• silverwhisper said on Jul 13, 2007....

  er, bloc? link? :>
  
  ed

• bloc said on Jul 13, 2007....

  fixed

• silverwhisper said on Jul 13, 2007....

  holy. crap.
  
  ed

• muckpar said on Jul 13, 2007....

  You don't have to read much of this article to see the incompetence of the leaders of our country at the time.  Any body with half a brain knew the strategy the Iraqi Sadam loyalists would use to fight us.  They had better sense than stand and fight.  They threw off their uniforms, went to the weapons stockpiles, got their supplies and have been fighting us ever since.  Throw in Al Qada and the shiite element and there you have it.  Can we win?  Not with this crowd running the show, that is obvious.  Should we stay?  I say the whole country of Iraq is not worth the life of  one American let alone over 3500.    I also believe after a power struggle, which will come after we leave anyway, the Iraqis will form an authoritarian regime, much like the one we overthrew in 2003.  So much for George's democracy in a land who doesn't have a clue what one is.   Why should they?  Have they ever had one in their entire history?   I cannot begin to comprehend this President's lack of a basic history of Iraq and how people are a product of their past.  And the Congress who authorized the war is almost as much to blame as the President.  Sorry for the out burst, Sometimes I cannot help myself, I get literally sick everytime I learn of another American's death over there and an innocent Iraqi's. 
   
  I thought the mess in Viet Nam would never be repeated when I left that hell hole, now here we are again with another stupid President and a stupid Congress that authorized another one.  We will never learn, our leaders are just plain stupid.

• lioneljay said on Jul 13, 2007....

  The first test of propaganda is the extent to which the perpetrators believe their own lies. Clearly the Bushies never really cared all that much about the WMD that they used as their primary selling point early on. They protected the oil fields and they rid the country of Saddam, which tells you a lot all by itself about their true priorities.

• stopmediabias said on Jul 13, 2007....

  So I'm interested in the mindset of a lot of these comments.  We spit out a radical-left source from the many thousands on the net then fawn over it as to purposely point a finger at the Liberal punching bag, President Bush. 

  Solutions?  You guys have all the answers, what about Iran?  Do you think if Iran attacks Israel like it has said over and over that Al Q. won't join with them?  There's is more Jews in America then in Israel and they hate us just because we are Americans.  When was the last time we had an evil like these terrorists we have now? 

  Iraq is Iraq, we are there, and we all voted to go there and not just because of WMD's.  War sucks, get over it.  If we lose this battle it is a victory for the greatest evil of all time.  These people hate everyone, lets not forget Beslan.

  V-

• D6fer said on Jul 14, 2007....

  So what I am getting out of all this is that you libs believe that there were WMDs when it is convenient for you to beleive so....guess you want to have your yellow cake and eat it too!
   
  On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
   
  So they didn't know....that is their crime here?....Wait.....they were groing biological agents here? Is that WMD?
   
   

• bloc said on Jul 15, 2007....

  "So they didn't know....that is their crime here?"
  
  The troops didn't know, but the high levels did. The high levels weren't concerned, which is the point!
  
  
  I know that nuanced points can be hard for you guys. Bush lied about them seeking yellowcake from niger. This doesn't change the fact that he lied about the niger incident. 

• stopmediabias said on Jul 15, 2007....

  Hmm, who has more credibility: Burn-out Bureaucrat Joe Wilson or the British government.  Iraqi officials were seeking nuclear materials from Africa, it has been proven time and time again.

• anonymous said on Jul 15, 2007....

  Oh, don't mind me.  I'm just here to observe.

• muckpar said on Jul 15, 2007....

  SMB:  You said "war sucks", have you ever been in one?

• bloc said on Jul 15, 2007....

  @stopmediabias
  "The classified documents appearing to depict an Iraqi attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger had allegedly been suspected to be fraudulent by some individuals in U.S. intelligence, according to news reports. According to further news accounts of the situation, by early 2002 investigations by both the CIA and theState Department had found the documents to be inaccurate. Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced doubt on the authenticity of the documents to the U.N. Security Council. A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into the origin of these documents has been reopened"
  
  
  This was known before Bush mentioned it in his speech. You see, it wasn't Wilson vs the intel community. The intel community told BUSH that it likely wasn't true. He used it in the state of the Union anyway. The lack of integrity is obvious.

• silverwhisper said on Jul 16, 2007....

  ...obvious to anyone but an apologist, that is.
  
  ed

• stopmediabias said on Jul 16, 2007....

  Did you make that up yourself, or copy it from moveon.org.  Senate Committees and the British Butler Commission in 2004 concluded in 1999 Iraqi officials visited Niger for the purpose of acquiring uranium.

  silverwhisper-I'm thinking of what Cheney told Leahy on the Senate floor. 

• bloc said on Jul 16, 2007....

  are you suggesting that none of the intel groups told the Bush admin that the conclusions where highly skeptical before he stated them in his speech? Please make your point clear so that you can't back track when I refute it. 
  
  
  Are you saying that there weren't high levels of doubt expressed inside our government, to the Bush Admin, regarding those claims before he made them?

• silverwhisper said on Jul 17, 2007....

  smb: and that specifically would have been...?
  
  ed

• bloc said on Jul 17, 2007....

  We'll see if he answers my questions. I'm guess he won't. 

• stopmediabias said on Jul 19, 2007....

  That facts are what I stated.  If intel groups said the info was highly skeptical that doesn't discard the what the British and the Senate concluded. 

  Silver: Cheney when walking on the Senate floor and remembering the slander and outright verbal slashing that Leahy has done to him, when Leahy said hi Cheney replied: "Go fuck yourself."  The best part is he didn't apologize, he said later he was glad he said and felt better afterwards.  Leahy is a loathsome individual so therefore he deserved it.

  V-

• lioneljay said on Jul 19, 2007....

  What everyone seems to conveniently forget is the political atmosphere in the months following the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration made everyone who even hinted at disssent out to be in league with the terrorists. They and their allies on Faux News were hounding dissenters relentlessly. Congress folk were in fear for their careers and so it's not at all surprising that so many of them made public statements that demonstrated support for Bush's plans. It would have been political suicide in 2002, an election year, to do anything else.
  
  So, yes, lots of Democrats are on record as having supported the war - but that is not at all the same thing as having believed in the intel that was used to market the war to the public.
  

• bloc said on Jul 19, 2007....

  @stopmediabias
  Nice dodge. I knew you couldn't give a straight forward answer. When did they conclude that? Sources please! The Bush admin was told prior to the speech that the intel was very shaky and likely untrue. He said it anyway, as if it were certain. That's dishonest in my book, and those are the facts. I love how you try to cherry pick to avoid the obvious and to deceive people. 

• silverwhisper said on Jul 20, 2007....

  smb: so you're telling me that i should go fuck myself? b/c that's about the level of discourse i've come to expect from bush apologists.
  
  bloc, don't compliment a bad dodge. indeed, i've seen better dodges executed by morbidly obese elephants. :>
  
  ed

• stopmediabias said on Jul 21, 2007....

  Bloc-The Senate Select Committee on U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence on Iraq, this is a Bipartisan committee found the Iraq/Niger claim to be true.  The report is 500 pages so maybe it would be easier to go to Wiki-pedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_of_Pre-war_Intelligence_on_Iraq

  The British and even the French support this claim. 

  Silver-Ya...that's what I'm saying.  You started it by instead of discussing the actual content of the argrument you wrote my opinion off by saying I'm a "Bush apologist," which I am because I believe he is right, but the issue here was not me.

  V-

   

• bloc said on Jul 22, 2007....

  @smb
  Do you read your own links?
  
  

  Niger and the Iraqi nuclear program

  Section II of the report discussed the handling of intelligence indicating that Iraq might be attempting to purchase uranium from Niger. The report examined the role played by former ambassador Joseph Wilson in investigating the issue, and the way Wilson's assessment was communicated within the intelligence community. It also discusses the process whereby references to Iraq's uranium-procurement efforts were removed from some speeches at the behest of intelligence officials, but left in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. The report concludes that prior to October, 2002, it was reasonable for the intelligence community to assess Iraq may have been attempting to obtain uranium from Africa.

  Section III of the report discusses assessments of Iraq's domestic nuclear program. It focuses a significant amount of attention on the intelligence process that took place in the spring of 2001 regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes. The CIA concluded that the tubes could be intended for constructing centrifuges for a uranium-enrichment program (i.e., for a restarted Iraqi nuclear weapons program); analysts in the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense considered that to be unlikely.

  The October 2002 NIE stated that Iraq appeared to be reconsitituting its nuclear weapons program. The Committee's report concluded that this view was not supported by the underlying intelligence, and the report agreed with the opinion of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, expressed as an "alternative view" in the NIE, that the available intelligence did not make "a compelling case for reconstitution" of the Iraqi nuclear program. The committee reached several conclusions critical of poor communications between the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community concerning this issue.

  
  See the pattern here? The Bush Admin had an agenda, to sell a war, and they didn't care about the facts. They ONLY gave voice to one side of the intel and they passed of maybes and possiblies as hard fact. It's clear as day even in the links you give.

• stopmediabias said on Jul 23, 2007....

  Weren't we talking about the Niger/Iraq claim?  Certainly we can argue the other stuff, but my point was made.  The elite media discounts the Iraq/Niger connection as "a lie."  They didn't have to "sell" the war.  And were not talking about slingshots here, the "maybe's" are concerning something that could kill millions of people. 

  And regardless of what happened after the fact, Saddam, according to a UN ceasefire agreement agreed to destroy and disclose all of his WMD's.  He didn't, he could have stopped this war and still be in power.

• silverwhisper said on Jul 23, 2007....

  lots of assertions, smb, but zero argumentation.
  
  ed

• bloc said on Jul 23, 2007....

  "the "maybe's" are concerning something that could kill millions of people"
  
  Yes, but they were told that there were doubts prior to the speech and they said it, not as a "maybe", but as a near certainty. We can argue about the definition of a lie, but it's clearly a deception. And it's even clearer when we look at the pattern as a whole. They didn't tell the American people the truth, and it's that simple.
  
  "He didn't, he could have stopped this war and still be in power."
  
  This is an often repeated lie. He agreed to give the inspectors full access prior to our invasion and Bush still chose war.

• stopmediabias said on Jul 23, 2007....

  Bloc-I think you lost me but I'll give it another try.

  "but they were told that there were doubts prior to the speech...."  This was before 2004. The Senate Committee held the Iraq/Niger claim was true in 2004.  So to claim "Bush lied about Niger," is false.

  Your basically saying the Intelligence Community with "near certainty" said the Niger claim was not true but President Bush left it in the speech anyway.  Could there maybe have been information the President had that we didn't know about, maybe classified information?

   

• bloc said on Jul 23, 2007....

  "This was before 2004. The Senate Committee held the Iraq/Niger claim was true in 2004. So to claim "Bush lied about Niger," is false."
  
  
  No they didn't!!!! They said that it would be reasonable to believe it, but they did not say it was without doubt or skeptics. You're also trying to misrepresent what I said, but that's not surprising. 
  
  
  Here is what I think, again. The Bush admin did not present the American people with the truth. They only showed one side of the issues and presented "maybes" as hard cold facts. They presented many things as unquestioned even though they knew that there were legitimate concerns about the validity of the claims. They did not tell the American people about these concerns! In the end they turned out to be wrong across the board. I suggest you read the links that YOU GAVE!
  
  
  You also misquoted my use of "near certainty". I said that Bush made the claim with near certainty when in fact there were doubts about many of their claims. 

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