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Friday, November 11, 2005

Criticism for the Critics

Bush takes on critics of Iraq war
Friday, November 11, 2005; Posted: 2:40 p.m. EST (19:40 GMT)
President Bush Friday accused critics of the Iraq war of distorting the events that led to the U.S. invasion, saying Democrats viewed the same intelligence and came to similar conclusions.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said.

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," Bush said. "They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush said.
Many anti-war critics are so blinded by inexhaustible hatred, so enraged by their impotency, so determined to seize power at any cost, that they care not what damage they do. They tolerate the intolerance of Islam and condemn the influence of Christianity. They excuse our attackers and betray our defenders. They see the world through a prism of fear. They are irrational. They cannot be persuaded by logic. Unfortunately these irrational critics are not a fringe minority. Among them are senior leaders of the second most powerful US political party:

Who Is Lying About Iraq?
Norman Podhoretz
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.
Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush’s benefit what he had told 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 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.
Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Senators 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 UN 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.
Even now these fevered American quislings stubbornly ignore the facts and busy themselves rewriting history...

The President Should Be Held Accountable
By Senator Ted Kennedy
t r u t h o u t | Statement
Thursday 10 November 2005
150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because the Bush Administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America never should have fought.

As we know all too well, Iraq was not an imminent threat. It had no nuclear weapons. It had no persuasive links to al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

But the President wrongly and repeatedly insisted that it was too dangerous to ignore the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, and his ties to al Qaeda.

In his march to war, President Bush exaggerated the threat to the American people. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to al Qaeda justified immediate war.
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3 Comments:

Blogger flippityflopitty said...

Round and round...

We beat this one in the Joe W debate. Am i reading the same material as you?

"Of course there were doubts. Powell was openly skeptical. But the intel we had was enough to make both Clintons, Kennedy, Biden, Kerry, and all the rest express exactly the sentiments Bush did when he took us into Iraq." - Youve also stated you had doubts about going to war with Iraq.

Does it bother you that the October 2002 NIE report (with dissenting opinions)and is markedly different from the unclassified summary. If you do further research, the October 2002 report is significantly more emphatic than prior intelligence briefs prepared by Tenet, yet, no additional intel was presented prior to the October preparation.

Do we know what the Congress was given as evidence for review prior to preparing and voting on:

HJ Res 75
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/archive/2001/uscongress122001.htm

Whats further emphasized in the resolution is exhausting diplomacy before war. Saddam released an updated report that was scowled at by the White House. Clearly, Saddam had no way out - HJ Res 75 wasnt worth the paper it was printed on - we were invading.

To suggest the rest of the world came to the same conclusions is ridiculous - what intel did they have to conclude this. What everyone concluded was that Saddam did not allow complete, unfettered inspections and we can only presume he still has weapons if not ambitions (these guys would be great asbestos or lead-based paint inspectors with that attitude).

Did this justify invasion? I think we found out where most of the world stood.

"What's ridiculous is the charge that Bush distorted reality to take us to war. It is the Ds who are distorting reality right now by forgetting what they said and believed. It's so incredibly lame an argument it's hard to believe anyone thinks it needs refuting."

It is ridiculous to charge Bush with anything at this time. All the documents Bush had access to are not available for debate. We have no idea what the White House had access to, no idea what influence the White House had on reporting. What we do know is that an NIE report, "supposedly" prepared with NO outside influence, grossly overstated the Iraq threat.

What we still need to find out is if the intel prepared and presented to Congress was as complete as the intel the White House had access to in preparing to go to war.

The only way an investigation of this magnitude is accomplished is through politics - the same politics that pushed us into war in the first place.

As Ive stated in the past, either Bush misled the congress & the people or they were incompetent. I need to expand that statement to include the Congress. Looks like the left wing err right wing libertarian anti-war loonies like Ron Paul were right after all:

http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/10/11/debating.html

11/14/2005 02:56:00 PM  
Blogger Tanstaafl said...

You seem to presume we all agree now the war is going badly and we have to figure out how we got in this mess.

I don't agree.

The war is not going badly. There is no mess. The objective facts belie the "sky is falling" mantra the press keeps repeating: our casualties are unprecedently low (based on virtually any comparison, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, you might make); for the 1st time in its 5K year history Iraq has a constitution and, after two elections (with much higher turnout than American norms) is on the way to becoming the first Arab democracy; Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon; Saddam Hussein is on trial; and most important the Jihadi threat to civilization has finally been openly recognized and confronted. You cannot solve a problem until you recognize you have one. We've had a Jihadi problem for a long long time and we're finally doing something about it.

Even if our casualties were higher the value of that last point would not be outweighed.

11/16/2005 08:33:00 PM  
Blogger flippityflopitty said...

The Ron Paul piece was meant to emphasize the intel snafu. There is no other acceptable outcome in Iraq - stabilization of the new Iraqi govt (democracy or not)and Saddam's trial and execution (since his attys are being executed first - I dont really care whether Saddam's execution comes before the trial).

With regards to casualty comparisons, weve covered the death vs. injured and Im not sure where the total casualty rate falls - I suspect Iraq should be far less since "military operations" ended a long time ago.

I think we recognized the jihadi problem after the 2nd plane hit WTC. Iraq has done nothing more than stick our noses directly in the beehive (you suggest this is a good thing). I dont agree with the counter-Jihadi activity justifies casualties in Iraq. We were fighting Jihadis in Afghanistan before Iraq - had the Jihadis escalated action in another country (like Iraq) and we got dragged in, so be it - if a foreign sovereignty was supporting Jihadis against the US and we responded militarily, so be it. Iraq didnt fit the bill. No matter how you want to skew it,Iraq was a mistake - I just want to know how big a mistake and how far reaching so we can put in curbs to avoid it in the future.

If we do not question our govt on issues like this, we dont deserve any rights. This is exactly what makes our country great.

11/17/2005 07:33:00 AM  

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