Nobody to match Bush

Typical non-intellectual conservative. So there.

If we take the theory that is being suggested that those who are not "on board" are in some way helping Saddam is correct, then it would be equally true that all of those who wasted time and energy dividing the country during the Clinton era on charges of Whitewater and Monicagate were damaging the solidarity and strengthe of our society.

How much time and energy wasted by Clinton and his administration defending himself from the constant republican harassment could have been spent creating unity and well being. Our enemies were using this time to plot against us, seeing how divided we were here at home.

What utter garbage. The republicans had a full right to go after Clinton, just as the democrats have an equal and full right to go after Bush.

Of course the neocons will argue this is different, we are at war. Well folks, we are always at war of some kind or another. You can always make the argument that we should do nothing but surrender to authority once they have been elected, and simply keep out mouths shut until voting day.

Horseshit.

 

How much time and energy wasted by Clinton and his administration defending himself from the constant republican harassment could have been spent creating unity and well being.
______________________________

Give me one instance of Clinton/Gore even trying to create unity and well being in fly over country. Speaking of horse----. Try explaining "monuments", "Klamath Falls", "lynx hairs" etc., etc., etc.
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You can always make the argument that we should do nothing but surrender to authority once they have been elected, and simply keep out mouths shut until voting day.
_____________________________________

Is this an actual quote from the Clinton/Gore days or just a coincidence.

 

They were trying to create unity of liberal thought.

 

White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes
Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page A01


The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.

The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given."

The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable.

The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.

Bush administration officials last week said the CIA was not consulted about the claim. A senior White House official did not dispute that account, saying presidential remarks such as radio addresses are typically "circulated at the staff level" within the White House only.

Virtually all of the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa. But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq.

For example, the same Rose Garden speech and Sept. 28 radio address that mentioned the 45-minute accusation also included blunt assertions by Bush that "there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al Qaeda contacts but were not themselves part of al Qaeda.

Bush was more qualified in his major Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, mentioning al Qaeda members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq. The State of the Union address was also more hedged about whether al Qaeda members were in Iraq, saying "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."

Bush did not mention Iraq in his radio address yesterday. Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), delivering the Democratic radio address, suggested that the dispute over the uranium claim in the State of the Union "is about whether administration officials made a conscious and very troubling decision to create a false impression about the gravity and imminence of the threat that Iraq posed to America." Levin said there is evidence the uranium claim "was just one of many questionable statements and exaggerations by the intelligence community and administration officials in the buildup to the war."

The 45-minute accusation is particularly noteworthy because of the furor it has caused in Britain, where the charge originated. A parliamentary inquiry determined earlier this month that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source." The inquiry also concluded that "allegations of politically inspired meddling cannot credibly be established."

As it turns out, the 45-minute charge was not true; though forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, an adviser to the Bush administration on arms issues said last week that such weapons were not ready to be used on short notice.

The 45-minute allegation did not appear in the major speeches Bush made about Iraq in Cincinnati in October or in his State of the Union address, both of which were made after consultation with the CIA. But the White House considered the 45-minute claim significant and drew attention to it the day the British dossier was released. Asked if there was a "smoking gun" in the British report, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Sept. 24 highlighted that charge and the charge that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.

"I think there was new information in there, particularly about the 45-minute threshold by which Saddam Hussein has got his biological and chemical weapons triggered to be launched," Fleischer said. "There was new information in there about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium from African nations. That was new information."

The White House use of the 45-minute charge is another indication of its determination to build a case against Hussein even without the participation of U.S. intelligence services. The controversy over the administration's use of intelligence has largely focused on claims made about the Iraqi nuclear program, particularly attempts to buy uranium in Africa. But the accusation that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack on a moment's notice was significant because it added urgency to the administration's argument that Hussein had to be dealt with quickly.

Using the single-source British accusation appears to have violated the administration's own standard. In a briefing for reporters on Friday, a senior administration official, discussing the decision to remove from the Cincinnati speech an allegation that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger, said CIA Director George J. Tenet told the White House that "for a presidential speech, the standard ought to be higher than just relying upon one source. Oftentimes, a lot of these things that are embodied in this document are based on multiple sources. And in this case, that was a single source being cited, and he felt that that was not appropriate."

The British parliamentary inquiry reported this month that the claim came from one source, and "it appears that no evidence was found which corroborated the information supplied by the source, although it was consistent with a pattern of evidence of Iraq's military capability over time. Neither are we aware that there was any corroborating evidence from allies through the intelligence-sharing machinery. It is also significant that the US did not refer to the claim publicly." The report said the investigators "have not seen a satisfactory answer" to why the government gave the claim such visibility.

 

They were trying to create unity of liberal thought.
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Boy you got that one right and use the federal government to shove their liberal thought down everyones' throat. True tolerance.

 

Soldier deaths in Iraq will do Bush in.........

 

Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then.

By JOHN KIFNER - NY Times

The public, the distinguished military analyst wrote from Baghdad, had been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor."

"They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."

He added: "We are today not far from a disaster."

Sound familiar?

That was T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — writing in The Sunday Times of London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British occupation of what was then called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell who, more than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too.

During the First World War, Lawrence had been present at the birth of modern Arab nationalism and fought alongside its guerrillas to victory against the Ottoman Empire, only to see the same guerrilla tactics turned against the British in a rebellion in Iraq.

It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset.

It has not been going well, especially in Sunni-controlled central Iraq. Rather than being hailed as liberators, the American troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" there that is increasingly organized, their new regional commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said last week. A Pentagon-approved independent body of experts criticized the lack of postwar planning. Soldiers of the Army's Third Infantry Division, have been told they are not going home as planned. The cost, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now says, is running about $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice earlier estimates, and tens of thousands of troops may have to remain for years to come.

At the same time, the rationale for war is increasingly questioned. Terror weapons have not yet been found in Iraq, nor have links to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration is scrambling to explain how allegations based on forged documents purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger found their way into the State of the Union address. All this has not helped build global support: last week, India rejected an American request to send some 17,000 peacekeeping troops.

Meanwhile, clashes and increasingly sophisticated ambushes have been running at a rate of a dozen a day; by week's end, at least 33 American soldiers had been killed in hostilities since May 1, the date when President Bush declared that major combat was over.

Ominously, Iraqi crowds have emerged to dance and cheer around burned-out American Humvees.

Many American officers had sensed trouble ahead. As their armor clanked north to Baghdad, officers in the First Marine Division said over and over that the war was no problem; the difficulties would come with the rebuilding of Iraq. Indeed, in the face of American might and technology, the enemy, for the most part, simply did not show up for the big battles.

The British had a tougher time of it in World War I; they lost thousands of troops — most of them Indian — in a five-month Turkish siege of Kut. But they regrouped and captured Baghdad on March 11, 1917. Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude greeted the populace with a speech that could have been written today: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

Well, not quite, General.

When World War I began in 1914, most Arab lands were under the decaying Ottoman Empire, whose ruler, the caliph, was also Islam's supreme authority. The Ottomans were Germany's allies, and Britain saw a chance to seize the Middle East; its interests were to command the trade routes to India and, as it would develop, to control the emerging resource of oil. Lord Kitchener, the war minister, wanted to set up his own caliph — an Arab — as Britain's ally among the Muslims. Attention focused on Hussein ibn Ali, who as sherif of Mecca was the guardian of Islam's holiest sites.

Enter the Arab Bureau, a special intelligence unit set up in Cairo. It had little expertise, and its early efforts to inspire an Arab revolt failed. Then Lawrence, a young captain at the time, volunteered to take a look on his vacation time. He recruited Hussein's second son, Feisal, as the charismatic leader of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt. His raiders crossed the desert to capture the port of Aqaba from the rear, repeatedly blew up the Turks' railroad tracks and harassed their troops, and finally entered Damascus in triumph (although this had to be staged because the Australian cavalry got there first).

The British had promised Feisal that he would be king of the Arabs in Damascus and he arrived at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as the chief Arab spokesman. But Britain and France had secretly agreed to divide up the Middle East, and Feisal's reign in Damascus lasted just months — until the French came over the mountains from Lebanon.

Meanwhile, things were not going well for the British in Mesopotamia. Bell was arbitrarily drawing lines on the map to make a new country out of three former Ottoman provinces — Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center and Basra in the south. The districts were composed, respectively, of Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, all of whom hated each other — and the British even more. For one thing, the British were more efficient than the Turks in collecting taxes.

By 1920, the country was in full rebellion, from Shiite tribesmen in the south to Kurds in the north. There were some 425 deaths on the British side and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 among the Iraqis.

Hoping to restore order, the British, at the urging of Bell and Lawrence, switched Feisal's franchise to Iraq in 1921, although he had never set foot there. In a rigged plebiscite, the new king got 96 per cent of the votes. King Feisal and his strongman prime minister, Nuri as-Said, managed to solidify Sunni minority control over the rest of the country. But there was frequent turmoil.

IN response, the British turned to technology, with their air force commander, Arthur (Bomber) Harris, boasting that his biplanes had taught Iraqis that "within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded." Winston Churchill, who, as colonial secretary, presided over the creation of Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine, called Iraq an "ungrateful volcano."

Still, it took 35 years for the disaster that Lawrence predicted to become total. Iraq gained independence in 1931, but the British-sponsored monarchy hung on and guarded British interests until 1958, when the royal family was murdered and dragged through the streets. That ushered in a period of successive military and Baath Party coups, all brutal, and by 1979 Saddam Hussein had assumed total control.

Like the Arab Bureau, neoconservative policy makers in the Defense Department, who have long been the most prominent advocates of removing Mr. Hussein, have a vision of the Middle East and a candidate. The vision is of a democratic Iraq that would be an example of change to other, undemocratic, Arab nations — the kind of change they believe would remake the region and make easier an Arab-Israeli peace.

They have promoted as a leader Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite from a wealthy family that had been close to the old monarchy, even though some Middle East specialists in the State Department distrust him and consider him ineffectual. As the head of the Iraqi National Council, Mr. Chalabi recently returned to Iraq after living in exile for decades. The American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has appointed a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, with Mr. Chalabi among them.

One other thing about Colonel Lawrence. While some of his exploits are doubtless exaggerated, his guerrilla tactics are still much studied. He came to realize that when a small band faced more powerful conventional forces, its strength lay in avoiding direct battles and instead conducting stealthy raids. His own guerrilla force, he wrote in his memoir, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," had "a sophisticated alien enemy, disposed as an army of occupation in an area greater than could be dominated effectively from fortified posts. It had a friendly population, in which some 2 in the 100 were active, and the rest quietly sympathetic to the point of not betraying the movements of the minority."

That larger army could be demoralized and worn down, its patrols and sentries made nervous and drawn, waiting for the next attack and never sure from where it would come. It is a feeling the weary soldiers of the Third Infantry Division are coming to know well.

 

This last, in a nutshell, is how Optional777 has been working: He can't show why "containment is a strong argument," he simply asserts that it is strong, ignores how it contradicts his other (inconsistently maintained) arguments (that, for instance, his policy would not objectively support Saddam's grip on power), ignores or forgets prior extensive discussion of that policy option, then tops it all off with unfounded personal attacks on the individual who disagrees with him. The irony that these personal attacks are themselves based on the idea of someone else supposedly making personal attacks is, of course, not at all unusual for these exchanges.

Contrary to O777's assertions, I've never called anyone who offered the containment argument "loony" or "not sane" for having done so, though I do have my doubts about the morality and in some sense even the sanity of the policy, as I also have inescapable doubts about the sanity of anyone who feels the need to call someone else a "moron" or a "bastard" on the basis of a message board debate.

Here is how the word "sane" even entered into this discussion:

I wrote:

"Fighting those battles that we need to fight, when we can fight them and have a chance of managing the aftermath, isn't immoral or inconsistent. It's the only sane policy there is."

Optional777's response was:

"So, you are the only one who is sane and knows what sane policy is? What a self centered bastard you really are. As if you have a lock on what is sane."

Optional777 thus transforms my simple, non-controversial characterization of a sane policy into a statement supposedly about my own superior personal grip on sanity as compared to some other individual's or group's. There is, of course, no good reason to make this leap. By the same token, calling a particular stance or argument "empty" and "foolish" is neither an "ad hominem" attack nor the same as calling the person who offered it an empty fool. Ad hominem arguments work in precisely the opposite manner, in the suggestion, for example, that someone's statements must be false simply because that person is a fool – or the member of vast neocon conspiracy, or a liberal, or an egomaniac, or a bastard, or an oil man, or a chickenhawk, or a cowboy, or an individual of below average intelligence.

(Of course, in debate and in life, if someone repeatedly offers up foolish, empty, or compromised arguments, other people may stop listening. In such instances, it is not the fault of those who have repeatedly found themselves pointing out the foolishness and emptiness of the debater's arguments if others have inferred that he is an empty fool, and better ignored: The ad hominem, if there is one, has in effect been advanced by the original debater against himself.)

Over the course of subsequent posts, Optional777 repeated the claim that I make it a habit to attack the sanity of those who disagree with me. In the meantime, hoping to clarify the policy issue, I responded to his initial comments with the following question:

"So, you would consider fighting battles that we don't need to fight, at times when we can't fight them effectively and have no chance of managing the aftermath, to be a sane policy?"

After working his way down to my question, he finally conceded:

"Fighting battles that we don't need to fight is not a sane policy, no."

Does Optional777’s concession imply, as would logically follow from his initial comments, that he and I now both are pretending to “have a lock on what is sane”? Does he mean that we are now “self-centered bastards” together? No - the simple truth is that my original assertion was a non-controversial point about policy - so non-controversial that even Optional777 eventually finds himself agreeing with it. The false accusation regarding the term "loony" entered this discussion by way of a similar misreading - one that has been explored elsewhere.

I could try, as in the past, to address Optional777’s other comments point by point, false accusation by false accusation, misreading by misreading, inconsistency by inconsistency, unjustified presumption by unjustified presumption, counterfactual assertion by counterfactual assertion, but this exchange between us seems once again to have devolved into a personal battle that has little or nothing to do with the thread topic. It’s a battle I don’t think I really need to fight anymore, and, as we now seem to agree, fighting battles we don’t need to fight is not a sane policy.

If Optional777 wants to keep fighting this battle, he can do so by himself.

 

Saddam's fall causes terrorist cash shortage
Downfall of dictator also results in power vacuum in Arafat's Fatah

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 18, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

The downfall of Saddam Hussein has led to a shortage of funds for terrorists and has also created a power vacuum among terrorist organizations in general and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in particular, reports intelligence newsletter Geostrategy-Direct.

This power vacuum has been most strongly felt in southern Lebanon. Palestinian sources said all of the Iraqi-financed Palestinian organizations have suspended public activities, such as rallies and marches.

Iraq had been directly funding such groups as the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestine Liberation Front and the Arab Socialist Party.

Saddam's demise has also led to renewed pressure on the Palestinians by Lebanon and Syria. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has approved a series of appointments in the Fatah leadership in Lebanon. The first changes have already been made in Fatah's organization, including the Fatah commander for the Beirut area, sources said. The ex-commander was not identified.

Fatah has the largest presence in Lebanon outside of the Palestinian Authority. Lebanon has more than 300,000 Palestinian refugees and Fatah controls the Ein Hilwe camp outside Sidon, with a population of 75,000.

Meanwhile, Palestinian factions have been battling in Ein Hilwe. The battle has pitted Fatah forces against al-Qaida-linked insurgents led by Abdullah Sharbadi, chief of the Usbat Nur group. Sharbadi was injured in an assassination attempt earlier this year.

The official Egyptian news agency Mena reported that "radical changes" would be made in the Fatah leadership. The agency did not elaborate but Palestinian sources later said this would include a reduction of Fatah member salaries in Ein Hilwe and the revision of tasks in the movement.

The sources also said the powers of Col. Munir Maqdah, the Fatah militia commander in Lebanon, would be reduced. Maqdah is regarded as a leading opponent of any Fatah talks with Israel. He is a chief element in the tension between Palestinians and the Lebanese government.

Fatah secretary-general in Lebanon Sultan Abu Einin has opposed Maqdah. Under the proposed changes, Maqdah's authority would be transferred to other Fatah offices headed by Ahmed Nasser and Said Al Asus.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33631

 

Dems to Launch Ad Campaign on Bush, Iraq

Sunday July 20, 2003 8:09 PM


By WILL LESTER

Associated Press Writer

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - Democrats said Sunday they will launch a new television ad in Wisconsin accusing President Bush of misleading Americans on the threat from Iraq.

Republicans warned broadcasters not to air the ad, scheduled to start Monday, calling it ``deliberately false and misleading.''

The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through an e-mail campaign that started July 10 to help pay for an ad that sharply questions President Bush's veracity on Iraq's weapons.

The ad says: ``In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat. ... America took him at his word.''

The video shows Bush saying, ``Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

The ad continues: ``But now we find out it wasn't true.

``A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it.

``But he told us anyway.''

Republicans claim the ad improperly quotes Bush because his entire statement was: ``The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

Democratic spokesman Tony Welch said: ``With the British in there, the president's information is still false and misleading. It is exactly what the president said.''

Some Republicans have argued Bush's statement was technically accurate because it attributed the findings about uranium to the British.

``You can say whatever you want in a fund-raiser,'' Republican spokesman Jim Dyke said, ``but it steps over the line when you knowingly mislead people in your advertising.''

Welch said the ad would be aired in Madison, Wis., starting Monday for about a week and the amount spent would be almost $20,000. The ad would be paid for, at least partially, by the Democrats' e-mail campaign, he said.

Efforts to get comment from TV stations in Madison were not successful Sunday.

The ad squabble comes at a time when public trust in the president has been eroding, according to results released Sunday from a CNN-Time poll.

The poll found that 47 percent view Bush as a leader they can trust, while 51 percent said they have doubts and reservations. That's down from 56 percent who saw him as a leader they could trust in late March, with 41 percent having doubts.

The poll of 1,004 people taken Wednesday and Thursday had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.