The emotionally-blinded liberals continue to buy into their own spin machine's lies, hook, line and sinker. The Democrats' Big Lie by Frank Gaffney, Jr. Adolf Hitler once observed that it was easier to convince people of a "big lie" repeated often enough than it was to deceive them with a lot of small ones. In their frenzied bid to displace President Bush in 2004, leading Democrats have evidently taken to heart this tip from one of the world's most successful propagandists. It is ironic that the big lie now being disseminated with increasing frequency from Democratic political podiums across the country is that George W. Bush is a liar. Specifically, the charge is that he dissembled, misled, prevaricated and even lied about the justification for going to war with Iraq earlier this year. Just yesterday, variations on this theme were pronounced by two prominent Democratic partisans -- the party's 2000 standard-bearer, former Vice President Al Gore, and a leading contender to become its next nominee, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. The former enumerated a list of false "impressions" President Bush and his subordinates used to justify going to war and to allay concerns about the repercussions of doing so. Mr. Gore contended that the Bush team had misrepresented the danger Saddam posed, exaggerating the imminence of the threat, making false claims of ties between the Al Qaeda network that attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001 and offering pollyannish assessments of the welcome we would receive from the Iraqi people and the support we would enjoy from the rest of the world once Iraq was liberated. He told a gathering of the anti-war activist group MoveOn.org, "Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong." Gov. Dean was even more strident in a speech he delivered last night in Iowa. As part of a wide-ranging critique of the Bush presidency, he enumerated what he described as a number of administration statements concerning the need for military action against Iraq that "turned out not to be true." Then he pledged that, if elected president, he would "never send our sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters and our parents to a foreign country to die without being truthful with the American people about why they're going there." There is just one problem with such charges. They are not true. President Bush did not lie to the American people about the reasons that prompted him to believe liberating Iraq was a necessary step. Rather, he and his subordinates laid out a compelling case on the basis of what was known at the time -- and, in those areas where we could not be absolutely certain of the facts, what were the best and most prudent judgments available. Specifically, the Bush administration told the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- a view formally espoused, by the way, by the United Nations, bipartisan majorities in Congress and by then-Vice President Al Gore's superior, President Bill Clinton. The precise whereabouts of those weapons today is still under active investigation by a forensic team led by one of the best experts in the field, David Kay. It may be some time before they are unearthed, perhaps literally, from the sands of Iraq (as have been Saddam's air force and components of his nuclear centrifuge program). The likelihood that such weapons will be found in due course has prompted few of the president's critics -- even those who contend he misled us about the quality of these weapons and/or their availability for use -- to declare they aren't there. A particularly egregious example of the big lie is the endlessly repeated contention that President Bush misled the American people in his State of the Union address. In fact, what he said on that occasion was true. There was abundant reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was bent on rebuilding his nuclear weapons program; Iraq was scouring the world for technology, expertise and materials to do just that. In his annual address, Mr. Bush correctly noted that British intelligence believed -- as it happens, on the basis of myriad sources it deems credible (and not a forged document in U.S. possession) -- that this effort included attempts to buy uranium (search) in Africa. The British government continues to stand by that assessment. It would have been irresponsible to ignore such evidence in assessing the need for preventive action. The President was also correct in characterizing Saddam's regime as one with long-standing ties to international terrorist organizations. This was similarly a matter of record, as reflected in Iraq's status as an official "state-sponsor of terror" under successive American administrations. Abu Nidal lived for years in Baghdad; Yasser Arafat, his and other Palestinian terror organizations and the families of their suicide bombers garnered millions of dollars in support from Saddam; and individuals and groups linked to al Qaeda were known to have operated from Iraqi territory. Interestingly, a U.S.federal judge who has been working for the past few months in Iraq told Al Gore's hometown paper, The Tennessean, recently that -- on the basis of his own investigation into the matter -- he was convinced Saddam actually had direct ties as well to Usama bin Laden's organization. The truth is that, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush felt obliged to prevent a known state-sponsor of terror with access to weapons of mass destruction and an oft-stated desire to exact revenge against this country from acting on that desire, through cut-outs or otherwise, with instruments capable of causing incalculable damage to this country. As to the question of what would come as and after Iraq was liberated, no one could say for certain. But those who speculated that large numbers of Iraqis would welcome the end of Saddam Hussein's despotic rule and that foreign governments would help in the reconstruction of Iraq have not been wrong. Indeed, it is a gross distortion to suggest otherwise, simply because some of those who benefitted from the ancien regime remain loyal to it and a number of countries are withholding assistance to the Iraqi people in the hopes of blackmailing the United States into acceding to a preeminent U.N. role in post-war Iraq. In short, far from lying about Iraq, President Bush has done an admirable job not only of characterizing what was at stake, but in acting accordingly. The partisan motives of those who must discredit his wartime leadership if they are to have any chance of removing him from office are clear. But it is they who are guilty of serial distortion and misrepresentation -- yes, a big lie -- about Iraq, not this President.
I love it how the extreme liberals attempt to portray Fox News as being more conservative than CNN is liberal. Ridiculous. I guess that's all they have left to work with after the American people voted them and their policies out of power.
THen why were you too ashamed to put it in? Maybe if you act like you don't care that it gnaws at you that fox news has limited credibility, you really won't care some day. Until then, keep declaring victory and running away. Very topical of you to bring that up, however. Even assuming that CNN (owned by that communist liberal corporation, Time Warner AOL) is "liberal", based on your warped perspective, Empirical evidence shows that right wing media outlets/hacks are far more conservative than "liberal" media outlets/hacks are liberal: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/Tomasky.pdf As for the substance, I can already tell you about a hundred things wrong with it, but I'll leave it to Macbeth or somebody else to bother as I don't have the time
Uh, like you just did below? Laughable. And if you don't think Ted Turner (re: Jane Fonda) is liberal, then you have problems defining the term. I'd love to see your list of 'a hundred things wrong with it', but apparently you don't think you have the intellectual horsepower to accomplish this task. It's better to leave it to MacBeth who will bore us all into submission with his 100 page documentary of verbose rubbish.
You are blind T_J, maybe you ought to watch CNN instead of just the commercials on Fox where they claim to be unbiased. If you want to see the liberal equivalent of Fox, wait til High Times gets their own channel.
It seems more and more that if religion is the OPIATE of the masses, politics is the anabolic steroid.
What's laughable is that you don't know, well reported in the financial press and other media, that Ted Turner's effective control over CNN lapsed years ago, as did his marriage to Jane Fonda, who is now a born again Christian. Also well reported has been Time Warner's efforts to make CNN more like Fox and give it a rightward slant to increase viewership. Looks like you have to find another windmill to tilt at. I hear the Times had some difficulties a few months back.
A really big GOP lie: We rail against "big government" while we realize that 75% of the budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense, and interest on the debt (the last, we've increased greatly). While we don't intend to do anything to those programs, our rhetoric allows us to advocate cool conservative ideas like privatizing national parks and a host of other programs at great expense to the taxpayer, weakening EPA, and cut off education and social spending under the guise of "fiscal responsibility." At the same time, we slice tax revenues, shuttling most to the rich, while we know the deficits will run at $450 billion or more each year. Because we don't want to go back on our word to the rich about tax cuts, we either have to drastically raise the payroll taxes and taxes that affect the retired (which greatly hurts lower and middle class workers), or we use our current startegy and just pass it on to people like rimrocker's kids while we claim to be the "family values" party. Ain't it wonderful?
Yes Sam, and I guess I also didn't realize that the day Ted lost control CNN, all of the employees that he hired immediately changed their political convictions. Ted formed that company and shaped its political stance. This is undeniable. This political stance does not turn on a dime when he gets divorced or leaves to go protect the wildlife in Montana. Nice try though. Still waiting for you to illuminate the 100 things that are wrong with the original article. Sigh
Politics is the Viagra of the masses. It gives people a false sense of virility when in reality they are hopelessly flaccid.
Nice spin job, I guess it's hard to give up bogeyman Ted even though he's been gone for years. Another nice spin job is the uranium affair: "In his annual address, Mr. Bush correctly noted that British intelligence believed -- as it happens, on the basis of myriad sources it deems credible (and not a forged document in U.S. possession) -- that this effort included attempts to buy uranium (search) in Africa. The British government continues to stand by that assessment. It would have been irresponsible to ignore such evidence in assessing the need for preventive action." Tabling the fact that GWB willfully ignored contrary american intelligence in order to market the war (or his aides/CIA director/whoever is taking the blame this week) What are the "myriad sources" that this Faux News hack is referring too? Does he troll the corridors of Whitehall and take tea at the club with MI-5 types? Or did he spend time in sweaty East African cafes, talking to wizened consular officials over a bottle of whiskey? Or, is he unapologetically recycling contrived post-hoc bullsh-t? You report! I decide!
I agree with Trader Jorge. Just because Bush lied about creating a war that killed more than 10,000 people, that doesn't mean Democrats should call him a liar. They're DEMOCRATS. They're supposed to bob their heads in Republicans' laps. Like the media.
1) "Adolf Hitler once observed that it was easier to convince people of a "big lie" repeated often enough than it was to deceive them with a lot of small ones. In their frenzied bid to displace President Bush in 2004, leading Democrats have evidently taken to heart this tip from one of the world's most successful propagandists. It is ironic that the big lie now being disseminated with increasing frequency from Democratic political podiums across the country is that George W. Bush is a liar. Specifically, the charge is that he dissembled, misled, prevaricated and even lied about the justification for going to war with Iraq earlier this year." It is sooo tempting to reverse the idiocy for a moment and claim " To even compare the United States of America with Nazi Germany is offensive, etc." as T_J and others have done in the past, but I'll skip it... Bush did dissemble, mislead, and probably lie. The facts support this as the only possible interpretation. To try and refute those facts, and then turn it around and say that pointing out those facts is itslef dishonest is laughable, which leads me to ask you, T_J, are you sure that you didn't at least co-write this piece? 2) "President Bush did not lie to the American people about the reasons that prompted him to believe liberating Iraq was a necessary step. Rather, he and his subordinates laid out a compelling case on the basis of what was known at the time -- and, in those areas where we could not be absolutely certain of the facts, what were the best and most prudent judgments available." Completely untrue, according to the President's own organ of assessing 'what was known at the time'...the NIE report completely refutes this ridiculous whitewash. 3) "Specifically, the Bush administration told the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- a view formally espoused, by the way, by the United Nations, bipartisan majorities in Congress and by then-Vice President Al Gore's superior, President Bill Clinton. The precise whereabouts of those weapons today is still under active investigation by a forensic team led by one of the best experts in the field, David Kay. It may be some time before they are unearthed, perhaps literally, from the sands of Iraq (as have been Saddam's air force and components of his nuclear centrifuge program). The likelihood that such weapons will be found in due course has prompted few of the president's critics -- even those who contend he misled us about the quality of these weapons and/or their availability for use -- to declare they aren't there." The original point, that the WMDs were compiled to such an extent, or were deployed in such a position that they were an imminent threat which could be realized, as the President said, " at any moment", or as the British told their people, " within 45 minutes" has already been debunked. Whether they even existed at all, to any extent, is now what is in question, and becoming increasingly less likely. The writer reveals his bias when he assumes their discovery as an inevitablity. But we were told that the reason for war, and more, that the reason for war RIGHT NOW was the imminent threat of WMD; Bush himself ratcheted up the fear by claiming that waiting for a smoking gun was foolish when that could be a mushroom cloud...and you, T_J, as I recall, parotted that idea ad nauseum. To now claim that that was secondary or merely us making a tough call is ludicrous, we now know that if the president thought that he was thinking it despite our own intelligence, not because of it. So what, exactly, was the basis for his conclusions then, it might be worthwhile to ask. 4) "A particularly egregious example of the big lie is the endlessly repeated contention that President Bush misled the American people in his State of the Union address. In fact, what he said on that occasion was true. There was abundant reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was bent on rebuilding his nuclear weapons program; Iraq was scouring the world for technology, expertise and materials to do just that. In his annual address, Mr. Bush correctly noted that British intelligence believed -- as it happens, on the basis of myriad sources it deems credible (and not a forged document in U.S. possession) -- that this effort included attempts to buy uranium (search) in Africa. The British government continues to stand by that assessment. It would have been irresponsible to ignore such evidence in assessing the need for preventive action." Ridiculous. To try and assert semantics when the effect and intent of the uranium statement has been well recorded, including the arguments to get it into the speech for just that effect is silly. And Saddam was not precluded by the treaty from wanting to have WMDs, merely from having them. And Bush did not note that the British "believed", which implies certainty, he said that they had "learned" which implies fact. And why would it have been irresponsible to 'ignore' the British claim when it was apparently just fine to ignore the assertions of our entire intelligence community, including a debunking of the British claim which the Brits had not been informed of? Selective responsibility, the hallmark of this administration. 5) "The President was also correct in characterizing Saddam's regime as one with long-standing ties to international terrorist organizations. This was similarly a matter of record, as reflected in Iraq's status as an official "state-sponsor of terror" under successive American administrations. Abu Nidal lived for years in Baghdad; Yasser Arafat, his and other Palestinian terror organizations and the families of their suicide bombers garnered millions of dollars in support from Saddam; and individuals and groups linked to al Qaeda were known to have operated from Iraqi territory." This one I love...no, the links were claimed between Al Queada and Saddam, not to one fo the thousands of terrorist organizations that exists in every nation in the world, including our own. Again the NIE report stated categorically that Saddam represented no threat, directly or through terrorists, and we ignored it to make the case for war...where's the author's outrage at this 'irresponsibility'? Hmmm... And this sentence is precious: "...and individuals and groups linked to al Qaeda were known to have operated from Iraqi territory." Wonderful use of a non-connected fact to make a specious claim. Fact is that 'individuals and groups linked to al Qaeda were known to have operated from American territory'...or ' Canadian territory'...or any number of territories. Again, like this article, silly. 6) "The truth is that, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush felt obliged to prevent a known state-sponsor of terror with access to weapons of mass destruction and an oft-stated desire to exact revenge against this country from acting on that desire, through cut-outs or otherwise, with instruments capable of causing incalculable damage to this country. As to the question of what would come as and after Iraq was liberated, no one could say for certain. But those who speculated that large numbers of Iraqis would welcome the end of Saddam Hussein's despotic rule and that foreign governments would help in the reconstruction of Iraq have not been wrong. Indeed, it is a gross distortion to suggest otherwise, simply because some of those who benefitted from the ancien regime remain loyal to it and a number of countries are withholding assistance to the Iraqi people in the hopes of blackmailing the United States into acceding to a preeminent U.N. role in post-war Iraq. In short, far from lying about Iraq, President Bush has done an admirable job not only of characterizing what was at stake, but in acting accordingly. The partisan motives of those who must discredit his wartime leadership if they are to have any chance of removing him from office are clear. But it is they who are guilty of serial distortion and misrepresentation -- yes, a big lie -- about Iraq, not this President." More complete rationalization while ignoring the salient facts, statemens, and errors made by the administration. Who wrote this, the WH press secretary? Honestly, I have seen 50 better articles for the war then this one, and I disagreed with most of their contentions as well. This isn't only clearly biased, ignoring facts, and unfounded speculation as support for claims, it isn't even well written. Now, T_J, if you want to come answer 7 questions...? No? Hmmm....
MacB's post refutes Gafney's article outright. It doesn't matter if Gafney is from FOX, or from the ACLU. Though it does show the kind of slipshod stuff that FOX reporters engage in. Anyway as far CNN goes and who's there that Ted Turner hired, there aren't that many left. Bobby Batista - gone. Bernie Shaw - gone Jeff Greenfield - gone Aaron Brown - in bevy of non-liberal, more traditionally attractive, female anchors - in. Paula Zahn - in The list goes on. I don't think TJ has watched CNN too much lately. Believe me, it's not liberal. It's often fluff, but almost never liberal. And come on TJ, hiding FOX from the source doesn't hide the flaws in this meaningless article.
Top GOPer rips Dubya on Iraq war By JAMES GORDON MEEK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU Monday, August 11th, 2003 WASHINGTON - The White House failed to grasp the complexity of rebuilding Iraq before going to war and ignored concerns that the U.S. was leaping before it looked, a top <b>Republican</B> lawmaker said yesterday. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar <b>(R-Ind.)</B> faulted the administration for "a thorough misunderstanding" of the politics of Iraq. "The basic assumptions ... simply were inadequate to begin with," Lugar told NBC's "Meet the Press." "This is a war that still has to be won." Lugar wants President Bush to budget a five-year plan and to turn to the UN. "I think we need to seek a resolution or more resolutions from the United Nations to give more legitimacy, more reason why other nations will come to the floor - specifically India, perhaps Germany," Lugar said. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is also still a major problem, said former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). "If they've left the country, then certainly God knows we better figure out where they are," he said. Also yesterday, Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman, in his most strident criticism of Bush over the Iraq war, said the President and his aides "overstated" the case for invading Iraq. "The Bush administration has too often followed a pattern of deception," the Connecticut senator told "Fox News Sunday." <b>Lugar noted that his panel tried to engage the White House on its postwar plans before the war began in March but was stood up by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who led the initial rebuilding effort.</b> In Iraq, meanwhile, hundreds rioted for a second day in the southern city of Basra to protest severe power and fuel shortages. Two Iraqis and a security guard working for the U.S. were killed. Elsewhere, attacks on U.S. forces in Baghdad and ex-dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit wounded six soldiers, the military said. Two other soldiers died of noncombat-related causes, including one G.I. felled by heat stroke. Temperatures hit a high of 118 degrees in Baghdad yesterday.
Thanks MacB, I didn't feel like bothering to argue that one. Collective action problem avoided! Now let's see if Junior comes back...
So let me guess... Lugar must be part of the extreme left-wing fringe partisan pathetic and lying wing of the Republican Party. Right.
