An American Hero

Bitstream · Jan 12, 2007

great post rattyboy.

Quote from ratboy88:

Silly word games and weapons of mass destruction

http://www.hillnews.com/marshall/110503.aspx

"In recent months, Democrats have criticized President Bush for claiming that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to the United States. Ted Kennedy said it. Wes Clark said it. And plenty of others have, too.

But now Republicans say itâs a bum rap. A chorus of conservative columnists and talk-show hosts claims that nobody in the administration ever said any such thing.

âNo member of the administration,â conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, âused the term âimminent threatâ to describe Saddam Husseinâs Iraq. No one. â¦ [Wesley] Clark is repeating a lie that has been thoroughly exposed on the Internet and elsewhere, a lie that even The New York Times has stopped repeating.â

Could this possibly be true? Could all our memories be so faulty?

In a word, no.

Letâs start by looking at what the presidentâs spokesmen said about the âimminent threatâ claim before things in Iraq started going sour.

Last October, a reporter put this to Ari Fleischer: âAri, the president has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth.â

Fleischerâs answer? âYes.â

In January, Wolf Blitzer asked Dan Bartlett: âIs [Saddam] an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home.â
Bartlettâs answer? âWell, of course he is.â

A month after the war, another reporter asked Fleischer, âWell, we went to war, didnât we, to find these â because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isnât that true?â

Fleischerâs answer? âAbsolutely.â

I could go on. But I trust you get the point.

Itâs true that administration officials avoided the phrase âimminent threat.â But in making their argument, Sullivan and others are relying on a crafty verbal dodge â sort of like âI didnât accuse you of eating the cake. All I said was that you sliced it up and put it in your mouth.â

The issue is not the precise words the president and his deputies used but what arguments they made. And on that count, the record is devastatingly clear.

To call something an imminent threat means that the blow could come at any moment and that any delay in confronting it risks disaster. Websterâs defines âimminentâ as âready to take place; especially: hanging threateningly over oneâs head.â That gets it just about right. The White House described the Iraqi threat as a sword over our heads, a threat we had to confront now.

With this in mind, consider a few more examples.

Hereâs how Vice President Cheney described the threat in August 2002: âWhat we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness.â

A month later, Bush called Iraq an âurgent threat to America.â

The next month, he described the threat like this: âIraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. â¦ Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof â the smoking gun â that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.â

Or Fleischer two days after that: âAnother way to look at this is if Saddam Hussein holds a gun to your head even while he denies that he actually owns a gun, how safe should you feel?â

Or the president justifying war as it got under way: âThe people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.â

For more than six months, Bush and his top deputies told Americans that Iraq posed a grave, immediate and imminent threat. Delay risked horrors like WMD terrorist handoffs or mushroom clouds billowing over American cities.

Some now point to statements in which they seem to declaim the idea of an imminent threat. In the State of the Union, for instance, the president said: âSome have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late.â

But here the president isnât ruling out an âimminent threat,â but rather just bending the concept out of all recognition by arguing that the threat will be âimminentâ only when we get a formal warning from the potential attackers. And thatâs just more of the same rhetorical gobbledygook and obfuscation.

Critics like Sullivan want to put the onus on Democrats to untangle these silly word games if they want to talk about what we all know happened in the run-up to the war.

But thatâs just not how it works. Just as they canât undo what they did, the White House and its supporters canât undo what they said.

Thereâs no use denying it. It was only a year ago. We were there. We remember."
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elbow · Jan 12, 2007

Kids kicked off school bus because they spoke english only....it takes a village....i have a great idea.......round up all the wetbacks and send them to iraq to fight....give them minimum wage and they will be deliriously happy.....would put millions of fresh soldiers there.......that way the liberals could not say american soldiers dying there....

elbow · Jan 12, 2007

zzzzzzzzz...........let's see, 12 million wetbacks.....man that would be more than a surge......it would also be a purge.....beans and rice would save billions food expense....

elbow · Jan 12, 2007

zzzzzzzzz....what is wrong r u one of the 12 million and now heading south..that is truly a viable option....it will be called the wetback draft.

flytiger · Jan 12, 2007

My God. If you're trying to make a point, why not spend a minute, or at least call your Dad into the room and put something cogent out there?

If you can even spout the words Nazi and US in the same sentence, you deserve no credibility from anybody. Anybody knowing the history of Hitler, Mengele, Himler wouldn't even think of uttering such nonsense.

You can make the point the war is misdirected, that Bush totally butchered the mission. That's arguable. You can make the point we shouldn't have gone. You can make the point we've lost people needlessly. But what you can't argue is the valor of the people we put there. They have beliefs also, and they have the right to believe in the mission. The fact that this Lt. had the right to do what he did. He broke his law, plain and simple.

You can't argue either, that he isn't some dimwit to enlist knowingly in a volunteer Army and then complain about a combat deployment. 40 years ago, different story. You got drafted, and you could get a CO status. The Lt. is a putz. And this is such a great country, even the politicians can't totally ruin it, but God knows they're trying. That's not arguable.

If you remember, when Bush 41 sent troops to battle Hussein, he cried, because he knew what it was like. Ever been to a VA hospital? Let's get it over with and steel ourselves to accept these people back in society. They are going to need our help.

Now if you'd like to make a point, and you would other people to listen to your views, try a bit of civility. Maybe you could even save a life.

Respectfully submitted.
FT

Hit the joke thread. You need to lighten up.

OldTrader · Jan 12, 2007

Quote from ratboy88:

read it sometimes?? please tell me right now why we went dipshit. no wmd's, no 9/11 connection, no al qaeda connection... torture??? yeah right.... gassing his own people??? nope.. US army war college said that was not saddam. UN resolutions??? that is the biggest joke.... if that were the case we would have blown israel off the map years ago. this administration only cites the UN when it suits their needs, they usually blast the UN.

come on oldtraitor... give me one F'ing reason.... just one.

please tell me where galloway is wrong... just one thing concerning this war.
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Hey Ratsass:

If you're a Saadam sympathizer like Galloway...be my guest. Again, the question in this thread is whether a guy who violates Article 92 of the Code of Military Justice is a hero.

Better yet...answer this. Should each member of the military that disagrees with the Iraq war simply refuse to go? Article 92 does not apply to anyone who has a reason to disagree with the war?

OldTrader

elbow · Jan 12, 2007

Hitler was one of many of Satan's disciples. Himmler, and the rest were lowest of the low. Killing women and children with pictures beyond belief as proof positive of the atrocities and the fool from Iran says " no holocaust"..... Chavez and Osama are as crazy as he..............

ratboy88 · Jan 12, 2007

Quote from flytiger:

You can make the point we've lost people needlessly. But what you can't argue is the valor of the people we put there. They have beliefs also, and they have the right to believe in the mission. The fact that this Lt. had the right to do what he did. He broke his law, plain and simple.

You can't argue either, that he isn't some dimwit to enlist knowingly in a volunteer Army and then complain about a combat deployment. 40 years ago, different story. You got drafted, and you could get a CO status. The Lt. is a putz. And this is such a great country, even the politicians can't totally ruin it, but God knows they're trying. That's not arguable.

If you remember, when Bush 41 sent troops to battle Hussein, he cried, because he knew what it was like. Ever been to a VA hospital? Let's get it over with and steel ourselves to accept these people back in society. They are going to need our help.

Now if you'd like to make a point, and you would other people to listen to your views, try a bit of civility. Maybe you could even save a life.

Respectfully submitted.
FT

Hit the joke thread. You need to lighten up.
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it is sorta like buying stock and then finding out it is being illegally naked shorted. at that point you are up shit creek..... did you know when you bought it that the govt was corrupt and the dept.s responsible for keeping a sound market were in fact part of the problem. if you knew.. you would never buy it. but once you're in it.... you can sell at a loss and go after the bad guys or you can be a coward and just whimper and accept the corruption.

once good men find out they have been swindled they make tough choices. thats when principles and god come into play... not the laws of corrupt politicians.

as far as bush 41 crying did he cry when they faked satellite photos?? did they cry when april glaspie told saddam we wouldn't interfere in arab vs arab disputes??? did he cry when hill and knowltin set up a fake news conference with a kuwaiti ambassadors daughter and lied about babies being slaughtered from their incubators??? come on fly... you of all people need to wake up. you understand the scam in the markets... wake up to this.

ratboy88 · Jan 12, 2007

Quote from elbow:

Kids kicked off school bus because they spoke english only....it takes a village....i have a great idea.......round up all the wetbacks and send them to iraq to fight....give them minimum wage and they will be deliriously happy.....would put millions of fresh soldiers there.......that way the liberals could not say american soldiers dying there....
More...

trust me that is the reason for amnesty..... but tell me.. what rock did you crawl out from. let me guess... you are vermin77's smarter brother?

OldTrader · Jan 12, 2007

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

Suppose what Bush has done is in fact unconstitutional.

Is it then right for an officer to blindly go against what is constitutional simply because the president orders it?

You are missing the point, as at Nuremberg they did not go after soldiers...they went after officers. The excuse is that they were simply following the orders of a higher officer, or the Fuhrer.

For an officer to knowingly act against what he in his heart believes is against the constitution is right, simply because an elected official says so?

Man, this is why people have a problem with blind followers who view the president as king, and the military as his bitch to order as he damn well pleases..
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What has Bush done that is unconstitutional? Again, read the War Authorization by Congress.

There needs to be something beyond a guy like Galloway calling everything a "pack of lies" before you call it unconstitutional.

Do you believe that members of the military, on their own, should decide that Bush acted unconstitutionally, and therefore should willfully disobey an order, thus violating Article 92 of the US Military Code of Justice?

Set that one simple belief into play and you will have effectively disbanded the military. The military is real simple...people follow orders because they are trained to do it...because they know if they don't they'll be court martialled. Once you've withdrawn that penalty, and substituted a military members judgment "IN THEIR HEART" as to whether it is unconstitutional, and goodbye military.

OldTrader