quote:
Originally posted by whomod:
Frankly, I've had it up to here with Dave's constant and incessant paranoia over the "liberal" menace. I mean DAMN! When you take Hal Lindsey's word for news and events over Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, CNN, Etc. Etc. Why fucking bother trying to talk reason? The irony is that when the AP runs a story that supports his mindset, suddenly THAT is worth posting. Most of the time though i'm sure they are the dreaded mouthpeice of the "liberals". Some people are just dug in holy warriors whether they choose to acknowledge their own bias or not. Hell, why bother even having an election next year? I'm sure that falls under treasonous activity as well in his mind.

I find your comments misrepresentative. Perhaps you've forgotten that I've QUOTED from TIME magazine, and also the Washington Post, as well as the Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes, PBS News and CBS News, among others. Hal Lindsey is not the "sole source" I quote, as you misrepresentatively allege.

Reading through this or other Iraq topics I've participated in makes this clear, that I've quoted many sources.

I'm also not a zealot for Bush. He or others in his administration may be guilty of what you allege. But UP TO THIS POINT, all I've seen are vicious allegations, with no smoking gun to back them up.
And how many times do I have to say I didn't even vote for the guy?
I don't agree with a lot of what Bush is doing (aside from defense issues, and I even dispute many of his defense actions) but I do think the case against him is overstated as if it is proven, when there has been --to date-- no solid evidence.

And based on the wild speculations you frantically hold up as "evidence", you've got quite the nerve calling ME paranoid.

If you want to criticize Bush on valid points, these are a few of the points where I'm critical of Bush:

  • NOT BUILDING LARGE PRE-WAR RESERVES.
    I think we should have a much larger military reserve force, of 200,000 to 400,000, so that if we need to fight another regional war, we have the reserves to respond as we should, such as in North Korea or Iran.
    ( Iran is near the point of revolution, where just the uncertainty that the U.S. might come in on the side of pro-democracy revolutionaries, could prevent Iranian pro-democracy protestors from being slaughtered, as Chinese students were slaughtered in Tianaman Square in 1989.)
    The mere POTENTIAL for the U.S. to intervene could save lives in Iran, if we had a reserve that could potentially be deployed. Not even U.S. action, but the mere potential, could change the outcome in Iran.
    We have adequate forces now for Iraq, despite the unexpected cost, but the U.S. can presently provide no deterrant elsewhere.
    And I think Bush should have the military immediately recruiting enlistment of 200,000 or more, to relieve our overworked reservists, who were called to duty under Clinton repeatedly, and have continued to be re-deployed over and over under Bush.
  • If Bush had adequate reserves, he could complete the job of democratizing Afghanistan, and training/strengthening a strong and stable central government in Afghanistan.
    I think we all know that Kharzai is referred to as "the mayor of Kabul", because Afghanistan has no central government, and President Kharzai has virtually no authority outside the capital city of Kabul.
    The rest of the country is run by warlords, as it was before the war. And Al Qaida is argued to be getting stronger again.
    Afghanistan has basically been put on hold, to focus U.S. military forces on Iraq. We should have military forces to do both, and have recruited these before the Iraq invasion, and be recruiting more reserves now.
  • THE TIMING OF THE INVASION.
    I think the Iraq invasion should have occurred toward the end of Summer this year, instead of 3/20/2002, which is 20/20 hindsight for me.
    But any military strategist should have seen BEFOREHAND the unrest that being without electricity and water for millions of Iraqi citizens would cause in 120 degree Summer heat.
    Being without power in any months but the scorching Iraq summer weather would have caused far less discontent for Iraqis, and for our own troops as well.
  • THE URGENCY FOR INVADING IRAQ, WHEN NORTH KOREA IS THE GREATER AND MORE IMMEDIATE THREAT.
    North Korea, since December 2002 (and actually, 10 years prior), has been developing nuclear weapons, and has missiles to carry them. They were believed in December to have 1 or 2 nuclear bombs at most, and if left unchecked could develop 6 weapons by June 2003.
    During the time we invaded Iraq, North Korea had time to process uranium from the re-opened nuclear reactor and turn these into weapons.
    And North Korea has the missiles to deliver these nukes, and have previously been proliferators of missile technology. A very scary prospect is if they were to proliferate NUCLEAR MISSILES, which I consider a good possibility, based on their prior proliferation of missiles.
    Bush appears to be using China and Russia, to put pressure on North Korea to abandon these weapons, which might yield fruit in a non-combative solution, but so far there is no evidence that is going anywhere.
    Again, I'd argue that maintaining a strong deterrant force would be useful in negotiating a solution with North Korea. But Bush has not built a deterrant there.

I really don't give a flying crap about personal attacks on Rumsfeld or Bush or Wolfowitz or Powell or Cheney, with speculative allegations that are constantly made without proof.

I fully accept Bush neo-conservatives wanted to attack Iraq and sweep the Middle East of terrorism, and have pressed that ideology as a new U.S. policy since the Bush Sr. years in the early 1990's.
But I dispute that they used deception to motivate that invasion.

The fact that Wolfowiz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., had a vision for the Middle East, for the region to be democratized and stripped of terrorism through military intervention, does NOT mean, or PROVE, that they used deceit to achieve it.

On every single political issue that is legislated, and on every international action, negotiation and political leverage is used.
You could argue that every President, Congressman and Senator, on whatever issue they have passionately pushed, has "lied" to the American People. Certainly, Roosevelt "lied" to the American people in many key aspects, to motivate public opinion to support war against Germany and Japan. And when even the most just war in U.S. history is brought into question, what persuasion toward war could possibly be justified?
In the case of World War II, if it were given the same pacifist/liberal rationalization and analysis, we would not have even defended our country even THEN, against certain annihilation.

And I think a similar fanatic and merciless enemy is spawning now in the Muslim world, if we allow it to.

I think persuasion toward any action requires a degree of bending the truth (a.k.a., "spin") to rally factions together in a democracy, whether that persuasion is by Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan or Bush. The alternative is NO leadership (a Chamberlain) that ineffectually does nothing and appeases other nations, against the national interest, until it is too late.

But regardless, the WMD urgency in Iraq was ONE PART of Bush's laundry list rhetoric of why we needed to rally and invade Iraq, and there were many OTHER reasons, stated over and over in the months leading up to the war.
So liberal/Democrat misrepresentation that WMD's were the "sole reason" doesn't ring true.
The MANY reasons were clearly stated, PRIOR to the war.

And the dispute of many in various branches of government --in the CIA, in the U.S. military, and other U.S. intelligence sources-- was very clear and discussed in the news, BEFORE the war. It wasn't something suddenly discovered AFTER the war.
And --as with every previous war I've seen, under various Presidents-- there are those who agreed at the time, and those who didn't. So it is misrepresentative of liberal/Democrats to say that there are suddenly shocking revelations, that the whole of Washington was deceived by an exaggerated threat of Iraqi WMD's.
ALL the reasons for war were given prior to the war, WMD's among them, and the objections of some in the Pentagon and the CIA, and even Colin Powell, were amply noted in the press, prior to the war.

And as I pointed out from a previous article, British Prime Minister Tony Blair still stands by the British intelligence that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger.
( I previously quoted a piece from the Weekly Standard in another Iraq topic, that I can't find now, but this article from Fox News covers the same ground: )

"Blair Stands by Niger Uranium claim"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92117,00.html


In the article I quoted, Iraq unquestionably purchased uranium from Niger in the 1980's. And the fact that Iraq would go back to the same sources for uranium in the recent past is not so wild in light of those past sales.
Iraq had a nuclear reactor used to cultivate weapons grade plutonium, that Israel bombed to the ground in 1981.
It is not like Saddam Hussein never pursued nuclear weapons. On the contrary, Saddam explored many methods to procure nuclear weapons. And that's why I can't understand liberal outrage, that the idea Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons is somehow ridiculous.


Many reasons were given for the invasion, and I accept that no one could have known that WMD's would be so difficult to find, post-invasion (I still believe weapons exist and could still be hidden. Many believe that Hussein at least kept the skeleton of a WMD program going, if not a stockpile of WMD's, so that WMD production could begin immediately after U.N. sanctions were lifted. )
And in any case (whether the documented weapons still exist or were secretly destroyed by Saddam) both the U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTORS and SADDAM'S OWN INVENTORY RECORDS have shown that large stocks of Sarin, VX, and Anthrax weapons did exist, and are still missing.
Regardless of anything else that is found or not found, THOSE WEAPONS exist, and have never been accounted for.

And that is confirmed by sources that have nothing to do with U.S. investigations, or the scouts'-honor word of the Bush administration.