Bush Lies

[Khornet]

Entebbe, Uganda (AP)-President Bush's national security adviser said Friday the CIA cleared Bush's State of the Union speech in its entirety, including a sentence alleging that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material from Africa.

If CIA Director George Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence in the President's speech, "he did not make them known" to Bush or his staff, said National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.

"The CIA cleared the speech. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," Rice said as Bush flew from South Africa to Uganda.

The CIA raised only one objection to the sentence involving an allegation that Iraq was trying to obtaining yellow cake uranium, she said. "Some specifics about the time and place were taken out," Rice said.

"With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared," she said. "The agency did not say they wanted that sentence out."

Folks, we just don't know. That's all we can say so far.

 

[agricola]

well:

i) either the CIA is incompetent, or at least more incompetent than the IAEA who saw through the yellowcake story in the space of a day (which is what Rice is saying);

or:

ii) the White House is attempting to blame people who cannot publicly speak for its own mistakes / omissions / lies.

I vote (ii).

 

[Khornet]

Of COURSE you vote ii, Agricola.

I know that. But you don't know the truth any more than I. The difference is that I know I don't yet have the data to vote rationally, and I'm not going to vote my feelings, so I'll wait.

 

[Bruce H]

In this day and age I'll use my standard test. Polititions lips and the lips of those close to them are moving. Without difinitive support of the position their actions and words need questioned.

 

[Khornet]

Here's another

From today's Washington Post:

"We consulted about the paper, and recommended against using that material," a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence program said. The British government rejected the suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States.

 

[Lone_Gunman]

Who cares.

Saddam is gone.

The justification for the war is not an issue that voters will care about.

 

[brookstexas]

Who cares?????

If the government or president lies or misleads????
Only good Americans would care about that.
Saddams gone? Missed the funeral what day was that?
Sorry, I can't think one dead serviceman is worth Iraq and the toll on our economy.
BT

 

[DRC]

Well KHornet...

If true I wonder what Don will use to attack GW and his administration? I wonder if he'd change his arguement to "Bush read what he was handed...grumble, grumble, grumble. And that proves he's a liar"?

Oh well, to each his own I guess. It's amazing that the focus is on this document and it's use as evidence in the SOTU address and yet no one seems to be asking or reporting anything regarding whether or not any deals like these were known to be going on or if shipments had in fact been made? The document is a fake so does that conclusively mean that no deals were made or carried out between the two countries in question? I'll wait to see.

Take care,

DRC

 

[agricola]

who cares?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,82432,00.html

http://www.operations.mod.uk/telic/casualties.htm

 

[Shaggy]

This line about uranium didn't come from the CIA or any US intelligence. In the speech Bush said "the BRITISH government has learned(that's part liberals conveniently leave out when they talk about this) that Saddam Huesain has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". So Bush did not lie or even mislead. He stated in a speech what the British claim they had, and Tony Blair still stands by that to this day.

In any case, one line in a speech about uranium is not the reason we went to war in Iraq. It's a non issue and in the end, nobody is going to give a crap, saddam is gone and that's a good thing.

Klinocchio was in office for eight years lying and obvuscating the truth about everything and not a liberal in the country gave a damn.

 

[agricola]

shaggy,

No, Blair admitted the claim was false when the IAEA stated that it was a forgery. Are you suggesting that the Crown has been telling GWB what to say in the State of the Union address?

 

[MicroBalrog]

Saddams gone? Missed the funeral what day was that?

Oh, he's probably still Iraq's President... missed the last address.

 

[agricola]

Khornet,

proof?

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,993018,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13536-2003Jul5.html

 

[Khornet]

Agricola,

I'll see your Guardian and raise you one National Review. Who is Mr Wilson?

www.nationalreview.com/may/may071103.asp

PLEASE ALL HANDS acknowledge that we are playing dueling newspapers over matters we know little about. Do you really trust them more than politicians?

 

[MK11]

so because the liberals gave Clinton a free pass that automatically means conservatives can do the same for Bush? That's probably just what will happen but it's a scary thought.

There were plenty of reasons to kick out Saddam. Unfortunately, the reasons cited by this administration haven't been substantiated. Right now it looks like there's either lying or incompetence or both at work here. The tone of this debate has gone from, "We WILL find weapons of mass destruction" to "Ooops, well maybe not but hey, aren't you glad he's gone?"

Saddam is/was an evil scumbag and people may not care why he was removed. But they do care whether or not the President was truthful, just like they care about American soldiers getting picked off in "post-war" Iraq, and care about an economy that's completely stalled. The Republicans better get their act together or the next election won't be the cakewalk they expect.

 

[MicroBalrog]

economy that's completely stalled

Not what the Dow thinks...

 

[HBK]

I believe George Bush is a good man who does his best to do what he thinks is right. He is not a liar. If the information in the speech was false, he did not know that it was. I wish everyone would just get off his ??? and let him do his job. People have been giving him crap since he won the election, sour grapes and sore losers.

 

[DontShootMe]

"We WILL find weapons of mass destruction" to "Ooops, well maybe not but hey, aren't you glad he's gone?"

LOL! That's exactly what I hear from the 'party line' sheep that I know.

But there WERE WMD's (in the late 80's - early 90's)
Bush didnt lie! (when he said "Bring Em On")
It's not about oil (But since it's there, we'll handle the contracts)
Operation Iraqi Freedom (freedom from electricity? family members?)

Blame the CIA!

 

[agricola]

khornet,

thats something that Ron Paul banged on about on that other thread, the way in which critics are attacked ad hominem when they question the established policies of the government. Point-by-point:

He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

I'd imagine most of us would be suspicious if we had been sent to investigate reports, found there was no substance in them (and Wilson admitted he hadnt seen the documents, but HAD seen the people who would have signed off on them), and then seen the Government stating those things as fact.

He's an "adjunct scholar" at the Middle East Institute — which advocates for Saudi interests. The March 1, 2002 issue of the Saudi government-weekly Ain-Al Yaqeen lists the MEI as an "Islamic research institutes supported by the Kingdom."

For a start, I dont see how one can suggest that Wilson is improperly beholden to Saudi interests (one would understand the point if we were talking about an Iraqi-funded body) when the issue doesnt revolve around Saudi. Second, this point is never raised when we talk about people who are associated with Israeli interests.l

He's a vehement opponent of the Bush administration which, he wrote in the March 3, 2003 edition of the left-wing Nation magazine, has "imperial ambitions." Under President Bush, he added, the world worries that "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

See point one - but that viewpoint can be justified in light of the available evidence.

He also wrote that "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party." He said that "the new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."

"Regime change" is evidence of this belief as are the statements of Bush and others. Afganistan and Iraq are free now, so why are the troops still there?

And consider this: Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat." He added that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."

Didnt the CIA assess that, if Saddam did have WMD, the one time that he would use it would be if his back was to the wall? How does his belief that Saddam had WMD affect his contention that the yellowcake story was a complete sack of lies?

 

[JohnBT]

After caring about Viet Nam, and Watergate, and former President Clinton's escapades, I'm all cared out.

Politician's make mistakes like the rest of us, and lie from time to time, more or less.

John

P.S. - The Iraqis I know think the war was worth it and are very appreciative. The Iranians I know are too

 

[Khornet]

Why is it that

every point you (e.g. Agricola) make can be countered by one of mine, and vice versa? Doesn't that tell us something? Doesn't it show that the case is still open?

I really must conclude that the Bush Lies group have closed their minds. They are made up and that's that. But for the rest of the world, it's nowhere near so certain. In the end, we will see.

 

[rick_reno]

and from http://www.msnbc.com/news/937576.asp?0cv=CA01 this article comes this gem.

“The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder,†Rumsfeld said. “We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11.â€

The use of the word "prism" is illuminating. Prisms bend light, Presidents bend truth. Big deal. Ask yourself if you would vote for Miss Hillary over Bush. I know I won't.

 

[moa]

Concerning the currently missing Iraqi WMDs, the situation looks illogical from Saddam's standpoint.

If Saddam truly destroyed his WMDs like he professed, then why not cooperate and show the UN insptectors the evidence of the WMD destruction, and get the world off his back? This is in the light of a superpower military gathering just over the border, and threatening war.

Everybody, including the UN inspectors, knew when they left Iraq in 1998 that Saddam still had large quantities of chem/bio weapons.

If Saddam had provided the proof the UN required, then there would have been no war, and most likely all the UN sanctions would have been removed. Saddam would have been in fat city.

The chem/bio WMDs were either actually destroyed, or they are carefully hidden, or they have been handed off to another party.

 

[MicroBalrog]

...or they have been handed off to another party.

Didn't the Israeli government already warn your government that the WMD's were probably already shipped off into Syria?

 

[HBK]

I believe that they ARE in Syria.