Rumsfeld caught lying yet again...

[joab]

I know, there's other bad dictators... you gotta start somewhere.

How many of them have lost a U.S. led war in the past 15 years or so. Who's terms of surrender included that they have limited military capabilities and that inspectors were to allowed unimpeded access to all areas to insure that they complied.
Apparently Texans don't know how to play the intenational politics game. Nobody told Jr. that he was only supposed to bully, bluff and rattle sabers.
I know very little of politics but I have learned to study people. And it seems that most were for military action or at least the strong threat of it until it bacame real and unattractive and then it was "Tommy wait outside"

 

[JohnBT]

From The Center for American Progress site's section About Us:

"...nonpartisan research and educational institute..."

"Every day we challenge conservative thinking that undermines the bedrock American values..."

I guess it depends on the definition of nonpartisan. Why would anybody listen to these folks?

John

 

[TaurusCIA]

TaurusCIA, I think you need to read the quotes again.

Context:

"No terrorist state"...AlQueida is not a state so they don't qualify

"More immediate"...does not mean immediate (more is a quantifier for immediate and helps form the comparative to other terrorist states)

No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate

 

[RED-DOG 40]

Diggler pretty much nailed this one IMHO, as did 7.62 FMJ ,

 

[TaurusCIA]

the war causes more Arabs and Muslims to hate the US

Fanatic extremists don't need a new reason. We are not Muslim and we don't bow down to their wishes. That is reason enough for them.

Some people (like the new Spanish govt) seem to believe that if we leave them alone they won't bother us. They may not bother us first but they will get around to us when it is in their interest.

Trying to appease terrorists just emboldens them to seek more concessions until you are weak enough to be an easy target.

Just like Afghanistan. Instill fear into the common folks and take over the govt and install your corrupt fanatical supporters.

It's not about religious ideals for the extremists, it's about power.

 

[idd]

Why doesn't anyone ever bring up the fact that Hussein tried to assassinate a President of the United States?

How do you know that that is a "fact"? Because the Clinton Administration said it was a fact? Seymour Hersh reports that "the American government's case against Iraq—as it has been outlined in public, anyway—is seriously flawed."
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020930fr_archive02

He did have WMD. Ask the Kurds.

Or ask the US companies that sold him the stuff. That was fifteen years ago. By fall of 2002 when Bush and Company were beating the war drums, it appears that Saddam had gotten rid of them.

Before the war, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, thought that Saddam had WMD. The UN, Germany, France, all of them.

Any evidence for this claim?

Even Hussein thought that he had them.

How do you know this?

But he wanted the world to know that he had them, whether he did or not.

Actually I remember officials of the Iraqi government repeatedly denying that they had WMD.

I know, there's other bad dictators... you gotta start somewhere.

Maybe we should start with the dictatorships in Uzbekistan. Oh wait, the US gave $160 million in 2002 to this dictatorship. Nitpickers at Human Rights Watch report that the Uzbek government officials try to re-educate dissidents with methods such as "beatings, electric shock, temporary suffocation, hanging by the ankles or wrists, removal of fingernails, and punctures with sharp objects."

After 9/11 the US government gave $64 million to the government of Georgia. Amnesty International reports that the Georgian government is guilty of "widespread and continuing torture."

Just about every repressive government on earth has shown up in Washington, D.C., looking for a handout to help in the "war on terrorism."

How can any try and have a well reason and thoughful exchange with information from MOVE ON. All they put out is political hate speech.

Maybe you should visit the link. It's a videotape of Rumsfeld from Face the Nation. He's caught.

And thanks to "idd" for all those unbiased sources.

"Biased"? There was the US Army War College, a former Air Force intelligence officers... Perhaps "biased" means anything that disagrees with your own preconceived notions.

We've lost more than 1000 dead (properly counted) and 3000 wounded in this war. It seems that every other day I turn on the news and hear about one or two more US soldiers coming home in body bags.

 

[Obiwan]

I would take Digglers analogy a bit farther......

You raid a house (with a warrant) looking for automatic weapons.

Guy in the back room raping a woman...her dead husband is on the fllor next to her.

So you shrug your shoulders and walk out......not why we came!

And my analogy is pretty weak...because in the case of Iraq, we knew about the human rights issues, Hussein paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers, etc.

The war was never JUST about WMD....despite the fact that everyone believed they were there...and they may be there still.

But the anti war /Anti Bush crowd has latched onto that as their rallying cry.

 

[TaurusCIA]

US Army War College, a former Air Force intelligence officers

Having been in the military I know that just because you are a soldier doesn't mean you can't be liberal biased. You seem to imply that just because the are military related sources they can't be biased against Bush. Wasn't Kerry a soldier?

"Dr. Jeffrey Record" - You might want to check out which senators he has worked for before you call him unbiased.

I have never met a truly unbiased person.

 

[Diggler]

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs

From the CIA, the best information we can get. Maybe it could have been better if it wasn't for Clinton weakening the agency.

If they didn't have any, then why not be fully accommodating? Why violate all of the UN resolutions that they did? Suspicious behavior. You don't have WMD's? Then show us.

Saddam was playing a game of chicken and he lost. Maybe he was insane, or just misinformed by his subordinates. Whatever, he's gone.

Do you want to re-open the rape rooms, since this war shouldn't have happened?

 

[TaurusCIA]

Any evidence for this claim?

Those darned old resolutions.

Recognizing the threat Iraq's noncompliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security,

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/11/08/resolution.text/

Now who voted for those things again?

 

[RGR]

> Having been in the military I know that just because you are a soldier doesn't mean you can't be liberal biased...

The point is, these guys have been in harm's way. They dedicated themselves to defending their country and the Constitution. You can't just casually slime them with some sort of "soft-hearted" or "Commie sympathizer" label that's intended to dismiss what they say without you having to actually look at what they say and why they say it. Throwing the term "biased" around without providing an argument for how they're wrong is "ad hominem lite." They aren't pacifists. They are arguing against this particular war, and by extension any war based on lies, not any war based on legitimate self-defense.

If you've been caught lying about defending yourself in a conflict, the burden of proof is on you to justify your violence. It doesn't fall to your opponents to continue to think the best of your motives until they can disprove every possible good motivation you might have had.

> I have never met a truly unbiased person.

Exactly, which is why this is useless as a point in a logical argument. Everyone's biased in some way -- we're all human. To win points in a legitimate debate you have to show WHERE your opponents are mistaken, not just show that they are probably mistaken because of their presumed assumptions -- assumptions which you haven't even demonstrated that they've made!

 

[moa]

Some items for this argument.

In 2002 the UN Security Council, including nations like France and Russia voted for Resolution 1441 which stated that there would be "serious consequences" if Iraq did not come clean on its WMD and delivery systems. The vote was unanimous among the 15 member Council, all of whom must have believed at that time that Iraq had outlawed weapons that Iraq had originally agreed to account for and destroy.

As of 1998 Iraq had those weapons because they actually admitted it, but hindered the UN weapons inspectors to the point they left Iraq. For instance Presidental palaces were not allowed to be inspected, all 80 of them. At that point, Clinton conducted a four day air bombardment of known weapons facilities. I just recently heard about this in the news. I did not know it was four days duration.

In theory, a state of war existed between Iraq and the UN member nations starting in 1991. And Saddam had shown by earlier actions to be quite reckless at times.

The problem was the Security Council was not willing to take military action against Iraq in the forseeable future, if at all. So a sub-set of the UN member nations took military action.

 

[bountyhunter]

I have to ask: in what way is using the intelligence available (at the time of the alleged statement) and coming to the same conclusion that the UN, Clinton, and the majority of the legislature came to a lie?

You missed the point entirely. The lie is that Rumsfeld claimed he never said that Iraq posed an imminent threat, and he said nobody else did either. If I had a dollar for every time I had heard that imminent threat crap from one of the admin, I could buy Halliburton and fire his lying butt.

What Cheney was doing is the same thing Bush has been doing: trying to re-write history. The stupid part is, all of their statements are recorded on video tape, so they always get caught lying about what they said.... but, nobody seems to care. The sheeple just have that glazed expression and are happy that we are safe now that the boogie man Hussein is captured.

 

[bountyhunter]

The moment someone says "more immediate than" or "less immediate than" or "almost immediate", "immediate" in that context no longer means "immediate".

And if semantics is the best refuge to placate their lies, that pretty much says it all too. Riddle me this: who repeatedly said this?

"There is no time, we must act now!"

GEORGE BUSH. That is not saying there is an immediate threat?

And who said this:

"The only proof you people will accept is when you see a mushroom cloud..."

Condoleeza Rice, regarding the IMMINENT threat Iraq's nuclear weapons program posed to us.

Give me a break.

 

[ojibweindian]

All I want to know is what flavor waffle is Kerry; blueberry or plain?

 

[fix]

The fact that Saddam had WMD is not up for debate. It is undisputed fact. He used them. Children in Northern Iraq are being born with severe birth defects as a result of this. He used them in the war with Iran. The only question that remains is, where the heck are they now? Did he really destroy them all to comply with the resolutions? Maybe, but then why did he kick the inspectors out rather than just showing them that the weapons were destroyed? Are they still hidden? Possibly. Did he give them to another country like Syria? Not likely, but possible. If anything, I think we may have overestimated the size of his stockpiles. If so, it stands to reason that we would have a hard time finding them. IMO the administration beat the WMD drum a bit too hard. There were about a million reasons to take out Saddam but they settled on one that, while good for shock value, may have been the weakest. I don't know where Saddam's WMD went, but to pretend that they never existed is just foolish.

 

[bountyhunter]

All I want to know is what flavor waffle is Kerry; blueberry or plain?

You know, I have three major college degrees (Education, Electrical Engineering, and Electronic Entertainment Systems) as well as a minor in Mechanical Engineering, and I have never considered myself slow.....but I still need you to explain something to me:

Exactly what does:

"All I want to know is what flavor waffle is Kerry; blueberry or plain?"

Have to do with the topic of the thread which is that Donald Rumsfeld was caught in a king sized lie when he claimed that neither he or any other major player in the Bush administration had ever claimed that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to the US?

 

[bountyhunter]

The only question that remains is, where the heck are they (WMD's) now?

Actually, that is the ONLY question if and only if you allow your thinking to be stratified into the narrow focus the Bush adminsitration desperately wants to keep to avoid answering for their horrendous incompetencies. A thinking person might very well ask a lot of other questions:

1) Even if WMD's did exist in some capacity, did any of them pose a threat to US interests?

2) Where is the proof of any threat to us?

3) What kind of invisible "proof" was accepted as fact by a CIC who was stanpeding to war and did not want to hear evidence contrary to his opinions?

4) What kind of CIC would commit such a massive amount of US lives on such flimsy evidence that was heavily disputed even within our own intel agencies?

5) Why won't the CIC accept responsibility for the decisions and actions he made and stop blaming everybody else?

6) Why doesn't the CIC stop falling back on the now thoroughly dosproven lie that Iraq was amajor player (or any playerat all) on the WOT and tht deposing Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 and/or improving US security.

7) Why doesn't the CIC stop re-writing history on a weekly basis as to why we went to war as each of the cover stories is proven false?

a) Active nuke program, threatens US. OOOPPPS, never mind.

b) Aluminum tubes going into a uranium enrichment device. OOOPS, never mind.

c) Tons of chems and bios in stockpiles waiting to be launched in rockets. OOOOPS, never mind.

d) Found a portable chemical weapons lab... that actually was a hydrogen generator for high altitude balloons. OOOPS, never mind.

e) Saddam was a really bad guy so we had to kill him.... of course, he was our ally all through the 80's. OOPS, don't want to go there.

f) Saddam was behind OBL and Al Qaeda. OOPS, wrong again.

g) We had to bring democracy to Iraq. OOPS, turns out they actually want an Islamic theocracy and installing a western friendly government will have to be done over a gun barrel.

Blah, blah, blah...... I hope they eventually find a cover story they like. I get dizzy trying to remember all of them.

 

[bountyhunter]

I don't know where Saddam's WMD went, but to pretend that they never existed is just foolish.

NOBODY has ever pretended he never had WMD's, especially since he got some of them from us back in the 80's (we sold him anthrax which could easily have been weaponized). What we asked was: where is the threat to the US?

The point that everyone seems to forget is this:

Bush said: I know you have WMD's. Either turn them over instantly, or we invade.

IRAQ: WE have none so we can't give them to you.

BUSH: You refuse to comply and that means war.


Bottom line is at this point, it has become clear there were certainly no large scale quantities of WMD and there are no facilities for creating them on short notice. The thing Bush refuses to admit is actually the most likely scenario:

Saddam DID get rid of his WMD's as ordered, not because he wanted to, but because he needed to get the inspectors out of his country and he wanted to get off "export probation". Period. I am not saying he would have never tried to have them again, but the evidence shows he had complied and the war was completely unjustified by the resolution Bush claimed as cover for it.

 

[fix]

Saddam DID get rid of his WMD's as ordered, not because he wanted to, but because he needed to get the inspectors out of his country and he wanted to get off "export probation". Period.

Again, why did he kick the inspectors out if his goal was to be inspected?

 

[moa]

Well, Bountyhunter, look at this way.

1. Congress authorized military action. They wrote Bush a check.

2. The UN authorized "serious consequences" and that can only mean military action at that juncture. They wrote Bush and others a check.

3. Bush and others cashed the checks.

Seems to me to be numerous players involved with plenty of blame to go around for faulty intelligence and the momentum for war.

It's a done deal now.

 

[TaurusCIA]

They aren't pacifists. They are arguing against this particular war, and by extension any war based on lies, not any war based on legitimate self-defense.

Didn't say they were pacifists. Just as all people are biased, it stands to reason that a person who has worked for at least two Democratic Senators is probably more biased against Bush than someone who had not worked directly for any party and had not been directly involved in politics.

So what. There are a lot of people who have been "in harm's way". It doesn't make them any more or less biased by their beliefs and experiences than anyone else. Implying that they are less biased because they have been in the military is ridiculous.

They are arguing against this particular war, and by extension any war based on lies, not any war based on legitimate self-defense.

Most of the article that I read from the "War College" was not accusing people of lying but specified that the given strategy for the war on terror was not sustainable, etc.

Do I see a little bias creeping in...

 

[TaurusCIA]

The lie is that Rumsfeld claimed he never said that Iraq posed an imminent threat, and he said nobody else did either.

He said that he didn't say "immediate threat".


The only time in the quote that he used immediate was:

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat"


"No terrorist state"...AlQueida is not a state so they don't qualify

"More immediate"...does not mean immediate (more is a quantifier for immediate and helps form the comparative to other terrorist states)

 

[Intune]

Building on the core allegation of the antiwar movement, that the case for war was fabricated, Blix mocked British and American intelligence, telling the BBC that: "we need evidence and not just tales from intelligence." Speaking to the Security Council on February 14, 2003, Blix took a different view, that: "Intelligence information has been useful for UNMOVIC" and that intelligence had in the past led to discoveries of banned activities in Iraq. A year ago, Blix was content to use these "tales." Indeed, he understood the risks that Iraqis ran in communicating information of any quality. The penalty in Saddam's Iraq for saying anything, let alone telling "tales", was death. Before liberation Iraq was, according to Blix on February 14, 2003, a "closed society."

Forgetting his role in justifying the war, Blix says that that it was wrong to conclude that WMD stocks that could not be accounted for must have existed. What clever Blix is telling us is that he knew all along that there were no WMD stocks to be found in Iraq.

Unfortunately for Blix, that is not what he thought last year. Before the UN inspectors returned to Iraq in late 2002, Saddam's regime was suspected of possessing 8,500 litres of anthrax, a deadly agent that the Iraqis claimed to have destroyed. The U.N. view, published on March 6, 2003, was not only that Iraq still had anthrax, the inspectors increased their estimate for the volume of unaccounted anthrax from 8,500 litres to 10,000 litres. As Iraq could produce little evidence of either production or destruction, Blix's team concluded that: "Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist."

 

[bountyhunter]

Let's piss off the repubs and speak real for just a moment:

1. Congress authorized military action. They wrote Bush a check.

Bush spent months saying he was going to war come hell or high water. he said it was to get the people who did 9/11. He said anybody who didn't support him was a terrorist lover. Yeah, right..... congress "authorized military action"..........

The UN authorized "serious consequences" and that can only mean military action at that juncture. They wrote Bush and others a check.

Don't know what earth youy were on, but the UN specifically said force was NOT authorized because the violations did not warrant it. period. Bush had Powell try to drum up support at the UN for a resolution authorizing force and it failed so completely it was withdrawn before vote to prevent humiliation of Bush.

3. Bush and others cashed the checks.

Just for amoment, why don't we all admit what happened: Bush was set to kill Hussein before he even took the oath. Why? Let's see... Hussein maintained power and humiliated his daddy and turned him from a victorious CIC into a one-term loser. Hussein tried to have his daddy killed. GWB needed to kick some ass in that region to throw the fear of God into them, and Hussein's ass was at the top of the list for kicking.

Bottom line is simple: all the rest of the BS was simply: GO AND FIND ME AN EXCUSE FOR WHAT I AM GOING TO DO. The dog and pony show after the decison was made was just that... propoganda. Period.


Another dose of reality is that this administration was duped by Iraqi expatriots who told them anything they could make up about the vast amounts of WMD's, just to add feul to the fire. Remember those massive underground facilities that stretched for miles below the palaces? Do we believe they packed those up and buried them in the desert? The point is, wehn somebody gives you unsupported intel, you have to consider if they have reason to lie... and they had HUGE reasons to lie and they lied through their teeth.