Perhaps you should spend more time reading the article and less time dismissing it?
One of the prospective attendees was rejected for a personal $250 donation to the Democratic Party.
I don't hold out much hope, since you apparently didn't make it to the third paragraph of a three paragraph article, but you should read up on the K Street Project to see that, in fact, things are different now.
IMHO, the triggered reaction was intended. NASA wants more money to maintain basic science in the face of Project Mars, Bitches! and is threatening to cut these projects to show how dire the situation is.
When the Pentagon wants more money, they spend $$ committed to payroll and then tell Congress that unless they get more money, people won't be paid.
Not to interrupt with facts, but I read in the Guardian that the tribes apparently went upland well prior to the tsunami, during a time of year they would have normally been on the coasts.
Alas, I can't find a handy link for that story, but there are stories about the Sentinelese, Shompen, and the more western-integrated Nicobari - that last who didn't fare so well.
I do see a travel journal (not the most reliable of sources, I fear) that indicates the Sentinelese went upland immediately after the earthquake. No ESP involved, but some amount of sensitivity and prudence.
When the Social Security trust fund runs out, the US government will need to borrow money until the baby boomers die off. That demographic lump will go away, and it's actually possible the problem will never happen.
When the Social Security trust fund runs out of money, the government borrows to pay for the trustees. The Social Security surplus now - caused by Greenspan and Reagan doubling payroll taxes in the 80s - is actually pre-paying for this borrowing.
What theoretically should be happening is the US government paying down the deficit, and preparing to borrow when the trust fund runs out. Given that Bush reversed Clinton's surplus and is spending money like a drunken sailor, he wants to reneg on those promises and promise the moon. His plan won't kick in until 2009, when he's safely gone.
You did know that social security is taking in more than it's paying out now, right? And those funds go straight into the general pool?
So, let's summarize from your perspective: current budget deficits that are weakening the dollar and appear to be structural: OK. Budget defecits that won't kick in for 40 or 50 years because they've been prepaid for? Not only much worse, but totally different!
If the payroll tax hike in the 80s is meaningless - the way Bush says it is - then US govenment bonds are worthless. Hello, major economic meltdown. (By the way, most of Bush's money is in US government bonds. I don't think he really feels they are worthless.)
But then I am not a hate filled person who considers every corrected mistake a lie
I hate stupidity. Would you please show me where Bush admitted that Social Security won't be bankrupt in 2042, or that US government bonds aren't worthless? By the way, the non-partisan CBO says that Social Security won't exhaust its trust funds until 2052. Wow, ten years of solvency right there!
Every year or two, the date of social security meltdown gets pushed back another year. If this happens often enough, problem solved.
Can you show me where Bush admitted that voluntary pollution controls and abstinence-only education don't work. Oh! How about all those times he apologized for taking credit for bills that he had opposed, or even vetoed? (Bush even opposed the Iraqi vote for over a year - imagine what would have happened if the vote were last May, like Sistanti originally wanted?)
You could also show the cite where Bush admitted that going into Iraq without a post-war plan was a mistake.
I know, I know - I'm full of hate for clinging to reality.
You know - or you probably don't - 10 years ago, the crisis was scheduled to happen sooner than 2018 and 2042. Do you know why this is? I bet not.
This is repeatedly and deliberately using misleading numbers to create a phony 'crisis', then proposing a "solution" that doesn't address the problem. If you don't think this is lying, today's Republican party is the right party for you.
On 9-11 read the report on it thier were ties between Iraq and bin Laden, not with this attack but on others.
The 9/11 commission found that the "ties" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda were not operational - i.e., they never worked together. Ansar Al-Islam was in US-protected Northern Iraq, and the Bush admin reportedly cancelled attempts to kill Zarqawi before the war in order to protect one of the justifications.
The "Czech Intelligence"/Iraqi story was pushed hard by this administration, and debunked. The "ties" between Iraq and Bin Laden kind of pale in comparison to the ties between Saudi Arabia's royalty and Bin Laden, or Pakistan and the Taliban.
The US does not get to decide when a country is in violation of a Security Council resolution, only the Security Council does. And they didn't.
Make no mistake; Bush's invasion of Iraq was a new war, and a war of choice. Bush inherited sanctions and replaced them with an invasion.
There are some people who consider spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, getting over a thousand US soldiers killed and thousands more wounded to be more significant than Clinton firing a few missiles into Sudan. Those people are part of the "reality-based community".
You do remember that the UN weapons inspectors left the country because Bush was going to invade, and Bush later claimed that Saddam had refused to let them in, right? Could you explain how that's anything other than a lie? A typo, maybe?
The first was that he lied about saying that by 2048 SSN would be bankrupht if not changed.
Yes, it is a lie. In 2048, Social Security is scheduled to be in deficit - paying out more than it's taking in, but still able to pay almost 80% of scheduled benefits without additional funding. Those 80% of benefits are higher, in real terms, than Social Security is paying today.
If you hadn't noticed, the general federal budget is in deficit now. Is the US "bankrupt"? No. Hence, a lie.
Second, let's look at just one of Bush's WMD statements from the site, about the 'mobile weapons laboratories': "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."
This is clearly false, and David Kay's report has debunked it. It was widely considered false at the time, or at least very suspect. (Who mixes biological weapons in canvas-sided trailers?)
At some point, you are caught in Reagan's bind - do you plead to incompetence or dishonesty? If Bush was simply wrong about every single one of those statements, and wasn't lying, he needs to be institutionalized for his safety and hours.
(Making a 180 degree flip when you're caught in a lie does not nullify the original lie.)
Okay, "unaccounted for" is not the same thing as "we know where it is". Fragments of anthrax in warheads is a "historical document" not live, weaponized anthrax.
Between documented use against the Kurds and Iran, admittance by Iraq of some of these weapons, and discovery of others by UNSCOM, and Bush's invasion, did the statement 'there are no WMD's' become true? When was that? And why didn't whoever was in power at the time scream it from the mountaintops?
It became true in the 1990s, starting in July 1991. It wasn't shouted from the mountaintops because there were questions about verification, and because it would have interfered with continuing sanctions. That's if you accept that the US intended sanctions to bring down the Hussein government, not simply to block WMD creation.
Your first quote references Hussein Kamel, who I also referenced. In 1995, Hussein Kamel said: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed."
Iraq admitted the program, and had tried to conceal the program, but by the time of the speech had already destroyed the WMD in question. This had been reported in real time - the point of the speech (as far as I know) was to push for continued inspections and verification of the Iraqis, not claiming that there were 'secret stocks'.
Do you know what the shelf life of the Iraqi anthrax was, anyway?
How long has the US not been a Muslim theocracy? Even more time than above. No real issues, even if you count the Barbary Coast pirates.
How long has the US been a major supporter of Israel? Since Lyndon Johnson's time, at least. Some correlation with Anti-American extremism, increasing over time.
How long did the US have military bases in Saudi Arabia? Since right about the time Bin Laden started to preach against the United States. If you'll remember, Bin Laden worked with US interests in the 80s in Afghanistan.
So, one psychotic's propaganda seems to track with reality, and another doesn't. (Incidentally, both psychos found religion after a dissolute youth funded by wealthy fathers.) What does it say that the US has the less rational psycho in charge?
Long-term memory, apparently. Do the names Scott Ritter and Hussein Kamel ring any bells?
Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war?
So, did John Kerry believe that because of what his intelligence service said? Oh, you mean Kerry didn't have his own intelligence service? Hm, I guess he had to rely on the Executive Branch.
People believed that Saddam had not accounted for all his weapons. Some intelligence reports, particularly from defectors, indicated that Saddam was hiding weapons. These reports had qualifications and equivocations that seemed to mysteriously get stripped out when declassified for public consumption.
Bush made his decision to go to war without even asking for a National Intelligence Estimate - Ahmed Chalabi's defectors speaking to the Office of Special Plans were good enough for him.
Not everyone believed that Saddam still had WMDs - former UN weapons inspector (and ex-Marine) Scott Ritter is a strong counter-example. Hans Blix was having no success because all of the US 'hot leads' were coming up a dry hole. Heck, even the State Department's intelligence service saw through most claims, such as those wacky aluminum tubes.
Are you saying that they were all so stupid and gullible that they could be misled by the smooth lies of the inarticulate smirking chimp moron Bushitler?
Well, Colin Powell lied too, and so did Cheney, and Condi, and Rumsfeld...
But yes, I do say it was stupid and gullible for Congress to believe this administration, particularly in granting him a blank declaration of war.
You're missing a fundamental point - the issue is not that many people believed Saddam was lying about WMDs. The issue is that, when evidence to the contrary surfaced and the case began to collapse, Bush rushed to invade without a post-war plan more advanced than "collect rose petals thrown by grateful Iraqis, give keys to Chalabi".
Clinton never did that, and I doubt President Gore would have either.
If we're going to say "They thought he had WMD's", as if it is a failing of Bush and Co, and only Bush and Co, let's be fair and bring everyone else to the table that said the exact same thing.
Show me where the Clinton administration said "We know where the WMD is", or listed the specific amounts of material that Saddam "had".
Oh, yes - show me where Clinton invaded Iraq after refusing to support continuing inspections. Believing that Saddam was hiding WMD is slightly different from starting Quagmire: the Sequel.
NO ONE (credible) even among the religious community is pushing against abortions for the life of the mother. Even before Roe Vs. Wade that was legal.
Talk about intellectually dishonest! The bill passed by the House and the Senate, then signed by Bush, made no mention of the health of the mother - that's why it was struck down. So, are you saying that none of these people are credible?
Politicians and religious leaders get around your little conundrum by insisting "partial birth" (or even abortion itself) is never necessary to save the life of the mother!
Does the "gag rule" that bans charities from talking about abortions have an exception for the health of the mother?
Heck, the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban doesn't even have an exception if the fetus is dead. That's one of the reasons the fetus is brought out intact, so the doctor can check for birth defects and tell the grieving parents how likely it is that their next child will die in utero.
Nobody's using "abortion as birth control" in the third freaking trimester!
Even your history is misleading - if you check a Catholic chronology of abortion in the US (not a particularly pro-choice outfit), you'll see that it wasn't until 1967 that the AMA endorsed exceptions in abortion law for the health of the mother, rape, incest, etc. Before 1967 still counts as "pre-Roe".
Do you think it's possible that liberal pro-science groups are collecting information about the Bush administration's move to faith-based science because there aren't any pro-science conservative groups?
The poster made the point that the WTC was not attack because it was a shining example of freedom. I'd like to know on what basis you're disagreeing - hopefully not the simplistic "They hate us for our freedoms". (And yes, I think a lot of the poster's point involved the choice of target - otherwise, why attack the Pentagon and not the National Cathedral?)
Bin Laden has listed his demands, and none of them involve freedom in the US. (Bush has already fulfilled one and is working on a second, by the way.)
BTW, Wahhabi Muslims consider 99% of Muslims to be infidels as well. Sunni muslims pray to Allah and ask for favors in the name of a prophet or a saint (similar to Catholics praying to saints as intermediaries). Wahhabis consider this idolatory, and its practictioners heathens.
To the extent that there's a war, it's not against Islam. It's a war between rationality and blind ideology - and in that war, Bush and Bin Laden are on the same side.
Warrentless searches are nothing new. FISA allowed them.
Untrue. FISA allowed searches to be authorized by a secret court. That court would routinely mark up warrant requests if they felt they were excessive and out of line.
The information gleaned from those warrants, of course, was used for intelligence gathering and not prosecution. There's a qualitative difference when the judicial branch cannot approve or disapprove, and the information will later be used in a criminal case.
There is a big difference between using PATRIOT to search for terrorists, and using PATRIOT to justify questionable wiretaps in a drug smuggling case. There's a rather substantial difference between searches for drugs that find terrorists, and using "anti-terrorist" legislation against known drug offenders.
I admire your technique of not reading links that answer questions you ask - it must help you stay so informed! To repeat, the ACLU is suing over what they feel are excesses in the PATRIOT act, but are not allowed to state what they are in public.
That (combined with your not reading technique) makes it much easier for you to feel the PATRIOT act is OK - after all, you haven't heard about any problems.
... and allowing them to be used as investigative tools (again with court orders) against terrorists
Substantial parts of the PATRIOT act can be used without any kind of court order. The 'sneak-and-peek' provisions can be carried out without the government ever telling you that you were searched or investigated.
The ACLU and EFF have pages up about the PATRIOT Act, and clearly show how the effects are not limited to "terrorists". (Unless, like Ashcroft, you feel that breasts and calico cats are weapons of mass destruction.)
More importantly, can you give me the number of people whose civil liberties have *actually* been violated (N.B. not those who "felt" they were violated) under specific provisions of the PATRIOT Act?
Not easily, because it's secret. I can certainly say that Maher Arar had his civil liberties violated, but since the US government won't talk about it, it's hard to say whether it was PATRIOT-related or just plain extra-legal.
The Lancet article was a peer-reviewed estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties since the invasion as around 100,000 as of the fall of last year. Based on the statistics, the true number could be between 5,000 and 200,000, but the highest probability was around 100,000.
The methodology was to compare the rate of deaths before the war and the deaths after the war. If someone dies because Bechtel can't manage to get sewage treatment back on line, that counts as a death related to the US invasion just as surely as a cluster bomb dropped on a house full of civilians.
Note that the WaPo article gets the other casualty count sources wrong - Iraq Body Count is tracking confirmed casualties in the Western media. They acknowledge that they are definitely undercounting, simply because the Western media is not present at all locations where bodies are found.
A sizeable chunk of Iraqis would actually prefer life under Saddam to the current lawless situation. Not all, not even most, but more than you'd like.
The choice between what Bush is doing and Saddam is a false dichotomy. Last year, a majority of Iraqis wanted the Americans to leave immediately - even those who felt that it would increase violence. Apparently, the Bush administration knew better.
Whether or not the initial invasion's benefits outweighed its costs (for the US or the Iraqis), the question about the current occupation is entirely separate.
Given the extremely high turnout for last weekend's elections, I'd say that the question has been rather eloquently answered, don't you?
Not really; the turnout was less than in South Vietnam in 1967. Anyway, how many of those Iraqis went to the polls to vote the Americans out?
Ah - so the first American president to win the election, both in electoral votes AND popular votes in oh, however many years, is a fuckup?
You may want to sit down for this - the number of votes a politician gets doesn't alter whether or not his policies are successful. Opinions don't magically alter reality.
Even in 2000, it was clear Bush had the reverse Midas touch - everything he'd been involved with had turned to crap. His only success in 'business' involved getting the state of Texas to confiscate land and hand it over to a baseball team.
But you can say that John Kerry (or any of the other candidates) wasn't one?
Actually, they didn't say that. It's pretty clear Kerry did fuck up, in that he lost to arguably the worst US president ever.
If the US is so concerned about the capability to do evil things, when is this administration invading Russia? Or if the issue is actual harm done, what is this administration doing for the 4 million dead and 3 million displaced in the Congo?
The only lists that Saddam was #1 on were: 1: Weak states on top of vast oil reserves 2: Mistakes W felt his daddy made
Um, no. If we exclude magical faeries from the tri-state condition (and unsupported rumors about Syria fall into the magical faeries category), we are left with:
1. The US said there were WMDs in Iraq
2. The UN weapons inspectors could not find them
3. The US invaded, and could not find any WMDs more recent than a few castoffs from the Iran-Iraq war.
4. Right-wing loonies refuse to admit they were wrong.
No one ever claimed there never -were- WMDs. (Although, to be fair, during the 80s right-wing loonies blamed the gassing of the Kurds on the Iranians.)
A better analogy would be: you know that, at one point, there was change in the couch. You ask the owner of the house, who tells you he took the change and threw it away. No one saw him throw it away, so there is no proof.
You send in couch inspectors, who fail to find change. So you blow open his front door, shoot a few family members, and break the couch into kindling while his neighbors loot his living room.
Upon finding no change, you decide that the result "cannot be equated to true or false".
Here's the thing - not only can the Right stop people from talking about Social Security "privatization", they can orchestrate a lockstep switch in the media from "private accounts" to "personal accounts", and claim that it's pure liberal bias not to use only the current Republican talking points.
If you are having a discussion about completely eliminating taxation, no one will take you seriously. The Right is trying to minimize taxation on them, but I kind of doubt they're going to be giving up cops, troops, or corporate (and pundit!) welfare anytime soon.
I think you may be confusing political correctness with adolescence.
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Perhaps you should spend more time reading the article and less time dismissing it?
One of the prospective attendees was rejected for a personal $250 donation to the Democratic Party.
I don't hold out much hope, since you apparently didn't make it to the third paragraph of a three paragraph article, but you should read up on the K Street Project to see that, in fact, things are different now.
IMHO, the triggered reaction was intended. NASA wants more money to maintain basic science in the face of Project Mars, Bitches! and is threatening to cut these projects to show how dire the situation is.
When the Pentagon wants more money, they spend $$ committed to payroll and then tell Congress that unless they get more money, people won't be paid.
NASA's budget kung fu is weaker than DoD's.
Not to interrupt with facts, but I read in the Guardian that the tribes apparently went upland well prior to the tsunami, during a time of year they would have normally been on the coasts.
Alas, I can't find a handy link for that story, but there are stories about the Sentinelese, Shompen, and the more western-integrated Nicobari - that last who didn't fare so well.
I do see a travel journal (not the most reliable of sources, I fear) that indicates the Sentinelese went upland immediately after the earthquake. No ESP involved, but some amount of sensitivity and prudence.
Please, please, please give we more then 2% where I can invest it in better sources.
I just noticed that Gene Lyons has a whole column today about what a chump you are.
Sorry, historical revisionism makes my blood boil. Just because you didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Wow that is really stretching to tie thoses two together.
Um, considering that the Social Security surplus is currently funding 20% of the general deficit - no, it isn't.
When the Social Security trust fund runs out, the US government will need to borrow money until the baby boomers die off. That demographic lump will go away, and it's actually possible the problem will never happen.
When the Social Security trust fund runs out of money, the government borrows to pay for the trustees. The Social Security surplus now - caused by Greenspan and Reagan doubling payroll taxes in the 80s - is actually pre-paying for this borrowing.
What theoretically should be happening is the US government paying down the deficit, and preparing to borrow when the trust fund runs out. Given that Bush reversed Clinton's surplus and is spending money like a drunken sailor, he wants to reneg on those promises and promise the moon. His plan won't kick in until 2009, when he's safely gone.
You did know that social security is taking in more than it's paying out now, right? And those funds go straight into the general pool?
So, let's summarize from your perspective: current budget deficits that are weakening the dollar and appear to be structural: OK. Budget defecits that won't kick in for 40 or 50 years because they've been prepaid for? Not only much worse, but totally different!
If the payroll tax hike in the 80s is meaningless - the way Bush says it is - then US govenment bonds are worthless. Hello, major economic meltdown. (By the way, most of Bush's money is in US government bonds. I don't think he really feels they are worthless.)
But then I am not a hate filled person who considers every corrected mistake a lie
I hate stupidity. Would you please show me where Bush admitted that Social Security won't be bankrupt in 2042, or that US government bonds aren't worthless? By the way, the non-partisan CBO says that Social Security won't exhaust its trust funds until 2052. Wow, ten years of solvency right there!
Every year or two, the date of social security meltdown gets pushed back another year. If this happens often enough, problem solved.
Can you show me where Bush admitted that voluntary pollution controls and abstinence-only education don't work. Oh! How about all those times he apologized for taking credit for bills that he had opposed, or even vetoed? (Bush even opposed the Iraqi vote for over a year - imagine what would have happened if the vote were last May, like Sistanti originally wanted?)
You could also show the cite where Bush admitted that going into Iraq without a post-war plan was a mistake.
I know, I know - I'm full of hate for clinging to reality.
You know - or you probably don't - 10 years ago, the crisis was scheduled to happen sooner than 2018 and 2042. Do you know why this is? I bet not.
Like the chump you are, you repeat your 2% talking point. The Social Security trustees use an amazingly pessimistic forecast, while the private account numbers are done with an optimistic one.
This is repeatedly and deliberately using misleading numbers to create a phony 'crisis', then proposing a "solution" that doesn't address the problem. If you don't think this is lying, today's Republican party is the right party for you.
On 9-11 read the report on it thier were ties between Iraq and bin Laden, not with this attack but on others.
The 9/11 commission found that the "ties" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda were not operational - i.e., they never worked together. Ansar Al-Islam was in US-protected Northern Iraq, and the Bush admin reportedly cancelled attempts to kill Zarqawi before the war in order to protect one of the justifications.
The "Czech Intelligence"/Iraqi story was pushed hard by this administration, and debunked. The "ties" between Iraq and Bin Laden kind of pale in comparison to the ties between Saudi Arabia's royalty and Bin Laden, or Pakistan and the Taliban.
The US does not get to decide when a country is in violation of a Security Council resolution, only the Security Council does. And they didn't.
Make no mistake; Bush's invasion of Iraq was a new war, and a war of choice. Bush inherited sanctions and replaced them with an invasion.
There are some people who consider spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, getting over a thousand US soldiers killed and thousands more wounded to be more significant than Clinton firing a few missiles into Sudan. Those people are part of the "reality-based community".
You do remember that the UN weapons inspectors left the country because Bush was going to invade, and Bush later claimed that Saddam had refused to let them in, right? Could you explain how that's anything other than a lie? A typo, maybe?
I can rebut even your cherry-picked examples.
The first was that he lied about saying that by 2048 SSN would be bankrupht if not changed.
Yes, it is a lie. In 2048, Social Security is scheduled to be in deficit - paying out more than it's taking in, but still able to pay almost 80% of scheduled benefits without additional funding. Those 80% of benefits are higher, in real terms, than Social Security is paying today.
If you hadn't noticed, the general federal budget is in deficit now. Is the US "bankrupt"? No. Hence, a lie.
Second, let's look at just one of Bush's WMD statements from the site, about the 'mobile weapons laboratories': "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."
This is clearly false, and David Kay's report has debunked it. It was widely considered false at the time, or at least very suspect. (Who mixes biological weapons in canvas-sided trailers?)
At some point, you are caught in Reagan's bind - do you plead to incompetence or dishonesty? If Bush was simply wrong about every single one of those statements, and wasn't lying, he needs to be institutionalized for his safety and hours.
(Making a 180 degree flip when you're caught in a lie does not nullify the original lie.)
Okay, "unaccounted for" is not the same thing as "we know where it is". Fragments of anthrax in warheads is a "historical document" not live, weaponized anthrax.
Between documented use against the Kurds and Iran, admittance by Iraq of some of these weapons, and discovery of others by UNSCOM, and Bush's invasion, did the statement 'there are no WMD's' become true? When was that? And why didn't whoever was in power at the time scream it from the mountaintops?
It became true in the 1990s, starting in July 1991. It wasn't shouted from the mountaintops because there were questions about verification, and because it would have interfered with continuing sanctions. That's if you accept that the US intended sanctions to bring down the Hussein government, not simply to block WMD creation.
Your first quote references Hussein Kamel, who I also referenced. In 1995, Hussein Kamel said: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed."
Iraq admitted the program, and had tried to conceal the program, but by the time of the speech had already destroyed the WMD in question. This had been reported in real time - the point of the speech (as far as I know) was to push for continued inspections and verification of the Iraqis, not claiming that there were 'secret stocks'.
Do you know what the shelf life of the Iraqi anthrax was, anyway?
Let's look at history:
How long has the US had freedom? Quite some time.
How long has the US not been a Muslim theocracy? Even more time than above. No real issues, even if you count the Barbary Coast pirates.
How long has the US been a major supporter of Israel? Since Lyndon Johnson's time, at least. Some correlation with Anti-American extremism, increasing over time.
How long did the US have military bases in Saudi Arabia? Since right about the time Bin Laden started to preach against the United States. If you'll remember, Bin Laden worked with US interests in the 80s in Afghanistan.
So, one psychotic's propaganda seems to track with reality, and another doesn't. (Incidentally, both psychos found religion after a dissolute youth funded by wealthy fathers.) What does it say that the US has the less rational psycho in charge?
To be fair, MI5 might have saved the receipts from when British firms sold conventional weapons and WMD precursors to Saddam.
Am I missing something?
Long-term memory, apparently. Do the names Scott Ritter and Hussein Kamel ring any bells?
Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war?
So, did John Kerry believe that because of what his intelligence service said? Oh, you mean Kerry didn't have his own intelligence service? Hm, I guess he had to rely on the Executive Branch.
People believed that Saddam had not accounted for all his weapons. Some intelligence reports, particularly from defectors, indicated that Saddam was hiding weapons. These reports had qualifications and equivocations that seemed to mysteriously get stripped out when declassified for public consumption.
Bush made his decision to go to war without even asking for a National Intelligence Estimate - Ahmed Chalabi's defectors speaking to the Office of Special Plans were good enough for him.
Not everyone believed that Saddam still had WMDs - former UN weapons inspector (and ex-Marine) Scott Ritter is a strong counter-example. Hans Blix was having no success because all of the US 'hot leads' were coming up a dry hole. Heck, even the State Department's intelligence service saw through most claims, such as those wacky aluminum tubes.
Hussein Kamel, Saddam's slain son-in-law, was frequently referenced as an expert in Iraq's WMD programs. But, after he defected, he claimed Saddam had unilaterally destroyed all his WMD. Didn't hear that a lot, did you?
Are you saying that they were all so stupid and gullible that they could be misled by the smooth lies of the inarticulate smirking chimp moron Bushitler?
Well, Colin Powell lied too, and so did Cheney, and Condi, and Rumsfeld...
But yes, I do say it was stupid and gullible for Congress to believe this administration, particularly in granting him a blank declaration of war.
You're missing a fundamental point - the issue is not that many people believed Saddam was lying about WMDs. The issue is that, when evidence to the contrary surfaced and the case began to collapse, Bush rushed to invade without a post-war plan more advanced than "collect rose petals thrown by grateful Iraqis, give keys to Chalabi".
Clinton never did that, and I doubt President Gore would have either.
If we're going to say "They thought he had WMD's", as if it is a failing of Bush and Co, and only Bush and Co, let's be fair and bring everyone else to the table that said the exact same thing.
Show me where the Clinton administration said "We know where the WMD is", or listed the specific amounts of material that Saddam "had".
Oh, yes - show me where Clinton invaded Iraq after refusing to support continuing inspections. Believing that Saddam was hiding WMD is slightly different from starting Quagmire: the Sequel.
Have you considered that you may not get a reply because your question is a non sequitur?
Or perhaps because if you type "Bush Lies" into Google, you'll get an answer?
NO ONE (credible) even among the religious community is pushing against abortions for the life of the mother. Even before Roe Vs. Wade that was legal.
Talk about intellectually dishonest! The bill passed by the House and the Senate, then signed by Bush, made no mention of the health of the mother - that's why it was struck down. So, are you saying that none of these people are credible?
Politicians and religious leaders get around your little conundrum by insisting "partial birth" (or even abortion itself) is never necessary to save the life of the mother!
Does the "gag rule" that bans charities from talking about abortions have an exception for the health of the mother?
Heck, the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban doesn't even have an exception if the fetus is dead. That's one of the reasons the fetus is brought out intact, so the doctor can check for birth defects and tell the grieving parents how likely it is that their next child will die in utero.
Nobody's using "abortion as birth control" in the third freaking trimester!
Even your history is misleading - if you check a Catholic chronology of abortion in the US (not a particularly pro-choice outfit), you'll see that it wasn't until 1967 that the AMA endorsed exceptions in abortion law for the health of the mother, rape, incest, etc. Before 1967 still counts as "pre-Roe".
Oh, right, this is the first allegation that the Bush administration politicizes science.
Do you think it's possible that liberal pro-science groups are collecting information about the Bush administration's move to faith-based science because there aren't any pro-science conservative groups?
The poster made the point that the WTC was not attack because it was a shining example of freedom. I'd like to know on what basis you're disagreeing - hopefully not the simplistic "They hate us for our freedoms". (And yes, I think a lot of the poster's point involved the choice of target - otherwise, why attack the Pentagon and not the National Cathedral?)
Bin Laden has listed his demands, and none of them involve freedom in the US. (Bush has already fulfilled one and is working on a second, by the way.)
BTW, Wahhabi Muslims consider 99% of Muslims to be infidels as well. Sunni muslims pray to Allah and ask for favors in the name of a prophet or a saint (similar to Catholics praying to saints as intermediaries). Wahhabis consider this idolatory, and its practictioners heathens.
To the extent that there's a war, it's not against Islam. It's a war between rationality and blind ideology - and in that war, Bush and Bin Laden are on the same side.
Warrentless searches are nothing new. FISA allowed them.
Untrue. FISA allowed searches to be authorized by a secret court. That court would routinely mark up warrant requests if they felt they were excessive and out of line.
The information gleaned from those warrants, of course, was used for intelligence gathering and not prosecution. There's a qualitative difference when the judicial branch cannot approve or disapprove, and the information will later be used in a criminal case.
There is a big difference between using PATRIOT to search for terrorists, and using PATRIOT to justify questionable wiretaps in a drug smuggling case. There's a rather substantial difference between searches for drugs that find terrorists, and using "anti-terrorist" legislation against known drug offenders.
I admire your technique of not reading links that answer questions you ask - it must help you stay so informed! To repeat, the ACLU is suing over what they feel are excesses in the PATRIOT act, but are not allowed to state what they are in public.
That (combined with your not reading technique) makes it much easier for you to feel the PATRIOT act is OK - after all, you haven't heard about any problems.
... and allowing them to be used as investigative tools (again with court orders) against terrorists
Substantial parts of the PATRIOT act can be used without any kind of court order. The 'sneak-and-peek' provisions can be carried out without the government ever telling you that you were searched or investigated.
The ACLU and EFF have pages up about the PATRIOT Act, and clearly show how the effects are not limited to "terrorists". (Unless, like Ashcroft, you feel that breasts and calico cats are weapons of mass destruction.)
More importantly, can you give me the number of people whose civil liberties have *actually* been violated (N.B. not those who "felt" they were violated) under specific provisions of the PATRIOT Act?
Not easily, because it's secret. I can certainly say that Maher Arar had his civil liberties violated, but since the US government won't talk about it, it's hard to say whether it was PATRIOT-related or just plain extra-legal.
Of course, you may feel that using the PATRIOT act against pot-smugglers is excessive.
I can't find a link (sorry!) but I believe some of the special treatment of Canadians actually derives from the treaty that ended the war of 1812.
The Lancet article was a peer-reviewed estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties since the invasion as around 100,000 as of the fall of last year. Based on the statistics, the true number could be between 5,000 and 200,000, but the highest probability was around 100,000.
The methodology was to compare the rate of deaths before the war and the deaths after the war. If someone dies because Bechtel can't manage to get sewage treatment back on line, that counts as a death related to the US invasion just as surely as a cluster bomb dropped on a house full of civilians.
Note that the WaPo article gets the other casualty count sources wrong - Iraq Body Count is tracking confirmed casualties in the Western media. They acknowledge that they are definitely undercounting, simply because the Western media is not present at all locations where bodies are found.
A sizeable chunk of Iraqis would actually prefer life under Saddam to the current lawless situation. Not all, not even most, but more than you'd like.
The choice between what Bush is doing and Saddam is a false dichotomy. Last year, a majority of Iraqis wanted the Americans to leave immediately - even those who felt that it would increase violence. Apparently, the Bush administration knew better.
Whether or not the initial invasion's benefits outweighed its costs (for the US or the Iraqis), the question about the current occupation is entirely separate.
Given the extremely high turnout for last weekend's elections, I'd say that the question has been rather eloquently answered, don't you?
Not really; the turnout was less than in South Vietnam in 1967. Anyway, how many of those Iraqis went to the polls to vote the Americans out?
Pity about those Iraqi Christians who couldn't vote.
Ah - so the first American president to win the election, both in electoral votes AND popular votes in oh, however many years, is a fuckup?
You may want to sit down for this - the number of votes a politician gets doesn't alter whether or not his policies are successful. Opinions don't magically alter reality.
Even in 2000, it was clear Bush had the reverse Midas touch - everything he'd been involved with had turned to crap. His only success in 'business' involved getting the state of Texas to confiscate land and hand it over to a baseball team.
But you can say that John Kerry (or any of the other candidates) wasn't one?
Actually, they didn't say that. It's pretty clear Kerry did fuck up, in that he lost to arguably the worst US president ever.
If the US is so concerned about the capability to do evil things, when is this administration invading Russia? Or if the issue is actual harm done, what is this administration doing for the 4 million dead and 3 million displaced in the Congo?
The only lists that Saddam was #1 on were:
1: Weak states on top of vast oil reserves
2: Mistakes W felt his daddy made
Um, no. If we exclude magical faeries from the tri-state condition (and unsupported rumors about Syria fall into the magical faeries category), we are left with: 1. The US said there were WMDs in Iraq 2. The UN weapons inspectors could not find them 3. The US invaded, and could not find any WMDs more recent than a few castoffs from the Iran-Iraq war. 4. Right-wing loonies refuse to admit they were wrong. No one ever claimed there never -were- WMDs. (Although, to be fair, during the 80s right-wing loonies blamed the gassing of the Kurds on the Iranians.) A better analogy would be: you know that, at one point, there was change in the couch. You ask the owner of the house, who tells you he took the change and threw it away. No one saw him throw it away, so there is no proof. You send in couch inspectors, who fail to find change. So you blow open his front door, shoot a few family members, and break the couch into kindling while his neighbors loot his living room. Upon finding no change, you decide that the result "cannot be equated to true or false".
Here's the thing - not only can the Right stop people from talking about Social Security "privatization", they can orchestrate a lockstep switch in the media from "private accounts" to "personal accounts", and claim that it's pure liberal bias not to use only the current Republican talking points. If you are having a discussion about completely eliminating taxation, no one will take you seriously. The Right is trying to minimize taxation on them, but I kind of doubt they're going to be giving up cops, troops, or corporate (and pundit!) welfare anytime soon. I think you may be confusing political correctness with adolescence.