Bush revives "revisionist history"

[Pangloss]

Interesting points.

 

By the way, two excellent sources the relative degree of informity of the Bush administration can be found in Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack", and in a more general sense in the surprisingly objective and insightful "All the President's Spin" by Nyhan et al.

[FreqWhenSee]

I'd love to get into the specifics of this debate, but hasn't everyone realized by now that Bush is a puppet, and disinformation is spoken from those moving his strings? There is a much higher order at work and we discuss what he said and she said.

 

My favorite quote from Bush is "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Ya fool me you can't get fooled again." Or can we?

 

The "attack" on the twin towers sparked the whole war excuse. Afghani "terrorists" attack us, then we attack oil-rich Iraq and blame Sadam. Once captured, his defense attorneys keep getting assasinated... Come on. It's all a setup... disinformation... all of it.

 

BTW, what are the odds that two buildings hit by airplanes fall down directly on top of themselves, then another that was not hit by an airplane nearby falls down exactly the same way. I've seen planned implosions fall down less conveniently than that. And where did the airplane go that hit the pentagon?

 

Can we say, "setup." Now who's the real terrorists? Who's getting fooled again and again?

 

Bin: a box, frame, crib, or enclosed place used for storage

Laden: to put a load or burden on or in

BinLaden: an enclosed place to put a load or burden on

 

What book was he reading at the time of the second tower attack? My Pet... Scapegoat

 

Get the message?

 

Rome II is on the rampage!

[Douglas]

I'd love to get into the specifics of this debate, but hasn't everyone realized by now that Bush is a puppet, and disinformation is spoken from those moving his strings? !

Oh, what disinformation, and who's pulling the strings?????????

 

disinformation = Deliberately misleading information

[FreqWhenSee]

And the peasants get on their knees to kiss the hand of he who enslaves them.

[Pangloss]

Because they're tired of kissing the hand of the false prophet, whose words never seem to quite work out to any kind of truth anyway.

[phcatlantis]

Not only is Bush wrong' date=' but it's unfortunate that he has to be corrected by a real national disgrace like Kennedy.

 

I guess the president has forgotten that he only introduced the WMD charge after it was clear that the American public was not behind invading Iraq based solely on a loose, largely unsubstantiated connection with Al Qaeda and 9/11. (A connection which later proved to be correct with regard to Al Qaeda, but incorrect with regard to 9/11.) That according to strongly independent and demonstrably objective journalists like Bob Woodward and Judith Miller.

 

So who's being the revisionist here, really?[/quote']

 

The critics, apparantly. Of course, it would help if their revisionism reach steady state rather than launching on mutually contradicting tangents whenever a short term oppoprtunity to lampoon the President arises.

 

The case of Saddam Hussein' date=' a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts. After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit U.N. inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms.

 

In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.

 

On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam's nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath.

 

But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors -- including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. [/quote']

 

-- remaining transcript at Whitehouse.gov, 8 August 2002

 

It's either incorrect or dissembling through an absurd degree of ambiguity (after all, how do we gauge emphasis in your mind?) to claim that the weapons of mass destruction case, as wrong as it may have turned out, to be anything less than a key component of the Administration's case for war at any point in 2002 or 2003. So before you repeat oft-repeated but unsubstantiated memes here, at least do a cursory Google sanity check to make sure you're on solid ground.

[phcatlantis]

These are the things people want answers from the administration about...

 

They're specifically things that far left detractors of Bush want the Administration to engage them about. There's no poll numbers suggesting that the public is interested in this political game of the Left's. After all, virtually no establishment Democrat is discussing the Downing Street memo, and last time I checked Europeans don't vote here.

[phcatlantis]

No, they aren't.

 

Yes they are, proof rather than semantic acrobatics follows.

 

There's a big difference between questioning what went on and "re-writing history".

 

Yes, there is. In this case, the Democrats are re-writing history. [1]. As you can see, they make several "findings" which are easily falsified. These are not questions in the vein of "what happened in 2002 and 2003?" In fact, they're not questions at all. These are accusations by the Senate Democratic Caucus. Specifically, the claim made by Democrats that the intelligence they received (in the October NIE) was dissimilar from intelligence in the community's daily products (the President's Daily and the Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs), is flat out contradicted by the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction's report issued last March. [2]

 

The latter is a willful attempt to skew of falsify what actually happened in favor of a particular ideology with little care for intellectual intergrity. The former is attempting to actually figure out what went on in the past by thorough investigation, to be sure that the curent version of what went on *is* actually right.

 

There is no effort by the Democrats to figure out what went on in the past through investigation. Otherwise there would be mention of what other commissions have found. The Democrats have not, and are consequently either demonstrating the same ignorance they willfully allege they suffered from in October 2002 or more likely the rank dishonesty we've come to know and love about them.

 

You cannot simply label any investigation into past events as "re-writing history" and dismiss it.

 

Sure we can, when the Senate Democrats pushing for it blatantly lie in their Myths vs. Reality press releases.

[phcatlantis]

Two wrongs don't make a right. What the democrats have or have not done is immaterial to the question of whether or not Bush is being deliberately selective in discussing how the war was sold to the American public.

 

Then I suggest you find us a PDB that was more "nuanced" product than what the President sold to the American people. This whole exercise is pretty academic.

[phcatlantis]

In any case, I don't think it's irresponsible to rewrite history if the rewrite is closer to the truth.

 

And what exactly closer to the truth about the Democrats' revisionism? I agree there are some strong points to their case. For example, its not unlike the Democrats to vote out of utter ignorance or base political motive. After all, this was 2002, a midterm election year where the Democrats strategy of trying to run towards the right with the Republicans on Homeland Security and Iraq backfired and actually increased Republican majorities in both houses.

 

Oh, just an aside. Kerry noted yesterday on Face the Nation that the international terroristist component of the Iraq insurgency was the smallest part. Here's an example of either Democratic stupidity or dishonsty. Can somebody tell me which is the smaller group in the the Afghan insurgency--the Taliban, the Hazara rejectionists, or al Qaeda? Is Kerry now recommending withdrawal from Afghanistan?

 

Final comment. A lot of hay has been made of recent Democratic "redeployment" proposals. Almost all of them follow the same sort of sick, pulled right out of thin air operational art that accompanied the "reconnaissance en force" proposals before the war began. So let's take the Korb report as our baseline and say half to three quarters of deployed force to the Iraq theter are drawn back home and the remainder redeployed to the Periphery. How exactly is this different from the search and destroy posture MACV maintained between 1964 and 1968? And can anybody tell me what the fatal flaw facing American forces egressing into combat under those battlespace conditions?

[Pangloss]

Holy cow! A Bush supporter who lives in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts?!?!

 

(grin) Just kidding, welcome to the boards. Always nice to see someone take a contrary-to-the-prevailing-wind view around here.

[phcatlantis]

Holy cow! A Bush supporter who lives in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts?!?!

 

Not native, I assure you.

 

(grin) Just kidding, welcome to the boards. Always nice to see someone take a contrary-to-the-prevailing-wind view around here.

 

Good to be here. Object oriented politics, now there's a discussion.

[Skye]

And what exactly closer to the truth about the Democrats' revisionism?

I don't know because I don't know the truth. I think to some extent that's still being sorted out.

[bascule]

They're specifically things that far left detractors of Bush want the Administration to engage them about. There's no poll numbers suggesting that the public is interested in this political game of the Left's.

 

Wrong.

 

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/10095

 

...according to a poll by Opinion Dynamics released by Fox News. 46 per cent of respondents believe U.S. president George W. Bush provided the best pre-war intelligence available, while 44 per cent think he intentionally misled the American people.

 

After all, virtually no establishment Democrat is discussing the Downing Street memo

 

Of course, Kerry, Feinstein, and Boxer are a bunch of pinko commies and the only reason they're talking about it is because they hate conservatism. No sensible moderate Democrat has any reason to question the war.

[phcatlantis]

Wrong.

 

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/10095

 

With all due respect' date=' how do you go from "believe [the President'] intentionally misled" to "[t]hese are the things people want answers from the administration about..."

 

Of course, Kerry, Feinstein, and Boxer are a bunch of pinko commies and the only reason they're talking about it is because they hate conservatism.

 

No, I imagine base ego, opportunism and either willful or insanely unintentional ignorance of their own language from three years ago play a large role as well. But for now I only contend that they're the revisionists; who cares about their motives?

 

No sensible moderate Democrat has any reason to question the war.

 

Every proposed Democratic "solution" to the objects of their "criticism" fall into three categories, train the Iraqis faster, set a timetable, redeploy to the periphery (or out of the region all together). The training of Iraqi forces is an operational question, not a strategic or a political one. The only difference between the Administration's approach to withdrawal's and the Democrats is that the Democrats insist that there is a necessity to spell out a timetable--even if conditions force us to deviate from it. This was a remarkably senseless addition to a conditions-based operations in 1972-3 (yet another Democratic proposal) and it is today. Finally, staging out of the periphery makes no sense whatsoever without an Iraqi force capable of securing any and all areas Americans leave behind. In short, the Democrats' entire plan can be summed up as skipping to the last chapters of Phase IV of the standard oplan and then calling it quits no matter what.

 

So yes, no sensible human being period has any reason whatsoever to question the general conduct of the counter-insurgency. Unfortunately, we can count the number of sensible Democrat in the Senate presently on one hand (and probably can only recall Joe Lieberman's name). Maybe you'd do better to focus on tangible problems encountered at the operational level. It's pretty hard to argue against "clear, hold and build" when you apparantly plan to do the same thing.

[phcatlantis]

I don't know because I don't know the truth. I think to some extent that's still being sorted out.

 

What's to sort out? You have three commission reports on US intelligence, two specifically pertaining to executive and congressional products covering Iraqi WMD. You have a helluva lot of open source information on Iraq's forces, the insurgency strength, US deployments, maps, etc. There's an immense public record that's almost entirely online. So either I have a position I can back up or I simply haven't done my due diligence. You?

[Jim]

People really need to seriously get over the WMD issue. Saddam had them at one time, used them, and, had we failed to invade, would have reacquired them sometime in the next ten years.

 

This is a man who had invaded a strategically important US ally and had attempted to assassinate a former US president. Think about that for a minute. Saddam tried to kill George Sr. What if he'd succeded? Can you imagine the US response?

 

Yet this is a leader who was willing to take that risk. Saddam was capable of SERIOUS miscalculations and presented a unique case. I don't care if he secretly buried or destroyed the WMDs. Rather than starve the country with sanctions, he needed to go and all of us are safer for him being gone.

 

Bushes problem is that many people can't compare the reality of more than 2,000 dead with what the world would look like if Kerry had his way and Saddam was still in Kuwait.

[john5746]

Bushes problem is that many people can't compare the reality of more than 2,000 dead with what the world would look like if Kerry had his way and Saddam was still in Kuwait.

 

Yep, Bush's problem is that everyone who disagrees with him is stupid. OK.

 

We do need to "get over" the WMD's, etc. The way I see it, the whole country was caught up in 9/11. I remember when Bush was pounding away at Saddam, how dangerous, etc. I didn't really believe he was a threat that needed immediate attention. I thought he probably had something to do with the 9/11 plot. I didn't really question it, as most people didn't.

 

We need to learn from history, to not be complacent(as was Clinton), but also not rush in(as did Bush). I doubt most of the intelligence that I hear now. Did Saddam really try to have Bush Sr killed? Maybe, Maybe not.

 

He was a bad guy, not doubt. The world would be better without Castro, Kim, and others but that doesn't mean we need to go in there and rebuild their nation for them.

[bascule]

Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

 

I think that line will go down in history with the same sentiments as "Remember the Maine!"

[Jim]

Yep' date=' Bush's problem is that everyone who disagrees with him is stupid. OK.

 

We do need to "get over" the WMD's, etc. The way I see it, the whole country was caught up in 9/11. I remember when Bush was pounding away at Saddam, how dangerous, etc. I didn't really believe he was a threat that needed immediate attention. I thought he probably had something to do with the 9/11 plot. I didn't really question it, as most people didn't.

 

We need to learn from history, to not be complacent(as was Clinton), but also not rush in(as did Bush). I doubt most of the intelligence that I hear now. Did Saddam really try to have Bush Sr killed? Maybe, Maybe not.

 

He was a bad guy, not doubt. The world would be better without Castro, Kim, and others but that doesn't mean we need to go in there and rebuild their nation for them.[/quote']

 

Ummm.... I don't think I was saying that everyone who disagrees with Bush is stupid.

 

I was saying that the issue of whether Saddam had WMDs at the precise moment we invaded is not so significant that it should be the primary thrust of almost every attack against the President. I think this for several reasons:

 

1. Saddam had a duty to disclose the destruction of the weapons and elected not to do so. Intel is imperfect and we should not accept a priciple that we have to guess. True, for most nations we cannot be so intrusive but Saddam invaded a US ally, lost and agreed to make disclosures. It would have been a simple matter for him to document the destruction of the weapons.

 

2. There were other justifications for the war. Saddam lost a war and while at our mercy agreed to certain requirements. We could have waited for him to reconstitute his WMDs very much like the world waited for Germany to rearm before WWII. Frankly, I think that many of the people who now say WMDs were the sole basis for their decision to authorize force are being dishonest. Most dems agreed to authorize force because of election year politics. My expartner argued against any force and then, after the fact, said that he did not argue more strongly primarily because of the WMD threat. Yeah, right. There were a variety of factors that made this a very unique case and WMDs was merely one factor.

 

3. Does anyone doubt that Saddam would eventually have gone after WMDs eventually? The man was capable of serious miscalculations. (President Clinton, after receiving reports from the FBI and CIA, was apparently sufficiently convinced Saddam tried to kill a former US president that he ordered a missile strike on the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in 1993.)

 

4. The war has eliminated nuclear a WMD threat from Libya. On it's face, the war was a success for that reason alone. Two thousand and plus casualties is a terrible loss (and yes, I have a family member in harms way right now) but the elimination of Libya's current nuclear program and of a possible reconsititution of Saddam's program in the future is an incalculable benefit.

 

5. America has eliminated a brutal dictator and given the Iraqi people a chance at democracy. These are good things. Somehow it has become Bush's failure if Iraq does not seize this opportunity. I don't see how. He is obviously doing everything he can to give them a chance at freedom. This is all we can do.

 

Jim

[Jim]

I think that line will go down in history with the same sentiments as "Remember the Maine!"

 

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

 

What is wrong with this statement? It merely states the obvious fact that intel is never perfect and being on the outside looking in, we will never have perfect, final proof and, many times, cannot afford to wait to act until we have that final proof.

 

Had Saddam not invaded Kuwait, and lost, none of this would ever have happened. Guess he shouldn't have done that, eh?

[bascule]

"Facing clear evidence of peril' date=' we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

 

What is wrong with this statement?[/quote']

 

The fact that North Korea, Libya, and Iran were all developing nuclear weapons at that time, and Saddam was not, and we had no evidence that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons and knew pretty much for certain that North Korea was at the time...

[Jim]

North Korea, Libya and Iran had not invaded a strategically important US ally, lost and then failed to honor an agreement to disclose their programs.

[Pangloss]

I'm not sure we really want to review whole Iraq war debate. Not that either of you have been inappropriate, but at some point I'm probably going to close it off, just because it's very old territory.

 

But for the moment I'm content to just point out that this debate has been done a number of times, and both sides have scored equally valid points, and I would encourage you to instead perhaps seek to find some common ground (just to give it a new twist, eh?).