A day to remember...

[grizzlywon]

What the heck is there to check out? Watch the video! It is recorded video of the Dems saying the same thing Bush did!

 

[meushi]

I'm sorry but this is simply in untrue and inaccurate statement! Our own current VP said Sadam would have Nukes with in at best a few years if not earlier! Watch this video and face the truth once and for all! You are saying that our Gov lied, both sides, Dems and Reps, I think that is preposterous. Sadam was a mad man and had the money to make it happen and that is exactly what he was doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSwSDvgw5Uc

Just watch the video.

Untrue and inaccurate? How does this measure?

2001:

Colin Powell, February 2001: "[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."

Condoleeza Rice, July 2001: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

2002 onwards:

Dick Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

George W. Bush
Speech to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
December 2, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.

Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
January 9, 2003

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

George W. Bush
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

George W. Bush
Radio Address
February 8, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.

Colin Powell
Interview with Radio France International
February 28, 2003

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.

Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.

George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

Ari Fleisher
Press Briefing
March 21, 2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.

Gen. Tommy Franks
Press Conference
March 22, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.

Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
Washington Post, p. A27
March 23, 2003

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.

Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
Press Briefing
March 22, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.

Donald Rumsfeld
ABC Interview
March 30, 2003

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Robert Kagan
Washington Post op-ed
April 9, 2003

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.

Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
April 10, 2003

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.

So, definite proof, we know exactly were they are, we'll find them and show them to the world, yada yada... why didn't they find a single shred of evidence in the 6 years since then?

For the yellow cake story:
http://cryptome.org/niger-docs.htm
The documents were already known as fakes abroad in 2002.

The administration even refused to listen to their own intelligence services when they said there were no WMD and that while there were research programs, they had no equipment and no funding. Said reports never reached congress.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

 

[grizzlywon]

That's your proof? A supposedly forged document posted on some foreign website? The video IU posted proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all our politicians (both sides of the isle) said Sadam had WMD or was close to getting them. How does this make Bush a bad guy? My point was that the war was based off our intelligence. If you are going to play the Nancy Pelosi role and say that and intire section of our military (IT) is a bunch of liars, that's your choice. While I think our Gov (especially our current one) is very corrupt, the War in Iraq freed 60 million people from tyranny and helped protect our country and many more from a certain attack.

Why didn't we find anything? Our biggest mistake was that we were too patient and kept warning him and waiting. We should have struck much earlier and not allowed them time to (probably export the major evidence). I'm willing to bet that at one point naysayers said that North Korea was pathetic and incapable of getting nukes. We we sat on our thumbs and look was we have on our hands now.



Oh and by they way Sadam was directly conected with al Qauda!

"Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/889pvpxc.asp

 

[greerhw]

Untrue and inaccurate? How does this measure?

2001:


2002 onwards:

So, definite proof, we know exactly were they are, we'll find them and show them to the world, yada yada... why didn't they find a single shred of evidence in the 6 years since then?

For the yellow cake story:
http://cryptome.org/niger-docs.htm
The documents were already known as fakes abroad in 2002.

The administration even refused to listen to their own intelligence services when they said there were no WMD and that while there were research programs, they had no equipment and no funding. Said reports never reached congress.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

I suppose you would have believed Iraq's foreign minister at the time, hind sight is a marvelous tool to make a point after the fact. I bet you think Iran is enriching uranium for their reactors because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said so.

keep it green,
Harry

 

[grizzlywon]

Keep on thinking that these guys don't want to hurt us or destroy Israel and maybe they will just go away right? Well, that seems to be the current admins strategy, we will see how it turns out in a short time. We think we can reason with Radical Islam and be buddies with them. If we just leave them alone they will leave us alone. The problem is that we have just a few thousand years of history that say otherwise. You will convert or you will die by the sword.

God help us!

 

[Klytus]

I'm not ready to embrace Zionism just yet.

 

[meushi]

That's your proof? A supposedly forged document posted on some foreign website?

The video IU posted proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that all our politicians (both sides of the isle) said Sadam had WMD or was close to getting them. How does this make Bush a bad guy? My point was that the war was based off our intelligence. If you are going to play the Nancy Pelosi role and say that and intire section of our military (IT) is a bunch of liars, that's your choice.

As I said before, garbage in garbage out. Give faulty intelligence to the congress, get the result you expect. Said "supposedly forged document" was exposed as fake in the French and Italian press in 2002 and was mentioned as a known fake in the "Downing Street memo". If you want, I can dig up in the archives at a library next week... I am however convinced it would be useless as you would dismiss it as "foreign drivel".

While I think our Gov (especially our current one) is very corrupt, the War in Iraq freed 60 million people from tyranny

That bolded part I agree with, however it is not the way the war was sold... Had the war been sold as such, it would however never have happened.

and helped protect our country and many more from a certain attack.

Just like the magic rock in my pocket... it prevents terrorist and/or nuclear attacks and keeps tigers at bay.

Why didn't we find anything? Our biggest mistake was that we were too patient and kept warning him and waiting. We should have struck much earlier and not allowed them time to (probably export the major evidence). I'm willing to bet that at one point naysayers said that North Korea was pathetic and incapable of getting nukes. We we sat on our thumbs and look was we have on our hands now.

That is indeed a possibility, however doubtful... it is a bit hard to vanish research centers and uranium centrifuges. It is also a bit hard to vanish all the paperwork and personnel, as demonstrated by the amount of paperwork found after the invasion and the amount of personnel available for torture to try and establish an operative link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

There is however another possibility which is what a good part of the intelligence community (US and international) has been saying since 2002: there were no WMDs. It is at least as plausible and happens to match all the evidence shown to date. Did you ever wonder why there was such a campaign against anything French in 2002? It would happen that the French intelligence services had agents in the highest spheres of the Iraqi government, one of those agents was actually the source used by the CIA for the report saying there were no WMDs.

For North Korea, the first explosion (under Bush watch, if you recall) was either a dud nuke or a massive amount of TNT. The second bomb could have been a very low yield nuke but the intelligence and science communities are actually divided on that one. In any cases, I would be all for a swift operation to take out the command structure if it could be done in such a way as to avoid destroying most of South Korea in the 30 seconds following the attack. It would be a worthy endeavor on the humanitarian level. I don't know if you have seen the conditions in which the population is right now... it is down right scary. The physiological differences between South Koreans and North Koreans are even greater than the differences between West Germans and East Germans just before the reunification. There is only so much malnutrition you can cope with before devastating effects appear in the population. That level has been crossed more than 10 years ago in North Korea. My in-laws and many of my friends also happen to live within the current strike radius of NK's ballistic missiles.

However, I also do recall simple facts:
North Korea has been "a couple of months away from inter-continental missiles" for about 20 years.
Land wars in that part of the world are rarely successful.

Oh and by they way Sadam was directly conected with al Qauda!

"Throughout the early and mid-1990s, Saddam Hussein actively supported an influential terrorist group headed by the man who is now al Qaeda's second-in-command, according to an exhaustive study issued last week by the Pentagon. "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." According to the Pentagon study, Egyptian Islamic Jihad was one of many jihadist groups that Iraq's former dictator funded, trained, equipped, and armed."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/889pvpxc.asp

By that logic, the US government (and many western governments indeed) is directly linked to Al Qaeda through the Reagan Doctrine... after all, what eventually became the Talibans and Al Qaeda was at some point funded, trained, equipped and armed with your tax dollars to fight against the USSR.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/01/cheney.speech/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/06/iraq/main2655316.shtml
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

Anyways, don't get me wrong, I am all for the fight against terrorism including Al Qaeda. I would even actively support the reinstatement of a draft in all countries that want to join that cause... the drafted could fill up the positions left vacant in the home country's defense or actively join in the fight.

 

[meushi]

I suppose you would have believed Iraq's foreign minister at the time, hind sight is a marvelous tool to make a point after the fact. I bet you think Iran is enriching uranium for their reactors because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said so.

keep it green,
Harry

Information minister Harry, information minister.

My pet theory on his subject is that he has been working in America as a political pundit ever since the invasion... that would explain the "discourse" coming from one side of the aisle.

 

[Tachigi]

I would even actively support the reinstatement of a draft in all countries that want to join that cause... the drafted could fill up the positions left vacant in the home country's defense or actively join in the fight.

Would I be outta line to think your older than the maximum draft age?

 

[greerhw]

Information minister Harry, information minister.

My pet theory on his subject is that he has been working in America as a political pundit ever since the invasion... that would explain the "discourse" coming from one side of the aisle.

Whatever, you didn't address my question on Iran ?

keep it green,
Harry

 

[meushi]

Would I be outta line to think your older than the maximum draft age?

You would be right, but where I grew up the draft was only lifted after I served... it was still active during the first Iraq campaign and during the Yugoslavia and Somalia peacekeeping operations. I ended up signing for 2 years as it was more interesting than being drafted for 10 months. My unit wasn't deployed during my service... they got deployed in Yugoslavia as part of UNPROFOR a couple of months after I left. Technically I am still on the standby reserve even tho that is currently moot... I live in another country and my condition isn't even remotely what it used to be.

 

[Klytus]

Fall on your sword!

 

[meushi]

I bet you think Iran is enriching uranium for their reactors because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said so.

keep it green,
Harry

I don't hold a strong opinion on Iran... let's say that a "gaffe" from a previous administration made all nuclear-related investigations in that country very hard and unreliable. Until that "gaffe", there had been no proof of weapon-oriented uranium enrichment.

A possible solution to the situation would be to trade a ban on their research for a reactor design that can't be used for military purposes... like a pebble bed reactor or one of the recently designed slow burn reactors. However, thanks to relatively recent history... that solution is very unlikely to be accepted by any side of the crisis.

 

[Klytus]

It's not as if Germany embraced Iran with Nuclear Submarines.

Germans with an eye for detail were rocked by the that recent Russian feint.

Piratic unterseaboots,Merckel will get the blame for driving them there.

 

[meushi]

*looks around*

Is there a German in the discussion?

EDIT: You're probably right about Merkel... The opposition wants Germany out of Afghanistan since the US is finally focusing on that country again.

 

[Klytus]

I'm thinking Merckel probably is the opposition.

A warmongering Kraut if ever there was one.

Will the incoming political party honour their predecessors mistakes by servicing those subs,i wonder.

 

[Mark59]

That may be so and I would have a tendency to agree on the face of it but the country's future depends on some of these people changing their minds before the bad guys come over here and kick all our asses. Don't think for a minute that if we abandon our resolve and pull back our determination to solve this problem that it wont happen. As an armature student of military tactics and strategy these people know how to defeat America, its simple. Prolong the conflict as long as possible, do not engage in open war fare where you cannot possibly win against American technology and training and wait for American politicians to sell the American people that this war is a bad thing and that we should cut our loses and abandon the enterprise. That's what happened in Viet Nam. The soldiers did not lose that war the politicians did.

Amen brother! Our soldiers and airmen are the finest bunch on the planet. They never lose on the battlefield. You are correct, its the jackasses in Washington that will find a way to lose.

 

[Klytus]

Mind you the American counterpart of Kraut is the not so effective Yank,it's perhaps construed as too congenial,much like Jerry.

No Bosch or Hun!

Maybe downplaying is the thing to do...why it's those warmongering Pemmicans of the Potomac again!

 

[Klytus]

Plucking a good titbit from the possibly maligned English translation of the Q'ran we find the concept of the slinking prompter.

Often the slinking prompter finds itself close to another concept,that of Jinn.

As we all know the Jinn is deadwood,so these talking heads doing the slinking and prompting are actually deadwood.

Without their cause they are the unemployable,what happens when the unemployable seize the reigns of a media endoctrinated nation?

Ghuls is what happens,hundreds of thousands of ghouls all tuning in with the expectation of seeing body parts,or else salivating at the concept of body parts,enemies killed,goals scored,Trifecta's.

The reason that few American carcasses are to be seen is that the Ghouls may develop a taste for American flesh,should not encourage that!

It is sad to see a country bankrupted so merchants with the governments ear or by the balls can sell stolen oil,sadder still is the mass murder used to accomplish such a criminal enterprise.

 

[Vance Wood]

I don't hold a strong opinion on Iran... let's say that a "gaffe" from a previous administration made all nuclear-related investigations in that country very hard and unreliable. Until that "gaffe", there had been no proof of weapon-oriented uranium enrichment.

A possible solution to the situation would be to trade a ban on their research for a reactor design that can't be used for military purposes... like a pebble bed reactor or one of the recently designed slow burn reactors. However, thanks to relatively recent history... that solution is very unlikely to be accepted by any side of the crisis.

Even if it was possible Iran would never go for that alternitive. There is no doubt in my mind that Iran wants to develop and deploy a nuclear weapon, and the crazies that run the place would no doubt use it especially on Israel they have said as much.