Victory!
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So I wonder what would cause the Bush apologists to question their hero?
I would trust the insights of some of these folk if what they said meshed with reality...even a little bit.
So far, based on their attitudes (and my interpretation of those attitudes, admittedly) Bush is pretty infallible and his 'mistakes' are not mistakes at all, but in fact are the vast misperceptions of the people of the left wingers and the world. He's just 'misunderstood' right?
At what point do the Bush apologists lose the bias? What needs to happen to hear opinions from them that SEEM to be balanced. I'm not asking wholesale criticism here...just a whiff of independence or deviation from at least some of Bush's positions would be really encouraging that there are REAL people talking here...not just 'talking heads'.
I'll say that I was a Bush supporter early on....it's hard to remember those days, I have been thoroughly dissappointed. It seems that everything I liked him for....compassionate conservative ideology, domestic vs international focus (not being a world police etc..), fiscal conservative values etc... has dissappeared.
Although I'm not too excited about all of his education reforms, I will say that I like the fact that he supports charter schools...my oldest daughter goes to a charter school that beats the snot out of the public fool systems' idiot factories. They teach how to think not just how to pass tests. So there's a good/bad....almost a point for Bush in my book.
[quote=mikebutler222][quote=Pandale]
So now the subject has changed from victory in Iraq to victory in Louisiana?
[/quote]
See above "wack-a-mole debate tactics". No doubt if we continue we'll hear how Bush gave North Korea nukes, didn't pass Kyoto and caused herpes to spread in rural Arkansas.
Watch closely, because even they know none of their talking points can withstand close examination, so you'll see a misquote here, a twist of facts there and bit of baseless conspiracy-mongering thrown in for good measure.
[/quote]
Bush is spreading herpes to rural Arkansas? When did he start boozin' it up with Clinton? Oh...you're talking about Bush Sr. right? I guess they're best of friends these days.
[quote=mikebutler222][quote=BondGuy][quote=mikebutler222]
And then there's Cindy Sheehan. A right wing lightning rod. <?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
If you like, I can give you dozens of cites from the MSM and liberal/left writers about how "Peace Mom" was the catalyist for the "peace movemnent". It's rather strange to see that twisting into "right wing lightening rod"
It is the right that has made her the poster girl for everything anti-Bush.
The right didn't create her, it's awfully weird to have you blame the right for her high profile.
Personally, I find her to a very mild antiwar protester, as antiwar protesters go. By <?:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Vietnam era standards she wouldn't even register on the national scene.
I donno, she blamed the president for the death of her volunteer, re-enlisted son and that the terrorists who actually killed him were innocent. Saying Bush is the world’s biggest terrorist. Posing with Chavez. What does she have to do, appear in a video with some guys about to cut the head off an “infidel”?
Exactly the right wing diatribe I speak of.
Since when is quoting the woman, her own words a "right wing diatribe"?
I don't think any of her actions paint her as anything more than what she is, a person in pain who wants the killing to stop. You want the killing to stop too, don't you? It's the right that elevates her to something more than a mother who is against the war.
You really need to stop blaming the right for this darling/creation of the left. While I understand her pain, trying to paint her as someone who simply wants to stop the killing is, well, disingenious at best.
But the right wing handlers decided to campaign her as the anti-Bush.
I have to assume that’s a typo. It sure wasn’t the “right wing” to made “Peace Mom” what she is.
It's the right that has marginalized her anti war stance in an attempt to paint desent, ops make that dissent, as unpatriotic.
I never said anything about being "unpatriotic", but it's astounding how quickly the left raises that as a defense. Again, I simply quoted the woman.
The right has latched on to such garbage as Sheehan is helping the enemy. As if they need any help defeating this President.
When did I say anything about her helping the enemy? Another false charge.
Open your thinking. I didn't say you made this charge. I clearly identified it as the right. Are you the right?
her words do, in fact, aid the enemy.
Mike you're smarter than this, right?
Bush is on record as having an Iraq agenda 911 was excuse to execute it.
I don’t even know what that means. If you’re saying Bush said POST-9/11 we can’t let Saddam shake off sanctions having never submitted fully to WMD inspections, I agree. If you’re saying Bush linked Saddam to 9/11, well, no.
Prior to 9/11 Bush had made "Dealing with Iraq" a priority of his admin. Dealing with can correctly be read as militarily.
Pure, unadulterated nonsense. "Dealing" in no way shape or form is purely military AND dealing with him, in one form or another was obviously what we were going to have to do, given his history with us and the UN on inspections.
Mike you need to educate yourself here. Bush make no secret of this FACT. Deposing Saddam was job one from Bush's first day in office. Clearly it was going to be the military's job. Don't believe it, tell it to Bob Woodward.
Shortly after 9/11 Cheney or maybe it was Rummy ordered Richard Clark to find an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks.
So says Clarke, others there said otherwise.
Woodward confirms Clarke's claims.
Yet instead of that news flash stopping the admin from moving forward with the invade Iraq plan they merely changed the reasoning for invasion to WMD.
Rubbish. There was no "move forward to invade" prior to 9/11, there was an acknowledgement of the history that Clinton commented on in the post I provided.
Correct "no move FORWARD to invade" prior to 9/11. That move started the day after 9/11. However, a move to invade was "in the wind" before 9/11. Bush wanted Saddam dead.
The "changed the reasoning" is pure conspiracy gibberish. Clinton as far back as 1998 had talked about the danger Saddam posed.
Tell it to Woodward, who by the way, kept tapes of all interviews to back up his claims made in his book. No terrorist link, so thus call off the invasion plan. Yet the plan still moves forward. However, it does so without Colin Powell who is staunchly against invasion. The admin then starts it's war chant of WMDs.
This even though there was no hard evidence that Iraq wasn't in compliance with UN sanctions.
Be serious, every intel agency in the world thought he was involved in WMDs,
key word "thought" that word has cost a lot of lives. Let me give you a better word "Know" And one last word "wrong" We were wrong. We thought they had WMDs. Now we "know" they didn't.
his refusal to allow full, unimpeded inspections provided even more evidence.
Evidence of what? His ostinance?
Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan.
Lunacy....Bush said repeatedly that there was no evidence to link Saddam and 9/11.
He says that now. However, per Clarke, and Woodward, plans to invade Iraq we started on 9/12/01. call that whatever you'd like.
This weaving of conspiracies, even in the face of the comments of every Democrat going back to 1998 saying the very same thing about Saddam and WMDs leaves many on the left looking like they should be wearing the tinfoil hats we hear about so often.
I don't get the conspiracy thing? What does the tinfoil hat comment mean?
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
High profile AQ members, no some local affliates, and the point is your "in Afghanistan" comment over-simplified reality.
The fact is not one of the countries you mentioned not only had AQ members and other terrorists who had killed Americans in the past living large and openly,
15 of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia, where they lived openly. So I guess that's one country huh?
none of the ALSO were in violation of 12 years of inspections that came in an agreement that ended a war between that country and ours. Not one of those countries not only had the terrorist links, but had had WMD programs (and fears that they continued) had shot down US planes on patrol and was the subject of a law making regime change official US policy.
Saudi Arabia didn't have links? Oh yeah, no links, just terrorist living there who came to our country boarded airliners and flew them into buildings. But wait, they're our oil life line. Can't do much there.
IOW, apples and oranges.
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right?
Not at all. Right after FEMA finally made it to town they issued debit cards, remember? FEMA got in hot water when they didn't control them well enough and they ended up being used in strip clubs and the like. A GAO investigation months later said that ALL accounting controls were too loose and money was lost in a variety of ways, and it happened because they wanted to "cut the red tape" to assist.
Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal.
Huh? Sounds like you forgot already what party the state and local governments in LA were made from...you're back in Lala land on this one.
After completely bungling the clean up, not helping ....
Sorry, but given how you twisted the facts above that I'm very familiar with, I'm not much interested in your take on FEMA in the Gulf.
FEMA was 24-48 hours late in getting to downtown N.O.,
You're really Micheal Chertoff aren't you? Mike, try 96 hours. I'll do the math for you, that's four days. Four days of people suffering and dying while Chertoff, Bush and company telling us on national TV 'What problem?"
beyond that I see nothing that happened there that didn't happen in the post-hurricane environment I saw up-close and personally. The fact that FEMA regs called for them to hand off, after a certain amount of time the housing issue to state and local gov'ts doesn't sound like ineptitude, other than on the part of the locals, it sounds like the rules Congress wrote for them.
It's ineptitude if nothing gets done. Which in large part is the case.
[/quote] [/quote] [/quote]All you liberals how diluted your vision is....can't you see how wonderful things are in the free and democratic Iraq? Simple dead enders are all these insurgents are, they are desperate and in their last throes! How can you honestly blame Bush when it's the media who is obviously to blame for undermining his absolute decisions. Shame on you for trying to hold him accountable, it only weakens our standing and fight against the terrorists. Can't you understand what his clear cut goals and strategies are in our fight in Iraq? You must be, well, liberal if you can't!
[quote=csmelnix]
All you liberals how diluted your vision is....can't you see how wonderful things are in the free and democratic Iraq? Simple dead enders are all these insurgents are, they are desperate and in their last throes! How can you honestly blame Bush when it's the media who is obviously to blame for undermining his absolute decisions. Shame on you for trying to hold him accountable, it only weakens our standing and fight against the terrorists. Can't you understand what his clear cut goals and strategies are in our fight in Iraq? You must be, well, liberal if you can't!
[/quote]
Actually: is more appropriate. Better get the medics, there's hemmoraging going on down here!
Remember dude, it's only Murphy's law were dealing with in Iraq not ineptness.
I'll try to remember but I think I already forgot!
Who's Murphy anyhow and does he have jurisdiction?
[quote=csmelnix]
All you liberals how diluted your vision is....can't you see how wonderful things are in the free and democratic Iraq? Simple dead enders are all these insurgents are, they are desperate and in their last throes! How can you honestly blame Bush when it's the media who is obviously to blame for undermining his absolute decisions. Shame on you for trying to hold him accountable, it only weakens our standing and fight against the terrorists. Can't you understand what his clear cut goals and strategies are in our fight in Iraq? You must be, well, liberal if you can't!
[/quote]
Guffaww! Guffaww! You funny! Well done!
Mr. A
Open your thinking. I didn't say you made this charge. I clearly identified it as the right. Are you the right?
“Open your thinking” !?!?!
You begin this baseless tirade about what “the right” does, how they “created” this woman, what “the right” says about her in a conversation that features NONE of the things you’re talking about and all in response to me quoting the woman.
her words do, in fact, aid the enemy.
Mike you're smarter than this, right?
Nice editing of my point. You're more honest than this, right?
Prior to 9/11 Bush had made "Dealing with Iraq" a priority of his admin. Dealing with can correctly be read as militarily.
Pure, unadulterated nonsense. "Dealing" in no way shape or form is purely military AND dealing with him, in one form or another was obviously what we were going to have to do, given his history with us and the UN on inspections.
Mike you need to educate yourself here. Bush make no secret of this FACT. Deposing Saddam was job one from Bush's first day in office.
Pure fiction. Regime change was ALREADY US policy. Clinton had ALREADY attacked Saddam for not living up to his obligations on inspections. Saddam had ALREADY fired at US patrol aircraft. IOW, Saddam was a know problem. Spinning that into Bush was already committed to an invasion is sophistry.
Clearly it was going to be the military's job. Don't believe it, tell it to Bob Woodward.
Shortly after 9/11 Cheney or maybe it was Rummy ordered Richard Clark to find an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks.
So says Clarke, others there said otherwise.
Woodward confirms Clarke's claims.
No, he doesn’t, and nowhere does even Clarke say “Cheney told me to lie and provide bogus evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11”. Asking the guy to see if Saddam, among others, was involed is one thing, “creating evidence” is another.
Yet instead of that news flash stopping the admin from moving forward with the invade Iraq plan they merely changed the reasoning for invasion to WMD.
Rubbish. There was no "move forward to invade" prior to 9/11, there was an acknowledgement of the history that Clinton commented on in the post I provided.
Correct "no move FORWARD to invade" prior to 9/11. That move started the day after 9/11. However, a move to invade was "in the wind" before 9/11. Bush wanted Saddam dead.
“In the wind” oh what a load of horse pucky. You really need to let the endless conspiracy crap go…
The "changed the reasoning" is pure conspiracy gibberish. Clinton as far back as 1998 had talked about the danger Saddam posed.
Tell it to Woodward,…
Again, bull pucky. Woodward says nothing of the sort.
This even though there was no hard evidence that Iraq wasn't in compliance with UN sanctions.
Be serious, every intel agency in the world thought he was involved in WMDs,
key word "thought" that word has cost a lot of lives. Let me give you a better word "Know" And one last word "wrong" We were wrong. We thought they had WMDs. Now we "know" they didn't.
The fact remains every intel agency in the world thought he had them. Spinning it to suggest the administration KNEW he didn’t is just another in a long line of distortions you’re tossing out. BTW, dead, certain proof isn’t something intel agencies often produce. Bush had a choice, trust Saddam at the risk of many, many American lives POST 9/11, or remove all doubt. No matter what you think about how the war’s been conducted, claiming he didn’t have reason to go isn’t reasonable.
his refusal to allow full, unimpeded inspections provided even more evidence.
Evidence of what? His ostinance?
Evidence that he wasn’t living up to the agreement he’d signed ending the Gulf War. Evidence that he had something to hide.
Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan.
Lunacy....Bush said repeatedly that there was no evidence to link Saddam and 9/11.
He says that now. However, per Clarke, and Woodward, plans to invade Iraq we started on 9/12/01. call that whatever you'd like.
Again, Woodward says nothing of the sort.
This weaving of conspiracies, even in the face of the comments of every Democrat going back to 1998 saying the very same thing about Saddam and WMDs leaves many on the left looking like they should be wearing the tinfoil hats we hear about so often.
I don't get the conspiracy thing? What does the tinfoil hat comment mean?
You have to be joking…
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
High profile AQ members, no some local affliates, and the point is your "in Afghanistan" comment over-simplified reality.
The fact is not one of the countries you mentioned not only had AQ members and other terrorists who had killed Americans in the past living large and openly,
15 of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia, where they lived openly. So I guess that's one country huh?
The 15 from S.A. didn’t live openly as a member of AQ, and you have to know that.
none of the ALSO were in violation of 12 years of inspections that came in an agreement that ended a war between that country and ours. Not one of those countries not only had the terrorist links, but had had WMD programs (and fears that they continued) had shot down US planes on patrol and was the subject of a law making regime change official US policy.
Saudi Arabia didn't have links?
The government? No. Some of their citizens? Yes. Were they living opening in the local branch office of AQ? No.
S.A. was also not the Club Med for retired terrorists that had killed Americans, as Iraq was.
IOW, apples and oranges.
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right?
Not at all. Right after FEMA finally made it to town they issued debit cards, remember? FEMA got in hot water when they didn't control them well enough and they ended up being used in strip clubs and the like. A GAO investigation months later said that ALL accounting controls were too loose and money was lost in a variety of ways, and it happened because they wanted to "cut the red tape" to assist.
Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal.
Huh? Sounds like you forgot already what party the state and local governments in LA were made from...you're back in Lala land on this one.
“money to the Republican faithful”????
After completely bungling the clean up, not helping ....
Sorry, but given how you twisted the facts above that I'm very familiar with, I'm not much interested in your take on FEMA in the Gulf.
FEMA was 24-48 hours late in getting to downtown N.O.,
You're really Micheal Chertoff aren't you? Mike, try 96 hours.
Wrong, as usual. They were 24 to 48 hours later than they should have been. The Feds are NOT expected to be on the spot immediately, “poof”, with equipment that can’t even be positioned in front of the coming storm. That first day or two if need be is the locals to handle.
beyond that I see nothing that happened there that didn't happen in the post-hurricane environment I saw up-close and personally. The fact that FEMA regs called for them to hand off, after a certain amount of time the housing issue to state and local gov'ts doesn't sound like ineptitude, other than on the part of the locals, it sounds like the rules Congress wrote for them.
It's ineptitude if nothing gets done. Which in large part is the case.
You might not be aware of this, but the Feds don’t have the authority to commandeer the locals government and the National Guard. FEMA doesn’t have the power to simply ignore the rules Congress writes for it. You keep talking “accountability”, but you’re dead silent on “accountability” anywhere other than the Feds. Bush asked Blanco to get her N.G. units up and running, she said no. It wasn’t Bush who decided not to evacuate, it wasn’t Bush that reported that the storm had past and the levees were intact.
The fact is all you have is an endless diatribe and a series of conspiracy theories. It’s really quite remarkable.
[quote=mikebutler222]
Open your thinking. I didn't say you made this charge. I clearly identified it as the right. Are you the right?
“Open your thinking” !?!?!
You begin this baseless tirade about what “the right” does, how they “created” this woman, what “the right” says about her in a conversation that features NONE of the things you’re talking about and all in response to me quoting the woman.
her words do, in fact, aid the enemy.
Mike you're smarter than this, right?
Nice editing of my point. You're more honest than this, right?
You're saying that her words aid the enemy? If so then you've got to be smarter than to believe that.
Prior to 9/11 Bush had made "Dealing with Iraq" a priority of his admin. Dealing with can correctly be read as militarily.
Pure, unadulterated nonsense. "Dealing" in no way shape or form is purely military AND dealing with him, in one form or another was obviously what we were going to have to do, given his history with us and the UN on inspections.
Mike you need to educate yourself here. Bush make no secret of this FACT. Deposing Saddam was job one from Bush's first day in office.
Pure fiction. Regime change was ALREADY US policy. Clinton had ALREADY attacked Saddam for not living up to his obligations on inspections. Saddam had ALREADY fired at US patrol aircraft. IOW, Saddam was a know problem. Spinning that into Bush was already committed to an invasion is sophistry.
Sophistry? OK mike i'm having trouble with dissent and throw this word? Still, not fiction. But to be clear, by the time 9/11 had rolled around the Bush admin was unsure as to exactly what to do about Iraq. But it was a priority first term agenda item. That it was going to invovle the military was a forgone conclusion. No one expected Saddam to go quietly into the night.
Clearly it was going to be the military's job. Don't believe it, tell it to Bob Woodward.
Shortly after 9/11 Cheney or maybe it was Rummy ordered Richard Clark to find an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks.
So says Clarke, others there said otherwise.
Woodward confirms Clarke's claims.
No, he doesn’t, and nowhere does even Clarke say “Cheney told me to lie and provide bogus evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11”. Asking the guy to see if Saddam, among others, was involed is one thing, “creating evidence” is another.
Don't know where you're getting the Clarke lie info. I wasn't aware clarke lied about anything. Quite the opposite. He's very credible despite the typical whistleblower hacchet job defense put out by the Bush admin spin team. He said that the iraq invasion plan formulation started on 9/12. he said either Rummy or Cheney told him to find an Iraq connection. Not to lie about it but to find some link. This was said in the belief at the time that there had to be one. Clarke was incredulous at the comment. He would find out who did this to us regardless of who it was. Personally, based on his expert knowledge he didn't think Iraq was even in the mix. Later analysis proved that out. But that the admin was so keen on linking Iraq goes to the agenda item. Iraq invasion planning started before they were cleared on the 9/11 attacks. That it didn't stop when Iraq was cleared was a problem for some in the admin. We no longer had a clear reason for attacking them. still, the wheels were turning and that was that, Invade iraq it was and nothing was going to stop it. As for Woodward, maybe try reading the book.
Yet instead of that news flash stopping the admin from moving forward with the invade Iraq plan they merely changed the reasoning for invasion to WMD.
Rubbish. There was no "move forward to invade" prior to 9/11, there was an acknowledgement of the history that Clinton commented on in the post I provided.
Correct "no move FORWARD to invade" prior to 9/11. That move started the day after 9/11. However, a move to invade was "in the wind" before 9/11. Bush wanted Saddam dead.
“In the wind” oh what a load of horse pucky. You really need to let the endless conspiracy crap go…
Mike where are you reading conspiracy into what i'm saying. There was no conspiracy that i'm aware of. Just an admin taking a wrong course.
The "changed the reasoning" is pure conspiracy gibberish. Clinton as far back as 1998 had talked about the danger Saddam posed.
Tell it to Woodward,…
Again, bull pucky. Woodward says nothing of the sort.
Again reading the book would go a long way in helping you here. And please don't tell me you've read it.
This even though there was no hard evidence that Iraq wasn't in compliance with UN sanctions.
Be serious, every intel agency in the world thought he was involved in WMDs,
key word "thought" that word has cost a lot of lives. Let me give you a better word "Know" And one last word "wrong" We were wrong. We thought they had WMDs. Now we "know" they didn't.
The fact remains every intel agency in the world thought he had them. Spinning it to suggest the administration KNEW he didn’t is just another in a long line of distortions you’re tossing out. BTW, dead, certain proof isn’t something intel agencies often produce. Bush had a choice, trust Saddam at the risk of many, many American lives POST 9/11, or remove all doubt. No matter what you think about how the war’s been conducted, claiming he didn’t have reason to go isn’t reasonable.
I'm not spinning anything here . I'm recounting what happened. You're all wrapped up in accusing me of putting Bush and company in some grand conspiracy to invade Iraq. my reading tells me quite the opposite. Bush did believe that there were WMDs and thus justified his decesion to invade. The problem is, and this is my point, is that he was hell bent on invading. nothing was going to stop this from happening. He wasn't listening to Powell or Tenet. we invaded on what we though was going on and it turned out we were wrong. The french and the germans don't look so stupid now.
his refusal to allow full, unimpeded inspections provided even more evidence.
Evidence of what? His ostinance?
Evidence that he wasn’t living up to the agreement he’d signed ending the Gulf War. Evidence that he had something to hide.
No hard, as in we've actually seen them, evidence of WMDs. just a lot circumstancial evidence that turned out ot be wrong
Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan.
Lunacy....Bush said repeatedly that there was no evidence to link Saddam and 9/11.
He says that now. However, per Clarke, and Woodward, plans to invade Iraq we started on 9/12/01. call that whatever you'd like.
Again, Woodward says nothing of the sort.
Well somehow it's in my copy of the book
This weaving of conspiracies, even in the face of the comments of every Democrat going back to 1998 saying the very same thing about Saddam and WMDs leaves many on the left looking like they should be wearing the tinfoil hats we hear about so often.
I don't get the conspiracy thing? What does the tinfoil hat comment mean?
You have to be joking…
I'm not joking. You keep putting the conpiracy thing on me and i don't understand that. Let me be clear, the iraq invasion, in my opinion, was not a conspiracy, just a misguided decesion.
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
High profile AQ members, no some local affliates, and the point is your "in Afghanistan" comment over-simplified reality.
The fact is not one of the countries you mentioned not only had AQ members and other terrorists who had killed Americans in the past living large and openly,
15 of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia, where they lived openly. So I guess that's one country huh?
The 15 from S.A. didn’t live openly as a member of AQ, and you have to know that.
here's what i know. The Bush admin and the saudi govt want the American public to believe that we are well liked in Saudi Arabia when nothing could be further from the truth. The saudis, while moderate, hate us for our support of Israel. it is American guns and weapons that kill fellow arabs. Plus the little issue with us being on their sacred ground. So we are not we liked in that country. That aside, these terrorist did live openly in that country, as they were , mostly, not on anyones radar at the time. yes they moved around and yes, it is and was beyond the Saudi governments ability to control them
none of the ALSO were in violation of 12 years of inspections that came in an agreement that ended a war between that country and ours. Not one of those countries not only had the terrorist links, but had had WMD programs (and fears that they continued) had shot down US planes on patrol and was the subject of a law making regime change official US policy.
Saudi Arabia didn't have links?
The government? No. Some of their citizens? Yes. Were they living opening in the local branch office of AQ? No.
S.A. was also not the Club Med for retired terrorists that had killed Americans, as Iraq was.
We're talking individuals here not governments. Neither government was sponsoring the terrorist. Both governments allowed terrorist to live in their countries. Not one of the terrorist who attacked us was Iraqi. 15 were Saudi, yet we attack iraq.
IOW, apples and oranges.
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right?
Not at all. Right after FEMA finally made it to town they issued debit cards, remember? FEMA got in hot water when they didn't control them well enough and they ended up being used in strip clubs and the like. A GAO investigation months later said that ALL accounting controls were too loose and money was lost in a variety of ways, and it happened because they wanted to "cut the red tape" to assist.
Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal.
Huh? Sounds like you forgot already what party the state and local governments in LA were made from...you're back in Lala land on this one.
“money to the Republican faithful”????
After completely bungling the clean up, not helping ....
Sorry, but given how you twisted the facts above that I'm very familiar with, I'm not much interested in your take on FEMA in the Gulf.
FEMA was 24-48 hours late in getting to downtown N.O.,
You're really Micheal Chertoff aren't you? Mike, try 96 hours.
Wrong, as usual. They were 24 to 48 hours later than they should have been. The Feds are NOT expected to be on the spot immediately, “poof”, with equipment that can’t even be positioned in front of the coming storm. That first day or two if need be is the locals to handle.
beyond that I see nothing that happened there that didn't happen in the post-hurricane environment I saw up-close and personally. The fact that FEMA regs called for them to hand off, after a certain amount of time the housing issue to state and local gov'ts doesn't sound like ineptitude, other than on the part of the locals, it sounds like the rules Congress wrote for them.
It's ineptitude if nothing gets done. Which in large part is the case.
You might not be aware of this, but the Feds don’t have the authority to commandeer the locals government and the National Guard. FEMA doesn’t have the power to simply ignore the rules Congress writes for it. You keep talking “accountability”, but you’re dead silent on “accountability” anywhere other than the Feds. Bush asked Blanco to get her N.G. units up and running, she said no. It wasn’t Bush who decided not to evacuate, it wasn’t Bush that reported that the storm had past and the levees were intact.
The fact is all you have is an endless diatribe and a series of conspiracy theories. It’s really quite remarkable.
Again with the conspiracy theory thing. This is just plain ineptitude. or maybe it's apathy. No conspiracy. Your finger pointing to deflect the blame really brings it back. People at the Superdome pleading for help on CNN, while Chertoff tells NBC he's not aware of any problems at the Superdome. Yeah, that's a classic. But it wasn't his fault he didn't know. Afterall , you can't be giving an interview and be watching TV at the same time. Chertoff, the only person in the country who could help these poor people, coincidentally, was the ONLY person in the country who didn't know they were in trouble.
[/quote]
Will Rogers said it best "Thank God we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
You're saying that her words aid the enemy? If so then you've got to be smarter than to believe that.
Of course her words assist the enemy. They, like Giap, know they can’t beat us on th battelfield, they have to wage a PR war, here AND there for support.
Just as they used Michael Moore’s movie as “proof” about Bush, they use Sheehan’s words. You can’t possibly believe otherwise. Having said that, and as I said before, that’s the price of our democracy and I wouldn’t stop her right to speak just because of the effect of helping the enemy. You knew that, that’s why you editied that comment out…
Pure fiction. Regime change was ALREADY US policy. Clinton had ALREADY attacked Saddam for not living up to his obligations on inspections. Saddam had ALREADY fired at US patrol aircraft. IOW, Saddam was a know problem. Spinning that into Bush was already committed to an invasion is sophistry.
Sophistry? OK mike i'm having trouble with dissent and throw this word?
What’s with the childish plea about dissent? No one’s silencing you, I’m just pointing out you’re making #$$^%^ up.
But it was a priority first term agenda item. That it was going to invovle the military was a forgone conclusion. No one expected Saddam to go quietly into the night.
Saddam was a US agenda item since before 1998 when Clinton attacked the guy (thus the military was ALREADY INVOLVED YEARS BEFORE BUSH CAME TO OFFICE) , talked about his WMDs and laid out the case for regime change. Cease the mind-reading gibberish that’s nothing but an attempt to say Bush twisted facts about 9/11 to do what he wanted to do all along.
No, he doesn’t, and nowhere does even Clarke say “Cheney told me to lie and provide bogus evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11”. Asking the guy to see if Saddam, among others, was involed is one thing, “creating evidence” is another.
Don't know where you're getting the Clarke lie info.
Clarke.
He's very credible despite the typical whistleblower …
Spare me. Clarke had an axe to grind since he lost his place at the president’s daily briefing. Here’s a known lie from Clarke, he claimed Condi had never heard about AQ until HE filled her in. Then that tape of Condi on a talk show, BEFORE THE ELECTION talking about the danger posed by AQ surfaced…
For every claim Clarke makes there are two people to say it ain’t so, including Bush critics like Micheal Scheuer who said Clarke ran an ineffective office and missed numerous opportunities to get OBL.
We no longer had a clear reason for attacking them. still, the wheels were turning and that was that, Invade iraq it was and nothing was going to stop it.
Here we go again. See 1998, See Clinton’s comments, SEE Saddam’s non-compliance with inspections. No one was trying to “invent” a reason to go after Saddam, they didn’t NEED TO.
As for Woodward, maybe try reading the book.
I have, you’re misrepresenting it.
“In the wind” oh what a load of horse pucky. You really need to let the endless conspiracy crap go…
Mike where are you reading conspiracy into what i'm saying. There was no conspiracy that i'm aware of. Just an admin taking a wrong course.
Bull#$%^. First you claim they were trying to frame Saddam, to create a reason to get him (despite the facts already in the public domain since 1998) and then you claim you'd said there was no conspiracy…
The fact remains every intel agency in the world thought he had them. Spinning it to suggest the administration KNEW he didn’t is just another in a long line of distortions you’re tossing out. BTW, dead, certain proof isn’t something intel agencies often produce. Bush had a choice, trust Saddam at the risk of many, many American lives POST 9/11, or remove all doubt. No matter what you think about how the war’s been conducted, claiming he didn’t have reason to go isn’t reasonable.
I'm not spinning anything here . I'm recounting what happened.
No, you’re inventing things. You’re claiming that the administration went out of their way to find a reason to go after Saddam, this innocent lamb, this victim of a Bush vendetta. You can’t even acknowledge that everyone, from Clinton in 1998 to Kerry in 2002, after reading the same reports Bush saw, said Saddam had to be stopped and he had WMDs.
The problem is, and this is my point, is that he was hell bent on invading. nothing was going to stop this from happening. He wasn't listening to Powell or Tenet.
Who knows where you get this fantasy. Perhaps you missed POWELL AT THE UN making the case for invasion or TENET QUOTED IN WOODWARD’S BOOK saying proving Saddam had WMDs was a “SLAM DUNK”…
The french and the germans don't look so stupid now.
While they opposed invading BOTH nation’s intel agencies thought Saddam had WMDs.
Evidence that he wasn’t living up to the agreement he’d signed ending the Gulf War. Evidence that he had something to hide.
No hard, as in we've actually seen them, evidence of WMDs. just a lot circumstancial evidence that turned out ot be wrong
I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but intel agencies can’t provide that level of certainty and Saddam was NOT ALLOWING the unimpeded inspections he was supposed to give.
Like I said, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to execute his Iraq plan.
Lunacy....Bush said repeatedly that there was no evidence to link Saddam and 9/11.
He says that now. However, per Clarke, and Woodward, plans to invade Iraq we started on 9/12/01. call that whatever you'd like.
Again, Woodward says nothing of the sort.
Well somehow it's in my copy of the book
Uh, bull@#$% it is.
At the time the terrorist were consentrated in Afganistan.
AQ members and other terrorists had been living the fat life in Saddam’s Iraq long before we went to Afghanistan.
As well as Saudi Arabia, Yeman, and a host of other middle eastern and North/Central Africian countries, not to mention Malaysia. Why not invade them too?
Iraq had high profile AQ members, not some local affliates, and the point is your "in Afghanistan" comment over-simplified reality.
The fact is not one of the countries you mentioned not only had AQ members and other terrorists who had killed Americans in the past living large and openly,
15 of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia, where they lived openly. So I guess that's one country huh?
The 15 from S.A. didn’t live openly as a member of AQ, and you have to know that.
here's what i know. The Bush admin and the saudi govt …
Nice change of subject. Now, back to the discussion. Comparing the involvement of some citizens of SA in 9/11 with Iraq’s retirement home for American killing terrorists is as foolish as claiming the US government was involved in the OK City bombing because McVeigh was a US citizen. Furthermore, no other nation fit all the other criteria that Iraq fit that you continue to chose to ignore.
That aside, these terrorist did live openly in that country,
Again, bull@#$%. No one lives in SA as an open member of AQ and never has. In case you’re unfamiliar with the facts, AQ has conducted attacks in SA and has sworn to replace the monarchy there.
none of the ALSO were in violation of 12 years of inspections that came in an agreement that ended a war between that country and ours. Not one of those countries not only had the terrorist links, but had had WMD programs (and fears that they continued) had shot down US planes on patrol and was the subject of a law making regime change official US policy.
Saudi Arabia didn't have links?
The government? No. Some of their citizens? Yes. Were they living opening in the local branch office of AQ? No.
S.A. was also not the Club Med for retired terrorists that had killed Americans, as Iraq was.
We're talking individuals here not governments.
No, YOU have changed the subject to individuals. When you first brought up “if we invaded Iraq for this, why not (fill in the nation). Well, we went after Iraq’s GOVERNMENT, not a few citizens.
Neither government was sponsoring the terrorist.
Wrong, Saddam was in fact funding terrorism and in the country that he ruled with an iron fist that no one entered or left without his permission, there were terrorists living opening after having killed US citizens. Even your hero, Richard Clarke once remarked that if OBL slipped away from him, he would “boogey off to Baghdad”. Even Clarke realized he would be welcomed there, like other American killing terrorist were.
IOW, apples and oranges.
It took a lawsuit and a court order to get FEMA to reinstate housing, which was taken away, to Katrina victims.
Let me guess, FEMA was following regs about how long they were to provide housing before state and local agencies were supposed to take over the job. FEMA can’t win. They made it easy to get funds and help to people and there was outrage a short time later when it turned out money flowed too quickly to be well accounted for. Now they get banged for not being lenient enough. I have news for you, I went through a hurricane and the resulting FEMA process, it’s never neat and tidy, it’s catch as catch can in a disaster area.
FEMA made it easy? Now that's a typo right?
Not at all. Right after FEMA finally made it to town they issued debit cards, remember? FEMA got in hot water when they didn't control them well enough and they ended up being used in strip clubs and the like. A GAO investigation months later said that ALL accounting controls were too loose and money was lost in a variety of ways, and it happened because they wanted to "cut the red tape" to assist.
Actually the way FEMA handed out the money to the republican faithful was easy and probably criminal.
Huh? Sounds like you forgot already what party the state and local governments in LA were made from...you're back in Lala land on this one.
“money to the Republican faithful”????
After completely bungling the clean up, not helping ....
Sorry, but given how you twisted the facts above that I'm very familiar with, I'm not much interested in your take on FEMA in the Gulf.
FEMA was 24-48 hours late in getting to downtown N.O.,
You're really Micheal Chertoff aren't you? Mike, try 96 hours.
You might not be aware of this, but the Feds don’t have the authority to commandeer the locals government and the National Guard. FEMA doesn’t have the power to simply ignore the rules Congress writes for it. You keep talking “accountability”, but you’re dead silent on “accountability” anywhere other than the Feds. Bush asked Blanco to get her N.G. units up and running, she said no. It wasn’t Bush who decided not to evacuate, it wasn’t Bush that reported that the storm had past and the levees were intact.
The fact is all you have is an endless diatribe and a series of conspiracy theories. It’s really quite remarkable.
Again with the conspiracy theory thing.
That was referring to your total approach to all things Bush, as with the conspiracy stuff above.
. People at the Superdome pleading for help on CNN, while Chertoff tells NBC he's not aware of any problems at the Superdome.
Because Chertoff wasn’t getting his info from CNN (I bet every FEMA tent in the future will have that TV going in the future) he was taking it from local gov’t. The same local gov’t caught on tape (Blanco) telling FEMA and the Whitehouse that the levees hadn’t been breached HOURS after they’d collapsed and the flooding started, long after the storm had passed.
Yeah, that's a classic. But it wasn't his fault he didn't know.
Neither did the Mayor (he says) and the Gov. of course, you’re not interested with “accountability” at those levels. For all you’ve said, they don’t even exist.
[quote=Starka]Thank Heaven that the coice of fonts is limited![/quote]
Yah but now they are also underlining and using italics, which creates more potential permutations…
As always this repeat of the wack-a-mole debate is stale. Rather than continue the cycle, let me sum up. Anyone who wants the last word is welcome to it, and perhaps we can then end the repeated hijacking of a financial services professional’s bulletin board towards hyperventilating politician discussions.
For reasons that perhaps some psychologists should study, many of the critics of Bush’s decision of going into Iraq aren’t satisfied simply reviewing the facts and weighing in on the decisions made, they have to couch it all in “that’s what they SAID was the reason for going, but they wanted to do it from day one were just looking for a cover story and their REAL reason was…(fill in favorite conspiracy theory)”. This is what makes it hard to take them seriously.
That approach allows them to side-step all the uncomfortable details like;
the fact that the previous administration (Democrat at that) had made regime change in Iraq official US policy
that the previous administration (Democrat at that) had reluctantly used military force to get Saddam to live up to the inspections he had agreed to at the end of the Gulf War
that they had warned about Saddam’s desire to attain WMDs (again) and how he’d eventually use them if we allowed him to escape sanctions and inspections and how grave a danger he was to the US and the world at large
how most everyone from both parties that had access to the intelligence report came to the same conclusion that given Saddam’s refusal to allow full inspections his history with WMDs his links with terror organizations, that fact we welcomed active and retired terrorists (killers of Americans) that he we simply, in a post 9/11 couldn’t take the risk that he’d slip the noose, produce WMDs (if he wasn’t already) given them to terrorist pals (the enemy of my enemy and all that) and have them surface here in an attack.
None of the countries they mention in their “Oh yeah? Then why didn’t we invade (insert nation here)” arguments fit anywhere near the criteria that Saddam’s Iraq fit in the quinella of the threat to the US, the region and the world.