Oops. Sorry if I sound and rail like a Tea Party member. At least, I'm railing for the right reason. Avoidable 3,500 DEAD compatriots should be enough reason for an American to rail against their president. Sadly, some prefer to rail against Tax Break and some against Abuse of Power. To tie it back loosely to the topic, all I'm saying is enough of the double standard. Impeach for the right reason.
If your standard is that lying to "the entire world" is worse than lying to Congress, then you can't pretend that Bush lying about the true purpose of the authorization to use military force was the Bush administration's worst lie about Iraq. If we're considering lies told to the public, then the lies about Saddam's WMD and connections to Al Qaeda were much bigger (and had much worse consequences) than any lies that anyone has accused the Obama administration of telling.
I earlier said I applaud US leadership in the 2 world wars. I cannot be against something that I applaud. :grin: I earlier said Iraqis are not terrorists of US citizens. Your previous president invaded an independent country. Assuming it's government is turning against it's own people, what should the US president do? For one, he can spare 3,500 Americans simply by being sane. I don't think you need a clue for this. But clueless people, they continue to rail with their double standard.
Believe me that I fully believe that the Senate deserves blame for the authorization for Iraq as well. Though the argument was that the military option had to be on the table to add weight to the negotiations to get Saddam to cooperate with weapons inspections etc. So yes they knew it was on the table. To me it's worse to lie in order to get approval for a military action so that you can start a war in another nation which wasn't really a threat to the U.S. That doesn't make lying about the reason why U.S. personnel died an okay thing, because it isn't.
That may in fact, be wrong. That is not illegal. And I have no idea why pahiyas is bringing up the casualties from the Iraq War - are you going to claim that the war was legal, up until a certain amount of American soldiers died, then it became illegal? If not, why even mention it aside from emotional pandering? That aside, tall, let me just ask a question. What is...the point of this stupid thing, the endgame? Because to me there is utterly no purpose besides silly political games. The IRS thing, now there is purpose, a reason to investigate, but this? This is the epitome of the rape of the lock.
There is a point. It is important to know whether the Secretary of State was covering up that there was a terror attack against the US by telling a lie about a spontaneous uprising over a video.
What? I didn't bring up any legality at all. I brought up something immoral and wrong. There was also nothing illegal about what happened regarding the administration and Benghazi, so I was merely talking about two things that might both immoral on the part of the U.S. govt.
I still think there is a big difference between convincing the Senate to authorize force based on faulty intel and telling the world a story on how an attack happened that you know to be false. Also, it isn't like the Senate authorized force and we went in the next day. We did not go in until Saddam Hussein continued to block UN weapons inspectors from accessing their weapons stockpile.
Honestly, all i'm really learning from all of this Benghazi mess is that there was confusion about what exactly happened -- not a sinister coverup.
Are yo telling us that you believe that they didn't know what their own intel said? My understanding is that the intel showed that there was a possible terrorist attack in Benghazi. A significant enough threat that the people on the ground asked for additional security. It appears that they knew it was not due to a video.
I think that's not accurate. In the end Saddam did agree to allow UN inspectors full access to inspect everything they asked to see. Bush attacked anyway and didn't let UN inspectors go back in.
Not exactly very true. I was just trying to question/highlight the different reactions by Mr. Tallanvor and his group to certain action of 2 presidents. To sum up: 1. "Sent" IRS men. Tax break issue = Railing for Impeachment 2. Sent 3,500 Americans to death = Not a whimper. Voted back to office. Whether legal or illegal, acted jointly with congress or approved by congress, fact of the matter is the previous president could have just simply avoided that course of action. There is a long list of credible opposition to that action. I think you have an idea why they choose to proceed. Nevertheless, you are probably right. Though not intentional, I maybe coming across like I'm pandering to emotion. How else can their different reactions be presented though? Honestly, I get more riled up with loss of human lives than tax break. As you people say: different folks, different strokes.
He agreed to full access and then hid thousands of weapon program documents in private homes and failed to account for several hundred warheads. The British and the US believed there was a lack of cooperation. After all, there were a lot of things that were conveniently left off the report. It isn't like the US did this alone. Remember, there was a coalition.
I don't know. There were two stages. The first was when the inspectors actually went back to Iraq. Initially they felt there was not total cooperation. Then Saddam agreed to allow them back and have free access. The U.S. didn't follow up on this and instead decided to invade.
Comparing Iraq with be Bengazi? Come on ref, they're not even remotely comparable. The former was the result of bad intelligence and willfull myopia by the executive branch to justify military action while the latter was the result of the confusion immediately following an attack on our embassy. The refusal of the Bush administration to actually check their intelligence (and the results) was far far worse. You're just kidding yourself if you believe otherwise.
If you had bothered to actually read the thread, you would see that it was not me that started making comparisons. Since you obviously haven't read the thread, just figured I'd educate you on the contents. Since I am providing you with some education, I'll continue doing so... 1. It was not the executive branch alone that sent troops to Iraq. The Senate is charged with authorizing military action. They did so. It is the responsibility of the Senate to hold hearings and consider all available intel. The only two explanations are that they did and authorized it or they abdicated their responsibility and willy nilly authorized military action. 2. In regards to Benghazi, there appears to be intel that existed ahead of time that an attack was planned. If that is true, the Secretary of State willingly lied to the world at large about a video being the cause. Maybe you don't have a problem with that, but most people do. The investigation should be tailored to finding out who knew what and when. When the inconsistency was revealed, the Secretary of State responded by angrily asking why it matters.
There is NO evidence regarding #2 that the Secretary of State lied. NONE. Every non-Faux news report I've read states that the CIA changed the talking points that Rice gave and that those changes were considered accurate at the time. In a matter of days, the intel changed and the talking points changed accordingly. But you and your GOP ilk are more interested in playing gotcha with the President than actually figuring out what went wrong (i.e. why the security was not increased prior to the attack, why the military was unwilling to send in assistance when news of the attack reached htem). Trying to make this the equivalent of lying to Congress and the American people to start a war is way, way off base, and no, I don't care if you started this line of reasoning or not. You've couched your extreme conservatism with a great deal less hyperbole than the other posters here, but that doesn't make your contentions any less nonsensical. Your spin of the lies that the Bush Administration presented in order to justify a war that resulted in thousands of deaths is particularly ridiculous.
Susan Rice went on the Sunday morning talk shows FIVE DAYS after the event to talk about this "video" that caused it. We all know this was false now. Rice works DIRECTLY FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE...HILLARY CLINTON. But according to some very relevant and knowledgeable people IN CLINTON'S OWN STATE DEPARTMENT, they knew this to be a complete falsehood. Among them were the following: Gregory N. Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya and #2 in charge behind the ambassador at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for Operations in the agency’s Counterterrorism Bureau. Both of these folks worked DIRECTLY for the State department and Ms. Clinton. And they BOTH knew the video claim was complete nonsense. Which means one of 2 things.... 1. Either Clinton knew but was lying for some reason (to cover up incompetence in the face of an upcoming election?) or... 2. Clinton was/is too incompetent to even speak with the relevant officials in her own Department of State before sending out the UN Ambassador to claim a falsehood. Lying or incompetence. Which is it? I suggest maybe both.
You should probably relax. Nobody on this board would label me as an "extreme conservative." I have stated on this board that the investigation should focus on who knew what and when. If the Secretary of State, or anybody in her command had reason to know ahead of time, they should be held accountable. As for the Iraq war, you and your extreme delusional ilk like to ignore the fact that the Senate had a lot of debate about the intel and the facts and then voted to authorize military action. Yet you seem to want to give the Senate a pass. Shocking.
