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Thursday, November 17, 2005
In a very political attempt to shore up a foundation for their run next year, Democrats are all over the media with the “Bush Lied” story in hopes of brain washing the American people. Since it has been over six years since Clinton was in office, I guess it’s easy to forget his comments and actions on the the same inteligence (which he passed to the Bush Administration) in 1998. Fortunately, we have Google and it has a better memory then most of those who believe Bush lied.
I heard Ms. Pelosi on Neil Cavota yesterday and every time he asked her point blank if Bush lied or if the intelligence she got was not the same as Bushes, she side stepped the question. Classic politian! You could tell Neil was getting tired of her doing this and at the end of the interview told her how he respected her and all but she just needed to answer the question…which she avoided again.
This is the game the dem’s are playing in hopes of capturing more seats next year. I understand the game because Repbulican’s play it, too. But what nerves me is how quickly the public has fallen for this latest game. Thankfully Google can show us what the media said when their poster boy ruled the nation since they refuse to do so now. Thankfully it’s still early and the campaigns haven’t even started and as we’re seeing here, most have short term memories and this will probably blow over in a few months, too. But these last few months of political excersise and the nations failing grade is concerning me enough to think we should bring back the landowners-only voters back. 
November 17th, 2005 at 21:37
Try getting your news from other sources besides pill-popper Rush Limbaugh, and you might get a clue. I’d recommend reading this, for starters:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13185357.htm
The administration’s overarching premise is beyond dispute: Administration officials, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and even leaders of foreign governments believed intelligence assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That intelligence turned out to be wrong.
But Bush, Cheney, and other senior officials have added several other arguments in recent days that distort the factual record. Below, Knight Ridder addresses the administration’s main assertions:
….
ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate – who had access to the same intelligence – voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”
CONTEXT: This isn’t true.
The Congress didn’t have access to the President’s Daily Brief, a top-secret compendium of intelligence on the most pressing national security issues that was sent to the president every morning by former CIA Director George Tenet.
As for prewar intelligence on Iraq, senior administration officials had access to other information and sources that weren’t available to lawmakers.
Cheney and his aides visited the CIA and other intelligence agencies to view raw intelligence reports, received briefings and engaged in highly unusual give-and-take sessions with analysts.
Moreover, officials in the White House and the Pentagon received information directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group, circumventing U.S. intelligence agencies, which greatly distrusted the organization.
The INC’s information came from Iraqi defectors who claimed that Iraq was hiding chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, had mobile biological-warfare facilities and was training Islamic radicals in assassinations, bombings and hijackings.
The White House emphasized these claims in making its case for war, even though the defectors had shown fabrication or deception in lie-detector tests or had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals.
All of the exiles’ claims turned out to be bogus or remain unproven.
War hawks at the Pentagon also created a special unit that produced a prewar report – one not shared with Congress – that alleged that Iraq was in league with al-Qaida. A version of the report, briefed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and top White House officials, disparaged the CIA for finding there was no cooperation between Iraq and the terrorist group, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed.
After the report was leaked in November 2003 to a conservative magazine, the Pentagon disowned it.
In fact, a series of secret U.S. intelligence assessments discounted the administration’s assertion that Saddam could give banned weapons to al-Qaida.
In other cases, Bush and his top lieutenants relied on partial or uncorroborated intelligence.
For example, Cheney contended in an August 2002 speech that Iraq would develop a nuclear weapon “fairly soon,” even though U.S. intelligence agencies and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency had no evidence to support such a claim.
The following month, Bush, Cheney and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asserted that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes for a nuclear-weapons program. At the time, however, U.S. intelligence agencies were deeply divided over the question. The IAEA later determined that the tubes were for ground-to-ground rockets.
A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 said that an al-Qaida detainee was probably lying to U.S. interrogators when he claimed that Iraq had been teaching members of the terrorist network to use chemical and biological weapons.
Yet eight months after the report was published, Bush told the nation that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers didn’t have access to intelligence products that may have been more temperate than what they got, even after they investigated the prewar intelligence assessment. For instance, the Director of Central Intelligence refused to give the Senate committee a copy of a paper drafted by the CIA’s Near East and Southeast Asia Office examining Iraq’s links to terrorism.
Lawmakers didn’t see the main document concerning Iraq and WMD – the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – until three days before their vote authorizing war. The White House ordered the NIE compiled only after lawmakers, including the then-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., demanded it.
The resolution that authorized use of force against Iraq didn’t specifically address removing Saddam. It gave Bush the power to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”
November 17th, 2005 at 21:46
And if you can tune out your talk radio long enough, here’s a shorter link:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007494.php
Was there a widespread belief in September 2002 that Iraq had an active WMD program? Yes. Did the Bush administration nonetheless lie, exaggerate, and dissemble repeatedly about that program? Yes. Should conservatives be concerned about that? Yes. After all, the next president to market a war this way might not be a Republican. Conservatives should be as interested in learning the truth about this — and preventing it from happening again — as the rest of us.
November 17th, 2005 at 23:27
Did the Bush Administration receive intelligence from the Clinton Administration? Yes. Did the Clinton Administration believe Iraq was of immanent danger? Yes. Does everyone love Clinton and hate Bush? Yes. Does every liberal want to tarnish Bush because he hasn’t been impeached for lying like Clinton? Hell yes!
Your quotes mean nothing, TOS. They’re just liberal media bias. You accuse me of listening to Rush (I don’t,) and then try to pass off you’re Al Franken rip-off-the-boys-and-girls-club for truth. Hilarious!
Try this on for size:
In case you don’t remember, “Boogie to Baghdad” is the phrase that Richard Clarke, when he was the top White House counterterrorism official during the Clinton administration, used to express his fear that if American forces pushed Osama bin Laden too hard at his hideout in Afghanistan, bin Laden might move to Iraq, where he could stay in the protection of Saddam Hussein.
Clarke’s opinion was based on intelligence indicating a number of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, including word that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven.
It’s all laid out in the Sept. 11 commission report. “Boogie to Baghdad” is on Page 134.
Source
Or:
“Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.
I want to explain why I have decided, with the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, to use force in Iraq; why we have acted now; and what we aim to accomplish.” President Clinton address to the people of the United States
Or:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for. Excerpt from Hans Blix UN Report on the weapons inspection
But don’t take the previous Presidential Administration’s word for it or uber-UN-boy Hans, take Germany’s, Britain’s, France’s, and Russia’s for it ’cause they lied, too!
But you’re right, maybe Bush didn’t have all the information he said he did because Clinton’s man Sandy Berger ripped them off and has now been convicted for it!
TOS, Clinton perfected the lie-for-truth act in his term. Say a lie often enough and it becomes truth. Unfortunately HE was impeached for lying and Bush hasn’t been. No charges have been brought up because the Democrat’s have no proof against such accusations. In fact, they know that THEIR names could get muddied in such a charge because the truth about them having the same information (not the same stupid Daily Briefs report like GW — the same information, there’s no difference freshman) as Bush had would come out under oath. That would hurt and that’s why you’ll only see Teddy up their with a cocktail saying Bush is a lier but he won’t take it to court.
November 18th, 2005 at 1:46
Bush lied when he led Americans to believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11 in order to gain support for a long-since-planned regime change. And I’m not going to draw a diagram for you. You know what I mean by “Bush” and by “lied.”
“The facts were being fixed around the policy.”
The policy was decided long before 9/11 and had little to do with WMD. A majority of Americans are starting to realize this and it has nothing to do with Dems finally saying it.
November 18th, 2005 at 6:19
Funny how the media preaches how liberal the media is, and some people actually buy into it. By the stricktest definition, not even Air America is “liberal” i.e. open-minded. They are as narrow in their viewpoints as Rush and O’Reilly. I would hope for more open-minded news sources, but there are few.
As to the dozen or so Chemical Warheads that Hanz Blix was talking about: they were EMPTY. Maybe you should read the whole report that he gave, shortly before the US kicked the inspectors out for their “Shock and Awe” campaign– not to mention what he’s had to say since then. Here’s the tail end of that report you are quoting:
“In the past two months, UNMOVIC has built-up its capabilities in Iraq from nothing to 260 staff members from 60 countries. This includes approximately 100 UNMOVIC inspectors, 60 air operations staff, as well as security personnel, communications, translation and interpretation staff, medical support, and other services at our Baghdad office and Mosul field office. All serve the United Nations and report to no one else. Furthermore, our roster of inspectors will continue to grow as our training programme continues — even at this moment we have a training course in session in Vienna. At the end of that course, we shall have a roster of about 350 qualified experts from which to draw inspectors.
A team supplied by the Swiss Government is refurbishing our offices in Baghdad, which had been empty for four years. The Government of New Zealand has contributed both a medical team and a communications team. The German Government will contribute unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and a group of specialists to operate them for us within Iraq. The Government of Cyprus has kindly allowed us to set up a Field Office in Larnaca. All these contributions have been of assistance in quickly starting up our inspections and enhancing our capabilities. So has help from the U.N. in New York and from sister organizations in Baghdad.
In the past two months during which we have built-up our presence in Iraq, we have conducted about 300 inspections to more than 230 different sites. Of these, more than 20 were sites that had not been inspected before. By the end of December, UNMOVIC began using helicopters both for the transport of inspectors and for actual inspection work. We now have eight helicopters. They have already proved invaluable in helping to “freeze” large sites by observing the movement of traffic in and around the area.
Setting up a field office in Mosul has facilitated rapid inspections of sites in northern Iraq. We plan to establish soon a second field office in the Basra area, where we have already inspected a number of sites.
Mr. President,
We have now an inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspection teams every day all over Iraq, by road or by air. Let me end by simply noting that that capability which has been built-up in a short time and which is now operating, is at the disposal of the Security Council.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/28/wblix28.xml
_________________________
And that brings us to Bush’s big lie. He said war in Iraq would be a last option, when it was really his only option on the table. Why insist on inspections if they weren’t going to allow them to continue? Inspections were just gearing up, when Bush & Co. kicked them out for their “shock and awe” blitzkrieg and occupation.
Maybe you should read the Downing Street Memo that Jon is referring to.
November 18th, 2005 at 8:46
Inspector had eight years. They were not granted full access to all points as the UN Resolutions demanded. They found suspicious evidence. Saddam’s closest advisers themselves believed they had WMD and you both are just sooooo smart and saw it all as a lie that you are in your high seats of office and — oh wait, that’s right, you’re not.
Look, the world was fooled with the intelligence that was given. If Saddam’s own top advisers think he’s got WMD, why wouldn’t our President? Why wouldn’t Congress believe it? You guys have so been trapped into this political game it amazes me. Maybe you’re just trying to jump on the dumbwagen as it heeds to your “told you so” argument since both of you are on record for not wanting war. I can respect your decisions not to want to go to war, but come on, THINK LONG AND HARD that if you were in the same position and had the same intelligence that you may have not been so quick to give a flat no. But then again, you may have and continued the “OK, Saddamy. We understand that you don’t want to obey our resolutions. That’s fine. Hey, we’ve allowed you to give us the finger for eight years, a few more is fine.”
November 18th, 2005 at 19:43
I concede that there were many who thought Iraq had WMDs prior to the occupation: both Republican and Democrat. As I’ll again point out, I’m not disputing that.
I’ll be brief, and to the point, since as usual you do not address the main thrust of my argument. If the previous 8 years of inspections (or lack there of) were sufficient to warrant invading their country, why bother going to the UN, and insist on NEW inspections, just to invade before they have a chance to do their work? As Hanz Blix has since said, they were finally getting unfettered access, just as we desired, yet we bombed them anyhow.
I suspect again you will fail to answer this one, rendering this debate pointless.
November 18th, 2005 at 21:15
Hans was not getting unfettered access as to the last day there, his team was demanded to remove themselves from one of Saddam’s palaces.
You’re questioning “why bother going to the UN” for new inspections if eight previous years didn’t work is a bit ironic since in comment five you said, “And that brings us to Bush’s big lie. He said war in Iraq would be a last option.” I guess you answered your own question to why Bush wento to the UN or maybe you forgot that you said that just like Kerry, H. Clinton, B. Clinton, Kennedy, and Edwards forgot that they said there was WMD’s in Iraq, too. Hey, at least your consistent with your party.
November 18th, 2005 at 22:31
Hey, great. So you are actually agreeing with me. Just so we are clear here, you are saying:
1. Bush said war in Iraq would be a last option.
2. The U.S. went to the U.N. to demand inspections continue
3. Inspections were allowed to continue.
4. We kicked the inspectors out and bombed them anyhow.
Clearly that means Bush lied in point number 1. Glad we could clear that up finally and get to some sort of agreement.
November 18th, 2005 at 23:18
Huh? Are you reading my comments? Saddam did NOT allow the inspectors into certain venues. This explains why you think Bush lied, because you’re not listening to all facts.
November 18th, 2005 at 23:35
It seems you are focusing on the inspections prior to 2003, as Hanz Blix says otherwise about the inspections in the time right before Bush’s invasion. I guess you must think even the Swedes are conspiring to make Bush look like a liar.
Read from Hans Blix book “Disarming Iraq”:
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375423024&view=excerpt
Although the inspection organization was now operating at full strength and Iraq seemed as determined to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States appeared determined to replace our inspection force with an invasion army…
Our inspectors in Iraq continued to work on Monday, March 17. They supervised the destruction of two Al Samoud 2 missiles, bringing the total number destroyed to seventy-two. They conducted a private interview with a biological scientist, bringing the total number of such private interviews to eleven. Inspection teams visited a dairy factory 140 kilometers north of Baghdad and two sites northwest of Baghdad. I worried about the risk of any hitches in the arrangements for their withdrawal on Tuesday morning.
…
In a televised speech on the evening of Monday, March 17, President Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq with his family within forty-eight hours. Vice President Dick Cheney said that an offer by Iraq to disarm was no longer an option. Referring to Saddam Hussein, he said, “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” His declaration was as firm as it was unfounded.
November 18th, 2005 at 23:38
Didn’t Richard Clarke right a book? Ya, that’s right and he said some things about Bush that didn’t seem to pan out during the 9/11 Commision. That’s alright, I’ll forego Hans’ book for his report to the UN that stated he did NOT have 100% access to all areas. That, my friend, was a direct violation of UN Resolution 1441.
November 19th, 2005 at 7:37
Oh really? What evidence are you basing your assumption on? What, no links, no quotes? Something you heard Bill O’Lielly blabbering about on Faux news? NO PROOF.
I see. So to your way of thinking Hans Blix, Richard Clarke and anyone else in a position to know what they are talking about who dare to criticise your president are lying. Bush on the otherhand is a saint, who you’ll go to such lengths as to even look quite silly defending and insisting he never lied? I have to wonder, why such fanatical devotion to one politician. Politicians lie, that’s how they get into office — get use to it. Bushco lied, torpedoing the good service of John McCain in the 2000 primary. No, the lies didn’t come from Bush’s mouth, but he knew and said nothing — condoning the lie. ALL POLITICIANS LIE. Get use to it.
I have no problem with people saying “Clinton Lied. People Died.”
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2005/08/clinton_liedand.php
Just as it is so obvious to me that “Bush Lied. People Died.”
So why is it so difficult for you to except the lie? Apparently, in your view he’s a saint, free of any sin. I find your fanatical devotion to this failed president quite frightening.
November 19th, 2005 at 7:40
Um. That shoud be “So why is it so difficult for you to ACCEPT the lie?” Dang it! Where is my Starbucks?
November 19th, 2005 at 12:39
My issue isn’t that “Bush lied”, my issue is he only made a decision on the intelligence he had. The same intelligence high officials in Congress had. They said the exact same thing but now it’s THEM that say Bush lied. What about them? Why aren’t we saying they lied too? Because their Democrats and it’s not allowed.
Bush is a saint. Read Romans 15:25 for that run down. Yeah, he lies, I lie, you lie, Democrats lie. We all lie. No news there but I believe Bush when he said he was honest about the information he had and the reason he went to war.
He’s not a failed president. After 9/11 and an inherited dipping economy that is now on the up for the last year and a half as well as not a single terrorist act committed on our soil since 9/11, I’d say that’s far from failure. With more black home ownership and high school graduates in the history of the United States under Bush, I wouldn’t call that a failure. But since you do, then those glorious eight years under Clinton need to be re-evaluated per your definition.
BTW, the Starbucks is on every corner in your neighborhood. Again, how soon you forget.
November 20th, 2005 at 8:24
Um. As I’ve pointed out early in this thread, even providing links: Congress did not have the same intelligence that Bush had. For the most part, they only had the intelligence that Bush gave them. Congress voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, yes. This was necessary to get Saddam to allow the weapons inspectors back in. Guess what it worked. Congress has NEVER voted to declare war on Iraq formally, as REQUIRED by the constitution. This is Bush’s war, PERIOD.
80% of Iraqis do not want our troops in their country. 45% of Iraqis think attacking our soldiers is justified. Our troops are experiencing DAILY terrorist attacks, not to mention terror attacks around the wold have gone up significantly since our invasion. Bush’s war on terror has most definately been a failure, by any reasonable standard. You think you are safe? I would like to think so, but our borders aren’t any more secure than since 9/11. If anything we are less safe.
Whether you think the war in Iraq was based on a lie or based on wrong intelligence, the war has been a mistake. You can search under every stone for some small silver lining to Bush’s many failures, but to me he is the worst president of our lifetime. The majority of americans think the war was a mistake, that Bush mislead us to go to war, and want the troops to come home, and no longer trust him. I suppose even Nixon had a few supporters to the bitter end, so you’ll no doubt have some company.
This president is most definately not a saint. Thousands of people have died because of his choices. But at least we agree on one thing: Bush is a liar.
November 20th, 2005 at 20:21
Okay, now you’re getting ridiculous. Your stats are bogus and unreal. Since you can’t read my previous links supporting my claims, I will present no more. You’ve been completely trapped into the politics the Democrats are pulling on the Hill and I suggest you request to be an intern for Nancy. She’s looking for people like you. I also suggest you read my post today that documents what a soldier who just came back from Iraq said about all this.
As much as you hate O’Reilly, I’ll give you the last word…
November 26th, 2005 at 9:27
November 26th, 2005 at 9:29
Guess I’m not up on my HTML today, here’s the beef:
Presidential brief
The president’s daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime existed.
And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer, more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.
The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the Bush administration.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other PDBs, as part of the committee’s continuing inquiry into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003.
The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.
“Indeed,” the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, “the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004.”
November 27th, 2005 at 10:03
Jon points out another of Bush’s recent lies. Here’s a quote, just for you svenrox:
“more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate — WHO HAD ACCESS TO THE SAME INTELLIGENCE — voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power. ”
–George W. Bush, November 11, 2005
I’ve even put the lie in ALL CAPS, so you’d be sure not to miss it. But since it hasn’t been sanctioned by his Republican Overlords, svenrox will no doubt dismiss it — if he’s even listening at all.