I am still waiting for vwiggin to convince me why "Bush doesn't strike me as a money-grubbing a*hole. He is a man of principle who likes to deal in moral absolutes."
Well we all know that "Bush Lied" is just an empty slogan, and not a fact. Right? I guess we should just copyright it. BushLied™ Hows that?
First, there are many people on this board who are neither left or right, myself included. I would say now most of people in the moderate camp do not support Bush's policies. Second, there are people who have changed their view on Bush, we could setup a poll to see how many people have changed their view on Bush in the last two years. the 80% to 20% poll on this BBS is more left leaning than the general public view of about 70% to 30% but not by a large margin.
Bush continues to mislead the nation by using the Robb-Silbermann report in an effort to clear his name. The administration's use of its intelligence wasn't part of their scope. In fact that only investigation into that hasn't happened yet, so there are no conclusive reports that are able to clear the administration. This is another article on the subject So we know that members of Bush's own administration didn't beleive there were significant WMD's there, that Bush had intel saying Saddam wouldn't use WMD's or give them to terrorists unless backed into a corner. We know that none of the commissions looked into whether or not Bush cherry picked intel.
Do you even know what Karla Tucker did? She pickaxed two people to death???? I would laugh too if now she was 'born-again' and wanted to live for what she had done. You're saying bush should go to hell because he did not pardon this lady? "There was this guy, she said, that she disliked. His name was Jerry Lynn Dean, and she wanted to break into his house and take something, like his Harley motorcycle or maybe some parts. When they entered in the dark, Karla heard Jerry waking up on his futon. She jumped him, scaring him, and that gave her an enormous rush. He started to struggle as she straddled him, so she grabbed a pickax to hold him down, and the more he struggled, the more she was determined to keep him down. She used the ax to put eleven deep stab wounds into his throat and chest, and as he died, she experienced a sexual climax. Then she went after Dean's girlfriend, Deborah Thornton, but as Gini Graham Scott put it in Homicide, her arms got tired, so her boyfriend had to finish the job. Later she bragged about this violence to her sister, who was so disgusted she turned Karla and Daniel in to the police."
Good! So now basso and the like can stop using the red herring that a "bipartisan" commission has exonerated the administration in regards to twisting intelligence.
There have been lengthy reports and articles, and explanations by posters. It might be a lot to read. So I will try and melt it down to one thing I would like explained. Bush received a report that a prisoner told interrogators that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda operatives in the use chem and bio weapons etc. The report also said that intel agencies did not believe the man. They said his information wasn't reliable, and that he wasn't even in a position to know that information. All of that was told to the Bush administration. Yet within months, the President, sec. of state, VP, and others were all claiming that they had learned Saddam had trained Al Qaeda. The fact that no intel agency believed that to be true was never reported to congress or the American people. How is that not misleading, cherry picking, exaggerating etc? Does anyone have an answer?
Nobody said Bush should burn in hell for not pardoning her. The rub against Bush is that he made fun of the situation, and mocked a person about to die. If a person who has say over life and death doesn't take it seriously, then that person may not have great character.
F.D...... 1. Show me anywhere in this thread where anyone said Karla Faye Tucker should be pardoned..... 2. It still doesn't give Bush the right to mock someone after they are dead, especially since he signed the order. Mocking the dead is pure 100% drunken fratboy behavior. Don't you think we should expect more from our elected officials? George W. Bush has no character. He is a character.
I don't blame them for using that. That is what the president and his administration told them. The only problem is that the president was once again lying/misleading.
Did Bush actually receive and read the report? We know that reading stuff like newspapers is not his thing. Thus, it is not much of a stretch to say that Bush only received heavily filtered oral reports. Bush would then only be guilty of repeating the lies he was told. I have seen this type of behavior in Corporate America. Take for instance PR campaigns. How many times do we sear and hear TV commercials that appear to probe the thin line between truth and fiction? How many times have we seen messengers shot? Would be messengers learn to be quiet and major problems get adddressed late and poorly. Bush is guilty of fostering an environment where he is shielded from the reality of his decisions.
Bush received and read daily reports along with oral briefings by the CIA. That happened every day when he wasn't on vacation. Either way the responsibility is still his. The words came out of his mouth. The reports by the intel agencies were given. He doesn't get a pass if he happened to fail to do his job and look over them.
you left our a couple of quotes from the same interview (cherry picking?) in it, Russert showed cheney a clip from an interview the two had conducted a year previously, just after the attacks: Russert: “Do you have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraq to this operation?” Cheney: “No.” back in 2002 now: Russert: “Has anything changed, in your mind?” Cheney: “I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that [2001] interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years.” Cheney mentioned the still-disputed/alleged/possible/discredited/maybe meeting between lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi agents in Prague. It was the subject of some dispute, he added. “The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business,” Cheney said. Was there anything else? Russert asked. “I want to separate out 9/11 from the other relationships between Iraq and the al Qaeda organization,” Cheney said. “But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years.”
Well if Bush ever comes out and makes the, 'I didn't really read any of the reports about the information that lead us to war' excuse we will consider that as a defense.
On the contrary in a democracy a political campaign is necessary for a war. The leadership has to convince the people to support it and to continue to support it. This is the essence of the so called "Bush Doctrine" that says that democracies are loathe to enter wars of aggression because in a war that most of the population sees as unjustified they will refuse to support the political leadership running that war. What we're seeing now is the "Bush Doctine" at work here in the US where support is turning against the war in Iraq.
The problem with this and Kerry's comment is that yes technically its not a declaration of war but what it practically does is that it gives up Congress' power to declare war and puts it all into the hands of the Executive branch. I hold the Admin. primarily responsible for getting us into Iraq but Congress certainly dropped the ball on this one and are at the least tacitly culpable since they gave up their own rights in regard to the invasion by voting for that resolution which took all the decision making out of Congress' hands.
I agree with you. The Dems in congress acted without a backbone. I wasn't showing that they were right in their vote, just that they believed the President when he "lied" and told them it was a vote to maintain the peace and that was what it was all about.
Let's see if we can keep it up The problem here is that you do not demonstrate a correlation between the the reports you cite and the administration's statements. Nor can you prove that senior decision makers within the administration saw every bit of intelligence. Lastly, your conclusions ignore the very nature of intelligence analysis, which is, almost by definition, cherry-picking. Intelligence analysts receive an overwhelming amount of data from many different sources. Their job is to filter out as much noise as possible and deliver a picture of what they believe to be happening. Intelligence reports gather reporting from many different analysts and presents a consensus view of what the particular department, bureau, or angency believes. as intelligence makes its way up the food chain, it must be balanced with intelligence gathered from many other sources, ie, CIA, DIA, NSA, State, and lastly Foreign intelligence services. It must also be balanced against the historical record. In the case of Saddam's WMD, no one has ever suggested there were no dissenting views. Clearly there were, and some of those dissents may even be correct, but the important question is to examine them in light of what we knew at the time. Certainly Bush's briefings may have included alternate points of view, and specifics may vary here and there, but the overwhelming consensus was Saddam had WMD. This was not just the conclusion of various US intelligence agencies. The intelligence services of France, Germany, the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and many others all concluded there were WMD in Iraq. So had the previous administration, which had also acted on that intelligence. Congress agreed. As I've said over and over again, post 9/11, that consensus had to be viewed in a new light. When so considered, and when additional information about Iraqi contacts with al queda and known support for terroists was factored in, it would have been irresponsible not to act. As for me, pretty much all i needed was this. one final point, you repeatedly use the word "lie" as a synonym for "wrong". this is not constructive, and doesn't really further the debate. Les said two years ago that that rockets team was the most talented ever. we failed to make the playoffs. was les lying?
congress should have insisted on a formal declaration of war. they didn't and IMHO ignored their constitutionally mandated responsibilities.
