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

I will admit this much. Some of us lefties have to be more consistent with our citation of polls. Sometimes, we cite them to "our" "advantage," but other times we say "see, look how stupid people are!"

This is *not* saying that other political persuations don't completely abuse the polls, but I'd love to raise the bar all around.

 

How come every time there's a discussion about Bush's credibility, someone has to drag Clinton's dead horse in? The man lied about getting a BJ, and the gov't spent $40 million to embarress him for it. His lies didn't make us alienate the rest of the world.

 

My point was Iraq was a legitimate target in the war on terror. Yours? or are you getting ready to post some anti-Truman screed? and wasn't he a democrat?

 

Actually I think he said if Saddam accepted excile there would be no war and he may have said "agreed to the resolutions" i.e. prove you have no weapons. Saddam never, ever proved he had no weapons nor did he provide any evidence that they were destroyed (as he agreed to do according to the terms of surrender after GWI). Nor did he cooperate with regard to providing evidence of his compliance. All of which he was bound to do in order to stay in power.

As someone else mentined, the polls still show supoprt for Bush and the war now even though the weapons were not found.

Where does the mandate specify this?

Also, you never addressed the issue of the fact that congress had the same intel as the President and never raised any objections. That Congress voted for the use of force so they have to be just as culpable as the President. It's pretty immature to agree to do something when the polls are with you and then take the opposite stance when it helps you politically or with your base. You want to gain more credibility? Attack Kennedy and Clinton (Hillary) and Gephardt and all those other Democrats who voted for the war.

Nor have you addressed why it was okay to go into Kosovo against the U.N.s wishes and after having been lied to about it.

 

Clearly you didn't read my post. We had legal right to invade Iraq based on the surrender ageement from GWI and the U.N. mandates. We have no legal right to go into any other country.

However, that doesn't mean that nothing is being done with those other countries. Just today it was in the news that the last of our soldiers have pulled out of Saudi Arabia.

Last American Combat Troops Quit Saudi Arabia

There are many things being done in this war. Some huge and obvious like the Iraq war, some economic like the freezing of assets of terrorists and others not-so-obvious that we'll probably never know about. Right now it's advantagious for the U.S. to work with the Saudi Government. They are all that's keeping the country from becoming a militant state like Iran. Same for the leader of Pakistan. Those countries will be dealt with in time and probably not with force.

 

No, I read your post; I just read two parts of it that are seemingly incompatible (I'm going to concede your point that we had a "legal right to invade Iraq", even though I don't think too many international law type people would agree with you)

So let me get it clear so that I can understand:

This is what we have to do:

But we can only do it unless we have this?

Well, I congratulate you on being respectful of UN resolutions and granting them such a high degreee of reverence. Unfortunately, that gets us into a practical difficulty. How do you suppose we to get to act (or acted) on those security council resolutions passed in 2002 condemning the occupation of Ramallah by Israel and calling for them to pul out immediately? Do we have the right to invade Israel? Do the other Security COuncil states have that right? Was it the member states of the Security council or just the permanent member states? What about past or future Security Council member states?

Let's get off Israel and turn to Iraq. What about Iraq? Could Russia have invaded Iraq? or China? Or Turkey or Germany? What if we told them not to? Could they have done so citing "legal rights?"

What about Afghanistan, we had no legal rights there, or did we? Are we talking about customary international law now?

If you want to create a legal regime, you have to be prepared to answer these questions.

Advantageous to work with the House of Saud? Do some reading and figure out why this is wrong. You want to know the difference between Saddam and the Saudis? The house of Saud DID give money to the Sept 11 hijackers, Saddam did not. State sponsored terrorism anybody?

Keeping it from becoming a militant state? On the contrary, their theft, graft and corruption in conjuction with their consent for the Wahabbis to run wild is making it into more and more of a militant state.

Crap, I like straight pre-emption, even though its ultimately futile, better than your "you can only invade with a legal right" doctrine, that's a recipe for disaster, IMO, and inconsistent with the conviction that we have to "eliminate" states that sponsor terrorism.

You people are obsessed with the people at the top. It's not them you have to worry about, it's the guys at the bottom that blow themselves up and hijack the planes and recruit the terrorists. You see saddam and say "oh, saddam is bad, Iraq must be a threat", and you see musharraf and say "well, Musharaff's our friend now, Pakistan's going to be OK!"; Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Some of the latest "USA-TODAY" poll numbers. I'll see if I can pull out the ones that pertain to the discussion:

1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?
2003 Sep 19-21 Approve 50% Disapprove 47% No opinion 3%

2003 Aug 4-6 60 36 4
2003 Mar 22-23 71 25 4



15. All in all, do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, or not?
2003 Sep19-21 Worth going to war 50% Not worth going to war 48% No opinion 2%

2003 Aug 25-26 63 35 2
2003 Jun 27-29 56 42 2



16. Based on what you have heard or read about the events in Iraq over the past few weeks, do you think that for all intents and purposes, the war with Iraq is over, or not?
2003 Sep 19-21 Yes, over 10% No, not 89% No opinion 1%

2003 May 5-7 ^ † 41 58 1
^ Asked of a half sample.
† WORDING: Based on what you have heard or read about the events in Iraq over the past few weeks, do you think that for all intents and purposes, the war with Iraq is over, or not?



17. Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th terrorist attacks, or not?
2003 Sep 19-21 Yes, was involved 43% No, was not 50% No opinion 7%

2003 Mar 14-15 ^ 51 41 8
^ Asked of a half sample.


Man, I had no idea it was so screwy trying to cut and paste a poll like that. I think I made the important figures, the latest, readable... the rest you can figure out or go to the link.

Bush and his policies are really starting to take a beating.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2003-09-22-bush-poll.htm

 

Hey Deckard,

Thanks for pasting that. To be fair, however, I think only question one shows a trend that is outside statistical fluctuation, and it's not that damning yet.

 

My incredulity is with your utter lack of logical arguments. I discredit Bush for the things that he has said that have turned out to be untrue. I don't have to discredit Saddam, nor have I ever defended what he has done in the past. I am incredulous that you can make the leap from me wanting my President to make accurate statements when making the case for war to me being on Saddam's side. In effect, you are saying that "you are either on Bush's side or you are on Saddam's side" which is a load of horse manure.

I have said since the beginning that we had weapons inspectors in country doing their job and they should have been allowed to continue to do that job. The US pulled them out because they told us that there was the imminent threat of WMDs and further, that Saddam had tried to acquire nuclear material. We acted prematurely and did not have a complete plan for putting humpty dumpty back together again.

The UN resolution that we claim to have been acting on the authority of was about WMDs, nothing else. We said that Saddam had not complied with the terms of the agreement and therefore, needed to be taken out of power. That is the only way to make what we did legal under international law.

What we did was the equivalent of kicking down a door because we had an informant who told us there were drugs only to find that after killing a few folks, there weren't any drugs, but technically, the guy whose house was raided had a history of beating his wife so we'll charge him with that so the raid isn't a total loss.

 

When will it be "strategically" possible?! Pakistan already has nukes and North Korea is right behind. Their military capabilities are light years better than Iraq. So did Dubya take down Iraq becuz they were the "easier" target rather than the "more dangerous" ones?!

 

Andy, and MacBeth, great analogies. I wish you could get that stuff out there to someone who does the political talk show circuit and spread that around a little.

 

I suppose we should let the owner of the house have the last word here:

in the words of Akila al-Hasemi, the Iraqi Governing Council member now fighting for her life in an American military hospital after an assassination attempt on Sept. 20, speaking to her French hosts ten days earlier: "Don't think the Iraqis will ever forget what the Americans did in liberating them. We will not allow the Americans to fail."

 

Again, basso, I am not questioning whether Iraq has been "liberated" from Saddam, I am questioning whether the administration was up front and honest with us when making the case for war. I also question whether we did enough planning for post-war Iraq and the eventual transfer of power to the Iraqi people.

Your inability to respond to the points brought up is very telling. It tells me that you are only interested in deflecting criticism and obfuscating the issue, which shows your very obvious bias. You might as well just stand up and say "it doesn't matter what the administration does, it is OK by me" and complete the process of giving your brain up so that you, too, can be a Bush bobble head.

 

Like most bush-haters on the board I think you are confusing being wrong with having lied. Deliberately lying to the american people to start a war, yeah, that be a crime (although LBJ did it). the problem is, there's no evidence of it. as for the possibility of bush being wrong about WMDs? certainly possible, but i'd caution against a rush-to-judgement on this issue. we're looking for material that in many cases is no larger than a vial of insulin. remember that a few months back they found an entire squadron of fighters (french made, naturally) buried in the sand- there's no telling what else is buried out there, along with the hundreds of thousands of saddam's victims. but you're not really concerned with them, are you?

 

Try as you might, you will never convince Macbeth (or any other card-carrying Bush-hater) that A) the weapons are buried or otherwise hidden, or B) that Bush did anything other than lie.

No matter that the rest of that air force is still buried (we only found about 30 of the planes - the rest unaccounted for). No matter that it would be far easier to hide a WMD cache than an entire friggen air force. No matter at all. The WMD just aren't there (I guess they never were?)...

No matter that under the best possible curcumstances, Bush himself must have been misled (that is, of course, if he was wrong - by no means a given). No matter that even under any possible circumstances where Bush lied, virtually every single other world leader, to include the UN as a body, lied about the same topic as well, since they all agreed with Bush on the WMD. No matter at all.

You must keep in mind that election season is already in full swing, and since the Democrats don't actually have any issues to campaign off of (note their frontrunner, Clark, does not even have any apparent ideas of his own about anything at all), they're all running on the same "Bush Lied" platform. That's it, that's all of the message / platform - Bush Lied. It does not have to be true. It does not have to be logically consistent. It just has to sound good, and it does to anyone who does not understand what is going on, and/or has an inherent bias against anything Republican.

Don't even bother with trying to go over the logic of it. I have tried many times, with Macbeth in particular, and it will just devolve into a personal assault against your own credibility, because their ideas about the issue do not hold up to logical scrutiny. It will just go personal, so don't even bother.

Macbeth just likes hearing himself talk / seeing himself write, anyway. Take my advice and don't fuel his ego.

 

thanks treeman .