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.,
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.
It doesn't affect the President anymore, unless he slept with one of the female nuclear scientists.
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
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.
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.
No, it's a damn shame that the idiots in this country believe that he is right. His administration has been caught in the liars den multiple times yet somehow they are able to get people to continue to turn to them in the face of this "imminent threat".
Once the people of this country get their heads out of their false reality created by what they are fed via consolidated media perhaps they will learn. It is unlikely that anything will change because people refuse to think for themselves. They want to be a passive recipient of all the news they get.
You cannot be successful in life being a passive recipient in anything.
Yes and no. The President is bound by all laws, but he cannot be tried while in office. He must either finish his position in office or be impeached and removed from office before he can be tried; however, it seems to be standing policy by each new president to pardon the previous president, as each wants the same from the following president. I wouldn't count on Bush being tried in a court of law unless he personally killed someone, in cold blood, with 10 witnesses, and was caught grinning into the camera.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
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.
And when the plan entails thousands of US casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties, do you call that "caution?"
Oceania has always been at war with East Iraqistan. It has always been allies with EurArabia.
Oceania has always been at war with EurArabia. It has always been allies with East Iraqistan.
You may be crimethinking without even knowing it comrade. Please report to the Ministry of Homeland Security.
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?
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
I wouldn't count on Bush being tried in a court of law unless he personally killed someone, in cold blood, with 10 witnesses, and was caught grinning into the camera.
And for impersonally killing thousands of people, in cold blood, with millions of witnesses, and being caught grinning into the camera, he may well be re-elected. Superb.
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.
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
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.
"...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*-
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."
You're right. Absolutely right. Every time a terrorist group with members in countries all over the world plans to bomb us, we should fix a few of the countries that may or may not have been involved. Because the USA's job is to fix countries that might be a threat to us in the future and turn these nations into carbon-copies of us. It's the American way, after all.
You officially fail it.
As I recall, Clinton made the same "lies" about Iraq in front of Congress... or did you not know that??
When? Clinton never EVER testified before Congress, so right there you show you don't know what you're talking about. Sitting presidents don't.
And Senator Kerry has been on television several times, as far back as 1995 in fact, stating the same "lies".
When? When did John Kerry know that aluminum tubes were not capable of being used in nuclear weaponsmaking, but claimed they were so capable anyway, and did so in front of Congress? Do tell.
How can something be inflamatory anyways when these people actually made those statements? In this country, that's what we call telling the truth.
They were stating what they believed. When the Bush admin officials testified in front of Congress, they were intentionally LYING. Big difference. They had information beforehand that contradicted what they were saying, and can be proven to have known it.
But its obvious you've got the blind ideology stick shoved up your bum, so I don't think this post will make a bit of difference.
Shyah? Conservatives alwas find it so easy to find a hole to crawl into when the rhetoric fails to be convincing.
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
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.
... but "Brand USA" is looking pretty busted right now. The US already imports far more than it exports. As the US gets more "on the nose" because of its unilateral foreign policy - people who buy US products around the world are going to shop elsewhere.
Do you really think that after all of this, the rest of the world trusts the US with nukes?
This is the main problem - the US, which was basically trusted by most of the world to "do the right thing" is now seen as consistently doing "the wrong thing".
Now there isn't much that the "rest of the world" can do about it
The US once was percieved as a "beacon of freedom" in the way that no other nation has been in history. Your current President has managed to flush that reputation down the toilet. It would take 20 years of great Presidents really making positive contributions to the world (as the US did for the most part last century) to undo the damage the current one has done. If the current one gets re-elected, I'm pretty sure that in four years time Americans abroad will be about as popular as white South Africans abroad during the 1980's.
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.
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.
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
"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.
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!"
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.
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 --
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
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!
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
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.
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
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
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.
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!'"
"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