Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>My source points to the tangible evidence that supports his position.<< While not pointing to the tangible evidence that doesn't support his position.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<Sorry, a rah-rah article from the National Review is not going to cut it.>> <Of course. You only believe foundationless opinion from left wing sources.> Cheap shot. I usually post from mainstream sources, actually. I definitely post from left-wing sources less often than you do from right-wing. Nor do I believe foundationless opinion from any source. I read far-left sites sometimes if someone sends me a link in an email or something, and find them often as wacko as newsmax or the equivalent right-wing sites. <<You've got everyone from the usually hawkish marine Murtha to the former under sec'y of defense under Reagan pointing out that this thing can not be won militarily.>> <And somehow their opinion is worth more than the many military experts that say we're winning, and can point to the tangible evidence that supports it?> They're hardly alone in their opinion. And it's worth noting that current military men and women pretty much HAVE to say we're "winning" - at least for public consumption.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Applause is right! During a war you want guys like Cheney in charge, taking care of business. NOT, a bunch of terrorist appeasing, cut and run, America is to blame liberals. The voters made this VERY clear last election. The anti war crowd had their butt kicked at the polls.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <They're hardly alone in their opinion.> They are also not the majority.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Douglas - last night you posted ... >> Please point out one document that the administration had that undermined the argument for war that was not shared with the congress. << Let's hear what bob graham - "chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" has to say about that. What I Knew Before the Invasion Washington Post By Bob Graham Sunday, November 20, 2005 In the past week President Bush has twice attacked Democrats for being hypocrites on the Iraq war. "[M]ore than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," he said. The president's attacks are outrageous. Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war. Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud. The president has undermined trust. No longer will the members of Congress be entitled to accept his veracity. Caveat emptor has become the word. Every member of Congress is on his or her own to determine the truth. As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress. I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence. In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda. In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems. At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE. Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE. There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked. Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary. The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq. From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth. On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.
Originally Posted By ElKay "During a war you want guys like Cheney in charge, taking care of business." Oh yeah burn the feet of that suspected terrorist with a copy of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. That'll show them they don't know Dick. Dick Cheney, vice president FOR torture--Stansfield Turner, former CIA director.
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Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Douglas - last night you posted ...> Yes, and I'm still waiting. I'm not sure why you expect me to believe Bob Graham when his Democrat Senate collegues apparently didn't.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy 2004 Election--USA Today Bush 51% Kerry 48% When the ENTIRE media ( well 90% ) was against Bush, forged documents hit the news 55 days before the election, it's a miracle Bush didn't lose by 20 million votes. The left sure makes a lot of noise, but people with no plan in the end lose and are shunned. It's going to happen in 06 and in 08 also.
Originally Posted By gadzuux >> I'm not sure why you expect me to believe Bob Graham << There's no explaining why you believe anything. But the GOP is running around continuously stating that congress had all the same intelligence available to them that bush had. Clearly that's an out-and-out LIE, and they know it. I post a statement from the chairman of the senate intelligence committee to validate the claim, and you dismiss him as an unreliable source.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <But the GOP is running around continuously stating that congress had all the same intelligence available to them that bush had.> Please show me one intelligence document that casts doubts on Iraq's WMD capacity that the President had that Sen Graham didn't have. <I post a statement from the chairman of the senate intelligence committee to validate the claim, and you dismiss him as an unreliable source.> Apparently, so did the rest of his party, since the majority of them voted for the war.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Unfortunately I do not have access to secret intelligence reports that only the president receives. And senator graham's comments clearly indicate that, as chairman of the senate intelligence committee, he became privy to facts that were never released to the the rest of congress. But then, you already knew that.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<You've got everyone from the usually hawkish marine Murtha to the former under sec'y of defense under Reagan pointing out that this thing can not be won militarily. They're hardly alone in their opinion. And it's worth noting that current military men and women pretty much HAVE to say we're "winning" - at least for public consumption.>> <They are also not the majority.> Given the constraints placed on people currently in the armed forces to air their views publicly, we can't possibly know what the "majority" thinks.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Unfortunately I do not have access to secret intelligence reports that only the president receives.> And yet you're certain that he got reports which conflicted with the the overwhelming opinion of every intelligence agency in the world. <And senator graham's comments clearly indicate that, as chairman of the senate intelligence committee, he became privy to facts that were never released to the the rest of congress.> But was so lowly regarded by his colleagues that he couldn't convince them to vote against the Iraqi resolution based on his assertions. Jay Rockefeller and John Edwards were also on the intelligence committee, saw the same intelligence that Senator Graham did, and voted for the resolution. Why do you suppose that is?
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Given the constraints placed on people currently in the armed forces to air their views publicly, we can't possibly know what the "majority" thinks.> There are military experts who aren't in the military, and therefore are constrained at all in what they can report. They can also analyze what the troops are actually doing on the ground, and point out our successes.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I've read just as many military experts saying our current policies are misguided as I have saying they're going well. Considering these policies are sired by the same people who sent in too few troops to begin with and assured us we'd be greeted with flowers, this doesn't surprise me.
Originally Posted By crapshoot <<Considering these policies are sired by the same people who sent in too few troops to begin with and assured us we'd be greeted with flowers, this doesn't surprise me.>> Actually, both sides of the aisle agreed that the combat opps against Hussein's Army went like clockwork. But then neither side of that same aisle predicted or calculated the overwhelming threat of the insurgency. Would more troops have helped in reducing the threat? It's kind of doubtful since weeding them out of a large crowd is even hard for the Iraqi citizens to do. Not every square meter of the country can be watched for bombs being planted, no matter the size of the force in place. They are a low tech enemy force who has no radar, has minimal survellience capabilities and can go undetected while conducting their raids. The only method of truly combating such an enemy is to find and eliminate their sources of funding. Only a small percentage of our military was ever trained in this type of urban warfare, if even we can call it that. But they learned very quickly and adapt to each new scenario the enemy throws at us.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Lets say Bush had this intelligence report that only HE saw. Lets say he hid the info that if seen by the patriotic democrats would have caused them to all vote against the war. It's already hillarious...but.. I suppose the British and the other 30 countires that went to war with us were also misled by Bush and his secret papers? Tony Blair and Howard from Austrailia are also big suckers duped by the " idiot " from Crawford Texas? Gadzuux, get real. I expect this from Elkay, but come on. Tinfoil alert Tinfoil alert Tinfoil alert Black helicopters overhead.
