I know that this subject can go on and on without either camp admitting any misrepresentation but honestly, how can anyone accuse GWB of lying when these quotes were out there and not have a single thing to say about the people who said these things. I know it`s old news but please stop acting like it never mattered.

this cannot be denied:

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ...


So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
 

- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 | Source


What a F***** LIAR!!!!

is not only a moron, but a chronic liar.

All politicians lie to some extent, but Bush's lies are dangerous and get young soldiers killed.

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
  - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 | Source

which contained the relevant argument.

why?

... The relevent intellegence information out of Iraq said no WMDs and no active programs in the country.  It was enough to convince Europe to stay out of the game.  Bush had his own intellegence sources (CIA, NSA Intercepts, ...)  & they couldn't find anything.  Nothing was there.  

The last I heard, GWB was president when when we went in.  The way he sold it to the American people was a clear & present danger from WMDs.  He was wrong (please save your one word posts saying 'Syria").  There have been no WMDs used against US Troops.  

Get over trying to paint the Dems and Kerry as being the cause or contribution to the problem.  The NEOCONs started this war & they will stand or fall on the consequences.  I personally expect the historical record to be mixed to bad.  However, I will be glad to be proven wrong.

I don't think AMPALLANG was denying that the war in Iraq was Bush's idea and that he should be accountable.  The point was that all these people who criticize the war and the WMD evidence are on record as not only supporting the war but corroborating the WMD evidence.

Yes, the Dems can claim that faulty intelligence data upon which their decisions were made on Bush.  But particularly reading Kennedy's quote about this being a decade-long problem ("we have known for years...").

I've also always been intrigued by the UN Weapons Inspectors issue.  I (but not necessarily W) always saw the war as a validation that, if you don't comply with them, we assume you have something to hide. Almost every quote has a smidgen of this (sorta we don't care if you don't have WMD, if you 'dis the UN, you're hiding something and we're gonna get you).  Of course, once we realize he might have just been fucking with the UN, the hand wringing ensues.

... by the executive.  I fault congress here much less than I do the executive.

help you with.

That's exactly right.  Despite Bush's claims during the 2004 campaign that Kerry has access to the same intelligence he did, Congress does not get the same info as the President.  There's a reason they call it the PDB -- Presidential Daily Briefing -- and not the Congressional Daily Briefing.  It's also been pretty well documented that the Bush administation cherry-picked from the available intelligence, discarding the findings that ran counter to its arguement for war.  

And apparently both Dems and Republicans largely chose to overlook the msot viable evidence of all -- from the UN inspectors that were in Iraq and only had to leave when Bush started the bombings.  Their findings have been proven to be 100 percent correct: no large caches of WMDs and no active nuclear (or is it nuculear) program.

It's nuculer, my friend.

In general, I agree - Dubya is accountable for the quality of intelligence data and the analysis thereof.  My point was that, as you read the rhetoric from the Democrats, there are many who make arguments that link back many years and to themes beyond WMDs.  Clearly, they're at fault as well.

Okay, so a few posters to this thread would like to continue to fault the Bush administration for bad intelligence but what about those 7 quotes that were uttered before he took office? Including one from Madeline Albright just days after the 2000 election. Google "WMD Clinton" and read allot more of the same.

 Here is an undeniable fact. Many world leaders, intelligence agencies foreign and domestic, elected U.S. officials, and Saddam himself said he had the weapons. To assume he did not would be a huge error.

You said.

  Here is an undeniable fact. Many world leaders, intelligence agencies foreign and    
  domestic, elected U.S. officials, and Saddam himself said he had the weapons. To
  assume he did not would be a huge error.

Lets stick with reality for a second or two.  There were no WMDs an Iraq and no programs to create them.  Assuming these things existed was a huge error.  Assuming they diid not was correct.  My friend, you have it exactly backwards.

The best public evidence came from the weapons inspectors before the start of the war.  They said they could not find anything and they thought it highly unlikely that they missed anything.  We ingored this evidence.  We were wrong.

Bush either made a mistake (in which case he should admit it), or he ignored the evidence, invaded anyway, and misrepresented the situation to congress and the Public.  I don't know about you, but I feel like somebody pissed down my leg and does not want to acknowledge that it happened.  Maybe it satisfies you to say the piss on your pants is  "everybody's" fault.  It doesn't satisfy me.

Harry



 

Harry. As I recall, many foreign intelligence services provided information regarding the development and probable storage of WMD`s. Among them were the Israeli’s, the Russians, and the British. Not to mention that you have to take seriously the possibility of stockpiled weapons when S.H. himself admitted to having them. Saying later that they had been destroyed without providing any documentation or inspection as to the destruction hardly qualifies as reliable information. In addition to that is the fact that for 2 years before G.W.B.`s first term the Dem`s were publicly accusing S.H. of deceiving the U.N. inspectors, as evidenced by the quotes I attached to my original post.

 It would have been a huge error on the part of G.W.B. if he hadn`t taken all of this information into consideration and done what he eventually did.

 I`m having trouble following the point of your post Harry. You`re making my argument for me. If in fact you are right and there never were WMD`s then why did the Clinton administration and other highly placed Dem`s insist there were. If you`re right then they are the liars…wouldn`t you say?  In my opinion it`s more likely that everyone was right in their assumption and the weapons have been removed under the noses of the inspectors as was suspected when the U.N. was in country.

The difference is this and this alone…. The Dem`s see a chance to make political hay and bruise the President by pinning unreliable intelligence on him without accepting any blame for their own failure to get it right.

I think that one of two things is the most likely scenario. Either the Iraqi’s had the weapons, hid them, and eventually removed them to a place unknown, or, he never had the kind of quantities he claimed and only said so to instill fear in his enemies…us included. Unfortunately for him, if the latter was the case, he didn`t spook GWB and he ultimately paid the price.

The WORLD-WIDE pre-war consensus was that Saddam had WMDs (which he had used against Iran and the Kurds), and that he had active weapons programs.  While your hindsight is 20-20, NO ONE was asserting that "The relevent intellegence information out of Iraq said no WMDs and no active programs in the country."  Certainly, that was NOT why Europe "stay[ed] out of the game."  There were a lot of reasons why Europe did so --- self-interest in deals with Saddam; feet of clay --- by the "belief" that you cite was non-existent before the war.

Usually, you're a little more sensible than that.  But your post is little more than an effort at revisionist history.  Which is a hallmark of the far Left.

As for the rest, GWB did not say "clear and present danger."  He said "growing and gathering."

you say ..."Lets stick with reality for a second or two.  There were no WMDs an Iraq and no programs to create them.  Assuming these things existed was a huge error.  Assuming they diid not was correct.  My friend, you have it exactly backwards."

Ok, so he never had WMD?  Is that your argument?

I suppose the fact of him gassing his own people & the Iranians during there war are false reports then huh?  Or perhaps just since that fact dosent' fit in with your view that Bush is Bad, Democrats are good that fact is simply ignored.  Hmmm.

What the inspection regime in 2002 established was that there was NOT likely to be any ACTIVE programs, because there was no evidence found of ANY active programs.  It is true that Saddam was being evasive and not cooperating with these inspections, but nonetheless, the inspections occurred, and effectively established that any programs Saddam had for WMD had at a minimum, been rendered dormant by the ongoing international vigilence.  This is why Europe et al chose to stay on the sidelines rather than invade Iraq.  You and the Bushies can spin this any way you like, but the bald-faced lies are the revisionist justifications coming from the Bush camp, after invading and finding nothing, NOT the statement that Harry made.

... Thery were certainly the gold standard for this issue (unless the US was talking to one of Saddam's sons).  Hans & the boys in the band played a really catchy tune.  I don't remember all the verses (a 80 page report), but the refrain went something like (key of G)

   We did not find any WMDs
     We did not find any WMD Programs,
       We Don't think there are any
         ............

Then the Pentagon refrain (played through friendly media)

    We have secret information
       We don't want to reveal our sources,
         You UN guys are wimps and you don't know Kaka
            .....

The results after extensive search
   WMDs                         0
   WMD Programs           0
   Terrorist Camps          0


It looks like Hans and the Guys did really know some kaka.

Defending US Policies in IRAQ is hot nasty work James.  Sometimes you can get a little lightheaded and forget things.  Happens to everybody.  

Harry
   

-- Modified on 2/3/2005 1:22:21 PM

-edited-

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/wdc/documents/041006keyfindings.pdf

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

I guess the truth really can be painful for some.

RLTW


-- Modified on 2/3/2005 7:53:55 PM

... I can improve myself with a spell checker.  What are you going to do?

Glick , Blix --- it's all the same to me.

The Upshot of the report, no weapons, no active programs found.  The estimate:  there probably wasn't anything there.

All the Best -- Harry

-- Modified on 2/3/2005 1:23:34 PM

...

We won Gulf I

As a condition of the peace, Iraq accepted weapons inspections and large degrees of control over it's economy.

Weapons Inspectors went in, found WMDs and Active Development Programs (the existed), and dismantled them (then they were destroyed and did not exist).

Iraq kicked out the weapons inspectors, but could not get it together to rebuild their WMDs and development programs.

Intl Inspectors rechecked again immediatly before Gulf II.  They did not find anything & said so.  

Conclusions:  

1) Inspections & sanctions worked to eliminate Iraq as a US threat.  While we may have "felt" threatened, we were not.   We have skid marks in our underwear.

II) The Pentagon Intelllegence group (the people warning of the threat) were wrong.  

III) The right has not learned anything from this mistake.  They seek to recast what happened -- we established an opportunity for "freedom" for the Iraqi People.  


IMHO, fuck the Iraqi people.   Let 'um get their own freedom.   If you want to "support freedom"  arm the Kurds and the Suni's.  It's cheap, not particularly flashy, it takes a little longer, and it doesn't let the DOD play guns, but hey, we might save some $$$ and lives.  Alternatively, if you wanted to be REALLY clever, leave the situation at status quo and the regime will collapse under it's own weight.

Harry

Harry.
You have a seemingly unhealthy obsession concerning human waste and articles of clothing.

“Maybe it satisfies you to say the piss on your pants is  "everybody's" fault.  It doesn't satisfy me.”
HarryLime

“We have skid marks in our underwear.”
HarryLime

The next thing you know you`ll be talking about cumshots on blue dresses and it will make about as much sense.

I admire your spunk (pun intended) even when your wrong.

my apologies.

But the truth of those reports is that it's not just a simple "there was nothing there".

RLTW

-- Modified on 2/4/2005 8:07:00 AM

... of course there is more in the document.  However, the fundamental secruity issue was whether WMDs existed or development programs were in place.   If they were, they were a real currend danger to other countries, and an invasion was justified.  If they were not, there were a HOST of policy options available to the US and the international community to stop an emerging threat.  One obvious way to do it was continuous intrusive inspections --  an idea that had extensive support in the world.  In retrospect, the solution looks pretty viable.  

Regardless of what you feel about the "good faith" of the current administration in claiming a present danger existed, you must agree that it did not.   The administration's attempt to change the terms of the debate is disengeneous.  Iraq may or may not enjoy the benefits of freedom and liberty from our efforts,  I devoutly hope for the best, but realistically expect something far less.  

Mr Bush is the president of the US.  He is responsible only to us, not to the rest of the world.  I sincerely doubt his claim that US security is enhanced by spreading "liberty" to the world.  I am personally very concerned that after this set of adventures in the middle east, we are going to end up with a depleted military and less clout than we had when we started this effort.   Our military is designed to fight and win quick wars, not to handle long term occupations.  We are trying to do this "on the cheap" with reserve troups.  This option is rapidly disappearing as the length of the occupation increases.  When the reserve option deteriorates, our military's abilitie to handle it's primary mission will decrease.

Our enemies in the middle east and elsewhere are not stupid and they did not get to where they were by being unrealistic.  If I can see those things, so can they.  We get nowhere by posturing that we don't have problems with our original actions and what we are trying to accomplish.  These things have to be addressed -- quickly and publically if our power is to be maintained and continue to grow.  We don't fool anybody other than staunch republcans when we pretend we did not make a strategic error and we are not making relaistic efforts to correct it.

All the best.   Harry

Harry, you still haven`t answered the point I tried to make in my post. Please take a stab at it. Once more, here is the question at hand.

 In 1998 many Democrats were accusing S.H. of having and concealing WMD`s. This is long after Gulf War I when you claim the weapons were accounted for and destroyed by the inspectors. If they thought those weapons were there as evidenced by the quotes I provided, and they didn`t actually exist as you claim, then aren’t they liars? Bill Clinton was in charge then and it was his intelligence agencies providing the reports. Not G.W.B.`s.

 The only difference is that G.W.B. took the next logical and prudent step and went to the U.N. and asked that they put some teeth into their resolutions. Remember the phrase… “or face the consequences”?

 The tired old claim that Bush lied about WMD`s is a foolish charge to level if you don’t also include the Democrats in your criticism.

 So…. Did the Democrats lie when they said those things or not? A yes or no answer would be great.