The second kind of mistake is radically different from the first. It occurs precisely because we have done our homework, and because we have consulted with experts The author is simply wrong here. Bush does not deserve an "A" for effort on his homework. Bush cheated on his homework. He wasn't the good student who made an unavoidable error, He asked the CIA, the State Department , the Department of Energy, the British, French and Russian intelligence agencies what was up with wmd. . He didn 't get the answer he wanted so he cheated. He didn't like the answer so he made something up. Think of it like this. You do a lab experiment, and the results don't come back the way you want, so you change the data. Once you find that Bush cheated on his homework the rest of the author's simplistic analogy that you can't fault Bush for his effort as a good student is just wrong.
And oh, those aluminum tubes were dual-use items. The fact that they have other possible uses does not mean that they were not used for what we said they were. Treeman. I got a laugh out of this one. It shows how stubbornly one can hold on their beliefs despite the evidence. Are you still claiming the Niger thing, too?
No Worries, you seem to be absolutely sure that the WMD were never there, and that our use of 'faulty' intelligence regarding them constitutes a lie. If this is so, then in all fairness, you must also accuse every single intelligence agency, and every leader, of also "lying" about them. That includes France, Germany, Russia, China, etc. It also includes the UN as a body, since they claimed their belief in the WMD too. My best guess prior to the Iraq War was that Iraq did have WMD. I just tended to believe the UN inspection team's opinion that Iraq was 90-95% disarmed. WRT to fauty intellengence, the careful reader of this bb would know that one of my primary reasons for opposing the war was that the US's Iraq intel had a history of being faulty. In point, the US intel was of NO help to the last round of UN inspections Thus, I am no surprised that much of the Iraq intel that the Bush Admin was touting as justification for war was faulty. I clearly thought the Bush Admin was overstating their case. I suspect that France and Germany thought likewise. After four plus months of exhaustive searching by the US, France and Germany appear to have been correct in their opinion.
Patriotism: Go and happily die for a paltering administration with faulty intelligence which only tends for the killing machines(the tanks, the planes...) and ignore the basic needs of the soldiers as human beings(the extra uniforms, the showers...).
Afghanistan and Iraq are "decoys". I believe the true center on the war on terrorism is Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia. 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Countless "charities" from Saudi Arabia continue to give money to these killers. Yet, with ALL the U.S. Government knows about what the Saudis have been doing, we continue to DO nothing about them. We have been, and continue to sleep with the enemy. Anyone else feel sick to their stomach?
Let's not forget that on Polish national Television Bush claimed that we had found WMD in Iraq. The aluminum tubes could possibly be used for nuke purposes, but it would have been inefficient, way more expensive, and a lot more trouble then just getting what they needed. It would technically be possible, but in reality highly unprobable. The tubes, and the IAEA reports and the cover-ups from the IAEA flap were all lies.
Bush also cut combat pay from $225/month to $150. The family seperation allowance was slashed from $250 to $100. Bush also dropped the plan to pay families of dead soldiers $12,000 instead of $6,000.
Long time lurker, 1st time poster.. Revisiting the Case for War In an effort to quell the controversy over the “16 words” in U.S. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address, the White House declassified and released intelligence documents on July 18, 2003 to prove there was ample evidence that Saddam Hussein had a continuing and expanding nuclear weapons program. Yet those same documents indicate that some senior officials had serious doubts about the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the regime’s links to al Qaeda. A look back at President Bush’s October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he made a detailed case for war against Iraq, reveals that what the president said did not always reflect what U.S. intelligence analysts believed at that time. By Joseph Cirincione and Dipali Mukhopadhyay Revisiting the Case for War This Article directly addresses many of the arguments point by point that have been brought up in this debate...
Welcome, Murdock. At least you didn't lurk as long as I did before joining our discussions. Good luck!
In defense - the Saudi's have been allied with the US for quite a while due to convienence more than anything else -- we like their oil and they like our big market in which to sell oil. Even though there is little real comonality there, this tacit alliance still deserves a greater degree of tolerance than a US - Iran relationship, for instance. In this environment, where there have been a number of disagreements between the U.S. and the ibn al-Saud family, an environment sympathetic towards terrorist thought has flourished. Even so, this environment has not been one born of divirgent ideals, but rather one born of a difference in perception. After the recent bombings in Rhiad, te Saudis have come to realize that many of the more conservitive Wahaabi elements are incompatable with rational government. The Saudis have divorced themselves from their idealistic view and come around to the american eay of thought. In the future, I expect to see a great deal of benefit from this relationship, something which I can't forsee from the countries which are idolically opposed to the US, like Syria and Iran. In other words, problems which cause Saudi Arabia to be a terrorist breeding ground are problems which have a genuine chance to be corrected. Lesser problems in more recalcitrant countries pose a greater long term thread due to their antapathy to the US.
Never let it be said that I'm not one to give someone a "second" chance. Let's hope they (the Saudis) can really work with us and "correct" their internal problems. Iraq and Afghanistan deserve, and rightly so, America's attention BUT the public in general (the media included) need to scrutinize what's going on in Saudi Arabia more closely than ever since thay have what most other enemy regimes have or don't have as much as, the money.
If this is true. . . it is more Insidious than the Lies Rocket River 87 Billion . . . 80 Billion into some one's Pocket!!
