Iraq: WMDs, Imminent Threat, 9-11, Nukes, etc. Simply Put: We Were Lied To.

AND I believe the conservative one has been going on since 2000, starting w/ William Renhquist, I believe..........

 

MacBeth, can you recall an American president cutting taxes during a major war?

It's madness of the highest order. That, or a reckless disregard for our economic security that I can't remember seeing before on such a scale. Deckard.

Do we need any more proof that these guys are trying to bankrupt our social security, medicare and medicaid systems so that they can reduce their taxes.

 

Do you have a substantive argument or are you going to rely on derision and autoerotic innuendo?

 

rehash

 

No none of this is new. Just more screaming out for attention.

 

Some of you must be in denial. The Bush team is spinning you like a record. WMD was the main reason for war, and if we can't find them even with most of the top Iraqi brass in our custody and the country in our control, then we are in trouble. If the WMDs are not in Iraq, we need to find out where they went. We should be worried and not be dismissive by entrusting eveything Team Bush says. MacBeth did an excellent job summarizing the lies/half truths of this admin time after time. Carry on and stroke whatever you fancy.

 

The purpose of this thread is two-fold:

1) MacBeth enjoys seeing his long rants 'published' as it improves his self-image.

2) The liberals need a place to express their misguided frustration, even if it is in the form of premature opinions and slanderous allegations.

 

Mleah,

No, the main reason for the war was taking out a man who harbored terrorists and tortured his people.

We knew that he eventually WOULD supply terrorists with help against us...so....he had to go.

This is pretty obvious to most people.

DD

 

What's also a rehash is the deafening silence from the other side to these charges.

Not even a token "well all presidents are s'posed to lie!!!!"

 

I take my previous post back, this is a new one.

 

This is the very essence of the Bush Doctrine of preemption. As Rumsfeld has said:
[Paraphrasing] It's not that we looked at new evidence and decided we had to strike, but rather we looked at existing evidence in the light of 9-11 and decided that we couldn't wait for the threat to become imminent. [/Paraphrasing]

It was the nexus of terror and WMDs in Iraq that made the war necessary NOW. To wait was to risk another 9-11. Remember, it wasn't the Bush administration that first made the case that Iraq had WMDs, it was the UN. Why isn't the reactionary left screaming that Kofi Annan lied?

 

OK, so why do we let the Pakistanis harbor bin Laden, have nuclear weapons with tons of fundamentalists running around, let Al Q and the Taliban (who they trained and supported) operate in their borders, and give nuclear advice to North Korea?

Don't give me any sh-t about "well military dictator Musharraf is trying real hard" because any real pre-emption argument would disregard this and purely evaluate the level of danger, and as you put it "the nexus of terror". By any objective measure, the level of danger and "nexus of terror" dwarfs that of Iraq.

Talk about a case for pre-emption! Pakistan and Saudi Arabia expose the pre-emption argument for what it is: a pretext.

 

I didn't get the memo on that.

Terrorists are all over the world, even in countries that are our allies. Their source of evidence that the Saddam regime were harboring them may be the same as the WMD. And it's B.S. that we did this on a humanitarian basis, because we were so unwilling to help places like Africa, where millions die and suffer every year. All I know is that most of the 9/11 terrorist were Saudi nationals. We should be kicking their asses.

 

Actually, it's the "nexus of terror and WMDs." two items must intersect to form a "nexus"

Are you suggesting we invade pakistan and S.A.? shouldn't we get UN approval first? wouldn't want us to act unilaterally...i assume from your post that you know where Bin Laden is? And are you telling me that the Bush Administration is giving nuclear "advice" to North Korea? I believe the latter was a democratic affair, negotiated by Jimmy Carter and signed by Bill Clinton (both of whom i voted for, once...).

The very fact that we're not invading North Korea, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, etc, indicates that the administration's approach to the war on terror is much more nuanced than Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dominique de Villepin, or Macbeth would have you believe...

 

Also, are you saying that because we don't act EVERYWHERE, we should act NOWHERE?

 

Sam, please don't use words you don't know the meaning of. "Nexus" is not used properly above.

basso, great posts. Keep up the good work. Sam is writhing in pain from this beating.

NEXUS

 

Going back to the "60 Minutes" story. Here is another dubious deal that almost went through.

Who They Know
Boeing’s ties bloat government budgets

By Frida Berrigan | 9.19.03 print | email | comment



Boeing is not only one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world, it is also a master of the fine art of quid pro quo. When the going gets tough, this Chicago-based giant gets tougher by calling in its favors and relying on friends in Washington. Just the latest instance of this can be seen in a unique leasing deal Boeing negotiated with the Air Force and almost squeezed through Congress.

Under the terms of the agreement—which has gotten long-overdue public scrutiny thanks to Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and his Commerce Committee —the Air Force would lease 100 Boeing 767 air-refueling aircraft for more than $20 billion. As In These Times was going to press, the Pentagon was deciding whether or not to approve a smaller lease of planes instead.

Rudy DeLeon, senior vice president for Boeing, insists that the original deal would be “good for the Air Force and good for Boeing.” DeLeon is in a position to know— he came to Boeing from the Pentagon, where he served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from March 2000 until March 2001. But does he know what is good for taxpayers who would foot the bill?

The numbers say no. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the original lease plan would cost $21.5 billion, while purchasing the aircraft outright would cost $15.9 billion. That means Boeing could pocket almost $6 billion in cool profit. Air Force Secretary James Roche disputes those figures, saying the plan would only cost an extra $150 million.

Regardless of which figure ends up being right, there is no question that the deal would be a huge bonus for Boeing, because it seems clear that the Air Force has no pressing need for the refueling tankers. Just two years ago the Air Force said their tanker fleet would be serviceable through 2040. With wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the planes are getting more work than anticipated two years ago, but that does not explain the huge leap from 2040 to ASAP.

McCain calls the deal an instance of “living for today and plundering resources for tomorrow” and has made it his business to squash it. At the beginning of September, he held hearings on the lease plan and released thousands of documents that show a disconcerting level of collaboration between Boeing executives and top Air Force officials. The 8,000 pages reveal negotiators on both sides problem-solving, brainstorming, and lining up formidable political support for the deal.

“In all my years in Congress,” McCain complains, “I have never seen the security and fiduciary responsibilities of the federal government quite so nakedly subordinated to the interests of one defense manufacturer.”

While the documents provide a disturbing insight into how billion-dollar deals are built, they also bring to light a revolving door scandal. Darleen Druyun, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisitions and Management, was a key negotiator for the Air Force. McCain’s documents show her sharing potentially proprietary information about a rival company’s bid for the tanker contract with Boeing.

The Pentagon’s Inspector General has launched a formal investigation to determine if Druyun broke the law to help Boeing. No matter what it concludes, Boeing clearly appreciated Druyun’s insights and hard work. After retiring from the Air Force, she joined Boeing as Deputy General Manager for Missile Defense Systems in January 2003.

Boeing also has friends in Congress whose hard work they appreciate. As the White House and Pentagon prepared to launch a war against Afghanistan in fall 2001, Representative Norman Dicks (D-Washington) wrote to President Bush explaining how the terrorist attacks had affected Boeing.

As a solution, Dicks described the “unique opportunity” Congress had to help Boeing and the Air Force at the same time, and asked Bush to add $2.5 billion for Boeing to his economic stimulus package. What Dicks did not mention was that as the representative of Boeing’s district in Washington state he has received almost $54,000 from the company in the last four election cycles and has a vested interest in the company thriving again.

Ted Stevens, Senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, also worked hard for the deal. Why did the Alaskan senator care? It is not too hard to draw some conclusions. Defense Week reports that just a month before shepherding the legislation through Congress, Stevens held a fundraiser where Boeing executives handed over $22,000 in checks. The company was Stevens’ top contributor, adding $34,400 to his 2001 reelection campaign. All but one of the executives who cut $1,000 checks were giving to the Senator for the first time, underlining his importance to the company. The timing and size of the donations makes it hard to accept claims from his office that there is “no connection between campaign contributions made to Senator Stevens and his legislative activities.” As Eric Miller, Senior Defense Investigator with Project on Government Oversight, notes, “you would have to be paid off to vote for such a bad idea.”

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Boeing, like other major weapons manufacturers, has stacked its deck with Washington insiders. John Shalikashvili, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on the Boeing board. Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering is Boeing’s Senior Vice President for International Relations.

How can Boeing, the Air Force, and Members of Congress claim that this multibillion-dollar boondoggle is good for anyone but themselves? McCain is on the money when he calls Boeing’s bailout a “military industrial rip-off.”

http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=372_0_2_0_C

 

here's the truth on the Haliburton deal:
http://nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200309220926.asp

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york072502.asp

--
it's not really true that the company got its work without competitive bidding. In the 1990s, the military looked for ways to get outside help handling the logistics associated with foreign interventions. It came up with the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. The program is a multiyear contract for a corporation to be on call to provide whatever services might be needed quickly.

Halliburton won a competitive bidding process for LOGCAP in 2001. So it was natural to turn to it (actually, to its wholly owned subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root) for prewar planning about handling oil fires in Iraq. "To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort," the Army Corps of Engineers commander has written.

Then, in February 2003, the Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton a temporary no-bid contract to implement its classified oil-fire plan. The thinking was it would be absurd to undertake the drawn-out contracting process on the verge of war. If the administration had done that and there had been catastrophic fires, it would now be considered evidence of insufficient postwar planning. And Halliburton was an obvious choice, since it put out 350 oil-well fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.

The Clinton administration made the same calculation in its own dealings with Halliburton. The company had won the LOGCAP in 1992, then lost it in 1997. The Clinton administration nonetheless awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton to continue its work in the Balkans supporting the U.S. peacekeeping mission there because it made little sense to change midstream. According to Byron York, Al Gore's reinventing-government panel even singled out Halliburton for praise for its military logistics work.

So, did Clinton and Gore involve the United States in the Balkans to benefit Halliburton? That charge makes as much sense as the one that Democrats are hurling at Bush now. Would that they directed more of their outrage at the people in Iraq who want to sabotage the country's oil infrastructure, rather than at the U.S. corporation charged with helping repair it.

 

1. In a system based on threat assessment, there's just no logical justification for going after the littler threat instead of the bigger one. It makes it seem like a pretext, as I said, which leads me to point 2.

2. The oft stated justification by Bush Admin types, "Now other nations that threaten us and sponsor terrorism will know we mean business" is totally eviscerated when you let nations that threaten us and sponsor terrorism, like SA and Pak, off the hook.

When you can't be consistent in your foreign policy, be it pre-emption, containment or whatever, it creates problems, as it becomes harder for other nations to predict how you will react, and you in turn will not be able to predict how they will react; Stability is at a premium.

 

A fine point, basso, until you consider the following. If we raise our voices to the evildoers in Iraq, that accomplishes nothing. They don't care what we think at all. However, if we voice our opinion to our elected (no additional comment) officials, we hope that they will listen.

It's not all about "our party versus their party" or "hating Bush" or any other nonsense like that. A lot of us simply care about the issues, about the lives of our troops, and voice our views in our pseudo-democratic system.

You really think the pipeline saboteurs are confused as to our stance on their actions?