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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:16 am Post subject: |
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| fiveeagles wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
I think his point was merely: Bush's war on terrorism and fundamentalist Islam is a total failure. Islamic fundamentalism is as prevelant and as pervasive as it ever has been.
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Wow, how that has all changed within a week, eh? |
hmmm? |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:29 am Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| , Syria probably got some sort of WMD from Saddam, ! |
Well I'm glad to see you decided to bat for the winning side after all.
So you agree Iraq DID likely have WMD and just sent them to Syria. |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:36 am Post subject: |
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| We know Iraq had some sort of chemical weapons because they used them against the Iranians and the US SOLD THEM TO THE IRAQIS!!!!!!!!! So the question was always whether or not Iraq posed and imminante and direct threat to the US, which they did not. But nice try. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 4:02 am Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| We know Iraq had some sort of chemical weapons because they used them against the Iranians and the US SOLD THEM TO THE IRAQIS!!!!!!!!! So the question was always whether or not Iraq posed and imminante and direct threat to the US, which they did not. But nice try. |
No it wasn't. Iraq was told to get rid of its WMD after the first Gulf War. Instead of transparently disarming they played catch-me-if-you-can with the inspections teams (when they allowed them in at all) for years on end until America's patience ran out.
War happened because Iraq refused to honour its agreements on WMD not because it posed a direct threat. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:48 am Post subject: |
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I think the following article by Laphman really hits the nail on the head and clearly outlines why Bush is wrong and he should be held accountable and be prosecuted for the criminal he is. In particular refering to the Conyer's report.
I highlight the last part which concludes....
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| We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal�known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child's tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues? |
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The Case for Impeachment
Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush
Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006. An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.
SourcesA country is not only what it does�it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates. �Kurt Tucholsky
On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form �a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.� Although buttressed two days previously by the news of the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance of the American citizenry, the request attracted little or no attention in the press�nothing on television or in the major papers, some scattered applause from the left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on the websites flying the flags of the militant right. The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind, and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess.
�To take away the excuse,� he said, �that we didn't know.� So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, �Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?� when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that �somehow it escaped our notice� that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.
A reason with which it was hard to argue but one that didn't account for the congressman's impatience. Why not wait for a showing of supportive public opinion, delay the motion to impeach until after next November's elections? Assuming that further investigation of the President's addiction to the uses of domestic espionage finds him nullifying the Fourth Amendment rights of a large number of his fellow Americans, the Democrats possibly could come up with enough votes, their own and a quorum of disenchanted Republicans, to send the man home to Texas. Conyers said:
�I don't think enough people know how much damage this administration can do to their civil liberties in a very short time. What would you have me do? Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done? At least I can muster the facts, establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news.�
Which turned out to be the purpose of his House Resolution 635�not a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers's staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses�government officials both extant and former, journalists, military officers, politicians, diplomats domestic and foreign�the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth.[1] The result has proved tragic, but on reading through the report's corroborating testimony I sometimes could counter its inducements to mute rage with the thought that if the would-be lords of the flies weren't in the business of killing people, they would be seen as a troupe of off-Broadway comedians in a third-rate theater of the absurd. Entitled �The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,� the Conyers report examines the administration's chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration's criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.
* * *
That President George W. Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. Pleased with the image of himself as a military hero, and having spoken, more than once, about seeking revenge on Saddam Hussein for the tyrant's alleged attempt to �kill my Dad,� he appoints to high office in his administration a cadre of warrior intellectuals, chief among them Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, known to be eager for the glories of imperial conquest.[2] At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad.[3] In March the Pentagon circulates a document entitled �Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts�; the supporting maps indicate the properties of interest to various European governments and American corporations. Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagon's western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings (the �best info fast...go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not�) that will justify an attack on Iraq. By chance the next day in the White House basement, Richard A. Clarke, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, encounters President Bush, who tells him to �see if Saddam did this.� Nine days later, at a private dinner upstairs in the White House, the President informs his guest, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that �when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.�
By November 13, 2001, the Taliban have been rousted out of Kabul in Afghanistan, but our intelligence agencies have yet to discover proofs of Saddam Hussein's acquaintance with Al Qaeda.[4] President Bush isn't convinced. On November 21, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he says to Secretary Rumsfeld, �What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?...I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.�
The Conyers report doesn't return to the President's focus on Iraq until March 2002, when it finds him peering into the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, to say, �*beep* Saddam. We're taking him out.� At a Senate Republican Policy lunch that same month on Capitol Hill, Vice President Dick Cheney informs the assembled company that it is no longer a question of if the United States will attack Iraq, it's only a question of when. The vice president doesn't bring up the question of why, the answer to which is a work in progress. By now the administration knows, or at least has reason to know, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, that Iraq doesn't possess weapons of mass destruction sufficiently ominous to warrant concern, that the regime destined to be changed poses no imminent threat, certainly not to the United States, probably not to any country defended by more than four batteries of light artillery. Such at least is the conclusion of the British intelligence agencies that can find no credible evidence to support the theory of Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda or international terrorism; �even the best survey of WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile and CW/BW weapons fronts...� A series of notes and memoranda passing back and forth between the British Cabinet Office in London and its correspondents in Washington during the spring and summer of 2002 address the problem of inventing a pretext for a war so fondly desired by the Bush Administration that Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI-6, finds the interested parties in Washington fixing �the intelligence and the facts...around the policy.� The American enthusiasm for regime change, �undimmed� in the mind of Condoleezza Rice, presents complications.
Although Blair has told Bush, probably in the autumn of 2001, that Britain will join the American military putsch in Iraq, he needs �legal justification� for the maneuver�something noble and inspiring to say to Parliament and the British public. No justification �currently exists.� Neither Britain nor the United States is being attacked by Iraq, which eliminates the excuse of self-defense; nor is the Iraqi government currently sponsoring a program of genocide. Which leaves as the only option the �wrong-footing� of Saddam. If under the auspices of the United Nations he can be presented with an ultimatum requiring him to show that Iraq possesses weapons that don't exist, his refusal to comply can be taken as proof that he does, in fact, possess such weapons.[5]
Over the next few months, while the British government continues to look for ways to �wrong-foot� Saddam and suborn the U.N., various operatives loyal to Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld bend to the task of fixing the facts, distributing alms to dubious Iraqi informants in return for map coordinates of Saddam's monstrous weapons, proofs of stored poisons, of mobile chemical laboratories, of unmanned vehicles capable of bringing missiles to Jerusalem.[6]
By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. Instructed to come up with awesome text and shocking images, the White House Iraq Group hits upon the phrase �mushroom cloud� and prepares a White Paper describing the �grave and gathering danger� posed by Iraq's nuclear arsenal.[7] The objective is three-fold�to magnify the fear of Saddam Hussein, to present President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who never in life would lead the country into an unjust war, and to provide a platform of star-spangled patriotism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections.[8]
* * *
The Conyers report doesn't lack for further instances of the administration's misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years�misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as �enemy combatants,� etc.�but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President's impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:59 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| We know Iraq had...chemical weapons because they [had already] used them against the Iranians and [because] the US [HAD] SOLD THEM TO THE IRAQIS!!!!!!!!! So the question was always whether...Iraq posed and [sic] imminante [sic] and direct threat ["clear and present danger"?] to the US, which they did not. But nice try. |
No it wasn't. Iraq was told to get rid of its WMD after the first Gulf War. Instead of transparently disarming they played catch-me-if-you-can with the inspections teams (when they allowed them in at all) for years on end until America's patience ran out.
War happened because Iraq refused to honour its agreements on WMD not because it posed a direct threat. |
That is correct, Urban Myth. Saddam used the threat of his possession of chemical weapons and their delivery systems in his foreign policy with Iran and with respect to his regime's security where the many dissident groups were concerned.
Not only did he wish to play cat-and-mouse with the UN inspectors. He also did not want his Iranian and domestic enemies to know he did not have any weapons of mass destruction.
But he also threatened Washington with these weapons, or at least Gordon and Trainor present the following exchange (among others) when Cheney travelled the Middle East before the war, securing allies and basing and transit rights...
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| During his trip, Cheney stopped in Yemen and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh at the Sanna airport. The Bush administration did not need Yemen for a war with Iraq; the subject was fighting terrorism. Saleh, who had close ties with Saddam, told Cheney that Saddam did not want to go to war but would use chemical weapons if attacked. Cheney did not blink. If Saddam used chemical weapons, then the Americans would deal with it. |
On the Vice-President's tour and this passage, see Cobra II, 38-43.
Also, CENTCOM (I assume it was the same for the British but have not looked into the question) not only feared and prepared for these attacks -- particularly with respect to their misinterpretation of a red-colored ring Saddam had drawn around Bagdad in a planning map CENTCOM somehow acquired. Franks's ground forces commander, McKiernan, was also tasked to gain control of all suspected command and control facilities after the regime fell so that these weapons might not fall into terrorist or rogue hands. Additionally, CENTCOM planned to film and immediately broadcast footage of these weapons, and tasked teams to indeed do this.
There is additional evidence, much of it presented in Cobra II, that supports the conclusion that the W. Bush Administration and CENCTCOM sincerely believed that Saddam possessed these weapons and threatened to use them.
The evidence is also clear, through more than ten years of cat-and-mouse games with the UN, that Saddam had no intention of openly disarming or cooperating with the UN.
He had a nuclear program on the shelf as well. He was biding his time to reactivate it.
Critics who refer to this, then, as "a lie," are wholly misinformed. It appears to have been a mistake, and, the administration's desire to start a war and its politicization of the intelligence process notwithstanding, an honest one at that. Perhaps the administration looked to hard. But perhaps Saddam encouraged it in its beliefs, too.
It is intriguing how many, if not all, exchanges on W. Bush's foreign policy -- and this thread treats events in Somalia and not the Iraqi War per se -- always arrive at the point where critics return to accusing the administration of having lied on the weapons of mass destruction allegation, as if this single incident somehow proves each and every point they wish to make, even in criticizing the administration's policies in other countries. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher,
You are not seeing much light from that hole you are in??? How can any person who can read a sentence and add 2+2, conclude that the Bush administration acted "sincerely"???
Of course you won't read the article posted above which outlines in general terms the vulgarity of Bush's own mouth and thoughts in office regarding "Iraq". Read the full report at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/finalreport.pdf
Hard hitting, inhouse information of what they knew and especially didn't know.....
It is accepted fact that the administration knew Saddam didn't even have a tin drum to beat on......... Also, even the U.N . chief weapons inspector Hans Blix , declared they didn't have WMD.
It was all decided beforehand and the evidence (cloudy, murky, suspect like the nuclear material in Sierra Leone) collected in pieces, as an afterthought.
Also, however much the tyrant/evil Saddam was -- he did allow inspections and really, the U.S.'s arguement came down to demanding Saddam/Iraq "produce weapons/chemicals he didn't have or be found guilty of hiding those weapons."...what a double attendre!!!!
PLease don't label this again -- antiAmericanism....It is about the truth. Something you won't swallow. Read the report or stay in your hole.
PS. It is not the lie that proves everything .........it is everything that proves THE LIE. You have your cart before the horse.
DD |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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The "report" you cite is merely partisan assertion, "backed up" by approximatley 1,000 references in the notes to other partisan or journalistic sources and allegations long available to the public.
Its authors, House Democratic staff members, in a pathetic attempt to enhance their relevance and credibility, package their document in the same style as the 9/11 Commission's report and attach the subtitle "Investigative Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff," apparently believing that many readers, perhaps not unlike yourself, might fail to notice that these merely represent the views of one faction in the Democratic Party -- and not even the mainstream Democratic view at that.
These House Democrats and their staff lawyers and investigators did not conduct an official, Congressionally-mandated investigation. The "report's" notes show that they had no power to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, or demand the production of any documents. Their "report" is also not signed in the usual way by the bipartisan committee members who would have overseen an actual investigation. (See, for example, the signature pages and the Church Committee interim reports, available on the net.) It is simply a Democratic attack on the Republican-controlled govt -- and its tone, content, and "recommendations" are hardly surprising.
So again, this is mere partisan assertion, and of little value as an "invesigative report." I could get the same thing at Michael Moore's website, or, indeed, from any collection of news accounts and other secondary sources -- like Woodward or Packard's book, for example.
It may appeal to your ideological leanings and anti-U.S. worldview. And that is fine. But you speak of living in a hole. The problem with this, of course, is that you are consumed by a bitter and cynical anti-U.S. ideology and are unwilling to consider anything but the "evidence" that you think confirms your preexisting beliefs and you think undermines alternative views.
In any case, please let me know when you have something worthy of our time on this board. The "report" you offer is useless. And this is not about "Truth," as you allege above, inasmuch as it is about the axe you are grinding against W. Bush and the entire U.S. political system.
By the way, do you have any new information to share with us on Somalia, or are you merely taking advantage of yet another opportunity to call the President a liar? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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As I have previously argued, if we start looking at Somali ground conditions, then we can learn something about what is going on there -- and this goes for other African nation-states as well...
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| A Washington Post reporter has found that Somali women were instrumental in the recent takeover of the country's capital, Mogadishu, by Islamist militias. Host Debbie Elliott talks to the reporter, Craig Timberg. |
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5494357 |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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| It may appeal to your ideological leanings and anti-U.S. worldview. And that is fine. But you speak of living in a hole. The problem with this, of course, is that you are consumed by a bitter and cynical anti-U.S. ideology and are unwilling to consider anything but the "evidence" that you think confirms your preexisting beliefs and you think undermines alternative views. |
A truth is a truth is a truth and those thousands of "assertions" equal an unequivicably dirty rotten pudding. Colin Powell lied so pressured, even the CIA, gave indications of positively NO WMD. Iraq was cooperating with weapons inspectors. The white house planted false information, channeled dirty money, kept building a "story line", paid for and planted false stories in the press, lied to Congress, never revealed crucial information pre election so the American people could make a democratic decision (like keeping Iraqi defector info. under wraps and their credible denials of NO WEAPONS of mass destruction and a dishevelled military.
If it smells like a pig, walks like a pig, eats like a pig and roots like a pig - it is a pig. Doesn't matter what vantage point you are looking from.
Fact is, if you read the FACTS of the report, there is no other conclusion but that of guilt.
All the government's arguements are much in the vein of Rumsfeld saying their must have been WMD because , "why would the boys wear chemical gear into battle then???"........... childish, idiotic logic and fandango.......
I don't see the report as useless , rather I see the report as AMERICAN. What it used to mean to be an American until everyone started with the McCarthyism, spinnnnnnning , with us , against us BS. I take offense at you saying this is just partisanship or that anyone including all these Senators are just "having an axe to grind". There are too many lies, too much death and too much unAmericanism by Bush and party to just stand there and let labels be attached. You are the unAmerican one sir, just blindly following the head of state --- how UNAMERICAN, to keep your hole in the ground and not ride free across the land that is truth and which truth built.
Keep on prattling but I will call a pig a pig and a good man a good man...
DD
PS> the report contains facts, whatever the messenger. (and do you think the Republicans themselves would offer the critique....haha....). |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:08 pm Post subject: |
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Unfortunately, your discourse has degenerated into a rambling diatribe. You refer to "these Senators" but the "report" you cite was produced by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee, or the Democratic Party's spin doctors, if you will, and, as far as I am aware, no Senators have accepted its "findings" (certainly no leading Democratic Senators have not; and I saw Kerry reject the assertion that W. Bush "lied" on Wolf Blitzer several months ago). It might benefit you to actually take some time and look into how the U.S. political system operates before attacking it so bitterly.
In any case, here are a few facts that may interest you:
Although very much opposed to the war, the German govt helped enable it. German troops performed security and custodial duties at U.S. military bases after American troops were mobilized; German naval assets guarded the Sea Lines of Communication at and around the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, thus enabling U.S. warships to focus on the Gulf; the German military also transferred Patriot antimissile batteries to Turkey.
Most importantly, the Germans dispatched a chemical and biological weapons detection and clean-up team to Camp Doha, McKiernan's Kuwaiti-based command post.
The German govt made the specious distinction that this was for defensive and not offensive, wartime purposes. And that is certainly the Germans' prerogative. But why do you think they would mobilize such a team? To help the W. Bush Adminstration's war efforts? Do you consider this a likely scenario?
Also, if you recall the first day of the war, the U.S. received unexpected intelligence that Saddam and his two sons were hiding in a command post at Dora Farms. CENTCOM struck, devastating the target, but missing Saddam. The intelligence was inaccurate.
Saddam retaliated the same day. He fired a Seersucker surface-to-ship cruise missile aimed at, but missing the Marine Expeditionary Force's base camp. He also fired Ababil-100 surface-to-surface missiles at the 101st Airborne's staging area and at Camp Doha. U.S. forces immediately reacted, up to and including McKiernan and his staff, by adopting an increased MOPP level.
"MOPP," as I am sure you know, refers to Mission-Oriented Protective Posture, and is adopted to survive a suspected chemical weapons attack (there is no defense against a biological weapons attack).
This shows that the ground commander and everyone beneath him believed Saddam had chemical weapons and was intent on using them.
And if you are so intent on focusing on W. Bush, his cabinet, and their beliefs, on the eve of the war, please do not forget that, according to Gordon and Trainor, W. Bush, through Rumsfeld, passed this word down the chain of command to the Pentagon's public affairs officer...
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| ...the President...wanted the military to facilitate three types of news reports: of Iraqis celebrating the arrival of the victorious American troops, of allied shipments of humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi population, and of the newly discovered arsenals of WMD...Bush was convinced that grateful Iraqis and disclosed WMD would provide the White House with the ultimate photo op... |
Cobra II, 168.
I dare suggest that the President and Rumsfeld tasked military assets (and there was a team assigned to secure these sites) to this mission, on the ground in Iraq, and in the Pentagon's public affairs division, because they sincerely believed -- a politicized intelligence process or not -- that these sites indeed existed.
At least that is what Richard N. Perle seemed to indicate when he told Wall Street supporters: "There is no question that we will find weapons of mass destruction."
Ibid., 169.
Of course, we have all learned that these beliefs were wrong, and the intelligence process politicized. But not all of this was clear to W. Bush and his cabinet in the months before the war. They were bad leaders, bad managers, and negligent warplanners. They were not, however, "liars."
You claim that you are interested in data and the truths they project. But you seem both misinformed and consumed by your own anti-W. Bush and anti-U.S. worldviews. Moreover, you have no information at all to contribute to this thread, which treats Somali affairs.
And, in the end, you show no indication that you have seen any data at all -- only fiery partisan assertions, which you take at face value and mindlessly parrot here on this board. You are not helping us see new things here. You do not like the U.S. political system; you think W. Bush is a "liar." But we have heard this very emotionally-driven rambling from many here already. What else have you got to say? |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher,
I'll end this useless arguement. For you , the moon is still made of cheese, just because we can't stand on it......Here are the senators, among many who backed the report. Pasted below.
Also, let's talk just briefly about what constitutes a "lie". Bush lied that he / his team were not decided about the war in the fall of 2002. Over and out, all the evidence in on that one, including his own reported foul language of "*beep* Saddam, we're taking him out" that early winter. I spent too much of my life, hearing this same vulgar, neolithic talk from E.European tyrants (Kuchma first and foremost) to not recognize blind power and war for war's sake.
I stick by the points below as crimes, high crimes, lies and deceits. People die over this stuff , even though you are so concerned about semantic notions of who said what in what intelligence office.....And let's not talk about the feeding frenzy to his buddies through military contracts and all the waste, while Americans can't even afford to go to a dentist.....
PS. We agree about the German military -- a sidebar...
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1. secretly decided to go to war;
2. decided to deceive and mislead the Congress and the American people with false claims about both weapons of mass destruction and ties between Saddam Hussein and 9-11;
3. secretly diverted $700 million from the War in Afghanistan and started bombing Iraq to provoke a war;
4. agreed to go to the UN only to "legalize" an illegal invasion - and then walked out of the U.N. when inspections worked.
Items 2 and 3 are both impeachable offenses. The Bush Administration's conspiracy to deceive Congress culminated in a fraudulent letter to Congress on March 18, 2003, claiming continued U.N. inspections would endanger the national security of the United States.
This fraud violated the federal anti-conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. � 371, which makes it a felony "to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose..."; and The False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. � 1001, which makes it a felony to issue knowingly and willfully false statements to the United States Congress.
President Bush did not declare war until March 2003. Congress did not authorize military action until October 11, 2002. But Bush began an air war six weeks before that authorization and increased "spikes of activity" five months before. This means that additional communications to Congress from the President, claiming that he had not yet begun the war, may be felonious, and that Bush violated the Constitutional requirement that Congress authorize any war.
These criminal actions constitute High Crimes under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution: "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." |
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Senator Kerry (D - MA) sends letter to Senate Intelligence Committee pressing for answers on the Downing Street Memo and other Downing documents. The letter leaked to Raw Story, is also signed by Senators Johnson, Corzine, Reed, Lautenberg, Boxer, Kennedy, Harkin, Bingaman, and Durbin. The text of the letter is below.
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June 22, 2005
The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman
The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV, Vice Chairman
United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
SH-211
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller:
We write concerning your committee's vital examination of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures. In particular, we urge you to accelerate to completion the work of the so-called "Phase II" effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence they received.
Last year your committee completed the first phase of a two-phased effort to review the pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Phase I-begun in the summer of 2003 and completed in the summer of 2004-examined the performance of the American intelligence community in the collection and analysis of intelligence prior to the war, including an examination of the quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorist groups. At the conclusion of Phase I, your committee issued an unclassified report that made an important contribution to the American public's understanding of the issues involved.
In February 2004-well over a year ago-the committee agreed to expand the scope of inquiry to include a second phase which would examine the use of intelligence by policy makers, the comparison of pre-war assessments and post-war findings, the activities of the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress.
The committee's efforts have taken on renewed urgency given recent revelations in the United Kingdom regarding the apparent minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security advisors. These minutes-known as the "Downing Street Memo"-raise troubling questions about the use of intelligence by American policy makers-questions that your committee is uniquely situated to address.
The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."
The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.
These issues need to be addressed with urgency. This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea. In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.
We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 1:22 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| We know Iraq had some sort of chemical weapons because they used them against the Iranians and the US SOLD THEM TO THE IRAQIS!!!!!!!!! So the question was always whether or not Iraq posed and imminante and direct threat to the US, which they did not. But nice try. |
No it wasn't. Iraq was told to get rid of its WMD after the first Gulf War. Instead of transparently disarming they played catch-me-if-you-can with the inspections teams (when they allowed them in at all) for years on end until America's patience ran out.
War happened because Iraq refused to honour its agreements on WMD not because it posed a direct threat. |
So, after *years* of cat-and-mouse, when the inspectors are literally just a few *months* away from final confirmation that there were not any longer any WMDs in Iraq.... THAT was the time to attack?
The lives of more than 2500 Americans, I don't know how many other "coalition of the willing" deaths, and literally tens of thusands of Iraqi deaths were worth less than three months of weapons inspections? I mean, Saddam i still alive, OBL is still alive. But all those innocents are not.
This must be the "new" math, 'cause I sure as hell don't get it. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:33 am Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
(1) It is accepted fact that the administration knew Saddam didn't even have a tin drum to beat on......... (2) Also, even the U.N . chief weapons inspector Hans Blix , declared they didn't have WMD.
DD |
1. Funny how TIME, Newsweek and The Economist all disagree with that.
2. No he didn't. He said that he couldn't confirm for sure and that there were substantial omissions in the Iraqis lists of destroyed WMD. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 6:38 am Post subject: |
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| EFLtrainer wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| We know Iraq had some sort of chemical weapons because they used them against the Iranians and the US SOLD THEM TO THE IRAQIS!!!!!!!!! So the question was always whether or not Iraq posed and imminante and direct threat to the US, which they did not. But nice try. |
No it wasn't. Iraq was told to get rid of its WMD after the first Gulf War. Instead of transparently disarming they played catch-me-if-you-can with the inspections teams (when they allowed them in at all) for years on end until America's patience ran out.
War happened because Iraq refused to honour its agreements on WMD not because it posed a direct threat. |
So, after *years* of cat-and-mouse, when the inspectors are literally just a few *months* away from final confirmation that there were not any longer any WMDs in Iraq.... THAT was the time to attack?
The lives of more than 2500 Americans, I don't know how many other "coalition of the willing" deaths, and literally tens of thusands of Iraqi deaths were worth less than three months of weapons inspections? I mean, Saddam i still alive, OBL is still alive. But all those innocents are not.
This must be the "new" math, 'cause I sure as hell don't get it. |
So if the inspectors had been allowed to complete their job and then left, that would have somehow stopped Saddam from REBUILDING his programs? Remember if there were no WMD then there would be no reason for sanctions. And with no sanctions it would be even easier for Saddam to rebuild his arsenal. Maybe instead of Iran, we would be dealing with a nuclear-armed Iraq by now as well?
We had to take Saddam out. Sure he may not have had WMD (he appears to have sent them across the border into Syria..maybe into Libya.)
What would have stopped him from restarting his WMD programs at a later date, once the UN inspectors had given him a clean bill of health and international attention was elsewhere? Nothing. And that is (I think) why Bush was determined to go to war. Because Saddam was a loose cannon and he couldn't be trusted.
Last edited by TheUrbanMyth on Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:31 am; edited 2 times in total |
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