Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people.
You are smoking crack. Iraq has been on the Council on Foreign Relations State Sponsors of terrorism for 2 decades. The US state department Indicted Iraq with these words "Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq". Iraq openly sponsored Ansar al-Islam (led by Bin Laden trained Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), Hamas, PKK, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Hussein even offered Bin Laden asylum when he was kicked out of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1999. There are many more examples (1, 2) if you ever bothered to do some research.
Bin Laden is on record calling Saddam a "Socialist Infidel".
He is also on record encouraging the entire muslim world to unit with Iraq to fight against western powers.
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche.
France doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to defending their own national security.
If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us?
Not when the gravy train called the UN "Oil for Food" program was funneling billions in cash and oil their way. Would you want to attack when your hand was still in the cookie jar?
Kuwait is not the same as ALL of Europe. Not by mass, population or any other measure.
Sorry, I didn't realize there was a death toll limit where suddenly a tyrants oppression warrants our involvement.
Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Yeah? Name one.
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution.
Ah. So we should wait until after somebody kills a few million people before we do anything about it?
After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing.
You mean, when Saddam wasn't sending his armies up to crush the rebellions and slaughter innocent civilians?
We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings.
We were not in a position to stop Stalin or Pol Pot when they were slaughtering millions.
Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
First of all, it still isn't a sales point. The whole point of the Iraq war is and has always been to eliminate the threat that Saddam Hussein and his WMD posed to our national security. Second, nobody has revealed that the WMD threat was non-existent. Quite the contrary. The Iraqi Survey Group found that the WMD threat was still very much real. From the report:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later
Among the things found by ISG:
Several dozen chemical warheads containing Sarin, Mustard, and other blister agents
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi
I don't recall Saddam taking over the entire Middle East like Hitler took over all of Europe (save England and Spain).
Yeah. Saddam never invaded a non-hostile border state like **cough** Kuwait **cough**.
And KNOW you can be ignorant enough to compare the Holocaust to Saddam's purges. I mean that would just be stupid.
And why would it not compare? Are the Kurds, Shiias, and Arabs that Saddam killed somehow less important than the Jews that Hitler killed?
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth? That's not democracy, that's unregulated business gone crazy.
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of what a democracy is. Democracy has nothing to do with the wealth of the constituancy. Democracy simply means a Government controlled either directly by the people or by representitives elected by the people. And yes, if the 1% of the population fairly earned 90% of the wealth, you bet its OK. It would not be OK to tell that 1% that they are not entitled to the wealth that they earned.
Tell me, what can an individual do with $10 billion that he can't do with $1 billion. Money is power. Just because someone is rich shouldn't make their existence more meaningful than mine, but to politicians the person with more money has a louder voice.
Well, if you judge ones existence by how much money they have, then I guess it may be more meaningful. But to the rest of us who are not shallow money-grubbers, wealth really doesn't have much to do with how meaningful your existence is.
And when we installed "democracy" in South America to stop Communism we called it a success too. Now look how peaceful and uncorrupted their governments are. Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success. If Iraq collapses in a few years... well, FUBAR. Enter more terrorists generated by harsh conditions which will be blamed on us.
Ah, so any failure in our foreign policy over the past 50 years should prevent us from defending ourselves today?
the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies
While you may be concerned about hurting our "allies" feelings, I'm more concerned about going after a culture and ideology that is intent on killing as many Americans as possible, as well as any nation that provides support or strength to this ideology.
Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court, Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges
You convienently left out that if the USSC had not stepped in, Gore would have still lost.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm.
There is no way to sugar-coat this. You are 100% wrong. There is nothing factual about your claim. Perhaps you came to this conclusion based on inaccurate information, but you can no longer claim ignorance for your inaptness of the subject. Please read the facts regarding WMD if you have any questions. Your welcome.
Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?
Guess what? We never stopped our war with Iraq. According to the Safwan Accord signed by Iraq in 1991 to end the first Gulf War, Saddam was required to disclose his WMD programs and allow the UN to either destory the programs or view evidence that they were destroyed. This was a condition of the ceasefire to the first Gulf War. Well, Saddam never complied, so that means a ceasefire never took place. The conflict that started last year was a continuation of the war that started over a decade ago, and was only brought to pass because 9/11 shocked us into realizing that we couldn't leave serious business like that unfinished.
The only difference is this time we actually did finish the job, and we are safer because of it.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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If you don't want to bother keeping up with the news, don't act all high and mighty when others who do decide to speak.
It is you, my friend, who has not bothered keeping up with the news.
Bipartesian committee says there were 10 instances where Al Queda could have been foiled in the months leading up to 9/11
I don't think that is in dispute. Obviously we didn't do enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks because they happened. The 9/11 commission lays blame on our entire system, from intelligence to the legislature. This isn't a shot at any single politician (past or present).
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq, though most of the hijackers did move through Iran. Bush makes vague threats about Iran.
President Bush has also said that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It has been very clear from the beginning that 9/11 was the sole responsibility of Al Quada. However, the war against terrorism isn't just a war against the people who attacked us on 9/11. Its a war against all terrorism. If you want to argue that Iraq did not have any ties to terrorism, good luck. They were on the state department list of state sponsers of terrorism for well over 2 decades.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
And you want me to "keep up with the news"? The proof of the threat of WMD is not in question. For crying out loud, the world watched Saddam use WMD on multiple occasions. He was under international order to destroy WMD that we knew he had, and for 13 years he lied to us and was caught in every lie.
Don't believe me? Here is the interim report given by the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) led by David Kay. This report is now nearly 10 months old, and the new ISG report (due in September) is said to contain even more details about what we have found since Baghdad fell. David Kay said:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
Some highlights of things they have found:
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was m
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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So when you Bush supporters talk about unemployment being so low, please fill in the blanks and talk about the kinds of jobs that are being created (hint: they don't pay as well as the jobs that have been lost)
Wrong. If we were only gaining lower paying jobs, why have wages steadily gone up?
And is it not possible that some people have given up looking for work, and therefore contribute to the lowering of the unemployment rate?
Its possible, but that is not what is happening. Visit the BLS Website and you can see just how many people out there who want a job are no longer looking. A comparison between 1996 (same 5.6% unemployment) and now show a minimal difference.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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The economy is still in shambles
I realize that you probably want to be in shambles, but unfortunatly (for you) it is not. Things are going quite nicely now, as witnessed by record setting GDP growth, strong employment growth, and record high wages for the past year and a half.
the national debt is at an all-time high
I have news for you. They national debt is always at an all-time high. It hasn't gone down in any year since the 1950's. You could make this complaint against any president in recent memory.
we go to war
I don't know if you remember or not, but we didn't "go" to war, we were forced into war by a group of fanatic Islamic terrorists who declared war on us in 1998.
and this administration is still pushing for tax cuts to the extreme upper class.
Thats funny, because I'm not the "extreme upper class", and my taxes (both state and federal) have significantly gone down since Bush took office.
Any good will that the United States had immediately after 9/11 has been squandered thanks to arrogant and stubborn foreign policy
Ok. You go and worry about international "good will". I'll vote for the guy who worries more about terrorists who want to blow us up, and dictators with terrorist connections ignoring international orders to disarm.
Thanks to the appointment of a prude like John Ashcroft, our freedoms to make choices about what we can do and say are being eroded. The Patriot Act is an obscenity against the Bill of Rights.
The Patriot Act didn't change a thing in the Bill of Rights. Exactly what freedoms have been eroded for you?
I wonder - do you actually understand that you're helping support the good-ol'-boy club that Bush and Cheney belong to (which, by the way, you DON'T belong to)? If you don't know that they're using you to further their own gains (NOT the best interests of the country), then you really need to pay better attention to current events. And that means turning off Fox News, Rush, and O'Reilly and doing some reading of your own.
Let me guess. Doing some "reading of your own" just happens to mean "reading something that I agree with".
This administration has been a dismal and total failure on many fronts.
I think you need to learn the difference between "failure" and "something that I do not politically agree with". Bush has accomplished much in his 3 1/2 years in office, including much needed tax reform, education reform, campaign finance reform, prescription drug reform, disarming a dictator who had been under international order to disarm for 13 years but refused, and leading the country to properity despite the worst terrorist attack in history and the worst private corporate accounting scandals in history.
You may not like Kerry, but regieme change must occur before this country goes completely down the crapper.
Reading your tripe has encouraged me to make yet another contribution to Bush/Cheney '04 to prevent anybody who agrees with your garbage from taking power.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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Have you not heard the recent admittance that the war in Iraq was launched based on an assumption that turned out to be false?!
There have been no assumptions that turned out to be false. That is, unless you have some information that the rest of the world doesn't yet have.
What about the contracts given to Halliburton, a crooked company whose ex-CEO is now our Vice President, in Iraq?
And those contracts were given before Cheney was even in office.
The US casualty toll in Iraq just reached 1000. That is 1000 of our young men and women who were sent overseas to a war that was based on nothing tangible.
If protecting our country from obvious threats are not "tangible" to you, we should all be glad that you are not in charge of national security.
And what about the Iraqi civilian casualties?
What about them? Would we be more or less culpable if we sat back and watched Saddam kill them without doing anything?
Your biblical quote is very fitting. One sinner (whether it be Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any other despot that we have declared war against) can destroy much good, and it is up to us to stop them.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
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Joe Trippi Interviewed
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History repeats itself, look at the correlation between national debt and inflation during the Reagan years.
Jeez. It's pretty apparent that you didn't bother to actually look anything up before making this claim. Inflation went down from the double digit mess that Carter caused to a low of 1.86% in 1986 during the Reagan years.
Besides, if the Fed were worried that THIS economy is growing so fast, they must have been terrified during the dot-com boom of a few years ago. Oh, that's right, they weren't worried then, either.
Again, you were not paying attention. Between 1999 and 2000, the Fed raised short term rates a total of 1.75% to cool the unsustainable growth. You can read just how concerned they were during 1999 and 2000, with every statement expressing concern that financial conditions may no longer be consistent with containing inflation.
Sorry, but I look at things beyond how they just affect me.
How about the 99.9999% of us (who are not terrorists) who are also unaffected?
John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act as a temporary means of handing a tough situation. John Ashcroft is trying to make the changes permanent.
Maybe that is because this "tough situation" is not a temoprary one either?
It's a shame you can't base your opinions on what's actually happening, rather than what you've been told is happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Turn off the TV and do your own research. It's not difficult.
One could say the same about you, being that you seem to have a hard time grasping basic historical facts. If doing your own research is not difficult, why is it that you are blatantly wrong on obvious facts?
So enjoy those tax rebate cheques folks, the money had to come from somewhere
The money comes from the revenue growth that is a direct result of the personal economic prosperity from the tax cuts.
It is really not that hard to understand. Less taxes = People have more money to spend = Economy Prospers = Tax revenue goes up. More taxes = People have less money to spend = Economy Suffers. Any short term gains the Government may get by raising taxes is quickly erased when the people who pay the taxes make less money because of a stagnant economy.
This isn't that difficult. If they can compromise our communications infrastructure at the same time they carry out the attack, they will greatly increase the severity of the attack because we cannot respond to it.
Since Bush has been in power the Geneva convention is more or less void
Well, considering that the Geneva conventions are limits of wartime behaviour, they have been more or less void since December 1941, which is the last time congress declared war.
a country has been overrun
Overrun by what?
the country is spending billions (more) on weapons
Wrong. Defense Spending is significantly lower than previous times of conflict, which is impressive considering that we are not fighting any single nation, but rather a philosophy that is present in many parts of the world.
Israel gets a "do whatever you like" card
US policy regarding Israel hasn't changed over the past 30 years. Why would you blame Bush for this?
rights have been taken away from citizens
And what "rights" would those be? The right to know if a Cell Phone network went down? (Hint: If your phone loses service, there is a good chance the network went down)
That's because the majority if the right's beliefs have no basis in actual fact.
Do you mind sharing any of these beliefs that supposedly have no basis in actual fact? My guess is that, because you don't agree with them, you refuse to accept any facts that may exist.
I find it quite interesting that Intel has stumbled (again) where AMD has had (nearly) flawless product launches for several product cycles
Wrong. This is not a design issue, this was a fab event. Anybody who works with semiconductor manufacturing can tell you that this sort of thing happens all to often.
AMD is not any better. It took them nearly a year to get their SOI process stable enough to launch the Athlon 64. This is just part of the business. It's just unfortunate for Intel that this happened on some of the first wafer lots out of the fab and that they didn't catch the problem from class probe and WAT data before they shipped some wafers out.
I would have thought by now you could have gotten one of your "fans" to post as something other than an AC to salvage some of your credibility though its a little late now. I have pretty high confidence nobody else has been following this ridiculous thread past Wednesday morning. I wish I hadn't.
For the record, I've been following this thread since the beginning, and have thoroughly enjoyed watching Twirlip make you look like a retarded schoolboy.
Of the $18.4 Billion in reconstruction approved by congress last year, only about $1.9 Billion has been allocated to specific projects. These government funded projects employed an estimated 25,000 Iraqi citizens as of last May (Halliburton employed at least 6,000 of those), but President Bush was pushing to at least double that number to 50,000 by the June 30th deadline.
However, an additional 400,000 jobs have been created in Iraq since the war. These were not part of the emergency rebuilding package Congress approved last November, but are private jobs that are being funded by Iraqi funds and Oil revenues.
Granted, with a work force of ~7 Million, there is still lots of work that needs to be done to improve things, but it has been getting better.
Why give large rebuilding contracts out to US firms, when there are literally millions of Iraqis who are unemployed - and will work for cheap - that are already in Iraq?
Those US firms are employing Iraqis by the thousands. From security and policing, to reconstruction, the majority of the work is being done by Iraqis, under the supervision of the coalition authority.
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
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Linux in Iraq
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Sorry, but the the federal procurement system is a highly structured process. Politicians have no access to it because these contracts are in the hands of civil servants, who would be risking their careers if they were steering contracts to big political donors.
Halliburton's KBR has always been at or near the top of the bidding process. They were even awarded so-called "no-bid" contracts during the Clinton administration to help rebuild the Balkans.
KBR did a risk assessment of potential oil fires before the invasion, which was covered by their 2001 contract. In March 2003, when the attack was unfolding, Pentagon planners issued an additional bridge contract to KBR to put out any fires that were set. KBR had the experience and their personnel were in place. It would have been crazy to open up a three-to-five-month bidding process at that time.
Even Steven Kelman, who was an administrator in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy under Bill Clinton, said this regarding the Halliburton Iraq contracts:
"One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd"
International laws do exist. You can study it in universitys. It IS the body of law formed from treaties. The Geneva conventions are international law.
Wrong. The Geneva conventions are not law, they are conventions. They are not even enforceable. If somebody decides they don't want to follow them, all they have to do is withdraw themselves from the treaty, and there isn't a thing anybody else can do about it.
SUPPORTING THE TROOPS MEANS NOT PUTTING THEM IN HARM'S WAY WITHOUT A DAMN GOOD REASON.
In other words, you think that "supporting the troops" means we have to roll over and let islamic extreemists kill us because we dont want to harm anybody.
Bush said "WMD". Nobody found any. How long have US troops been in Iraq? When did they stop bothering to look for WMD?
Over the past 13 years a lot of people said "WMD". Thats because it is a well established fact that Saddam had capibility to produce WMD, and was actively seeking the technology to produce more. Nobody, including the UNMOVIC team that was carrying out inspections in Iraq, disagrees with this.
Bush told us that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Bull crap. Bush never told us that Saddam was behind 9/11. Here is a complete listing of all the public speeches that Bush has made in office, including his State of the Union addresses, his address to the UN general assembly, and his remarks to the nation after the war started. Find one instance where he said that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. I'll give you a hint, you can save your time because he never said it. What he did say is that Saddam supported Al-Qauda, and that he approved of the attacks, and that the 9/11 attacks proved that we could not allow the threat of his WMD to go unchallenged. This has never been in dispute.
Practically all the hijackers were from SAUDI ARABIA. Where is al-Queda funded? Very largely, out of Saudi Arabia.
And Saudi Arabia does not support them. Sure there are Islamic extreemists there, but Saudi Arabia has been very responisive to help with the war on terror, particularly on the financial front. Attacking them would be akin to attacking New York because Timothy McVeigh was born there.
When a formal declaration of war is issued a whole bunch of international laws kick in.
So-called "international laws" do not exist. There is no law book anywhere that contains "international law", and there is no enforcement body in the world that can enforce "international law". There may be treaties and unions signed between countries, but these do not represent "law" by even the most general definition of the word.
You you seriously suggesting that President Bush is the first US president to have secret service agents secure an area where he is about to walk in? Do you really think that any average joe with a "Bush Rox, War Rulz" sign can walk right up to him and pat him on the back? Are you really that stupid?
Slashdot Mirror
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democracy :
1) Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people.
You are smoking crack. Iraq has been on the Council on Foreign Relations State Sponsors of terrorism for 2 decades. The US state department Indicted Iraq with these words "Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq". Iraq openly sponsored Ansar al-Islam (led by Bin Laden trained Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), Hamas, PKK, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Hussein even offered Bin Laden asylum when he was kicked out of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1999. There are many more examples (1, 2) if you ever bothered to do some research.
Bin Laden is on record calling Saddam a "Socialist Infidel".
He is also on record encouraging the entire muslim world to unit with Iraq to fight against western powers.
I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche.
France doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to defending their own national security.
If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us?
Not when the gravy train called the UN "Oil for Food" program was funneling billions in cash and oil their way. Would you want to attack when your hand was still in the cookie jar?
Sorry, I didn't realize there was a death toll limit where suddenly a tyrants oppression warrants our involvement.
Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Yeah? Name one.
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution.
Ah. So we should wait until after somebody kills a few million people before we do anything about it?
After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing.
You mean, when Saddam wasn't sending his armies up to crush the rebellions and slaughter innocent civilians?
We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings.
We were not in a position to stop Stalin or Pol Pot when they were slaughtering millions.
Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
First of all, it still isn't a sales point. The whole point of the Iraq war is and has always been to eliminate the threat that Saddam Hussein and his WMD posed to our national security. Second, nobody has revealed that the WMD threat was non-existent. Quite the contrary. The Iraqi Survey Group found that the WMD threat was still very much real. From the report:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later
Among the things found by ISG:
Several dozen chemical warheads containing Sarin, Mustard, and other blister agents
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi
I don't recall Saddam taking over the entire Middle East like Hitler took over all of Europe (save England and Spain).
Yeah. Saddam never invaded a non-hostile border state like **cough** Kuwait **cough**.
And KNOW you can be ignorant enough to compare the Holocaust to Saddam's purges. I mean that would just be stupid.
And why would it not compare? Are the Kurds, Shiias, and Arabs that Saddam killed somehow less important than the Jews that Hitler killed?
So it's OK for 1% of the population to control over 90% of its wealth? That's not democracy, that's unregulated business gone crazy.
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of what a democracy is. Democracy has nothing to do with the wealth of the constituancy. Democracy simply means a Government controlled either directly by the people or by representitives elected by the people. And yes, if the 1% of the population fairly earned 90% of the wealth, you bet its OK. It would not be OK to tell that 1% that they are not entitled to the wealth that they earned.
Tell me, what can an individual do with $10 billion that he can't do with $1 billion. Money is power. Just because someone is rich shouldn't make their existence more meaningful than mine, but to politicians the person with more money has a louder voice.
Well, if you judge ones existence by how much money they have, then I guess it may be more meaningful. But to the rest of us who are not shallow money-grubbers, wealth really doesn't have much to do with how meaningful your existence is.
And when we installed "democracy" in South America to stop Communism we called it a success too. Now look how peaceful and uncorrupted their governments are. Lest wait a few years before we declare unconditional success. If Iraq collapses in a few years... well, FUBAR. Enter more terrorists generated by harsh conditions which will be blamed on us.
Ah, so any failure in our foreign policy over the past 50 years should prevent us from defending ourselves today?
the alienation of some of our historically strongest and staunchest allies
While you may be concerned about hurting our "allies" feelings, I'm more concerned about going after a culture and ideology that is intent on killing as many Americans as possible, as well as any nation that provides support or strength to this ideology.
Even though he was appointed by the Supreme Court, Gore should be blamed for giving up his challenges
You convienently left out that if the USSC had not stepped in, Gore would have still lost.
Too bad there was nothing to disarm, and still isn't anything to disarm.
There is no way to sugar-coat this. You are 100% wrong. There is nothing factual about your claim. Perhaps you came to this conclusion based on inaccurate information, but you can no longer claim ignorance for your inaptness of the subject. Please read the facts regarding WMD if you have any questions. Your welcome.
Um...yeah you did. You went to war with Iraq. In fact, you invaded them. Remember? Killed a few innocent people, a whackload of bad guys and pretty soon a cool grand in US soldiers(900 and counting! Go us!)?
Guess what? We never stopped our war with Iraq. According to the Safwan Accord signed by Iraq in 1991 to end the first Gulf War, Saddam was required to disclose his WMD programs and allow the UN to either destory the programs or view evidence that they were destroyed. This was a condition of the ceasefire to the first Gulf War. Well, Saddam never complied, so that means a ceasefire never took place. The conflict that started last year was a continuation of the war that started over a decade ago, and was only brought to pass because 9/11 shocked us into realizing that we couldn't leave serious business like that unfinished.
The only difference is this time we actually did finish the job, and we are safer because of it.
It is you, my friend, who has not bothered keeping up with the news.
Bipartesian committee says there were 10 instances where Al Queda could have been foiled in the months leading up to 9/11
I don't think that is in dispute. Obviously we didn't do enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks because they happened. The 9/11 commission lays blame on our entire system, from intelligence to the legislature. This isn't a shot at any single politician (past or present).
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq, though most of the hijackers did move through Iran. Bush makes vague threats about Iran.
President Bush has also said that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It has been very clear from the beginning that 9/11 was the sole responsibility of Al Quada. However, the war against terrorism isn't just a war against the people who attacked us on 9/11. Its a war against all terrorism. If you want to argue that Iraq did not have any ties to terrorism, good luck. They were on the state department list of state sponsers of terrorism for well over 2 decades.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
And you want me to "keep up with the news"? The proof of the threat of WMD is not in question. For crying out loud, the world watched Saddam use WMD on multiple occasions. He was under international order to destroy WMD that we knew he had, and for 13 years he lied to us and was caught in every lie.
Don't believe me? Here is the interim report given by the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) led by David Kay. This report is now nearly 10 months old, and the new ISG report (due in September) is said to contain even more details about what we have found since Baghdad fell. David Kay said:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
Some highlights of things they have found:
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was m
So when you Bush supporters talk about unemployment being so low, please fill in the blanks and talk about the kinds of jobs that are being created (hint: they don't pay as well as the jobs that have been lost)
Wrong. If we were only gaining lower paying jobs, why have wages steadily gone up?
And is it not possible that some people have given up looking for work, and therefore contribute to the lowering of the unemployment rate?
Its possible, but that is not what is happening. Visit the BLS Website and you can see just how many people out there who want a job are no longer looking. A comparison between 1996 (same 5.6% unemployment) and now show a minimal difference.
The economy is still in shambles
I realize that you probably want to be in shambles, but unfortunatly (for you) it is not. Things are going quite nicely now, as witnessed by record setting GDP growth, strong employment growth, and record high wages for the past year and a half.
the national debt is at an all-time high
I have news for you. They national debt is always at an all-time high. It hasn't gone down in any year since the 1950's. You could make this complaint against any president in recent memory.
we go to war
I don't know if you remember or not, but we didn't "go" to war, we were forced into war by a group of fanatic Islamic terrorists who declared war on us in 1998.
and this administration is still pushing for tax cuts to the extreme upper class.
Thats funny, because I'm not the "extreme upper class", and my taxes (both state and federal) have significantly gone down since Bush took office.
Any good will that the United States had immediately after 9/11 has been squandered thanks to arrogant and stubborn foreign policy
Ok. You go and worry about international "good will". I'll vote for the guy who worries more about terrorists who want to blow us up, and dictators with terrorist connections ignoring international orders to disarm.
Thanks to the appointment of a prude like John Ashcroft, our freedoms to make choices about what we can do and say are being eroded. The Patriot Act is an obscenity against the Bill of Rights.
The Patriot Act didn't change a thing in the Bill of Rights. Exactly what freedoms have been eroded for you?
I wonder - do you actually understand that you're helping support the good-ol'-boy club that Bush and Cheney belong to (which, by the way, you DON'T belong to)? If you don't know that they're using you to further their own gains (NOT the best interests of the country), then you really need to pay better attention to current events. And that means turning off Fox News, Rush, and O'Reilly and doing some reading of your own.
Let me guess. Doing some "reading of your own" just happens to mean "reading something that I agree with".
This administration has been a dismal and total failure on many fronts.
I think you need to learn the difference between "failure" and "something that I do not politically agree with". Bush has accomplished much in his 3 1/2 years in office, including much needed tax reform, education reform, campaign finance reform, prescription drug reform, disarming a dictator who had been under international order to disarm for 13 years but refused, and leading the country to properity despite the worst terrorist attack in history and the worst private corporate accounting scandals in history.
You may not like Kerry, but regieme change must occur before this country goes completely down the crapper.
Reading your tripe has encouraged me to make yet another contribution to Bush/Cheney '04 to prevent anybody who agrees with your garbage from taking power.
Have you not heard the recent admittance that the war in Iraq was launched based on an assumption that turned out to be false?!
There have been no assumptions that turned out to be false. That is, unless you have some information that the rest of the world doesn't yet have.
What about the contracts given to Halliburton, a crooked company whose ex-CEO is now our Vice President, in Iraq?
And those contracts were given before Cheney was even in office.
The US casualty toll in Iraq just reached 1000. That is 1000 of our young men and women who were sent overseas to a war that was based on nothing tangible.
If protecting our country from obvious threats are not "tangible" to you, we should all be glad that you are not in charge of national security.
And what about the Iraqi civilian casualties?
What about them? Would we be more or less culpable if we sat back and watched Saddam kill them without doing anything?
Your biblical quote is very fitting. One sinner (whether it be Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any other despot that we have declared war against) can destroy much good, and it is up to us to stop them.
History repeats itself, look at the correlation between national debt and inflation during the Reagan years.
Jeez. It's pretty apparent that you didn't bother to actually look anything up before making this claim. Inflation went down from the double digit mess that Carter caused to a low of 1.86% in 1986 during the Reagan years.
Besides, if the Fed were worried that THIS economy is growing so fast, they must have been terrified during the dot-com boom of a few years ago. Oh, that's right, they weren't worried then, either.
Again, you were not paying attention. Between 1999 and 2000, the Fed raised short term rates a total of 1.75% to cool the unsustainable growth. You can read just how concerned they were during 1999 and 2000, with every statement expressing concern that financial conditions may no longer be consistent with containing inflation.
Sorry, but I look at things beyond how they just affect me.
How about the 99.9999% of us (who are not terrorists) who are also unaffected?
John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act as a temporary means of handing a tough situation. John Ashcroft is trying to make the changes permanent.
Maybe that is because this "tough situation" is not a temoprary one either?
It's a shame you can't base your opinions on what's actually happening, rather than what you've been told is happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Turn off the TV and do your own research. It's not difficult.
One could say the same about you, being that you seem to have a hard time grasping basic historical facts. If doing your own research is not difficult, why is it that you are blatantly wrong on obvious facts?
So enjoy those tax rebate cheques folks, the money had to come from somewhere
The money comes from the revenue growth that is a direct result of the personal economic prosperity from the tax cuts.
It is really not that hard to understand. Less taxes = People have more money to spend = Economy Prospers = Tax revenue goes up. More taxes = People have less money to spend = Economy Suffers. Any short term gains the Government may get by raising taxes is quickly erased when the people who pay the taxes make less money because of a stagnant economy.
This isn't that difficult. If they can compromise our communications infrastructure at the same time they carry out the attack, they will greatly increase the severity of the attack because we cannot respond to it.
Since Bush has been in power the Geneva convention is more or less void
Well, considering that the Geneva conventions are limits of wartime behaviour, they have been more or less void since December 1941, which is the last time congress declared war.
a country has been overrun
Overrun by what?
the country is spending billions (more) on weapons
Wrong. Defense Spending is significantly lower than previous times of conflict, which is impressive considering that we are not fighting any single nation, but rather a philosophy that is present in many parts of the world.
Israel gets a "do whatever you like" card
US policy regarding Israel hasn't changed over the past 30 years. Why would you blame Bush for this?
rights have been taken away from citizens
And what "rights" would those be? The right to know if a Cell Phone network went down? (Hint: If your phone loses service, there is a good chance the network went down)
corporate america has been placed above the law
Besides the crooks who broke the law.
the VN was almost invalidated
The UN was invalidated because they failed to enforce their own resolutions for 13 years.
money for good causes is being withdrawn
Let me guess, a "good cause" is something that you agree with, right?
America, get yourself another president, _please_.
owlstead, get yourself an educated argument, _please_.
Ah, so because somebody came up with a crackpot conspiracy theory, suddenly the "majority if the right's beliefs have no basis in actual fact"?
If that is the case, there is plenty of that to go around on both sides.
That's because the majority if the right's beliefs have no basis in actual fact.
Do you mind sharing any of these beliefs that supposedly have no basis in actual fact? My guess is that, because you don't agree with them, you refuse to accept any facts that may exist.
Yeah, and it took AMD a year to figure out SOI so they could release the Athlon 64. It goes both ways.
I find it quite interesting that Intel has stumbled (again) where AMD has had (nearly) flawless product launches for several product cycles
Wrong. This is not a design issue, this was a fab event. Anybody who works with semiconductor manufacturing can tell you that this sort of thing happens all to often.
AMD is not any better. It took them nearly a year to get their SOI process stable enough to launch the Athlon 64. This is just part of the business. It's just unfortunate for Intel that this happened on some of the first wafer lots out of the fab and that they didn't catch the problem from class probe and WAT data before they shipped some wafers out.
I would have thought by now you could have gotten one of your "fans" to post as something other than an AC to salvage some of your credibility though its a little late now. I have pretty high confidence nobody else has been following this ridiculous thread past Wednesday morning. I wish I hadn't.
For the record, I've been following this thread since the beginning, and have thoroughly enjoyed watching Twirlip make you look like a retarded schoolboy.
Of the $18.4 Billion in reconstruction approved by congress last year, only about $1.9 Billion has been allocated to specific projects. These government funded projects employed an estimated 25,000 Iraqi citizens as of last May (Halliburton employed at least 6,000 of those), but President Bush was pushing to at least double that number to 50,000 by the June 30th deadline.
However, an additional 400,000 jobs have been created in Iraq since the war. These were not part of the emergency rebuilding package Congress approved last November, but are private jobs that are being funded by Iraqi funds and Oil revenues.
Granted, with a work force of ~7 Million, there is still lots of work that needs to be done to improve things, but it has been getting better.
Why give large rebuilding contracts out to US firms, when there are literally millions of Iraqis who are unemployed - and will work for cheap - that are already in Iraq?
Those US firms are employing Iraqis by the thousands. From security and policing, to reconstruction, the majority of the work is being done by Iraqis, under the supervision of the coalition authority.
Sorry, but the the federal procurement system is a highly structured process. Politicians have no access to it because these contracts are in the hands of civil servants, who would be risking their careers if they were steering contracts to big political donors.
Halliburton's KBR has always been at or near the top of the bidding process. They were even awarded so-called "no-bid" contracts during the Clinton administration to help rebuild the Balkans.
KBR did a risk assessment of potential oil fires before the invasion, which was covered by their 2001 contract. In March 2003, when the attack was unfolding, Pentagon planners issued an additional bridge contract to KBR to put out any fires that were set. KBR had the experience and their personnel were in place. It would have been crazy to open up a three-to-five-month bidding process at that time.
Even Steven Kelman, who was an administrator in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy under Bill Clinton, said this regarding the Halliburton Iraq contracts:
"One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd"
International laws do exist. You can study it in universitys. It IS the body of law formed from treaties. The Geneva conventions are international law.
Wrong. The Geneva conventions are not law, they are conventions. They are not even enforceable. If somebody decides they don't want to follow them, all they have to do is withdraw themselves from the treaty, and there isn't a thing anybody else can do about it.
SUPPORTING THE TROOPS MEANS NOT PUTTING THEM IN HARM'S WAY WITHOUT A DAMN GOOD REASON.
In other words, you think that "supporting the troops" means we have to roll over and let islamic extreemists kill us because we dont want to harm anybody.
Bush said "WMD". Nobody found any. How long have US troops been in Iraq? When did they stop bothering to look for WMD?
Over the past 13 years a lot of people said "WMD". Thats because it is a well established fact that Saddam had capibility to produce WMD, and was actively seeking the technology to produce more. Nobody, including the UNMOVIC team that was carrying out inspections in Iraq, disagrees with this.
Bush told us that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Bull crap. Bush never told us that Saddam was behind 9/11. Here is a complete listing of all the public speeches that Bush has made in office, including his State of the Union addresses, his address to the UN general assembly, and his remarks to the nation after the war started. Find one instance where he said that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. I'll give you a hint, you can save your time because he never said it. What he did say is that Saddam supported Al-Qauda, and that he approved of the attacks, and that the 9/11 attacks proved that we could not allow the threat of his WMD to go unchallenged. This has never been in dispute.
Practically all the hijackers were from SAUDI ARABIA. Where is al-Queda funded? Very largely, out of Saudi Arabia.
And Saudi Arabia does not support them. Sure there are Islamic extreemists there, but Saudi Arabia has been very responisive to help with the war on terror, particularly on the financial front. Attacking them would be akin to attacking New York because Timothy McVeigh was born there.
When a formal declaration of war is issued a whole bunch of international laws kick in.
So-called "international laws" do not exist. There is no law book anywhere that contains "international law", and there is no enforcement body in the world that can enforce "international law". There may be treaties and unions signed between countries, but these do not represent "law" by even the most general definition of the word.
You you seriously suggesting that President Bush is the first US president to have secret service agents secure an area where he is about to walk in? Do you really think that any average joe with a "Bush Rox, War Rulz" sign can walk right up to him and pat him on the back? Are you really that stupid?