Four thousand troops don't mean much, but it's still not a very good sign. It's almost as if they're daring us to leave (or, worse, provoke them).
Al queda + saddam= bacon. Saddam's opponent in the Gulf War was Big George Bush. Bush ran against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, whose cousin, Olympia, was in Picture Perfect with Kevin Bacon.
Well, the problem is that people in the administration keep telling us the completely dead horse is alive. So I don't get why anyone can complain when someone says that the horse is still dead as a reply. "Nope, it's still dead. We just did another test for you. In fact, Mr. Cheney, when you see these hunks of flesh fall off, and when you can see most of the skeleton, that's usually a sure sign that the animal is dead. But our measurements of respiration (zero) and pulse (none) and brainwaves (none) also confirm the observations." basso, your bacon post is extremely strong work. I love it. No comment on your other posts here.
the funny thing about the commission report is that it actually dovetails quite nicely w/ what cheney and bush said. the key phrase is "in attacks against the United States." the Bush Administration has been very careful to state that it did not believe there was a link between Iraq and 9/11, but there was evidence of a link between iRaq and al queda. this apparent mischaracterization of the Administration's position adds to the list of reasons to doubt the Commission's judgment as to what is "credible" evidence in the first place.
Stick to bacon, good sir. In short. Yes, Cheney & Bush have said: link exists between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Now, carefully: commission said there was no evidence of such a link. That is in the report, aside from any lack of 9/11 link. So now you'll be painted into the sad semantic corner of debating what a "link" or "connection" can be. I can hear it already: "well, basically Saddam did not return Usama's phone calls, but he probably listened to the phone calls! That is strictly a connection! Viola!" If we just sit down and get honest. There is no evidence of any sort of substantial connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, once and for all. Let's move on (no reference intended to .org).
sorry, i just don't buy it, and this is my own impression, not anything i've heard from W and C. in fact, i think they've been far too reticent in their linkage. i think the evidence is far stronger than what they've suggested. i'll go so far as to say that in time, it will be proven that saddam and al queda had operational links and iRaq was involved in 9/11, and that this is what the war will be remembered for, not WMD. once again, you won't currently hear this from W&Co, but there's enough smoke there to suggest a fire.
Well, I appreciate the faith. I mean that. If I trusted those guys in the current adminstration, I'd be tempted to say "well, they just know a lot more about the tell-tale smoke than I do, and they can't tell me all about it. I trust them and I support them."
he's not dead..he just lost...i mean, he was a length away from a freaking Triple Crown people!!! back the freaking truck up!!! man!!! wait...what's that?? oh...sorry.
my feelins about this have nothing to do with any trust i might have in the admin. if anything the reverse is true. any trust i might have in the admin is a result of their taking saddam's threat seriously. if they'd backed away i'd feel considerably less charitable towards them.
backed away? huh? Cause Saddam was threatening us, right -- I forgot about that. Look, we've been over this 1,000,000 times, and I was just trying to pay you some respect for your stance. But if we both distrust them, okay. That leads you to believe them when they tell you controversial, insubstantiated things leading to elective wars unrelated to Al Qaeda, while it leads me to not believe them. Simple. Ciao.
Everyone and their mother should read "The True Believer;" "The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause." and, "It is the true believer's ability to shut his eyes and stop his ears to facts which in his own mind deserve never to be seen nor heard which is the source of his unequalled fortitude and consistency." Awesome.
well it turns out, as if we didn't already know, that the Bush propaganda machine is still working strong and still duping people on the real story. according to a cnn poll today . . . www.cnn.com that is just sad that 31% still buy this garbage, but i guess better than before.
Here's the New York Times editorial, which sums up pretty well the President's dilemma... either he knows he's decieving the American people, or he is incredibly delusional. Take your pick. Personally, I choose both. The New York Times June 17, 2004 The Plain Truth It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different. Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that. Nevertheless, the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11. And since the invasion, administration officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, have continued to declare such a connection. Last September, Mr. Bush had to grudgingly correct Mr. Cheney for going too far in spinning a Hussein-bin Laden conspiracy. But the claim has crept back into view as the president has made the war on terror a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. On Monday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." Mr. Bush later backed up Mr. Cheney, claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who may be operating in Baghdad, is "the best evidence" of a Qaeda link. This was particularly astonishing because the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime. The staff report issued by the 9/11 panel says that Sudan's government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden in the early 1990's, tried to hook him up with Mr. Hussein, but that nothing came of it. This is not just a matter of the president's diminishing credibility, although that's disturbing enough. The war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be Qaeda forces, including Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17THU1.html
