Bush Lied.. err, not so much!

Oh, how prescient your geezer mod is!

In today's WaPo, we see the 'Bush Lied' ship being started to turn. Yes, after all these years, the truth is coming out {and the Titanic eases around slowly}.

See if your lib stomachs can take this.

Why now, you ask?

Well... I have a theory. And I already told you what the theory is. There is no way the Senate wants hearings or a show trial on Dubya, even if they can nail him with mistakes. That Jay Rockefeller and a host of others including Kerry, essentially said the same thing as Dubya about Saddam and WMD. And that Al Qaeda did have an arrangement with Saddam.

Sorry to ruin your days!

heh...

 

About what I expected..

Don dissembles. He never SAW those Rockefeller/Kerry/Clinton speeches. He DOESNT THINK that Rockefeller is backtracking.

Oh... when our beliefs are dashed, what PAIN! That's why Don advises you to research MORE THAN YOU THINK is necessary before you form your opinions and views, kiddies.

That's okay Don.

heh...

 

That article (and the entire website, for that matter) is the sort of nonsense that falls into the category of "if I keep telling myself something, one day it will be true."

The question conservatives should be asking themselves is not "Did Bush lie?" (what kind of a stupid parlor game is that) - the real question is, "Why did he want to go to war in Iraq so badly and so hurriedly?" when there was no immediate threat, when there was no link to 9/11, when it wasn't the last resort, and so on.

The Iraq War was a sell... and Petty, you're a buyer.

 

Tell me this, do people not have reason to be suspicious when key members of the Bush White House were members of a conservative think tank (brownie points for you for being so informed, if you know the one i'm talking about) that has had a collective hard-on for an Iraq invasion since before Bush even took office?

Gee, why were they so eager to jump in there to "liberate"? Why were they so eager to connect 9/11 to Iraq and get everyone's blood boiling? Why were they so quick to take all the intelligence as fact and present it as such in numerous speeches, presentations to congress, the UN, etc.? Why?

I'm not surprised anyone jumps to the conclusion that Bush lied. It's not a logical accusation, it's an emotional one.

Truthfully, in the end, it doesn't matter whether he lied or not. The moral of this story is that intelligence information isn't always factual. If you are going to make a decision that could potentially (read: will absolutely) cost many people their lives, you need to do better than "well, the intelligence we had at the time said that uhh..."

Do you honestly think that Bush shouldn't take the fall for his decision making?

People may be inaccurate in saying that Bush lied, but what else is your average American, who doesn't know why we're in this war, what their brothers and sisters in unfiorm are dying for, or when this war is going to end, supposed to think about all this?

My day isn't ruined. It's not about me, man . . people's lives, families and this country's reputation has been ruined by what we're neck-deep into right now. That's who/what we should be thinking about, not petty political bullshit, but the lives that are at stake because of what this administration has led us into.

 

Petty did not dig this up on some right wing blog. This was the topic on Talk of the Nation (or one of those other NPR shows) on Friday. Not exactly a right wing news source. And if any of you were paying attention at the time it should not have even been news anyway. Rockefeller, Clinton and others all had their own "mushroom cloud" statements. Remember, Senator Clintion's husband bombed Bagdad for four days because he thought Saddam had WMDs.

Mistakes in the war are the administrations fault, but the fact that we are in a war is totally the fault of Congress and not of any supposed lies by Bush. The Constitution clearly states "Congress Shall Declare War". Congress did not do that in this case. Instead, they passed a law letting the President use military force against Iraq if he basically thought it was necessary to protect our country. They were too cowardly to shoulder the burden of declaring or not declaring war so they defied the Constitution and passed it on to Bush.

 

absolutely I think the outcome's all on Bush. I dont for a minute think that the Dems in their pontifications thought for a minute anyone should take them serious.. about 'doing something about Saddam'.

to them, talking about it is 'doing something'.

I'll make a deal with you. If Iraq continues to turn over as it has.. will you give Dubya the credit?

It's a little more complicated than that. How would you answer that for any previous war?
One thing for sure, Our military now knows how to handle modern 'assymetrical' wars, something only hinted at in Viet Nam.
The old way is gone, the old way Generals are gone. Or better be soon.

And for the first time in 60 years, our military is finishing what it began.

I vehemently disagree with that Starbucks Poli Sci consensus. We gained a lot of respect by sticking it through, even while changing course.

Our allies have the feeling they can depend on our word again.

No... you wont hear it right away. and the lefties will continue to howl. But it will come out that we have more guts than people thought.

And BTW, in case you havent noticed, we proved Al Qaeda wrong. They will now have to change course.

 

Cleveland, come on. Although Congress didn't stop the insanity, it surely wasn't their idea - it was the Bush administration's idea. I don't blame Congress - it was a "Vote Yes or else you'll be branded a terrorist" situation, and they were being told that it was going to be a conflict that lastest weeks, possibly months, not a 6 year (and growing) quagmire, among other misinformation. It was Bush's way or the highway, always, Congress was voting for war when all of the rhetoric was "Us vs. Them". Even if you're remotely close on the issue, it was still Premier Bush's job to demonstrate some restraint on going to war - he jumped in as soon as he could, a few UN conversations aside, into a preemptive war.

What was your level of disgust at the time for those Congressmen (and women) who voted against the war in 2002? After all, what were they thinking, even after being bombarded with propaganda such as Rumsfeld's "the post-war troop commitment would be less than the number of troops required to win the war" and, "the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces [to secure Iraq] is far from the mark."

 

It'll have to "turn over" a lot more than it's currently doing for me to believe that the change that will ultimately be accomplished will have been worth the cost, both in lives and in massive amounts of debt.

 

"Lie"
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

Definition #2 appears to fit very nicely when applied to the pre-Iraq war ranting and raving.

Based upon the face of the Washington Post article that Petty posted, the entire "intelligence community" of the US should be taken out and shot.

 

I dont know where you guys get your news, but that CIA / DIA intelligence problem was nothing new. And part of that was due to the decision not to use sources with a shady reputation.

Much of the decision was made on the UN inspectors' problem with Saddam. Regardless what the liar El Baradei SAYS NOW, they were toyed and hindered on every level. Nuch the same as Iran and North Korea have done.

Turns out NOW we know that Saddam actually DID do away with or abandon the WMD's but he also moved some to Syria. The reason he didnt come clean which is all that the Security council needed was that he wanted everyone to think he might still have them.

If you dispute El Baradei's a liar... just watch, the EU is getting sick of his wobbling on Iran. All you have to do to see that is google his name on the news search. You tell me which accounts are the correct ones.

But in the end, CIA got fat and dumb. Remember the Aspirin factory? Or the Chinese Embassy bombing?

 

Members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution. They should not forsake this oath for fear of being branded a terrorist or not being re-elected. That would be cowardice in the first degree. It is their first and foremost duty to uphold the constitution, to debate the issue, investigate the issue, question the President, and decide on war. The Founding Fathers fathers gave the burden of declaring war to Congress in order to have a separation of power; so we would not have tyranny. Our Congress totally failed in regard to this war. Why, because war is unpopular but even more unpopular is a terrorist attack on US soil - and they all feared another one.

If you remember correctly, most of the free world thought Saddam had WMD's. Hillary gave a speech to Code Pink before the war explaining how she was convinced invading Iraq was right because of what she knew from her own experience not because of anything a war-mongering republican President said. The UN had weapons inspectors in and out of Iraq for years due to fear of WMDs. The scariest info I heard about Saddam's threat was not from Bush or Powell or Rice but from a PBS Nova episode that interviewed former Iraqi and Soviet scientists.

This whole thing about Bush lies is scapegoating by a simple media and a simple American public that wants one easy sound-bite source to blame. So we can all talk about it at the water cooler as if we know something rather than face the much more difficult task of trying to understand what is really going on.

There were plenty of democrats and republicans, who gave sound logical arguments (Byrd (D) and Leach (R) and Paul (R) were the ones I liked the best) against passing the resolution which essentially gave the President a blank check to decide if we should invade Iraq. But the fact is too many in congress were afraid to confront the issue so they passed the buck. Shameful.

I was upset when we invaded Iraq. I thought it was a huge mistake. I did not feel outrage at Bush because I thought he was trying to do something to solve a decades old (and inherited) problem and I still believe that. He is one person who had the huge burden of protecting our national security and he made a decision that he thought would best protect that, using undue authority that Congress gave him. My outrage at the time was at Congress for giving the President this authority, and my outrage is still at Congress. The decision to go to war was never meant to be made by one person or administration - that is against everything this country stands for. Frankly, I am shocked that this bothers so few people.

 

It's on my list, although squarely behind items such as the Patriot Act, signing statements, our foreign policy, our inadequate funding of research into alternative fuels, the bald inefficiency of the Department of Homeland security, the castration of our intelligence community, our moving target rationale for the Iraq war, our military strategy in Iraq, our fundamental misunderstanding of the tribal population of Iraq and how our unliateral approach impacts the rest of the Middle East... things like that.

The Patriot Act is a good example of how Bush put Congress in a corner. A titanic piece of legislation that was shoved in their face on a quick timeline, the scope of it demended that it be broken down into smaller parts, if only to be rendered examinable - even its title suggests that "you shouldn't vote against this unless you're with the terrorists."

 

As Mo stated earlier, it's their JOB to serve as a check and balance to the President. Being "put in a corner" is no excuse, it's a condemnation of their ability to perform their duty. That or they thought the Patriot Act was a good piece of legislation, in which case they have piss poor judgement (imo).

I'll stop now before I get started on my Congress rant.

 

Congress I think half screwed up and half were intimidated - it's easy to paint someone as unpatriotic when they're unwilling to vote for something called the "Patriot Act," after all.

 

God, I swore I wouldn't post on politics anymore but this is too much, you lefties are spending way too much time 'in the media'. Meaning, getting sold a new history of what led up to the war by these sad sacs who knew exactly what voting to provide Bush with the ability to go to war meant.

Petty and Mo are right on with their analysis. You all need to get over Florida and start rooting for your country instead of blaming your hangnails on Bush. Jeez.

 

Ridge-Rider:
They wont listen to Feith.. whose book on it, WaPo and NYT REFUSE TO REVIEW, preferring to cherrypick notes on warts from it.. rather listen to a little knob, whose feelings were hurt when it was pointed out how inadequate he was in the job. By people who pretend they never watched West Wing, rather pretending that core policy meeting are attended by the Press Secretary!

I WILL NOT stop pointing out that the Dems SAID all the same thing.

And, as far as Bush v Gore I will not stop pointing out the ABSURDITIES:

That Gore might have actually had a Pyrrhic claim to an election in which he was beaten in his home state.
Think about that! Suppose the opposite result had happened; Bush lost, and Rush and all the Conservatives kept harping on how the election was stolen even though Bush had lost in Texas.

That the vote was never properly investigated by the press. BECAUSE IT WAS; by the Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and -I think- the NYT.
They came up with nothing... and because they have editorial policies -leaning- toward the Dems.. made small potatos of it.

And why are you dropping out?
Suck it up and keep me company... I dont give a fuck if I'm the last man standing on here who uses his brain rather than repeat the continuous lies of the political hyenas but I sure could use a little more help.

 

Don't forget. The Wall Street Journal was part of the team that investigated the voting in Florida after the election. They did publish their results because that paper has the moxy and the reputation to print and have opinions that are against the tide of their brothers and sisters in the print media.

 

DAMN that Republican-controlled Congress!