the proof Bush team Knew Iraq had no weapons in 2002

Of course he needed the American people to support the war. He wanted to be reelected...

So he told what he knew to be a deliberate lie, that would eventually be discovered and cause the whole house of cards to fall? Is that your take? If so, it's beyond 'Richard Nixon' stupid! I mean, I know you've portrayed Bush as pretty much a Monkeyboy, but honestly? You think he was that stupid?

With regard to American public support for the war... when has he had that in Iraq? As I recall, this anti-war crusade began as soon as the war started. The American public is generally not in favor of war, that is just a common fact. They never have favored war over peace, it's just not who we are. Again, this is why our brilliant founding fathers allowed the president to be the commander in chief of the military, and granted Congress authority to declare and fund wars.


Okay... look... for the sake of argument, let's assume your synopsis is accurate, and the neocons had an agenda to take out Iraq from the start, and everything was all fabricated and concocted around that idea...

Here's a strategy session with Bush...

Neocon Advisor #1: Mr. President, we need to establish a strong public support for this war, we need to really scare the people into supporting this, your entire political legacy it at stake, as well as the Republican party... so here are a bunch of lies we can tell, to get them to buy into it... it's certain to work, as long as the lies hold up...

Neocon Advisor #2: Mr. President, I recommend you forget about 'public approval' because you'll never have that for war, just use your executive authority to order military action against Iraq, for the past aggressions against the United States, and in the name of National Security. You can cite executive authority to take this action, you do not have to divulge any information for security reasons, and you can do so without even getting Congressional approval.

Now.... just how stupid would Bush have to be, to go along with Neocon advisor #1? The lies are eventually going to be discovered, and there will be far less public support for being lied to, than you will ever gain by telling the lie. It just doesn't make any sense, even IF your bird-brained neocon plot theories are correct! There was no tenable justification for Bush to lie, plain and simple.
 
uscitizen said:
Bush could not sell his war for what it was really for, so he had to come up with other reasons. All of which except Sadam being a bad man having been proven false.
Will the Iraq war go down in history as the first round in the "Oil Wars" or the "religious wars" ?
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Again, the president does not have to "sell a war" to you, or anyone else. He also doesn't have to tell you what it's for, why we are doing it, or how long it might take. You are free to hold him politically accountable, and you have! However, he still does not need your support or approval for this war, and never did.

Nothing has been proven false, that is a lie. Some things haven't been proven positive, some things can't ever be proven positively, that doesn't mean they are proven false. I refer you to the Scientific Method.

Iraq will go down in history as Arabian introduction to Democracy.
 
Dixie said:
Again, the president does not have to "sell a war" to you, or anyone else. He also doesn't have to tell you what it's for, why we are doing it, or how long it might take. You are free to hold him politically accountable, and you have! However, he still does not need your support or approval for this war, and never did.

Nothing has been proven false, that is a lie. Some things haven't been proven positive, some things can't ever be proven positively, that doesn't mean they are proven false. I refer you to the Scientific Method.

Iraq will go down in history as Arabian introduction to Democracy.
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bullshit Dixie, why then is bush travelling around right now giving interviews and such promoting just sending more troops and such. Bush knows he has to justify his actions to us even if you are too stoopid to realize this.
 
and Dixie...Bush did more than merely cherrypick...he lent an air of certainty to intelligence estimates that the analysts themselves did not present.....

When he was trying to convince the UN to lend its support, yeah, he made the best possible case! Just as, when you test drive that Camry, they are going to tell you everything they can about how great that car is, and not a word of anything negative or to the contrary. Just as, when you get on a rant, you put the best possible spin on whatever idiocy you're espousing at the moment... are you "lying" to us when you do that? Are you "cherrypicking" things to make your case and argument seem more relevant?

See... you are taking something that is perfectly normal and legitimate, and twisting it into something you want to call a "lie" and that just isn't the case here. As we've established, Bush had no tenable justification to lie.
 
if he wants to win, he needs support, for support he needs to sell the war. if they believed it would be a cake walk, the only support they needed was to get in there and it would have been over. since they were wrong about the cake walk, they need to continue 'selling' the war to keep suppport. it's not working; he has very little support now, so the cahnce of 'winning' is now very small.

the anti war crowd has much more effectively 'sold' their posotion so they now have the support for policy to get out.

that being so, then it means that the president does indeed need to 'sell' a war if he is to 'win' it.
 
Dixie said:
Again, the president does not have to "sell a war" to you, or anyone else. He also doesn't have to tell you what it's for, why we are doing it, or how long it might take. You are free to hold him politically accountable, and you have! However, he still does not need your support or approval for this war, and never did.

Nothing has been proven false, that is a lie. Some things haven't been proven positive, some things can't ever be proven positively, that doesn't mean they are proven false. I refer you to the Scientific Method.

Iraq will go down in history as Arabian introduction to Democracy.
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Iraq will go down in history as a war of aggression and proof of the moral degeneracy of the American people. Anyone know if Dubya's got a fiddle? I'll send him one.

He does indeed need the public's support. That's why he and his advisors lied to get it. It worked, too, at least for a while.
 
uscitizen said:
bullshit Dixie, why then is bush travelling around right now giving interviews and such promoting just sending more troops and such. Bush knows he has to justify his actions to us even if you are too stoopid to realize this.
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Bush isn't telling us that aliens landed in Iraq, and are attempting to take over the world, so we need to send more troops. In other words, he has no tenable reason to lie about why he wants to send more troops. If he wanted to, he could send the troops and never give you any explanation or justification. He has chosen to give you an explanation for political reasons, not because he is required to do so.

Now... why would Bush tell us that aliens landed in Iraq? Knowing that we would discover the lie in fairly short order, what would be his purpose in making that statement? In hopes that some of us would just take it on faith? And what about afterwards, when the lie is revealed? Wouldn't he have been better off, to use executive authority and command the military as presidents always have, than to try and fabricate a lie about aliens landing in Iraq?
 
Dixie said:
Of course he needed the American people to support the war. He wanted to be reelected...

So he told what he knew to be a deliberate lie, that would eventually be discovered and cause the whole house of cards to fall? Is that your take? If so, it's beyond 'Richard Nixon' stupid! I mean, I know you've portrayed Bush as pretty much a Monkeyboy, but honestly? You think he was that stupid?
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Why do you assume that anyone in the administration was even considering the fact that the eventual discovery of no WMD's would cause the whole house of cards to fall? I clearly stated, that it is MY belief that they were so certain of the success of their invasion and imposition of democracy in Iraq...they were so sure it would be a cakewalk and that democracy was just waiting to flourish and they marginalized to ZERO any talk of sectarian strife...they were so mutually ebullient with group think and heady with the thoughts of seeing the New American Century off to such a great start, they could not possibly imagine failure and they could not contemplate America's response to the WMD lie in light of that failure.
 
It must kill Dixie to know that if Bush had taken the advice of the anti-war crowd - Dean, Gore, Pelosi, etc - Bush would probably be viewed as a hero on Iraq today:


Somewhere in a parallel Universe, where Bush took Gore and Dean's advice on Iraq back in 2003

-Bush gets the UN inspectors back into Iraq (Bravo, Bush!)
-Bush give UN inspectors adequate time - Iraq is determined to be substantively free of nukes, WMD, and associated programs (Bravo Bush!)
-Through tough diplomatic work, Bush works with UN member states to maintain a long-term inspection, containment and sanctions regime on Iraq to make sure they don't re-arm with WMD (Bravo Bush!)

-Bush is viewed as a hero on Iraq: he got the inspectors back in, determined Iraq was essentially disarmed, and maintained a tough containment policy to keep saddam in his cage.
 
OrnotBitwise said:
Iraq will go down in history as a war of aggression and proof of the moral degeneracy of the American people. Anyone know if Dubya's got a fiddle? I'll send him one.

He does indeed need the public's support. That's why he and his advisors lied to get it. It worked, too, at least for a while.
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that is a ridiculous statement. "moral degeneracy of the americam people"?????

the reason most supported the war was becasue of the perceived threat, which did not tuen out to be true.


So now, most don't support the war!!!! most, however, don't want to leave until there is some stability there; that isn't 'mral degneracy of the american people'.


if the morals of the american people ad degneerated then tmsot would still be screaming for muslim blood, not wanting to get out. alos, if we had degenerated morals, do you think there would have been a problem with anything that wetn on at abu grab or gitmo??? of course not; moral degenerates would be sreeming 'kill em all" instead of 'get them attorneys"

maybe you should move to afghanistan and hang with osama. that's the kind of crap he spreads.
 
HipLew said:
if he wants to win, he needs support, for support he needs to sell the war. if they believed it would be a cake walk, the only support they needed was to get in there and it would have been over. since they were wrong about the cake walk, they need to continue 'selling' the war to keep suppport. it's not working; he has very little support now, so the cahnce of 'winning' is now very small.

the anti war crowd has much more effectively 'sold' their posotion so they now have the support for policy to get out.

that being so, then it means that the president does indeed need to 'sell' a war if he is to 'win' it.
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You say yourself, the easier they thought it would be, the less support they would need. The truth is, the president didn't need any support to take action against Iraq, he has the executive authority to do this, without any support from anyone. If they did indeed think it would be easy, this is even more evidence, they had no tenable reason or justification to lie to the public for support.

You have transitioned into a discussion on the aftermath of the actions, the political ramifications of such an action. This is a different matter, and on a political front, yes, the president needs to be able to "sell" the war to remain politically popular. This has nothing to do with his authority to command the military and take action as he sees fit.

The anti-war crowd has sold the idea that Bush lied us into a war, and that is untrue. Bush had no tenable justification to lie, and he is not a habitual liar, so it's impossible that he would have lied when he didn't have to. As I've maintained, and even Maineman agrees, the president had the full authority to send the military into Iraq, and didn't require approval from anyone to do so. The only counter to this point, is the political aftermath, but when you compare what that might have been, with what the current political climate is, I don't see a substantial gain from 'lying and misleading'. Do you?

If Bush had just signed an executive order or something, and never "made the case" at all... he might be viewed as an arrogant S.O.B. who doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks, and believes he can do whatever he pleases... compared to now, where he is thought of as an arrogant S.O.B. who doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks, and believes he can do whatever he pleases... only, with impeachable lies! So, what would be the difference? Why would Bush be compelled to intentionally lie, for support he did not need to have?
 
the only reason for an intentional lie would be that they were so confident in success ( a swift overthrow and set up and leave) that it wouldn't have mattered if they found weapons or not. If it was a blazing success, no one would be concerend about it. since that didn't happen, the motive for going in is now in question, which they did not think would happen.
 
Dixie said:
You have transitioned into a discussion on the aftermath of the actions, the political ramifications of such an action. This is a different matter, and on a political front, yes, the president needs to be able to "sell" the war to remain politically popular. This has nothing to do with his authority to command the military and take action as he sees fit.
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As I said, if Bush wanted to invade Iraq and he didn't give a damn about the rest of his agenda or the agenda of the republican party, he could certainly have done so with little or not warning and/or consultation with congress or the people. Had he done so, he would have lost the midterm election badly, he would have not been reeelected and his party would have been relegated to long term minority status.

If, on the other hand, he SOLD the war with fear, he would get the support...he would marginalize opposition in congress by painting those who spoke against him as soft on terror (Max Cleland style). As i said above, his entire team was so thoroughly convinced of total success...WITH EASE - A CAKEWALK - that none of them even contemplated having public opinion turn against them because of continued failures in the war effort and mounting costs and casualties.... it is only in the context of that chronic failure that the lack of WMD's begins to gnaw at the public psyche... and anger them. If this war had been a success as the neocons were so sure it would - the lack of WMD's would not have mattered to the public. Why would we bother with such trivialities when we had a created new multiethnic jeffersonian democracy and gained a steadfast ally against Islamic extremism in the heart of the middle east?

THAT is why the lie was so important to tell... and why the administration was not worried about having to answer for it....they never contemplated Iraq as a bucket of shit.

too bad.

I wish they had.
 
He does indeed need the public's support. That's why he and his advisors lied to get it. It worked, too, at least for a while.

Fact #1: The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the Military, he does not need any approval or support to command the military in his official capacity as commander in chief.

Fact #2: With the exception of pathological liars, people do not tell lies for no tenable reason and without tenable justifications.

Fact #3: Deliberately lying to people, does not garner their support, ever! Telling lies that you know will be uncovered, is patently stupid, if you are attempting to garner support from someone.

Fact #4: War strategies can not be based on something that "works for a while" thus, even if your theory is correct, it is contradictory to common sense, and would have never been planned that way.

Fact #5: You have consumed too much koolaid, and it has caused severe and irreparable brain damage. It is beyond your mental ability to comprehend the facts in this matter, and you may as well start hurling personal insults now, and save yourself some keystrokes.
 
HipLew said:
the only reason for an intentional lie would be that they were so confident in success ( a swift overthrow and set up and leave) that it wouldn't have mattered if they found weapons or not. If it was a blazing success, no one would be concerend about it. since that didn't happen, the motive for going in is now in question, which they did not think would happen.
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Bingo.

I think Bush and Cheney thought we would find some residual bio-chem weapons. Although, they never bothered to tell the american people that the evidence for bio-chem weapons was circumstantial and qualified -- they chose rather, to tell the American people that there was "simply NO doubt", and that we "Know for a FACT" that saddam had bio-chem weapons. In other words, they had already decided to invade iraq, and consequently decided to hype and exaggerate the intel on bio-chem weapons.

Intentional misleading and lying in particular, occured over the alleged collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and on the alleged Iraq nuke program.
 
Cypress said:
Bingo.

I think Bush and Cheney thought we would find some residual bio-chem weapons. Although, they never bothered to tell the american people that the evidence for bio-chem weapons was circumstantial and qualified -- they chose rather, to tell the American people that there was "simply NO doubt", and that we "Know for a FACT" that saddam had bio-chem weapons. In other words, they had already decided to invade iraq, and consequently decided to hype and exaggerate the intel on bio-chem weapons.

Intentional misleading and lying in particular, occured over the alleged collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and on the alleged Iraq nuke program.
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sure; so why did he want to go there so bad? i originally thought it was cuz of iran, but now it hink it was oil. saddam used to be da man back ing the day, but he didn't defeat iran in our proxy war, and he stifed bush1, making him our enemy.

the promises he made for our support in the 80's nver materialized, so they felt they had to make him pay for screing us (kinda like the mob works). they took him out and took his oil (that we were supposed to get).

If we let him get away with it, then the rest of the wolrd thinks we're wusses and start to screw us too. theis showed them they cn't screw with us and suffer not consequences.

not only oil, but a BIG world political statement, this was...but the statement as no legs due to the failure of the war.

pay back is a bitch, saddam.
 
HipLew said:
sure; so why did he want to go there so bad? i originally thought it was cuz of iran, but now it hink it was oil. saddam used to be da man back ing the day, but he didn't defeat iran in our proxy war, and he stifed bush1, making him our enemy.

the promises he made for our support in the 80's nver materialized, so they felt they had to make him pay for screing us (kinda like the mob works). they took him out and took his oil (that we were supposed to get).

If we let him get away with it, then the rest of the wolrd thinks we're wusses and start to screw us too. theis showed them they cn't screw with us and suffer not consequences.

not only oil, but a BIG world political statement, this was...but the statement as no legs due to the failure of the war.

pay back is a bitch, saddam.
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sure; so why did he want to go there so bad?

IMO: Oil, Israel, and Geopolitics, aka a permanent strategic american presence in the oil-rich middle east.

And, I can't discount that the messianic Bush actually foolishly believed his theory that he could install a pro-american, jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the arab world.
 
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