Bwahahahahahahah - hahahahahahah! Excuse me but that was too damn funny - the old "Blame Clinton Gambit." And from Newsmax.com - did you order your Hillary is Evil playing cards while you were there?? Give me a break - or at least give me ONE verifiable quote to substantiate your original claim (and the point of this exchange) that "lies" were told to the American people by accountable public officials to undermine the administration.
OMG - You quote the dregs of right-wing lunacy ??? I guess I could google up some Michael Moore gibberish to counter that with - but I'm sorry - I refuse to succumb to the lowest common denominator. Ann (Joe have-you-no-decency McCarthy) Coulter? Listen - I respect the views of the conservative right - but this is just pure crap, and you know it. Even that piece by William F. Buckley Jr., was almost acceptable criticism, despite the fact that Buckley, through it, leaves little doubt that he in fact lives in an America that has never truly existed except perhaps among the cliques of Skull-and-bones, and the landed gentry of the Antebellum.
Actually Kummer - you're on my ignore list - your verbosity is just absurd - way too much crap to slog through - make your points concise and on topic for a change will ya? Till then you're just an attention whore in my book. And before you go loquacious on my ass kindly observe; I did not engage you in this thread - so save it. - ignore re-enabled.
You keep harping on the "lies" aspect of the earlier post. The "lies" were followed by a "?", does that not show on your screen. It also ends with a question about "faulty intelligence" for the ten warnings. I personally have never stated that they are lies or believe that they raise to that level. I do believe that they were concerns, much the same as my own, at the beginning of the Afghan campaign. The difference in Iraq was when I heard the same things I tended to remember similar warnings from a year before and expected them to not prove out. I don't watch Coulter but I would certainly agree more with her than Salon. Talk about the dregs.
I am disappointed in the administration's reaction to this relentless attempt by the Dem's and leftwing press to paint the President as a liar. It is totally insufficient to say George Tenet screwed up or send Condi Rice out for damage control. The administration's big guns, Rumsfeld and Powell, should have immediately gone on the offensive and labelled the attacks as gutter politics. There is a time for civility and a time to go ballistic, and this was the latter. The President's enemies have a finely tuned sense for smelling blood in the water, and once they got the scent during a slow news cycle in the dead of summer, the game was on. The irony is the actual claim that Saddam was reported to be seeking uranium was clearly true, but the facts were conveniently ignored once the grandstanding Joe Wilson got in the spotlight and started blathering about how everyone ignored him. A double irony is that Wilson was deeply conflicted as a war opponent and paid lackey for a Saudi-funded middle east institute and could have been easily discredited. Politics can be a contact sport, but some allegations are too corrosive to let stand. To paint the President as a deliberate liar is one of the worst. It is particularly dangerous when we have troops in the field taking casualties, and we may be forced to take action in Iran or N. Korea. I have to think that the resignation of veteran press secretary Ari Fleischer affected the response. The administration's bumbling had all the hallmarks of no one being in charge. And while we're talking about no one in charge, how is it that George Tenet is still employed? Unfortunately, now he has lifetime tenure since firing him would seem to be making him the fall guy. The man perhaps shouldn't get the boot for this disaster, but he should get it for losing control over the Agency. He is a lifelong Democrat and former Senate staffer, so he knows how the political game is played. Yet he presides over an agency with nonstop leaks designed to embarrass the President? We're not talking about the friggin' Commerce Department here. This is the actual Central Intelligence Agency. They can put any employee they want on a lie detector, tap their phones, follow them aroudn the clock, transfer them to afghanistan, whatever. And Tenet is not able to control leaks?
More instances of being forced, like we were "forced" to wage war with Iraq pre-emptively because of all those nasty WMD pointed directly at us? It is rough not to actually make choices, nor take responsibility for poor ones, but to live life as a victim of others who force war upon you. A mentality that believes we were "forced" into war with Iraq is the same mentality that assumes we are forced into a democracy...hmmm, the administration is trying to force their brand of democracy on Iraq...sucks to never have a choice. I see we how have Iraqi's governing Iraq? I must have missed the free elections that put them in power.
Madison, You must long for the days when we had President Charisma running things, or should I start calling him President Credibility? He really had the respect of the military and the country, and what is really important, the euro's thought he was swell. Why can't Bush be more like him? When Saddam got out of line, he fired off a few million bucks worth of cruise missiles and did a victory lap around the White House. None of that aircraft carrier stuff for him, anyway the troops tended to boo and jeer him and it was tough to get over to the hotel for his 'nooner if he was stuck out on some damn boat. What a leader!!!