|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
|
 Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject: How Does President Bush Lie? |
 |
|
| Quote: |
In the face of overwhelming evidence, it�s astounding that people such as James Kirchick, in �,� continue to defend the president against accusations that he intentionally misled and outright lied to the American people in making the case for war with Iraq.
Consider first the implications of the famous Downing Street memo from July 23, 2002. Briefing Tony Blair about his recent talks with Washington, Britain�s top intelligence officer stated that U.S. �military action was now seen as inevitable. � But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.�
A month later, in August 2002, the administration set up the White House Iraq Group, designed solely to sell the public on the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In essence, it was a marketing campaign to sell the war by escalating the rhetoric and misleading the public. And lying.
And boy, did they. Here are statements from the administration in 2002 as they beat the drums for war. Dick Cheney said: �There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use � against us.� Condoleezza Rice: �We do know that [Hussein] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.� Donald Rumsfeld: �[Hussein�s] regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons.�
These statements were designed to cultivate in Americans fear of Iraq�s imminent threat, the keystone of Bush�s push to war. They were grossly and intentionally misleading, suggesting that the administration possessed incontrovertible facts on which were drawn these definitive conclusions. In reality, the facts were known to be ambiguous at best. Absolutely no intelligence existed at the time that would allow anyone to reach such concrete conclusions.
And Bush advisors aren�t the only ones. His assertion on Oct. 7, 2002, that Iraq posed an imminent threat was beaten into the nation�s psyche: �Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof.� Yet the president possessed directly opposing information from the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate, released days earlier. Prepared by the CIA with input from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies: �Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional CBW [chemical and biological weapons] against the United States.�
The declassified summary of the NIE � released by the administration for public and media review shortly after the full report � was another lie in that it was grotesquely altered. The above point was not included. Also missing were several forceful statements from other intelligence agencies disputing the CIA�s horribly overblown and inaccurate assessments. Finally, in at least half a dozen instances, conclusions were altered to make Iraq�s threat more compelling. Language was added or omitted that changed CIA opinions to incontrovertible facts
Conclusion: The public document was rigged to support the push for war. The president intentionally misled the public. The intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy.
Another example is the now infamous nuclear reference from Bush�s 2003 State of the Union address: �Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.� Not only was this refuted twice in early 2002 � by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and by French intelligence � but the CIA�s National Intelligence Council investigated and told the White House four days before the address that �the Niger [Africa] story is baseless and should be laid to rest.� So the administration knew the claim was false, used it anyway and when caught, issued a collective �oops.� Although these speeches are vetted by Bush staffers, State, Defense, National Security and the CIA, it just slipped through. Riiiiight.
Two weeks before the war, the president echoed statements made in January�s State of the Union: �I�ve got a good evidence to believe that. [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction,� and �Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents to avoid detection by inspectors.� Ah yes, the mobile labs. And your evidence was from whom, sir? Curveball? The now fully discredited Iraqi chemical engineer who defected in 1999 and claimed to have worked in the labs? In 2002, German intelligence � who debriefed Curveball � told the CIA that the guy was �crazy� and �a fabricator.�
Yet in his push for war, Bush chose to voice the Iraqi defector�s claims over proof offered by U.N. weapons inspectors who, with eyes and ears on the ground, represented the best possible intelligence. From November 2002 to March 2003, they were granted unprecedented freedom and conducted more than 700 no-notice inspections all over Iraq and found nothing. No mobile labs, no underground storage facilities, nothing. This should have been great news, but not for a president looking to go to war. Indeed, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix flat out accused Bush and Blair of lying when he stated: �The Americans and British created facts where there were no facts at all. � The Americans needed [to find] weapons of mass destruction to justify war.� So Bush was creating facts to justify war.
If there remains any equivocation of Bush�s propensity to lie, consider the Jan. 31, 2003, meeting between Bush and Blair. In a summary, Blair foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that there was tension between the two over finding some justification for the war. In fact, Bush was so concerned about the failure of the weapons inspectors to find WMD that the president floated three possible ways to �provoke a confrontation� with Hussein. So here�s your president very publicly using self-defense to sell a war while quite privately discussing how to provoke one � with an allegedly dangerous foe who poses an imminent threat. Either Bush lied or he put us at grave risk. Or both.
Space constraints don�t allow for a refutation of all the lies the president told about Iraq�s threat, their weapons and their link to Osama bin Laden. However, consider this final point: Our government spent nearly tens of millions of dollars to try to impeach a president for lying about consensual sex between two adults. Compare that to this abomination: George W. Bush knowingly lied to the American people in selling his case for a war that has directly led to the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans. They are deaths brought about by his lies, deceit and deception. It is an American atrocity of monumental proportion, followed closely by the heinous fact that no one has held him accountable. Where is the outrage?
|
LINK |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
aarontendo
Joined: 08 Feb 2006
Location: Daegu-ish
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| on his belly |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Let me count the ways? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Czarjorge
Joined: 01 May 2007
Location: I now have the same moustache, and it is glorious.
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:12 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| With flair, aplomb, and terrible grammar, diction, and word choice. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Through his teeth.
In our faces.
Wearing a smirk.
And, given that anyone at all still supports him, convincingly.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Joe Wilson's story has been debunked.
and Saddam did try to get urainium from Africa.
That is the truth.
The op -ed author says Bush lied but is also seems that the Op-ed author isn't about beiing loose with the facts. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Zenas
Joined: 17 May 2008
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
As a psychopath.
____________________________ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
|
| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 10:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
Joe Wilson's story has been debunked.
and Saddam did try to get urainium from Africa.
That is the truth. |
About as true as WMD and his links with AQ. Only the most faithful still believe those falsehoods. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| catman wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
Joe Wilson's story has been debunked.
and Saddam did try to get urainium from Africa.
That is the truth. |
About as true as WMD and his links with AQ. Only the most faithful still believe those falsehoods. |
Catman you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.
| Quote: |
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.
Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.
Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.
The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."
� 2004 The Washington Post Company |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39834-2004Jul9?language=printer
| Quote: |
fighting words
Plame's Lame Game
What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife forgot to tell us about the yellow-cake scandal.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2004, at 12:27 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.
The Senate's report on intelligence failures would appear to confirm that Valerie Plame did recommend her husband Joseph Wilson for the mission to Niger. In a memo written to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, she asserted that Wilson had "good relations with both the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Mines [of Niger], not to mention lots of French contacts." This makes a poor fit with Wilson's claim, in a recent book, that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." (It incidentally seems that she was able to recommend him for the trip because of the contacts he'd made on an earlier trip, for which she had also proposed him.)
Wilson's earlier claim to the Washington Post that, in the CIA reports and documents on the Niger case, "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong," was also false, according to the Senate report. The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after he made his trip. Wilson now lamely says he may have "misspoken" on this. (See Susan Schmidt's article in the July 10 Washington Post.)
Now turn to the front page of the June 28 Financial Times for a report from the paper's national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among European intelligence services that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. The bogus document produced by an Italian con man in October 2002, which has caused such embarrassment, was therefore more like a forgery than a fake: It was a fabricated version of a true bill.
Given the CIA's institutional hostility to the "regime change" case, the blatantly partisan line taken in public by Wilson himself, and the high probability that an Iraqi delegation had at least met with suppliers from Niger, how wrong was it of Robert Novak to draw attention to the connection between Plame and Wilson's trip? Or of someone who knew of it to tell Novak?
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, notionally violated by this disclosure, is a ridiculous piece of legislation to begin with. It relies in practice on a high standard of proof, effectively requiring that the government demonstrate that someone knowingly intended to divulge the identity of an American secret agent operating under cover, with the intention of harming that agent. The United States managed to get through World War II and most of the Cold War without such an act on its books. The obvious disadvantage of the law, apart from its opacity, is that it could be used to stifle legitimate inquiry about what the CIA was up to. Indeed, that was its original intent. It was put forward by right-wingers who wanted to stifle and if possible arrest Philip Agee, a defector from the 1970s whose whistle-blowing book Inside The Company had exposed much CIA wrongdoing. The act is now being piously cited by liberals to criminalize the disclosure that someone who shuttles dangerously "under cover" between Georgetown and Virginia and takes a surreptitious part in an open public debate, works for the agency and has a track record on a major issue.
To say this is not to defend the Bush administration, which typically managed to flourish the only allegation made about Niger that had been faked, and which did not have the courage to confront Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in public with their covert political agenda. But it does draw attention to an interesting aspect of this whole debate: the increasing solidarity of the left with the CIA. The agency disliked Ahmad Chalabi and was institutionally committed to the view that the Saddam regime in Iraq was a) secular and b) rationally interested in self-preservation. It repeatedly overlooked important evidence to the contrary, even as it failed entirely to infiltrate jihadist groups or to act upon FBI field reports about their activity within our borders. Bob Woodward has a marvelous encapsulating anecdote in his recent book: George Tenet on Sept. 11 saying that he sure hopes this isn't anything to do with those people acting suspiciously in the flight schools. ... The case for closing the CIA and starting again has been overwhelming for some time. But many liberals lately prefer, for reasons of opportunism, to take CIA evidence at face value.
I prefer the good old days. It was always alleged against Philip Agee, quite falsely, that he had identified Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens who was gunned down by Greek anarchists in 1975. In fact, Agee had never mentioned his name in any connection. This did not inhibit the authors of the Protection Act from going ahead, or Barbara Bush from saying in her memoirs that Agee had fingered Welch. I actually contacted Agee at that time, pointing out that the book was being published in London and suggesting that he sue. He successfully got Mrs. Bush to change the wording of her paperback version. But we are still stuck with the gag law that resulted from the original defamation, and it is still being invoked to prevent us from discovering what our single worst federal agency is really up to.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2103795/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 6:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
Catman you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.
|
OK Mr.Rumsfeld.
Well tell me if you believe this is a fact. The 'Niger Uranium Documents' are forgeries. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 2:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| catman wrote: |
| Quote: |
Catman you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.
|
OK Mr.Rumsfeld.
Well tell me if you believe this is a fact. The 'Niger Uranium Documents' are forgeries. |
they probably were , that doesn't mean that Saddam didn't try to get Uranium from Africa.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
postfundie
Joined: 28 May 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| less than 6 months to go until the election. can't wait for a new president to be elected so we don't have to hear about Bush all the damn time. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words_on_iraq_uranium.html
Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying
July 26, 2004
Updated: August 23, 2004
Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 10:25 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| catman wrote: |
| Quote: |
Catman you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.
|
OK Mr.Rumsfeld.
Well tell me if you believe this is a fact. The 'Niger Uranium Documents' are forgeries. |
they probably were , that doesn't mean that Saddam didn't try to get Uranium from Africa.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/ |
There is no "probably" about it. They have been declared forgeries. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nolegirl
Joined: 17 Apr 2008
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 11:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
George Bush is the smartest man alive, he is leader of the free world, ya know??? What do we do again, oh thats right, we teach english.
What has the adminstration taught us: Lie and cheat your way to the top, I'm in...seems to work |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
