-- STOP HILLARY -- Video

[Bama Torch in Pcola]

Yes because the democrats were fed the 'misinformation' about WMDs that the administration cherry picked and gave to them. The administration was in the position to see ALL the intelligence and chose to only use what they wanted. The press rolled over on this one fearing to be viewed as un-American because 911 was still too fresh in everyone's minds.

"GWB acted on information he was provided by his intelligence sources." He only acted on some of the information.

Bamaro, you seem sure that this alternative evidence existed. What is it?

 

[Bamaro]

Bamaro, you seem sure that this alternative evidence existed. What is it?

http://www.amazon.com/Fiasco-Americ..._bbs_sr_1/103-9732511-0283054?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Hubris-Inside...0307346811/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-9732511-0283054
Another issue Cheney fixated on was Baghdad's ties to terrorists, especially the allegations of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. The agency would write up answers to the vice president's repeated questions and send them to his office, often reporting that there was little to substantiate Cheney's darkest suspicions of an operational alliance between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. But Cheney and his hard-nosed chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby (who went by the nickname of Scooter), were never satisfied and continually asked for more. "It was like they were hoping we'd find something buried in the files or come back with a different answer," Michael Sulick, deputy chief of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, later said. There was no "obvious pressure" by Cheney and Libby to change the answers, Sulick recalled. But the barrage of questions and the frequent visits by the vice president had created an environment that was subtly, but unmistakably, influencing the agency's work. The CIA's analysts, Sulick believed, had become "overly eager to please."

 

[NYBamaFan]

When it comes to ties with Al Qaeda specifically, I know few who believed that this was the case before the war began - but Saddam's ties to terrorism against Israel are clearly documented. This is beside the point. The risk that drew America into war with Iraq was the risk that they might have or use WsMD anywhere in the region. The documentation tied to that risk runs back more than 20 years, and never missed a beat through many administrations.

Fact - Saddam supported terrorist organizations
Fact - The entire world believed Saddam had WsMD
Fact - 9/11 made America act differently when faced with facts 1 & 2 above

 

[blackumbrella]

When it comes to ties with Al Qaeda specifically, I know few who believed that this was the case before the war began - but Saddam's ties to terrorism against Israel are clearly documented. This is beside the point. The risk that drew America into war with Iraq was the risk that they might have or use WsMD anywhere in the region. The documentation tied to that risk runs back more than 20 years, and never missed a beat through many administrations.

Fact - Saddam supported terrorist organizations
Fact - The entire world believed Saddam had WsMD
Fact - 9/11 made America act differently when faced with facts 1 & 2 above

i have forgotten alot about this, but i seem to remember that the inspectors didn't believe they had wmds, and this is the information that the un accepted, so i don't see how your fact #2 is true. and teh info that goes back 20 years is only tangentially relevant to the primary question--does he have, is he making wmds right now? last time i checked, the answer to that was 'no.'

what i'm curious about, still, is how bush goes down favorably in history based on, say, establishing a democracy in the middle east, when the impetus for effecting this change, was either 1) faulty intel or 2) deception of congress and the american people. you seem to suggest option 1, but at teh same time, you want to give bush historical credit for establishing a democracry, when, if this even pans out, which is very very questionable, by your own logic he took this course of action by mistake. help me understand

 

[NYBamaFan]

i have forgotten alot about this, but i seem to remember that the inspectors didn't believe they had wmds, and this is the information that the un accepted, so i don't see how your fact #2 is true. and teh info that goes back 20 years is only tangentially relevant to the primary question--does he have, is he making wmds right now? last time i checked, the answer to that was 'no.'

There were conflicting reports about the possibility that he was still producing WsMD, but his behavior (requiring advanced notice of inspections, making certain areas off limits to inspectors) cast a huge shadow on the findings. Saddam purposely led the world to believe that he had WsMD, knowing that the UN would never call his bluff. He knew that the only way that we would ever learn the truth would be to invade, and he also knew that he had paid off enough high level people in France and Russia to keep that from happening with his "food for oil" scam. He placed his bets and lost.

what i'm curious about, still, is how bush goes down favorably in history based on, say, establishing a democracy in the middle east, when the impetus for effecting this change, was either 1) faulty intel or 2) deception of congress and the american people. you seem to suggest option 1, but at teh same time, you want to give bush historical credit for establishing a democracry, when, if this even pans out, which is very very questionable, by your own logic he took this course of action by mistake. help me understand

I have never mentioned giving Bush credit for creating a democracy in Iraq. If a democracy does rise, Bush deserves some credit (even if his rationale for the invasion was wrong), but the Iraqi people will deserve most of the credit for it - having endured all that has taken place since the fall of Saddam.

I credit Bush for standing up to the UN and terrorism. No matter the outcome, he started a war against terrorism when the rest of the world was content to sit on the sidelines. 9/11 demanded as much - not just in Afghanistan, but anywhere that terrorism rears its ugly head...

 

[Bamaro]

Fact - The entire world believed Saddam had WsMD

Fact - ONLY because this is what the administration wanted everyone to believe.

The fact is that after the 1st gulf war and through 41 & 42s administrations, we had Saddam pretty well boxed in.

 

[blackumbrella]

There were conflicting reports about the possibility that he was still producing WsMD, but his behavior (requiring advanced notice of inspections, making certain areas off limits to inspectors) cast a huge shadow on the findings. Saddam purposely led the world to believe that he had WsMD, knowing that the UN would never call his bluff. He knew that the only way that we would ever learn the truth would be to invade, and he also knew that he had paid off enough high level people in France and Russia to keep that from happening with his "food for oil" scam. He placed his bets and lost.

I have never mentioned giving Bush credit for creating a democracy in Iraq. If a democracy does rise, Bush deserves some credit (even if his rationale for the invasion was wrong), but the Iraqi people will deserve most of the credit for it - having endured all that has taken place since the fall of Saddam.

I credit Bush for standing up to the UN and terrorism. No matter the outcome, he started a war against terrorism when the rest of the world was content to sit on the sidelines. 9/11 demanded as much - not just in Afghanistan, but anywhere that terrorism rears its ugly head...

i don't give him credit for doing the obvious. i would've gone into afghanistan. and i think the 'rest of the world' was in support of us at that time, if memory serves. where we fell out of favor with the rest of the world was when we felt justified in invading iraq when no one else did, and then our justification turned out to be false, and then we started acting like our purpose was to free iraq, and then when they started wanting us out we started acting like we were cleaning a potential breeding ground for terrorists was our purpose. basically, we invaded a country on certain grounds, then when those grounds were shown to be flase, we squirmed around accountability. i guess you could call that standing up to the world, but i call it not owning up to yourself

 

[NYBamaFan]

Still, there is some question...

Former Iraqi general Georges Sada claimed that in late summer 2002, Saddam had ordered all of his stockpiles to be moved to Syria. The former number two in the Iraqi Air Force stated that with the arrival of inspectors on November 1st, he took the occasion of Syria’s broken dam and made an “air bridge”, bringing by air and by ground, moved them into cargo aircraft and moved them into Syria. He also claimed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s attempt to use 20 tons of chemical weapons in Amman, Jordan and kill 80,000 civilians came from a large cache in Syria, originally transported from Iraq. Another Iraqi general, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti who defected before the 1991 Gulf War, claimed in 2006 that weapons are in Syria because of long military deals going back to the late 1980’s, where contingency plans would be activated if either country were threatened.

 

[NYBamaFan]

i don't give him credit for doing the obvious. i would've gone into afghanistan. and i think the 'rest of the world' was in support of us at that time, if memory serves. where we fell out of favor with the rest of the world was when we felt justified in invading iraq when no one else did, and then our justification turned out to be false, and then we started acting like our purpose was to free iraq, and then when they started wanting us out we started acting like we were cleaning a potential breeding ground for terrorists was our purpose. basically, we invaded a country on certain grounds, then when those grounds were shown to be flase, we squirmed around accountability. i guess you could call that standing up to the world, but i call it not owning up to yourself

So, you thought that we should have stopped after Afghanistan? No reason to stop terrorism on a larger scale?

 

[NYBamaFan]

Fact - ONLY because this is what the administration wanted everyone to believe.

Pure BS

The fact is that after the 1st gulf war and through 41 & 42s administrations, we had Saddam pretty well boxed in.

The fact is that Saddam kept thumbing his nose at the rest of the world and was lying and stealing the entire time. Boxed in? How? If we had continued to follow the guide of the UN, we could never have touched him, and he knew it. Boxed in? By whom? The French? The Russians? The Chinese?

LOL - the only countries with any stones are the US and UK...

 

[blackumbrella]

So, you thought that we should have stopped after Afghanistan? No reason to stop terrorism on a larger scale?

this is a good question, and goes hand in hand with the syria wmd quote you posted as well. what i would do, and what i do expect my government to do, is follow through with their initiatives. you already mentioned in this thread how we dropped the ball w/ afghanistan after initial success, where, if we'd stayed committed, it likely wouldn't be the heroin dealership it is today, and we might have captured bin laden. and as for teh wmds, i don't understand why the slim possibility that they were moved to other countries is such a mitigation for this admin. so, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent people's lives we invaded a country hostile to us with wmds, then let those same wmds slip out the backdoor into other countries also hostile to us, leaving us to fix the country we first invaded, losing more and more lives every day.

 

[NatchezTider]

NYBF: it's nice to see you stick to the high road in your assessment of the Iraqi situation. some people just don't get it because of their blind hatred of anything the president does.

insane hussein had the weapons and had used them against his own people. that is no secret. the panty-waisted UN gave him plenty of time to get the weapons buried, moved to another country, etc. he was a piece of crap that deserved to die!

we must stay the course or there will be new waves of terrorist acts like never before. it we give the impression that all the terrorists have to do is hold out until the liberals in the usa b***h and moan enough that we pull out, we have lost. our brave men and women will have died in vain, and for the life of me i cannot understand how liberals don't see that. as the great president reagan once said, the enemy fears nothing more than strength and disdains nothing more than weakness.

 

[rkwilkerson]

United Nations...

 

[It's On A Slab]

United Nations...

The United Nations uses duct tape?

 

[NYBamaFan]

The United Nations uses duct tape?

Industrial strength red tape. It will stick to anything, and takes about 100,000 US troops to remove...

 

[bama-wayne]

I guess we need the honest and forthright democrats in control. You know, the ones that support our sons and daughters in Iraq but would like to pull funding so they can't do the job they have been assigned. I have had two sons in Iraq and one is still over there with the 10th. Mountain Infantry walking the streets of Baghdad. It would sure not translate into support if funding say for body armor was pulled IMHO!!! I do believe we need a little balance from both parties but I think for either to have a solid grasp for too long is hazardous. But we need some qualified applicants and I'm not sure I've seen any.:BigA:

 

[NYBamaFan]

I guess we need the honest and forthright democrats in control. You know, the ones that support our sons and daughters in Iraq but would like to pull funding so they can't do the job they have been assigned. I have had two sons in Iraq and one is still over there with the 10th. Mountain Infantry walking the streets of Baghdad. It would sure not translate into support if funding say for body armor was pulled IMHO!!! I do believe we need a little balance from both parties but I think for either to have a solid grasp for too long is hazardous. But we need some qualified applicants and I'm not sure I've seen any.:BigA:

I was a grunt with the 2-22 , 10th Mountain Division, in the late 80's (when they first reformed). We were one of the first units of the "new" Army - built to fight like Special Forces units. This is a very tough unit, and I wish you and your family the best...

 

[92tide]

some people just don't get it because of their blind hatred of anything the president does.

i guess it is easy to dismiss criticism out of hand as "blind hatred"

when one paints their adversaries as consumed by hate, full of rage, socialist military haters, etc. it does make it much easier to argue against them.

fwiw, it is possible to disagree with the way this administration has handled the war and not have it based in hatred, wanting to bring down bush, etc. but that fact does not give one a nice neat straw man to systematically tear down.

i think it is somewhat arrogant to assume that the only reason someone could disagree with you is because they are irrationally emotional

 

[Bamaro]

i guess it is easy to dismiss criticism out of hand as "blind hatred"

when one paints their adversaries as consumed by hate, full of rage, socialist military haters, etc. it does make it much easier to argue against them.

fwiw, it is possible to disagree with the way this administration has handled the war and not have it based in hatred, wanting to bring down bush, etc. but that fact does not give one a nice neat straw man to systematically tear down.

i think it is somewhat arrogant to assume that the only reason someone could disagree with you is because they are irrationally emotional

That seems to be the only argument they have left!

 

[Bama Torch in Pcola]

That seems to be the only argument they have left!

Have you read this thread at all? I've seen several good arguments put forth on both sides. Perhaps you're seeing only what you want to see.