Originally Posted By ElKay In Bush's two most recent speeches he scolds his opponents for trying to rewrite history as to how we stumbled into this Iraq War. Read this analysis: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101832.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111101832.html</a> >>The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements. But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions. National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen." But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."<< Congress was only given the evidence the Admin wanted them to see. That's hardly the same as getting the unedited Nat'l. Intel. Estimate or the Presidental Daily Briefings. It's almost like buying Enron stock from Ken Lay. He didn't tell Wall St. all of the schemes his people were perpetuating in order to inflate the appearence of their operations. I'm sure if a savy analysist took the time to read everything on Enron the inconsistancies would have been noticed. The Dems went in wanting to believe, assuming that the declassified NIE was an accurate representation of what was actually known. To do otherwise, the Dems would have been labeled as unpatriotic (well, I guess Bush finally got around to that as well). >>Bush, in his speech Friday, said that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." But in trying to set the record straight, he asserted: "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support." The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power. The resolution voiced support for diplomatic efforts to enforce "all relevant Security Council resolutions," and for using the armed forces to enforce the resolutions and defend "against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."<< The Dems as well as the rest of the country were going along with the President's policy. The Dems did in fact forced Bush to go to the Security Council and get them to pressure Iraq to disarm, in exchange for voting for their own "theoretical authorization for war". The Admin's most "pursuasive" argument for war was presented by Colin Powell in his discredited (by Powell himself) speech before the Security Council in Feb. of '03. This speech, though edited by Powell because he had serious qualms of much of what the Admin wanted him to say, has since been almost totally proved to have been wrong on all accounts. Mobile WMD labs, aluminum tubes for nuke refinery, terror camps in UN/US controlled Kurdish areas and WMD bunkers all have been shown to have been fabricated from unrealible sources that feed a predisposed inclination to attack within the Admin. In that old saying about types of sinning. Sinning by commission or ommission. This Admin. is guilty of sinning (lying) through ommission, if not commission as well.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy More great ideas on how to win the war on terror Elkay?? Didn't think so. YOu might want to back away from the scandals, especially scandals with no merrit, and get some kind of gameplan other than bash Bush. The soldiers would appreciate it.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Great Bush-like response there, Beau. Ignore the issues, and bring up the war on terror. That's why Bush is losing support across the board.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Congress was only given the evidence the Admin wanted them to see. That's hardly the same as getting the unedited Nat'l. Intel. Estimate or the Presidental Daily Briefings.> That's true of Congress as a whole, but not of members of the intelligence committees. Nor is it true of members of the last administration, who saw all the intelligence and came to the same conclusions. <The October 2002 joint resolution authorized the use of force in Iraq, but it did not directly mention the removal of Hussein from power.> No, that joint resolution passed in 1998.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>Nor is it true of members of the last administration, who saw all the intelligence and came to the same conclusions.<< They didn't come to the conclusion that Iraq needed to be invaded, though. Especially unilaterally.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <They didn't come to the conclusion that Iraq needed to be invaded, though.> They came to the conclusion that "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq." <Especially unilaterally.> It wasn't unilateral.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh And Britain, and Italy, and Australia, and Spain (at least to start), and most Eastern European countries, and more than a dozen more.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Actually thre were over 30 countires in the coalition... but that doesn't fit into the liberal re write of history.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer Regardless of the token involvement of other countries (98% of the troops were US or UK), the decision was unilateral. The US said, "We're going to push Iraq. Who's with us?" A multilateral decision would have been, "We think that Iraq is a threat and this is our evidence. What are we going to do about it?"
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <A multilateral decision would have been, "We think that Iraq is a threat and this is our evidence. What are we going to do about it?"> Yeah, we tried that. The UN passed a bunch of resolutions waited over a decade and then France and Germany said they'd veto doing anything worse. Evidently because they lose some kickbacks from the oil-for-food program.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Evidently because they lose some kickbacks from the oil-for-food program<< I don't often agree with you Douglas, but the oil for food program, I believe, played a HUGE role in this whole mess by providing Saddam with a steady income and undermined the whole concept of economic sanctions. And it sure isn't getting talked about very much. I wish the White House would underscore that point, and it's something Democrats AND Republicans ought to be livid about. I'm not hearing too much outrage about it, which is just strange. I also haven't heard of anyone in the UN being held accountable for the lack of oversight on this program. It's disgusting.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "That's why Bush is losing support across the board." Yah, but apparently he still has more support than the liberals... Sorry, but just a personal pet peeve, when your strongest piece of your platform is that you are NOT the other candidate, how can you expect to win? With a campaign as negative as it was, it interestingly enough turned off many liberals, and let Bush win. Apparently, though, it isn't really the war that we are arguing about here, so it really doesn't matter. It is just an argument about how much you like the President.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh Here's party chairman Howard Dean, talking with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" Sunday: Russert: What is the Democratic position on Iraq? Should we withdraw troops now? What do the Democrats stand for? Dean: Tim, first of all, we don't control the House, the Senate or the White House. We have plenty of time to show Americans what our agenda is and we will long before the '06 elections. Russert: But there's no Democratic plan on Social Security. There's no Democratic plan on the deficit problem. There's no specifics. They say, "Well, we want a strong Social Security. We want to reduce the deficit. We want health care for everyone," but there's no plan how to pay for it. Dean: Right now it's not our job to give out specifics.
Originally Posted By DlandDug Bush and company had been in Washington two years when the build up to the Iraqi war began, Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had been on the Hill for literally decades. To suggest that the Bush White House was able to filter everything they knew about Saddam retroactively is absurd on its face. If these Senators who now are claiming that the intelligence was manipulated had had an ounce of their own intelligence at the time they should have pointed it out. But the fact is that Bush and Company were acting in good faith on the same conventional wisdom as everyone else. (P.S. I still wait, in vain, for the mountain of contemporaneous dissenting opinions I was assured some time ago would be forthcoming.)
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>The UN passed a bunch of resolutions waited over a decade and then France and Germany said they'd veto doing anything worse.<< And France and Germany would have been right to do so, since Saddam Hussein did not have an active WMD program and he did open up to inspectors again when he saw the UN was getting serious. They might have done us a favor, and there would be 2070 families who'd get to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy <<And France and Germany would have been right to do so, since Saddam Hussein did not have an active WMD program and he did open up to inspectors again when he saw the UN was getting serious>> France and Germany were getting paid of by Saddam and caused this war by letting Saddam think they would stop an invasion. Saddam also broke 17 UN resolutions and banned weapons inspectors from going where they wanted in Iraq. How many resolutions were we supposed to let him break before someone did something? 30, 60, 200?? <<They might have done us a favor, and there would be 2070 families who'd get to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones.>> Again, this is a comment that digs at the military and shows total disregard for what they are doing. Since the dems seem to want to cut and run and set a timetable, they have no problem letting these soldiers die in vain by not letting them complete the mission. This is something you will hear the military say all the time also, since I am on this topic a lot the last few days.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>How many resolutions were we supposed to let him break before someone did something? 30, 60, 200??<< We did do something. We made him blink, and the weapons inspectors had unprecedented access to Iraq before the war. But we had to tell them to stop looking for weapons because we were about to invade. If the weapons inspectors had done their job, they would have found the same thing that our troops found.
Originally Posted By cmpaley Well, when you've been looking to go to war with a country since before you took power, no petty little thing like weapons inspections will stop you.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Dean: Right now it's not our job to give out specifics.<< That's a cop-out answer. But sadly, for all of us, it's pretty much the same answer we get from the current administration. Throw 'em all out next election, I say.
