Y’know how you read something that you already figured was true, but you just needed to see it in writing? Yeah.
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Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but that’s the President’s job. When you’re the President, it’s your job to act based on the situation in front of you. Claiming ignorance is saying you weren’t competent enough to do what the nation put you in office to do. If you couldn’t figure out whether or not Saddam had WMD, then you sure as hell shouldn’t have been the one at the red button. Rove then, like so many other right-wing blowhards, mentions that lots of Democrats thought Iraq had the WMDs too. There’s a big reason for that: the President said they did. If your doctor tells you that you have cancer and you agree to an operation, only it turns out you were fine, the doctor can’t plead “but he thought he had the tumor too!” when he gets sued.
They postulate it’s related to the finding of broken-down chemical weapons back then. Regardless, the message is clear. Despite no concrete evidence, the people believe the lie. Redcoats accuse the Lebanese for being to blame for Hezbollah, well now America is to blame for Bush. Any backlash for his shit is on your, and our, heads. Thanks. Also, is it any coincidence that it’s the religious-right types most apt to believe in the WMDs regardless of the complete lack of evidence? Hm. [tags]iraq, wmds, poll, survey[/tags]
Who are these individuals? Who wrote the report? The Outfoxed documentary makes a good case about Fox’s tendency to supplant “I believe” with “some say”, and here’s another great instance of it. Gibson’s talking out his ass and hiding behind “some say” to avoid any responsibility. Now, there is one man who claimed Saddam put his weapons in Syria. His name is Georges Sada, but I already covered the problem with going on his word. Once again Fox is just making things up and pretending to be good journalists. [tags]fox news, wmds, hezbollah, iraq, saddam[/tags]
I think I’ve finally figured out the secret behind Bush’s strange foreign policy priorities. Threats to the United States are not judged by policy, or rhetoric, or nuclear capability, or military size. Threats are judged by mustaches. At this point, it’s fairly obvious that George Bush is terrified of mustaches. The thicker and fuller and better-groomed a tyrant’s mustache is, the bigger a threat he is to America. Before he got his post-invasion Crazy Mountain Man look, Saddam Hussein had an amazing mustache. It was dark, full, and trimmed just right. It was a great mustache. So he was a massive threat, and we invaded him. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a decent mustache. It’s a bit uneven, not quite as well-trimmed, and not nearly as thick as Hussein’s, but it’s a nice enough mustache. We see Iran as a threat, but I don’t think we’re going to invade until Ahmadinejad picks up some Just For Men. Kim Jong Il is mustacheless. He is without a mustache. His very state of being is sans mustache. He might have all of the nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles in the world, but I don’t think the administration’s going to even consider attacking North Korea until Jong Il gets something on his upper lip. This is just a theory, but it would explain a lot of things. Why else would we rush headfirst into Iraq, snubbing Iran and ignoring North Korea to disarm a much smaller “threat?” Because Hussein’s mustache had to be stopped first.
There’s a lot of talk that nuclear weapons aren’t on the menu for Iran, and that it’s unfair for them to be barred from uranium enrichment by countries with nukes. On enrichment, Ayatollah Khamanei said, “We must not lose this at any price, because any retreat would be a 100 percent loss.” Familiar rhetoric, no? What’s most striking is how Iran almost seems transparent with their intentions. No resistence to working with anyone who wants to see the facilities, no hiding from the UN, only the insistence that they be allowed to enrich uranium. Can the double standard be supported given their cooperation? [tags]iran, nuclear, wmds, united nations, uranium[/tags]
Which, of course, translates to “nuclear strikes are at the top of the table and we want to solve this issue without having to resort to diplomacy”. Either that or Bush has a different definition of diplomacy, which is pretty possible as well. I don’t even need to repeat myself that Iran isn’t going to stop enriching uranium or that the IAEA has no proof that they are trying to get nuclear weapons. I don’t even need to say that they are publically willing to work with the IAEA. I’ve said it multiple times already. What I found interesting was the China and Russia are both pushing hard for a negotiation.
Well that’s comforting. It’s one thing to piss off France or Austria, but if we start doing things that China and Russia actively oppose? Uh-oh. Plus we’ve got another problem with China. Recall that the Axis of Evil was Iraq/Iran/Korea. We hit Iraq, we’re pushing for Iran. If China feels that we’re going to go after North Korea, we’re going to have to deal with THEIR preventative measures. Then ol’ Joementum decided to come out and help scare the shit out of everyone.
Wow. I’m just speechless on that one. Israel has the most to worry about with a nuclear Iran, so he comes out and says we have no way to stop them, but that we could only delay the destruction of Jerusalem. Great work, Joe. Way to not create more paranoia. It’s not like statements like that would just help push along an irresponsible military attack due to blind fear. And don’t worry, if America attacks, Iran definitely isn’t going to just sit idly by while we march into Tehran.
America on one side, Iran on the other. China and Russia both looking like they’ll get pissed at anyone who starts the violence. Awesome. Honestly, I’m not sure I have a solution to this one. It’s just bad on all sides and I’m not sure what would fix anything and not end in a hell of a lot of bloodshed. All I know is that I neither want the United States to initiate the deaths, nor do I want the United States to suffer the first of them. Seems a possibility that it’ll be hard to accomplish that. [tags]Iran, Russia, China, George Bush, nuclear weapons, war, attacks, sanctions, IAEA, United Nations, Tehran, uranium, enrichment[/tags]
Of course, that’s presupposing that the watchdogs are shown all of the sites, that it isn’t a ruse to get them to think all’s well while secret sites are operating. Which, whether or not it’s true, will probably be amongst the reasons we go to war in October just in time for the elections. That’s the big question, then, isn’t it? Okay, Iran is clearly enriching uranium and that’s going to be used for something. Is it for weapons? Is it for power? The humanitarian in me wants to believe the latter, the faintly paranoid guy in me believes the former. So of course Bush has been pushing the UN to do something about it, which means some inspection.
Three years of investigations and no proof of even effort to build atomic weapons, let alone anything more concrete than that. You see, despite what Bush and the media might want us to believe, the enrichment of uranium alone doesn’t mean intent to build atomic weapons. Remember that Iran is around ten years away from a nuclear bomb currently. You can ponder for yourself why the administration won’t talk about that report. I’m impressed this one came to light so early. Rather than believe a report like that, we have horror reports cropping up, such as one that Iran could get a nuke in 16 days if they wanted to.
Oh, okay. So they aren’t at a state where they could make enough uranium in 16 days yet. And that’s only making enough uranium for a nuclear bomb, it says nothing about whether or not they have the technology for the actual device yet. But if at some point down the road they have all of the machines built and have the ability to create the bomb itself, they could make enough uranium to put in it in around 16 days! I wonder how long it takes the United States to make a new nuclear weapon. So we’re really left between a rock and a hard place, here. We’ve got Iran saying they’re meaning this for entirely peaceful purposes. Then we have Bush and his friends saying that Iran is going to drop nuclear bombs on Israel and everyone you love as soon as they can. Who are we supposed to believe? Can we believe either of them? Both? I can’t imagine Iran will never go for a nuke. It just doesn’t seem likely at all. The country wants one desparately, which I can honestly understand. They’re a target of the country with more atomic weapons than anyone else in the world as well as some nuclear-armed friends. That said, I cannot imagine they’d be so overt about it. You’d think Iran would pretend to have so few sites, then build the rest in secret. Of course, it’s our intelligence saying that Iran is going for the 54,000 so we’ll see what becomes of that. We’re still in Iraq, we’re still in Afghanistan, al Qaeda still exists and Iraq can’t settle on who they want leading the country thanks to a civil war. Bush wants to move his ass into Iran. I really, really want to know where the part is that tells us why he won’t completely screw up once again? Folks, Iraq, no matter what anyone says, was not a threat. There weren’t WMDs, those bio labs weren’t real, we were in no danger. The country ain’t that big and Saddam didn’t put up any resistance (talk to your local marines, they’ll verify how easy it was to drive right through). It hardly matters outside of the in-Iraq casualties that Bush totally botched the war because the country couldn’t do jack. How many of the deaths were insurgent-caused? Almost all? Now imagine if that same leadership put our military, and don’t kid yourself this won’t be an “air-only” operation, into Iran. Iran won’t just sit there and watch our soldiers driving around. They aren’t going to crumble in two weeks, they’ll actually fight back. And when it’s all over, the insurgency will be far larger. Guided by Bush, Iran will be a disaster so big people will only look at Iraq as the precursor to it, rather than the big disaster itself. No matter what, this will come to a head soon and it’s going to get ugly. Iran hits Israel, Israel hits back, next thing you know we really do have that nuclear war the movies have always talked about. I wonder what Australia is like to live in. They seem far away enough that the direct blasts wouldn’t get me, so I’d just be able to sit back and enjoy the nuclear winter. [tags]Iran, Iraq, George Bush, war, nuclear weapons, uranium, enrichment, terrorism, disaster, Israel[/tags]
Only problem? There weren’t any. The reports on the bio labs were wrong and now the White house is hopping mad about it. So now there’s a mad dash happening of “how in the world are we going to cover Bush’s ass this time?” Incredibly, they don’t seem to have any good answers yet. The first excuse appears to be that Bush is out of the loop. Again.
See? It’s not his fault. He was just working on intelligence that was proven wrong and the papers didn’t get there in time. After all, we can’t fault him for that, now can we? He wasn’t trying to mislead the country, he just wasn’t aware that what he was saying was wrong. Oh sure, that was the key bit of persuasion to get the country to back the war, but he THOUGHT it was right. So ABC apologized.
So apparently the excuse is that Bush wasn’t lying, he didn’t know. Because an ignorant president is better than a lying president (wasn’t that the entire reason people said Bush was better than Clinton?), according to Scotty McC. The second lovely nugget of ass-covering comes in saying that it wasn’t just Bush not knowing of the report, it wasn’t even available yet.
Ohhh, well that makes it all better. It wasn’t that the report was kicking around the White House and Bush didn’t know it was there. The report wasn’t even verified and available to the White House for a few months! So what does that tell us? That there’s a report that’s in the process of verification but Bush is just going to gloss over it because he wants to sound all strong and heroic when he says we have the Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or that no one told him about this report and just let him say what he wanted in the hopes no one would find out? I can’t see how either of those is better. Sure, the latter means Bush isn’t a conscious liar, but it doesn’t mean the country is any safer in his hands. No matter what, we now know we can’t trust a thing that comes out of Bush’s mouth. Either it’s a lie and he knows it, or it’s a lie and no one’s told him yet. And while it’s en vogue amongst liberal bloggers to rip on the WaPo because of their… bizarre choices in editorials and bloggers (Ben Domenech??), I still consider it amongst the best news sources in the nation, being the first to report the true Iraq death total for example. And they are not standing down, citing one good reason why NEITHER of those excuses are valid.
Which is true enough. No matter what the exact date of the report, no matter when exactly the report was truly verified and sent to the White House, the pictures of those biological labs were our main justification for a long time. And after a while, someone knew it was false. I’m willing to bet the guys who made that DIA report knew pretty early on. I’m just waiting for the day when new history textbooks come with “revised” accounts of American wars. Maybe we’ll win Vietnam and change the motivation for entering WWII. It’d also be nice to downplay all of that slavery nonsense and forget that we needed France’s help in the Revolutionary War. [tags]george bush, scott mcclellan, washington post, biological, weapons, wmd, labs, iraq[/tags]
The book is generally a biography of a man who was first in the Air Force and eventually became the aforementioned advisor to ol’ Saddam up until the day he was “removed from office”. It’s being touted as an uncompromising look into the world that us in the United States will never get a look at. More than anything, though, it says that not only was Operation Iraqi Freedom the greatest thing to ever happen to the Middle East, but Saddam DID have Weapons of Mass Destruction, and just before the invasion they were all moved to Syria. Basically what the man is giving us is that Bush was right and we should all be thankful for it. A nice sentiment, but I’m skeptical. This book came out on January 24th, if it were the case that this is what happened, the administration would have jumped on it and thrown it into every media outlet there is. After all, a man who claims to have seen the WMDs with his own two eyes and knew the men who hid them away? That’s pretty much all the right would need to shut the left down. So where is this frenzy? There isn’t one, and that’s pretty strange. Another thing is that the book seems far too pro-Bush and pro-America. I admit I haven’t read it, but Amazon’s printed review includes this, which all of the 5-star reviews corroborate:
The US is great, our Operation saved everyone, Iraq had WMDs and hid them, Saddam destroyed Iraq, the UN is corrupt, and Christianity is good while Islam growth in the West is something to be afraid of. This is hardly something you’d imagine from a man who was Saddam’s #2. Not only that, but he also claims to have been the one man who spoke honestly to Saddam, telling him when he was wrong and what he should be doing. In the same breath he said on TDS that Saddam was ruthless and all of that. We’ve got the “renegade” advisor who told Saddam what was what, and now he’s telling all of us that Bush was right and we’re saviours? I don’t think I’d be out of line to say it sounds too perfect. It also totally misses everything a guy by the name of Naji Sabri said, a CIA spy in Iraq who said Saddam had no weapons program. He said Saddam may have wanted to start up a program, but that one didn’t exist.
Now I know that sounds secondhand to Saba’s firsthand, but don’t worry, they’re both the same. Saba said in the interview to have talked to people who transported the weapons away. I’m curious as to what the CIA was even paying Sabri for. The man was a CIA spy in Iraq and given I can’t imagine how much money to deliver information, yet it was ignored. Don’t think he’s a Saddam sympathizer, either. The man’s brothers were arrested by Saddam’s forces, both were tortured and one died in prison. So I’d be apt to trust what he’s saying. Though, at the end of it all, all we have is two people who claim to know what was there, but with zero proof whatsoever. Though a fairly pressing question does pop into my head. If Saddam was transporting vast amounts of biological and nuclear weapons into Syria, how did no one in the area notice this? [tags]Daily Show, propaganda, WMDs, Iraq, war, terrorism, Syria, Saddam Hussein[/tags] |
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