| Author | Message | ||
     Mrt Citizen Username: Mrt Post Number: 142 Registered: 3-2003 |
Tjohn, you are an incredible idiot to make statements like, “the only possible justification for war against Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United States.” I agree it is best to fight our own fight, but sometimes you have to stick up for the oppressed. So, I’m curious then to ask, what are your thoughts regarding Israel? Monrovia? And Korea? And if we are we all to believe that only threats that offer a clear and present danger, say like the 93 WTC bombing, why did our leaders fail to react then? Not stopping there you continue with, “All of this stuff about the nastiness of Saddam is irrelevant.” Oh it is, is it? How dare you consider the tens of thousands upon thousands of people that died as a direct result of Saddam being in power, as “irrelevant”. Anyone who views the results of suffering brought about by Saddam’s reign as “irrelevant” is pretty much a “jerk-off” in my book. Go ahead and tell us how the world would be a better place had we not gone into Iraq? Please explain. | ||
| JJC Citizen Username: Mercury Post Number: 67 Registered: 12-2002 |
I think the case that we (US Govt) were concerned about the atrocities commited by Hussein is as weak as the case made for imminent danger and WMD. There simply is no case. We are in Irag because of the strategic importance and the obvious resources in that region. WMD and human rights are a flimsy cover - it there were any strength behind either of those cases, there would have been international support. As it was we 'bought' whatever support we could get. No matter how badly you want to believe that we did this for the right reasons, we did not. There might be some pleasant side-effects but it is really to early to say how all of this will turn out. On the matter of Bush now blaming the CIA for incorrect information - it doesn't wash. Bush has tightly and successfully managed every bit of the selling of this war effort - they all knew what they were doing and in fact muddied the waters in the UK and Australia with their 'intelligence'. And - after trying to outrun this problem, Bush did the predictable thing - circled the wagons (including the CIA) and put the blame anywhere but at the White House. | ||
| Dave Ross Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 4839 Registered: 5-2001  |
(Mrt docked for 1 week for personal attack.) carry on... | ||
| Tommy Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 223 Registered: 1-2003  |
I think the responsible thing for Bush to do would have been to fire Tenet. And by the way, the boss is responsible for what his underlings do. In this case, Bush is Tenet's boss. Not firing Tenet is, in essence, a pat on the head. Tom Reingold | ||
| tjohn Citizen Username: Tjohn Post Number: 1582 Registered: 12-2001  |
Tenet might have been the fall guy to cover up for a Bush Administration misuse of intelligence. Far stranger things have happened in our government. I notice that Bush has stated that he has confidence in Tenet. That's amazing after such a fundamental oversight. | ||
| FOUR STAR STRAW Citizen Username: Strawberry Post Number: 916 Registered: 10-2001 |
God only knows what an Islamic terror group might think today if the American President announced to the world he has "no" confidence in the head of the CIA. If Tenet is replaced, it will be done efficiently and without fanfare. Also, now may not be the time to fire intelligence officials. We are fighting a global war on terror after all, like it or not. The CIA has done a great deal to prevent additional attacks over the last two years. Remember the Buffalo terror cell?? Those guys have been knocked out of business. Remember?? I can end this post now, but again I will take a shot at the Democrats. That's because this whole thing comes down to common sense vs. the liberals. It's very important we continue what we've started, with the people who can best accomplish what it is we're trying to do..eliminate further attacks on America. If you don't understand this yet, you're hoplessly and helplessly lost. "We have the money, we have the power, we have the population, and most importantly if we want, we can take you down as well." -Strawberry/ Star Ledger, Sunday June 22, 2003 | ||
| tjohn Citizen Username: Tjohn Post Number: 1584 Registered: 12-2001 |
Dearest Strawberry, Having a brain, I am capable of distinguishing between the quiet work down by the CIA and FBI to prevent terrorist attacks and the efforts of the Bush Administration to justify war with Iraq. Tenet's mea culpa speaks volumes about politics as usual in Washington, but says nothing about the competence of the CIA. I imagine that all but the Bush faithful suspect that Tenet was selected to take the fall so that the Bush Administration could wriggle out from under this latest allegation of misuse of intelligence information. Finally, your last paragraph contains the genesis of many historical follies. You wrote, "It's very important we continue what we've started...." In business, this is called throwing good money after bad. We should continue a national policy as long as it is in the best long-term interests of the United States. Too often, countries, ours included, have pursued failed policies to the point of disaster for reasons of national pride and domestic politics. With Iraq, it is truly the case that we have seized a wolf by the ears and we must now be successful in stabilizing the country and then getting out. | ||
| Dave Ross Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 4840 Registered: 5-2001 |
Clearly it's going to get worse for the Bush administration. I can't see how the administration avoids an inquiry at this point and I'm guessing that Tenet may have to step down, even though everything he did was probably right.
full story from Washington Post. | ||
| Tommy Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 226 Registered: 1-2003 |
Bush should be saying that it is not OK that he was fed a very rotten piece of so-called intelligence. If it were true that it was Tenet's mistake, Bush should be saying loudly and clearly that it is not OK. Instead, he is saying, "there there, never mind." That, to me, is not good leadership. I also feel that there is a job to be finished. I'm not confident that it will be, however. I hope we don't handle Iraq the way we handled Afghanistan. Remember that country? Tom Reingold | ||
| tjohn Citizen Username: Tjohn Post Number: 1586 Registered: 12-2001 |
Afghanistan is better off than under the Taliban. There is still much to be done and we aren't doing it, but there is still a window of oppurtunity. | ||
| Paul Surovell Citizen Username: Paulsurovell Post Number: 173 Registered: 2-2003 |
It's good that the media is giving grudging attention to ONE of the Bush administration's Big Lies that terrorized the Congress and the public into supporting the war-invasion-occupation whose primary purpose is the privatization and takeover of the Iraqi oil industry by Bush oil company loyalists. But the media is -- as it has from the beginning -- ignoring many other Bush administration Big Lies that brought us into war. In many ways, the real issue and the real story is the media's silence and/or complicity in the propogation of these Big Lies. Here are 19 of the other lies, compiled by Glen Rangwala of Cambridge, UK. Glen is the professor who exposed the Blair dossier on Iraq as a plagiarized version of a doctoral dissertation that dealt with Iraq in 1990-91. Glen also uncovered the testimony of the late Iraqi Gen. Hussein Kamal, who revealed that Iraq had destroyed all of its WMDs by the mid-'90s. A story censored by the major US media, except for Newsweek's Periscope column. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Published on Sunday, July 13, 2003 by the lndependent/UK 20 LIES ABOUT THE WAR Falsehoods Ranging from Exaggeration to Plain Untruth Were Used to Make the Case for War. More Lies are Being Used in the Aftermath by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker 1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none. 2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defense Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added. Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces. 3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review". 4. Iraq was trying to import aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges. 5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago. 6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously. 7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it. 8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 liters of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons program" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not." 9. Previous weapons inspections had failed Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons program" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons program more than a month before the defection. 10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming." 11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes. 12. The "dodgy dossier" Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organizations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created. 13. War would be easy Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained. 14. Umm Qasr The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's Defense staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely. 15. Basra rebellion Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth. 16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed. 17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorized to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong. "It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen." 18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD "I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin. 19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people". Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. 20. WMD were found After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain. © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd | ||
| duncanrogers Citizen Username: Duncanrogers Post Number: 588 Registered: 12-2001  |
Paul have you not been told a number of times to link the article? Please in the future LINK THE ARTICLE | ||
| Paul Surovell Citizen Username: Paulsurovell Post Number: 174 Registered: 2-2003 |
Duncan, Sorry, here's the link: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008 Also, I should have been more accurate in my introduction to the article. Of the lies cited in the article only 11 -- not all 20 -- were actually used BEFORE the war to terrorize the US congress and public, one of which was the alleged purchase of uranium. The other 9 lies were promulgated AFTER the invasion started, or were aimed primarily at the British parliament and public. | ||
| Mary Gallagher Citizen Username: Mary_g Post Number: 38 Registered: 2-2003 |
Insite Here's a link to one of the many web sites debunking Ann Coulter's fabrications. http://www.whatliberalmedia.com/apndx_1.htm Eric Alterman sums it up nicely: "The sheer weight of [Coulter's errors], coupled with their audacity, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a journalistic culture that allows her near a microphone, much less a printing press." If you fall for her swill, it's no wonder you are also taken in by the lies of the Bush administration and the failed policies of the Republican party. And what are these far left policies that have you so dismayed about your fellow posters. That we think presidents should not send soldiers to their deaths and inflict death and destruction upon the citizens of other countries on the basis of falsehoods and cooked intelligence? That they should be accountable when they do so? Radical stuff! I am sorry for you if you think differently because it means you have awfully low standards for our leaders --but then low standards are what George Bush is all about. And Bush's excuse that Tenet cleared his speech is so lame. What a copout! How could he use that bit of info to make a case for war without inquiring into the basis for it, which should have led to knowledge of its falsity. At the very least Bush didn't do his homeowrk on a crucial bit of policy. The other possible explanations are, of course, far more damning. The American people -- including the families of those killed in Iraq and those still at risk over there --deserve much better. I think it possible that Bush and Tenet are engaging in a reciprocal CYA on this in conjunction with their mutual failures re 9/11. | ||
| strawberry Citizen Username: Strawberry Post Number: 919 Registered: 10-2001 |
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| Dave Ross Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 4842 Registered: 5-2001 |
Iraq won't matter in the next campaign...
http://www.johnedwards.com/page.asp?id=125 | ||
| Mary Gallagher Citizen Username: Mary_g Post Number: 39 Registered: 2-2003 |
strawberry, Like your boy Bush, you seem to be living in an altered or perhaps doctored reality. Your resort to that sort of response shows who it is that has no logical "arguement." Wasn't it a Bush lackey -- potatoe-head Dan Quayle-- who was famous for extraneous "e's". Dave, That sure is a nice Edwards quote and tempts me to take another look at his candidacy. | ||
| Mary Gallagher Citizen Username: Mary_g Post Number: 40 Registered: 2-2003 |
An interesting disclosure reported in Saturday's LA Times: As far back as October, Tenet had a reference to the purchase of uranium removed from a Bush speech. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-usiraq13jul13,1,3988 840.story?coll=la-home-headlines The question has to be why then did Bush refer to the discredited report three months later in his state of the union speech. I can not imagine an answer that does not reflect poorly on Bush's integrity or competence or both. | ||
| zoe Citizen Username: Zoe Post Number: 257 Registered: 7-2002 |
The truth sometimes hurts, but face reality. All of you MOL poster's seeking to find something that will stick to the wall and discredit or harm Bush's chances for re-election. The truth is, regardless of what you all think, Bush will once again be the POTUS and be easily re-elected in 2004. You may have yor chance in 2008, but that is still a long way off. | ||
| Tommy Reingold Citizen Username: Noglider Post Number: 230 Registered: 1-2003 |
Zoe, we realize you might be right. Not much (if anything) sticks to this guy. Funny, they called Clinton Slick Willy, but Bush is clearly slicker. I concede that this may not injure him. But what's the harm in discussing bad stuff he's done that ought to count on his record? Tom Reingold |
