Iraq debate
Posted at 10:49am on May 29, 2008 Quotes that Kill..or..The Definitive 'Bush Lied People Died' Smackdown
By speciallist
Promoted by absentee
Among the many misrepresentations and distortions that have been repeated about the debate over Iraq, one stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively smacked down.
This charge has had amazing success in getting established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by irrefutable facts and evidence. I want to expose it for the lie that it really is. I hope to refresh memories that have grown dim.
Another "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
We were informed of the possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies...and there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
Lets say, for the sake of argument, that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion. It defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false.
Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
George Tenet, his own CIA director and hold over from the Clinton administration, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States.
The National Intelligence Estimate of 2002 offered with "high confidence" that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."
The consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.
Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written...
Posted in Archived | Iraq debate | President Bush — Comments (81) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:11pm on May 22, 2008 George W. Bush And The Curious Case Of The Dog In The Night-Time
By Dan McLaughlin
Beldar reminds us of the two great accomplishments of George W. Bush's national security policy. I have nothing to add to the first, which affects me personally, but I would underline the second:
[E]ven if the Iraq War did nothing else (a proposition I reject), ... it emphatically demonstrated to every other country in the world that, in their dealings with the United States, there simply is no "military solution" which can favor them.
This can't be emphasized often enough in discussing the deterrent effect of the war. Yes, the war has been hard at times on the U.S., but it is not lost on other regimes how badly it ended for Saddam, his sons and his senior apparatchiks. Or for Zarqawi or other leaders of the foreign forces opposing us in Iraq. That's a huge distinction from how Vietnam ended for Ho's regime. Only the Iranians have really come out of this well, and only because they have not yet provoked us to the point where we would turn our guns on them directly. And if the U.S. did invade and seek to conquer Iran in the same fashion as Iraq, no matter how difficult that would be for the U.S., it would be much worse for the Iranian regime.
Posted at 1:00pm on Nov. 30, 2007 Rove: WH Didn't Want Iraq Vote 'Politicized'
The Left Won't Like It, But He's Telling the Truth
By Mark I
Former White House Political Driector Karl Rove told PBS's Charlie Rose that there was a debate in the Administration about whether or not there should be a vote on the Iraq War Resolution before the 2002 Congressional elections.
Despite Rose's incredulous reaction, the reporting from the time confirms that Rove is correct. It was Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and other Congressional Democrats who demanded that Congress be allowed to vote on the resolution before recessing for the 2002 mid-term elections.
Read on...
Posted in Democrats | Iraq | Iraq debate | Iraq War Resolution | senate | Tom Daschle | War — Comments (17)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:59am on Mar. 14, 2007 Harry Reid Thinks He's Got The Surrender Right This Time
By RS Insider
It took him 17 tries, but this time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thinks he has finally got it right. His latest iteration in the sad and long list of Democrat Iraq proposals goes further than others in the past. Indeed, it had to. Democrats on Capitol Hill have been self-destructing as the extreme left-wing of their Party has consistently agitated for a full-on surrender resolution, with teeth.
Now they have it.
S.J. Res. 9 is a binding resolution that if passed, would be taken up by the House and then sent to the President for his signature (or veto). By introducing this resolution Reid seeks to change the troop's mission from his perch in the Senate and impose a hard deadline for complete troop withdrawal. Reid wants to micromanage the mission by limiting troop engagement to three specific purposes:
(1) Protecting United States and coalition personnel and infrastructure.
(2) Training and equipping Iraqi forces.
(3) Conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations.
If passed, troops in the field would be forced to determine in the blink of an eye whether or not their conduct passed through one of these three filters.
Scroll to minute 4:30 in this video in which UPI reporter Pam Hess describes the situation in Iraq right now. As she describes three masked men shooting a completely innocent young boy in the face four times ask yourself this question: would our troops, had they been there at that moment, have had the legal authority to stop the savagery if Reid got his way? Your conclusion has to be no. Taking action in such a situation would only have been legal if in the blink of an eye our military on the ground could have determined that this was a targeted counter terror operation. But how can you do that if you don't know who the actors are ahead of time?
This resolution would hamper our military in the worst of ways and would prohibit our best ambassadors of good will from continuing to be so.
Read on . . .
Posted in Congress | Harry Reid | Iraq debate — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:44am on Mar. 3, 2007 "I was not always able to give the case my full attention" [updated]
From Nifong to Murtha: sacrificing others' lives for political gain a hallmark of the modern Left
By Jeff Emanuel
Since the issuance of indictments last April, the prosecution of three former Duke University lacrosse players (all young white males) for the alleged rape of a black female “dancer” has continued, despite continuously mounting evidence against their assumed guilt. Included in this potentially exculpatory data was DNA evidence (which was suppressed – an act for which Nifong has now given eleven separate explanations).
Trusting his victim more than science, Nifong decided that all he needed to proceed with his case was the fact that, “in a photo line-up done April 4, the accuser identified [two of the accused] as her assailants “to a certainty of 100 percent,” and identified” the third to “a certainty of 90 percent”
Playing to the crowd in the racially-charged atmosphere which filled the scandalized community after the “victim” made her accusations, Nifong decided that he had more than enough evidence to proceed with the ruining of three young men’s lives – despite the fact that it took all of a month for the rest of the American public to glom on to the fact that, due to her countless revisions to every aspect of her story about the night in question, the accuser either (a) had no idea what she was talking about, or (b) was a pathological liar.
Public statement after public statement followed, with Nifong having appeared in front of the media more than 70 times by the end of May (though as soon as the defense began to hit back, and negative PR – also known as “the facts becoming public” – began to taint the case, the DA began publicly considering issuing a gag order. This idea was backed by the NAACP, which was suddenly worried that “media coverage of the alleged rape [would] deprive the alleged victim of her legal rights to a fair trial.” How typical of liberals – as similarly expressed in proposals like the Fairness Doctrine for talk radio, the modus operandi is, of course, to call for silencing of one or both sides once the PR machine begins broadcasting a message not 100% in tune with the “party line.”)
Now, almost a full year into the case, we learn from Nifong himself the very good reason why he continued the rape prosecution of these young men, destroying their reputations and threatening to deny their freedom with years in jail. That reason, which was disclosed in a letter on the case from Nifong which was “included in a voluminous filing [February 28] to the State Bar,” was this:
The lacrosse case arose “during the last few weeks of a hotly-contested Democratic Party primary in which I was seeking to retain my office,” [Nifong] said. “I was not always able to give the case my full attention.”
Read on . . .Posted in Democrats | Duke rape case | Iraq debate | Liberals — Comments (21)/ Email this page » / Read More »
