Okay, the following turdlet is not true at all…
It is also a known fact that the entire global community believed that Iraq was in posession of wmd’s witht the possibility of nuclear armament.
Just as some claim the word lie is being abused I’ll claim the word fact is being abused. Oh, the asshole of the English language is going to be extremely sore by the time this election is over…
Pork, it’s possible, but certainly not verified at this point. For all we know someone is hoping to dupe the US into going into Syria next…
[quote]rainjack wrote:
It is also a known fact that the entire global community believed that Iraq was in posession of wmd’s witht the possibility of nuclear armament.[/quote]
No, what is fact is that the entire global community was duped by bush/cheney/powell/rumsfeld and their lies. A few, most notably France, Germany and Russia, stood up and called BULLSHIT. They are, of course, no longer “with us”.
Wasted years you say bush claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat I never heard him say that so why don’t you tell us when he said that. Bush said they are “a threat”. I agreee they were a threat. Bush followed a time frame that removed saddam as a threat as quickly as possible and gave himself the maximum amount of time for damage control in Iraq before the next presidential election. I call that being politicaly astute. I think the ted kennedys are upset that bush did this in a way that isn’t political suicide and are being totally unfair in their criticism. If anything is hurting democracy in the us it’s the radical polarization of the two parties and the downright nastieness of both groups. It has turned off most people that is why voter turn out is so poor.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Wasted years you say bush claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat I never heard him say that so why don’t you tell us when he said that. Bush said they are “a threat”.[/quote]
There’s no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
“We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”
Iraq was “the most dangerous threat of our time.”
“Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat…He was a threat. He’s not a threat now.”
“Absolutely.”
“We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended.”
“The threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction will be removed.”
“It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended.”
“The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”
“The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations.”
“This is about imminent threat.”
Iraq is “a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies.”
Iraq poses “terrible threats to the civilized world.”
Iraq “threatens the United States of America.”
“Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
“Well, of course he is.”
“Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It’s a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It’s a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.”
“The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. … Iraq is a threat, a real threat.”
“The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands.”
“I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month…So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?”
“Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.”
“I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq.”
“There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein.”
“The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace.”
“There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.”
“The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency.”
“There’s a grave threat in Iraq. There just is.”
“This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined.”
“No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
“Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons.”
“Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness.”
By golly you’re right sifu, bushleague himself never used the words imminent and threat together in the same sentence. So I guess it doesn’t count.
Russia now admits that there were ties between Iraq and Bin Laden. How did Bush dupe Russia? Clinton admits Saddam had WMDs. How did Bush dupe him? Gore admitted Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. How did Bush dupe him? Are liberals so stupid that some hick from Crawford can use the Jedi mind trick on them?
TME:
Sifu was mistaken. I think he was confused between the fact that the Bush Administration never claimed Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and this item.
The Bush Administration did claim, as one of its justifications for going into Iraq, that Saddam, based on intelligence concerning his chemical and biological weapons systems, as well as intelligence concerning his continued attempts to get missle systems from North Korea and reports from British intelligence of Saddam attempting to get fissionable material, that he did pose an imminent threat. Please do not forget the other justifications that the Bush Administration offered for going into Iraq: 1) humanitarian; 2) strategic stabilization of an important area; 3) long-term American interests of having an ally in the area to counter our current dependence on the Saudi Arabia alliance, which has been the case ever since the Shah in Iran fell in 1979.
Please recall that not one other country at the time disputed the idea that Saddam had large quantities of biological and chemical weapons. Please note that, while we do not have all the info, Russia has claimed to have warned the U.S. that Saddam was actively planning terrorist striked against U.S. targets – even while opposing the Iraq incursion for its own economic reasons.
Doogie, your statements have a significant time element involved in them. I think everybody on the planet will admit Saddam had WMD at some point. The big question is when.
BostonBarrister,
Good stuff as always.
I suppose I run the risk of sounding like broken record when I keep harping about UN Resolutions that textually state that Saddam was a threat to the international peace.
Moreover, Russian President Putin has admitted that his country gave the US intelligence that Iraq was preparing international mischief. The intelligence was presented post 9-11.
The international community - or the nations that mattered, rather - believed Saddam was a threat. Fifteen out of 16 UNSC signatories attest to it (Syria abstained).
I am not a huge fan of some of bush’s policies, but I do think that he was right to consider saddam a threat. Lets not forget the recent revelations about AQ Kahn and his network. Saddam had plenty enough money to buy everything he had to offer. Saddam had no redeeming qualities and it is a good thing he has finally been dealt with. It was a huge mistake to leave him in power after the first gulf war. I live a mile from a huge community of expat Iraqi’s who have settled in america and become citizens, I remember when bush came here and met with some of them. They have something in common, Saddam tried to kill bush’s father, so of cousrse he is going to be sympathetic to them. Besides as president It’s his duty to take any attemp on a former presidents life personally, it’s an attack on the political process here. I wonder if any of the critics of the Iraq invasion have any knowledge of what the effects of these various weapons are. I’ll ever forget the stories my grandmother told me about my great grandfather who was mustard gassed in ww1 it took him a year of absolute agony to die. I wonder how many of the critics have read or seen Barefoot Gen. To those who haven’t Barefoot gen is a manga book written by a survivor of the hiroshima blast, it tells the story of a boy who survived the blast and the sights he saw. Things like people who had their skin partly melted by the flash of the bomb then they were hit by the blast which stretched it to the point that they looked kind of like flying squirrels. These weapons are no joke and the fact that someone who held a huge grudge against us had tried to get them should be enough to get him taken out. Lets also not forget that some of the countries that opposed us at the un are oil producing nations or in the case of France they own the banks where much of the oil revenues from Russia goes. The French and Russians didn’t think that the threat saddam posed to us was enough to take a hit in their wallet is what really is going on. Let face it if they were wrong, they were not the ones who were going to get hit. We are the main target not the French. Those people in this country who are so concerned about what the french have to say need to wake up and realize that the french were putting their own selfish interests before our legitimate security concerns.
What appals me is the way our supposed liberals are so busy bitching about the fate of a dirtball like Saddam, but they barely mention much more important issues like the patriot act and how our civil liberties are just being destroyed. This whole should we, shouldn’t we have done Iraq is just a big distraction and people need to wake up and realize that.
[quote]tme wrote:
No, what is fact is that the entire global community was duped by bush/cheney/powell/rumsfeld and their lies. A few, most notably France, Germany and Russia, stood up and called BULLSHIT. They are, of course, no longer “with us”.
[/quote]
OK - you got me. I’m part of the vast right-wing-conspiracy that duped the UN into adopting 17 resolutions regarding Iraq and his wepaons build up.
This was a real hard one to pull off - especially thru the Clinton years. But it was worth it.
tme - you don’t think the Oil for Food corruption had anything to do with the three stooges backing off, do you?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
The Bush Administration did claim, as one of its justifications for going into Iraq, that Saddam, based on intelligence concerning his chemical and biological weapons systems, as well as intelligence concerning his continued attempts to get missle systems from North Korea and reports from British intelligence of Saddam attempting to get fissionable material, that he did pose an imminent threat.[/quote]
BB, the issue is, and what I perhaps assumed Sifu to be alluding too, that the White House now denies that it ever referred to Iraq or Saddam as an “imminent threat”, and is attempting to infer that “imminent” is something the media invented. That’s just not true.
[quote]tme - you don’t think the Oil for Food corruption had anything to do with the three stooges backing off, do you?
[/quote]
Maybe it did, I don’t pretend to know. I do know that “the three stooges” told bushleague that Iraq did not possess WMD and that the UN should be given more time to complete their inspections. bushleague knew that the inspections would show that the sanctions were working, and that he would no longer be able to use “massive stockpiles” of WMD as his justification for invasion.
[quote]tme wrote:
BB, the issue is, and what I perhaps assumed Sifu to be alluding too, that the White House now denies that it ever referred to Iraq or Saddam as an “imminent threat”, and is attempting to infer that “imminent” is something the media invented. That’s just not true.
[/quote]
Really? I haven’t seen those denials? I remember there being a debate concerning the imminence of the threat Saddam posed, especially concerning whether it was a good idea to give Saddam more time to prove he was in compliance.
The sanctions were working allright half a million Iraqi’s died because of those sactions, while corrupt UN officials lined their pockets and all the oil producing nations benefited from the fact that 2.5 million barrels a day of iraqi were kept off of the market.
Anything that Saddam did that resembled compliance was merely to buy time, he was not going to change. niether was Uday or Qusay which meant that mess was going to continue to fester for a long time till someone went in and physically removed them. Anyone who thinks Saddam was not as viscious and as evil of a person who has ever lived is in denial.
Talk is cheap, the politicians who say we could have talked saddam into leaving Iraq or gotten the French Russians and Germans on board is just talking trash and insulting our intelligence. The French and Germans were not going to give up all the oil money the russian oligarchs are putting in their banks.
If any of you think the French were not motivated by oil money you need to explain why after the fall of Bagdad did the french put a proposal into the security council to continue limiting Iraq’s oil exports until WMD’s were found.
Now lets get onto more important issues like our civil liberties and how the patriot act essentially repealed the 4th amendment. Or how about free speech zones. Senator Byrd was the only senator to vote against the patriot act. Kerry voted for it. That is why he hasn’t brought that up as an issue. Instead he and kennedy are still on about saddam. This is called wag the dog and people are falling for it hook line and sinker. Lets not forget that some of the same major corporations that contribute to the republicans also donate to the democrats. All these democrats who are bitching about the neccessity of invading Iraq are being played and the republicans who are cheering bringing freedom to Iraq are missing the erosion of thier own liberties here in America. Both need to wake up to how the debate is playing them.
[quote]tme wrote:
Maybe it did, I don’t pretend to know…
[/quote]
Does that mean that you do pretend to know about the evils of the Bush Administration?
Pretty selective on what you pay attention to.
Based on what Wasted_Years wrote…
If you like what these guys write, and agree with them so much that you feel the need to copy and paste them here, then at least give them credit by citing them in your post.
You make it appear as if you are the one writing - that’s kind of against the law. At the very least you should get a zero for the class.
I referred to my education, not look like a big man, but to try and make a point. In the thread you refer to, there was a term being thrown around that I felt was racist in its conotation. I waved my education in his face to try and rebut him.
Upon further review, it was a bad call on my part.
If you are going to single me out as the name caller on these threads, I would submit that you try not to be quite so myopic in your rush to judgement.
I think it would be easier to find people here who DON’T resort to name calling.