Wow. You'll repeat any old dumbass statement that Terry McAuliffe blurts out, won't you. Look, genius, Bill Burkett has already admitted to being the source of the documents to CBS, though he says someone else was the original source. So, unless you're a complete idiot and think that Burkett is protecting Karl Rove, they obviously came from somewhere else.
Yes, let's have a detailed examination of documents that practically everyone believes are forgeries. Except Dan Rather. If the documents are forged, he wants to "break" that story. Here's your detailed examination. "Well, it appears that these documents were made up. *crumple**crumple* Into the circular file for two points."
SH had WMDs in the '90s. He used them on his own people.
Every intel organization in the world believed that he did. Including Russia, France, and Germany. John Kerry believed that he did, "If you don't think SH's WMDs remain a threat, don't vote for me."
SH's actions with the UN weapons inspectors were to mislead and obfuscate, making it SEEM as if he had something to hide.
Moreover, every Iraqui military commander who's been debriefed has stated that, while THEY had no WMDs, "everyone knew" that "other units" had them, and expected them to be used against the Americans.
If he did not, in fact, still have them, then he surely is eligible for a Darwin Award--he gave everyone in the world reason to believe that he DID have them.
Chemical weapons shells have been used as IEDs by postwar terrorists. A
2-part serin shell (designed to mix chemicals in flight) was found in a roadside bomb. Because it was not used as designed, only a small amount of serin was released. IMO, a "small amount of serin" is much like "a benign brain tumor" in desirability.
Great Britain still contends that SH DID attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger (not Nigeria). Russia also so claims.
The 911 commission concluded that there were longstanding ties between SH and Al Quada. "Not operationally involved in the 9/11 attacks" has been seized upon as a synonym to "no connection" but even a cursory reading of the report makes the connection clear.
Now, I'm NOT a fan of our present Iraq policy. BUT I note that Kerry hasn't put up any proposal beyond "let France deal with it" . . who, BTW have emphatically said they WON'T be sending the troops Kerry expects from our "Traditional Allies."
But I suppose "Build nuke plants and tell the Saudis to drink their damn oil" makes me a dangerous reactionary or something.
Although it's a good first step, nuke plants alone won't do it. The most important step in ending our dependence on Middle East oil is to find an alternative to the internal combustion engine for powering our personal transportation. It's an inherently inefficient technology that makes poor use of the chemical energy in gasoline, wasting most of it as heat. Until that happens -- which will take a *long* time, given that there are a couple hundred million cars in the US -- we're stuck with buying oil from the buggers.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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Partially . . . I suspect it's a combination of inertia plus the portability of gasoline. Fuel cells aren't "there" yet, and petroleum remains cheap and abundant--it would need to be something like 10x more expensive for its cost to affect things like ocean shipping.
My understanding is that the sticking point for vehicular use is cost per distance. It only becomes cost effective for things like satalites where there's no alternative but to be solar.
Though there are some encouraging developments: When was the last time you saw a diesel-powered temporary road sign? Around here they've been replaced 100% by solar powered LED models.
Still, if you remove all non-vehicle applications of petroleum, it would be significant in terms of supply and demand.
The Korean War is often, even 'officially' called a 'police action'.
That the Korean War was a police action does not change the fact that it was a war.
Pennsylvania is a 'Commonwealth'. Someone in Pennsylvania tried to convince me that the Peannsylvania was not a state because it was a commonwealth. That the State of Pennsyulvania is a Commonwealth does not mean it is not a state.
No and that is what you fail to understand. The THREAT of war was neccessary to force Iraq to comply with the UN bans on proscribed weapons and to cooperate with UNMOVIC. Had Iraq NOT cooperated then an invasion may have been necessary. But Iraq did cooperate. Irag did comply. Anybody who was actually following the news during that time knows this.
The THREAT of war was successful in achieving those goals and thus eliminated the need for war.
I agree that Kerry's position is driven by the polls. But that does not change the fact that Kerry and the Congress authorized the use of force but did not MANDATE the use force. Nor does it change the fact that Iraq cooperated with UNMOVIC. Nor does it change the fact that the invasion was not necessary. That is NOT splitting hairs, that is paying attention to the facts as they developed.
I am not speaking for Kerry, he didn't approve this article.
Someone who was paying attention knows that the Blair administration was caught fasifying reports by changing the dates on plagiarized materials and rereleasing them as new material. The Bush adminstration was caught submitting forged (though not forged by the Bush administion, just like those memo weren't forged by CBS) documents to the IAEA.
The evidence of dishonesty on the part of the Bush and Blair administrations is undeniable, the motive is clear. There is no doubt that the US sabotoged the UNMOVIC inspections by feeding false information to the inspectors. Though there may be some doubt as to how much of it was false, the evidence that the Bush adminstration falsified its case for the invasion is far stronger than any case that can be made for Iraq hiding WMDs in 2003.
A police officer is authorized to draw his weapon, point it at a man breaking into a car and tell him to put his hands up. If the man complies, and the officer shoots him, is it splitting hairs to say that the officer acted wrongly?
How many times do you recall Bush saying that those of us who were opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq thought that Saddam Hussein could be trusted? That was a lie. I did not think Saddam Hussein could be trusted, and I do not know anyone who did. Do you?
Translation: "Yeah, well, they're fake, but they're still true, waaaaah".
I'd like Kerry to answer why he didn't attend 77.6% of the intelligence committee meetings he was supposed to attend. How about things that matter? Bush's questionable service record, Kerry's post-war disgraces of the military - it's a wash. Pick another topic, you're not getting anywhere with this one.
It seems unlikely that he lied about that. Mostly he says he remembers very little, booze does that.
As noted below, that was Niger, not Nigeria and if you know what one is supposed to call a citizen of Niger, please let us know.
Depends on the definition of links. Sort of like the definition of 'is' issue.
Misleading if not a lie. While it is true that he used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and it is true that the had chemical weapons in the 1990s, he used chemical weapons agains the Kurds, and against Iran, in the 1980s.
Iraq admitted to producing VX after 1991. Iraq also claimed to have destroyed it. UNMOVIC found residues at the disposal site to confirm that VX was destroyed there, though the amount could not be determined.
There has been no evidence of continued production of WMDs after the mid-1990s.
We do not know what the intel organizations concluded, only what their governments said.
Even that statement while true as late as 2002 is false in reference to 2003 once UNMOVIC inspections resumed. At least some people, after getting the inspections they demanded, had the honesty and integrity to respect the conclusions of those inspectors.
Conspicuous by its absence is the date of that remark. Dunno if the quote is accurate but yes, as late as Fall 2002 he believed it. The 2003 UNMOVIC inspections showed otherwise whether Kerry accepted that or not.
Not according to the IAEA and UNMOVIC in 2003. Blix described the degree of Iraqi cooperation in 2003 as 'unprecedented'. They had no problems inspecting sites. That's not quite true, they had a major problem with interference by the US. We kept feeding UNMOVIC false informaition, keeping UNMOVIC on a wild goose chase and preventing them from getting on with their work. One UNMOVIC inspector refered to the US intelligence as 'shit'.
The IAEA certified that Iraq was in comliance with the ban on nuclear weapons programs, and also pointed out that the US had tried to foist forged documents on them. WHile it is true that the US did not forge those documents (just like CBS did not forge those memos) it is also true that no one who saw them has ever publicly climed that they thought the were anything but forgeries. There is no question that the US knew they were forgeries when Rice was publicly chiding IAEA for not acting on the information contained therein.
One of the most pernicious lies about the UNMOVIC inspections is the lie that Iraq resisted and interfered with the inspection. No inspector made any such claim. Whereas there was considerable resistance to the UN weapons inspection program prior to 2000 there was none in 2003. It is completely dishonest to claim Iraqi resistance prior to 2000 as justification for the 2003 invasion, given the Iraqi cooperation in 2003 with UNMOVIC.
I don't have access to those debriefings. I doubt that you do either. What is your source, please be specific, I'd like to check it out. ...
One sarin (note spelling) shell (singular). Another (one) mustard shell was discovered laying by the roadside. It would appear that both were mistaken for HE by the insurgents. It is reasonable to presume that there are more, not so reasonable to conclude that a tactically significant stockpile exists now or existed at the start of the invasion. the fact that these were used or evidently inteded for use as an IED indicates that they were stocked with ordinary HE shells. We've been told that Iraq did not mark their chemical munitions differently from conventional so these may have been lost in inventory, mistakenly stocked with HE. Not something I'd count on.
Had the insurgents used HE instead, they might have hurt someone with it.
Non Sequitor. A small amount of chemical munitions is tactically useless.
More noteworthy is that the sarin shell was a binary munition. I personally have never read anywhere that Iraq was suspected of having produced binary munitions. Could it have been Soviet or South African, like the Iraqi artillery? Could it have been American? The origins of that one sarin shell is a pretty important issue that appears to have been completely ignored, as well as the probablilty that it was not unique.
One of the reassurances that we had prior to the invasion, that Iraq had no chemical weapons was the widely held belief that Iraqi chemical munitions (aside from mustard) suffered from impurities that adversely affected their longevity so that any stockpiles that might have been hidden for 12 years were useless anyhow. However binary sarin is long-lived.
Great Britain was also caught changing the dates on information plagiarized from pre-1990 documents and rereleasing it as if it was new information.
It is pretty well established that Iraq did recently send envoys to Niger to discuss imports. Though thus far no evidence that yellow- cake was discussed, has surfaced it does seem unlikely, as others have noted, that Iraq was interested in importing Niger's number two export product, goats. But no one ever claimed that Saddam Hussein could be trusted or that Iraq could not resume WMD production if it could. That was one of Bush's lies. The claim was that Iraq had not and could not resume WMD production. That claim was validated by the UNMOVIC inspections in 2003 and had been further validated since then:
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The commisson concluded that there were some number of meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Quaida. ISTR that number was three or less. There is a clear lack of evidence for cooperation, coordination or material support of either by the other. Calling a couple of meetings 'longstanding ties' with no evidence that the meetings led to any kind of cooperation strikes me as dishonest.
To claim that the Iraq/AL Quaida connection, such that is was, justified the invasion rather stongly implies more than just talk between them, no?
Talking with our enemies hardly justifies war.
I dunno how anyone can fix the mess that is now Iraq. Clearly the insurgency will continue as long as there are foreign troops on Iraqi soil and it remains to be seen if civil war will erupt if foreign troops leave. Changing those troops to French or German even those of another Muslim nation won't help.
What Kerry has going for him over Bush is that Bush made this particular mess, not Kerry. An incumbant either has an advantage or disadvantage based on what he has accomplished in his term.
I think the work being done on catalytic cracking of light alcohols for
2H2 O2 --> 2H2O fuel cells is promising. We can grow some of our fuel. But I suppose that makes me wild-eyed tree hugger or some such.
Problem is that US demand is quite a bit higher than US production, even when you factor in the biofuels. We *must* reduce demand -- our dependence on Middle East petroleum jeopardizes our national security.
Can't argue with you there. Not much, anyway. Trouble is, if we stop buying oil from the Arabs, we're gonna run out pretty quickly -- which raises
*another* national security issue: the depletion of our own supplies. As long as our demand remains as high as it is, we're actually better off buying oil from the Middle East than consuming our own. If the oil is running out, better _for_us_ that we use up the Arabs' oil, than use up ours. If we use ours up first, before we've created technologies to replace the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine, then we *must* buy from the Arabs, and they will be able to extort whatever they wish from us.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.
Fred, I can't argue the point with someone who doesn't believe UNMOVIC was completely impotent. The threat of force was a complete joke. Saddam became the wealthiest man on Earth because of the UN. 12 years of threats, and during that time he amasses billions and billions. As far as falsified documents by Blair and Bush ala CBS, I'm quite sure these are in the same vein as all that proof (where is that proof again?) that Bush lied to everybody.
What did he lie about? Bush filed his F180 that discloses his record. Where's Kerry's record? Oh yeah, he won't let us see it. Do you really know anything about Bush's TANG record? If you got past the political stuff you'd see that he had a good career over 6 years. They didn't even fly the planes he was trained on in Alabama, for one. Read up on it a little instead of just throwing out DNC talking points.
What did he lie about? Are you sure the book is closed on this issue? Last I heard Britain was still backing this intelligence, and other news has been leaking out that this did, in fact, happen. Since when does potentially faulty intel = lying? One guy says the intel wasn't strong enough to come out with and that automatically makes Bush a liar?
Huh? Who's in Iraq beheading Americans and Brits as we speak? Al Qaeda was all over Iraq. How can you not know this? The list of countries in which they were operating in that region reads like an atlas. Do you expect us to believe they were in just about every country except Iraq?
Before 9/11 I would have believed this, but since then I have learned that people are unable to get past their political biases and see the truth. It is an amazing thing.
Andy, how about get off your Arss and go look for the info. It is all over the internet...not at all hard to find. Of course when you do find it you will probably attribute it to biased reporting.
Two points: 1. The UN never found the weapons hidden after the first Gulf War for something like 2 years? They had to rely on defectors to tell them where they were hidden. 2. What did they have to hide in 2000? What about Powell's testimony of all the audio clips showing the Iraqi generals trying to hide stuff from the inspectors? Is that just two Iraqi military personnel talking to each other for fun?
In a way, you, for one. You just said they didn't resist the UN in 2003. The implication is that they had nothing to hide and so must not really have any WMDs. So you are trusting SH's word that they have nothing to hide. This is really moot because SH DID NOT provide unfettered access to the UN at any time. In a country where it is truly impossible to prove that there are no WMD's, you have to trust SH's word on it to believe that they don't exist.
I doubt Bush ever said that everybody opposed to the invasion necessarily trusts SH. Even if he did, this is not a lie. It is a point of view, an opinion. I think some people who think they do not trust SH really are doing so without even knowing it. If this is the best lie you can come up with you are stretching it.
I love this! Talking points from that bastion of fairness and even-handedness, Terry McCauliff. If Karl Rove is that clever and capable of pulling off such a sleight of hand exposition of the willingness of the media (CBS) to, with few questions, air forgeries in order to bring down a president, only to be shown to be partisan lapdogs of the Kerry campaign, then we have the wrong person running the war.
So, now we have gone beyond the 80's clarion call of "it's not the nature of the evidence, it's the seriousness of the charges", we now have, "The memos may be forged, but we should concern ourselves with the contents of those FORGED (i.e, FAKE, MADE-UP, FALSIFIED) documents and indict and investigate the president based upon the contents of these FORGED (i.e, FAKE, MADE-UP, FALSIFIED) documents. Wow. Complete melt-down on the left, we now have such visceral hatred of the president that we should not consider accusations in forged documents to be sufficient evidence for conviction.
Realizing of course, that the FORGER has committed a felony (falsifying federal documents).
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