-
The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to
In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.
Thanks!
- Status
Oncearunner8 said:
I have been living out of the realm of sentimental patriotism, and hence grounded in reality, for far too long, to even respond to such amatuerish nonesense. One thing I'll say, though, is that the capacity of the propaganda to misinform and take-hold of weak-minds, and hence control their world view, is sensational. Bravo! And complimenti!
And you American conservatives today are so attached today to your so called conservative values, are so bogged down today in your sense of holding absolute moral patrimony, while setting the rest of the world aflame. Talk about fascism.
Hugh Januss said:
Not really. There's a huge difference between talking and doing.
I do think it's insightful to look at the rhetoric before the war started among many prominant democrats and then compare those comments to the ones they made after the war became a political liability, particularly among those who voted for the war action. My personal favorite is from Harry Reid who made similar arguments Bush did before the war and then uttered the infamous "the war is lost" while we still had a few hundred thousand troops fighting in Iraq.
Oncearunner8
BANNED
Hugh Januss said:OK you guys, you know what? I feel like I am right in the effing middle here. I agree with parts of what each of you say (ok maybe not Scott so much except of course in the beer thread) but WTF. Rhubroma do you ever read over what you just typed before you hit submit? OAR do you really think being President of the USA exempts you from being indicted for lying to get us into a war? Buckwheat, I don't know, when I see one of your posts where you have broken down every point (?) that someone has made, and answered each individually, my eyes just glaze over. TFF, usually pretty right on, but what a freekin fuse you have. ChrisE, well all I can say is, stay crazy man.
Most of this post was meant in fun, but really can't we disagree without insulting? Except of course when Robert shows up with his survivalist theories. Then it's on.
I do not think President Bush is above the law.
If you notice my post was regarding the language Rube used agains President Clinton. I thought it shows a basic lack of respect. I have stoped now and will go no further with it.
HJ your posts about ChrisE is very funny! If you only knew the real man.
buckwheat
BANNED
Hugh Januss said:
Whaaat?
Hugh Januss said:
I feel the same way a lot of times.
Hugh Januss said:
I know, I see the TV schedule and there's some stuff I wouldn't even consider watching.
Hugh Januss said:
I think the points are questionable too. That's why I break them down. I break them down to their incorrectly simplistic building blocks and the progenitors of the points and some of the spectators still get it wrong.
Hugh Januss said:
Often that someone hasn't made a point at all, like Scott, OAR. Look at that crap Palin is shoveling. It seems with these people, it's necessary to rebut everyone of their points in the simplest way possible, lest the targets of that crap get confused.
Hugh Januss said:
It seems you're looking for consensus here. I'm not. I'm addressing statements.
If we were in the bike shop and you got into micro details about the differences between high end bikes or anything about the bike industry for that matter, I'd be very interested hanging on every word, even though I know the most important part of a bike above a certain level, is the person riding it.
The customer who only wanted a beach cruiser. Their eyes would glaze over.
I've been studying Quantum Electrodynamics lately. Sometimes my eyes glaze over.
Ahhh, one's gotta laugh. Life's too short. We need justice too though.
Just a quick question though. Why are the Republicans and their supporters always worried about the rich paying a small percentage more in tax, while they don't seem to care about the poor at all who are working lousy jobs for bad meals?
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
Wow, while we were talking about respect for the office of the POTUS, I would think most members of Congress have respect for it.
Maybe Reid thought GWB was above lying about issues of national security to start a war and trusted what GWB said and the "evidence" he advanced?
buckwheat said:
Was Reid then also lying about information thought to be credible before the start of the war? Was he lying about the war being lost?
I don't think he was lying, I just think he's an incompetent hack politician willing to say nearly anything for the sake of political expediency (not unique to either party BTW). I guess Colin Powell was lying too. The speech he gave to the UN was laying out the case for war. Of course he now claims he was mis-led. The vast right wing conspiracy strikes again, I guess.
Kinda interesting to see who voted "yea", who then later shouted "nay".
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
Not to rehash but the NSA and the CIA answer to the POTUS. Reid (as well as other members of Congress) relied on a report (White Paper summary of NIE) issued by the POTUS. That's my point.
Cheney was literally looking over the shoulder of CIA analysts and influencing "intelligence."
GWB was hell bent on war as was Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. Powell is a tragedy. Very weak personality. Should have resigned.
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
They voted yea, because they didn't imagine the POTUS would lie about issues like war and peace. They also tried to play politics with the issue.
They later shouted nay when it became obvious he did lie.
It' overwhelmingly obvious many Democrats are weak and corrupt too. Just not as bad as Republicans.
To people like rhubroma, myself and a large number of thinking people, it was obvious GWB was lying and conflating 9/11 with Iraq all along.
buckwheat said:
So the dossier that the Clinton Admin had built containing similar evidence of WMD was made up too? How could Cheney have had a hand in that? Don't you think that Hillary had a pretty good idea of the intelligence estimate while Bill was Prez? Does it strike you as odd that she voted for the war powers (having been involved since well before GWB only to backtrack later)?
The intelligence F-up with respect to WMD was in place well before GWB ever made it to office. There were several instances where President Clinton spoke publicly of Hussein having WMD. Hell, the intel estimate probably went back to before Clinton was in office.
It's kinda strange to me how it is singularly Cheney's doing, or singularly GWB who "lied" us into war. I don't buy it.
PS, I thought W was a dumbass. How could he and Cheney fixed intelligence reports if they were the dumbest two in the room?
buckwheat said:
The highlighted should not be in the same sentence.
That was a joke.
"Just not as bad as Republicans." This made me laugh.
I can see that in a campaign slogan... "Hello, I'm a corrput democrat who is running for dog-catcher. I'd like to say that, while I'm bad, I'm not as bad as my republican competitor. So, vote for me.... 'cause as bad as I am things could get worse."
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
Let's see, the first Gulf War was '91.
Clinton was POTUS from '93 to '01.
The weapons inspectors were swarming the place all of this time. We had sanctions and no fly zones.
The intelligence for GWB was mixed and that was due in part to Hussein who still wanted Iran to believe he had some teeth.
GWB and crew, eliminated the mixed part, along with all the important dissents which said Hussein did not have WMD.
Rumsfeld wanted to start bombing Iraq on 9/12 because there were no good targets in Afghanistan. Then there was the whole PNAC which telegraphed the neo cons agenda.
Clearly GWB & co. didn't go to war with Iraq as a last resort. For them it was a first option.
see downing st memo. mannin memo.
Oh, and this is not an endorsement for Dems many of whom are Clintonesque triangulating BS artists.
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
The fact is that Cheney was in Langley looking over the raw intelligence and cherry picking it for a justification to start the bombing.
buckwheat said:
And we had a 1998 missile attack. President Clinton himself, defending intensified U.S. air strikes against Iraq military targets, in 1998 declared "the actual use of force" the "surest way to contain Saddam Hussein’s WMD program."
President Clinton posed the rhetorical question more than once, what is the consequence of failing to take action against Saddam’s defiance of United Nations resolutions condemning his oppressive regime and refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors? His answer? "He (Saddam) will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use that arsenal."
Joe Biden said in 1998 "First and foremost, an Iraq left free to develop WMD would pose a grave threat to our security."
Carl Levin (pre Bush-basher days) said "He (Saddam) has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Harry Reid said:"He (Saddam) is too dangerous a man to be given carte blanche with WMD."
There are quotes from much of the dem leadership that are saying similar things. Manipulating intelligence? Misleading the people? Hyperbole? Lying?
As in most cases, looking backwards provides an unusually clear vision of what should/could have been done.
There's more.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
There is more, under origins.
The problem is that the latest intelligence, right up until the beginning of the war, showed that Sadaam Hussein did not have WMD.
That was being proven to be the case more and more right up thru March 2003 so GWB hurried up and shooed the WMD inspectors out of Iraq so the bombing could begin.
The time period in 1998 was when Clinton was having his Monica troubles also and he was being accused of wagging the dog, no?
buckwheat said:
Just Six months before the war AlGore said this:
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
And
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.
And
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.
And
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.
And
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.
And
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002.
And
"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do." Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002.
And
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
And
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002.
And
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002.
And (this one is particularly good)
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..." Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.
Is it at all possible that this:
"The most grievous intelligence errors, as the report makes clear, concerned the judgments about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs -- and the roots of these failures pre-date the Bush administration. Like other investigations before it, the Senate probe found that the CIA failed to develop agents in Iraq -- it had none after 1998 -- and neglected to distinguish fact from conjecture. The agency layered new conclusions about Iraq's weapons programs on top of old ones on the basis of small and sometimes questionable scraps of evidence, withheld key information from other agencies and its own analysts, and relied too heavily on foreign governments and Iraqi exiles. It failed to reexamine or second-guess its conclusions, in contravention of its own doctrine. Much of the responsibility, the report implicitly suggests, lies with the leadership of longtime director George J. Tenet; little wonder that Mr. Tenet chose to leave the agency before the report's release. "
could even partially explain some of the bad decisions made?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40032-2004Jul9.html
Since Obama has been elected, I've gained some hope in America's chances to get out of their anti-socialist trance. Obama is really important to America, even if he doesn't do any ground breaking work for now.
Arno Sluismans said:
I have a few friends in western europe who feel the same way. By anti-socialist trance are you referring to government structures like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal... or do you mean more like like Denmark or Sweden?
buckwheat
BANNED
Scott SoCal said:
No, it's not because it was not a bad decision. It was an intentional decision to act.
What you're obviously missing is this fact. The closer it got to the start of the war. The more clear it became that Iraq did not have WMD.
The fact is that many of the people you cited did believe Iraq had WMD. This did not take into account the time period immediately preceeding "Shock and Awe." The direct findings of the weapons inspectors right before the war made it daily increasingly clear Iraq did not have those weapons despite what the earlier intelligence may or may not have said. George Bush and his administration knew this and they were terribly afraid that WMD would not be found.
Hence the rush to war.
Both the Downing Street memo and the Manning memo made it crystal clear that the US was hell bent on going to war no matter what the inspectors report said. GWB however knew that there was no way in hell that the American people would support an invasion if Iraq was found to not be an imminent threat. That's why the inspectors were ordered out, and why the war was hastily begun.
You do realize that John Kerry, Gore and others could actually believe Iraq was a threat and that GWB and his admin knew they weren't and lied about it?
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/1692
Bugliosi calls our attention to the fact that after Bush had started talking about the possibility of war with Iraq, he said that his decision will be based on the "latest intelligence." What he never said, of course, is that on October 1, 2002, the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate issued by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies said that Saddam was NOT an imminent threat to the US.
Not long after that, on the afternoon of October 7, 2002, then CIA director George Tenet delivered a letter to Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW (chemical or biological weapons) against the United States." That evening Bush delivers a speech to the nation at the Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in which he called Saddam Hussein a "great danger to our nation."
However, for many, the conclusive evidence that Bush knew Saddam was no threat to this country, and therefore an attack on Iraq was unjustified, was the following. Back in March 2003, Bush said that if Saddam Hussein did not give up his weapons of mass destruction, Iraq would face war. But earlier, in a January 31 closed-door meeting, Bush told his British buddy Tony Blair that the attack would take place even if no WMDs were found. Indeed, George and Tony candidly conceded that the discovery of such weapons was unlikely.
This deliberate deception is revealed in a confidential five-page memo written by David Manning, Blair's top foreign-policy advisor, who was at the meeting.
Manning records that both Bush and Blair were uptight that the WMDs were not going to be found, so George W. offered another fabrication to give them an excuse to attack. He suggested that the U.S. would paint one of our own surveillance planes in the colors of the United Nations and fly it over Iraq, hoping that Saddam would be provoked into shooting it down. Then the U.S. and Brits could invade, claiming that they were retaliating for Saddam's attack on the UN.
buckwheat said:
Buzzflash? The article was posted in July of 2008. At the tail end it says "But Bugliosi is hot on his case, and the clock is ticking, the day is coming, when a grateful nation will soon celebrate Bush's complete and total removal from the high councils of government, once and for all, and hopefully, one day, be called to judgment by an awakened America for the great tragedy he has wrought."
So what happened? If Bugliosi has such a rock solid case then what happened?
Then there's this;
http://www28.brinkster.com/october28/dsm_debunk.htm
And Rycoft advocating the removal of Hussein after the downing street memos,
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/5055/rycroft5br.jpg
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2003/08/21/DOSSIER_mad.pdf
Would you conceed that this may have contributed?
"In a personal message to Blair, dated 22 March 2002, Peter Ricketts wrote that, although Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs "have not, as far as we know, been stepped up," they "are extremely worrying." What has changed, he emphasises, "is not so much the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programmes but our tolerance of them post-11 September."
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/rickettstext.html
Why would Graham make these comments;
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002.
After Tenet supposedly gave him this;
Not long after that, on the afternoon of October 7, 2002, then CIA director George Tenet delivered a letter to Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW (chemical or biological weapons) against the United States." That evening Bush delivers a speech to the nation at the Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in which he called Saddam Hussein a "great danger to our nation."
This does not square.
I dunno. Things changed after 9/11, that much is certain. Seems like many a US politician wanted to see Sadam gone and were all singing the same tume from the mid-90's forward. Seems kind of thin that only at the very last minute did credible evidence surface that should have changed everything. Again, I'm just not convinced.
buckwheat said:
The thing is, Buckwheat, and I know Scott SoCal and just about every American at the time and still most today (oops, I'm I being too general again?), don't realize that they were living under a regime. Information that was being plainly talked about in no uncertain terms here in Europe in the dailies then, was simply not being reported as it shoud have to inform the American people properly, which was its journalistic responsibility, about the entire facade that was being put up to pass-off the Iraq war as a just invasion and to give it legal authenticity.
When everybody here knew Saddam had no weapons of mass distruction, the American government was baldly lying to the American people and to the world; while we at the time knew the American press was falsifying events, not reporting certain facts to deceminate the truth: and hence halt the mystification of the American people that was instrumental to gain the popular approval and reinforce the political consensus, on both the right and left, to start the bombing. This was easy enough to achieve with all the fear mongering following 9-11 of course, along with the suceptability of Americans to trust their government on such matters. Misinformation is cheap and politically most effective.
And all of this from the perspective of watching it go down as they say over here, with the information that was made available and while attending in the anti-war protests, made you simply want to vomit at the great crime that was about to be commitied. And all in the name of so-called freedom and so-called democracy, to the point where it seemed the whole world knew what was really happening accept America.
For a nation that profesess itself to be the beacon of democracy and free information, for which it had assumed the right to promote this civilization of democracy and free information, when necessary by force, the Iraq war as it was propagandistically constructed and realized, went well beyond the realm of hypocrisy and into the criminally grotesque. This is why George Bush is a criminal, along with Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld et all, who have on their conscionces the murders of more than one hundred inocent citizens from Mesopotamia. The world should have arranged an Abu-Graib or a Guantanamo for them to protect us all from them.
- Status
TRENDING THREADS
-
Giro d'Italia Giro d‘Italia 2024 Stage 3, Novara-Fossano, 166 km- Started by QueenStagiaire
- Replies: 356
-
Giro d'Italia Giro d'Italia 2024 Stage 2: San Francesco al Campo – Santuario di Oropa (Biella), 161.0 km- Started by Netserk
- Replies: 514
-
Giro d'Italia Giro d‘Italia 2024, Stage 4 Acqui Terme-Andora, 190 km- Started by QueenStagiaire
- Replies: 174
-
2024 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1: Venaria Reale - Torino, 140 km (Saturday, May 4)- Started by Lequack
- Replies: 588
-
-
Paris - Roubaix 2024, one day monument, April 7- Started by Dreginald
- Replies: 2K
-
Liege Bastogne Liege-7 hour monument, Sunday, April 21, 2024- Started by topcat
- Replies: 986
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram