The donkey world view- Don't hold anybody responsible for anything they do because some other people do/did the same kind of thing. Don't try to form opinions about policy or history because we can't ever have all of the information.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby were all part of a group that urged Clinton to attack Iraq years before 9/11. I will never accept that Bush is some innocent little puppy being led astray by incompetent people. They didn't go to war on bad intelligence, they just couldn't find the intel they needed to legitimize what they already wanted to do. Of course that didn't matter at the time, so many people just buying everthing they were selling.
What? We're not talking about getting someone's cousin a job at the local post office or even a Teapot Dome. We're talking about conning the United States into a war that will affect this country and the world for decades to come. Spilled milk? A little crooked? These are people's lives. One thing about this administration that is different from all others is their ideology. You can say people who favor extraordinary executive power, people who have a child's view of international relations, people who advocate torture, people who don't think habeus corpus is that big of a deal... those people do not belong anywhere near the levers of power in this country. I'm not naive enough to think we'll ever do away with political favors, graft, etc. But those things are chronic in our Democracy. This administration is toxic.
oh, dont get me wrong. im not saying bush is innocent. But i think if people are really concerned with learning about what went wrong, they need to stop focusing solely on bush b/c like you mentioned he was just a tool being used.
boy you love those emotional tools dont you? whats next? showing a fetus in a trash can for pro-life? give me a break dude. playing on emotions is not a valid argument.
oh i will share my opinions...and i have. but on the other hand i will tend to take the opposite side just to see what develops. so you said. i never said that, i was making a point that why just focus on the 1 person and not all? do the others get a free pass just b/c one goes after the person with the highest title? didnt really say that either. You can form an opinion but lets look at what we are talking about here...national security, secret intelligence and motives that may have never been written on paper, etc. Form an opinion, but realize that the opinion is based on limited info and take make your opinion sound like fact.
Dude you wouldn't know a valid argument if it bit you on the ass. Most of your posts in here are fact-free, passive agressive sniping at positions you disagree with, but won't confront directly.
Call it intuition. I never said he was smart enough to start a war. (And my argument throughout this thread is that you cannot excuse Bush for his incompetence... he has to be accountable.) I do think he appointed people who were obviously smart enough to get us into a war we had no business getting into. Admittedly, there's a lot I don't know about the WH and how Bush makes decisions and yes, there are seemingly contradictory reports. I suspect Bush wanted a war, I suspect he let that be known, and people told him what he wanted and played to his vanities to make sure he would allow them to do what they wanted. As an aside, I used to think Clinton would have a ton of books written about him from the psycho-history perspective, but now I think the books on Bush will dwarf Clinton. And again, these were not just bad judgements. They were deliberate judgements.
Sorry, but using phrases like "spilled milk" and "a little crooked" is obviously an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the war. I wanted to remind you that decisions on war have consequences and affect people. Call it emotional if you want, but it is a reality that can't be dismissed. (And for the record, I'm pro-choice.)
fair enough. I dont know who it started with or where but im not quite so certain it was bush. I just have a hard time rationalizing why a president would start a war based on circumstances that he knows will turn out to be bogus (I dont buy the war for oil argument). There is obviously a greater purpose, right? at least in their minds. I mean, i just dont believe that bush is so evil that he enjoys seeing american troops die and get hurt for no greater purpose.
Read the thread. It's about Doug Feith and by extension, his boss in DoD, Rumsfeld an dthe way intelligence was corrupted at levels below the WH. I never mention Bush until a response to hotballa's Bush-specific posts. Then you take issue with my response to hotballa and we carry on for awhile. This thread does not focus on Bush. You do. And it's a common refrain of yours... trying to move the discussion to Bush and then crying about us being unable to see the big picture because we're all hating Bush. If anyone in this thread has a Bush fixation, it is you. And for the record, the Libby trial showed that most of the time when "Senior WH Officials" were referenced as sources, it applied to people like Libby, Rove and on up. Thus my thinking as to the audience. And really, are you implying that given what we know, Doug Feith only briefied people on the level of say, Richard Clarke?
first, please dont try to attach too much meaning to what i said. casual? sure, but no hidden agenda there. Yes, war is horrible, disgusting, heinous, etc . i know this. But does flashing a few pictures of disfigurement really prove anything people dont already know? of course they dont. there are there to get an emotional response, which can and usually does cloud rational thought.
i will mention one thing then i'm iraqed out... for a country that had no alqaida ties...there sure are a crap load of them in that country now.
