied.

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

In the case of the Iraq War, many people didn't have access to the whole story. Those who did knew that Bush was misleading people.

As for directing you to the classes I think are best? It turns out that my opinions were quite simply wrong. Now you're ending up taking 6 years to get your BA in business.

We've arrived back at the Bush conundrum: he either lied or is quite incompetent.

I've already covered this:

All the intel was not correct, nor was all of it incorrect.

Have you made decisions when you have have imperfect information? When you knew it was imperfect? When you did not know it was imperfect?

At what point in your decision making do you decide you have done enough research? If you had to research an issue to "perfection" would you ever be able to make a decision?

Have you ever had research that supported a certain action but made a decision based on another reason?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Man....I wouldnt want to be a Commander in Chief and have to tell a young war widow...

"I meant well, but I was either "uninformed or incompetent" and as a result, your husband died and your young child will never know his/her father."

I would not want that either, who would?. Many Commanders in Chief have been faced with having to tell a "young war widow...", history shows that in hindsight, many lives could have been saved with better information and or better judgment. Are you suggesting there is a problem with the reliance on what turned out to be imperfect intel that has cost lives that has been unique to the Bush Administration and no other Administration?

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

All the intel was not correct, nor was all of it incorrect.

So some of intelligence was correct, and the intel was cherry picked. Yes, that's the conclusion that most people have now come to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Have you made decisions when you have have imperfect information? When you knew it was imperfect? When you did not know it was imperfect?

George W. Bush was filtering his decision making process through his neo-conservative and anti-Iraq bias, which meant that he ignored the intelligence that contradicted his plans.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

At what point in your decision making do you decide you have done enough research? If you had to research an issue to "perfection" would you ever be able to make a decision?

This is highly dependent on the weight of the decisions I must make. If I was given the responsibility of deciding whether or not the US should go to war, you had better believe that I'd spend day and night for as long as was possible to decide.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Have you ever had research that supported a certain action but made a decision based on another reason?

No.

aceventura3 · 06-04-2008, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

So some of intelligence was correct, and the intel was cherry picked. Yes, that's the conclusion that most people have now come to.

I agree.

Quote:

George W. Bush was filtering his decision making process through his neo-conservative and anti-Iraq bias, which meant that he ignored the intelligence that contradicted his plans.

Faulty conclusion. Or, perhaps there is a difference between "ignoring" intel and not giving it the same weight as other intel. It is very possible that he looked at all of the intel, carefully considered all of it, and still came to the conclusion to go to war.

Quote:

This is highly dependent on the weight of the decisions I must make. If I was given the responsibility of deciding whether or not the US should go to war, you had better believe that I'd spend day and night for as long as was possible to decide.

Does it also depend on the consequences of time available? Did you see the movie Crimson Tide? What would you have done? Given we know how the movie turned out, its easy, but actually think about it.

Quote:

No.

Are you married? There have been many times when I have done tons of research, go with my wife to make a decision on something and she says something like "it doesn't feel right", and I change my view, even though the intel and data I had suggested otherwise, her "data" (gut) did not agree. Would that make me a lier?

Willravel · 06-04-2008, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Faulty conclusion. Or, perhaps there is a difference between "ignoring" intel and not giving it the same weight as other intel. It is very possible that he looked at all of the intel, carefully considered all of it, and still came to the conclusion to go to war.

He looked at all of the intel, carefully considered all of it, and then only presented the evidence that supported what he wanted to do to Congress and the American people.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Does it also depend on the consequences of time available? Did you see the movie Crimson Tide? What would you have done? Given we know how the movie turned out, its easy, but actually think about it.

Bush had a year and a half.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Are you married? There have been many times when I have done tons of research, go with my wife to make a decision on something and she says something like "it doesn't feel right", and I change my view, even though the intel and data I had suggested otherwise, her "data" (gut) did not agree. Would that make me a lier?

"It doesn't feel right" is probably fine when you're picking out furniture but doesn't fly when you're the president.

host · 06-04-2008, 11:16 PM

The dead US troops and Iraqis have no voice...ace. They cannot speak of what has been done to them...There are no more posts about WMD in this forum, even any "perhaps", there were WMD, posts.

Now, this will stop, too:

Quote:

Originally Posted by IBD Editorail

2002

October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.......

PERHAPS.....Not !

....due to multiple, official determinations to the contrary, and the fact that the president himself has stopped making this link, since 8/21/06.

ace, it's not at all as you make it out to be..it was a co-ordinated, well planned propaganda "OP".."to fix the facts around the policy":

Quote:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02282003.html
February 28, 2003

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Who's the hack? I nominate The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg. He's the new Remington... Back in 1898, William Randolph Hearst was trying to fan war fever between the US and Spain. He dispatched a reporter and the artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to send back blood-roiling depictions of Spanish beastliness to Cuban insurgents. Remington wired to say he could find nothing sensational to draw and could he come home. Famously, Hearst wired him, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." Remington duly did so. .....

..the policy to invade and occupy Iraq, and remove Saddam and his government. They knew they did not have justification that rose to a level that would be acceptable to the American people....a level, Worth Dying For, as the troops were expected to risk, in the falsely justified, "unnecessary war"!

Quote:

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/inde..._id=&Issue_id=
MCCAIN SENDS CLEAR MESSAGE OF SUPPORT FOR IRAQ RESOLUTION
October 11, 2002

U.S. Senator John McCain today made the following statement on the floor of the Senate regarding the Iraq resolution:

.."These debates will be important. I believe the President's position will prevail. Congress cannot foresee the course of this conflict and should not unnecessarily constrain the options open to the President to defeat the threat we have identified in Saddam Hussein. Once Congress acts on a resolution, only the President will have to make the choices, with American forces likely deployed in the region to carry out his orders, that will end the threat Saddam Hussein's weapons and his ambitions pose to the world. Congress should give the President the authority he believes he needs to protect American national security against an often irrational dictator who has demonstrated a history of aggression outside his borders and a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

"This is not just another Arab despot, not one of many tyrants who repress their people from within the confines of their countries. As New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently traveled across northern Iraq, recently wrote in Slate:

'There are, of course, many repugnant dictators in the world; a dozen or so in the Middle East alone. But Saddam Hussein is a figure of singular repugnance, and singular danger. To review: there is no dictator in power anywhere in the world who has, so far in his career, invaded two neighboring countries; fired ballistic missiles at the civilians of two other neighboring countries; tried to have assassinated an ex-president of the United States; harbored al Qaeda fugitives...; attacked civilians with chemical weapons; attacked the soldiers of an enemy with chemical weapons; conducted biological weapons experiments on human subjects; committed genocide; and... [weaponized] aflotoxin, a tool of mass murder and nothing else. I do not know how any thinking person could believe that Saddam Hussein is a run-of-the-mill dictator. No one else comes close... to matching his extraordinary and variegated record of malevolence.'...

...and just who is this Jeffrey Goldberg who John McCain was quoting in his promotion of Bush as "the decider"?

Give it all a "serious", read, ace....because hundreds of thousands have died as result of this, including 4080 American troops, and you still cling to this justification for invading and occupying Iraq, even now:

Quote:

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001776.html
October 03, 2007
Jeffrey Goldberg, Five Years Ago Today:

Quote:

http://www.slate.com/id/2071670/entry/2071900/
Should the U.S. Invade Iraq? Week 2

from: Jeffrey Goldberg
to: Slate writers
Aflatoxin
Posted Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002, at 3:47 PM ET

There is not sufficient space…for me to refute some of the arguments made in Slate over the past week against intervention, arguments made, I have noticed, by people with limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected)…

The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

..Still, as gruesome as this is (and as gruesome as Goldberg's pre-war reporting was),:

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003...da.afghanistan
The missing link?Mohammed Mansour Shahab claimed to be the key link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. In the latest of his regular online dispatches, The Observer's Chief Reporter interviews him - and finds that you can't always believe what you are told.
Jason Burke Observer.co.uk, Sunday February 9 2003

...For the first six months of his imprisonment he had kept the rest to himself. Then, in October 2001, he told a fellow prisoner who told the guards who told the deputy chief of investigations. When, in the early spring, a reporter from The New Yorker was in Sulamaniya Shahab told him too. The resulting story was published in March with the headline 'The Threat of Saddam' and announced that 'the Kurds may have evidence of [Saddam's] ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.' There were a number of possible links raised by the article but the main tie between al'Qaeda and Saddam was Shahab.

There were obvious reasons why hawks in Washington are keen to find such links. The joint FBI and CIA investigation into a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague reported last year by Czech intelligence had proved that Atta was almost certainly in the US at the time of the alleged meeting. The lack of evidence to inculpate Saddam was presenting a problem. It still is. The New Yorker's story thus caused some excitement and its author was interviewed by CNN.

....And this was the Saddam-al-Qaeda link. Clear evidence, the hawks said, that one of the most notorious men in Saddam's regime, with a proven history in chemical weapons, was sending secret fluid filled containers to Osama bin Laden. Not conclusive, admittedly, but good enough.

However Shahab is a liar. He may well be a smuggler, and probably a murderer too, but substantial chunks of his story simply are not true.

Firstly there are inconsistencies between what Shahab told the New Yorker and what he told me. He told Goldberg he had met bin Laden in a tent, not a cave, and said he himself delivered the liquid-filled fridge motors to the Taliban and then killed the smugglers who had helped him.

Then there are practical problems with what he had told me. A Soviet-made 82 mm mortar weights 60kg with its bipod and baseplate. Even a lightweight Iraqi 60mm weights nearly half of that. An RPG, unloaded, weighs 7kgs. Four hundred of the former and 300 of the latter would be a load of more than 20tonnes. Could six men load and unload that weight (twice) in five hours? Not according to a friend of mine who is a logistics specialist with an elite British infantry regiment. It also takes longer than six hours to drive from the Iranian border to Kandahar. Shahab's mistake is understandable though. He has never been to Kandahar. When I asked him to describe the city he said it was 'dirty' which is certainly true and entirely composed of mud houses, which certainly isn't true. I spent several weeks in Kandahar during 1998 and 1999 (i.e when Shahab said he was there) and unless there was a lot of very quick demolition and reconstruction work going on Shahab is either blind or lying.

Kandahar may not be Canary Wharf but it isn't just a pile of mud huts. Uthman's house in the city, Shahab told me, was made of mud too. Which indicates a remarkably ascetic lifestyle for a successful major league smuggler. Not least because much of rest of the local population live in relatively substantial concrete houses. There are (or were following the US bomnbing) several government buildings of three or more stories and a large mosque.

So why was he lying? Possibly because, as the deputy chief of investigations admitted, his sudden loquacity might well get him a few years off his sentence. And where did he get the material for the lies from? Well, televisions were introduced into the cells in August last year.

At the end of our interview I told Shahab that I didn't think he had ever been to Kandahar or met bin Laden. He didn't deny it. Instead he just asked a series of questions about who I was. Why was I in Afghanistan? Was I a spy? An American? Who? I showed him my British passport and press card.

He laughed. 'You are a difficult man,' he said.

In fact other prisoners held by the PUK say there are links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. They are just in the wrong place for Rumsfeld and his cronies.

In the last ten years Kurdistan has sprouted its own largely home grown radical Islamic movement. The most extreme group has managed to carve out a 100 square mile fiefdom for themselves in the hills between Halabja and the Iranian border. There the Ansar-ul-Islam, a group of 600 or so Kurdish Islamists bolstered by around 70 laregly Arab foreigners, have set up a miniaturised version of the Taliban's Afghanistan complete with bans on televisions, sanctions on 'immodest behaviour' by women and training camps for fighters and suicide bombers.

After speaking to Shahab I interviewed a series of Ansar-ul Islam activists. Many were speaking to the press for the first time. For the most part, they spoke coherently and cogently about their organisation. At least three had left ansar-ul Islam and given themselves up to the PUK because they were unhappy at the growing influence of 'foreigners' (i.e. Arabs) in the group. They said that several of the leaders of Ansar-ul-Islam, veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan for the most part, visited bin laden in Afghanistan last year and requested his assistance. They met with senior al-Qaeda men like Dr Ayman al'Zawahiri and received training in camps run by the group. After two of the three main extremists groups in Kurdistan had solicited his aid bin Laden became more proactive and sent an emissary, a Jordanian Arab, to the third group offering them funding and facilities. The offer was accepted.

They did not mention Abu Musab al'Zarqawi, the man who Colin Powell alleges is the link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Many had been captured before al'Zarqawi reached Iraq. That may be one explanation. Another is that al'Zarqawi is a minor player with no real links to al-Qaeda who few were concerned about or interested in.

Since the US-led war in Afghanistan more than 100 fighters from al-Qaeda or associated groups have fled to the Ansar-ul-Islam enclave. This does not make it an al-'Qaeda group. The group may recently have been radicalised by bin Laden's influence and agents, but the roots of Ansar-ul-Islam lie far back in Cold War politics,in the failure of the West to fund reconstruction in Kurdistan or to deal with the Baghdad regime properly post 1991. Other elements also are critical: a massive influx of Saudi-backed Wahabi organisations which disbursed huge sums in Kurdistan in the early Nineties with the express intention of making converts and the internecine strife among the Kurds themselves among them. There are several more contributing factors, all of which are complicated and take some detailed explanation. Saddam may well have infiltrated the Ansar-ul-Islam with a view to monitoring the developments of the group (indeed it would be odd if he had not) but that appears to be about as far as his involvement with the group, and incidentally with al-Qaeda, goes. If you are a Pentagon hawk you are better off sticking to Mohammed Mansoor Shahab and his lies about chemicals, bin Laden and mud houses.

· Jason Burke is The Observer's Chief Reporter. His book on al-Qaeda and modern Islamic fundamentalism will be published by IB Tauris in the summer. You can read a selection of Jason's reporting on the terrorism crisis, including his regular online terrorism dispatch in Observer Worldview's best of Jason Burke page.

......I don't recommend that anyone get angry at him [Jeffrey Goldberg] personally. He doesn't matter. What matters is the political economy of our media. Here, in an article from this past August, is a description of how that political economy functions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080501576.html

David Bradley had been trying to lure Jeffrey Goldberg to the Atlantic for more than two years.
Bradley, the magazine's owner, wrote flattering letters. He courted Goldberg at a McDonald's on Wisconsin Avenue. He proffered a hefty signing bonus. And when the New Yorker's Washington correspondent finally seemed receptive to making the move, Bradley sent in the ponies.

"He's incredibly persistent and makes you feel like you're God's gift to journalism," says Goldberg, who had turned Bradley down once before. But that was before the horses showed up at his home to entertain his children. "The charm is incredibly disarming," says Goldberg, who joined the Atlantic last month...

Part of what Bradley is selling is a commitment to long-form journalism, at a time when there are few quality outlets for those who believe in the power of nonfiction narrative. But what Goldberg calls "smart-bomb flattery" doesn't hurt, and neither do salaries for top journalists ranging as high as $350,000.

"Smart-bomb flattery." Oh, tee hee hee. I find it particularly witty for Goldberg to speak of himself enjoying these metaphorical smart bombs at the same time that, thanks in part to him, Iraqis are enjoying the real kind.

In any case, the lesson is clear: as long you advocate war—any war, anywhere, anytime—and as long as you coat it with a certain brand of intellectual varnish, you literally cannot be wrong in the mainstream US media. Your views may diverge from reality so completely they are essentially psychotic, but as far the people who own the media are concerned, it's reality that's mistaken. Hey, do your kids like ponies?

EXTRA CREDIT: In his Slate post, Goldberg cites Richard Spertzel as an authority. Spertzel is an American former UNSCOM inspector and a truly appalling hack. Predictably enough, Spertzel was later hired by the CIA as part of its post-war WMD search team—and predictably enough, he came back to the US and wrote an editorial: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/resea...?doc_id=242996
for the Wall Street Journal brazenly lying about what they'd found and what the final CIA report said. (Brief description here, http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000213.html though it's actually even worse than that. Details on request.)

Quote:

http://www.washingtonindependent.com...-an-loose-with
Fast and Loose With the Facts

How Two Leading Journalists Played the Public to Help Bush Sell His War

Spencer Ackerman

03/19/2008

The danger," said President George W. Bush on Sept. 25, 2002, is that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world." He proceeded to build on a lie that finally died last week -- but only after nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis did as well. The war on terror, Bush said, you can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

Only if you're a liar. For the CIA knew that Saddam Hussein had no ties of any significance to Al Qaeda. Richard A. Clarke, the long-time counterterrorism director at the National Security Council, knew that Saddam Hussein had no ties of any significance to Al Qaeda. Michael Scheuer, the CIA's original bin Laden analyst, knew that Saddam Hussein had no ties of any significance to Al Qaeda. Eventually, the 9/11 Commission would know that Saddam Hussein had no ties of any significance to Al Qaeda.

But by the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, five years ago today, much of the public thought that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were tightly allied to strike the United States. And the public believed this because the Bush administration constantly intimated it in order to launch its long-desired war.

Donald H. Rumsfeld called the evidence linking Saddam and Al Qaeda bulletproof. (He would later say, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two" -- and then walk that statement back.) CIA Director George J. Tenet, carrying the administration's water by misrepresenting what his CIA knew, said there were ties going back a decade. (He meant that they were a decade old.) Vice President Dick Cheney went on "Meet The Press" again and again to say that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an agent of Iraqi intelligence. (In early 2002, the FBI and the CIA debunked this claim.)

But the public also believed it because the press amplified the lie. The major networks and papers uncritically recycled what these administration officials said. The elite media was no exception -- and played a major role in convincing less-expert journalists that the administration was on to something. Two writers in particular, though very different, stand out: Jeffrey Goldberg, then of The New Yorker and now of The Atlantic, and Stephen F. Hayes, of the neoconservative Weekly Standard.

Goldberg, in The New Yorker, wrote two pieces -- one in March 2002 and the other on the eve of the invasion -- backing the Saddam/Al Qaeda claim. Bush praised his work publicly, if inelegantly: "Evidently, there's a new article in the New York magazine or New Yorker magazine--some East Coast magazine--and it details about [Saddam's] barbaric behavior toward his own people." Asked about Goldberg by Tim Russert, Cheney called Goldberg's 2002 piece, which breathlessly recycled the second-hand claims of prisoners of the Kurds that Saddam and bin Laden were allied, "devastating".

Hayes, in the Standard, has made a career out of pretending Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league to attack the United States. He published a book -- tellingly wafer-thin and with large type in its hardcover edition -- called "The "The Connection".

One infamous piece even suggested that Saddam might have aided the 9/11 attack. Hayes can be relied on to provide a farrago of speciousness every time new information emerges refuting his deceptive thesis. Unsurprisingly, Cheney has repeatedly praised Hayes's work, telling Fox News, "I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections."

The Bush administration will leave office with the legacy of a disastrous and unnecessary war, which threatens to undermine the Republican Party for a second straight election. Bush and Cheney will probably leave office distrusted and loathed by a large majority of the electorate, and if they ever travel to Europe they might even face indictment as war criminals.

By contrast, Goldberg and Hayes have seen their careers flourish. Goldberg traded his New Yorker post for a lucrative spot at The Atlantic. Hayes wrote a lengthy hagiography of Cheney for major New York publisher, HarperCollins. Publicity for the book got him a special spot on "Meet The Press", befitting his status as a high-profile television pundit who is never treated as the conspiracy theorist he is.

Every single inquiry into the Saddam/Al Qaeda link has revealed it to be untrue. First, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission's definitive study found "no collaborative operational ties" between the two. (Hayes' response was to attack the commission, and then to claim that this was a legalistic way of saying that Saddam and Al Qaeda were actually in league.) Then, in 2006, the Senate intelligence committee rejected it. Then, in 2007, the Pentagon inspector general -- albeit in a more circuitous way -- rejected it. Now, in a report released last week, the U.S. military's Joint Forces Command rejects it.

The Joint Forces Command study combed through 600,000 pages of captured documents about Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism throughout the years. It documents, in great detail, precisely that. But the label "terrorism"; is a misleading category. The study refutes the idea that there was any "direct connection" between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Saddam's support for terrorism was largely limited to Palestinian, anti-Kurdish and anti-Gulf state terrorist groups. (See the JFC's Executive Summary here, another excerpt here and conclusions.)

About as close as anything could come to linking Saddam to Al Qaeda was a memo from one Saddam's intelligence services "written a decade before Operation Iraqi Freedom." It says: "In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt." That organization would eventually merge with Al Qaeda in the late 1990s, long after the apparent meeting in Sudan. It also says that for a time in the mid-1990s, Saddam and Al Qaeda had "indirect cooperation" by offering "training and motivation" to some of the same terror organizations in that country

Out of this thin gruel, Hayes attempted to make a meal in the Standard's pages this week. He lifted as many bullet points from the report as he could that, out of context, seemed to bolster his theory. He then went about attacking reporters who accurately wrote that the study found no direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Hayes tacitly promised his readers that history will ultimately vindicate him, writing that "as much as we have learned from this impressive collection of documents, it is only a fraction of what we will know in 10, 20 or 50 years." And he expressed puzzlement that an administration with an obvious credibility problem had not "done anything to promote the study."

Hayes's boss, New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, criticized the administration's silence in an editorial, lamenting that "most Americans will assume there was no real Saddam-terror connection." The phraseology is telling. Not even Kristol, a supreme propagandist, could bring himself to write of a "real Saddam-Al Qaeda connection", preferring the sleight-of-hand approach to discussing Saddam's ties to undifferentiated "terror" groups.

At the risk of belaboring the point, it should be obvious that if Saddam Hussein was as important to Al Qaeda as Hayes has erroneously and deliberately written for years, then Al Qaeda should be reeling years after the destruction of his regime. Instead, according to a mid-2007 warning from the National Counterterrorism Center, Al Qaeda is "Better Positioned to Strike the West." Never once has Hayes, in all the thousands of words he has written on the "connection", reckoned with this basic strategic problem. In essence, he asks every U.S. soldier and Marine in Iraq to be the last man to die for a debater's point.

Goldberg's approach has been rather different. He has simply kept quiet about what he did. In his March 2002 piece, he credulously recycled the claims of "Kurdish intelligence officials" that a Kurdish terror group called Ansar al-Islam was "shielding Al Qaeda members, and... doing so with the approval of Saddam's agents." (In a parody of a concession to reality, he caveated the claim by saying "they have no proof that Ansar al-Islam was ever involved in international terrorism or that Saddam's agents" were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.") Never once did he indicate to his readers -- The New Yorker has a circulation of more than a million -- that the Kurds, sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein, had an obvious motive to peddle lies to American reporters.

A subsequent piece baselessly asserted that "the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam's regime was brokered in the early nineteen-nineties by the then de-facto leader of Sudan, the pan-Islamist radical Hassan al-Tourabi." Needless to say, not a single investigation into Iraq or Al Qaeda has ever substantiated what Goldberg wrote.

Goldberg further pimped the assertions of "senior officials" that "an Al Qaeda operative--a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi -- was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training."(It's possible that this piece of information came from Abu Sheikh al-Libi, who was tortured into telling the Bush administration about Saddam giving Al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons training, before subsequently recanting.) And he again wrote of "another possible connection early last year," gleaned -- once again -- from "Kurdish intelligence officials."

Goldberg, perhaps chastened, largely stopped writing about the war after the occupation proved to be a disaster. Unlike Hayes, if he still believes that Saddam and Al Qaeda were indeed in league, he has not publicly said so. His beat at The New Yorker changed from the Iraq war to domestic politics. Yet even then, he could not resist the urge to lionize the architects of the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. In 2005, he authored a puffy profile of former Pentagon official Douglas J. Feith. ("His glasses magnify his eyes, making him appear owlish, and his mouth is set in an expression of bemusement that can slip into impatient condescension when he hears something that he thinks is foolish, which is often.")

All the while, he has neglected to correct the record. The closest Goldberg has come to acknowledging what he did in 2002 and 2003 was in an interview with New York magazine to promote a book he published in 2006. When the reporter, Boris Kachka, gently asked about his earlier reporting, Goldberg snapped, "Is that part of the interview? Okay, fine, if you really want to go into it, the specific allegations I raised have never been definitively addressed by the 9/11 Commission."

Yet Goldberg enjoys a sterling reputation. The Atlantic's wealthy owner, David Bradley, reportedly sent Goldberg's children ponies in order to convince the reporter to leave The New Yorker for the prestigious magazine. "He's incredibly persistent and makes you feel like you're God's gift to journalism", Goldberg said of Bradley. The Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz approvingly referred to Bradley's pursuit of "top talent".

But it seems as though, despite Goldberg's ability to escape accountability for his journalistic malpractice, he can't help smirking to attentive readers. The cover story of the January/February edition of The Atlantic featured Goldberg's meditations on the post-Iraq Middle East. It featured, of all things, a discursion into "a decrepit prison in Iraqi Kurdistan" where "a senior interrogator with the Kurdish intelligence service" tortured an Arab prisoner. Goldberg mentioned not a word of what his last dalliance with Kurdish intelligence yielded. To anyone who read his 2002 and 2003 pieces, it appeared that The Atlantic writer was returning to the scene of the crime.

Nearly 4,000 Americans and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and counting, will not have the same opportunity.

Quote:

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/goldbergs-non-mea
In my piece yesterday about the journalists who hawked the Saddam-Al Qaeda lie, I wrote that the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg "has simply kept quiet about what he did". Right as the piece was churning its way to the internet, however, Goldberg broke his silence in a piece for Slate. Unfortunately, from his perspective, it probably would have been better for him to have kept his mouth shut.

In the section that actually deals with what Goldberg "reported" before the war -- Kurdish intelligence officials introduced him to prisoners who they said were the connections between Saddam's intelligence apparatus and Al Qaeda -- he writes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Goldberg

I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorism. The report on Saddam's terrorist ties released last week by the Joint Forces Command confirms this (not that you would know it from the scant press coverage of the study). The study, citing captured Iraqi documents, indicates that Saddam's regime supported various jihadist groups, including Ayman al-Zawahiri's, and including Kurdish Islamist groups, about whom I have reported. But read the study for yourself; it's actually quite an achievement of translation and analysis.

So there you go: Goldberg was right all along! In truth, however, he's trusting that you won't actually read the report. Because what he wrote is simply not supported by what's in the Joint Forces Command study.

The relevant section of the report is stretches from pages 30 to 34. There, it details a 1993 Iraqi Defense Ministry letter describing a campaign of attacks on civilians and non-governmental organizations in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

"Terrorist operations in the Kurdish areas were carried out with the direct knowledge of the highest levels of the Iraqi government"; the report states. "... According to correspondence between [the Defense Ministry] and [an Iraqi intelligence organization], seventy-nine regime-directed attacks were successful against 'saboteurs,' Kurdish factions, UN operations, and various international [non-governmental organizations] in the northern Iraq [sic] during a six-month period in 1993".

That is obviously a campaign of deliberate state violence. What it is obviously not is a collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Rather, it was a campaign conducted by Saddam's own operatives. Goldberg says Saddam was "a supporter of terrorism". What he's hoping you're too half-awake to realize is that there's a difference between generic "terror" groups and Al Qaeda. The report, as I wrote in my piece, does not say, at all, contra to Goldberg's misleading implication, that Saddam collaborated with Ayman Zawahiri. It says that around 1993, a memo from one of Saddam's apparatchiks noted, "In a meeting in the Sudan we agreed to renew our relations with the Islamic Jihad Organization in Egypt". Years later, that organization would merge with Al Qaeda. Nowhere in the report does Joint Forces Command substantiate that Saddam and Zawahiri's group actually, you know, did anything together. To the contrary: it refers to a memorandum, "dated 8 February 1993, asking that movement to refrain from moving against the Egyptian government at that time."

Goldberg has misled The New Yorker's readers for years. Now he's misleading Slate's readers. And, when you think about it, why shouldn't he? After all, he rode his misrepresentations all the way to a great job at The Atlantic. All the incentives have aligned for him. Why stop now? It's not like 4,000 Americans have died or anything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Bush stated that he never said there was an operational relationship. I think he came to the conclusion there was a relationship based on circumstantial evidence. I accept the fact that there may have been occasions when he did not make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence and other times when he did. ......

Here are the relevant Bush and Cheney quotes, ace....can you single out the one(s) where either official "make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence", or come up with a relevant quote that I might have missed?:

Quote:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1
Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab
Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab

By John McWethy

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)

President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to administration officials....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0021007-8.html
President Bush October 7, 2002

...We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html

For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
.. But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39

Slide 39

POWELL: You see a picture of this camp. ....

... Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
President Bush February 6, 2003

...Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.

We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.

The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. The same network has plotted terrorism against France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and was caught producing poisons in London...

http://web.archive.org/web/200304012...?bid=3&pid=371
Capital Games By David Corn
Powell's One Good Reason To Bomb Iraq--UPDATED
02/06/2003 @ 12:12am

...But here's the first question that struck me after Powell's presentation:
why hasn't the United States bombed the so-called Zarqawi camp shown in the slide? The administration obviously knows where it is, and Powell spoke of it in the present tense.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=8&gl=us

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The, Feb 7, 2003 by GREG MILLER

SHOWDOWN ON IRAQ
Why not hit terrorist camp?
Lawmakers question lack of military action

By GREG MILLER Los Angeles Times

Friday, February 7, 2003

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons.

"Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?"

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

"I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said.

Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq.

"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified.

But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it?...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20030208.html

President Bush March 6, 2003

Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference

,,THE PRESIDENT: ,.Colin Powell, in an eloquent address to the United Nations, described some of the information we were at liberty of talking about. He mentioned a man named Al Zarqawi, who was in charge of the poison network. He's a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. There is a poison plant in Northeast Iraq. To assume that Saddam Hussein knew none of this was going on is not to really understand the nature of the Iraqi society...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040617-3.html

June 17, 2004

... THE PRESIDENT: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections -- not only al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations; Abu Nidal was one. He was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq.

No, he was a threat, and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power. ..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040618-1.html
June 18, 2004

President Bush Salutes Soldiers in Fort Lewis, Washington
Remarks by the President to the Military Personnel
Fort Lewis, Washington

..And we're beginning to see results of people stepping up to defend themselves. Iraqi police and Civil Defense Corps have captured several wanted terrorists, including Umar Boziani. He was a key lieutenant of this killer named Zarqawi who's ordering the suiciders inside of Iraq. By the way,
''he was the fellow who was in Baghdad at times prior to our arrival. He was operating out of Iraq. He was an Al Qaeda associate.

See, he was there before we came. He's there after we came. And we'll find him.''..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040923-8.html
September 23, 2004

President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi Press Conference

...PRESIDENT BUSH: Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein were still in power. This is a man who harbored terrorists -- Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060320-7.html
March 20, 2006

THE PRESIDENT:..We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. .....but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
August 21, 2006.

...Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060910.html
September 10, 2006

..Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda....
..we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02..

.Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda..

Cheney Oct. 19, 2006 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...061019-10.html

Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. The sectarian violence that we see now, in part, has been stimulated by the fact of al Qaeda attacks intended to try to create conflict between Shia and Sunni...

Cheney April 5, 2007 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0070405-3.html

Q It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08 is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes. But they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill -- and, thus, official government language -- of that term. Does that give you any indication of their motivation or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure -- well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton; I worked closely with Ike when I was Secretary of Defense. He's Chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike is a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about -- just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. ..

Cheney June 3, 2007 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20070603.html

The Vice President:..The worst terrorist we had in Iraq was a guy named Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth; served time in a Jordanian prison as a terrorist, was let out on amnesty. Then he went to Afghanistan and ran one of those training camps back in the late '90s that trained terrorists. Then when we launched into Afghanistan after 9/11, he was wounded, and fled to Baghdad for medical treatment, and then set up shop in Iraq. So he operated in Jordan, he operated in Afghanistan, then he moved to Iraq..

aceventura3 · 06-05-2008, 12:14 PM

One nice thing about finding ("cherry picking) editorial pieces is I can often find people better able to communicate points that I agree with than I can. From yesterdays WSJ editorial page, accept it for what it is or reject it - just know there are many with the view shared here.

Quote:

Why We Went to Iraq
By FOUAD AJAMI
June 4, 2008; Page A21

Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came."

It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. Scott McClellan can't be accused of strategic thinking, but he has been anointed a peer of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. A witness and a presumed insider – a "Texas loyalist" – has "flipped."

Mr. McClellan wades into the deep question of whether this war was a war of "necessity" or a war of "choice." He does so in the sixth year of the war, at a time when many have forgotten what was thought and said before its onset. The nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America's grief, taunted its power.

We don't need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.

Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.

Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the "charities" that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.

We should give the "theorists" of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.

There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of "necessity." A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.

"Wars are not self-starting," the noted philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in his seminal book, "Just and Unjust Wars." "They may 'break out,' like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims."

Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush's war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq's disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.

With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.

It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to "sell" the war. Wars can't be waged in stealth, and making the moral case for them is an obligation incumbent on the leaders who launch them. If anything, there were stretches of time, and critical turning points, when the administration abdicated the fight for public opinion.

Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of "reform" in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an "original" war aim, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was, by Lincoln's own admission, a product of circumstances? A war for the Union had become a victory for abolitionism.

America had not been prepared for nation-building in Iraq; we had not known Iraq and Iraqis or understood the depth of Iraq's breakdown. But there was nothing so startling or unusual about the connection George W. Bush made between American security and the "reform" of the Arab condition. As America's pact with the Arab autocrats had hatched a monster, it was logical and prudent to look for a new way.

"When a calf falls, a thousand knives flash," goes an Arabic proverb. The authority of this administration is ebbing away, the war in Iraq is unloved, and even the "loyalists" now see these years of panic and peril as a time of exaggerated fear.

It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?

Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker's admonition. And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq.

Mr. Ajami, a Bradley Prize recipient, teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2006).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1212...gn2008_mostpop

Tully Mars · 06-05-2008, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

One nice thing about finding ("cherry picking) editorial pieces is I can often find people better able to communicate points that I agree with than I can. From yesterdays WSJ editorial page, accept it for what it is or reject it - just know there are many with the view shared here.

Seems like an odd argument to be making considering the wars approval rating is at or lower then Bush's. Which is what? Low 30's, high 20's? When does the number agreeing with this view no longer become "many?"

jorgelito · 06-05-2008, 01:49 PM

Will, I'm not sure leaving Iraq willy nilly will lead to stability. Surely there needs to be a transitional plan in place (exit strategy) instead of just up and leaving. The last time the Brits just up and left all there colonies/occupations, well, we saw the chaos that came out of that.

Whether or not you agree with the war, simply pulling out is not really a good option in my opinion. There needs to be an exit game plan.

Willravel · 06-05-2008, 03:05 PM

It's about removing a cause of instability, not creating stability. That's up to Iraqis.

host · 06-05-2008, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

One nice thing about finding ("cherry picking) editorial pieces is I can often find people better able to communicate points that I agree with than I can. From yesterdays WSJ editorial page, accept it for what it is or reject it - just know there are many with the view shared here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1212...gn2008_mostpop

ace, your editorial's arguments are supported by......???? .....compared to the linked support for every point in my last post.

Can you refute, with facts, anything in my last post?

I responded to what you posted, in your post directly before your most recent one:

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Bush stated that he never said there was an operational relationship. I think he came to the conclusion there was a relationship based on circumstantial evidence. I accept the fact that there may have been occasions when he did not make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence and other times when he did. ......

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Here are the relevant Bush and Cheney quotes, ace....can you single out the one(s) where either official "make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence", or come up with a relevant quote that I might have missed?:

....and you ignored my question...... the list of Bush and Cheney quotes is in the lower portion of my last post....waiting for you. Feel free to cite your own quotes of occasions where either Bush or Cheney, "make it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence", when it came to assertions that "Saddam had relations with al Zarqawi"....

If you believe this, it should be a simple exercise to point out when and where, before September 15, 2006....Bush "make[s] it clear that his view was based on circumstantial evidence", when it came to assertions that "Saddam had relations with al Zarqawi"....

Bush's false statements about this are my prime example of him lying us into war, and keeping us there, all of these years. You claim that it was only "on occasion" that Bush said unqualified things like the last time he said it, (August 21, 2006),and that....

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2460645&postcount=63

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Getting back on track...

Ace: You read up on the PNAC? I'm curious as to your impression.

I don't know what is real, exaggerated, politicized, or made up, regarding the organization from the websites I have visited. It seems the constant is that the organization is or was made up of a group of conservatives with a belief in maintaining and using US military strength. It seems that the philosophy of the people in the organization comes from the Reagan administration and has influenced Bush 41 and Bush 43.

I still don't understand the relevance of the organization. If I want to know what Chaney thinks about our military and how he would like it used in the world, all I have to do is trace his very public track record and public statements on the subject. He has not been deceptive on this topic, nor has he been deceptive about his views regarding executive power. Bush has not been deceptive either. I don't get it....

Show us the occasion, or occasions, where Bush qualified this:

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030206-17.html
President Bush February 6, 2003

...We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.....

In between these two dates, ace...February 6, 2003, and August 21, 2006.... if Bush qualified these assertions as "based on circumstantial evidence", point me to where and what he said.....

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060821.html
August 21, 2006

Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. ....

dc_dux · 06-06-2008, 03:54 AM

Host....you dont get it.

Bush was not lying....he just changed his view because his "wife" said it didnt fell right:

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

Are you married? There have been many times when I have done tons of research, go with my wife to make a decision on something and she says something like "it doesn't feel right", and I change my view, even though the intel and data I had suggested otherwise, her "data" (gut) did not agree. Would that make me a lier?

The only unresolved issue here is who is the wife (Cheney) and who is the hubby (Bush)....or it vice versa?

ratbastid · 06-06-2008, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

The only unresolved issue here is who is the wife (Cheney) and who is the hubby (Bush)....or it vice versa?

I think we all know Bush is the catcher.

aceventura3 · 06-06-2008, 06:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

Seems like an odd argument to be making considering the wars approval rating is at or lower then Bush's. Which is what? Low 30's, high 20's? When does the number agreeing with this view no longer become "many?"

War approval rating? I don't know anyone who ever wanted to be in a war. It is very easy for people to get discouraged, when people are discouraged and want a war over - that does not mean either surrender or not completing what was started. When you talk ratings, I guess it all depends on how the question is asked.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Host....you dont get it.

Bush was not lying....he just changed his view because his "wife" said it didnt fell right:

The only unresolved issue here is who is the wife (Cheney) and who is the hubby (Bush)....or it vice versa?

You can not help it can you? You should seek professional help.

It is not very creative cutting and pasting words out of context to try to make someone seem foolish, it is more a reflection on you than the person you try to mock.

If you don't get the historical context of the Iraqi war relative to other wars and how decisions were made and how strategy and goals changed, you may want to get help with that too. I understand people disagreeing on our preemptive attack, occupation, strategy, goals, use of intel, selling the war, etc., but to pretend all of our current problems with this war is Bush's fault is beyond realistic in my view. But you and others are welcome to your view.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

ace, your editorial's arguments are supported by......???? .....compared to the linked support for every point in my last post.

Can you refute, with facts, anything in my last post?

I am not interested in refuting anything in your last post. I don't even know what your point is, other than you think Bush lied. O.k. let's assume he lied to you, DC, Democratic members of Congress, McClellan, and some members of the media. So what? What are you folks going to do? Let's focus on that for a few days.

Tully Mars · 06-06-2008, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aceventura3

War approval rating? I don't know anyone who ever wanted to be in a war. It is very easy for people to get discouraged, when people are discouraged and want a war over - that does not mean either surrender or not completing what was started. When you talk ratings, I guess it all depends on how the question is asked.

I disagree, I don't think it's been all that "easy for people to get discouraged." I think the approval of the war was artificially high for quite a while. I think the reason it took so long for the public opinion to drop was, for the most part, the vast majority of people have little to no personal investment in this war. Unless you have a family member or close friend serving (or obviously yourself) you're really not asked to make any changes in your life due to the war. The public, in general, has even been shielded from the displeasure of seeing flag draped coffins returning from the wars. We've borrowed a large amount of money to keep the war going so no one being asked to pony up and pay for it. I think it's been easy to not to get discouraged when your total sacrifice and investment is a $3 yellow ribbon magnet for the back of your car.

dc_dux · 06-06-2008, 07:06 AM

Tully...I think its fair to say that some will never accept the fact that Bush lied to the American people, with the complicity of Congress who did not have access to the same intel, and much of the media.

That number has diminished significantly to only the hard core supporters who place ideology over truth.

Most others who initially supported the war have changed their opinion not only as a result of the failure of the Bush occupation strategy that has kept us mired in the midst of an unending sectarian conflict at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, but also because more facts continue to expose the immoral decisionmaking process by the Bush administration that brought us to this point.

Most recently, the phase II Senate Intel Committee report that was released yesterday on how Bush used (and abused) the intel.

While it concurred with the general consensus that the intel on WMDs was faulty, it strongly rebuked Bush on several key points....

Bush/Cheney/Rice repeatedly played the post 9/11 al Queda-Saddam boogyman card and misled (lied to) the American people on that supposed connection despite the lack of intel to support that contention.

Bush withheld dissenting opinions from numerous intel agencies on Saddam's lack of WMD capabilities, and

Bush/Cheney/Rice attempted to sell (mislead, lie to) the American people on how quick and easy an invasion and occupation would be despite sigificant intel to the contrary...they were warned nearly a year earlier by the CIA and DIA that a US invasion would face serious resistance from "the Baathists, the jihadists and Arab nationalists who oppose any U.S. occupation of Iraq" and chose to intentionally and deliberately withhold that intel for fear that it might undermine their case for war.

From the Senate Intel Committee:

Quote:

Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” Rockefeller said. “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11. Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."

http://intelligence.senate.gov/press....cfm?id=298775

A moral leader does not act in that manner.

roachboy · 06-06-2008, 07:33 AM

it is more than passing strange that ideology requires some conservatives to deny that there were problems--to say the least--with the fabrication of a case for invading iraq. there are some basic problems of credibility of the state itself which are at play here, problems which run beyond the particularities of the bush administration--problems that have in the end to do with the status of rules of ethics and law as transcending the persons and interests of those who hold power at any given time. given the role played by flag-waving and affirmations of Faith in "amurica" for conservative worldviews, you'd think that this sort of breach of at least good faith and at worst law (or actions which reveal the absence of law on the basis of which an administration could be brought down or to heel) would be Problems that the right would take seriously.

it seems to me that what this all points to is the strange conflation of the particular political interests of conservatives with the notion of america as a whole--there is no distinction---this seems to me rooted in the space occupied by identity politics in conservative ideology. i don't see anything comparable amongst those who support the democrats, and even less amongst folk who operate to the left of the democrats---it seems to me that amongst this population (which is not a single group) there's alot more willingness to engage in critiques of those who hold power in such situations----nothing at all parallel to the refusal to criticise happened amongst democrats during the clinton period for example.

populist conservatism in the states is a very strange beast.

Willravel · 06-06-2008, 09:12 AM

Getting back...

Ace, there was no threat from Iraq to the US or our allies. While Saddam did offer to pay suicide bombers, that was more an act of a desperate man who was no longer relevant in Middle Eastern geopolitics. He hasn't been a threat to anyone since I was 9 years old. A combination of a spectacular failure in Desert Storm and years of sanctions made Iraq into a minor military player. Yes, he was a shitty leader of the highest degree, but there are real threats out there to the US and invading Iraq has weakened us for them. We invaded a non-threat and are now weaker against real threats.

We got into Iraq based on what was said by Administration officials. Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rummy, etc. all presented the same case: Iraq absolutely has weapons of mass destruction (bio, chem and nukes) and links to al Qaeda, and as such they were a danger before 9/11 and are still a clear and present danger. Instead of presenting a case based solely on the intelligence they were provided (a case that would have casted doubt over the actual danger from Iraq, presenting us with all the information in order to make an informed decision), they only presented a small fraction of the evidence they were provided and actually prevented other intelligence from being released to Congress or the American people. A lie of omission is still a lie, and lying to Congress in order to start a war is an impeachable offense.

Tully Mars · 06-06-2008, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Tully...I think its fair to say that some will never accept the fact that Bush lied to the American people, with the complicity of Congress who did not have access to the same intel, and much of the media.

I agree. I posted this elsewhere and a flame war flashed up rather quickly. But I think there are some that will just never admit, regardless of evidence, that this was a really stupid idea sold to the US tax payer with "cherry picked" information. Now McCullen's joined an ever growing list of insiders to come forward to confirm what many have been saying for a long time. I can't think of the who said it but didn't someone from within the White house talk about "rolling out a new product" and the timing? Didn't he say this months and months ago? I know I heard or read this somewhere, probably could go find it but really it wouldn't matter. Those who want to continue to believe this was the "right" thing to do and or we need to continue for whatever reason will still believe that regardless of what evidence comes out. I can remember watching a press conference with Bush himself where he admitted there were no WMD's. I was a very active member of another board at the time and even after the GOP POTUS clearly stated there were no WMD's many, many neo-cons and cons. wouldn't accept it. You know if the President of your own party tells you something you might want to consider the possibility you've been wrong about this issue all along. Nope! Even after Bush stated it as fact the issue was a hot topic of debate, complete with satellite photo's and unsupported stories of truck convoy's transporting mass amounts of WMD's to Syria in the dark of night. What night? Why didn't our massive satellite surveillance see this massive chemical exodus? Where are these WMD's now? No one knows. But it must have happened because they were there, they must have went somewhere... somehow, right?

I, like many around here, was completely with the President when he said we need to get the guys responsible for 9/11. I remember watching CNN and seeing a poll that showed Bush had something like a 95% approval rating and that 95% of people approved of going after Al Queda. I remember thinking "who the hell are the other 5% and what the hell are they thinking?" I supported, completely the military action in Afghanistan. I took very seriously the security concerns raised regarding Iraq, Saddam and the WMD's. But when Hans Blixer basically came back empty handed I thought "well that's good news, now we can stay focused on Afghanistan." When Bush and Co. continued with the sell job on Iraq I had many serious concerns. Remember LP's? Remember that sound the stereo used make when the needle would slide across the LP's surface?- that's sound that went off in my head.

On almost every point the Bush Administration has been wrong.

WMD's? Nope.

Link to 9-11? Nope.

Greeted as liberators? By some.

By the masses? Not really.

We're not going to need a large force, it'll be over with quickly. How long we been there now?

We'll not only stabilize Iraq, but the region as a whole will follow. Ever heard of an insurgency? How's that Middle East stabilization coming?

It'll basically pay for itself. Anyone know the current amount we've borrowed for this debacle?

Might last 6 days or 6 weeks, but I don't see it going on for 6 months. Hmm, might want to add years to that statement... and a zero.

Gas prices will drop. Fill up your tank lately?

I honestly can't think of anything that's turned out the way they said it would. I guess we knocked out the Iraqi Army quickly with "Shock and Awe." After that? Basically Bush and Co. have denied at all cost any of it's failures and short falls. Wasn't it Rumsfeld who said "it's been a catastrophic success?" What the hell does that mean? And any one who disagreed with the "plan" was basically fired and silenced. What was the General's name who stated were going to need at least 300K troops to do this? And what's he doing now?

Now we're there and we have to stay because if we leave Iraq will spin out of control. Not to mention the "surge" has worked and is working. Wasn't the surge supposed to lead to political gains? So the "surge" has been a success because of what political gains? None that I've heard of, all I keep hearing is there's less violence. Yeah, as long as we stay in large numbers and commit a ton of borrowed cash every day there will likely will be less violence. But do you really think this is the pathway to political gains in a region where the two major groups have been battling each other for centuries?

Sorry I don't see it and I don't trust the current Administration at all. I don't trust what they say about it and I don't trust their ability to manage the situation. A situation they created. The neo-cons got us in this mess and they have no idea how to get us out of it. Now we need to make some really hard choices. Personally I believe we're left with only bad options at this point. Leaving's going to likely be a mess. Staying may well sink our military and economy even farther. I'm willing to listen to anybody with any reasonable thoughts on how we deal with these issues.

So, Mr. McCullen's written a book confirming what many of us said all along. Great where were you with this info. several years ago when it could have made a difference? Sadly it likely wouldn't have mattered. If he'd spoke up then he'd likely be the same place the good General and his 300K troop advice currently are, sitting at home watching CNN and thinking "I fucking tried to tell them."

06-03-2008, 02:41 PM	#87 (permalink)
aceventura3 Junkie Location: Ventura County	Host, The problem is not in the citations, it is more fundamental than that. How is it that you selectively have seemingly blind faith is intel that supports your premise and then can totally ignore intel that may contradict your view? I acknowledge that intel can be correct or it can be incorrect. If a view is formed based on intel and then the view is changed based on intel - how is that a lie? It is not possible for us to come to an agreement, because I don't think we know one way or the other with certainty if there were direct links with Zarqawi and Hussein. There is evidence that suggests that Zarqawi could have had "relations" with Hussein. Your conclusions often don't directly support your premise, for example you point to the fact that Hussein publicly looked at al qaeda as a threat, as if that would be proof there was no contact or "relations". That logic is flawed. That logic suggests that you think Hussein would be open and honest about a relationship. That logic assumes that al qaeda and Hussein could not view the US as a common enemy, a greater threat and reason to collaborate. Also, you are arguing a point that is not material to the editorial. The author of the editorial, if proven wrong - did not present the link as a fact. If you think IBD lacks credibility because of that point, you have a right to that view. On the other hand I have been reading IBD for about 10 years and I have confidence in the information I read in the paper and enjoy the opinions writted on the editorial page. __________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch." "It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion." "If you live among wolves you have to act like one." "A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

06-06-2008, 07:33 AM	#118 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it is more than passing strange that ideology requires some conservatives to deny that there were problems--to say the least--with the fabrication of a case for invading iraq. there are some basic problems of credibility of the state itself which are at play here, problems which run beyond the particularities of the bush administration--problems that have in the end to do with the status of rules of ethics and law as transcending the persons and interests of those who hold power at any given time. given the role played by flag-waving and affirmations of Faith in "amurica" for conservative worldviews, you'd think that this sort of breach of at least good faith and at worst law (or actions which reveal the absence of law on the basis of which an administration could be brought down or to heel) would be Problems that the right would take seriously. it seems to me that what this all points to is the strange conflation of the particular political interests of conservatives with the notion of america as a whole--there is no distinction---this seems to me rooted in the space occupied by identity politics in conservative ideology. i don't see anything comparable amongst those who support the democrats, and even less amongst folk who operate to the left of the democrats---it seems to me that amongst this population (which is not a single group) there's alot more willingness to engage in critiques of those who hold power in such situations----nothing at all parallel to the refusal to criticise happened amongst democrats during the clinton period for example. populist conservatism in the states is a very strange beast. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-04-2008, 08:14 AM	#92 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	So, Bush lied, but America's to blame because it wasn't cynical enough, and should have known he's a fucking liar. It's like saying, "If I punch you in the nose, it's your fault for not moving in time."

06-04-2008, 12:11 PM	#99 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Ace, maybe changing the frame of reference could shed some light on this. Let's say you're just starting out in college and that I'm your school counselor. You come to me in order to get the right classes for your major in order to graduate. I only name the classes I like, and you don't graduate. Was the act of purposefully omitting all of the classes I didn't like a lie?

06-05-2008, 01:49 PM	#110 (permalink)
jorgelito All important elusive independent swing voter... Location: People's Republic of KKKalifornia	Will, I'm not sure leaving Iraq willy nilly will lead to stability. Surely there needs to be a transitional plan in place (exit strategy) instead of just up and leaving. The last time the Brits just up and left all there colonies/occupations, well, we saw the chaos that came out of that. Whether or not you agree with the war, simply pulling out is not really a good option in my opinion. There needs to be an exit game plan.

06-05-2008, 03:05 PM	#111 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	It's about removing a cause of instability, not creating stability. That's up to Iraqis.

06-06-2008, 09:12 AM	#119 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Getting back... Ace, there was no threat from Iraq to the US or our allies. While Saddam did offer to pay suicide bombers, that was more an act of a desperate man who was no longer relevant in Middle Eastern geopolitics. He hasn't been a threat to anyone since I was 9 years old. A combination of a spectacular failure in Desert Storm and years of sanctions made Iraq into a minor military player. Yes, he was a shitty leader of the highest degree, but there are real threats out there to the US and invading Iraq has weakened us for them. We invaded a non-threat and are now weaker against real threats. We got into Iraq based on what was said by Administration officials. Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rummy, etc. all presented the same case: Iraq absolutely has weapons of mass destruction (bio, chem and nukes) and links to al Qaeda, and as such they were a danger before 9/11 and are still a clear and present danger. Instead of presenting a case based solely on the intelligence they were provided (a case that would have casted doubt over the actual danger from Iraq, presenting us with all the information in order to make an informed decision), they only presented a small fraction of the evidence they were provided and actually prevented other intelligence from being released to Congress or the American people. A lie of omission is still a lie, and lying to Congress in order to start a war is an impeachable offense.