So What If Bush Lied? (1 Viewer)

[aquapub]

The only evidence liberals have that President Bush was lying (let alone wrong) about Iraq's still unaccounted for WMD is....Oh wait, there is no evidence, not a shred. There are only major axes to grind, fanatical misrepresentations of current events, and self-discrediting conspiracy theories. (FYI: Joe Wilson's wife being a "covert spy"-the kind everyone in Washington knew about for years, you know, not covert at all-with a partisan agenda does not constitute Bush lying about the still unaccounted for WMD...or all the Democrats who argued the same thing Bush did when they saw the same evidence and voted for the war, or every country in the world who concluded the same thing we did).

But even if liberals could grasp what constitutes "evidence" and had any, what would be so wrong with Bush misleading us into war?

It is a matter of historical record that FDR tried to have American ships provoke conflicts with the German subs to get Americans behind the war. And it is a feasible conspiracy theory that FDR lined our entire navy up like ducks in a row as an irresistible target for the Japanese to get them to attack Pearl Harbor and get us into the war.

The reason's he was so eager to get us into Europe's fight was that Hitler had attacked or invaded every neighbor he had (just like Saddam), he was building and possessed WMD (just like Saddam), he was committing genocide (just like Saddam), and most importantly, he knew that Hitler would eventually be a direct and unstoppable threat to the U.S. if left in power (another 9/11 would have been unstoppable if we allowed Saddam to continue sponsoring terror-Palestinian suicide bombers and probably Al Queda too).

Liberals forgive their own for doing the same thing they are crucifying Bush for supposedly (very supposedly) doing.

 

[Simon W. Moon]

It comes down to what one thinks of as the fundamental American principles. If you think that the just powers of the government are derived from the consent of the governed, then anything which denies the governed the ability to consent subverts tha basis of American democratic ideals.

If those don't matter to you, then I guess it doesn't matter at all.

 

[dragonslayer]

The only evidence liberals have that President Bush was lying (let alone wrong) about Iraq's still unaccounted for WMD is....Oh wait, there is no evidence, not a shred. There are only major axes to grind, fanatical misrepresentations of current events, and self-discrediting conspiracy theories. (FYI: Joe Wilson's wife being a "covert spy"-the kind everyone in Washington knew about for years, you know, not covert at all-with a partisan agenda does not constitute Bush lying about the still unaccounted for WMD...or all the Democrats who argued the same thing Bush did when they saw the same evidence and voted for the war, or every country in the world who concluded the same thing we did).

But even if liberals could grasp what constitutes "evidence" and had any, what would be so wrong with Bush misleading us into war?

It is a matter of historical record that FDR tried to have American ships provoke conflicts with the German subs to get Americans behind the war. And it is a feasible conspiracy theory that FDR lined our entire navy up like ducks in a row as an irresistible target for the Japanese to get them to attack Pearl Harbor and get us into the war.

The reason's he was so eager to get us into Europe's fight was that Hitler had attacked or invaded every neighbor he had (just like Saddam), he was building and possessed WMD (just like Saddam), he was committing genocide (just like Saddam), and most importantly, he knew that Hitler would eventually be a direct and unstoppable threat to the U.S. if left in power (another 9/11 would have been unstoppable if we allowed Saddam to continue sponsoring terror-Palestinian suicide bombers and probably Al Queda too).

Liberals forgive their own for doing the same thing they are crucifying Bush for supposedly (very supposedly) doing.

Rename Dubya's Party after the old Know Nothing Party, but call it The Know Nothing and The We don't Wanna America To Know Nothing Party.

It is actually an insult to the traditional republicans like Lincoln, T Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Ford and even Nixon, for the extremist right wing Neoconservatives to call themselves Republicans. Just another Bush-- Cheney Lie.

How come a man from Texas who was only a Governor, who has no experience with the military, (being Awol from the Air Force, don't count)
has not even traveled much outside the US, has no experience in Washington DC, and dealing with the ins and outs of the Feds, is considered to be such great defender. Look at the lies Bush has told? He never stops lying. He is ruining our economy and treating real Americans like ****. Since W Bush is such great friends with the Saudi royal house and the Bin Laudins, and most of the 911 people were from Saudi Arabia. Oh well. how can American's possibly trust Dubya, knowing his ties to Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laudin Family.

 

[Old and wise]

And every time he visits a foreign country he manages to make an ass of himself.:rofl

 

[KCConservative]

Look at the lies Bush has told? He never stops lying.

Let me guess, if I ask you to present any evidence that supports this, you're going to say, "Why should I present evidence? It's not worth it. I don;t need to waste my time presenting evidence", right? Or are you going to show some sac and support your wild claim this time?

 

[cnredd]

Rename Dubya's Party after the old Know Nothing Party, but call it The Know Nothing and The We don't Wanna America To Know Nothing Party.

Actually, the accusation from the left is that the Asministration DID know something, but they weren't willing to share it, making your "Know Nothing" rant at odds with the accusations...

If your wanna spout the ravings of your masters, at least get on the same page as them...:2wave:

 

[aquapub]

"Rename Dubya's Party after the old Know Nothing Party, but call it The Know Nothing and The We don't Wanna America To Know Nothing Party.

It is actually an insult to the traditional republicans like Lincoln, T Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Ford and even Nixon, for the extremist right wing Neoconservatives to call themselves Republicans. Just another Bush-- Cheney Lie.

How come a man from Texas who was only a Governor, who has no experience with the military, (being Awol from the Air Force, don't count)
has not even traveled much outside the US, has no experience in Washington DC, and dealing with the ins and outs of the Feds, is considered to be such great defender. Look at the lies Bush has told? He never stops lying. He is ruining our economy and treating real Americans like ****. Since W Bush is such great friends with the Saudi royal house and the Bin Laudins, and most of the 911 people were from Saudi Arabia. Oh well. how can American's possibly trust Dubya, knowing his ties to Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laudin Family." -Dragon slayer






HAHAHAHAHHA! :lol:


This is exactly what I am talking about when I say liberals cannot speak the language of facts, evidence, and reality. Nothing but mindless, spiteful spewing against Bush based on nothing but the long-disproven Michael Moore-originated "Saudi-Bush connection" lie, the AWOL story that was based on a forgery, and other baseless conspiracy theories.

And what hurts our economy/health care system and kills jobs are: frivolous lawsuits, corrupt labor unions (like there is any other kind), tax hikes, over-regulation....All things that LIBERALS support.

 

[oldreliable67]

He is ruining our economy

Oh? How so?

treating real Americans like ****

Exactly to whom are you referring?

Care to be a little more specific with these allegations?

 

[Iriemon]

But even if liberals could grasp what constitutes "evidence" and had any, what would be so wrong with Bush misleading us into war?

You mean aside from the 2000+ dead Americans, 12000+ wounded Americans, and 30,000+ dead Iraqis, and who knows how many wounded.

That isn't enough reasons?

How about: we have spent approximately $250 billion and will probably spend a half a trillion by the time its over.

How about: we have created a civil war quagmire that there is no reasonable way out. If we stay, we will remain sniper fodder. If we leave, Iraq devolves into a civil war between the Shiites and Kurds we have armed and trained and the Sunnis, who formerly had control of Iraq.

How about: By misleading the world to justify a preemptive invasion, Bush destroyed US credibility, a crucial element in a campaign where we are striving to convince those we are ruling that we are acting in their best interest, not ours.

How about: By misleading the world about the reason we invaded a country, those who oppose us in the Middle East can use our lack of credibility as an argument that the US is trying to subvert the religion of Islam, creating a recruitment tool for terrorists.

How about: Nations like Iran and China rightly distrust us when we tell them they can trust us to responsibly handle our position as the worlds own super power and that they do not need to expand their military forces or develop nuclear weapons.

Just a few consequences of lying I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[oldreliable67]

Iriemon,

Excellent response: well organized and to the point. The only part I don't agree with is the following:

we have created a civil war quagmire that there is no reasonable way out

It is far from a quaqmire, at least as of this moment. Still could turn into one, but not there yet. The risk of a quagmire is more of a political risk than a military risk. Like Vietnam, the insurgents know very well that the American public has a short attention span and will not stand for a prolonged conflict, even one with as low a US casualty rate as this one (so far). (Thats not a minimization of casualties- any casualty is tragic.)

bin Laden/Zarwhahiri/Zarqawi et al have all gone to school on the US experience in Vietnam: bin Laden has demonstrated his knowledge of criticisms of the US effort in his tapes and writings several times. The following is the example they are trying to emulate:

"We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn't our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war."

--North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1990 interview with historian Stanley Karnow.

Two of the biggest lessons of Vietnam are these: Don't fight wars you don't intend to win, and while American troops can't be defeated, American politicians can be. Like General Giap, bin Laden and Zarqawi and fellow terrorists understand the second lesson very well, and so their strategy, IMO, has always been not to capture Baghdad but to inflict casualties in a way that breaks the will of American elites. They know the public in the US will respond negatively to the perception of a prolonged conflict and continued casualties (however light they may be). The MSM will see to that. And if the American public becomes discouraged, politicians seeking partisan advantage will follow sniffing right behind. The terrorists can only be encouraged by this week's show of Beltway duck and cover.

And therein lies my major disappointment with the Bush administration's pursuit of democracy in Iraq: abandonment of the Powell doctrine of applying massive force overwhelmingly. The warfighting part was easy. Winning the peace? We are/were not nearly as prepared as we should have been.

Ok, mistakes were made. What do we do about now? We need to look beyond Iraq to the rest of the ME and indeed, the entire Muslim world for our motivations. Iraq is not just Iraq. Iraq is not a fight in a vacuum. We still have a chance to facilitate a representative government in the ME. If we can do that, it will do more for the chances of peace in the ME than any thing that has been tried in many years. We have already seen the promise, the stirrings, of that in Lebanon, Egypt, and of all unexpected places, Saudi and the stirrings among the Iranian youth.

In the smaller picture, though, here is one man's view of why we are in Iraq: We are trying to democratize this country so they - terrorists - don't try to kill us. That Iraqis should "get their freedom" is genuinely good and desirable. But I wish Bush would say more often that Iraqi democratization is in our raw self-interest. It doesn't much matter to me whether the country we democratize is Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Syria. The theory that democracies don't attack other democracies is as strong as such notions get, and what the world most needs now is a new, large Islamic democracy. A democracy, however "imperfect," is less likely than an authoritarian state to detonate a nuclear device in someone else's territory.

I am beyond caring in the least what weapons Saddam held in March 2003. If the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections in Iraq lead to a party-based government stabilized over time by U.S. troops, then the odds fall that a large and wealthy adversary will try -- again -- to acquire nuclear weapons in the open market. Saddam may be gone, but what isn't gone is the global marketplace and trade in nuclear-weapons material that is the legacy of the infamous A.Q. Khan network.

This week, in a not-much-noticed follow-on report from the 9/11 Commission, one finds this statement: "Preventing terrorists from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all other problems of national security because it represents the greatest threat to the American people."

By "terrorists" the commission means al Qaeda. By "weapons of mass destruction" it means nuclear devices -- specifically the leakage of nuclear bomb-making material from former Soviet sites. The original 9/11 Commission's report said al Qaeda had tried to get nuclear WMD for 10 years, presumably while bleeding Afghanistan. Al Qaeda now is in Iraq. It is trying to push the U.S. out of Iraq. Some in Washington want a withdrawal from Iraq. If we do that before Iraq is secure, leaving its central provinces and neighboring nations as a jihadist transit point, will the commission's reasonable fears about WMD acquisition by terrorists ease? Duh.

Democratizing Iraq is where the hedge has been placed against Islamic extremism's proven compulsion to annihilate civilian populations -- with airliners, humans as bombs and assuredly any WMD they can get -- each weapon as morally repugnant as the next. Yes, Iraqi democratization may not work. But it is a bet worth making. As former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle wrote in the WSJ not long ago, "The paroxysm after 9/11 would be a hiccup compared with the reaction the morning after one or more nuclear bombs caused massive devastation."

To believe that an untouched Saddam five years hence wouldn't have been back in the WMD game is fatuous beyond description.

Portions of the foregoing were paraphrased from Daniel Henninger's 'Wonderland' column in the WSJ. The source is here.

 

[Iriemon]

Iriemon,

Excellent response: well organized and to the point. The only part I don't agree with is the following:

Iriemon: we have created a civil war quagmire that there is no reasonable way out

It is far from a quaqmire, at least as of this moment. Still could turn into one, but not there yet. The risk of a quagmire is more of a political risk than a military risk. Like Vietnam, the insurgents know very well that the American public has a short attention span and will not stand for a prolonged conflict, even one with as low a US casualty rate as this one (so far). (Thats not a minimization of casualties- any casualty is tragic.)

...


In the smaller picture, though, here is one man's view of why we are in Iraq: We are trying to democratize this country so they - terrorists - don't try to kill us. That Iraqis should "get their freedom" is genuinely good and desirable. But I wish Bush would say more often that Iraqi democratization is in our raw self-interest. It doesn't much matter to me whether the country we democratize is Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Syria. The theory that democracies don't attack other democracies is as strong as such notions get, and what the world most needs now is a new, large Islamic democracy. A democracy, however "imperfect," is less likely than an authoritarian state to detonate a nuclear device in someone else's territory.

...

Portions of the foregoing were paraphrased from Daniel Henninger's 'Wonderland' column in the WSJ. The source is here.

A well reasoned and eloquent argument, as always. I agree with many of your points.

I agree a democracy in Iraq would be great. I question whether we can realistically achieve that goal.

1. We have no credibility. Not that US credibility in the region was great to begin with. But add to is a preemptive invasion based on false (if mistaken) pretenses, without international consensus as to necessity or legitimacy, and mismanagement like Abu Grave, and you have a populace we are trying to convince we mean to help by instituting a democratic government that has all the reasons in the world to question our intent and to trust us when we say we are there to help them and not steal their oil. Iraqis have a history of this, in WWI Britain came in as liberators of Iraq (from the Ottoman Empire) and stayed as occupiers (under the guise of helping them to install a democratic government).

2. We have created a civil war environment. The Sunnis controlled Iraq before Mar 2003. Whether that was right or wrong is beside the point. Under Saddam, they were very harsh against groups that tried rebel. We have dispossed the Sunnis, and are arming and training the Kurds and Shiites as fast as we can. How can this lead to anything but civil war, and possibly a slaughter once our troops are withdrawn.

I agree that a true democracy would be wonderful. I don't think it is reasonably achievable under that circumstances. IMO, as long as we maintain an indefinite occupation there, those that oppose us will be able to rationally argue that our goal is not to help Iraqis, but control the country, just like the British in 1920. It is ironically undermining our credibility, which is crucial to achieve our goals.

I don't think the cost of a 10 or 20 year occupation that would be necessary to really establish a democracy is realistic. IMO, the best thing we can do is to 1) announce a date (6 months to 2 years) our troops will be out so that there is no basis for the contention we want to control their country, 2) apologize for the mistake we made in invading the country, and 3) offer reparations to whatever government emerges for damage our invasion caused. Those things would go a long way towards re-estabilishing American credibility in the region. But it will never happen -- acknowledgement of a mistake and apology is barely acceptable in American culture, certain not in this Administration.

 

[dragonslayer]

Actually, the accusation from the left is that the Asministration DID know something, but they weren't willing to share it, making your "Know Nothing" rant at odds with the accusations...

If your wanna spout the ravings of your masters, at least get on the same page as them...:2wave:

Masters, not as long as I can buy guns and ammo and think like a human.

 

[argexpat]

So you're seriously comparing Saddam to the Nazis? Please. Iraq war supporters have to engage in this inane exageration in order to justify an unjustifiable war. Because the truth is that Saddam, unlike the Nazis, was a defanged tinpot dictator of a third-world country with a rickety military who was completely contained and posed no credible or imminent threat to the United States, or even his neighbors (who were so threatened by Saddam, they didn't even bother to join in the "coalition of the willing"). Not to mention that invoking Hitler or the Nazis is a clear sign of one who is bereft of good arguments.

Your inane analogy aside, if you have to lie to the public to drum up support for a war, isn't that proof that the war isn't justified? And if the people, even after hearing the truth, refuse to back a war, then the people have spoken. That's why the Founding Fathers saw fit to give Congress the right to declare war. That's called democracy.

 

[oldreliable67]

expat,

??? To whom or what are you referring?