So rather than officially admit you've been decieved you retreat to,' well he did it first!' Talk about lack of focus.
Fact: Bush admin lied to start a war that dramatically transformed the political structure of our planet.
Fact: certain folks on here ate it up uncritically.
I really don't see how groverat, someone who has thoroughly demonstrated his inability to critically digest information, is in any position to comment objectively on truth or deciet.
So you're saying that prior to the 1996 election Clinton didn't lie and was therefore worthy of your vote?
Does lying before he was even elected count? Where he said he experimented "2 or 3 times" in England with weed and then at another time said he never inhaled?
Clinton was a prolific liar, a more capable and skilled liar than any president I have ever had the privelege to witness or study. It was his gift, his forte.
And Clinton's WMD lies used to explain his bombing the absolute hell out of Iraq in 1998? Or for blowing up a Sudanese aspirin factory?
Or is it more fun to act like Clinton never dropped any bombs?
No I didn't say that. But once again you're missing the point. You're such a blowhard!
It'd all be more fun if you would show some reason why you believe Clinton lied about the bombings.
Well the stated reason to bomb the shit out of Iraq (coincidentally right before his impeachment, go figure) was to hinder Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, I hope you'll be as willing to label that WMD cry a lie as you have GeeDub's.
Saddam's deception has defeated their effectiveness. Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the inspectors.
This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere. The international community gave Saddam one last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors. Saddam has failed to seize the chance.
...
They are designed to degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors.
...
So we will pursue a long-term strategy to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and work toward the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.
George W Bush or William Jefferson Clinton?
-----
giant:
Quote:
So rather than officially admit you've been decieved you retreat to,' well he did it first!' Talk about lack of focus.
"officially admit"?
Do you want an engraved and notarized announcement or will you just continue to ignore what I say anyway?
The WoMD excuse was weak and it has yet to be proven or disproven. The documents from Niger were forged, sure, I recognize that.
Bush lies. Clinton lied. Bush's dad lied. Reagan lied. Carter lied. Ford lied. Nixon lied. Kennedy lied.... all politicians lie. Most people lie.
Was I decieved? That's a little different because it assumes that I believed something in the first place. Since I don't usually believe anything any presidential administration says in the first place I fail to see how I have been decieved.
Inspections have not worked and there is no indication that they will.
Quote:
Originally posted by groverat
How else will Iraq be disarmed?
Quote:
Originally posted by groverat
Almost a month later and the only progress on disarmament is the destruction of a couple-dozen missiles.
Quote:
Originally posted by groverat
If it's not clear to you by now that we can't disarm Saddam without force then I don't know what else to say to you. I guess for you all of history starts with every new breath.
12 years of history show very very clearly that Hussein will not ever fully cooperate and that without full cooperation we cannot fully disarm Iraq. But I guess that's not compelling enough for some.
Quote:
Bunge: If the goal is disarmament, I think at the very least we have time to find out if we can successfully disarm Iraq without war.
Would there ever be a point that you decide that we can't?
Your logic is circular and ignorant of history.
Somehow I have the funny feeling that there actually were alternatives.
My opinion on the WMD were that they probably existed. Looks like Bush is proving me wrong.
Did Bush lie to start a war? Yes, it looks like he did.
Hey they haven't found them yet. I also believe that Iraq had WOMD......at one time. Did they have a suffcient quantity or means to deliver them to us? So they would be considered an viable threat worth this war and what it's cost both sides? Probably never.
"We can conclude that the large number of deployed chemical weapons the administration said that Iraq had are not there. We can also conclude that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was not nearly as sophisticated as the administration claimed," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq.
Bush's claim:
Quote:
Bush in an October 2002 speech said, "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Reuters, 5.12
we now know that this is not true.
Whether or not a small amount of chemicals are found, the claims made by the Bush admin did not stand up.
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
That's a dead horse you're beating there. They also said they that he had the weapons and was a threat. Their whole push was based on making Saddam disarm. You can't beat this one with semantics. And if it's so tenuous why have a war?
Bush's assertion that Iraq had the stated quantities of chemical etc. weapons was the testimony from Hussein Kamel, an in-law of Saddam Hussein who defected from Iraq and was assassinated by the regime on his return. The bit that Bush omitted (from the Kamel testimony used in that infamous UNMOVIC report) was where Kamel stated that all Iraq's chemical weapons were dumped or destroyed in 1991 shortly before the inspections started. Obviously, widespread publicity about those inconvenient parts was kept quiet in the US media during the lead up to the war. Not only was Bush, Powell and the rest of the admin lying but they were deliberately misleading the US people and the rest of the world. A trial, (or articles of impeachment) is what's needed to sort this mess all out once and for all. If Clinton was impeached for lying to the US people, then why should the current batch of scum be immune?
They also said they that he had the weapons and was a threat.
I agree that the Bush Administration misrepresented the threat and their own intelligence on the issue. You can say they lied, even, but to extrapolate that out to the entire WoMD being a Bush admin fabrication is just stupid.
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
Quote:
Their whole push was based on making Saddam disarm. You can't beat this one with symantics. And if it's so tenuous why have a war?
I'm not allowed to discuss semantics in a thread about someone lying? I'm sorry, jimmac, but that's the entire purpose.
-
sammi jo:
Quote:
If Clinton was impeached for lying to the US people, then why should the current batch of scum be immune?
I agree that the Bush Administration misrepresented the threat and their own intelligence on the issue. You can say they lied, even, but to extrapolate that out to the entire WoMD being a Bush admin fabrication is just stupid.
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
The latest Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker (Q & A with him here, the article here indicates that those weapons are unaccounted for simply because the Iraqis disposed of them when they were supposed to.
You have to admit that it was an unbelievable predicament that the admin put the Iraqis in: prove that they don't have something.
As you say above, the admin "misrepresented the threat" for whatever reason. I *would* go so far as to say that they lied about it. It seems clear to me that the admin recognized along the way that "Saddam is a bad, bad man" wasn't going to fly with the American people. This is why, I suspect, we all have such a difficult time talking about/debating this: the admin tried seemingly every way to justify the escalation on the way to conflict, but nothing would stick to the wall. And so in the end folks like me were simply left asking "Why did we attack, invade, and now occupy another country, again?"
But this is serious business. Hersh has a really good response to why we ought to care whether we were misled by the admin:
Quote:
It matters because the threat from Iraq was the whole basis of selling the war to the American people. There's a striking observation in my article from Bob Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska, who wants to see a secular, democratic Iraq and was a strong supporter of the war. Kerrey said that it's very possible that they thought if they made a public argument on the basis of Saddam Hussein's being a bad guy the public really wouldn't care enough to endorse a war. But what they could do to mobilize public opinion was suggest that Saddam was involved in generating weapons of mass destruction, whose mere existence could potentially be a threat to us, and allow people to believe that he was involved in 9/11. If it is true that this Administration deliberately, from the very beginning, understood that the best way to mobilize the American people was to present Saddam as a direct national-security threat to us, without having the evidence beforehand that he was, that's, well, frankly, lying. That's the worst kind of deceit a President can practice. We don't elect our President to not tell us the real situation of the world, particularly when he sends kids to kill and be killed.
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
Oh really? So you like making unsubstantiated claims?
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
red: already disproven. Here's an easy one--Al Furat. Hell, that was disproven BEFORE the war.
The latest Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker (Q & A with him here, the article here indicates that those weapons are unaccounted for simply because the Iraqis disposed of them when they were supposed to.
Without a trace or any proof at all?
Odd... how does one destroy thousands of tons of deadly chemicals with ZERO evidence of such disposal?
It's possible
Quote:
You have to admit that it was an unbelievable predicament that the admin put the Iraqis in: prove that they don't have something.
The administration!?
The administration put them in that predicament!?
Did you even look at the URL of the link I provided? UN.ORG
I swear to God this is maddening, it's like you people forget that this whole thing was a big deal 10 goddam years before George W Bush even ****ing took office!
in cases regarding possible sexual assault, your private sex life with other women in similar situations is not actually private anymore.
there's a huge difference between the two (bill/gwb), but it's pointless to try and paint Bill as horribly wronged regarding his testimony along these lines.
in front of a grand jury, when the line of questioning is directly related to the charges against you, it's not really your private life anymore.
if you can't admit that to yourself you're delusional.
Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress (under oath) about his private sex life.
This is nitpicky, but he wasn't impeached for that. Even the House rejected that one. He was impeached for lying to the Independent Counsel and for obstructing justice in the Paula Jones case.
Comments
Fact: Bush admin lied to start a war that dramatically transformed the political structure of our planet.
Fact: certain folks on here ate it up uncritically.
I really don't see how groverat, someone who has thoroughly demonstrated his inability to critically digest information, is in any position to comment objectively on truth or deciet.
Originally posted by groverat
jimmac:
So you're saying that prior to the 1996 election Clinton didn't lie and was therefore worthy of your vote?
Does lying before he was even elected count? Where he said he experimented "2 or 3 times" in England with weed and then at another time said he never inhaled?
Clinton was a prolific liar, a more capable and skilled liar than any president I have ever had the privelege to witness or study. It was his gift, his forte.
And Clinton's WMD lies used to explain his bombing the absolute hell out of Iraq in 1998? Or for blowing up a Sudanese aspirin factory?
Or is it more fun to act like Clinton never dropped any bombs?
No I didn't say that. But once again you're missing the point. You're such a blowhard!
Originally posted by sammi jo
One of Bush's greatest allies: the short attention span of Americans.
True, true
It'd all be more fun if you would show some reason why you believe Clinton lied about the bombings.
Well the stated reason to bomb the shit out of Iraq (coincidentally right before his impeachment, go figure) was to hinder Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, I hope you'll be as willing to label that WMD cry a lie as you have GeeDub's.
Saddam's deception has defeated their effectiveness. Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the inspectors.
This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere. The international community gave Saddam one last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors. Saddam has failed to seize the chance.
...
They are designed to degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors.
...
So we will pursue a long-term strategy to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and work toward the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.
George W Bush or William Jefferson Clinton?
-----
giant:
So rather than officially admit you've been decieved you retreat to,' well he did it first!' Talk about lack of focus.
"officially admit"?
Do you want an engraved and notarized announcement or will you just continue to ignore what I say anyway?
The WoMD excuse was weak and it has yet to be proven or disproven. The documents from Niger were forged, sure, I recognize that.
Bush lies. Clinton lied. Bush's dad lied. Reagan lied. Carter lied. Ford lied. Nixon lied. Kennedy lied.... all politicians lie. Most people lie.
Was I decieved? That's a little different because it assumes that I believed something in the first place. Since I don't usually believe anything any presidential administration says in the first place I fail to see how I have been decieved.
Originally posted by groverat
Inspections have not worked and there is no indication that they will.
Originally posted by groverat
How else will Iraq be disarmed?
Originally posted by groverat
Almost a month later and the only progress on disarmament is the destruction of a couple-dozen missiles.
Originally posted by groverat
If it's not clear to you by now that we can't disarm Saddam without force then I don't know what else to say to you. I guess for you all of history starts with every new breath.
Originally posted by groverat
12 years of history show very very clearly that Hussein will not ever fully cooperate and that without full cooperation we cannot fully disarm Iraq. But I guess that's not compelling enough for some.
Bunge: If the goal is disarmament, I think at the very least we have time to find out if we can successfully disarm Iraq without war.
Would there ever be a point that you decide that we can't?
Your logic is circular and ignorant of history.
Somehow I have the funny feeling that there actually were alternatives.
Originally posted by groverat
...I hope you'll be as willing to label that WMD cry a lie as you have GeeDub's.
My opinion on the WMD were that they probably existed. Looks like Bush is proving me wrong.
Did Bush lie to start a war? Yes, it looks like he did.
Originally posted by bunge
My opinion on the WMD were that they probably existed. Looks like Bush is proving me wrong.
Did Bush lie to start a war? Yes, it looks like he did.
Hey they haven't found them yet. I also believe that Iraq had WOMD......at one time. Did they have a suffcient quantity or means to deliver them to us? So they would be considered an viable threat worth this war and what it's cost both sides? Probably never.
"We can conclude that the large number of deployed chemical weapons the administration said that Iraq had are not there. We can also conclude that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was not nearly as sophisticated as the administration claimed," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq.
Bush's claim:
Bush in an October 2002 speech said, "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Reuters, 5.12
we now know that this is not true.
Whether or not a small amount of chemicals are found, the claims made by the Bush admin did not stand up.
click for big pdf
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
Originally posted by groverat
The fact that Iraq produced thousands of tons of chemical agents that were never accounted for is an indisputable fact.
click for big pdf
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
That's a dead horse you're beating there. They also said they that he had the weapons and was a threat. Their whole push was based on making Saddam disarm. You can't beat this one with semantics. And if it's so tenuous why have a war?
They also said they that he had the weapons and was a threat.
I agree that the Bush Administration misrepresented the threat and their own intelligence on the issue. You can say they lied, even, but to extrapolate that out to the entire WoMD being a Bush admin fabrication is just stupid.
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
Their whole push was based on making Saddam disarm. You can't beat this one with symantics. And if it's so tenuous why have a war?
I'm not allowed to discuss semantics in a thread about someone lying? I'm sorry, jimmac, but that's the entire purpose.
-
sammi jo:
If Clinton was impeached for lying to the US people, then why should the current batch of scum be immune?
Was Clinton impeached for lying to the US people?
I agree that the Bush Administration misrepresented the threat and their own intelligence on the issue. You can say they lied, even, but to extrapolate that out to the entire WoMD being a Bush admin fabrication is just stupid.
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
The latest Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker (Q & A with him here, the article here indicates that those weapons are unaccounted for simply because the Iraqis disposed of them when they were supposed to.
You have to admit that it was an unbelievable predicament that the admin put the Iraqis in: prove that they don't have something.
As you say above, the admin "misrepresented the threat" for whatever reason. I *would* go so far as to say that they lied about it. It seems clear to me that the admin recognized along the way that "Saddam is a bad, bad man" wasn't going to fly with the American people. This is why, I suspect, we all have such a difficult time talking about/debating this: the admin tried seemingly every way to justify the escalation on the way to conflict, but nothing would stick to the wall. And so in the end folks like me were simply left asking "Why did we attack, invade, and now occupy another country, again?"
But this is serious business. Hersh has a really good response to why we ought to care whether we were misled by the admin:
It matters because the threat from Iraq was the whole basis of selling the war to the American people. There's a striking observation in my article from Bob Kerrey, the former senator from Nebraska, who wants to see a secular, democratic Iraq and was a strong supporter of the war. Kerrey said that it's very possible that they thought if they made a public argument on the basis of Saddam Hussein's being a bad guy the public really wouldn't care enough to endorse a war. But what they could do to mobilize public opinion was suggest that Saddam was involved in generating weapons of mass destruction, whose mere existence could potentially be a threat to us, and allow people to believe that he was involved in 9/11. If it is true that this Administration deliberately, from the very beginning, understood that the best way to mobilize the American people was to present Saddam as a direct national-security threat to us, without having the evidence beforehand that he was, that's, well, frankly, lying. That's the worst kind of deceit a President can practice. We don't elect our President to not tell us the real situation of the world, particularly when he sends kids to kill and be killed.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by groverat
FACT: Iraq had a metric assload of illegal weapons unaccounted for. If you don't consider that threatening then that's your business, but others considered it a threat. Threat status isn't a 100% objective measurement.
Oh really? So you like making unsubstantiated claims?
http://middleeastreference.org.uk/iraqweapons.html
moving on:
Originally posted by groverat
So from this statement blue=truth and red=questionable:
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons."
Can the second sentence be proven or disproven? I don't think so.
red: already disproven. Here's an easy one--Al Furat. Hell, that was disproven BEFORE the war.
blue: see link above
Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress (under oath) about his private sex life
and why was he being questioned about his private sex life? (the legal reasons, not conjecture)
Originally posted by alcimedes
and why was he being questioned about his private sex life? (the legal reasons, not conjecture)
Yeesh! Isn't it obvious? It was a crucial line of questioning in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal! Jeez! The connections are *obvious*!
The latest Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker (Q & A with him here, the article here indicates that those weapons are unaccounted for simply because the Iraqis disposed of them when they were supposed to.
Without a trace or any proof at all?
Odd... how does one destroy thousands of tons of deadly chemicals with ZERO evidence of such disposal?
It's possible
You have to admit that it was an unbelievable predicament that the admin put the Iraqis in: prove that they don't have something.
The administration!?
The administration put them in that predicament!?
Did you even look at the URL of the link I provided? UN.ORG
I swear to God this is maddening, it's like you people forget that this whole thing was a big deal 10 goddam years before George W Bush even ****ing took office!
Here's the link again. click
Let me walk you through the URL since the significance seems to escape everyone who sees it.
un.org (Hey! It's a UN document!)
/depts/unmovic (A department of the UN! UNMOVIC! OH WAIT, THAT'S BLIX AND COMPANY! Not exactly the Bush administration now is it, sparky?)
/06 March 2003 (HMMM! Seems fairly recent to me, how about you?)
Make an effort, please. Please please please please please.
----
giant:
Oh really? So you like making unsubstantiated claims?
Unsubstantiated? Have you even been paying attention to the Iraq situation for more than 2 days?
click
Look at P. 21 published by that blood-thirsty warhawk oil-man Hans Blix. A beautiful list just for you.
Unsubstantiated... Christ al-****ing-mighty. I link to the goddam UNMOVIC report from March 2003 and it's unsubstantiated...
---
tonton:
Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress (under oath) about his private sex life.
You know, as much as I'd love to re-tread the tired and pointless argument about privacy and Clinton witch-hunting I think I'll avoid it.
Thanks for proving my point.
Perhaps "Sammi Jo is still lying to justify attacks on GeeDub" as a thread is in order?
there's a huge difference between the two (bill/gwb), but it's pointless to try and paint Bill as horribly wronged regarding his testimony along these lines.
in front of a grand jury, when the line of questioning is directly related to the charges against you, it's not really your private life anymore.
if you can't admit that to yourself you're delusional.
Originally posted by tonton
Clinton was impeached for lying to Congress (under oath) about his private sex life.
This is nitpicky, but he wasn't impeached for that. Even the House rejected that one. He was impeached for lying to the Independent Counsel and for obstructing justice in the Paula Jones case.