I'm not really willing to use the word "lie" and mean it; for the purpose of this discussion I'm just adopting FB's language. A lie is a simple thing; this is a complex situation with desperate motivation.
I never venture into the D+D, but this thread title caught my eye, so I clicked on it. I did just want to make one point about this comment. I don't think that the fact that WMDs were never found really builds a case that the Bush administration wasn't lieing. GWB sold this war as going into Iraq to stop Saddam from posessing WMDs. Let's just assume that he knew (or was relatively sure) that there were no WMDs. I would think that their thought process was that they can bait and switch -- sell it as WMDs, (whether or not they exist is irrelevant) then turn it into a "fight for liberation of the oppressed Iraqi people". This is what actually happened, too -- two years ago (when the war wasn't as unpopular as it is now), if you complained that no WMDs were found, people were quick to say that it was also about liberating the Iraqi people. Now, had everything gone well, and if the U.S. had been successful on a speedy basis, I would think that for the most part, everyone would've just gone along with the bait and switch. The fatal flaw for GWB was that things weren't smooth in Iraq. I don't think anyone fully anticipated how complex the situation there would be -- it seems to me that they underestimated the difficulty of the mission, and overestimated their ability to create stability. Now, I don't really know if GWB out-and-out lied or mislead the American people, or if he genuinely thought there was a threat. I'd say that as of now, it looks like he was intentionally misleading, but none of us really knows the truth. Lets face it, from late '01 through the beginning of the Iraq war, President Bush had INCREDIBLE public support. Had things in Iraq gone smoothly, they could've found chocolate factories instead of chemical weapons factories, and the American people probably wouldn't have been too bothered -- I mean, so what there were no WMDs, we got rid of the evil Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi people are free! But since things aren't going well right now, people are looking back and asking difficult questions. Anyways, that's all -- I just wanted to say that I don't think you can draw a conclusion that because we'd eventually find out there were no WMDs, that the Bush Administration didn't intentionally lie about it.
Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq. If you don't like the word "lie," then one can say he certainly distorted the truth to fit his own ends. Does that make you feel better, giddy? D&D. Go see The Children of God.
I don't know why Bush would lie. Deckard has the best guess I can think of though. Plus I think arrogance at being able to spin and manipulate the situation as well, but that part is just speculation. At this time most Democrats were on board with the idea of authorizing force so they may not have been probing and snooping around as much as they should have. Here is the whole story. In the process of making nuclear weapons aluminum is needed. It was discovered that Iraq had bought some nuclear tubing. The adminstration checked with experts to see if they were for nuclear purposes and they were told that they were not. They were told that the tubes were the exact measurements needed for conventional weapons(which was allowed under the UN resolutions). They were told that it would be very difficult to use those tubes for nuclear purposes if not impossible. Saddam said they were for conventional rocket firing weapons. The administration had already been pushing the mushroom cloud/nuke angle. Condi went ahead and came out publically to declare that the aluminum tubing could only have one purpose and would be to make nuclear weapons. It was a lie, and the administration knew that wasn't the only possible use for the tubes. Eventually it wasn't the Democrats that shined the light on the fib, but UN's own IAEA. It was then when reporters looked into it that they found out what the administration had been told previously by our own experts. After the invasion they find that indeed the tubes were used in developing conventional weapons for the Iraqis. On the whole Bush is probably not as big of a liar as Saddam. But the point wasn't who was the biggest overall liar. We were talking about whether to trust the Bush administration with opening the mail of U.S. citizens without any oversight, or checks. The fact that they would intentionally misstate a threat in order to gain powers(authorization of force in Iraq) shows that they aren't trustworthy. Any President that loses even one battle of honesty to someone like Saddam isn't somebody that I would volutarily give my rights away to, and just trust that they won't misuse it. Bush has not shown a need why it is important to do away with warrants in these circumstances. And even if we could trust Bush to never open any mail except of people who were definitely terrorists, how do we know the next president would be as trustworthy. I wouldn't trust Hilary Clinton(I hope she's not next) to open up mail without a warrant either. Anyway I remember when it came out that the tubes were definitely for conventional weapons, I was ashamed that this administration's dishonesty actually eclipsed that of someone like Saddam. That was my govt. and they sunk down to Saddam's level. It would be like if Hakeem all of a sudden started being more of a punk on the basketball court than John Stockton. It was not a good feeling.
I was responding to FB's complaint of Americans being harmed by these Administrative moves. About the only American so affected that people can name is Jose Padilla. That's why the symbolic 99.9999999999999999.... I think part of FB's complaint is that these are not laws and, conceptually, that may be their saving grace.
I do agree with your general observation here, but to be fair there are some who were critical from the outset. As things didn't resolve as quickly as hoped/anticipated/projected the bandwagon nay-sayers have piled on and so the numbers for support are down.
And it turns out that the people whoi were critical from the start were correct while the administration was nearly 100% incorrect. Again, the point is that we cannot trust an administration that is either so incompetent (at best) that they could not appropriately analyze the information or is so dishonest (at worst) that they deliberately lied to the American people to go around the law by performing searches of our papers without a warrant, something that the Constitution expressly forbids.
golly gee - why would people "pile on" like this? its not like the bush administration told us it would be easy...wait a minute - YES THEY DID! http://www.usatoday.com/educate/war28-article.htm Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." March 4, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait. March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside." Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official who serves on a Pentagon advisory board, said in a Washington Post column in February that the war would be "a cakewalk." Richard Perle, who chaired that board until last week, predicted in July that support for Saddam, even within the Iraqi military, would "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder." its amazing how totally wrong our leadership was on pretty much everything. it begs the question of whether or not these people are totally incompetent or totally criminal - it can only be one or the other. if you habitually lie to people eventually they get fed up.
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs_108_2/pdfs_inves/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf very good report detailing all the lies put forth by the bush administraion. its actually sickening to read all the b.s. they put forth about WMD's and ties to al-queda, which even bush later had to say there were none. if you can paroose this and still think that the bush administraion is deserving of any trust whatsoever than you are hopeless. and to those who say the bush administration would never lie to us i offer these three instances - 1 - bush said that nobody could have imagined hijacked planes being flown into buildings - that was a lie - norad and the pentagon had run war game drills doing just that. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say. 2 - bush said that nobody could have imagined the levies failing - that was a lie - the video came out of the teleconference bush had w/ 'brownie' at his "ranch" where 'brownie' tells him that there is a good chance the levies will fail. 3 - bush says that they are not illegally spying on u.s. citizens, when at the time they were. "Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
So when the tide turns will that make them wrong... again? A popular vote is no way to judge the historical merit of anything. I don't think it is really a matter of right and wrong just differing opinions. There is always somebody opposed to anything and everything (no matter how wonderful)... and there's always somebody in favor of anything and everything (no matter how wretched).
not too suprised that bush supporters cant answer this. how about this one though... http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/breaking_news/16392915.htm why is it ok for the bush administration to open our mail, but we can no longer know who is visiting the white house? why the double standard bush supporters? White House visitor records closed PETE YOST Associated Press WASHINGTON - The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public. The Bush administration didn't reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration's lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge's ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs. The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration. The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff. The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo "a political maneuver couched as a legal one." "It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda," Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Friday. The White House and the Secret Service declined to comment. Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush administration, in response to three lawsuits, provided an incomplete picture of how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the White House. The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House committee that collected the lobbyist's billing records and e-mails. The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove. As part of its security function of protecting the White House complex, the Secret Service uses the log information to conduct background checks on people prior to daily appointments and visits. The memorandum of understanding is an unusual step because it deals with an unsettled area of law. Federal courts will ultimately decide whether records identifying White House visitors and who they are going to see are under the legal control of the Secret Service or are presidential records publicly releasable solely at the discretion of the White House. The Bush administration's agreement with the Secret Service "at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who these records belong to," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "This memo reflects the Bush administration's view of American government, which is that the people's business should be conducted behind closed doors." In the mid-1990s, a conservative group, Judicial Watch, obtained Secret Service entry logs through a lawsuit. Secret Service records played a significant role in the Whitewater scandal in the 1990s, supplying congressional Republicans with leads to follow in their investigations of the Clintons. A decade ago, Senate investigators used Secret Service logs to document who visited the White House during the fundraising scandal surrounding President Clinton's re-election campaign.
Here, here. people need to realiase, Were at War. not Against a Single country, but against an Radical Ideology. this War is gonna be harder to win then any of the Previous wars. get off you're high horses people.
High horses my ass. If we toss our freedoms into a dumpster to fight our enemies, they are winning. It's what they want. The more we become like the dictatorships posing as democracies in the Middle East, the better they like it. If the common people of the region believe we are no different than the Mubaraks and Ahmadinejads, why should they take our talk of democracy seriously? If we chip away at what makes our country great and unique to battle those who would do us harm, it chips away at our very soul as a nation. We can fight the mad actors of this world without becoming something other than what has made us great. D&D. Democracy is More than a Word.
I'm in awe... 39 words and at least 19 spelling or grammatical errors. Seriously though, if you think this is an ideological war, the best way to win is to stand for your ideology, particularly if it includes things like freedom and human rights. The way to lose is to adopt the ways of the ideology you are trying to best.
Apart from the obvious observation that we are nowhere near becoming like that, I have to point out that things like freedom and democracy are things these folk aren't supposed to appreciate or even understand because they've never enjoyed them... I'm quite sure the subtlety of stripping us of ours is going right over their heads. They would rather we just die.
The subtlety of stripping us of our freedoms, bit by bit, certainly is going over your head, giddy. I won't argue with that. Freedom is easier to lose than it is to gain. D&D. Democracy and Danger.
I'm much more concerned about the power of the IRS and a term-limitless congress than I am about federal mail-readers. Shouldn't your signature read "Democracy in Danger"?
