If Bush Was A Liar On Iraq Then So Were the Libs

[BCPVP]

It very well might have been, but it's the kind of remark jaxmike would use. I think you're above his level.

[BluffTHIS!]

Well there's no way I could ever hope to outdo jaxmike. But he was right occasionally, and Cyrus is wrong a lot.

[Jedster]

This stuff below is so stupid. I mean incredibly stupid. Anyone who really thinks that the Democrats started the war in Iraq should be invited to the intellectual special olympics.

Not to defend Clinton here but it's now pretty clear that the policy of containment through occasional strikes and bombing Saddam's air defenses was extremely effective.

In other words, because of policies started under GHWB and continued by Clinton, Iraq did not pose a major threat.

So in 1998 Democrats and Republicans all looked the intelligence and decided that the Clinton approach made sense. And it worked.

Then Bush took office and we know what happened next. The brain damaged former cocaine addict, drunkard, and draft dodger listened to what his oil executive draft dodging VP had to say, and here we are now.

But anyone who truly thinks that a Democratic or liberal president would have done the same thing Bush did in Iraq is so stupid that they probably should not be allowed to vote. I'll go ask Katharine Harris for some advice on how to disenfranchise them.

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Excerpted from this link.

Jonathan Gurwitz: Opponents say Bush lied; read between the lines

Web Posted: 11/13/2005 12:00 AM CST


San Antonio Express-News

Opponents of President Bush routinely invoke the incantation that he lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to take the nation to war.

"Urges the President to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
— Text of Senate Concurrent Resolution 71, Jan. 28, 1998, co-sponsored by Democrats Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, Max Cleland, John Kerry and Robert Byrd, among others

In doing so, they conveniently overlook the fact that if Bush lied, a long list of liberal icons have also been lying for a very long time, some from before the time he arrived in the Oval Office.

"(Iraq) admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability — notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And might I say, UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production."
— Text of President Clinton's address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff, Feb. 17, 1998

Of course, it's not the continuity of intelligence findings and Bush's reliance on them that his detractors find objectionable. It's what he did in response.

"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
— Press release from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Dec. 16, 1998

Clinton fired cruise missiles and put his faith in what we now know was a corrupt and ineffectual U.N. sanctions regime in a fruitless effort to keep Saddam in a box.

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
— From an address by Al Gore to the Commonwealth Club of California, Sept. 23, 2002

In fairness to Clinton, there was no consensus in American politics to initiate major military operations against the Baathist regime or other state sponsors of international terror before Sept. 11, 2001. There was barely such a consensus afterward.

"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last four years ... he has continued to build those weapons."
— Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, Oct. 9, 2002

But the central issue of the presidential election one year ago was Iraq: why we are there, how we got there and whether Bush misled the nation.

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years."
— Floor statement of Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Oct. 10, 2002

Having lost that election — in effect, a plebiscite on what Bush did about the intelligence information he, his predecessors and Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate agreed upon — Bush opponents are left banging their heads against a wall, repeating the meaningless mantra, "Bush lied."

"Under Saddam's rule, Iraq has engaged in far-reaching human rights abuses, been a state sponsor of terrorism and has long sought to obtain and develop weapons of mass destruction."
— Statement from the Web site of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, dated 2002

Only the blindly partisan, the ignorant and the gullible can subscribe to the belief that Bush — and, somehow, Bush alone — lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

"I consider the prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein who can threaten not only his neighbors, but the stability of the region and the world, a very serious threat to the United States."
— Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York at a Jan. 22, 2003, press conference

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[MMMMMM]

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It is a well know fact that Israel has nothing to fear from either the front-line states or the whole Arab nation. Israel is stronger militarily than all the Arab states combined. Therefore, the security argument is dead at the starting gate.

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Israel must be eternally vigilant against those who wish to destroy her, and slaughter the Jews. Her security is not a given, and is potentially quite fragile.

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Its myriad Arab neighbors are many times more anachronistic throwbacks


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There is once crucial difference: I would not accept those Arab states as worthy of admittance in the family of western democracies. But Israel has pretensions that "it belongs". I say it is a hundred times more of an anachronism than British Royalty.

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What a TOTAL crock. The Arab states get a relative exemption for being backwards, merely because they are backwards? Israel is far more tolerant than they, both by custom and by law, yet Israel gets blamed first because Israel is expected to be better than they? Israel is more of an anachronism than the Arab states? Uh no, Cyrus: this isn't kindergarten; this is the grown-up world. ric.

All who value civil rights, religious freedom, equality of rights for all human beings, must rightly condemn the Arab states FAR MORE than Israel. Yet you claim that Israel irredentism and type of policies are the sort of thing that led to the slaughters in Europe. In reality, Israeli policy is primarily a DEFENSIVE mechanism, and it was the prejudices of the Europeans and Russians that led to the slaughters in Europe. Furthermore the Arab attitudes and Arab laws are far more similar to such bigoted views, than are any Israeli views or policies.

You've got it nearly 100% upside down, Cyrus. Why don't you start holding everyone to the same enlightened standards for a change.

In today's world, the Arab states are the MOST bigoted, MOST unequal, and MOST irrespective of equal civil rights for all persons.

If you want to start howling about how prejudice and unequal laws and policies lead to bloodshed and evil, you can start right where those things are worst. If the problem in the Middle East is prejudice and unequal treatment, Israel is NOT the main problem; the Arab states are. So stop disproportionately blaming the relative good guys in this scenario, and be willing to call a spade a spade and set the blame for bigotry, and bigoted laws customs and policies, where it most squarely belongs: on the Arab/Muslim states and Arab/Muslim peoples with their horrendously unequal bigoted laws and customs.

[Cyrus]

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There's no way I could ever hope to outdo jaxmike. But ... Cyrus is wrong a lot.

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I'd say you are giving it your best shot in the former field, and you're getting nowhere near proving the latter.

[Cyrus]

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Israel must be eternally vigilant against those who wish to destroy her, and slaughter the Jews. Her security is not a given, and is potentially quite fragile.

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Did I say that Israel should disarm? Did I suggest that Israel should forget about security? Why do you come up with such irrelevancies, then? What purpose do your platitudes serve?

I wrote simply this : " Israel has nothing to fear from either the front-line states or the whole Arab nation [because] Israel is stronger militarily than all the Arab states combined. Therefore, the security argument is dead at the starting gate."

The "security argument" is used by fanatical Zionists to justify the many crimes perpetrated by Israel, on an individual and state scale, against the unlucky Palestinian inhabitants of the land. It is still used today, to justify Israel's reluctance to grant even the absolute minimum of statehood for Palestinians, as it has been explicitly provided/dictated by numerous United Nations resolutions and also United States proclamations.

But it's a dead duck.


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Its myriad Arab neighbors are many times more anachronistic throwbacks.

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Have I ever once defended the regimes of the Arab states? Why then bring up this non-argument? This is a typical "Yeah-but-you-beat-your-wife" type of diversion.

All I'm saying is that Israel is promoted in the West as being far more advanced than those Arab states, when it is actually worse in its human rights record. Is there a similar to Israel's amount of torture, murder and abuse directed a whole nation that is being waged anywhere in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt or Jordan ? I don't think so.


Once again, I was very explicit: "I would not accept those Arab states as worthy of admittance in the family of western democracies. But Israel has pretensions that "it belongs". I say it is a hundred times more of an anachronism than British Royalty."

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In today's world, the Arab states are the MOST bigoted, MOST unequal, and MOST irrespective of equal civil rights for all persons.

[/ QUOTE ] So, Morocco is worse than China, Egypt is worse than North Korea and Lebanon is worse than Congo.

Is this what you are saying, O Master Of The Inane Hyperbole?

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If you want to start howling about how ... policies lead to bloodshed and evil, you can start right where those things are worst.

[/ QUOTE ]Thanks, I will.

I will start at the notion whereby a nation is enforced at the heartland of another, with the explicit aim of deporting the local inhabitants and waging war in the most ferocious manner until the ex-inhabitants and their neighboring brethren are subjugated to the will of the newcomers (viz. Zabotinsky et al).

Will this do, O Master Of The Half-Baked Idea?

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[MMMMMM]

Cyrus, you wrote this: [ QUOTE ]
There is nothing for Israel to fear except itself. It is a living anachronism among western democracies, a throwback to the nationalist, irredentist ideologies of the 19th century which predictably caused so much bloodshed in Europe for a hundred years.

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As I pointed out, if you're looking to blame ideologies for contributing to things like long European bloodsheds, don't first blame Israeli ideologies--which are mild indeed compared to its neighbors' bigoted laws and customs, and were significantly born of defensive necessity--blame instead those who yet adhere to truly archaic and far more grossly bigoted and unfair laws and customs. Since you're taking aim at the Middle East, and looking for pernicious ideologies, that would rightly mean blaming Israel LAST, not FIRST.

The evils visited upon Europe, especially the Holocaust, sprang from ideologies far more similar to the Arab/Muslim supremacist doctrines of past and present, which are encoded in actual law, than from anything resembling Zionism. Yet you manage to make it sound as if the opposite were true.

[Cyrus]

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The evils visited upon Europe, especially the Holocaust, sprang from ideologies far more similar to the Arab/Muslim supremacist doctrines of past and present, which are encoded in actual law, than from anything resembling Zionism. Yet you manage to make it sound as if the opposite were true.

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I will try to put this as gently and as delicately as possibly: You have no idea what you're talking about!

I would suggest that you start a new thread with this very text, quoted above, as a start. Readers who hold similar views to yours will then be disabused of 'em. (Little hope for you.)