|
I'm not getting this streaming very good on my shitty spare CPU (since my other one's down for repairs), so I don't know what is being said on the program. Let me venture a guess, however, and see if I'm correct -
Is this perhaps a collection of quotes or something along those lines of Dems. who also felt Saddam was a threat and needed to be dealt with too?
If so, I happily concede such a point. I've got no problems with that at all. Take Bill Clinton, for example - numerous times has he mentioned the threat of Saddam and how he had to be dealt with. Numerous times has many Dems. stated the very same thing about Saddam in the late '90's and early 2000's about Saddam. Fine, I certainly concede that.
But who decided to invade?
Who had the opportunity to fully examine all the evidence presented for or against the case to sell to the public? And who presented this evidence to the public?
Was that Bill Clinton?
Now let me be clear on something - I would have happily taken Bill's ass to the woodshed if he went to war in the exact same manner as George did. I'd be just as fucking pissed as hell to see all the counterevidence against the case of Saddam possessing WMDs and nuke capabilities no matter who sits in the office. You have to keep in mind something here - many of us Dems. including myself were behind this president to go to war with Iraq at first because we TRUSTED him. We trusted that the intelligence he was using was correct, and that there was no other intelligence that might weaken his case. We trusted that all was under control with Al Qaeda and bin Laden, and that our troops were actively hunting him down rather than giving such powers to paid off corrupt drug warlords in Afghanistan.
Neither was true.
I happily accept the fact that our intelligence gathering during the 90's had fallen to the wayside. Much of that had to do with HOW we were gathering intelligence, which the 9/1 report lays this out pretty well. After the Cold War, our intelligence gathering more or less took a backseat as we relied less and less on spies on the ground and more on satellite photos and second hand information. If you want to lay that on the feet of Clinton, fine, but make sure you also lay it on the feet of your former Republican President Bush Sr., whom Clinton was more or less following his script of downsizing.
Things, however, are coming out that are clearly showing just how correct Hersh's Stovepipe article truly is:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact
This war was made as a selling point by a group of slimy salesmen:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...sion=6.0.8.1024
Now I've gone into detail before as to all the counterevidence against this Administration's selling points on the war, but the bottom line is this and it's quite inescapable:
This Administration had information that was not passed down to Congress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/11/iraq-intel/
Things that were mentioned as selling points were more or less summaries without the caveats and descriptors that clearly showed such "firm" evidence against Saddam was not so firm. And here's a kicker that you Republicans can never escape from. Actually it's two kickers:
1. The claim of the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam (and ultimately 9/11).
2. The absolute idiocy in post-war planning.
You boys own those two points all on your own. And for #1, combined with the possibility that Saddam had possible nuke capabilities, you guys got yurselves a purty little war, didn't cha?
So yes, in particular Bush is lying through his fucking teeth, especially when the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam was dubious as fuck to begin with, yet the President and his Administration KNEW this beforehand and said it anyway:
| quote: | The intelligence report from February 2002 said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making allegations about Iraqi support for al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.
.....Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...MNGLTFJRLA1.DTL |
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005...in1041302.shtml
The only way you could possibly undercut this is to say that he simply didn't know about it.
And I counter that your president is that fucking stupid enough NOT to know this intelligence handed to him in his lap? Talk about incompetence.
But I don't believe that, and I'd venture to guess deep down neither do you. And just this morning, we see this in the LATimes:
| quote: | The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.
According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.
Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.
"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...-home-headlines |
So yes, he's lying. As for the Dems. and others who didn't have all the evidence presented to them in full, I can't speak for them. They'll have to stand up for themselves, something which admittedly many of them have difficulties doing.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
|