WMD's again!
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was recently quoted about the reasons for going to war in Iraq as saying, "concern about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the fundamental reason." This is in response to former Press Secretary Scott McClellan's claims in a new book that the runup to the war involved administration deception to the American public.
Her quote may actually be true although I believe that the WMD's made a convenient lynchpin for a war the administration WANTED to fight. The real issue for me is that the administration settled on WMD's as the cause celebre and then ignored any facts that didn't support their contentions. In addition they willfully manipulated the intelligence they had to make their point making war inevitable as opposed to possible.
That is the real crime. January 20th, 2009 can't come soon enough.
posted by PurplePol @ 2:47 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Why can't people get this right, on the issue of WMD?
The U.N. inspection teams that Saddam kept kickiing around were not charged with finding out whether or not Iraq had WMDs. After the first Gulf War, it was firmly established (by the U.N.) that Iraq did in fact have them. Many of them. Hans Blix was sent there to verify that they had been destroyed as ordered by the U.N.. There never was any question, during that time, of whether or not Saddam ever had them. We'd seen them and cataloged them already. He was supposed to destroy them and document that destruction.
But people today just want to forget that we knew he had them, and pile on Bush and Chaney, saying that they lied and made it up that he had them.
They just can't accept the 2000 election. Well, thank God Al Gore was NOT President in September, 2001.
We will never know how things would have turned out with Gore in charge and it's useless to continue any kind of "sour grapes" whining. Bush was elected and it's his policies that are being debated.
My main problem with Bush on this issue is that he manipulated the facts to suit the reality he desired and he justified it by saying it was for the country's security. I don't agree that the end justifies the means. The President should not be allowed to run roughshod over the facts and weaken or ignore the checks and balances put in place to reign in the power of the office. He did both of these things and while I rejoice in the fact that we have not been attacked since 9/11 I would rather stand on morality, principle and the rule of law and risk another attack then to give all of that up for smidge more security and the illusion of unparalelled safety.
"I would rather stand on morality, principle and the rule of law and risk another attack then to give all of that up for smidge more security and the illusion of unparalelled safety"
That's very nice rhetoric. But that's all it is. The facts the administration put forth in support of the war were, at the time, agreed upon by nearly the entire world. And they came from all corners o fhte world, as well. He did not make them up to suit himself.
It is only the Left's misguided hatred of Bush that is fueling the current "conventional wisdom" that he lied and manipulated facts. So you hate Bush? OK, but now it is you who are rewriting history and lieing to suit your own cause, which is obviously to put a Democrat back in the White House.
The inconvenient truth here is that Bush used widely accepted intelligence information, gathered from sources around the world, to convince Congress to approve the war. All of the major Democratic players had access to the raw intelligence, and agreed with it at the time. Saint and Savior of the World Bill Clinton made these same arguments himself when he was in office.
So now these players want a Democrat in the White House, and are going along with the "Bush Lied, People Died" crowd. But people in 2004 didn't buy their rewritten history, and I pray they will not buy it in 2008.
The recent report from congress (june 4, 2008) validates the statements here about the administration cherry-picking and manipulating intelligence and in some cases (i.e. Rumsfeld) blatantly making statements that had no basis in fact. Time to do some reading.
I'm no Democratic shill here. I'd prefer Obama in this election but McCain (the McCain that doesn't pander) will still be better than Bush. And I don't hate Bush but I do feel that his actions have severely damaged our standing in the world, eroded our rights and diminished the Presidency (far worse than lying about sex during the Clinton administration).
Bush did lie whether you can admit it or not. Now it's you who is cherry-picking the facts.
Yea, I'm sure the Senate Intelligence Committee'a Phase II report on pre-war intelligence just thrills the liberals to no end. They wanted "proof" that Bush lied, and that's what they got. What did anybody expect? Congress has been looking to back-pedal their support for the war all along,
And don't give me any of this "bi-partisan" nonsense, either. With both party's saturated with liberalism, "bi-partisan" is a meaningless term.
The truth is, no one raised any of these concerns until Bush failed to pacify Irag after winning the war. And if he had pacified Iraq, we wouldn't be hearing all this now. At least, not from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
We're back to "the end justifies the means", huh? So I guess you're OK if the President lies to you if the end result is desirable? I think your moral compass needs a little adjusting. You have no problem railing against homosexuality, civil unions, programs that assist the poor and unemployed or the disadvantaged who risk everything to come to this country but you'll gladly look the other way for this President.
Government malfeasance whether hidden or uncovered is a corruption of the power that the electorate bestows on the office holder and a diminishment of the democracy envisioned by the founders of this country. The fact that the lies and manipulations would not have been examined in detail if the war had gone better doesn't excuse the violation of the public trust or the abuse of the power of the presidency. Winning isn't everything. How you win is just as important.
I agree that bi-partisanship is not a part of the current government machinery and I am highly sceptical that the next occupant of the Oval Office will have much luck in altering the dynamic. But I'll cling to my optimism just the same.
Look, hind-sight can often be 20-20. In this case, it obviously isn't, though, because you all keep equating being wrong with lying. I'm not even agreeing that he way wrong about things, I'm just saying that if he (and most of the world) was wrong, that isn't the same thing as lying about it.
And its all because liberals cannot get over the 2000 election. How could he have "stolen" that election? Looking at the crap that was going on counting votes in Florida sure makes it clear who was trying to steal it. Bush didn't have any influence with the Supreme Court, and you all know it. So get over it already.
So you can look back and cast doubt on the pre-war intelligence data? So what. On paper, one can make a reasonable sounding case that the Japanese never bombed Pearl Harbor. But that wouldn't mean FDR was wrong or that he lied about it.
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