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#283701 - 11/14/05 01:04 PM Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
Would you buy a used car from
Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid,Dick Durbin,Howard Dean ?

Probably not but you will jump on the bandwagon for anything anti Bush.


Who Is Lying About Iraq?

A campaign of distortion aims to discredit the liberation.

BY NORMAN PODHORETZ Monday, November 14, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked. This entire scenario of purported deceit was given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."

Now, as it happens, Mr. Libby was not charged with having outed Ms. Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that "this indictment is not about the war":

This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person--a person, Mr. Libby--lied or not.

No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting: "This case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president."

Yet even stipulating--which I do only for the sake of argument--that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq. How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and--yes--France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix--who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past--lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

"The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km [105 miles] 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."

Mr. Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.

So, once again, did the British, the French and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the U.N. in the period leading up to the invasion. Mr. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as secretary of state. But Mr. Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP--Ammunition Supply Point--with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate. Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Mr. Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios. In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about:

Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.

But, according to Wilkerson:

"The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this rpm, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?"

In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Mr. Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written:

"I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes)."

No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that "Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material." (Hard as it is to believe, let alone to reconcile with his general position, Joseph C. Wilson IV, in a speech he delivered three months after the invasion at the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, offhandedly made the following remark: "I remain of the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons.")

But the consensus on which Mr. Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program."

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."

Finally, Mr. Clinton's secretary of defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Mr. Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President "to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs."

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Mr. Bush succeeded Mr. Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new president, a group of senators led by Bob Graham declared:

"There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."

Sen. Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Mr. Bush's benefit what he had told Mr. Clinton some years earlier:

"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:

"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."

Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:

"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."

Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:

"We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

And here is Mr. Gore again, in that same year:

"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."

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:

"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."

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Mr. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Byrd: "The last U.N. 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."

Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again."

The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country's salvation."

So, too, the Washington Post, which greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001 with this admonition:

"Of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous--or more urgent--than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos . . . show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons."

All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Mr. Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam's stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Mr. Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the 16 resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?

Another fallback charge is that Mr. Bush, operating mainly through Mr. Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. Yet in its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities. The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."

Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Mr. Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as "imminent." But this, too, is false: Mr. Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war. Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared that he would "not wait on events while dangers gather" and that he would "not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer." Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point: "If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long." And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word "imminent" itself precisely in order to repudiate it:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

What of the related charge that it was still another "lie" to suggest, as Mr. Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee's report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to "meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives."

Which brings us to Joseph C. Wilson, IV and what to my mind wins the palm for the most disgraceful instance of all.

The story begins with the notorious 16 words inserted--after, be it noted, much vetting by the CIA and the State Department--into Bush's 2003 State of the Union address:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

This is the "lie" Mr. Wilson bragged of having "debunked" after being sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check out the intelligence it had received to that effect. Mr. Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the vice president's idea. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, through whom Mr. Wilson first planted this impression, was eventually forced to admit that "Cheney apparently didn't know that Wilson had been dispatched." (By the time Mr. Kristof grudgingly issued this retraction, Mr. Wilson himself, in characteristically shameless fashion, was denying that he had ever "said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent.") And as for his wife's supposed nonrole in his mission, here is what Valerie Plame Wilson wrote in a memo to her boss at the CIA:

"My husband has good relations with the PM [the prime minister of Niger] and the former minister of mines . . ., both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

More than a year after his return, with the help of Mr. Kristof, and also Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, and then through an op-ed piece in the Times under his own name, Mr. Wilson succeeded, probably beyond his wildest dreams, in setting off a political firestorm. In response, the White House, no doubt hoping to prevent his allegation about the 16 words from becoming a proxy for the charge that (in Mr. Wilson's latest iteration of it) "lies and disinformation [were] used to justify the invasion of Iraq," eventually acknowledged that the president's statement "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." As might have been expected, however, this panicky response served to make things worse rather than better. And yet it was totally unnecessary--for the maddeningly simple reason that every single one of the 16 words at issue was true.

That is, British intelligence had assured the CIA that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country of Niger. Furthermore--and notwithstanding the endlessly repeated assertion that this assurance has now been discredited--Britain's independent Butler commission concluded that it was "well-founded." The relevant passage is worth quoting at length:

"a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this."

As if that were not enough to settle the matter, Mr. Wilson himself, far from challenging the British report when he was "debriefed" on his return from Niger (although challenging it is what he now never stops doing), actually strengthened the CIA's belief in its accuracy. From the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Mr. Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium. And again:

The report on [Mr. Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

This passage goes on to note that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research--which (as we have already seen) did not believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons--found support in Mr. Wilson's report for its "assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." But if so, this, as the Butler report quoted above points out, would not mean that Iraq had not tried to buy it--which was the only claim made by British intelligence and then by Mr. Bush in the famous 16 words.

The liar here, then, was not Mr. Bush but Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Wilson also lied when he told the Washington Post that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence (by whom it is not yet clear) that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents did indeed turn out to be forgeries; but, according to the Butler report:

"The forged documents were not available to the British government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine [that assessment]."

More damning yet to Mr. Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never laid eyes on the documents in question:

[Mr. Wilson] also told committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article . . . which said, "among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.' " Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.

To top all this off, just as Mr. Cheney had nothing to do with the choice of Mr. Wilson for the mission to Niger, neither was it true that, as Mr. Wilson "confirmed" for a credulous New Republic reporter, "the CIA circulated [his] report to the Vice President's office," thereby supposedly proving that Cheney and his staff "knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie." Yet--the mind reels--if Mr. Cheney had actually been briefed on Mr. Wilson's oral report to the CIA (which he was not), he would, like the CIA itself, have been more inclined to believe that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

So much for the author of the best-selling and much-acclaimed book whose title alone--"The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity"--has set a new record for chutzpah.

But there is worse. In his press conference on the indictment against Mr. Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that lying to federal investigators is a serious crime both because it is itself against the law and because, by sending them on endless wild-goose chases, it constitutes the even more serious crime of obstruction of justice. By those standards, Mr. Wilson--who has repeatedly made false statements about every aspect of his mission to Niger, including whose idea it was to send him and what he told the CIA upon his return; who was then shown up by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having lied about the forged documents; and whose mendacity has sent the whole country into a wild-goose chase after allegations that, the more they are refuted, the more they keep being repeated--is himself an excellent candidate for criminal prosecution.

And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq--the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy--have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals."
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283703 - 11/14/05 01:30 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
stlhead Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/08/99
Posts: 6830
A retired Air Force major and 11 year employee of Lawrence Livermore Labs speaks out in todays PI:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/248055_firstperson14.html
_________________________
"You learn more from losing than you do from winning." Lou Pinella

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#283704 - 11/14/05 01:37 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
Sens. Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin have accused President George Bush of lying about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, insisting he "lied us into war." They are even floating the suggestion that he be impeached.

Here are their accusations:

"The Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America should never have fought." --Ted Kennedy

"We all know the Vice President's office was the nerve center of an operation designed to sell the war and discredit those who challenged it. ... The manipulation of intelligence to sell the war in Iraq...the Vice President is behind that." --Harry Reid

"I seconded the motion Sen. Harry Reid made last week. Republicans in Congress have refused, despite repeated promises, to investigate the Bush administration's misuse of pre-war intelligence, so Senate Democrats are standing up and demanding the truth." -- Dick Durbin, who recently compared U.S. troops to the Nazis and Pol Pot.

Naturally, the Democrat's media lemmings are reporting these charges as de facto truth, but there is considerable evidence that these Demo-gogues and their colleagues believed Iraq had WMD long before President George Bush came to Washington. Here is a small sample of that evidence from the Clinton years:

Bill Clinton: "If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

Madeleine Albright, Clinton Secretary of State: "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."

Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Advisor and Classified Document Thief: "[Saddam will] use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has ten times since 1983."

Harry Reid: "The problem is not nuclear testing; it is nuclear weapons. ... The number of Third World countries with nuclear capabilities seems to grow daily. Saddam Hussein's near success with developing a nuclear weapon should be an eye-opener for us all."

Dick Durbin: "One of the most compelling threats we in this country face today is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Threat assessments regularly warn us of the possibility that...Iraq...may acquire or develop nuclear weapons."

John Kerry: "If you don't believe...Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me."

John Edwards: "Serving on the Intelligence Committee and seeing day after day, week after week, briefings on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and his plans on using those weapons, he cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, it's just that simple. The whole world changes if Saddam ever has nuclear weapons."

Nancy Pelosi: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons-inspection process."

Sens. Levin, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Dodd, Kerrey, Feinstein, Mikulski, Daschle, Breaux, Johnson, Inouye, Landrieu, Ford and Kerry in a letter to Bill Clinton: "We urge you, after consulting with Congress and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

After President Bush was sworn into office in 2001, his administration was handed eight years worth of intelligence analysis and policy positions from the Clinton years -- you know, the years of appeasement when Saddam was tolerated, when opportunities to take out Osama bin Ladin were ignored, as was the presence of an al-Qa'ida terrorist cell in the U.S. -- which reared its head on 9/11.

In the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq, Democrats, who had access to the same intelligence used by the Bush administration (much of which was compiled under the Clinton administration), were clear about the threat of Iraq's WMD capability.

Ted Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

John Kerry: "I will be voting to give the president of the U.S. the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security. ... Without question we need to disarm Saddam Hussein."

Hillary Clinton: "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, his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists including al-Qa'ida 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."

Carl Levin: "We begin with a common belief that Saddam Hussein...is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."

Al Gore: "We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Bob Graham: "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."

For the record: Here's a partial list of what didn't make it out of Iraq before the OIF invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc. Assuming Irag had no WMD because only small caches were recovered after Operation Iraqi Freedom began is perilously flawed logic. That, in no way, affirms what he spirited out through Iran and Syria before OIF.

So, ask Ted, Dick and Harry, what is their real agenda?

One might fairly conclude that they are willing to reduce U.S. national security to political fodder by accusing the President of the United States of "lying." Problem is, the President had no political motive for Operation Iraqi Freedom -- only a legitimate desire to fulfill the highest obligation of his office -- to defend our liberty against all threats.

Ted, Dick and Harry, on the other hand, have plenty of political motivation for their most recent antics -- and all of America should look upon these disgraceful Demo-gogues, and anyone who supports this dangerous folly, as traitorous louts.

On Veterans Day, President Bush noted: "Today our nation pays tribute to our veterans -- 25 million vets.... At this hour, a new generation of Americans is defending our flag and our freedom in the first war of this century. This war came to our shores on the morning of September 11, 2001. ... We know that they want to strike again and our nation has made a clear choice. We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire or rest until the War on Terror is won. ... [I]t is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. ... We will never back down. We will never give in. We will never accept anything less than complete victory."

"Deeply irresponsible"? He is too kind.

Semper Vigilo, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander Publisher, The Patriot
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283706 - 11/14/05 02:30 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
h2o Offline
Carcass

Registered: 10/31/02
Posts: 2227
Loc: Portland
balancing the budget?

try 'paying for the war'.
_________________________
"Christmas is an American holiday." - micropterus101

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#283707 - 11/14/05 04:50 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
I bet each one of you is deeper in debt as a percentage of your income than the US govt. is. Count the house , the cars all of it.
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283708 - 11/14/05 05:40 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
John Lee Hookum Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/12/01
Posts: 2505
Loc: Area 51
_________________________

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of
Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter
of the gods.

-- Albert Einstein



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#283709 - 11/14/05 05:42 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
stlhead Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/08/99
Posts: 6830
Not I. So you lose the bet.
_________________________
"You learn more from losing than you do from winning." Lou Pinella

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#283710 - 11/14/05 05:54 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
It does not count if you live with your parents Stlhd.
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283711 - 11/14/05 06:22 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Dan S. Offline
It all boils down to this - I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and anyone who disputes this is clearly a dumbfuck.

Registered: 03/07/99
Posts: 17149
Loc: SE Olympia, WA
Oh, I get it. Being irresponsible with one's personal finances is an excuse for our lawmakers to be irresponsible spending our tax dollars.
_________________________
She was standin' alone over by the juke box, like she'd something to sell.
I said "baby, what's the goin' price?" She told me to go to hell.

Bon Scott - Shot Down in Flames

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#283712 - 11/14/05 06:54 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
It's childish to expect the elected to be of higher standard than the electorate. It's why we don't let sex offenders run schools. Childish I say childish.
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283713 - 11/14/05 07:02 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Dave Vedder Offline
Reverend Tarpones

Registered: 10/09/02
Posts: 8587
Loc: West Duvall
TK: Can you remember when your party was so eager to balance the budget they were clamoring for a balanced budget amandment to the constitution. Oh yeah, I bet there was a dem in the white house. Please tell us why it was such a good idea then but not now.

I like several aspects of the moderate republican party. I especially like the idea of fiscal restraint. Why did your party abandon that?
_________________________
No huevos no pollo.

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#283714 - 11/14/05 07:05 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Dan S. Offline
It all boils down to this - I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and anyone who disputes this is clearly a dumbfuck.

Registered: 03/07/99
Posts: 17149
Loc: SE Olympia, WA
Quote:
It's childish to expect the elected to be of higher standard than the electorate
Hell if it is.
_________________________
She was standin' alone over by the juke box, like she'd something to sell.
I said "baby, what's the goin' price?" She told me to go to hell.

Bon Scott - Shot Down in Flames

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#283716 - 11/14/05 07:17 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
Dave,

I have no party. That was the republicans. I just have more in common with them than I do the Democrats. I agree that there should be a balanced budget amendment. I think the Right side of the isle as been irresopnsible in spending. I have said that over and over. I have also pointed out tha the budget contains mandatory expenditures that make cuts very difficult.I think the avg. American supports the spending and wants their piece of the pie. Lets throw out the Clinton years and the boost he saw from economic expansion and lets talk about the 100 years before when the Democrats held a 2:1 advatage in congress. How responsible where they with spending? No more than the R's this time arround.

Lets talk realistic cuts her Dave. What would your cuts be and how would you defend them? Someones going to get hurt lets see who you would whack first.

Lets take a preemptive strike at the fantasy that if Corps paid all of their taxes the avg. American would hardly have a tax bill. We all know we would just paying higher costs for everything. Plus we would be paying interest and profit on it and have no idea what that the true tax burden was. Pluse the vast majority of US corps would move out of the US.
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283717 - 11/14/05 07:38 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Dave Vedder Offline
Reverend Tarpones

Registered: 10/09/02
Posts: 8587
Loc: West Duvall
TK

I would balancing the budget by eliminating star wars, reinstating the pre Bush tax rates for those earning more than $200,000 per year, eliminating the huge subsidies for the energy companies, passing an excess protift tax on eneargy companies and eliminating a ton of special interest loopholes?

What are your ideas to balance the budget?
_________________________
No huevos no pollo.

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#283718 - 11/14/05 07:45 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
I would eliminate 100% of the budget items that are not listed in the US constitution as functions of the federal govt. So pretty much every thing would become the responsibilty of the states except national defense.
_________________________
Liberalism is a mental illness!

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#283719 - 11/14/05 07:57 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Salmo g. Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/08/99
Posts: 13526
Whew! Until the latter part of this thread, I thought you were right, Aunty, TK has become Rory. Fortunately, he's come back with some original material, even if demeaning and low grade slams at you. Either he has issues, or just doesn't like you. Yet he continues to engage you.

Oh, TK, you lose the bet again. My debt is 8.5% of income. So heck yes, I expect fiscal responsibility from my gov't. Now I can't get it from either party. Maybe Libertarian.

Oh yeah, good fiscal strategy. No federal money for interstate highways, or Corps projects, or . . . and unfortunately the list is forever too long.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

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#283720 - 11/14/05 09:27 PM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
grandpa Offline
Three Time Spawner

Registered: 08/18/02
Posts: 1843
Loc: brier,wa
I stop by for my evening laugh and I am not disappointed.......

Quote:
It does not count if you live with your parents Stlhd.
Even if it's in a trailer park?

I think there are some CIA overseas prisons making room for Kennedy and Reid. Maybe next time the US is attacked they will be rounded up for causing it and be sent to "ABU GRAB" where they can practice reach arounds on each other in their cells.

I would gladly give up the tax breaks if all those extreme left wing horse's asses could be sent to prison for treason.

How's that Dave? As far as a balanced budget goes when politicians stop spending our money so they can get re elected we could maybe regin in the budget and start paying off the debt.
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#283722 - 11/15/05 01:32 AM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
KlausRMinnow Offline
Returning Adult

Registered: 10/19/05
Posts: 330
Loc: Everwet WA
Lets see we could start by ceasing all of the intellectual property transfers with China, India, Russia, Japan, etc, etc..

Does anyone remember that little thing about 6 months ago when they were trying to buy Unocal (an American icon company). Now we have John Chamber talking about Cisco being the next big Chinese network appliance manufacture.

Does anyone remember what the Japanese did to us and our electronics and automobile industries in the 1970's? I do, now take that damage and multiply it by 1000 and you can start to get an idea of what unfettered trade and IP trade-offs with China can do to our economy.

Our exports have been steadily decreasing while our imports are steadily increasing. I feel a 200 Billion dollar trade deficit is not healthy with a COMMUNIST country. But hell who am I to say.

So, if you take into account the outsourcing that is occurring on all levels, the trade deficits that are out of control I believe it is probably knocking about 2 points off of our GNP.

Well how’s that for starters?

KRM

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#283723 - 11/15/05 02:26 AM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Mingo Offline
Three Time Spawner

Registered: 03/27/05
Posts: 1552
Loc: Kona, Hawaii
Quote:
Originally posted by Dave Vedder:
I would balancing the budget by eliminating star wars, reinstating the pre Bush tax rates for those earning more than $200,000 per year, eliminating the huge subsidies for the energy companies, passing an excess protift tax on eneargy companies and eliminating a ton of special interest loopholes?What are your ideas to balance the budget?
Dave, great points.........here is how our leader is reacting to criticism.......he has decided to go stealthy..........remember the "timely" trip to Argentina? \:D

_________________________
-------------------------------------------------------
Bankers are twats that have been hated throughout history - Dan S.

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#283724 - 11/15/05 11:17 AM Re: Liar! liar! pants on fire
Theking Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 10/10/03
Posts: 4908
Loc: The right side of the line
Dave,
"eliminating the huge subsidies for the energy companies, passing an excess protift tax on eneargy companies "

They would just cut production more in the US driving up costs and supply more overseas. It would make the problem worse not better. Lots of reports on the net about this very issue.

SG,

"Interstate highways, or Corps projects"

A little history on interstate hiways. They where pushedby the good ol Mob Aka the teamsters to help expand interstate trucking. they laid a lot of payola on the DEMOCRATS to expand roads and eliminate their competitor the railroads. The biggest transportation mistake of the 20th century. We killed the railroads so we could build roads that caused some pretty serious downstream effects. Like pollution, Dependancy on oil,urban and suburban sprawl. That single bit graft by your party and your friends the unions and corruption by your party has had the single most devastating effect on our environment in the history of this country. Makes sense that you would want to see it prosper being the psuedo environmentalist and deep thinker that you are. Corps, projects are another boondoggle, We will be spending $300 billion to repair the damage that a corps project fostered in the Gulf. Yep we need more levies,rivers channelized and wetlands mitigated.

KK,

Sure it does. But the intent was to have the states in control of their own destiny.

Better yet what is working so well at the Federal level that you would keep t there vs. giving it back to the states? Besides affirmative action extortion.
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