Must read WaPo article breaks down Kay Report, makes clear Bush's treason

That only stacks up if you believe that nothing the Bush or Blair adminstrations said stretched the rationale that could reasonably be extrapolated from that evidence. Which is, by most standards, not the case. See Powell speech to the UN, contradicted in fact and theme by the UN's own inspectors more or less immediately. Not least by Hans Blix, demonised at the time by the right-wing press in the US and the UK but since proven to have been largely right.

It is to be presumed that both the US and the UN had a similar picture of the situation, so why did one side end up so very wrong and the objections raised by the other side prove largely correct?

 

This attempt to pawn off the blame on bad intelligence is yet another dismal effort by Bush to pass the buck. Does ANYTHING stop on his desk? I think he is incapable of taking responsibility - personally or professionally. Hell he won't even take responsibility for a banner much less a war.

Look the original article that started this thread and subsequent conversation has been all about how Bush manufactured and lied about the evidence to start his war. He was not "misled". He and his top advisors selectively picked the intelligence they wanted and discarded the stuff that didn't fit into their plan.

That is the real crime here.

Even if Bush was some doe-eyed leader who honestly was misled by a sinister trifecta of Cheney, Rumsefield and Rice it still does not change the fact that HE IS THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF.

I manager a department here at work. If I were to present a report that is full of crap and I am called on it...who do you think is held responsible?

I'll leave you with this quote from Bush's inaugural address:


America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected. Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience....I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well

TRY to live it? I never caught that - the man gave himself an "out" from day one.

 

Well, you didn't answer the question so much as you plunked down for "Bush is naive, irresponsible and reckless" as opposed to "Bush is a liar". I'm not sure that's any improvement for Bush. Either way, Bush has proven himself unfit for his office. After all, even if he was merely a dupe and not a liar, do we really want a credulous, irresponsible blunderer as our President?

At any rate, the Bush team made many extremely detailed and precise claims that have turned out to be astoundingly wrong. Not just "Saddam might have this..." or "We suspect he has that..." but "We know what he has and where it is..." And they claimed to have proof positive that turned out not to exist or to have downright forged.

If you have any shred of responsibility or strategic acumen in you, you don't repeatedly make those kinds of ironclad claims and then later say "Oops, those nasty ol' fibbers in the CIA deceived me". Sorry, but given the nature of the claims, the evidence about "who knew what when" and their pattern of deceit and fudging on other topics involving the war, one doesn't have to be a mind reader to know that the Bush team doesn't even have plausible deniability regarding their lies about the WMDs. They knew that what they were saying about WMDs was not true. Period.

Now, if you wish to discuss whether or not the current situation was worth lying to the American people about (along with the new deficits, the loss of international credibility and goodwill, the distraction of vital resources from the War On Terrorism, etc.), that's a more debatable topic for which decent cases can be made both for and against. But that's another thread...

 

You mean sanctions and the blockade were working? And that Republicans would still rather spend $200 billion and 13,000 lives?

It's that kind of fiscally irresponsible idiocy that's going to get Bush tossed out on his ear next November.

 

Not quite sure where the 13,000 lives comes from, but how much do you think it would have cost to maintain the type of military presense around Iraq that we had just prior to the war indefinitely?

 

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/031029/1/3fdqf.html

If it makes you feel any better, only about 4,300 were non-combatants.

 

OK and how many Iraqi's do you think Saddam's henchman have killed over the years prior to our liberation?

How many Kuwaiti's did they rape torture and murder?

How many Iraqi's and Iranians were killed during the Iran Iraq war?

 

And how many of those unfortunates would have wished a similar fate on another few thousand of their compatriots at the hands of the US and her allies?

 

you can't be serious... is this supposed to make a point?

1-funny how you wrote 'our liberation' - wait i thought it was their liberation... wait i thought this was about WMD's...

2-filed under persian gulf war

3-ummm didn't we give sadaam chemical weapons to kill iranis?

gee somehow i don't feel any better about it all...

 

Just had to answer these two!

1) "our liberation" as in we did the liberating.
2) So "rape, torture and murder" is ok as long as it happens during a war...or an occupation, which is when a lot of this occured?

 

Dave was trying to say that Bush's policy was going to cost him re-election because it cost 13,000 Iraqi lives.

The policy also removed the dictator who had cost thousands more Iraqi lives so I don't know how in the minds of the American voter it is the clear cut "idiocy" that Dave implied.


And you know what, once peace is established in Iraq, I will feel much better. In fact, I will be down right happy. How good would you feel if the war had never happened and Saddam was still in power and the people of Iraq had nothing to look forward to but a future of a food for oil programs and maybe being murdered and tortured if someone thought thay might be enemies of Saddam?

 

Coming back around, (2) was clearly intended to mean that the First Gulf War was declared a success in having "dealt with" the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. If Michael seriously intends to bring that in as a moral reason for a second, unrelated war against Iraq, then we are back to the idea that war against Very Bad Men is not only good, but necessary. Which is a big issue in and of itself.

 

I was adressing Dave's point, and I do think that it is not a political winner to attack a president for removing a very very very bad man from power, even if it means the loss of some life.

 

Erm ... quite possibly not, no. But do you think that there are aspects of this issue that transcend "political winners"?

That's the problem with American political/social/whatever debate from this outsider's POV - it's all about what flavour political party you support and not about the actual issue at hand. It's way to personalised. Which I do realise is more or less inevitable when you have people like Slick Willy and Thick Georgie being made President, but nonetheless ...

 

Well, he was kinda slick.

As to the gay chant, I think I love it so because it was put forward in another thread as an example of how the atmosphere at American sports events can be really intimidating.

 

noooo... as in that is not an issue with the current campaign, which is how he tried to mention it