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Powell Aide Says Case for War a 'Hoax'
PBS recently aired an interview with Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Ret), Chief of Staff at the Department of State from Aug 2002 - January 2005, addressing some of the skepticism surrounding the pre-war claims made by the Bush administration. Wilkerson claims in no uncertain terms that he "participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council." This is not the first time that Wilkerson has spoken out against the administration and intelligence community.
dad21 is the same idiot who insisted repatedly that parents were responsible for their children getting kidnapped, because the parents should have watched them 24/7. That's who you're in bed with when you listen to him.
Well I agree with your other points, except this one. Keep in mind that it wasn't until the late 1940's that the US had anything resembling control of the global currency base. Up until the 1940's, everything was pounds sterling. And even then, it probably wasn't until the 1960's that the pound was passe.
I have to agree. And yet, congress voted for it and the unwashed public thought it was on the level. By what this guy says, Colin Powell thought it was on the level. What happened? Does the average American actaully not have the two neuron minimum?
The fact that everyone in congress voted for it, and that many of those guys were not stupid enough to believe it wasn't a hoax, suggests that there would be plenty of recriminations to go around. The legislative branch will actively squelch this.
c) the public at large isn't going to get outraged about this (or anything else) unless gas prices go back up to $3/gal
No, $2.50 was enough. The speed that this sort of thing will move depends exactly on the price of gas, but $3 ain't the tipping point, $3's just the acceleration point. But you're right, at $3 it would move fast. As is, it'll be a big part of the eventual pullout shenanigans.
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Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940), nicknamed "the fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Butler was awarded the Medal of Honor twice during his career, one of only 19 people to be so decorated. He was noted for his outspoken left-wing views and his book War is a Racket, one of the first works describing the military-industrial complex. After retiring from service, Butler became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, communists, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s. Butler came forward to the U.S. Congress in 1934 to report that a proposed coup had been plotted by wealthy industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The problem is that politicians could lie and get away with it. Before the war Bush & Co were pretending that we were in danger from Iraq, and now that they've been proven wrong no one called them on the original claims. If I call the police and falsely claim there's a robbery when there isn't, I will be fined for false call. Bush made a false call which caused 2,000+ Americans and unknown number of Iraqis to die - and he just got away with it.
We need some sort of accountability system that would force politicians to pay for their mistakes. Require them to publicly estimate cost of war and take all outstanding costs from their personal bank accounts. Wolfowitz estimated war to cost around half a billion, and so far we ended up with more than $200 billion (yes, two hundreen billion US dollars) of extra costs. If Bush & Co were forced to pay all outstanding costs, they would've estimated the cost of war honestly, and people wouldn't be misled into supporting war.
Same thing for human cost. Require pro-war politicians to gather signatures. It's way too easy to say "I support a war" while sitting at home in front of TV. Make a law that starting a war would require million or so legally binding signatures from people to cover in case we run out of troops. There's always so many vocal pro-war supporters, but when it comes to actually fighting the war we always seem to run out of people. Make war supporters actually carry the cost of war, and they will actually start using their brains first.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
Actually, you are very close to being correct in refuting my "since 1913" idea, but I have been spending a LOT of time lately reading up on how the US helped prop up the Sterling for decades and it seems that they/we may have done so in order to help it crash and be replaced. I'm hoping that I'll have performed enough research to back it up in the next few months -- which is why I am holding to the theory.
Here are some current "facts" from the Bush administration that are being accepted without question by the media and most of the US population:
If we withdraw from Iraq the terrorists will win.
This statement seems to imply that unless the USA maintains 100,000+ troops in Iraq for many years then the insurgents will overrun Iraq and set up Bin Laden as a dictator of Iraq. This is obviously false at a number of levels. At a most basic level, the insurgents lack the capability to defeat the Shiite militias. In the broader picture, even if the USA sets up a stable democracy after many year of occupation, there is no guarantee that the Iraqi people will not elect a government with strong ties to organizations that the USA considers to be terrorist organizations. Whether it is a good idea for the USA to maintain substantial trooop levels in Iraq for many years to come is unclear without substantial impartial detailed study. If these studies have been done at all, the results have certainly not been presented to the American people. Instead, we are merely given some simplistic message about how the terrorists will win unless we do what the Bush administration wants.
Social security is broken.
The way social security works is that people who are working pay into the system and that money is used to pay benefits for people who are retired. Strictly speaking, it's not possible for the system to break. The government just transfers the money that is collected from the workers to those receiving retirement benefits. In order to cushion the effect of the baby boom generation, however, the government was collecting more than it was paying out. The problem is that the rest of the government started borrowing against this surplus and now the Bush administration is looking to avoid having to pay it back. Whether the current system is optimal is certainly open to debate but the idea that the system is "broken" is obviously false.
The Bush administrion did nothing illegal in order the NSA to listen in on American phone conversations
From the Bill of Rights in the US constitution:
I'm not a constitutional scholar but that seems to rather clearly state that some kind of warrant is required. Maybe there's a loop hole and maybe there isn't but it is certainly not factual to blatantly assert that it is legal for the US government to listen in on American phone conversations without a warrant.It was all about oil (for long term goals)
I think that's so but in a very roundabout way . . . the war clearly and predictably resulted in loss of short-term production, and the upcoming Iran war will even more so; but, if the Empire can manage to build bases in the region, that will help it control access to oil to some of its potential rivals over the next century (China, Russia, India, possibly the EU).
So there is a long-term benefit to the Empire, but one paid for by the loss of countless innocent lives. That in my mind makes it completely unjustifiable. But, besides that, it also means these nations will be forced to choose between imperial control of resources they desperately need for their own continued survival, or war - and probably the first large-scale war since WW2 - in order to attempt to liberate them.
There are tough times ahead.
Nonaggression works!
Maybe you should have read the story. You see, he responded that -- until 6 months ago -- he did not know there was dissent among the intelligence community that gave him the information he relied on to make his case. You can argue that he was stupid, or anything else you like, but he relied on his staff, and the intelligence community, to let him know what was fact and what was in dispute. According to him, this was not presented. He was told the information was "rock solid."
Give the man credit for speaking out once he found out that the system was broken. He makes a very strong argument against the way the Bush administration works.
Building WMDs on any large scale is a HUGE undertaking. Sure, anyone with a little knowledge can cook up poison gas in their bath tub but to make it on a military scale is very complex you need:
1) Chemical plants (or bio incubator sites) to make tons of the stuff.
2) Railrods or fleets of trucks to bring in precursor chemicals.
3) A source for the precusros, either from overseas or from plants in country.
4) Then you have to develop some sort of delivery system, shells, bombs, planes, boats etc.
5) You need thousands of people to support the operation: scientists, engineers, security people, administrative people etc.
6) Power plants to run the various factories.
7) Then you ned to train people in use of the delivery system.
During WWII the Germans tried to proect ahd hide some of their plants in caves. The locations were usually easy to spot due to the huge infrastructure needed. And even though many of the factories were deep enough not to be damaged by bombs, many of them could effectively be shut down by cutting off access to power or the transportation net. And factor in that there were UN inspectors on the ground as well as electronic survelliance, and the possibility of Sadam developing stockpiles of wepaons on the sly becomes slim to none.
We were definitely lied to.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I hope you're being sarcastic. He left the administration in the most graceful way he could, and preserved most of his image which is pretty impressive, considering the crap he was forced to argue for. I think this is a huge testament to the man's integrity and reputation.
If I see Powell, McCain, or Guiliani on the 2008 republican ticket, I would vote for any of them in a heartbeat.
The moderate/liberal republicans seem to be the most effective in office while still preserving a sense of honesty and integrity. Even though I'm somewhat liberal, I absolutely detest the Democratic party in its current state. Moderate republicans have the bargining power to allow important legislation to get passed, whereas a democratic president in an overwhelmingly conservative senate will be completely ineffective
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
As a non-USian, I'm sure I speak the sentiments many others have by saying it wouldn't be nearly as frustating, nearly as fucking annoying if only the USA would stop prancing about with all its self-congratulating double-speak and admit it's just greedy/doesn't care just like everybody else, PICK A SIN AND RUN WITH IT ALREADY.
As if the phrase "Opeartion Iraqi Freedom" (yes, Iraqis gained some freedoms, but at the expense of others) wasn't bad enough, they actually had the nerve to go and mock real people's blood and guts with it.
1)After 911 Bush assumed Iraq may have had something to do with it.
2)He then ordered the inteligence guys to find any evidence linking the two.
3)He also told them to turn up any evidence of WMDs to show how bad they are.
4)Every little thing that would normally get ignored as inconclusive or even improbable suddenly became elevated to the level of hard evidence. Possibly not in a single step - a guy reports something to his supperior that he normally wouldn't, and says "well it could be X". It then moves up the food chain gradually changing to "this is X". Now with several hundred small bits elevated to the status of real evidence, you get a very different picture than reality. Different enough to look really bad later when the truth is made clear.
You have to be careful what you ask people to find. I suspect Bush asked for evidence of certain things, and the organisations dutifully produced that evidence. He probably told them not to overlook the slightest thing, and in a large organization the slightest thing got elevated to hard fact.
It's still wrong. You don't tell the intel guys what to look for, you let them tell you what they see.
Because it's anti-Bush. Since 80%+ of /. readership is liberal, it gets posted.
In response to the article, I think it's the general consensus of everyone involved that we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Problem is, now that we've done so, we have to stick it out until Iraq is able to run themselves again.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
"I detest him for not having the moral fiber to resign"
Why, because quitting is morally superior to staying put and doing your best to minimize the damage done by the administration?
Resigning would have accomplished nothing -- since Bush had already been elected, he had no need of Colin Powell's general appeal -- so some yes-man would have been appointed, instead of someone who would act on his conscience and try to ameliorate the evil.
What happened when Chistie Whitman resigned as head of the EPA? Nothing good. She wanted to preserve her political future, and resigned on principle -- she was replaced by someone who barely even bothers with lip service to environmental responsibility.
IMO, it is far more moral to suck it up and try to ameliorate the evil, to be the voice of reason, than to just resign on principle. Especially considering the hit Powell's reputation has taken -- he showed a selflessness extremely rare in high-ranking officials, and you should be lauding his efforts instead of detesting him.
If the president had to sell the war on the cost up front there would have been no support whatever. The cost is now around $ 800 per citizen. If you are a middle class tax payer that is more around 2k per family member. Some are claiming much higher.
But Bush was able to sell the war on a deferred payment plan which includes record deficits and raiding surpluses. If Bush said we are going to war and we are going to tax petro an extra 10 cents a gallon to help pay for it he would have gotten booed of the stage. There should always be a cost for all citizens to go to war as some families are called to pay the ultimate sacrifice.
I swear the most important number on peoples mind is the price of gas at the pump. The president's approval rating inversely proportional to the price of gas that fuel pump.
First, and with respect to your service, impugning the character of Jack Murtha is beneath you. It's little better than when "Mean" Jean Schmidt did so on the house floor, and is disrespectful of the Representative's service and, even more importantly, his dedication to the well-being of our troops.
Second, you mischaracterize Rep. Murtha's proposal. Should you care to read it, it's available here. It calls for large-scale redeployment at "the earliest practicable date," which Murtha has in the past estimated as requiring about six months. This is hardly equivalent to "leaving right now."
Third: rather than debate the "immediacy" of the representatives plan, many supporters of the administration have chosen to take issue with the notion of an "artificial timetable." Obviously you're free to agree or disagree with the idea, but keep in mind that a sizeable portion of the Iraqi National Assembly recently released a statement in which they called for that very timetable. Even more recently, they repeated that demand: tellingly, they condemned terrorism, but defined terrorism in such a way that excludes insurgents who attack the US Military.
So, respectfully, I would suggest that the Iraqis that you fought to "liberate" have spoken, and what they're saying is, "Thank you. Now get out."
Video: http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=event&EveI
Transcript (pdf): http://www.newamerica.net/Download_Docs/pdfs/Doc_
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I don't think most rational humans want to see Iraq become a terrorist state. This is why we need to stay the course at this point and why playing politics with the Iraqi war is going to do more damage than good to a potential presidential canidate.
Would you personally be willing to die to "stay the course"? Would you ask your children to die for this cause? You're assuming that we can win the war in Iraq. If we can't win, then letting more of our bravest and most patriotic citizens die needlessly is equivalent to murdering them.
If anyone in this administration, including the president, lied or ignored evidence in order to push this war on the people, then they should be executed for treason.
The strikes against Afghanistan were legitimate, if largely ineffective; the strikes the same night against Sudan were not.
Depends on how you define ineffective. Opium production came out of a slump after the attacks.
Seriously, I almost agree that the attack on Afghanistan could be deemed legitimate. I have no conflicting evidence.
Any person that can think and read that does not believe that the "War on Terror" and the Iraq war are made up is a moron. I flipped off Rumsfeld the other day while watching TV in a store. He was crying wolf again about the "War on Terror".
Just last week or so, a tunnel was discovered that went from Mexico to the US. It was 2400 feet long, had a cement floor, took over a year to build, and some chump got caught with 1 ton of Mexican swag.
Now, that was one operation. I forget the estimated tonnage of pot that comes from British Columbia every year (not much better than Mexican swag, but I digress). But its a bunch.
Oh, and sometimes people bring in tons of cocaine. And other stuff.
Now, how difficult would it be to replace the multi-ton cargo with say a few tons of explosives, poisons, or whatever nasty stuff a "terrorist" can think of? Zero.
The "War on Terror" is such a joke, that a few weeks ago, CNN broadcasted that there were "confirmed" bin Laden tapes saying that he was planning to attack the US or something. Read the disinformation here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/19/binladen.tape/
Nothing happened. No response. The terror "threat level" did not raise up from "elevated" than it has in years. Remember that Bush used to jack up the terror threat level during his reelection campaign for the fun of it.
The American people are being lied to and they simply accept it.
There is nothing you can do to stop a well funded suicidally driven person. Period.
Just ask Ireland when they really had issues with terrorism.
I always get modded all over the place with posts like this from insightful, informative, overrated, and flamebait. So here we go again.
The war in Iraq is about profit, inflation prevention, and basic economics. Or was it really about WMDs? Or was it really for 9/11/01? Well, WMDs were a farce, and Saddam didn't have anything to do with the plane thing.
Oh, but North Korea is next, right?
The president has very little control over the domestic economy.
Uhm.... wrong.
The President has quite a bit of control over the domestic economy. The reason the economy was good under Clinton was because he obeyed one rule with the economy: do not spend more than you make.
There is a direct correlation between a balanced federal budget and the economy. Yes, Clinton enjoyed a false economic boom, but he was doing everything right to *foster* that boom. The national debt plays directly into the confidence of both domestic and foriegn investors, which provides incentive for economic growth. The economy can turn terrible even with strong confidence, that's true; but a good balanced federl budget is a positive influence.
President Bush has helped destroy an already-ailling economy by massively increasing federal spending, while reducing federal incomes. This is terrible for the economy.
Think about this:
Would your family be prosperous for long if you continually spent more than you made?
Or, put another way, what's the easiest way to destroy your finances? A: rack up credit card debt.
The President has made many choices that were against the better interest of domestic economic strength. He doesn't get off the hook so easily.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
So you're claiming that the inspection crews being booted was a hoax?
In a way- according to the same PBS program that presented the interview, inspection crews were able to inspect 100% of the sites listed by the intelligence agencies, and were only truly booted out by the US government 48 hours previous to the second invasion. EVERY single one of those reports showed no WMDs. And the Germans had already told Cheney personally that Curveball's reports were not reliable.
All of this happened prior to Powell's speech- so I guess the real question was why the Administration was feeding known false information to the Secretary of Defense. The "hoax" label comes not from me- but from Powell's aide, who feels abused and defrauded by our government.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have a class this semester where the teacher encourages political debate, he is a liberal and I am a neo-con (I love that), so we get into the topic of the war in Iraq, and he says "You know why we went into Iraq right? OIL!" and so I politely responded "See, I just don't see what we have to gain by overtaking Iraq, in terms of oil." to which he responded "That's right, we don't! It's not worth it!". He made my point quite cleary, and quickly realized the quandary he had gotten into so we moved on at that point. The fact that Iraq exports oil is not just a coincidence, it is not a reason for going to war but it WOULD explain why Iraq is so corrupt, that is the only correlation I, myself, can make between the Iraq war and oil.
First, and with respect to your service, impugning the character of Jack Murtha is beneath you.
I didn't intend to impugn his character, rather to criticize his stance. And while the actual resolution he proposed sounds reasonable and learned (thanks for the link, btw), his press release literally screams for immediate withdrawal. Part of the release is quoted here. Since democracyrising.us can hardly be considered a shill site for the administration, I think it's safe to assume they're not taking his words terribly out of context.
I think the reason some people are against a timetable is because it gives insurgents and terrorists a date they can shoot for (no pun intended) when they can resume operations. While I agree with that stance, I do think we need to give something like that to the INA (I keep calling it the Iraqi National Congress, don't know where that confusion came from). Afterall, it's their country, and we're just guests now. If they want to do something we think is foolish, well, there's not much we can do about that.
As for their politicians condemning terrorists without condemning insurgents, that's probably more pandering to their own base than anything else. I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Besides, it's a lot easier to condemn people who are killing innocent civilians than it is those who are targetting police and/or soldiers. The second group is bad enough, but the first is absolutely horrific.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
> Sounds like Iran is next on the list
Perhaps I'm naive, but I like to think even our current Moron in Chief realizes that we can't take on Iran right now.
However, I fully expect him to do something stupid that will cause Iran to become overtly involved in Iraq.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wilkerson never attacks Bush or the administration. He is always clear that his issues are with the flaws in the current inteligence system, and how it can easily be exploited by the politically motivated.
He gives historical examples of these same politically motivated exploits being used by the Truman(D), Eisenhower(R), Kennedy(D), Johnson(D), and Reagan(R) administrations.
Why some people take this as an attack Against George W. Bush is puzzling.
The system is broken. We have been attacked (9-11), and our two major political parties still cannot see above the political squabling. They both want to capitalize on the tragedy to gain political ascendance over their rivals.
The system is broken. Our leaders have not addressed the threat that America is facing. In order to address that threat, we must fix the system. Our founding fathers gave us the methods and tools. Read your constitution, and apply its lessons. Vote the bums (both D's and R's) out of office.
I'm a bit of a leftie, and these days, we have fairly short fuses when it comes to accusations of treason or unpatriotism, and tend to see them where they really aren't. So my bad there, and thanks for clearing that up.
I did read the release that you linked. The full quote reads, "According to The LAT, Murtha called for beginning withdrawal immediately with completion in six months. He also urged a rapid deployment force remain in the region." That is a substantively different stance than "everyone out now," but the issue has been politicized so far by both sides that it's easy to lose the distinction.
This argument makes little sense to me. How would having a timetable make terrorists more likely to attack after the US withdraws than not having a timetable? If terrorists are waiting for the US to leave before stepping up attacks, why wouldn't they go into hiding and stop their attacks, then resume once the Bush Administration declares that we've won, packs up their things, and goes home?
The only answer I can come up with is that it's the very presence of the US forces that are provoking the attacks. In fact, once again from the PDF you linked to, a State Deparment study released in 2004 indicated that terrorism was on the rise in Iraq, and concluded that the US presence in Iraq was actually exacerbating the problem.
The Iraqi politicians are condoning attacks on US troops because it's what their constituents want to hear?
Do you really find that comforting?
That is probably and optimistic figure, at least a according to Joseph Stiglitz:
The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.
This is from an article in the British newspaper The Guardian about a month ago.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Kierkegaard was a very bitter man.
Fixed that for you.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
When one reads about modern chemical weapons, one is struck by the almost ridiculous levels of lethality of these agents. Nerve agents like Vx can kill after an exposure measured in miligrams, with volumes comparable in size to a pinhead.
Ever wonder why this stuff has to be so lethal?
It turns out that the biggest problem in chemical warfare is that of DISTRUBUTION. It is very, very difficult to deliver an agent over an area with sufficient concentration to ensure the desired effect. Modern agents are so lethal because it is so difficult to bring a target into contact with the agent AT ALL that it must be lethal no matter how small the exposure - or it just won't work very well. And even then, you're still talking about volumes in terms of tanker trucks, not soda cans.
Planning for chemical strikes during the Cold War involved massed regiments of artillery, and in some cases, special delivery aircraft that resembled crop dusters - and even then, the primary intent behind chemical warefare wasn't the first-order casulties, but rather second-order area denial, and incidental effects from forcing your enemy into his NBCW gear. (If you've never lived in a gas mask and bunny suit before, it's a terrible pain in the ass that greatly reduces combat effectiveness)
The only terrorist attack to make use of chemical weapons picked probably the best place in the world to try it - the Tokyo subway, where you have an enclosed space with a super-high population density. They released 1l or Sarin into this space (in trains!) and killed only 16 people, with most of the injured being from panic/trampling rather than poisoning from the agent.
They would have done much better with plain old ordinary explosives - compare to the death toll during the London subway bombings, which was a target with a much lower population density.
Unless you are capable of fielding a massive delivery system, there just isn't much "mass" destruction with chemical weapons. They are horribly inefficient, and really, not much of a threat at all in real terms. They're really more of a threat to those who would try and use them than the intended targets.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Back when Powell introduced the bogus intelligence information in front of the U.N. and it turned out to be cribbed from 10-year-old studies available on the Internet, it should have been a big red light for Americans. Now even the people who were on the fence then and are having second thoughts now are mostly doing it because they're looking at maybe a $1 trillion cost eventually. They still ignore the depth of corruption in our government. Our legislators routinely take bribes to write laws, in many cases just parroting the legislation as handed to them by corporate lawyers, complete with spelling errors. But we continue to call it campaign financing or the reality of politics, or dismissing the critics as cynical or self-promoting or simply calling them "liberals" as if the term itself invalidates anything they say. The country is screwed up. In my opinion it's beyond saving. All we can do is watch it go down the drain and hope the disintegration process isn't too painful.
The American Right increasingly uses the logic of non sequitur and ad hominen in their less than substantive attacks upon the left. Ironic, as well as a further indication of Contemporary Conservatism's continuing plunging fall into the abyss of moral relevance, which began in 1968 when Nixon played his "southern strategy", and openly courted the racist vote.
One ugly godawful thing to have done to the party of Lincoln.
Nixon won, and the GOP has never looked back. Now neoconivving trotskyites speak for contemporary conservatives, and self-confessed American traitors are welcomed with open arms in under the Big Circus Tent of Republican Inclusiveness, the party of nothing, for everybody.
Ever stop to think that maybe some people who wish to harm Americans are reacting self-defensively to previous Administrations' wrongful actions against them? You solution for this is 10 eyes for an eye?
And he spake a parable unto them,
Can the blind lead the blind?
shall they not both fall into the ditch?
--Luke 6:39
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
They used to call it "United States Department of War" or war department. I believe that name is much more accurate. In 1949 they changed it. Personally, I'd like to see it called the Department of Offense or DoO for short.
I honestly don't think a Clinton invasion of Iraq would have put the presidency in Al Gore's hands. For better or worse, Conservatives and the Republican part 'own' national security. When Democrats are seen as doing anything to promote security, the right wing takes it as the Left playing politics with the military. Remember, the strikes Cliton ordered on Sudan and Afghanistan were on the eve of his impeachment. Remember all the 'wag the dog' talk? How much worse would it have been if Clinton had invaded Iraq? I don't think he would have had much support o n the left for his invasion either.
Though it would have played out much betterif Clinton *had* invaded Iraq -- there might actually be a stable democracy there right now. Clinton did a great job in the former Yugoslavia, with no combat casualties.
Hell, I don't know.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So was Diogenes - according to those who misunderstood him. But we still cite him 2300+ years later.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
In the Jones deposition, he responded to the definition of sexual relations
Not quite, Sparky, you are only telling half the story. Clinton complained, rightfully so, that the prosecution's definition of "sexual relations" was overly broad. Then the judge agreed, and said sexual relations==sexual intercourse. Since blow jobs are not intercourse, Clinton did not lie. End of story. As far as your "sexual harrassment law" angle goes, the judge ruled that even if Clinton was lying, it wasn't sexual harrassment anyway.