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I support the troops but NOT their mission!

Binary_Digit

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As a Navy veteran of 5 years, I'm surprised at the other vets who accuse anti-war Americans of not supporting the troops. Disregarding the fact that denouncing the opposition's patriotism is intellectually equivalent to calling them schoolyard names, it seems that some veterans and many non-vets have forgotten what the role of the military actually is.

The military does not dictate foreign policy any more than a gun dictates who it shoots. Just like a gun, the military is a tool, and a tool is only as good as the tool who uses it. And just like the troops, I support a citizen's right to own a gun, but I don't support the killing of an "undeserving" person with it. Whether or not Iraq was "undeserving" should be the argument. Not anyone's patriotism.

If you're concerned about whether the lack of mission support at home might demoralize the troops, or offer encouragement to the enemy, that's a good point. But let us never forget that Americans have a Constitutional obligation to criticize our government whenever necessary and appropriate, and that includes wartime. Especially wartime. This "aiding and abeding the enemy" argument will always be a factor if we continue to be Americans during war. Obviously the criticism should be centered on facts, not conspiracy theories. But the right of American citizens to criticise their government is exactly what every United States soldier and sailor take a solemn vow to defend:

"I, [name], do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. [So help me God.]"

So the fact that we are debating and criticizing our government's actions should encourage them, not demoralize them.

Our soldiers have kicked ass and taken names. They have done everything they were designed to do, and many things they were not, and they did it bravely and professionally. They should get absolutely everything they need. The best equipment, the best training, and the best Christmas cards from us at home. I support the troops. Our President cherry-picked intelligence on pre-war Iraq, exaggerated the link between al'Qaeda and Iraq, and overstated Saddam Hussein's ambitions to directly or indirectly initiate an attack against the United States. I don't support their mission.

See this post (mine and Simon's) for proof that nobody has refuted:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/showthread.php?t=6300&page=3
 
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Extremely well put....and I cant disagree with any of it.

Thanx
 
:agree well said
 
Binary_Digit said:
Our President cherry-picked intelligence on pre-war Iraq, exaggerated the link between al'Qaeda and Iraq, and overstated Saddam Hussein's ambitions to directly or indirectly initiate an attack against the United States.

Wild, partisan and unsubstantiated claims of hate. Nice job. :2wave:
 
KCConservative said:
Wild, partisan and unsubstantiated claims of hate. Nice job. :2wave:
If you're not going to read the link I gave, and refute those points, then kindly take your flame bait somewhere else.
 
Binary_Digit said:
If you're not going to read the link I gave, and refute those points, then kindly take your flame bait somewhere else.
You mean the link to another thread on this very forum? lol Yeah, I've read it. I support your right to state your opinion. Why are you upset that I state my opinion as well?
 
KCConservative said:
You mean the link to another thread on this very forum? lol Yeah, I've read it. I support your right to state your opinion. Why are you upset that I state my opinion as well?
Why should I be upset if it's your opinion that 2 + 2 is 5? Because your opinion is plainly wrong. What I said is not wild, it's not partisan, and it's certainly not unsubstantiated. If you read the other post, then I can't believe you would call it "unsubstantiated" and pretend that wins your case. Why didn't you refute anything specific? I think because you can't.

Here, this way you don't have to click a link. I challenge you to refute any of this.

CONGRESS DID NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME INTELLIGENCE TEAM BUSH HAD


Example 1:
Presidential Daily Briefs.

Example 2:
Team Bush began making claims about the Iraqi threat several months before Congress received any substantial, updated intelligence analysis.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200511080006

Example 3:
Team Bush received information directly from alternative intelligence sources, specifically the since-discredited Office of Special Plans and Iraqi National Congress. The CIA and the State Department were highly skeptical of the intelligence provided by these agencies, yet the information was used by Team Bush to sell the war anyway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...999737,00.html


TEAM BUSH KNOWINGLY EXAGGERATED THE LINK BETWEEN AL'QAEDA AND IRAQ


Example 1:
Dick Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press that Mohammed Atta's trip to Prague was "pretty well confirmed."

RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20011209.html

The CIA, FBI, and the Czeck government have questioned the report's credibility from the beginning. Cheney denied his own words on CNBC's Capital Report:

BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."
CHENEY: No, I never said that.
BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: Never said that.
BORGER: I think that is...
CHENEY: Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.
BORGER: Well, now this report says it didn't happen.
CHENEY: No. This report says they haven't found any evidence.
BORGER: That it happened.
CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: But you haven't found the evidence that it happened either, have you?
CHENEY: No. All we have is that one report from the Czechs. We just don't know.

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...404_flash3.htm

Example 2:
The 9/11 Commission Report found "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al'Qaeda. When the New York Times reported that there was a fundamental split between the Commission and the President, Dick Cheney called the article "outrageous," but then went on to confirm that there is a split between the Commission and the President:

BORGER: But you say you disagree with the commission...
CHENEY:CHENEY: On this question of whether or not there was a general relationship.
BORGER: Yes.
CHENEY: Yeah.
BORGER: And they say that there was not one forged and you were saying yes, that there was. Do you know things that the commission does not know?
CHENEY: Probably.
BORGER: And do you think the commission needs to know them?
CHENEY: I don't have any--I don't know what they know. I do know they didn't talk with any original sources on this subject that say that in their report.
BORGER: They did talk with people who had interrogated sources.
CHENEY: Right.
BORGER: So they do have good sources.
CHENEY: Gloria, the notion that there is no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida just simply is not true.

Directly contradicting the 9/11 Commission Report, President Bush himself has said "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/17/Bush.alqaeda/

Sounds like Team Bush has information the 9/11 Commission doesn't. Just as quickly, however, a spokesman also said the administration "cooperated fully with the commission," and "the president wants the commission to have the information it needs to do its job." Yeah, right.

Example 3:
In June 2004, Dick Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...iraq.al.qaeda/

About that time, bin Laden was denouncing Hussein's Baath party as "infedels." Some collaborative link.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...aq.Qaeda.link/

Example 4:
Bush said in an October 2002 speech, "Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

But the individual who made this claim has retracted it. Since his capture sparked the first debates among the U.S. government over the harsh treatment of prisoners, this allegation was probably made while he was being tortured.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jul31.html

Just about every intelligence agency in the world contends that bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein don't trust each other, and don't even like each other. The only thing they have in common is their resent of America, and even that is for different reasons.


TEAM BUSH KNOWINGLY EXAGGERATED THE THREAT POSED BY IRAQ


Example 1:
The supposed Iraqi defector named "Curveball" told German intelligence agencies about mobile chemical weapons factories in Iraq. German officials said that they had warned American colleagues well before the Iraq war that Curveball's information was not credible - but the warning was ignored. Colin Powell told the UN that the information came from a "solid source."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...184172,00.html

The U.S. has since admitted that Curveball's information was total bullshit.

Example 2:
Condoleeza Rice repeatedly warned about the dangers of waiting for a "smoking gun" to evolve into a "mushroom cloud." But in 2002, CIA director George Tenent told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the probability of Sadaam Hussein initiating an attack on the U.S. was low.

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/10/dci100702.html

Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector, told the U.N. Security Council in January 2003 that they still have no "smoking gun" and need more time, perhaps months, to complete their inspections. Obviously they were denied this request and removed by the U.S. two months later.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/10/wbr.smoking.gun/

Example 3:
Colin Powell told the UN, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants." and, "When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq."

The training camp is run by a dissident Kurdish Islamic militant group called Ansar al-Islam. This group does have connections to al'Qaeda, but they are utterly opposed to the Iraqi regime under Hussein and has no connection to it whatsoever.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Ant...ral_Powell.htm

Example 4:
Bush said in October 2002, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist or individual terrorists"

But declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate released by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech, the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely.

In fact, the estimate shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al'Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his regime were collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

"Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al'Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," said one key judgment of the estimate. It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...1/MN105561.DTL

The issue is not whether anyone believed Iraq had WMD's. The issue is that Team Bush made an absolute, unconditional case. That's what "manipulating the intelligence" and "misleading the public" means. Knowingly exaggerating the case for war by cherry-picking intelligence, using defunct intelligence, and by speaking about ambiguous intelligence in alarming absolutes.
 
Binary_Digit said:
Why should I be upset if it's your opinion that 2 + 2 is 5? Because your opinion is plainly wrong.

:thinking It's opinion. It's neither right or wrong. Don't look now, but your hate is getting away from you. By the way, 2+2 is 4. Nothing opinionated about that.
 
KCConservative said:
:thinking It's opinion. It's neither right or wrong.
Ok, I think we should get back to some basics for a minute. Opinions and logical conclusions are not the same thing.

If premise 1 is "All dogs bark"
and premise 2 is "Fido is a dog"
then the conclusion is "Fido barks"

The conclusion "Fido barks" is not an opinion. It's not wild or partisan either. It is a logical conclusion based on the premises. If any of the premises are false, then the conclusion may be false, but not necessarily. But if all the premises are true, then the conclusion is said to be logically sound and correct.

Now, if premise 1 is "Congress did not have access to the same intelligence Team Bush had"
and premise 2 is "Team Bush knowingly exaggerated the link between al'Qaeda and Iraq"
and premise 3 is "Team Bush knowingly exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq"

Then the logical conclusion is "Team Bush knowingly misled Congress and America about Iraq." And again, it's not wild or partisan. It is a logical conclusion based on the premises. If any of the premises are false, then the conclusion may be false, but not necessarily. But if all the premises are true, then the conclusion is said to be logically sound and correct.

Can you show me how any of the premises are wrong, or how the conclusion is illogical?
 
BD (and since Simon seems very much in sync with your views)..and Simon,

Clarify a point for me, if you would. You said,

CONGRESS DID NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME INTELLIGENCE TEAM BUSH HAD

and,

Example 3:
Team Bush received information directly from alternative intelligence sources, specifically the since-discredited Office of Special Plans and Iraqi National Congress. The CIA and the State Department were highly skeptical of the intelligence provided by these agencies, yet the information was used by Team Bush to sell the war anyway.

So are you saying that the intelligence that the Bush admin had access to and believed was the Office of Special Plans, a lot of which was based on the since-discredited sources at the INC? And that the intel produced by the OSP was not shared by Congress (not at all clear on this, appreciate your help in understanding).

Is the reason that the Bush admin preferred the OSP intel was that they viewed the CIA and other intel sources as flawed or inaccurate, as witness Cheney's reported scribbling in the margin of one OSP report, "This is better than that crap from the CIA"? And this seeming lack of 'quality of product' apparently confirmed by the conclusions of the investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Kerr Report, and the 9/11 Commission?

Is this insult to the USIC the reason for all of the leaks from current and former CIA folks to the media about perceived transgressions by the Bush admin, the reason for the apparent guerilla warfare being waged by certain parts of the USIC against the Bush admin?

PS: unable to connect to the Guardian link, check it please?
 
Sorry about the guardian link, this one should work:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html

oldreliable67 said:
So are you saying that the intelligence that the Bush admin had access to and believed was the Office of Special Plans, a lot of which was based on the since-discredited sources at the INC?
Much of it, yes. The OSP was created to find links between Hussein and terrorism, specifically al'Qaeda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

oldreliable67 said:
And that the intel produced by the OSP was not shared by Congress (not at all clear on this, appreciate your help in understanding).
No, the OSP's intel was shared with Congress. That was the point, to make a case for war against Iraq. What wasn't shared were the caveats in the OSP's conclusions. How the CIA questioned links to al'Qaeda that the OSP supposedly found. Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski was there there, and she said: "I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/


oldreliable67 said:
Is the reason that the Bush admin preferred the OSP intel was that they viewed the CIA and other intel sources as flawed or inaccurate, as witness Cheney's reported scribbling in the margin of one OSP report, "This is better than that crap from the CIA"? And this seeming lack of 'quality of product' apparently confirmed by the conclusions of the investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Kerr Report, and the 9/11 Commission?
According to the links above, the OSP was created because Bush had a pre-concieved agenda to wage war against Iraq and he wanted any and all evidence possible to support that. Wikipedia quotes a Senate Intelligence Comittee report saying the OSP "sought to discredit and cast doubt on CIA analysis in an effort to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism." Incidently, this corroberates with the Downing Street Memo.

oldreliable67 said:
Is this insult to the USIC the reason for all of the leaks from current and former CIA folks to the media about perceived transgressions by the Bush admin, the reason for the apparent guerilla warfare being waged by certain parts of the USIC against the Bush admin?
I'd like to think at least some people in our government have enough integrity to blow the whistle for ethical reasons, not political revenge, but I have no idea. Maybe they just want publicity, but that'd make more sense if it were just one or two.
 
Democrats are pretty much admitting that they were too STUPID to ask for the rest of the intelligence (of which I'm pretty sure Bush would have given it to them, had they only asked). But now they realized their stupidity, so thus they are taking it out on Bush by calling him liar. Bush only gave them what he dubbed was important. But, the dems were too stupid to ask for the rest. So it's not that the Bush Admin are liars (of which they're not), but it's more like the democrats are stupid.
 
I'm going to have to say that BD is winning this battle.

Any right-wing refuters of his well-developed and supported arguments (eg KCCon., others) are not gaining any ground in debate. KCCon is using word play and typical neocon, partisan tip-toeing to avoid the fact that BD is right!

Sorry, KC, but you just perpetuate the trend that conservatives love to practice: hear the real issues, address them in a bogus, fraudulent manner.

Make a real argument and do something most cons never do - use facts supported by sources!
 
Say MDSkins, I have 1/3 of your sig! Or, you have 9/3 of mine. I don't know, posession is 9/10 of the law, but that's a catch-22 when both sides have posession. I guess this one's 50/50. :rofl
 
BD,

Good stuff. Well done response to my questions. Especially, thanks for the links.

Haven't come to a conclusion yet as to whai I think of it, but it sure makes for interesting reading. One aspect of Kwiatokowski's article that dimishes the credibility a bit - but not all, by any means - is the 'office politics' flavor. Too much sounds like, 'I didn't get invited to play with the big boys, so I'll show'em!" A little less of that tone would have helped her sell her case a lot. But thats just my impression - certainly YMMV.

Since Hackworth's passing earlier this year, a lot of the stuff that was on his website, including those of Kwiatowski that were linked in the Salon article, don't seem to be available. Any idea as to where they might be found now?

So what eventually became of the Office of Special Plans? I gather that it has been disbanded or downsized? And the neocon cast of characters - have they shown up elsewhere since? Folks that Kwiatowski mentions as prominent in the OSP?
 
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