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Originally posted by Renz Wasn't that an episode of Gilligan's Island?
Anyway, I think the war on Iraq was justified based on human rights alone. Look at all the mass graves being found full of women and children. Saddam was not going to give up power under any circumstances. He needed to be removed by force.
As for WMD, I think that just about every country/intelligence service in the world thought Iraq had WMD. I think they will be found eventually and even if they aren't, I think it is an intelligence failure and not the White House purposely misleading us.
Well if that's the reasoning, then why try to talk about WMDs?
To be honest, for National Security, Saddam Hussein would be better than any Rightwing Islamic fundamentalist govt....which will probably replace Hussein.
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We've gone around on these sorts of things before, and I always enjoy your viewpoint.
Many Americans demand a little bit more evidence from their elected officials. If you have enough faith in the veracity of the government (a faith that is not supported very well by historical precedent) then good for you, I am not going to criticize your belief that WMD will be found.
But I am more skeptical and would like to see something turned up, not mere circumstantial assumptions. And if the answer from the administration is "Well the weapons were all destroyed" that is simply not good enough for me. What if the police came to your house with a search warrant for drugs, found none, and threw you in jail anyway because all the prosecutor had to say is "well he had drugs but destroyed them before we got there".
Here you have a high ranking member of the military admitting that the White House told him just MINUTES after 9/11 that the event must be linked to Iraq, yet you still have no doubt at all that our motives in Iraq were pure and our actions necessary. Fine. I respect your opinion. But it is sensible to think that many people might not take that same leap of logic.
And the media is not liberal. The #1 news network in ratings is Fox and CNN is making itself more conservative every day to compete.
Originally posted by Dback Jon
Wayward - once again you delude yourself in calling the media liberal. It is anything but liberal. Sure, there are some liberals in the media, but the ownership/programming of all the networks in conservative. Even CNN is more balanced than the Republican News Network (Fox).
And I'll respectively return the statement that you delude yourself believe what you just said. The evidence compounded illustrating the overwhelming liberal bias in the media cannot be logically ignored.
It is funny that liberals find CNN balanced and Fox conservative when conservative think that Fox is balanced and EVERYTHING else is rediculously leftist.
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The media has given Bush a big pass on this so far. They failed to ask the critical questions about the conjured documents that the Bushies used to justify this war.
I disagree. It is topical every night, and they provide the mouthpiece for Democrats to slander without proof.
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The war, that will involve us for at least 10-years, cost us hundreds, if not thousands of American lives, and up to a trillion dollars.
But so far is costly us FAR less than expected.
And, it is a good thing.
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Did Iraq at one time have WMD - yes.
Did they still have them? unknown.
Did they have any capability to harm the US? Most likely no.
Where they an immediate danger to the US? No.
I'll disagree on the last two and just leave it at that.
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Youre points are well taken, Wayward, but read that interview up top. Isnt that a military general saying he saw no evidence of the imminence of the Iraqi threat? Isnt that the MAIN (granted not only) reason we the public were given for going to war? Isnt he saying that he was told by the white house in the aftermath of 9/11 to tie Sadam to the bombers, without being shown one ounce of evidence?
From what he said, the President made a decision based on the information he had. He also said that investigations should take place (and I'll agree that they should probably be classified investigations by proper personnel). For now, I have no reason to believe the attack was warranted on all fronts.
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Thats what Im worried about in this thread. It contends that the white house was cooking evidence as far back as 9/11/01 to help provide them with the backing of the public to eventually go to war. That bothers me. The source seems credible too. DOesnt that bother you at all? Speaking SPECIFICALLY about the above posted interview now, not the other standard whinings that come from all sides on this board...
Does it bother me? Of course it does. I never suggested it didn't. I'm saying that there is as yet no firm indication that everything isn't on the up and up. IF evidence was fabricated, regardless of the fact that I'd support the war for whatever reason (it was the right thing to do), then that is a horrible thing and I'll denounce it right along side you.
But what I will NOT do is hang the guy because items meant to be hidden (and thus hard to track via intelligence!) haven't been found just yet.
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Originally posted by Renz Wasn't that an episode of Gilligan's Island?
Anyway, I think the war on Iraq was justified based on human rights alone. Look at all the mass graves being found full of women and children. Saddam was not going to give up power under any circumstances. He needed to be removed by force.
But the stated reason by the government was WMD. They never mentioned it as a human rights crusade until late in the game when mass piles of WMD were not found.
And if Bush is suddenly so misty over mass graves of women and children (which were never found, by the way.....that's a hyperbole of the reporting) I assume we're getting set to go to war in Rwanda, Zaire, Eritrea, and a dozen other African nations where there is currently genocide taking place that would curl your hair. No?
And for god's sake can we all just agree that every media outlet is biased - some conservative, some liberal - and stop using that as a rhetorical point.
It's all biased. To state it proves nothing at this point. Fox News would support Bush if he repealed the Bill of Frickin' Rights, and CNN would still slam him if he suddenly became a hippie liberal.
It's all biased. Period. I give none more credence than any other.
Originally posted by Ed B
Hi wayward, I've missed you!
Yeah, I'm sure!
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We've gone around on these sorts of things before, and I always enjoy your viewpoint.
LOL!
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Many Americans demand a little bit more evidence from their elected officials. If you have enough faith in the veracity of the government (a faith that is not supported very well by historical precedent) then good for you, I am not going to criticize your belief that WMD will be found.
I don't want to deprive those Americans that satisfaction. My problem is that despite having no proof, people are hell bent on discrediting Bush. If he lied or this whole thing is crap, I'll be just as pissed as you (probably more so, because that will mean we'll have to try to live through a Dem president).
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But I am more skeptical and would like to see something turned up, not mere circumstantial assumptions.
Why can't you wait for them then? Isn't your side a little irrational by insisting they be found by now?
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And if the answer from the administration is "Well the weapons were all destroyed" that is simply not good enough for me. What if the police came to your house with a search warrant for drugs, found none, and threw you in jail anyway because all the prosecutor had to say is "well he had drugs but destroyed them before we got there".
Fair enough, despite the fact that might be just what happened.
It's a moot anyway, as they will be found.
Question for you though: Why aren't you MORE concerned with where they are? Doesn't that scare you?
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Here you have a high ranking member of the military admitting that the White House told him just MINUTES after 9/11 that the event must be linked to Iraq, yet you still have no doubt at all that our motives in Iraq were pure and our actions necessary. Fine. I respect your opinion. But it is sensible to think that many people might not take that same leap of logic.
Fair enough, but like I said I have no beef with this portion of the argument.
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And the media is not liberal. The #1 news network in ratings is Fox and CNN is making itself more conservative every day to compete.
Aha! Got you.
Sure, the media is liberal. That is well documented. Yes, the #1 cable news network is Fox (despite being in 600,000 less homes). You know why? Because people are tired of only getting the liberal side of things. CNN must get more balanced because they need viewership. However, it is not conservative and never will be balanced. It will try to give the illusion it is getting there, but it will never truly get there.
And if Fox forces other networks and media outlets to be a little more objective, then that's a good thing!
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Wayward, you put your faith in an administration that does this?:
Bush Admin cooking the books on Global Warming:
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Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change
by Andrew C. Revkin and Katharine Q. Seelye
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but [bold]after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.
[/bold]
The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.
Agency officials said it was tentatively scheduled to be released early next week, before Mrs. Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.
Drafts of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.
The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.
Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.
In the end, E.P.A. staff members, after discussions with administration officials, said they decided to delete the entire discussion to avoid criticism that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy.
Administration officials defended the report and said there was nothing untoward about the process that produced it. Mrs. Whitman said that she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited version and that the differences over climate change should not hold up the broader assessment of the nation's air, land and water.
"The first draft, as with many first drafts, contained everything," she said in a brief telephone interview from the CBS studios in Manhattan, where she was waiting to tape "The Late Show With David Letterman."
"As it went through the review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change," Ms. Whitman said. "So rather than go out with something half-baked or not put out the whole report, we felt it was important for us to get this out because there is a lot of really good information that people can use to measure our successes."
James L. Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory group, said, "It would be utterly inaccurate to suggest that this administration has not provided quite an extensive discussion about the state of the climate. Ultimately, E.P.A. made the decision not to include the section on climate change because we had these ample discussions of the subject already."
But private environmental groups sharply criticized the changes when they heard of them.
"Political staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to endorse junk science," said Jeremy Symons, a climate policy expert at the National Wildlife Federation. "This is like the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture."
Drafts of the report have been circulating for months, but a heavy round of rewriting and cutting by White House officials in late April raised protest among E.P.A. officials working on the report.
An April 29 memorandum circulated among staff members said that after the changes by White House officials, the section on climate "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."
Another memorandum circulated at the same time said that the easiest course would be to accept the White House revisions but that to do so would taint the agency, because "E.P.A. will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science."
The changes were mainly made by the Council on Environmental Quality, although the Office of Management and Budget was also involved, several E.P.A. officials said. It is the second time in a year that the White House has sought to play down global warming in official documents.
Last September, an annual E.P.A. report on air pollution that for six years had contained a section on climate was released without one, and the decision to delete it was made by Bush administration appointees at the agency with White House approval.
Like the September report, the forthcoming report says the issues will be dealt with later by a climate research plan being prepared by the Bush administration.
Other sections of the coming E.P.A. report — on water quality, ecological conditions, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and other issues — all start with a summary statement about the potential impact of changes on human health and the environment, which are the two responsibilities of the agency.
But in the "Global Issues" section of the draft returned by the White House to E.P.A. in April, an introductory sentence reading, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" was cut and replaced with a paragraph that starts: "The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future."
Some E.P.A. staff members defended the document, saying that although pared down it would still help policy makers and the agency address the climate issue.
"This is a positive step by the agency," said an author of the report, who did not want to be named, adding that it would help someone determine "if a facility or pollutant is going to hurt my family or make it bad for the birds, bees and fish out there."
Originally posted by Ed B
And for god's sake can we all just agree that every media outlet is biased - some conservative, some liberal - and stop using that as a rhetorical point.
It's all biased. To state it proves nothing at this point. Fox News would support Bush if he repealed the Bill of Frickin' Rights, and CNN would still slam him if he suddenly became a hippie liberal.
It's all biased. Period. I give none more credence than any other.
LOL!
Post of the day, Ed.
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Report Cast Doubt on Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection
by Walter Pincus
In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, [bold]President Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States[/bold] by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda.
A still-classified national intelligence report circulating within the Bush administration at the time, however, portrayed a far less clear picture about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda than the one presented by the president, according to U.S. intelligence analysts and congressional sources who have read the report.
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which represented the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, contained cautionary language about Iraq's connections with al Qaeda and [bold]warnings about the reliability of conflicting reports by Iraqi defectors and captured al Qaeda members about the ties, the sources said. [/bold]
"There has always been an internal argument within the intelligence community about the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," said a senior intelligence official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. "The NIE had alternative views."
Similar questions have been raised about Bush's statement in his State of the Union address last January that the British had reported Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa, which the president used to back up his assertion that Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. In that case, senior U.S. officials said, the CIA 10 months earlier sent a former senior American diplomat to visit Niger who reported that country's officials said they had not made any agreement to aid the sale of uranium to Iraq and [bold]indicated documents alleging that were forged[/bold]. Details of that CIA Niger inquiry were not shared with the White House, although the agency succeeded in deleting that allegation from other administration statements.
Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that "go back a decade." He said "we've learned" that Iraq trained al Qaeda members "in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." Although the president offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the national intelligence document, sources said.
The presidential address crystallized the assertion that had been made by senior administration officials for months that the combination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, committed to attacking the United States posed a grave and imminent threat. Within four days, the House and Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution granting the president authority to go to war.
The handling of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda has come under increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with some leading Democrats charging that the administration exaggerated the case against Hussein by publicizing intelligence that supported its policy and keeping contradictory information under wraps. The House intelligence committee opened a closed-door review into the matter last week; its Senate counterpart is planning similar hearings. The Senate Armed Services Committee is also investigating the issue.
Bush has defended his handling of intelligence before the war, calling his critics "revisionist historians."
"The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons, and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed," Bush said in his weekly radio address yesterday. He vowed to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."
Questions about the reliability of the intelligence that Bush cited in his Cincinnati address were raised shortly after the speech by ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence and armed services panel. They pressed the CIA to declassify more of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate than a 28-page "white paper" on Iraq distributed on Capitol Hill on Oct. 4.
In one of the more notable statements made by the president, Bush said that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," and added: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq. The intelligence report had said that the Iraqi president might decide to give chemical or biological agents to terrorists, such as al Qaeda, for use against the United States only as a "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." And it said this would be an "extreme step" by Hussein.
These conclusions in the report were contained in a letter CIA Director George J. Tenet sent to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, the day of Bush's speech.
While Bush also spoke of Iraq and al Qaeda having had "high-level contacts that go back a decade," the president did not say -- as the classified intelligence report asserted -- that the contacts occurred in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, was living in Sudan and his organization was in its infancy. At the time, the report said, bin Laden and Hussein were united primarily by their common hostility to the Saudi Arabian monarchy, according to sources. Bush also did not refer to the report's conclusion that those early contacts had not led to any known continuing high-level relationships between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the sources said.
The president said some al Qaeda leaders had fled Afghanistan to Iraq and referred to one "very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." It was a reference to Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a Jordanian. U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents, the sources said.
As for Bush's claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and use of poisons and deadly gases, sources with knowledge of the classified intelligence estimate said the report's conclusion was that this had not been satisfactorily confirmed.
"We've learned," Bush said in his speech, "that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." But the president did not mention that when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had referred the previous month to such training, she had said the source was al Qaeda captives.
The CIA briefed congressional committees about the National Intelligence Estimate but did not deliver the classified version until the evening of Oct. 1, just before a Senate intelligence committee hearing the next day, congressional sources said. At that closed-door session, several senators raised questions about qualifying statements made in the report, which was circulated only among senior national security officials.
On Oct. 4, three days before the president's speech, at the urging of members of Congress, the CIA released its declassified excerpts from the intelligence report as a "white paper" on Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda links. The members wanted a public document to which they could refer during floor debates on the Iraq war resolution.
The white paper did contain passages that hinted at the intelligence community's lack of certitude about Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda ties, but it omitted some qualifiers contained in the classified version. It also did not include qualifiers made at the Oct. 2 hearing by an unidentified senior intelligence official who, during his testimony, challenged some of the administration's public statements on Iraq.
"Senator Graham felt that they declassified only things that supported their position and left classified what did not support that policy," said Bob Filippone, Graham's deputy chief of staff. Graham, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, opposed the war resolution.
When the white paper appeared, Graham and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence panel member and at that time chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked to have additional portions of the intelligence estimate as well as portions of the testimony at the Oct. 2 hearing made public.
On the day of Bush's speech, Tenet sent a letter to Graham with some of the additional information. The letter drew attention because it seemed to contradict Bush's statements that Hussein would give weapons to al Qaeda.
Tenet released a statement on Oct. 8 that said, "There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the president in his speech." He went on to say, however, that the chance that the Iraqi leader would turn weapons over to al Qaeda was "low, in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses" weapons of mass destruction.
On Oct. 9, the CIA sent a letter to Graham and Levin informing them that no additional portions of the intelligence report would be made public.
Originally posted by Dback Jon
Wayward, you put your faith in an administration that does this?:
Bush Admin cooking the books on Global Warming:
Unless and until you can provide evidence that there IS global warming taking into account the following, this is an utter non-issue:
The scientist who 'discovered' global warming has since come out and said there is absolutely no proof.
70% of the dreaded 1 degree rise in temperature over the last century happened before the industrial revolution
All (junk) science saying global warming is real utterly fail to account for changes in the distance and activity of the sun
it is now universally accepted that the hole in the ozone layer will be closed by 2030
There is every indication that the earth is coming out of an ice age rather than engaging in global warming. Go check out the 'concerns' of the first Earth Day. They were all harping on global cooling. Make up your minds, please.
Non-issue.
__________________
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Originally posted by Ed B
And if Bush is suddenly so misty over mass graves of women and children (which were never found, by the way.....that's a hyperbole of the reporting) I assume we're getting set to go to war in Rwanda, Zaire, Eritrea, and a dozen other African nations where there is currently genocide taking place that would curl your hair. No?
Are you actually suggested that there were no mass graves? That the video footage was fake? What did they film it on the Moon soundstage?
__________________
Fell deeds awake... Now for Wrath... Now for Ruin... and the Red Dawn...
Well, first of all, don't "LOL" at my comment, I was serious, it's nice to see both sides on the issues.
Unfortunately, you've begun arguing outside of the realm of logic with statements like "Wait, they will be found" or "It's a moot anyway, as they will be found."
If you're going to argue in that manner, then there's no point in continuing.
You have no more evidence that weapons will be found than I have that they will not be found. It's a hypothetical debate and if you argue it as though there is a provable "right" then that's delusional.
As for fox being a little more objective, just a few posts ago you criticized "liberals" for calling CNN more objective. So you can call your bias "objectivity" but others can't?
It seems like you could benefit from taking a little more open minded approach to the situation rather than the "My Team vs Your Team" approach. These are issues that affect us all and it's absolutely loony to think that either side of the argument is right about everything. Some things the Republicans propose I agree with very much. Some I totally disagree with. If you agree 100% with any politician or political party, fit yourself for a casket because I think at that point you're clinically brain dead.
Re: Re: Of course, the Bush cooking still continues
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Originally posted by WaywardFan Unless and until you can provide evidence that there IS global warming taking into account the following, this is an utter non-issue:
The scientist who 'discovered' global warming has since come out and said there is absolutely no proof.
70% of the dreaded 1 degree rise in temperature over the last century happened before the industrial revolution
All (junk) science saying global warming is real utterly fail to account for changes in the distance and activity of the sun
it is now universally accepted that the hole in the ozone layer will be closed by 2030
There is every indication that the earth is coming out of an ice age rather than engaging in global warming. Go check out the 'concerns' of the first Earth Day. They were all harping on global cooling. Make up your minds, please.
Non-issue.
I am glad you can dismiss the issue so easily.
SO you rely on the junk science prepaired by the oil companies?
Originally posted by WaywardFan Are you actually suggested that there were no mass graves? That the video footage was fake? What did they film it on the Moon soundstage?
But that was not the point of the war. That is not why we were told we were in mortal danger from Saddam. You are trying to be revisionist here, on the justifications for war.
This was the first pre-emptive war in history. You damn well better be sure of your reasoning, and that the threat to your country was immenent and real. You can't use the threat of an immenent threat to start the war, and then say, see, he was a bad guy for these other reasons. Doesn't fly.
Originally posted by WaywardFan Are you actually suggested that there were no mass graves? That the video footage was fake? What did they film it on the Moon soundstage?
I'm suggesting that Iraq's human rights violations don't even make the 50 worst if you ranked the world's nations in order.
I've seen that footage too (of course the media played it endlessly to support the administration's stance). There was never a body count released and throwing in the phrase "women and children" is the cheapest emotional plea in the book.
Go search for mass graves in Rwanda and you'll see human rights violations. i'm not denying that Iraq is a nation that practices human rights violations but it is utter bunk to claim that these violations were our motive in attacking them, because there are dozens of nations where the violations are more severe.
Every human rights violation Iraq practices is also practiced by our "ally" Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi royal family are the worst terrorists on earth in terms of funding terror.
