Slashdot Mirror
White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
An anonymous reader writes "This New York Times article reports that in 2002, the Bush Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program were based on evidence that was doubted by the government's foremost nuclear security experts. Specifically, aluminum tubes most likely meant for small artillery rockets were interpreted by the administration as parts for uranium centrifuges." In a nutshell: while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges.
Politicians? Lying??
Bullshit.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
"Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States."
So where are those tubes now Dick?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People
... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
by John Hawkins
Since we haven't found WMD in Iraq, a lot of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd is saying that the Bush administration lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Well, if they're going to claim that the Bush administration lied, then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same "lies" since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples that prove that the Bush administration didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction...
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
"Saddam's goal
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may l
Does this extend to the President?
The same question dogged Nixon to resign.
Seastead this.
I keep reading stories like this, hoping the American public will finally "get it". But it never happens. Richard Clarke, the 9/11 commision, Abu Ghraib, whatever. If it's not there kid in Iraq, they don't care. We just need to face it: about 45% of this country is going to support Bush no matter what. I'm not saying people should switch to Kerry, but if you still support Bush at this point, you must have constructed a very elaborate little fantasy world in your head.
The saddest part is that there is a very high chance you guys will have this team back in business (?) again for the next four years. I read the transcript of that debate last week and it amazes me that GWBush still has the balls to stand in front of people and talk about it when he managed to bomb the f#@$ out of a country for no rhyme or reason. Damn shame.
Free XBox, PS2
Weren't some of the news channels telling us that before hand or am I the only person that remembers history? I feel like we're living in the world of 1984.
I intentionally gave party members syphilis, et all.
The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence.
This was a case study in lying and having the fucking people fall for it because we were told to have faith in the leaders of our country or be labeled unpatriotic.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes' suitability for centrifuges.
Perhaps this is partially why the administration originally claimed that Hussein was not a credible threat to the United States?
One senior official at the agency said its "fundamental approach" was to tell policy makers about dissenting views. Another senior official acknowledged that some of their agency's reports "weren't as well caveated as, in retrospect, they should have been." But he added, "There was certainly nothing that was hidden."
Let's not fuck around here. It's called making the viewpoint you want noticed more apparent than those you don't regardless of whether or not it's true... This is what any good position paper should do.
"Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."
Sounds like exactly what the United States ended up doing. It decided it was right and it had the power to make sure it got what it wanted out of the deal. Notice the reference to oil... Not to the safety of the United States' populace. Oil. Cute.
I don't get it... How is this news for nerds? In light of all the other political blather going around, it isn't news that matters, either. Can we stop the political BS and just get back to the nerdy stuff?
Slashdot, let's not try to be a site you're not. Let's leave the political discourse to the other sites and leave it out of here. Please!!
If y'all would tone down the rhetoric, you would have Bush out of office, but instead you use inflammatory terms like the headline here. You wind up turning off the undecideds/moderates out there with the over-the-top Bush bashing.
What concerns me most is the ability of this administration (or the potential of any future ones) to pull a veil over the collective US public to go to war against an enemy that was a perceived threat, not a real one. What worries me most is that this could very well happen again, if we let this one slide. That in the future, a Republican or democrat white house could choose to shift its focus on a nation that it deems to be evil and take its own young men and women in to a hail of bullets and ill will.
Bush was brilliant or clueless enough to have his administration divert the public's gaze from Afghanistan or Iraq, forcibly or otherwise and even the critics in the media remained largely silent over the unjust war the country was being dragged in to. The esteemed Bob woodward said it himself that he finds himself guilty of ignoring stories that were of relevance, that could have proven to the public time and again that this war was being fought in the name of lies, that this was an unjust war. But men, who shirked their duties when their country asked of them to fight, chose to send young men and women in to harms way.
It were a crime then to question the legality of this war, it was unpatriotic to do so, it was simply wrong to doubt on the ability of our Commander in Chief, who chose to surround himself with yes men instead of criticism, like a clueless King who was fed what he needed to know by his courtiers, and never the truth.
It happened once, and it will happen again. And its a shame that it does, in this age when media remains omnipotent, the public has access to information of any nature, that a group of men and women could pull a veil over our collective judgement and lead many a mother's kid in to a nation in peril and a war that never end.
Rapid Nirvana
"Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges."
Not that I buy it, but the claim the Bush administration is going to be making (and this is covered in the article) is that the CIA didn't highlight or even mention the debate going on in the intelligence community over the use of these aluminum tubes. Condoleeza Rice appeared on a lot of Sunday shows today (I saw the CNN one) claiming that back when she claimed that the tubes could "only really be used for nuclear weapons", she knew of the debate but thought it was a marginalized dissent and that the overwhelming consensus in the intelligence community was that these tubes were to be used for nukes.
Of course, the response to these claims is: you couldn't have afford to have just based your information on the CIA briefings. If you're leading the nation to war, call in the advice of every relevant department and organization. The path to war shouldn't be a light one. And of course, since the nuclear issue was one of the major ones that drove us to war, supposedly, then the Energy Department clearly should have been consulted. And their overwhelming views were that the tubes were to be used for rockets.
Two points that are interesting in this article (that deserve a read)...
#1: The fact that the CIA endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the aluminum tube evidence, knowing the yellowcake evidence was bullshit. Meanwhile, the Energy Department endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the yellowcake evidence, knowing the aluminum tube evidence was bullshit. And yet, this was just read as a double endorsement.
#2: Dick Cheney's roll throughout all this (the fact that he was basically demanding evidence before any surfaced, or at least any that he was aware of).
You COULD be a terrorist. I think we should lock you up just in case. We'll let you out when the War on Terror is over.
Or not...
The failure of Congress to voice even token dissent on every foreign policy decision since 9/11 is the biggest failure of the entire system in my view. Every Congresscritter should be voted out of office and barred from even running for town dogcatcher for the rest of their miserable lives.
Half the country knows George Bush and Co. are a bunch of half-wits with their own agendas, but we deserve better from Congress. That they chose to goosestep to the White House's tune with nary a word of protest is unforgiveable.
but i also always thought their trumped up reason was laughable
couldn't the administration had just said "look, we should have killed this snake saddam in 1991, but we couldn't deal with a lot of body bags then. we now know a basket case of a middle east is bad for the us, and so we can stomach the body bags, because it's better a couple hundred dead servicemen in iraq than a couple hundred thousand dead civilians in washington dc. osama is not a cause, he's a symptom. and the cause is a f**ked up middle east. so to war with iraq we go, to begin the the process of fixing the middle east. because september 11th shows that the middle east will export its problems to us, so it is our responsibility to fix the middle east, whether we deserve it or not."
and i fear it's tehran, here we come, and a draft, in 2005. because i don't know about you, but i don't trust those mullahs with nukes, and i know for certain the neocons, or even the dems, don't either.
i just hope that when we go to iran, they level with the us citizen, rather than play let's make up a stupid excuse.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Michael: When you rip off posts from Drudgereport.com, The New Scientist and other well-read sites, make sure you follow the thread through to the point where they explain that the story was nothing more than a political hit piece.
For instance, check out an earlier NY Times piece that actually reinforces the administration's position. Or you could review that this hit piece was to be joined by CBS News in another attempted effort to push fraudulant information and sucker all the sheep out there.
Or should we expect a post from you about "critical national guard documents damage Bush" and experience a deja vu Slashdot experience?
Slashdot readers - you too can read it before Michael (or some alleged anonymous reader, just like the CBS anonymous sources) reads it and makes up a libelous headline damaging Slashdot credibility and objectivity:
Drudge Report
The New Scientist
and other excellent critical reads include:
Power Line
Weekly Standard
Little Green Footballs
Oh... I should warn you - if you're determined to vote for Kerry in spite of everything, do NOT go to the any of the above sites. It'll destroy any opportunity for ignorance you might have.
The statement, if true, doesn't scream bias. It sounds like a fact, which like most fact seems either refutable, or true.
Feel free to refute it and show how it's false, but on the fact of it, just because a fact helps one side more than another doesn't mean that it's automatically bias.
Oh wait, presidents can only be impeached for lying about their personal life, not for something that actually affects the American people.
And when the plan entails thousands of US casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, do you call that "caution?"
I've heard this said many, many times, and while it may be technically true, that doesn't mean we were justified to go to WAR because of it.
War is a failure, it's not a success. It's not something we should be looking for excuses to get into, it's something we should be looking for excuses NOT to get into.
War is what you do when all other options have been exhausted, and we clearly hadn't exhausted all of our options.
Regardless of whether you think it is right or wrong to go to war, ie whether or not we had a casus bella against him that would stand up in a court of law, it is, in my oppinion, bad policy to risk so many of your own lives, and kill so many of their people, just because you are legally allowed to and pretty fed up. If your experts aren't giving you real data that says yes, in all likelihood this country is producing weapons of mass destruction, and is likely to use it, it's just not worth it. It is particularly not worth it if all the experts are saying the likely result is chaos which is not beneficial to U.S. interests. The problem with the Bush administration's approach is that they basically were looking, from day 1, for a way to justify attacking Iraq. What they then did was latch on to any flimsy excuse. The result isn't that pretty, but regardless of the result, it was wrong to risk U.S. lives, and Iraqi lives, on flimsy evidence that you knew to be flimsy and probably inaccurate. They payoff that was expected to off-balance those risks has yet to come, and it looks like it probably won't.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
If by "Flip-Flop" you mean "Being able to change his opinions based on new information", sure.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Easy to say when it's not your country that was invaded. Easy to say when it's thousands of non-American civilians that are paying the price.
Why don't you prove that YOU don't have weapons. Let us know how that goes. Good luck!
BTW, if you can prove a negative, please let the world know. It will be a great advance.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Even if that gives us the right to invade Iraq, the question is, was it in our best interest?
"Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions."
If this were a surprise, it might matter more. However, I have trouble believing that an intelligent person can believe most of the things the Bush administration says. I do not think this will hurt Bush because his supporters are completely uninterested in knowing the truth.
Do you remember the cost estimates of the Republician Drug Plan? (e.g. here, here).
What about WMD?
Do you believe him when he talks about how much better is the economy?
Did you believe Bush or Greenspan when they talked about the need for tax reductions because the federal government was going to have too large a surplus?
"But continuing to run surpluses beyond the point at which we reach zero or near-zero federal debt brings to center stage the critical longer-term fiscal policy issue of whether the federal government should accumulate large quantities of private (more technically nonfederal) assets. At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. This development should factor materially into the policies you and the Administration choose to pursue.
"I believe, as I have noted in the past, that the federal government should eschew private asset accumulation because it would be exceptionally difficult to insulate the government's investment decisions from political pressures. Thus, over time, having the federal government hold significant amounts of private assets would risk sub-optimal performance by our capital markets, diminished economic efficiency, and lower overall standards of living than would be achieved otherwise.
"Short of an extraordinarily rapid and highly undesirable short-term dissipation of unified surpluses or a transferring of assets to individual privatized accounts, it appears difficult to avoid at least some accumulation of private assets by the government." (From here)
When I hear Bush or his crew talk, I know that the truth is the exact opposite of their opinion.
Iraq was a hotbed of terrorists before we invaded? NO!
Iraq is now a hotbed for terrorists because Bush invaded? YES!
Did Bush look like a "little boy" who did not really belong in that first debate?
when we let Saddam off the hook in '91, one of the conditions was that he would have to prove that he had no weapons.
How do you prove that something doesn't exist?
You can't take the sky from me...
as the NY Times article points out, similar quality aluminum is found in tin cans and other commercial products. And the same material (with similar specs) was used to make rockets for the US Military.
If you RTFA it's very clear that the tubes would be completely useless in a nuclear program. And that the specs were consistent with the Iraqi army's requirements for these rockets.
And, as the article shows, all this was known to the current administration months before the Iraq war began.
Great reporting by the Times. Very eye-opening.
So the argument that Sadam was developing nuclear weapons was based on the discredited Yellowcake report from Niger. And on these aluminum tubes. Both of which were known to be suspect before the war began.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
First of all, since only about 50% of the population will vote, it's only about half of that 45% who will be voting for Bush. Basically, one-quarter of the country falls into this category, and one-quarter into the Kerry camp, and one-half in the Who Knows? category. OK, with that out of the way, let's play devil's advocate and speculate on why those people will vote for Bush despite what you say:
Liberal Attacks: "Yeah sure, figures it's in the New York Times, that bastion of liberal thought. Let me check Fox News to get the real story. Heh, just as I thought, they don't even mention it, must not be true. Just more liberal lies."
Patterns of Birth: "I was born Republican, my pappy was Republican, his pappy was too, and I'm gonna die Republican."
One-Issue Paramount: "I wish Bush would be more forthcoming about these things, but hey, he's going to (fight abortion / put conservatives on the Supreme Court / fight for school prayer / put tax money in my pocket / keep them liberals away from my wallet / keep America safe)."
Shared Beliefs: "We got ourselves a born-again Christian in the White House, and by God, we've got to keep him there!"
Shared Geography: "He's from Texas! Not like them panty-waists from Taxachusetts."
Rambo Syndrome: "He got tough with them terrorists, and he's gonna keep getting tough, and that's the way I like it!"
How do you reason with such persons? Basically, you don't. If they want to microfocus on one particular issue, ain't nothing you can say to negate it. Just remember, it's really only 25% of the country.
I think the point is that this is another indication of this administration's willful disregard for advice and information from the scientific community if it conflicts with their agenda. If that isn't news for nerds (or news that should worry nerds) then I don't know what is.
Iraq, North Korea, China, India, Wales, etc, actually any country, has a right and a duty to defend itself. If the US and other countries have nukes, then every sovereign nation on the planet has the duty to defend itself with similar force.
GWB can rebut any statement by just saying the same simplistic catch phrases that cite only the successes in Iraq. For better or worse, Bush really knows his constituency. People can take "Saddam is in jail" to the polls, but not the three-paragraph (well reasoned or not) statements Kerry makes about why he thought Saddam was a threat but would have relied on inspectors using war as a last resort with a larger coalition of nations, etc.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
I don't know about liberal eyes, (or even what a liberal is exactly), and I don't know about aluminum tubes either. But I do know that anybody who claims that the Bush government doesn't lie and manipulate on a regular basis is not in the business of viewing the world at all.
-FL
What the hell are you talking about? They threatened to fire the Medicare auditor if he told anyone their actual estimated cost, because it exceeded Congressmembers' upper tolerance of $400B by at least 10%, now nearing 50%, before the program is even fully underway. This is the truth, and your tired denial with "liberal" as a smokescreen is sleazy. How do you like Representative Tom DeLay's criminal inducements to his fellow Republican, to vote for the bill in exchange for DeLay backing the reluctant Rep's son's campaign? Your own words apply only to the extent of not believing your Slashdot posts: they're part of the pack of lies destroying this country. Happy?
--
make install -not war
"Great thing about politicians, though, you can always tell when they're lying: their lips move."
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Oh you mean the same NY Times we trust to report the made up news...excuse....news.
j m2 0040629.shtml
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/joelmowbray/
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Well since I'm a citizen of the United States, I'm only able to hold my own government accountable directly. When our vice president says "There is no doubt that Iraq has reconsitituted it's nuclear weapons program", he has made a very strong statement.
It is our governments job to guide the country. When they are guiding the country into an unpopular direction, they need to justify this. I think it is irresponsable to make statements like the one above when there is in fact much doubt.
Lied is a bit strong, but I believe misled is an understatement. It's only right to hold our leadership accountable.
-- john
Unless there was some reason to believe that he did have weapons, there was no reason not to simply continue with the inspections. Anyone with any sense knew this at the time -- why do you think Powell tried so hard to convince the UN that Saddam really did have WMD?
Even if you feel that at some point something had to be done, why that particular point, if there was no evidence of WMD? And why this particular action -- even if something had to be done, why did that "something" have to be invading and taking over the country?
More importantly, this is no excuse to lie to the American people. If the war was justified regardless of whether Saddam was building nukes, why not just say that? Why lie to us about it?
The answer, of course, is that the American people would never have accepted going to war unless they felt threatened. So basically, Bush tricked us into going to war, and now he wants us to be OK with that because he thinks the war was justified anyway. That just doesn't work for me, and I think a lot of the American people feel the same way.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I hope you get to attend a university someday. You might learn to do some research and have informed opinions. (OK, I think you do not have the ability to think critically; I hope I am wrong.)
We forced the inspectors to leave. We (i.e. Bush) decided that the inspectors' mission had failed and offered as evidence a pack of lies.
"we tried that for OVER A DECADE and it wasn't working"
Did we find any WMDs? NO! This sounds like success to me. How to justify this comment ("it wasn't working") of yours?
Is there even one honest bone in your body? Are you just a political hack?
How do I prove I don't have something? Especially if you are convinced that I do? It is easy to prove I have something, I can show it to you. But to prove I don't have it I... show you nothing? But then you say it is over there. So I show you there is nothing over here and you say that I moved it over there. Of course, by the time we are able to check, you say I've moved it somewhere else.
However, getting away from the philosophical and theoretical prove, I am pretty sure that was never a condition to begin with. He had to agree not to develop weapons of mass destruction and allow inspectors to look around to verify that he wasn't. While we can't prove somebody doesn't have WMD, we can be reasonably certain they don't because the development of all them leaves chemical traces behind that can be detected long after they've left. Which is why an inspection regime can work.
The ball was in Saddam's court.
No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere. We gave them the locations of where we thought they were producing WMDs and they all turned out completely wrong. We kicked the weapons inspectors out so that we could bomb Iraq.
Considering the utter shit that Michael's been approving lately, I'd just about decided to kill the bookmark to the site and go my merry way.
/. Preferences
Then I remembered that you *can* exclude stories posted by any of the Slashdot supermods, or whatever the hell you call them. Just go to:
Click on the tab titled "Homepage," then under "Exclude Stories From the Homepage" locate the author you don't want to see again (in this case Michael) and check the box.
Now, the suggestion to Slashdot coders: Why not create a special section called "Ignore shitty articles by Michael?" After all, it's not that I want to exclude stories as much as I don't like my time wasted by a jackass like him.
I read this story Saturday evening and the tubes that Iraq was shopping for were of a much greater tolerance than needed for their small artilery rockets.
Wrong wrong wrong WRONG!!!!
From the story:
To sum up: a low-level analyst found an old centrifuge design that he thought the Iraqis were copying. He ignored the fact that the tubes were an exact match of rockets the Iraqis used earlier, and didn't even bother to ask the inventor of the original centrifuge whether or not the tubes could be used in that centrifuge.
End of story, WRT the "much greater tolerance" line.
-jdm
The problem with this whole post is this: Just because I disagree with Bush out of doesn't mean that I like the Democrats. I dislike both parties. They're both up to their ears in risky foreign policy that earns us the hate of the rest of the world. How many dictators (including Saddam) have the Democrats and Republicans installed over the years? Remind me why they supported (or orchestrated) the destruction of several democratic governments in the Americas alone?
It's time to get rid of both of our main parties.
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)
First three docs:
Iraq Oil Map.PDF
Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF
Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF
So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.
But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.
If I were President, on September 12, 2001 I would have announced two new programs:
To my mind, the best way to lower the threat level of the Middle East is to stop giving it our money. Let Europe buy their oil and become entangled in their affairs. We don't need it.
Of course, I have a libertarian view of foreign policy: Peaceful co-existance without any of the turn-the-other-cheek stuff. Don't fight unless you have to, but be sure that when you do fight, you minimize the probability of your adversary attacking you again.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
OK, so Jayson Blair pulled the wool over their eyes, and they took a credibility hit. But with regard to the Bush White House, the only thing the NYT admitted to doing wrong is saying that they didn't question the Administration enough before going to war.
That's right. They retracted agreeing with the President.
Oops.
Enough with this "The NYT and Washington Post are dirty liberal rags that print 'news' that is actually lies!" BS.
-jdm
I think this weapons technology sale to China in the mid-90's is the sale in question.
Much of the evidence presented as "proof" had been discredited before the President's State of the Union address that presented the evidence as unequivocable. The yellow-cake evidence had already been determined to be a forgery, the British intelligence report that figured prominently had been shown to be a cribbed-together mishmash of outdated sources (a 5-year old thesis available off the 'net, and some stuff from one of the Jane's military references), the the "aluminum tubes" evidence had been widely discredited by experts in the nucular field. I read all of this after the UN presentation by Collin Powell, and before President Bush's State of the Union address.
The one piece of evidence that was kept rather quiet, mentioned obliquely as reports from defected Iraqi citizens, turned out to come from one or two con artists.
There was not one single piece of evidence that was valid, and anybody following the leadup to war could tell. Anyone who questioned the legitimacy of the evidence was labelled a "liberal," as if it were a dirty word. Hell, even Anne Coulter called those folks traitors.
To place so many citizens in harm's way (and to perform a national variety of vigilante justice) based on such questionable evidence took either an unbelievable amount of self-deception, or a desire to attack Iraq *in spite* of the evidence.
Considering there was *no link whatsoever* between bin Laden and Hussien, I can only interpret the evidence in one way: President Bush intentionally lied to the US citizens to follow a path to war with a beaten enemy. I don't know why. The "liberal" in me thinks it might be to benefit Halliburton and Bechtel. The realist in me realizes it might be nothing more than a distraction from the complete disaster in Afghanistan. Or there might have been a *real* reason to go after Iraq, one that had to be hidden from the world.
Considering the price tag in human life and our nation's honor and credibility, I'm not sure which would be worse.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"screams "I'm a Democrat, I hate Republicans!" to me."
I know. Reality is SO freakin' biased. Why do the facts hate Bush and his followers? Why oh why? There should be a law!
The scary thing is that at this rate I could actually see one being created:
The RightThink Homeland Defense Act - "Because only a terrorist would question the President's motives!"
"...according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity."
Oh yeah, there's credibility just oozing from this story. We're talking two years after the fact and these anonymous sources are only now growing a spine? On conditions of anominity??? Oh, and it just happens to be election year! What a coincidence!
And while we're on the subject of amazing coincidences, where was this scandal coverage in 2002? I mean, you supposively had top CIA officals who knew, you had the Department of Energy who knew, America's leading nuclear scientists who knew as well as any number of intelligence experts and Martha Stewart who knew. No doubt the current administration put the screws to all of them to supress this damning story and loosened them just in time for the Primaries. I mean, what better time is there to shoot yourself in the foot by letting key sources blather away about political secrets that you'd managed to keep anybody from knowing for the last two years?
Are we stretching the bounds of credibility yet? No? Then it's a good thing for the NYT that investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. I mean, you'd almost think this administration acted without cause...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
And before you start typing your rebutal to my comment, let me add that I think it was stupid of the legislative branch to vote in favor of providing an option for the executive branch to make war....
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Bush and company called the evidence conclusive and worthy of going to war; it was used as justification to both US citizens and the international community. If you're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, kill a thousand plus US troops, trash carefully crafted diplomatic relations...THEN sell all that as a "success" AND the reason you should be elected- you goddamn well better have your I's dotted and your t's crossed.
It was publicly reported that at best the evidence was inconclusive, and now we see that it was quite positively false, and further that they KNEW it wasn't conclusive. Fact is, to date, not a single fucking piece of evidence has been uncovered to support any of Bush's claims that Iraq had any "weapons of mass destruction", and certainly not the claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat to national security.
That fits my definition of "lying" pretty well, thanks.
Please help metamoderate.
You officially fail it.
Scott Ritter was a U.S. Marine who served in the Gulf war and acted as chief inspector of the United Nations Special Commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM). He resigned his role as chief inspector after the CIA was caught trying to into the inspection teams in 1998.
In an interview with Paula Zahn, one of the United States' leading experts on Iraqi weapons programs left no question as to his feelings on the justification for war:
Scott Ritter was bashed by the media, who painted him as a traitor to the United States for failing to accept the White House's justifications. It's interesting how the media, often accused of being quite liberal, went out of their way to discredit Ritter and show loyalty to the White House in late 2002, yet reported of just which mouths had engulfed Clinton's penis could hardly be avoided during Monicagate.
The real story here isn't that the White House lied -- if you pay attention, White House officials "flip-flop" so much over the supposed motivations for war that even their caricature of Kerry looks rock solid. The real story here is that the media fell for the Iraq justification (or lack thereof) hook, line, and sinker, while doing the dirty work of discrediting Scott Ritter and ignoring or discrediting any other voices asking for more investigation for military action against Iraq.
You want links? Try these:
Documentation of "flip-flops" by the "liberal" media -- reporting the truth (that UN inspectors voluntarily left in December 1998), then
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
"We train our children to drop fire on people, but we won't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their airplanes, because it's obscene." -- Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now
My site: Free Nature Pictures
While I generally agree with you, that statement assumes a situation like the Cold War, where both sides understand and want to avoid the result: complete annihilated by the other (mutually assured destruction). Does Kim Jong-Il care? Would Osama Bin Laden care if he had a nuclear arsenal? You don't start a nuclear bluffing match with a madman who has nothing to lose.
Obviously you're right, pure MAD only applies to situations such as that during the cold war, and any degree of asymmetry at all ruins it. However, having nuclear weapons is a great bargaining chip, or, more accurately, not having them renders you pretty much irrelevant.
I'd be willing to wager that a whole lot more Al-Q activity goes on in Pakistan than Iraq (Iraq as it stood before the invasion that is, obviously it's seething with hardline islamist nut-jobs now). However, Pakistan has the bomb, and therefore doesn't have to be pushed around, similarly to Nth Korea - no US administration is going to attack them if they can nuke even Japan in retaliation, let alone land one in California.
This has been the big give-away from the start. If Saddam had nukes (or even plenty of chem- or bio- weapons), the neo-cons would never have invaded. Why would you put thousands of troops in a position where they would likely be nuked? If you still don't get it: Iraq was invaded because it DIDN'T have WMD. It was a soft target*, with oil, and invading it no doubt served many other political purposes, but it clearly didn't have WMD, that much was fairly transparent before the invasion began.
* for invasion, evidently occupation is a different story.
A Secret background investigation involves financials and court records. They don't go through your past contacts and they only ask about drug use after the age of 18.
You can explain away a _lot_ of things on a Secret investigation. A TS or above is much, much harder. I'm aware of a person with a felony conviction who got through a Secret investigation with a bunch of testimonials from govt employees to his upstanding character. Admittedly, he was rejected once before.
There is a Judge Advocate who makes decisions on such things.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Gosh darnit, I am so sick and tired of the liberal media twisting and spinning all the news into some sort of Conservative conspiracy story. I wasn't too thrilled watching that PBS commie Jim Lehrer moderate the presidential debate, either. Jesus, if you're not going to place your faith in God and the * elected * president's office, and trust that the men in the closed meetings know a bit more than you or I know, that what are you going to place your faith? Bush and Cheney are smarter, and probably more honest than 75% of the bleeding heart liberal whiners that keep wrecking my day. I hope you all go back to your gay bars and stay the hell away from my ballot boxes.
Lost my Job in 2002 spent 6 months getting new one at lower pay.
My health care premiums have risen every year.
The first Tax break was really a loan to be repaid the next year. Funny I had to pay it while I was on my unemployment.
My friends are now fighting a war and have emailed me several times to never believe what their superiors have said. Believe the News.
No WMD's and I'm sure Saddam is still laughing inside about it.
Our freedom is threatened by the Patriot Act.
Bush wants to amend the constitution a document that has historically given rights to individuals. This time he wants to take away individual rights.
Cuts money to the police while at the same time allowing the assault weapon ban to expire.
Oh despite a 87billion dollar boost in money soldiers (I was one) are still getting raises that are lower than inflation and many make much less than poverty level with housing and food considered.
That second tax break amounted to 15 dollars a month for me and I make 60k a year. However I'm paying more than 40 dollars extra a month in Gas for my veichle and nearly 50 dollars extra in energy costs for my house.
Oil prices are high reguardless that there's no shortage and in fact Saudi Arabia has consistently said consumption is far below supply. Yet nobody is doing anything to stop the price runup's.
Also I've learned something. Americans need to pay attention to who they're voting for. That senator or govenor you're voting in may have more ambitions than just helping your state or their constituents. Cheny is a grand example of who we may not of had to put up with if they didnt vote him into congress years ago. In fact he may never of joined up with any of the Bushes and Gore could be president today.
Actually, you can prove a negative. Case example: the proof stating that there is NO algorithm to check if a context free grammer is unambigious (you can only show, through example, that it *is* ambigious). There are many examples of this in Computer Science and I'm sure many other fields (I'm CS so don't know about the other guys, but sure lots of math and science examples exist ^_^).
Course, you can't prove that you don't have weapons (in fact one can prove that that proof doesn't exist).
Isn't math fun?
--- "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." -- Robert Heller
If something is binary, weapons or no weapons, it can be proved one way or the other.
Phew! That's a relief!
So, does God exist? I'm glad I finally found someone who pointed out that the existance of God is binary, and therefore is provable one way or the other!
Well, don't keep us waiting! Which is it?!
</sarcasm>
You idiot. I can't prove that there is no Loch Ness Monster. I can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I can't prove that a blue monkey doesn't control your thoughts. I can't prove that aliens DID NOT LAND IN IOWA LAST NIGHT AND MOVE A SLEEPING COW ONE FOOT TO THE LEFT, IN DEFIANCE OF ALL LOGIC!
You can't prove a negative like that.
Or, to use your "W00t!" lingo against you: PWN3D!
Education is the silver bullet.
here's the first sentence from the article:
Now this is in comparison to a "Declaration of War" which is a vote by the Legislature to actually conduct a war action...
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
If you had read the article, all 10K+ words of it, you would have seen that there was bipartisan support for the attacking of Iraq. In Bush's rhetoric, he has repeatedly pushed the issue that Kerry supported the war. Democrats and Republicans crossed the lines in both directions during the votes, mostly based on their understanding of the data. Intelligence is a fragile art. The Clinton administration could have done more to help prevent 9/11. The Bush administration is certainly not helping matters by creating an environment in which communication is purposefully confounded so as to make the facts look different from what they are generally agreed to be.
Examples from the article.
Even when the pre invasion inspection found the tubes were used for conventional rockets. Even when we found not WMD. Even when every shred of credible evidence seems to point that there is not WMD program. The president still believes his story.
The problem is not the republicans or the democrats. The problem is that we have a set of people who have no sense of logic. No sense of shame. No sense that the truth is something that is not set in stone. Just because I believe that I am the greatest guy in the world does not make it so. I am just going to say this. Bush is a truly stupid person. He drove drunk into his thirties. That was truly stupid. He lied about his arrests. That is truly stupid. The republicans are in t
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??
So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.
Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:
My blog
We stepped in, overthrew their government, and deposed their leader. In doing so, we were able to put our own (US-chosen) leader, the "Shah of Iran" (yes, THAT shah) into power, with a very specific set of rules and policies that were to be followed by his people, dictated by... you guessed it.. the United States Government.
We've been screwing around with the Middle East for several decades, even long before radicals like Osama and Al Zawahiri were even born.
Also, lets not forget that the same Afghanistan rebels that the United States helped and funded with money and military arms to beat the Russians out of Afghanistan... were the the same Afghanistani rebels that became Al Queda, and attacked us on 9/11. Yes, the very same group.
There's a lot more to this than people are seeing at the surface.
The problem is that they don't take any intelligence seriously, but act on what they believe, regardless of what the facts are. We call it "faith-based intelligence."
"Where are your hidden weapons labs?" "We have none!" "Well, show us." "Show you what?" "Your weapons labs." "But we have none." "Well, prove it." "All right. Where would you like to look?" "You tell us." "But if we have no weapons labs, we have nowhere to tell you about." "Ah, so, then, you refuse to be cooperative."
At the last, when the inspectors were still in there, just before they were pulled out, the Iraqis were cooperating to the fullest extent of their abilities. There were some major paperwork problems, apparently generated because when they destroyed some of their weapons they didn't document them sufficiently. But they were even being allowed to inspect within all the places that had previously been off-limits, and in fact were even allowed unannounced visits with no warning time.
Strangely, the rest of the world thought they were doing fine. Given that, one must either assume that every single other country with the exception of England* is bone stupid, or that we are warmongers who above all else didn't WANT the inspections to work.
Makes you feel good to be an American, don't it?
-fred
* - (Yes, we had other allies eventually. But at that point we still hadn't scraped them together, so it was just GWB and GB)
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Kerry hasn't told you one thing that he is going to do. He has proffered nebulous lists, buzzwords, and catchy quotes, but nothing substantial or concrete.
Bush constantly accuses Kerry of his flip-flops, or whatever you want to call them, and cites them as evidence of him being unfit to lead. Let me share an excerpt or two from the transcripts of some public lecture by the late RP Feynman (who should need little introduction here, if he does, just google it ok?):
"The government of the United States was developed under the idea that nobody knew how to make a government, or how to govern. The result is to invent a system to govern when you don't know how. And the way to arrange it is to permit a system, like we have, wherein new ideas can be developed and tried out and thrown away. The writers of the Constitution knew of the value of doubt. In the age that they lived, for instance, science had already developed far enough to show the possibilities and potentialities that are the result of having uncertainty, the value of having the openness of possibility. The fact that you are not sure means that it is possible that there is another way some day. That openness of possibility is an opportunity. Doubt and discussion are essential to progress. The United States government, in that respect, is new, it's modern, and it is scientific. It is all messed up , too."
So, to wit, as most geeks should be aware, uncertainty is key to progress, and the american constitution rates well, having been written according to these principles. He continues in the next lecture:
"... has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions - that is, penetrating, interested, frank, direct questions on the subject, and no trick questions - then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man. It is important to appreciate that. And I think that I can illustrate one unscientific aspect of the world which would be probably very much better if it were more scientific. It has to do with politics. Suppose two politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section and is asked, 'What are you going to do about the farm question?' And he knows right away - bang, bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. 'What are you going to do about the farm problem?' 'Well, I don't know. I used to be a general, and I don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very difficult problem, because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it, and people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard problem. So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot of people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have had with this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come to some conclusion in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what conclusion, but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use - not to make things difficult for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have some way to take care of them,' etc.,etc., etc.
Now such a man would never get anyhere in this country, I think. It's never been tried, anyway. This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an answer and that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when the real fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around."
This is why I consider Kerry better than Bush, he's not so damned sure of everything. The fact that he changes his mind atleast shows that he THINKS. It also illustrates very well the fundamental flaw not only in american politics, but democracy in general.
How is this news for nerds?
Nerds have strong opinions about many things, even things that are political. Software Patents are a political issue, for example, as is Linux vs. Windows, to a large extent. GPL vs. BSD licensing has had its share of politically-motivated discussion. So has pretty much anything regarding Sun Microsystems or HPaq or IBM, lately.
Adding in election politics, at least until November, doesn't seem entirely out of line, given that the Presidential election is weighing more on many minds than whether Java 5 supports syntactic sugar for type casting.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
What do you say to Poland? Poland! Why does everybody forget that we were supported by Poland!
The real question is what does Poland say to us. Here's what the President of Poland says about the Bush administration's justification to going into Iraq:
"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
-President Aleksander Kwasniewski
(March 18, 2004)
Great way to build a coalition.
Full Story
Apparently they didn't teach you in school that Opinion Pieces (i.e. the Op-Ed piece you linked to above) are the opinion of the author of the piece and usually have a loose license to the truth. While on the other hand the article in the actual story is reporting which comes with a much higher burden of proof for facts.
m ocraticunderground.org/c om/ (remember the Kerry Intern story he broke, and turned out to be a pile of...
Don't use Op-Ed pieces as source for 'facts', also don't use an extremist site to get 'facts'. Examples of sites that do not qualify as reliable on facts are:
http://www.freerepublic.org/
http://www.de
http://www.drudgereport.
http://www.commondreams.org/
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
"No, he let the weapons inspectors in and let them search anywhere."
Uh, I'm not sure if you were watching the news at all before then, but he most certainly did NOT allow inspectors to go wherever they pleased. That statement is just plain false. In the years after the first Iraq war, he continually kicked out and restricted access to inspectors. This was in contradiction to the agreement we had with him at that time.
It's bad enough that the Dems and Reps are pretty much the same party at this point. But it's even worse that the Reps are trying to take over every branch of government. This completely breaks the system of checks and balances, as if it weren't broken enough already.
We need to go in the opposite direction as fast as possible. That starts with getting a Democratic president now, so that we'll have some sort of check on the Republican Congress.
In the long term, this means we need to move beyond the one-party-two-names system and develop some real alternatives. But we have to take that one step at a time, and the first step is to break the Republican stranglehold on power.
That said, I agree completely that congress failed miserably in this regard. Sen. Byrd stood up at the time and waved a copy of the Constitution, saying "our job is not to rubber-stamp the president's resolution, our job is to protect the text of the Constitution!" Nobody listened. Kerry is as accountable for that as anyone. But at least he no acknowledges that going into Iraq was a mistake. That's a start, and right now, it's good enough for me.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
You're building up a case to go to war.
You're assembling the evidence for that case.
You find that some of the evidence wasn't substantiated.
You find that some of the evidence was false.
You find that some of the evidence is in dispute.
You find that some of the evidence is hearsay.
At what point do you STOP and have ALL the evidence re-examined?
Rather, what we saw was a continuing onslaught of new "evidence" and fear.
All since proven false.
Now, how is it possible to get ALL of the "evidence" wrong? Not part of it. Not some of it. But all of the "evidence".
Bush and Co. lied to get us into this mess.
the man is consistent
... then he cuts benefits.
This was pretty simple to scare up off the Internet:
Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he's for it.
Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it.
Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it.
Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he's for it.
Bush is against nation building; then he's for it.
Bush is against deficits; then he's for them.
Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again.
Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.
Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution.
Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't.
Bush first says that 'help is on the way' to the military
Bush-"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden." Bush-"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care."
Bush claims to be in favor of the environment and then secretly starts drilling on Padre Island.
Bush talks about helping education and increases mandates while cutting funding.
Bush first says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea. Now he will.
Bush goes to Bob Jones University. Then say's he shouldn't have.
Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq (no matter what the outcome). Later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.
Bush said the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors. Bush later admits it was his advance team.
Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US. Bush after meeting with Pres. Fox, he's against it.
Education is the silver bullet.
What's sexual about a tit? It's used for feeding babies. Do you get a boner looking at a fork, a knife, a plate, or a spoon?
What is so sexual and offensive about a tit?
Like what I said? You might like my music
Mod me down if you want, but this has to be said.
The rest of the world knew that Iraq had no WMDs. Everyone knew it was a "war to boost the economy". Nobody did anything. Why didn't America know? Ask your media that question and ask yourselves how much international news you actually listen to? Ask yourselves why.
Then you'll see why it isn't surprising. It is always easier for a government to go in for the wrong reasons and explain later, just like it's easier for us to do something we've set our minds on and explain later.
Look at the U.S's foreign policy from the outside (try some independent and known-to-be-unbiased news agencies for a change) and you'll see the difference.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I found the whole halftime "tit show" disappointing
Disappointed that they didn't show both tits?
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-- INSERT --
I suggest you read up on the Project for the New American Century and some of its publications. Most members of the bush administration have ties to this organization.
Specificly, see this website's analysis of PNAC, and PNAC's open letter to Clinton in 1998 urging military action in Iraq, signed by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, among others.
Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?
They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.
Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.
He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.
Like you, I wish (at least in hindsight) that Congress should have checked Bush. And I agree that Congress has that role and responsibility.
But let's be realistic about what happened. A) There *was* token dissent. The problem was that it didn't go beyond being token. B) Congress can't be trusted with highly secret info because they leak it to satisfy their own political agendas or due to their own incompetence. It's happened over and over. C) Because of B, both citizens and Congress presume that the Executive branch has info they do not release to Congress. D) Because of C, when there is a really critical, intelligence-driven decision to be made, the US citizens and the Congress will tend to trust the president due to the additional information available to him but not to us. Plus for a congressperson there is the following pragmatic logic. For a congressperson to buck the tide, they risk a career-ending looking-foolish moment if the intel turns out to prove the Executive correct. And if the congressperson goes along with the ride, the worst they suffer is having to claim the Executive duped them and they run on the issue in the next election.
This is a structural problem with Congress. While you might claim its a moral or ethical failure of many many congresspeople, it's tough to argue they are not acting in a perfectly rational way.
The solution for this problem it to vote out your local duped congresspeople, Republican or Democrat. If they face getting voted out in either case, maybe they'll start taking responsibility for knowing what's going on and they'll start taking keeping confidential info secret more seriously.
--LP
The 'disappointing' part of it was the lack of sexual shock. I watched the Superbowl in a dorm room with 8 other college-aged guys, a fairly sexually charged group of people. Half of the people in the room didn't even *notice* that it was happening, and those that actually saw anything didn't really think anything of it. Christ, it's like whining about seeing a woman breastfeeding her baby in a public park. It might be giggle-inducing for those under 16, but it's hardly harmful or "disappointing."
Your portrayal of sexuality (and how it is/should be viewed) as one of two extremes is a little unfortunate. The 'sex-fest' that is MTV (an informed observation on your part, I'm sure) is certainly not realistic nor necessarily beneficial when teaching children about sex, but it is no more skewed and inaccurate than the wildly conservative views touted as family friendly.
If you feel the need to actually adjust your television viewing habits due to the sexual content on a public network, you could probably stand to do a little better in educating those whom you seem to be a role model or some sort of parental figure for. If the MTVesque view is something you don't want perpetuated, censoring it exactly what not to do. Religious affiliation and the fact they're involved in a church group aside, they're still regular kids. Most of them will have more meaningful sexual information provided to them by their peers. Being honest and open in your dealings with these teens when it comes to sex will be more effective.
As long, of course, as you're willing to accept the fact that they may develop opinions slightly more liberal than your own.
LegendMUD
Actually, human female breasts are the way they are as a result of human sexuality. Most other animals only have prominent breasts when they are lactating. However, human females use their breasts to attract mates. The most basic explanation of this is because all animals, at least loosely, choose their mates on their ability to produce good and plentiful offspring and ostensibly, having better breasts might make one female better at caring for children than another.
The evolution of the modern human breast seems to have began with the development of walking upright. Before this development, the primary attribute on which potential mates were judged was the buttocks.
The WMD fiasco is nothing but a sideshow to keep you from seeing the real underlying issues here.
Ever since Vietnam the Presidents have totally pissed on the Constitution they swore to uphold. The President has NEVER had power to declare war, that was granted to the Congress. I don't recall Congress declaring war against Iraq, for whatever reason.
The Congress does not want the political heat of declaring war. So they attempt to push that over to Bush by signing a letter of "support for our troops". They can then blame the President for whatever goes wrong, or take credit for whatever goes right. This way, they keep their offices relatively unspotted in the view of the people. Offices which in reality consist largely of shoveling money towards corporate interests.
All this reeks of the same corruption that occurred when the Senators of the Roman Republic shoveled all their power over to Octavian... making him Caesar. Those Senators did not want to risk alienating the people by taking stands on issues, they would rather let Augustus do it, and then blame him when things went sour. Thus, those Senators could hide their incompetency and accountability from the people, while continuing their corrupt business dealings.
We read in Article I Section 8 that Congress has power...:
Article I Section 8 (Powers granted to Congress):
"...To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;...."
In Section 1 or Article II we read: Article II Section 1 (Executive branch, office of President):
"...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now that Congress has no gumption and represents corporations instead of the people-- the President does whatever he wants. So we go to war at his say so, over whatever he wants us to fight and die for. The leaders of our country swore to uphold the Constitution, yet they piss on the balance of power that was built into it for their own political and personal gain.
And these people are going to bring "freedom" to Iraq. Physicians... heal thy selves.
"I'll liberate you peoples' fate
Spoke the Burnin' Bush
But the song of beasts
Growl with oil soaked teeth
Their dollar is mighty and true
Now the eagle soars the sky
Over refugee and child
And to all there is no end
Another day in perfect Hell"-- Flogging Molly
Yes, we were. By whom? This is the important question you're missing. The main problem with your line of reasoning is that you're conflating Al-Qaida with Iraq or perhaps the entire Middle East. If you cannot distinguish between enemies and neutral parties, or even between different enemies, or even keep track of which enemy was responsible for which offense, then you cannot know how to react. The enemy who attacked us on 9/11 was Al-Qaida, an international terrorist network based in Afghanistan but with operatives in several different countries worldwide. Al Qaida was not in league with Saddam Hussein, because Al Qaida saw him as a "secular infidel." And "Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army." (9/11 Commission Report, page 61). They were two quite separate enemies. (In fact, America wasn't an object of Hussein's aggression; his problem with the U.S. was that we stopped his aggression against his neighbors.) Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to George HW Bush, laid the situation out pretty well here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h
Top U.S. military commanders argued against invading Iraq because it was at best tangential and at worst entirely counter-productive to the war on terror. These include General Anthony Zinni, http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html, General Joseph Hoar, http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/s803482.htm, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded U.S. forces in the first Gulf War http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2705275.stm.
Yes, we absolutely need to get the guys who attacked us. But to do that, we need to get the guys who attacked us. This "hit 'em where they ain't" strategy is just bloody stupid. Afghanistan is a justifiable war. Iraq is not.
Heh, well, at least you didn't forget Poland. But you did neglect to note something about Poland: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1069242.ht
"[Polish President] ALEKSANDER KWASNIEWSKI (translated): They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
Eh?
I remember reading this story when it was happening more that 2 years ago. At that time it was reported that experts were highly doubtful that the tubes were for nuclear refinement.
Why does it seem that nobody listens to what anybody else says if the president claims something contrary. Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's -- even if they are experts on the issue?
Grow up, Americans! It's time you got over your infantile fixation on hero figures and giving them divine, infallable status.
I don't know what it is like in other countries, but here in Canada, even people who generally like the Prime Minister will treat things he says with a measure of healthy scepticism. And if a bunch of experts line up saying the PM is full of shit, people will listen to the experts, not the PM.
When this was in the news 2 years ago, it was easy enough to conclude that the White House was off base in its assertions. Why is it just now that people are thinking "Hey! Maybe the experts were right and the president was wrong"?
Ideology is for ideots.
In Afghanistan, women were beaten and sometimes executed for showing even their naked ankles in public. Here is a website created by Afghan women where they describe the restrictions placed on them by the Taliban. So, probably those women were psychologically harmed by their fundamentalist abusers.
It is up to you to prove that naked breasts are detrimental to our society if you are going to advocate that women be restricted from baring their breasts in public. I submit that you oppose women baring their chests in public because you are uptight about a woman's body. If you disagree, then tell me how it's bad for a woman's breasts to be displayed.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Welcome to 2 years ago!
No, seriously, that's rather old news (out of the U.S. anyways) and the rest of the world always had strong doubts about the administration's claims. Powell's Powerpoint demo to the UN was fun too...
Come on, get over it: assholes rule the world.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
You're right about the likely connection to upright walking, but a more direct reason for the sexualization of the female breast has to do with frontal coitus, largely unique to homo sapiens, although also practiced on occasion by those fun loving bonobos ("pygmy chimps").
... for sexual purposes.
Big fat orbs are a basic sexual signal to the male ape, and breasts provide the "big fat ass orbs" signal when having sex face to face, in place of the ass.... And of course face-to-face coitus is facilitated by the skeletal structure associated with upright walking. So likely the transition to upright posture, the development of face to face coitus and the enlargement of breasts to function as a "sexual" organ occured together in evolutionary time.
Breasts in short, and in part, are an ass transplanted to the chest
But beyond that the REAL REAL reason for the sexualization of breasts is very modern and has to do with the decline of breast feeding.
Western and American children, deprived of the NORMAL two to three years of breast feeding that homo sapiens have enjoyed throughout recent evolutionary history, never got enough of the boob and spend their lives lusting after what they missed.
The hyper-sexualization of breasts is DIRECTLY related to the decline of breastfeeding.
American men in particular are known to be breast obsessed as adults, while breast feeding rates in America are among the lowest in the world - That's a correlation that does suggest causation!
Go to cultures where children derive significant portion of their nutritional needs through the first 3 years of life from the breast and you will find that (1) it is the buttocks and legs that are more sexualized and (2) breasts are freely displayed (often) becase they pretty much thought of as feeding tubes, quite unconnected to sex. http://milkofhumankindness.org/
That's the real story, you breast deprived American men.
(Yes, I'm an American man too.)
I care, you better care, and so should anybody else who cares about the USA.
Clinton lied about getting blow jobs from Monica Lewinsky in the White House, evidently because he hadn't told his wife and daughter about it. In fact, Hilary and Chelsea Clinton were the only people truly injured by what he did; but conservatives in America freaked out about it, and a partisan majority in the House impeached him. Ann Coulter wondered whether he should be impeached or assassinated.
Bush, however, lied about the reasons to start a war, in which presumably tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over a thousand American soldiers have died, bereaving their families and making orphans of their children. Bush's dishonesty is a moral abomination that has caused an enormous amount of death and suffering, with no end in the foreseeable future.
If you see some kind of moral equivalency between Clinton's lies and Bush's, then I have no choice but to wonder if you comprehend the value of human life.
Interesting, Iraq under Saddam has often been called a brutal dictatorship, and Bush supporters like to cite that as an ex post facto justification for war, but the expression "genocide" has rarely been used.
Be that as it may, dictatorship or "genocide" were not given by Bush and Cheney as justifications for the war, and the American people were never given the opportunity to decide whether they would support a war on those grounds. They said it was because of WMD's and alleged connections to Al Qaeda, both of which have proven to be false. And what's worse, the Bush Adminisration may have been aware of the shakiness of their claims. Chances are, they realized that the American people would not have have supported a war to overthrow a dictator who was no threat to the US, so they decided to come up with something else, anything else, no matter how poorly supported by the facts.
If a "zero tolerance policy towards genocide" is the justification for war, then do you advocate US intervention in Sudan, which is widely regarded as a potential genocide in the making? Neither Bush nor Kerry support such a policy, as they both stated in the debate. I doubt that the American people would support such an action under present circumstances. Wouldn't you agree with Bush and Kerry that at applying other means of pressure in Sudan, such as enlisting the help of the Organization of African States, is a better way to start?
If overthrowing dictatorship is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of North Korea? In fact, North Korea is worse than Iraq by far on all of the reasons given for invading Iraq: It is widely agreed that they really do have WMD's (four to seven nuclear weapons); and North Korea is one of the cruelest dictatorships the world has ever seen, where the people are in constant danger of starvation.
If overthrowing tyranny is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of the People's Republic China? A communist dictatorship ruling a billion people?
If overthrowing dictators is the justification for war, the do you advocate war against almost all of South America, almost all of the Middle East, almost all of Africa, and almost all of Southeast Asia?
Are you aware that this world is filled almost to the brim with ruthless tyrannies? Indeed, we certainly should do whatever we can against it, but if the answer is that the US should go to war against any and every dictator in the world, then we would be at war with almost all of the world, almost all of the time.
And every time we go to war, assuming we succeed with the overthrow, in the aftermath we would be faced with just the sa
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry.
Oh, absolutely. I doubt that there's a potential presidential candidate that absolutely refrains from lying.
However, Bush is in hot water not for lying (Clinton, for instance, lied about his sex life and the public didn't care) but for lying to convince the public that we needed to declare war on Iraq. Clinton's lie maybe set a bad example, but that's about it -- Bush's had a lot of lives, international relations, and money at stake.
People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).
Do you? What's Bush's timeline for Iraq over the next four years? What, in detail, does he intend to do with alternative fuel research? I don't know, because Bush hasn't announced anything. I don't really know much about Bush's specifics. I know that:
* His VP is very hawkish.
* Bush is willing to invade and occupy countries for reasons that I do not consider sufficient to invade and occupy countries.
* Bush backs changing the Constitution to ban gay/lesbian marriage. I don't like this.
* Bush has pushed NASA into reallocating a huge amount of their funds towards a manned Mars mission, not something that I view as worthwhile as other projects that were replaced.
* Bush has said that he supports the Assault Weapon Ban (one of the few reasons I could see voting for Bush instead of Kerry would be that Republicans tend to be better about protecting gun rights).
* Bush has made my nation very unpopular internationally over the span of his presidency.
* Ashcroft is Bush's appointed AG -- and Ashcroft pushes his conservative religious values on the nation, is an advocate of monitoring and eliminating oversight of the Department of Justice.
Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.
That many people die each week from smoking or each month from car crashes. Both problems cause much more economic on a *recurring*, *yearly* basis. Yet most of Bush's presidency has been spent prioritizing the "War on Terror" over everything else, and allocating my money to fight this "War on Terror". Said "War on Terror" could be taken directly from 1984. I don't like it.
Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves.
He killed those people *after* we encouraged them to rise up against him. It's a little difficult to call him out on that point. Besides -- I expect that with the proper media coverage, the skeletons in just about anyone's closet can be made pretty awful -- I don't want a leader to declare war and try justifying it afterwards on very flimy grounds. By this logic, if we find Bush's grounds for war to be legitimate, we also need to allow him to declare war on a large number of other regimes around the world, and try to use military force to cause change. I think that this is a bad idea -- I don't accept the "well, Saddam was a nasty guy" justification. Besides, if Saddam is *that* bad, don't you think it'd be better for the Iraqis to rise up and remove him, rather than us? Look at our Revolutionary War. We had enough people get fed up with the leaders
May we never see th
But the inspections were working before the invasion. Can you really use actions that took place long before as an excuse for a war, espesially since the matter had been resolved already?
And, at one point, USA asked the inspectors to leave due to immiment military action (Operation Desert Fox). Funnily enough, that incident is usally described as "Saddam kicked the inspectors out" in the USA, when it fact it was USA that asked them to leave.
Uh, no they didn't. He did posess such weapons earlier, but they were destroyed after the first Gulf war.
Inspectors did not believe that they existed. They had no evidence one way or the other. They were there trying to make sure they were destroyed. Unfortunately USA did not let them finish the job.
Let's review the facts shall we? USA claimed that Iraq had WMD's. Iraq claimed it had no WMD's. USA had no real evidence to support their claims. Iraq had evidence to support their claims with some omissions. There were inspectors on the ground determining the validity of the claims made by USA and Iraq.
Where was the need to invade? And since no WMD's have been found, it seems that Iraq was right and USA was wrong. So how exactly was the war (and killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians) justified? Iraq was telling the truth it seems.
So, if no WMD's are found, it just proved that Saddam hid them REALLY well? It does not prove that there are no WMD's? If US Forces are able to find one man in a hole in the ground in some remote location, surely they can find those WMD's?
And how do you prove a negative? According to you, if no WMD's are found, it only proves that they are really well hidden. How do you prove that there are no WMD's? It seems to me that Iraq had no way to convince people like you that they had no WMD's. You just wanted to have your little war, no matter what.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Seems like much ado about nothing, right? But this is the cornerstone of the Administration's belief that Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. These tubes were the only hard evidence they had going for them.
Bush also claimed that Sadam was trying to buy uranium from Africa, even though the administration knew there was no evidence of that. And the scandal goes even deeper than that. When the man they assigned to investigate the uranium rumors (retired ambassador Joseph Wilson) revealed the truth (that the evidence was forged), the administration retaliated against him by revealing to the world that his wife was a CIA agent (thus placing her life in danger and risking American security).
And before you discount this as liberal spin, the reported who outed Wilson's wife is Robert Novak, a well known conservative reporter, and he has confirmed that his sources were a pair of senior whitehouse staff member. This assertion is backed up by additional investigation from the Washington Post. A special investigator has been appointed, and even the President has been questioned. The rumors abound now that the two staff member have already been identified (the names have even been leaked), but the Bush administration has put pressure on the FBI to hold off on the arrests until after the election.
Of course there is no proof that Bush himself ordered the retaliation against Wilson, or that he even knew about it, and in fact I believe it very possible that he did not. The evidence so far indicates a couple of staffers reporting directly to Vice President Cheney. It is entirely possible that Cheney took this action upon himself without consulting with the President. Either way, a couple of alarming things remain: The administration used the uranium evidence to support their case for the Iraq war even though they had been told the evidence was bunk. Furthermore, senior staffmembers in the whitehouse broke the cover of an undercover CIA agent (an agent involved in the hunt for weapons of mass distruction no less)... a treasonous act by any measure.
The Bolachek Journals
Not that I want to get embroiled in a flame war but...
If Israel wants to pull back to it's original borders, as mandated by the UN and defined at the time of its creation, close those borders, and build the biggest frickin wall in history, NO ONE WILL COMPLAIN. If they want to shoot any Palestians who try to cross that wall, that would probably be tolerable too. If they really want to, they can build a giant dome over the whole of Israel and not let anyone in or out. Fine, fine fine.
The problems are:
(a) Israel is building a big fuckoff wall *way outside* those borders, conveniently annexing large swathes of territory that do not belong to Israel with NO JUSTIFICATION
(b) Israel is pursuing a systematic policy of colonising a foreign territory with 'native' Israelis
(c) Israelis forces are performing violent operations against civilian, terrorist and militia forces alike with no real concern as to which is which, outside its own territory, with no international sanction and indeed against international law and consensus
(d) the Israeli government actually talks about maintaining the genetic purity of Israel (ah the irony) in the sense of making sure that at least 50% of Israelis are Jewish so that there can never be a 'democratic coup' inside Israel at election time
(e) Israel, unlike other nations, is completely ignored in all the hubbub from the west about nuclear proliferation despite possessing 100-200 nuclear warheads.
Most of these things are contrary to international law (which Bush and Blair now spit on but which still matters to most countries); some are contrary to domestic Israeli law; all are contrary to basic standards for ethical behaviour.
Incidentally, I genuinely like the Israeli people and I fully support their right to live free from the fear of suicide bombers or invasion by their neighbours. But the way Israel is going about its business at the moment is just atrociously bad.
Read Pynchon.
And yet, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Osama is a Saudi prince by birth. Saudi charities were funding terrorism. Saudi Arabia makes their women wear hoods, teach and endorse radical fundamentalist Islamic religion, and have no problem with slavery. Afghanistan was just a terrorist camp ground. By the time we got there, the terrorists were gone and the Taliban was left holding the bag.
So where did we go after Afghanistan? That's right, Iraq. Who's next? Iran maybe? We aren't going to win the war on terrorism, because we keep invading the wrong countries.
Does that mean you support US invasion of Israel to remove Sharon and throw Israel out of the illegally occupied areas? If not, why, as they have been systematically ignoring UN resolutions since before Saddam got to power in Iraq in the first plae.
Thank you for respecting my culture enough to accept that a bare breast may seem sexual. I hope you will also accept that there is a mountain of scientific evidence that a breast is an organ that is part of human sexual response and arousal. Now that we've dispensed with that petty argument, let's get on to your questions about harm, etc.
I do not claim any harm to the one or two kids who noticed a five-pixel breast on their TV screens for a period of under 1 second. My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point.
While I do not expect a rational skeptic such as you seem to be to adhere to that particular moral choice that we wish to make, I hope you will grant us the freedom to pursue our choices, and some respect for our desire to have a shared understanding of what is going to appear on the TV.
I call it "truth in advertising" or "good product labeling." I recognize a concerned more liberal friend would caution me that labeling content leads to censorship, and being a good reader of 1984 I am not ignorant of those perils, although I think they are overblown if applied in this case. More information about the content, more metadata is good. It's really a matter of courtesy and good expectation-setting within any medium.
Let me explain this in a slashdot metaphor. Just as I do not want to see the goatse guy without adequate warning, despite the fact that I do not find it particularly titilating, sexual or "deeply offensive", I'd just rather not see it while in the middle of reading slashdot without a little warning first.
So it is with tits at the superbowl at church parties.
I am asking for courtesy, not for the world to adopt my sexual ethics.
--LP, who has also lived in Austin btw
Just a comment to the 'Let Europe' buy their oil: I live in Germany, and there are a lot of activities to find alternative energy resources. Wind already produces more than 10% of our local energy, because alternative power plants are pushed. I don't pay taxes for my current car, because it consumes less than 5 litres per 100km. Just another example how energy efficiency is supported.
Do you think the guy in the Oval Office is some kind of God handing down holy truth and his word is to be trusted above anyone else's
A significant number of people in the US think GWB was placed into his current position by "God" himself. So that's at least one large chunk of the group who blindly follows whatever he says.
I blame the followers of blind faith for a large portion of the failure of rationality in this country. The whole "faith" concept itself seems to be an excellent personality attribute to exploit.
You hit the nail right on the head!
I remember images of GWB standing at a press conference with the bible in his hand offering it as a guidebook for everyday life and politics. And there's the executive order to launch the faith-based charity initiatives, slashing through your first constitutional amendment - the same constitution he swore to protect as the President of the United States. Following 9/11 and the war on terror, there's the "good vs. evil" and the "crusade" references.
How about the previous (?) presedential debate where he said he viewed Jesus as his inspiration? When he was asked to elaborate he said that people wouldn't understand unless they'd experienced - I guess - his touch? I can't remember his exact words, but in any case he said he had had a religious experience that changed his life.
This is a guy who must believe he was chosen by his own god to be the President of the US. He openly discussed his religious motives during the presedential campaign, and it must surely have played a huge part in him getting elected - that makes him practically a religious leader.
All this is very disturbing to me! When you view the bigger picture, it turns out that the war on terror, etc. is basically a holy war wagered on both sides. It's truly saddening that the human race hasn't evolved beyond religion. We're still very much primitive in this regard.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
To quote from a nice paragraph at factcheck.org:
The "Gift Trust Agreement" the Cheney's signed two days before he took office turns over power of attorney to a trust administrator to sell the options at some future time and to give the after-tax profits to three charities. The agreement specifies that 40% will go to the University of Wyoming (Cheney's home state), 40% will go to George Washington University's medical faculty to be used for tax-exempt charitable purposes, and 20% will go to Capital Partners for Education , a charity that provides financial aid for low-income students in Washington, DC to attend private and religious schools.
The agreement states that it is "irrevocable and may not be terminated, waived or amended," so the Cheney's can't take back their options later.
The actual PDF of the agreement can be found here.
That's what you're talking about, right?
--LP
There are a number of things I'd like to say about this article in the NYT, the American Public(TM) and GWB's policies.
/. where the same old emotional debate between faithful right and cynical left rages. In short, I think it will have a serious impact on GW's reelection chances, but that's possibly a good thing.
Firstly, what amazes me, truly, on a website meant for above average technically interested people is that almost no comments have been made on the actual technical contents of the NYT article itself as regards the Aluminium tubes and their suitability for use as Uranium centrifuges. The NYT went out of its way to explain to the layman (along with a very good graphic) how the tubes fit the use of small tactical rockets and were totally unsuitable, without extra manufacturing, for the use as centrifuges. I mean, come one, 60 000 tubes for centrifuges! Even the USA, the world's largest nuclear power, doesn't have or need that many centrifuges! It would be nice if people noticed this fact and then took note of how almost the whole American establishment basically went along with the analysis of ONE man (The guy called Joe), ignoring the majority's dissenting voices!
Secondly, this NYT article may well have been timed to be a political time bomb, since it appeared now, after the TV debate, but the NYT, to give it some credit (which the right does not do), explains very well in the same article that it itself was as guilty as almost everyone else in ignoring the evidence available during the highly emotional bullshit campaign that Bush and Co. conducted in the run up to the war. The NYT, for all its failings and left leaning political bias, has explained in a number of editorials that it made a mistake. How often does the favourite of the right, Fox news, do that?
Thirdly, I've seen a number of comments here about what the real motivations were for going to war, be they oil, control of the middle east, liberating Iraq, bring democracy to the middle east, furthering an agenda in wake of the 9/11 attacks. etc. My answer would be the Falklands War in 1982, when the right wing military Junta in Argentina used the issue of the Falklands, by invading them, to bring the nation behind them in the rush of patriotism in wartime, when they were politically starting to lose support. I think that the main reason for this war was a domestic political agenda in the USA, used by the very intelligent people behind Bush, such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld etc, in order to bring the American people in line with their way of thinking by starting a war. I feel most sorry for Collin Powell, who despite his actual opinion, suffered the consequences for being true to his President. I hope he gets a decent job in the future where he is repsected and not treated as the house nigger.
Fourthly, despite all the nuances of the aluminium tubes, such as the fact that this was not unknown in 2002 and the faked yellow cake uranium from Niger, none of which stopped anyone from believing the most astounding things about Iraq at the time, such as Iraqs supposed ICBMs capable of threatening the USA, I think that this article will be treaed by the American Public as being new and novel. I seriously doubt the ability of the public to distinguish the facts, and I am buoyed in this opinion by the comments here on
1. They are highly placed politicians. When our parents were getting killed in Vietnam, these guys got themselves tanned in Air National Guard.
2. This is the not the first time a US prez. has lied to goto War. Check our chequered history and you will find many such men.
3.As long as we act like stupid GI Joe guys, put our heads into sand and refuse to think the World is a bigger place than USA, and as long as we refuse to listen to true world news instead of the Fox news crap about Peterson trial/Jacko Whacko trial, we will continue to have presidents and heads of state who will send our young men/women to their deaths without reason.
Amen.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
If ignoring UN resolutions is all it takes, can we please invade the US now?
Get a clue.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Kerry is a practicing Catholic...
... practicing what, cognitive dissonance?
who is pro-choice. That is a very strong indicator that he is a man of his own mind and doesn't support a particular position just because his church says so. I find that very reassuring.
I always find this line of thought bizarre. It's actually much harder to hold yourself to an external standard, and requires much more thought and discipline. It's easy to just say you do ("why, I'm a practicing Catholic ...") and then just adjust your actual actions and beliefs to whatever is comfortable or expedient.
It's a correlation, but an equally valid interpretation is that American sexual/religious conservatism and certain psychological theories popular in the first half of the 20th century combined to temporarily universalize the notion that breast-feeding should be minimized or eliminated from the rearing process.
This conservatism can be identified directly with, or at least blamed for, the fetishization of the breast in modern mainstream America. Hence, mere correlation or even reverse causation.
The difference between repeating false information and lying is intent. If the UN really thought there were no WMD or other violations in Iraq, they wouldn't have continued sending inspectors to look for them. Oh wait, they DID find banned weapons which Iraq was destroying (or not since they apparently had SOME that were ready to fire at us when the invasion began).
They were more than likely hiding something; be it plans for a renewed weapons programs in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or leftover samples for use in those revived programs. I don't think anyone truely believed that Iraq was clean. We found out later that they weren't.
Even John Kerry won't stand up and say Bush is a liar. He simply states that Bush "misled" America. Misled is a neutral term applicable to either a liar or someone that mistakenly leads another astray. Blair might very well be in the same situation. He said Iraq had weapons that could be fired within 45 minutes. Considering Iraq's attempts to actually make people think their units had the weapons and would use them against invaders (they were apparently issuing orders on the use of imaginary WMD), I don't see why we should think Blair lied. He probably just didn't know he was feeding the UK incorrect information.
We know now that Saddam likely didn't give a rat's ass whether sanctions were lifted in his lifetime since the Oil for Food program was a corrupt assortment of bribe takers that would let him do whatever he wanted with the money anyway.
I saw in some pro-Bush advertisement a picture of U.S. soldiers standing in front of crates full of what looked like shoulder fired missiles. The large caption said something like "And some say Iraq had no weapons"
My jaw hit the floor. They were a soverign nation, with an army. Of fucking COURSE they are going to have weapons! Hell, we probably sold them those rockets. The Bush supporters have gone from twisting the truth to twisting lies!
I remember when we invaded Iraq, because my wife and I had already had a weeklong trip planned for Paris. We had to decide whether we wanted to go or not, because the U.S. invaded Iraq on a Thursday, and we left for Paris on Sunday. We had to question whether it would be safe. It was of course, and we received zero ill treatment there. I got 10x worse treatment here at home, in O'hare airport. One NASCAR following, Bush-loving idiot at work asked me when I got back if I asked for any "Freedom Fries" while I was there, and I just stared blankly at him. He also asked if I got enough to eat, because the French eat just tiny little portions. (another blank stare)
But I digress... I remember, and some people seem to forget, that Saddam DID let weapons inspectors into Iraq. Yes, for years he dodged them, but when the threat was made by the U.S., he let them in. They didn't find anything, and before the inspectors could finalize their work and come out and officially say "Iraq has no WMD", Bush decided to invade. I remember specifically, he said the inspectors should leave because we were going in. And now the Bush supporters somehow forgot all of that and like to say that Saddam wasn't cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.
I just don't get it. Even after something like 9/11 (which again, has NOTHING to do with Iraq - even GW said so after 9/11) doesn't wake up the American people to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We can't go pushing around other countries without reprocussions. Bush had nothing to do with what caused 9/11, but he is setting us up for the next one. He is making sure that we are hated throughout the world, and that makes me nervous.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I am Polish, I have supported the war against Saddam at the beginning (there were some analogies with the lack of action against Hitler by France and England in WWII).
But now I can agree with every word of the article linked by parent post.
Complaining about a dictator is easy.
Yep, that's right.
Removing him when you KNOW its going to cost lives requires a tad more moral character, will, and resolve, especially when you know its going to piss some people off who are making money off that dictatorship.
Yep, that's right.
But it isn't applicable in this case because that wasn't how the war was sold to the US citizens.
We didn't go in to remove a dictator.
We went in because a dictator with terrorist connections was hiding "WMD's" and preparing to use them against the US.
Telling so many lies (and continuing to tell them) to sell your war does NOT show "moral character, will, and resolve".
Rather it shows the opposite. Too bad for your side.
FACT: If we leave the EU, all British trains will run on time. And the tickets will be free. And everyone will have a legrest.
FACT: If we leave the EU, all mail will be on time. And stamps will cost half as much. And they'll have the queen's head on them again.
FACT: If we leave the EU, Britons will pay 120% less taxes than today. Poor people will no longer need to pay taxes, and we will remove the tax burden from the middle class will ceasing to punish the rich for their productivity. And everyone will get three times as much social support money, we will increase pensions by 400% AND we will pay off the national debt.
FACT: If we leave the EU, we will triple the British literacy rate to almost 300%. There will be no more school violence, all the teachers will be paid well and the NUT will be banned. We will also ensure that students are no longer taught all those embarrassing things about puberty, either.
FACT: If we leave the EU, Britons won't need banks because they won't need to pay bills anymore. With all the money saved from the Great Satan in Brussels, every Briton will be able to have a private castle in Leeds and a fleet of luxury cars that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger envious.
former US Marine Officer, a Chiropractor by training and CEO of a technology company by trade. Let me tell you what I've seen in Iraq.
I remember (I believe it was 1988 or '89 or so) I was in the Middle East and saw much of the misery ascribed to Saddam myself.
As an XO of a Weapons company in the 3rd Marines, my company was dispatched initially to Bahrain. From there we dispersed to other points.
I remember both in the initial runs and the subsequent runs we made after the Gulf War had started seeing Women, Children and young boys in prisons in the REGSAT photos.
I then dispatched our TOW, 81's (mortars/observers) and STA (Scout/Snipers) to a region in the north not too far away form that village on orders from my superiors (albeit for different reasons)
We were too late.
I will never forget seeing the sightless eyes of dead children on the streets, looking like broken dolls. Their Skin blistered from the gas.
You as an American citizen can vote for whomever you feel to be the most appropriate representative of your values.
Just remember, the choices you make affect numerous generations to follow.
Those of us who are now parents and have children that are or almost the age of service know this all to well.
It's a choice we don't make lightly.
Think for yourself. Don't listen to the pundits or your buddies. Investigate for yourself. Don't give in to irrational hate or loyalty to any party.
Semper Fi,
Nick
Nick Donovan - CEO
Ioni Corporation
Frisco, TX USA
Slashdot :: Politics :: Republicans
White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
RNC Outsourced Voter Database to India
New Bush Guard Records Released
and
Slashdot :: Politics :: Democrats
Football Fans For Truth
The Rest of the World Wants Kerry
10 Things To Know About The Upcoming Debates
It's almost hilarious how obvious it is.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
If you read the N.Y. Times regularly you would know that they had already done an interview with an Iraqi nuclear scientist who said they were ready to reconstitute their nuclear program when the sanctions were lifted. The tubes are dual use and the administration wasn't ready to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Now a Iraqi nuclear scientist has a new book about the the bomb in his backyard. Here's more from the Australian.
_ page/0,5744,10863824%255E31477,00.html
An Iraqi scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country's dormant nuclear program were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.
But their existence, Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq's successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon.
In The Bomb in my Garden, Obeidi details fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's furious, and then abandoned, quest for a nuclear bomb.
"Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the story of how close Iraq came to developing them should serve as a red flag to the international community," Obeidi writes with his co-author Kurt Pitzer.
The Associated Press obtained an advance copy of the book, to be released Sunday.
[...]
While only the former president knows fully why he didn't restart his nuclear program, Obeidi believes Saddam may have realised the scope of the massive undertaking.
United Nations inspectors had dismantled the program, removed the enriched uranium stockpiles and exposed Iraq's international network of suppliers. And Saddam was making a mint off the UN's oil-for-food program, while increasing his control over a population reliant on him for basics such as flour, Obeidi says. To get caught importing components needed to produce a nuclear weapon, the scientist says, would have ended the program.
Yet Saddam kept his Iraq Atomic Energy Commission running, apparently without weapons programs, as late as 2003.
[...]
Obeidi, 60, was the creator of Iraq's centrifuge, a key component in one method of enriching bomb-grade uranium. He considers it the most dangerous piece of nuclear technology because related advances make it possible to conceal uranium enrichment programs inside one warehouse.
[...]
By the late 1980s, Iraq was making breakthroughs. However, the international help dried up as Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The UN arrived after Saddam's 1991 defeat, intent on taking apart his weapons programs.
To hide signs of uranium enrichment then, Obeidi describes a massive demolition and reconstruction program he led to remove everything from the top soil to the coffee makers at his former centrifuge lab.
After the 2003 invasion, Obeidi attempted to take the nuclear secrets buried in his garden to US authorities. He describes disorganisation as the CIA and military intelligence wound up fighting over him.
Only after extensive negotiations involving former UN weapons inspector David Albright, who was in Washington, did Obeidi turn over all of his information.
[...]
Looking back, Obeidi struggles to find words to describe how he could arm Saddam, whose government at one point kept him from his family for six months so he could work and left them fearing the walls had ears.
He says it was a matter of national pride and scientific pursuit, but more than anything, it was fear: "The idea of dozens of nuclear bombs in Saddam's hands is horrifying in retrospect."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story
"My main objection, as I've stated in another reply, was that our current regulatory and cultural environment conditioned me not to expect a strip show in the middle of the superbowl. If our church knew that tits were on the menu, we would not have had a Superbowl party. I hope you can appreciate, despite our differing premises, this point."
I can't understand your point.
You complain about a "strip show" yet, your church will condone the mass viewing of 22 men who hit each other so hard that they have to wear body armor, literally, beating each other bloody over a leather ball. Yet, your church condones said beating, interspersed with advertisements for drugs that give four hour erections? And you have the audacity to complain about a tit-flash?
Eat me.
Seriously.
And the sanctimonious horse you rode in on.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
"I know that I will be flamed with out mercy for daring to suggest a bias but here is a sample of"
Or maybe you are being selective in your memory. The forged Guard document story was thoroughly covered on Slashdot to the detriment of CBS, Kerry and the Democrats though its questionable if it had anything to do with Kerry and the Democrats. Maybe you just can't cope with stories that don't agree with your world view so you fixate on them.
It is becoming a tried and true tactic by the right to scream bias at every opportunity and pound the media and editors in to becoming biased to the right because they get worn down by constantly accused of having a liberal bias. Its worked really well thanks to 9/11, the rise of Fox News, and constant threat of being accused of being unpatriotic if you question the Bush administration.
The "liberal bias" in American media has been largely erased, and the pounding CBS is taking should finish it off. In its place we have an increasingly right wing bias which is why the U.S. was very successfully rushed in to the war in Iraq without the media questioning a fabricated case for WMD's and ties between 9/11 and Iraq at all. They were to busy riding along with the troops cheering it on, to do their job and challenging the reason for an aggressive, preemptive, illegal war.
@de_machina
Remove politics from slashdot
This is nothing but a hot bed of liberal left ideas, and nowhere are conservative ideas permitted to have any creedence, as they are always marked troll, flamebait, or some other term straight out of the leftist playbook.
The rebellion of these people against the establishment from years of being socially outcast, manifested into a powerful cynicism permeating every aspect of life and skewing observed information to suit their predefined jaded position. After searching for meaning and finally finding a niche in computers, "education", and anti-establishment/anti-mainstream ideas, the newly intellectual elite now come to spread the creed of those who would suppress the "intellectually inferior" ideas, viewed as wrong or archaic, but claim to promote tolerance of ideas and free speech. This along with the intrinsically socialist left ideas of free and open source software, as well as the destruction of property rights, which people here advocate ad infinitum, amounts to a group of people who embrace the ideas of those who would not separate them from those who outcast them, despite their intellectual elitist mentality. Ever the champion of the downtrodden, the democratic party (now hijacked by marxist/socialism) now finds itself ready to assimilate those outcast, oppressed newly intellectual elite; ready to take their cynicism and anti-establishment mentality to the promised land of equality, equality with those who are clearly not equal.... unless you expect to make it into the ruling body.
I am so pissed that this source for breaking tech news is comprised of the remnants of the former Soviet politburo and their indoctrinated youth.
Clinton lied under oath about SEX! This is something the general public has NO business knowing about. I hate it, HATE IT when politicians are called out on this. It happens all the time to many people...in many countries...in many walks of life... But OMG, a president did it! *Gasp* Let's impeach him!!! Come on. It was immoral, and wrong, but it in no way impacts how well he leads.
Bushed lied to the UN. He lied to Congress. He lied to the American People. Worst of all, he had no reason to lie! The American public rallied behind him, the international community supported us. All we needed to do was carry out a just war on terror and none of this would be an issue today. Bush would be re-elected in a heartbeat and the world would be supporting him and the US all along the way.
But instead he lied. Destroyed our credibility and split the country in two. I don't think the US has ever been this bi-partisan. BAH!! How can anyone support such a man. On top of it all, he's about as intelligent as a 5th grader.
Now then, you blame Clinton for the 1000's of deaths? Too bad it was Bush who cut the anti-terrorism budget when he took office. It was one of his first acts before going on a 4 month vacation.
Get your facts straight and open your eyes. This was is no longer about protecting Americans...it is all about the pocketbook.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Thanks for the US government for taking out Saddam from power even if they lied.