Certainly interesting:
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
Feith’s office “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith’s activities as “an alternative intelligence assessment process.”
An unclassified summary of the full document is scheduled for release today in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs. In that summary, a copy of which was obtained from another source by The Washington Post, the inspector general concluded that Feith’s assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a “mature symbiotic relationship” was not fully supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers.
At the time of Feith’s reporting, the CIA had concluded only that there was an “evolving” association, “based on sources of varying reliability.”
Expect to see the phrase “alternative intelligence assessment process” again. Feith’s remarks are priceless, too:
In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general’s conclusion that his actions, described in the report as “inappropriate,” were not unlawful. “This was not ‘alternative intelligence assessment,’ ” he said. “It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance.”
Now if he was just playing Devil’s Advocate, that would be one thing. But in hindsight, it looks like he was merely filling the role of advocate, and we made a series of decisions based upon his work. I am not of the opinion that intelligence is a 100% thing, and that there will always be uncertainties and we have to expect our leadership is acting in good faith and doing the best they can with the intelligence they have. I am not going to accuse people of “lying us into war,” or whatever you want to call it.
I will state, however, that at this point it is a virtual certainty that EVERY time an opportunity was made available to portray intelligence in a certain light, it was done. The document dumps ofthe past few years, the revelations during the Libby trial, bits and pieces of investigative journalism here and there make this pretty clear. Additionally, this administration would then downplay any criticism of those portrayals or attack those questioning them. I fully expect the spin machines to pitch a fit about this IG report. After all, Carl Levin’s name was mentioned, so it must be liberal bias.
Mr Furious
Deliberately marginalizing, ignoring or outright disputing the “whole” truth is the same thing to me, John.
They carefully crafted enough plausible deniability and “alternative reality” to refute charges of outright lying, but they knew what the fuck they were doing every step of the way, and it was carefully orchestrated misinformation and misleading the country into war. Call whatever helps you sleep at night.
I call it fucking lying.
tbogg
…and Captain Ed is leading the way.
matt
They presented information they knew was sketchy without letting us know it was sketchy, consequently scaring the shit out of us so we would support the war.
I don’t know why people are still so caught up on calling that “lying” but whatever.
Mr Furious
And regarding your title… there’s a big difference between “faulty” and “willfully misrepresentative.”
It wasn’t under oath, but does the phrase “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” ever come into play in matters as serious as life and death and war for these fucks?
They presented something more along the lines “whatever tangentially connected semi-truth from an unconfirmed source seems to buttress the argument we wish to present.”
If they were under oath it would be perjury. Any lawyers want to back that up for me?
It was lying. Not “faulty.” Presenting flawed or faulty intelligence as fact when you know differently, is lying. I don’ know how you can pretend otherwise.
Elvis Elvisberg
“we have to expect our leadership is acting in good faith and doing the best they can with the intelligence they have.”
I did have that expectation. I supported the war. I no longer have that expectation.
That everything you say about intelligence analysis– and that there was intense pressure on the CIA to go along– has been clear to me since summer 2003. This New Republic article, and this New Yorker article, made clear just how intelligence analysis was run. It wasn’t to get the right answers, it was to confirm preconceived notions.
Like the Boston Globe’s Bush AWOL National Guard story in 2000, I waited for this to seep into the mainstream media and conventional wisdom.
Both times, I was wrong.
Of all things, the reaction to the Amanda Marcotte story has given me some hope about the media’s ability to report facts and be somewhat less timid about the right-wing noise machine. Some press outlets are even reporting the fact that Bill Donahue is a crazed fringe right-winger who cynically trades on our instinctive deference to respected religious institutions to give him an automatic, unearned aura of credibility.
Marcotte is not someone I would have picked to be a standard-bearer, but you gotta take wins for reality where you can get ’em.
Pb
Well I’ll start by accusing Feith of it, along with the rest of the OSP, and the WHIG–“lying us into war” was their job:
Mr Furious
How you can compose that post and still hang onto “not lying” shows somne lingering effects of your Republican coma…
Mr Furious
Lucky for the American public, it’s Anna Nicole Smith 24/7. It’s a Friday, and nobody gives a shit about the ancient history that got us into this fucking fiasco of a War.
Elvis Elvisberg
By the way, little-known fact, in the course of reasearching that post, I found out that Googling “fuck it” site:newyorker.com turns up a surprising 38 hits. The Hersch article is something like the 7th result.
Tsulagi
Yeah, not to be confused with the same process of pulling crap out of your ass and calling it gold.
Shorter Feith: They were not providing what we wanted, so I did. And oh, BTW, not my fault.
I will.
Mr Furious
Yes, I am back, well-rested and ready to rumble. Where’s Darrell?
matt
I wanted to echo this because I think it’s important and something people often miss. If 99 analysts agree on something, and 1 analyst takes the opposite view, and you choose to present to the public information based on that lone analyst’s opinion, and it proves to be wrong, the intelligence wasn’t “faulty”, the intelligence community didn’t “fail”, ect.
As far as I can tell, this is the type of thing that happened over and over again in the laed up to the war.
Frank
Is that becuase you are an idiot, or because you are a traitor?
Tom Hilton
I am not going to accuse people of “lying us into war,” or whatevr you want to call it.
I will state, however, that at this point it is a virtual certainty that EVERY time an opportunity was made available to portray intelligence in a certain light, it was done.
That may be a distinction without a difference (IMO). Deception is deception, whether achieved through outright invention or through cherrypicking and spinning.
The Other Steve
I don’t know why not. That’s exactly what they did.
Mr Furious
Exactly Matt. It drives me crazy to hear the intel was faulty or wrong, or the classic “but, everybody thought…”
It’s bullshit. The evidence they chose to present was wrong. And they likely knew it and didn’t care. There’s a big difference.
Even at the time, there was plenty of contrary intel, it just wasn’t what the Administration wanted to hear. So they created their own fucking new “agency” to sit around and distill the farthest scraps of favorable intel into some bogus “case for war.”
The flaws and faults were NEVER with the intelligence—it is by it’s nature imperfect—it was with the manner in which it was analyzed, used and presented.
The Other Steve
He’s looking through old copies of hustler magazines for a spread eagle pic of anna nicole smith.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I’m gonna hafta agree with Tommy Franks on the subject of Feith: “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”
Just try to savor the momentary peace. We all know it’ll be over soon enough.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
I know Levin loves to grandstand, and God forbid anyone get between him and a camera… but couldn’t they have picked a better guy to talk about the accuracy of accepted intelligence regarding Saddam’s Iraq than this guy?
Or, to steal the weak meme of the moment, Carl Levin has been wrong about everything for ten years, so why should anyone care about anything he says?
dreggas
I did the same. I should have remembered learning early on the very simple motto DTA, Don’t Trust Anybody, especially the government. But I did and they lied, parse it anyway you want but deliberately concealing facts and tailoring information to your liking in a manner that is deceitful is still a lie.
They withheld evidence. Dougie Feith cooked the intel just as sure as Enron cooked the books and while there may be no law against lying there sure should be one against the shit that little pecker head pulled.
Richard Bottoms
Why not?
On the other hand, I wasn’t fool enough to vote for George Bush… twice, so my conscience is clear.
The bodies will continue to pile up even as Feith, Bush and the rest do their best to avioid prosocuted/impeached/tarred & feathered for their reckless disregard of anything having to do with reality.
I am quite sanguine knowing that the sacrifice these troops are making will keep a bunch of fundamentalist assholes from running the country for the next 20 years or more.
The Republicans I mean.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
I knew that would get the moonbat brigade up in arms. Heh.
John Cole
Furious, read this again:
I don;t think there is an inch of disagreement from what you are saying and what I am saying.
chopper
“alternative intelligence assessment-related program activities”
Richard Bottoms
Suckers.
Tsulagi
When Cheney’s Gestapo (Colin Powell’s term for Cheney’s PNAC butt boys) took over the Pentagon, there was an Air Force Lt. Col., LTC Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in intelligence gathering and analysis. Worked with NSA too. She became a part of Feith’s Office of Special Plans tasked with apparently the “alternative intelligence assessment process.”
Her words…
I didn’t get many Gentlemen-Cs in college, so maybe I don’t get the nuance, but her statement above tells me OSP’s job was TO FUCKING LIE. Oh, but since she resigned her commission, maybe that means she was a disgruntled employee. Or maybe she had a husband that got her the job in OSP. Yeah, that’s it.
chopper
i’ll give you the second one, but the first quote is from back when saddam had some leftover WMDs. the UN inspection team was having them destroyed. but saddam was acting all cagey with inspectors and the UN team was all ‘screw this noise, he’s holding out’. so clinton bombed everything in sight.
different time, different situation.
dreggas
I thoroughly admit I was suckered into it, difference is I pulled my head outta my ass unlike the 28 percenter’s. I’ve given my Mea Culpa and don’t need it heaped on anymore.
Jake
Relax, John Cole is snarking it up. From what I’ve gathered of his day job I can’t see him seriously arguing that deliberately giving faulty or incomplete information is anything but a lie.
Richard Bottoms
Except for the unfortunate by-product of their stupidity (dead soliders and iraqi babies), I am enjying every second of your disallusionment and self-recimination.
Why?
Because I fucking told you so. You didn’t listen. So suffer.
Your cherished political party and conservative movement has been overrun by bible thumping nuts, as if they are any worse than icons (assholes) like William F. Buckley who was just fine with segregation back 1955.
You were stupid, foolish, a pastsies for George Bush, Dick Cheney and the whole bunch.
If you voted for them I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for you as you watch the bodies pile up and consider your complicity.
In fact, I am more angry now that Democrats are starting to take power than before because it appears some of you STILL think this clown car administration has a shred of decency, competence, or shame for anything they do.
I hope these decisions haunt you the rest of your lives.
Mike
John, why is it so difficult for you to simply admit that they lied to you and all of us? You know it, we know it, and they know it. THEY LIED, and the Clintonian parsing to avoid the ACCURATE word “lie” simply makes you look foolish.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
You’re suffering from a common misconception. According to UN records, they hadn’t destroyed anything significant in terms of WMD since June 1994 (Levin’s statement was from a full 4+ years after that), and the basis of what Levin was saying — that WMD programs were still active and dangerous — was still dead wrong, if you accept current official reports.
John Cole
Because I am not sure they lied, Furious. I think they shaded everything to reach their own conclusions, but I am not sure they didn’t believe those conclusions.
Besides, isn’t being Clintonian a good thing? I would think that is high praise coming from you. :P
dreggas
I didn’t vote for any of them. Sit on your high horse I could care less. The government lied, again, I was foolish for believing them. I’m glad your enjoying yourself but guess what….I got over it and have moved on so you can save your popcorn for when those responsible have to give their mea culpa.
Pb
Then there was surely some lying going on there. But I think my favorite defense of this so far is that they were doing policy work, not intelligence work–that is to say, they weren’t fixing the policy around the intelligence, they were fixing the intelligence around the policy!
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
To believe that “Bush lied” is to believe that the Clinton Administration “lied” first and was in cahoots on the whole run-up to war. To believe that, you’d have to believe that during two election campaigns, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, each knowing that the other side was also lying on an issue of grave national security, had even one fearful candidate who “blew the whistle” on the whole affair. You would have to imagine a (post-Monica) Washington where national policies were put above partisanship and winning elections. If you believe that, there is not enough tinfoil on the planet for you.
Occam’s Razor: Covert intelligence operations attempting to detect the presense or absence of secret programs aren’t always accurate.
Richard Bottoms
Good, then you can ignore anything after “If you voted for them….”
Yes you could, to the point of infinity probably. I’m not a mathmatecian though.
And yes, it is a fucking 40ft high horse I’m on because I know I didn’t vote for them and I never believed them.
I didn’t laugh at 10 million people around the world who said “THIS IS A MISTAKE DON’T DO IT.”
I didn’t vote for an incompetent clown because he sounded like someone I might want to have a beer with (20 or 30 in his case) or deride the other guy because he spoke French.
I am not obligated to defend an administration that runs a torture facility 90 miles off shore or who snatches innocent men off the streets to be abused in my name.
I don’t sending an innocent man off to Syria to be tortured and then not have the backbone to take him off the terrorist watch list when it’s proved he is TOTALLY innocent.
I don’t want your mea culpa or anyone elses. If you were complicit in this war I want you to have nightmares, I want you to have regrets, and I want you to suffer.
It’s not much. But it will do.
Zifnab
The only difference in situation was that when Levin read the NIE in ’98 it wasn’t packed full of giant lies. The only difference in time was that we had Republicans in the White House and Congress who shut off all debate or investigation. Levin didn’t change, the country did.
But please, EEEL, tell us again why Levin shouldn’t have believed the NIE report and how he was stupid to take the Bush Administration at its word that Saddam absolutely had to be taken out right then or we’d all be nuked to kingdom come.
dreggas
A bit less than that. I could care less for the simple reason that what’s done is done and now it’s time to un-fuck things as much as possible, if possible.
Believe them? Never BELIEVED them, give them the benefit of the doubt? Yes simply stated I gave the government the benefit of the doubt because Saddam was a fuckhead and not to be trusted. Sadly the government of this country is headed by bigger fuckheads even less deserving of trust.
I admit I laughed at a few especially those who couldn’t give a coherent explanation of why they were protesting. However I didn’t accuse them of being traitors and believed it was their right to protest. When it came to those who protested going into afghanistan….I mocked them mercilessly because that is where the fucker who did this to us was hiding.
Me Neither, I quite honestly wouldn’t want someone I’d have a beer with in office because, for the most part, those I have beers with are more crazy than me.
Ditto. I’d say you wouldn’t find anyone more in agreement than me on this but there are a lot of others. Nothing offends me more as a real patriot than to see all the things I’d fight and die for and believed in with regards to my country be tarnished by an asshole.
refer to the above.
Complicit? I gave the benefit of the doubt, I didn’t cheerlead. I made the mistake of trusting the government leaving aside the little voice in me that said DTA that’s my crime and I guess the crimes of a lot of other people as well. As for regrets? I regret trusting the government but that’s about it, I don’t have nightmares or suffer. Those that perpetrated this…I hope they do but doubt they ever will.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Right, becuase when Democrats say that Iraq has WMDs, then it’s not a lie, but when Republicans say it, it’s “packed with giant lies.” The faith-based defense. Nice.
Even excusing all your factual errors there, Levin wasn’t stupid for believing it. He’d been hearing the same things about Iraq’s “real” and “grave” WMD threat (including nukes) since 1997 from Clinton, Kerry, Albright, Tenet, etc. The thrust of the NIEs didn’t change over that time, so why should his opinion that Iraq had WMDs change?
Richard Bottoms
No, when Bush says Saddam is after yellowcake uranium and we can prove it. That’s a lie.
When Bush says we don’t torture or condone those who do. That’s a lie.
When Bush says we are winning the war before the election and says we’re not after his party loses. The former is a lie.
Believing anything Bush as to say. Well, that’s just stupid.
dreggas
Not that it’s worth the breath to argue with someone who has their head up their ass, or at the least is consciously ignoring history. It was only after 1998 that Saddam Hussein had been completely disarmed. So yes prior to 1998 it was perfectly reasonable to believe he still had “WMD” of course we now know this for a fact given all those WMD’s we didn’t find there. As for nukes, that was the biggest load of horse shit given the fact Iraq’s nuclear program died after Israel blew up their reactor in the 80’s.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
And if Bush would’ve only said “Saddam is a fuckhead and not to be trusted, so we must get him out of there and install a government that won’t be assholes to us and the UN,” (which is just an extension of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act), what would your feelings be about the war?
dreggas
nice picking and choosing, learned from the admin eh? Read the rest, this administration is filled with bigger fuckheads who aren’t to be trusted.
Jake
So let me see how this would work. I have a question or a theory and in the course of searching for an answer or support for my theory I ignore information that doesn’t support the answer I believe is the right one or goes against my theory. Maybe I fiddle with the information that does support the desired result. I then go before the world and say: “Look, I’ve proved X and here’s the data that supports my findings!” But I don’t mention all of the contradictory information and fiddling.
But this isn’t lying? Error. Does not compute. If you pull this shit in college – You’re in deep shit. If a reporter does it – Buh-bye. Prosecuting attornies – World class smack down by the state bar. Large pharmaceutical company – Lawsuits galore await. The list goes on for people who do far less harm when they engage in similar behaviour. Why? Because it is LYING. When you’re talking about people that we have to trust (because no one else can do their job and/or a lot of people will be harmed if they lie) the bar is that much higher.
dreggas
Niphong anyone? So eager to get the prestige with getting that conviction in the duke case that he persued them the evidence be damned.
George Bush – So eager to avenge daddy and some fucked up view of family honor he used cooked intelligence to go to war with Iraq the real evidence be damned.
jg
Language is fun!
Perry Como
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
scarshapedstar
I am.
I’ll even grant you the benefit of Bush’s hyperlegal parsings about how
Maybe they really did think that.
But, sorry, I don’t believe it’s sheer coincidence that they thought they could “double dip” and not only save us from imminent destruction but also turn Iraq into an enslaved anarcho-sydicalist playground with no corporate taxes and no publicly owned assets, like Somalia but run by McDonald’s and GM, which — as luck would have it — would guarantee them the left nut of every campaign contributor they let operate there for the next hundred years of the Republican Reich. And yet they didn’t mention that casus belli.
Forgive me for thinking that this sounds kinda like a guy who tells his wife he has to run to his secretary’s house to pick up his briefcase, which may or may not actually be true, but somehow he ends up fucking her like he does every time he goes over there. And then when somebody finds out, he says that, hey, he had no idea she wanted to fuck. Shit happens!
tBone
1998 -> 2003 War. Gee, I wonder if anything could have changed between those two dates?
And change your handle back to Mac Buckets. The EEEL moniker is almost as annoying as your idiot trolling.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
I’m just asking a question. Why the dodge?
Richard Bottoms
You’re the president, you control congress so you can do pretty much whatever the fuck you want.
So, be sure to send 500,000 troops with sufficent armour and a solid supply chain. Make sure competnet people handle the reconstruction and don’t shortchange Afghanistan while you do it. Increase the size of the Army, boost pay, and you’d better get the VA ready for long term care of the injured.
Oh wait. That WAS my reaction back then.
Guess the shitheads didn’t do any of it.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
A Republican was elected.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
You know, wishing it were so is not the same as the truth. There’s no evidence to back that up, and there’s a ton of evidence to directly contradict it. Try reading the Duelfer Report sometime, or UNSCOM’s records. Like I say, there’s nothing stronger than Democratic Faith-based history!
My irony meter just blew up.
grumpy realist
All of this reminds me of a story, probably apocyphal, of how physicists in the USSR became exempt from the Doctrine of Revealed Truth (as revealed in the writings of Marx and Lenin.)
Turns out the authorities (over many squawks from physicists) had decided what the critical mass of certain nuclear waste was through Revealed Truth….
….shortly afterwards there was a meltdown in the Urals…
Result: exemption of physicists from the Doctrine of Revealed Truth.
Same thing here: doesn’t make too much difference whether you know that you’re lying or whether you really, really believe something erroneous: Mama Nature doesn’t care and it’s gonna blow up.
One of the most painful trainings as a scientist is the learning that it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference how much you want to believe in something. You can cherry-pick your data, fudge your error bars, put your thumb on the scale as much as you want. The only person you are attempting to fool is yourself. The critical mass of plutonium is still whatever it is.
This is why true leaders, both in business and in government, will do anything they can to keep truth-tellers around them. You want people who will tell you what is real, who will not fudge the data, who will rub your nose in reality. The further up the totem pole you go, the greater the temptation to surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear. Lickspittles and courtiers in a Byzantine court.
No wonder George W. Bush’s companies crashed and burned.
tBone
Sadly, your keyboard appears to have survived.
Nikki
My local newscast just reported that the IG report cleared Doug Feith of any wrongdoing. Not that it found he had manipulated the intelligence. Cleared of all wrongdoing.
Tsulagi
Some say lying, some say willful shading. Tomato, tomahtoe. Whichever works for you.
Zifnab
Shorter EEEL: “I love Dick. If you don’t love Dick, you’re gay.”
dreggas
Well if you’d quite reading the shit you right these things might not happen.
chopper
actually, i’m going by the reports of the actual inspectors on the ground in 1998. they were supervising the destruction of all sorts of crap just previous and definitely later than 1994. check the archives, i’ve cited it numerous times.
dreggas
Ughhh… that should have been “quit” and “write”
TenguPhule
Doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.
I knew from the moment Bush started talking about Iraq he was lying and trying to get a War on to win votes in 2004. Does nobody else remember how his demands on Saddam changed as Iraq complied with the prior ones? The evidence wasn’t there, so they used the *absence* of evidence as proof that something was going on. And when that didn’t work, Bush finally said Saddam had to leave Iraq or he would attack.
TenguPhule
Lampchop’s Irony of the Day(tm).
TenguPhule
The same, I’d be against it. The world was and still is filled with fuckheads not worth getting Americans killed over. You go to war when you’re attacked or in actual danger of being attacked. Not to clean out assholes.
The US military doesn’t specialize in proctology.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, we know: artillery shells from 1970 that lost their mustard gas when they rusted out in 1980.
Clearly, 2 trillion dollars was a reasonable price to dig them up.
DougJ
I hate to think what would have happened if you moonbats had been there with George Washington at Valley Forge when he used fake intelligence to justify his attack of the British.
Don’t you get it? Our enemies want to kill us all. If we have to lie to justify our attacks on them, so be it.
Richard Bottoms
Just the opposite. Taking out assholes is exactly what the Army is for. The problem here was the size of the asshole, much inflated it turns out.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
No, I think you’re going on what would be convenient for your argument if it were true. The lack of links is a dead giveaway. Here — I’ll post an actual UNSCOM link. The last UNSCOM reports of destroying actual weapons:
Note that even that destruction wasn’t missiles loaded with WMD, but just chemical weapons agents in containers — still, that qualifies as WMD in most people’s book. Only facilities, equipment, and precursors have been dismantled since — no weapons. Hell, Duelfer says we still have facilities and equipment to dismantle. So anyway, I don’t find any evidence to support your assumption that “Saddam had some leftover WMDs,” and UNSCOM and Duelfer contradict it. Not very convincing.
DougJ
Why does any of this matter? Saddam is out of power and the world is a safer place.
Richard Bottoms
My issue was never that I was shocked that we cooked up some reason to go after Saddam. Who cares if we go stomp his ass.
But you better do it with enough troops so he doesn’t get the last laugh.
Meanwhile we’re stuck killing car loads of civilians at checkpoints and flying 300 tons of US dollars into oblivion.
DougJ
Sorry, but if it prevents another 9/11 it’s worth it — a hundred times over.
jg
Tom Tommorrow
Richard Bottoms
Which world is that? Saturn?
The war is a giant clusterfuck with 3,000+ dead, 20,000+ wounded and trillions up in smoke.
it would have been cheaper to offer every Iraqi $1,000,000 to stay home and watch TV.
The Army is broken, without the cudgel of IRR callbacks where you might as well re-enlisted to get the bonus we’d be totally up shit creek.
Billions upon billions of dollars of hardware is rusting in the Iraqi sun, meanwhile we cannibalize units for parts and troops to send into the grinder.
Bush rolled the dice and lost. Not because he’s gambler with giant balls but because he sent in just enough troops to lose from the outset.
He sent over idiots worried about abortion instead of fixing the power. He said for three years there are enough troops to do job right up until he sad we need more troops to do the job.
Only there aren’t any. Jonah Goldberg Jr. and Jenna and Barbara Bush are kinda busy right now, too busy to go fight this war.
And just so you know, I voulunteered to go back into the Army three years ago but I was too damn old. Even with the enlistment age now jacked up to 41 I’m too old by more than a decade. Hell, you go fight it, or send your kids if it’s that damn important to the Western world.
chopper
my lack of links was because i’ve gotten sick of making the same argument over and over again.
here.
sorry, mac, but you’re wrong. your UN timeline is merely a synopsis of major events. there still were remnants of WMDs left after 1994. not much, but the fact that saddam was not letting inspectors into certain locations led people to believe (logically) that there was more left being hidden.
Richard Bottoms
Prevents it how?
You mean the bad guys are unable to rent a truck in Ottawa and drive it across an unguarded frontier because we’re in Iraq?
Get fucking real.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Nonsensical on its face. He was riding 70% approval ratings in Summer of 2002 when he started talking seriously abour war with Saddam. The GOP were talking about electoral lockdown and permanent majority, not “trying to win votes.” And even if Bush was looking for the “spike,” why go to war a full 18 months before the election? Why not wait until 2004, when you’d get a boost you could sustain through the election?
jg
And most people would be wrong. And anyone who argues from the postion that they represent ‘most people’, is full of shit.
DougJ
We haven’t been attacked in five years. Period. We were attacking repeatedly when BJ Klinton was “in charge.” Facts are tricky things, huh moonbat? The irony is that if the Islamofascists took over, you’d be the first up agains the wall. We’re fighting for your safety.
Richard Bottoms
An the anthrax attack was what, really bad head colds gone horribly wrong?
No asshole, your writting on a blog. Soldiers are fighting for my safety.
Unless they are Iraq, in which case they are fighting for no reason at all other than one man’s blind stubborness.
DougJ
Well, there you have it, then. You admit that staying on the offensive keeps us safe.
Case closed.
Richard 23
Fixed. You’re welcome.
DougJ
The ultimate irony is that I would be fine under Islamic law. I don’t drink, gamble, fornicate, eat pork, or allow my woman to display her body in public. It’s people like Richard Bottomos, liberals with decadent lifestyles, who would suffer. Sometimes I wonder if it would be worth having the Islamists rule the country for a few years, just so the moonbats would see what it was like.
Richard Bottoms
I said they were fighting.
Didn’t say anything about us winning.
pharniel
the d-man’s back in black!
Richard Bottoms
That’s right. Me and Madonna telling Osama to fuck off.
Along with Jerry Falwell.
Zifnab
Which just goes to show how delusional they all were. “The economy will never go into recession!”, “The /party/ will be in majority forever!”, and “Let’s march our army on in winter Moscow!” all rank with equal plausibility.
Bush was a lame duck right President in 2000, and would have stayed that way right up until he let our country suffer the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. Then, for reasons beyond all comprehension, everyone handed over the steering wheel to the worst drivers in the car. And the rest was
a series of DUIs that would make Paris Hilton blushhistory.Richard Bottoms
See, we know fundamentlism is bad because we’ve been telling you so since Robert Maplethorpe and the Moral Majority days.
I was a soldier then and like all soldiers prepared to do my duty, even if it was for senile old cowboy, or at least the previous senile old cowboy.
We tried to tell you that a theocratic America was what Bush and his croies wanted but guys like John just couldn’t believe that his party really MEANT the things it said about gays and other intrusive nonsense.
His party could never engage in fascistic behaviour or shred the constitution as we crazy hippies charged.
Well times have changed.
So fuck Osama, and you too if you want to abridge my rights, punish people for their sexuality, or break the spirit of our laws and consitution.
DougJ
There are only two ways we can prevent another terrorist attack:
(1) Take the fight to the terrorists — see Afghanistan, Iraq. See no attacks for five years. Hopefully, see Syria, Iran over the next few months or years.
(2) Rein in Hollywood. The Islamists hate us because of what they see in our movies, the most extreme liberal elements of our culture: bisexuality, beastiality, even cannibalism (isn’t there a new Hannibal Lecter movie out). I don’t blame them for hating for that. But I do blame them for hating freedom.
Richard Bottoms
So you’re one of those troll types.
Thanks, done playing.
DougJ
Come on, it’s an homage.
jg
A lot of republicans (me included) saw the republican party as what we assumed it was when we made the decision to join it, rather than what the current leadership turned it into. Add that to the natural tendency to believe your side and what you have is a situation that causes the worm to turn slooooooowly. In Johns case he was also slowed by his military service. The new republican party has done a masterful job associating criticism of republican presidents with an attack on the troops.
DougJ
I don’t think they’ve done that good a job of it. They went to the well too many times and now their whole line of attack is seen as a joke.
jg
To a lot of people the shit still works. Listen to McCain or Lieberman or any of the right wing radio asshats who have the ear of millions of gullible losers who only need reinforcement of their hatred of democrats or anything on the left. It doesn’t have to be true, just truthy. When you are trained to be dismissive of anything that doesn’t come from approved right wing sources it doesn’t matter what you’re told to allow you to do the dismissing or how fucking ridiculous it is. These are people who fall for ‘Liberal Fascism’ or ideas that the Nazis were socialists. If the rigth people say it they believe it.
Newport 9
Ah, the Costanza Defense.
DougJ
Yeah, but I think those gullible losers are only about 30 percent of the population. That’s what makes this nation great (I’m only half-kidding).
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
While I am puzzled why the UN doesn’t have any mention of finding or destroying 12 mustard gas shells on their timeline (or why the date of this discovery is so vague), I’ll accept it conditionally.
But hold on, hold on. A dozen 7-year-old mustard gas shells found 4 years after the last of 12,000+ shells were destroyed? Do you really think that’s what Levin meant when he authorized bombings to stop Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction programs”? I really, really doubt it, because it wouldn’t make much sense in context.
Hell, by that standard, Iraq had WMD when we invaded! We’ve found at least 500 chemical shells from the 1991 war since the invasion (prolly the last of the shells Iraq couldn’t find/wouldn’t find).
Richard 23
Welcome back, DougJ. Nobody does right wing talking points better.
The Senator tries when he’s not too busy googling or masturbating.
DougJ
In fairness, I think we all work around those time constraints.
dreggas
And one helluva an homage, even had me ready to hand you your sign.
DougJ
Thanks. Next time I do it, I’m going to talk about Occam’s razor a lot. I like the idea of a rightie who constantly misuses the Occam’s razor concept. It just seems so Rick Moran/Jeff Goldstein.
Jake
However, he does enjoy a fresh kitten sandwich from time to time. Other than that he’s a pretty vanilla sort of guy.
DougJ
Thank God that’s one thing the p.c. police haven’t outlawed yet.
tBone
Mmmmmm-mmmm. White bread and mustard on a juicy calico – now that’s living.
Of course, you moonbats probably make your kitten sandwiches with tabbies and that grainy health bread crap.
Jake
Tabbies? Phaugh! Get with the times you Bushite. It’s tuxedo with sprouts and hummus for the unwashed hippy crowd.
Tabbies. Sheesh.
tBone
Don’t blame me if I can’t keep up with the fickle tastes of the whackjob Dems.
I’m surprised the oxygen bars on the Left Coast haven’t started offering vaporized kittens yet. I suppose it’s only a matter of time.
demimondian
Tuxedo? Eyeuch.
No, dude, in order to promote our homosexual agenda, it’s Manx cats now. I mean, come on, all that prime Mann tail?
The Other Andrew
If you removed WMD from the equation, I don’t think the American people would’ve supported an invasion. For years, people like Hitchens were calling for it on solely humanitarian grounds, and they were ignored. It was only the illusion of an imminent threat that did the trick, plus the lingering psychological aftereffects of 9/11.
That said, the mainstream clearly believes that Bush was deceptive, in terms of the war. Every poll bears it out. I think the right’s doom will come from their stubborn, illogical belief that certain issues/positions are “moonbat-exclusive”, while the majority of the American people are warming up to them, or have already.
tBone
Riser, rumpy, stumpy or longy?
Jonathan
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm
Slide
John. They lied to you. Period. They lied to the American public to gain their support for a war that they wanted long before 911. They lied and they continue to lie. It is second nature to them to lie. Even on small things (Rumsfeld will stay) to large things (yellowcake from Africa) these scumbags lie. This is the most dishonest, venal, corrupt, and incompetent administration in my lifetime. They have done grevious damage to our country which we will be paying for for a generation. Feel good about your vote?
Of course when I said this years ago, you just dismissed me as a Bush hater. Well, you did get that right. I do hate the man and what he has done to our country.
Perry Como
They’ve been offering that for years. How “honest” of you.
jake
Well damn it! I didn’t get that particular Moonbat Memo. Oh, I know. I forgot to force twelve christian virgins to listen to The Smiths & Judas Priest until they felt unnatural cravings and then hand them over to The Cause.
Bloody membership fees.
tBone
Sorry if I haven’t kept up with the menu, but I have a job. I can’t spend all day bouncing between anti-war protests, global warming benefits, recreational abortion parties, and oxygen bars like you and your moonbat friends.
Perry Como
Like throwing paint on people in fur is a “job.”
Hey, the only reason I do meth and sleep with gay hookers is so I can see what you Leftards are up to. If I’m not going to fly to an island with an active underage sex trade and score some Viagra, who is?
Krista
I just got home, saw there were some new threads, read the posting by John, saw that there were over 100 comments, and immediately scrolled to the very bottom, where I saw the comment quoted above.
I now know that there’s no point in reading the rest of the thread, as it’s obviously been thoroughly Darrelled.
chopper
first off, are any of those 500 shells full of 97% pure and viable mustard gas?
second, you’re missing the point. the UNSCOM team didn’t quit after 1994, because they didn’t consider the job done. they continued inspecting sites, and within less than 2 years iraq was denying them access and acting all cagey around suspected WMD sites. they kept doing that through 1998.
then things came forward like these mustard gas shells which were found in areas that were supposed to be clear. so i for one don’t think it too intellectually dishonest for someone like levin to have thought back in 10/98 that iraq was hiding something like WMDs. it made a lot of sense at the time.
the difference between 98 and 03, of course, is that in 03 inspections were going on and the UNMOVIC team was in fact allowed access. blix stated that explicitly, that iraq was complying. if the president had just let blix and his team do their job instead of getting blowing his wad prematurely, we would have discovered what we all know today.
Zerthimon
Oops
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387_pf.html
tBone
Hey, I’m not going to judge you for that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, provided that:
1) You only bought the meth so you could throw it away; and
2) You convince yourself that you totally didn’t enjoy the hot gay sex.
Not really. We did a preemptive Darrelling. No one could have anticipated that we wouldn’t find any Weapons of Rhetorical Evasion in this thread.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Whoooooops!
Turns out those Pinkus-penned WaPo quotes on which John based this thread — you know, the ones from the just-released “report by the Pentagon’s inspector general” — were actually froman old report by…wait for it… hyper-partisan Senator Carl Levin. Nice reportage, geniuses. Story on A-1, retraction on page B-28. On a Saturday. Brilliant!
WaPo’s corrections:
I might have added that last sentence, but at least I did it for free.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Once again, WaPo feels free to lecture on “reporting of dubious quality and reliability”…while getting the story wrong.
Why did the Washington Post lie?
jake
Just remember two words: Investigative Reporting. It’s a great excuse that covers everything short of murder.
j
p.s. Sorry Krista, most of the thread is worth a read. Some fool (dork, idiot, neanderthal…) brought up kitten sandwiches and it got a bit side-tracked.
Aaron
Just a couple of thoughts on Clinton.
Its 1998. The UN inspections had been going on for years, with progressively more material being destroyed..
Of course theres a huge amount of stuff unacounted for. But its a big country, a long period of time and when your running a corrupt dictatorship, (Iraq, not Bush’s Amerika) lots can fall through the cracks.
Progress comes to an end, and finally, Saddam kicks out the UN inspectors in 1998. Clinton responds by launching operation cruise missile strike! and any remaining buildings that are suspected of having anything to do with WMD’s are destroyed.
But for Clinton, and America, Saddam’s actions are a boon!
Consider, the worst result could have been for Saddam to comply, the UN certifies his country as WMD free and sanctions and the will to sustain them are over. At that point he could start doing whatever anew.
But with Saddam’s non compliance we have numerous advantages:
2/3 of the country is now a USAF bombing range.
Sanctions continue.
Saddam is kept under the US and the worlds thumb and microscope.
world opinion creates a clear good bad narrative..
The only downside is that sanctions are screwing the civilian populace.
After the bombing Clinton continues to claim that Saddam has wmd’s- based on all the unacounted for crap. After all, we cant say we dont think he has anything, otherwise how could we still be supporting sanctions?
He even makes it official US policy that Regime change in Iraq would be nice. Doesnt actually do anything about it. Not stupid. Not W stupid. (just bj stupid..)
In contrast Bush has surrounded himself with similarly stupid morons, who fail to see the utility in status quo.
they start a secret bombing campaign against Iraq. As a result Saddam says the worst thing possible: ‘we will comply’ Saddam lets in inspectors. Heck he even offers to let the FBI send hundreds or thousands of agents…
The UN goes in, and finds…. lots of sand. and some dry heat!
No WMDs though. No factories. No specialty infrastructure that a chemical program would require. no nuclear programs. Heck, even the UN seals on his yellowcake uranium are intact. stuff with UN seals on it that are ‘dual use’ (such as specialty high explosives) are intact.
Any leads we may have had are checked out by the UN.- nothing.
So Bush does what he was talking about since before he got elected. he invades.
for bush this has numerous upsides:
outdoes his daddy,
permanent military bases in the region(Saudis wanted us out)
control of Iraqi oil.
bush gets to be a ‘war president’, appears with codpiece.
and of course its a partisan issue to be used against dems in the 02 election, witch swings the senate back the rethuglicans.
Clearly, Clinton handled the situation well, conducting his Iraq strategy as part of a broader dual containment strategy, encompassing Iran and Iraq.
Clinton rocked.
I just heard Mary Matelin on Imus (video at crook and liars)
Matelin is the Veeps mouthpiece. Imus says to her the ‘they (bush, dick, etc..) “lied us into the war”.
Matelin comes back and calls this “left wing propaganda”. points to clinton’s regime change policy as justification for telling all those lies.
( http://www.crooksandliars.com/index.php?s=imus at 6 minute mark)
And thats what they were JOHN. LIES.
Darrell
Yeah, those leaky sanctions really kept Saddam “under the thumb” dumbass.
Oh brother. No doubt Aaron considers himself to be a deep thinker
chopper
Yeah, those leaky sanctions really kept Saddam “under the thumb” dumbass.
as posted above, quoting colin powell…
lessee, sanctions, a huge swath of the country a no-fly zone, regular bombings, no ability to rebuild WMD and project force against neighbors, yeah i’d say that he was under the world’s thumb.
all you righties make it out like the oil-for-food scandal was this huge thing. far more american money has ‘disappeared’ in iraq in a far shorter amount of time. and obviously the money didn’t do saddam any favors, he still hadn’t done any rebuilding of WMD programs or gained any more ability to proiject conventional force on his neighbors.
Darrell
Duelfer and Kay beg to differ on Saddam’s “ability” to rebuild WMDs as WMD programs were definitely kept in place.
Saddam kicked out inspectors in 1998. Given his history in both development of, and use of WMDs I think we should have just assumed that Saddam turned over a new leaf
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
I found the UN report on this:
So it sounds less of an attempt to hide weapons in an area thought to be clear, and more of a self-declaration that out of 13000 mustard weapons, they couldn’t find 550 of them (which seems to be borne out by what we’ve found in Iraq since the invasion), an amount that the Duelfer Report obviously felt was not significant. Hell, UNSCOM didn’t even put it on their timeline.
Of course, I have no problem with Levin not trusting Saddam. Saddam was never to be trusted. But Levin didn’t say that Saddam was “hiding” 500 mustard shells. That could’ve been true to the facts, even if it’s unlikely. What he was saying, though, was that his review of the best intel told him that Saddam had ongoing WMD programs that needed to be attacked by air strikes, something which Duelfer and others absolutely contradict. So Levin examined the current intelligence on Iraq’s WMD in 1998 and was still dead wrong/”lied”/cherry-picked.
Don’t overstate. Blix said they hadn’t been restricted from going where they wanted to go (except once!) but that Iraq was still dodging “perhaps the most important problem we are facing,” namely providing the required information to prove destruction of their known quantities of mustard gas, ricin, VX, and anthrax. He said, “Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions.”
The UN inspection process was to not to be absolutely trusted to prove anything, even given all the time they wanted. Need I cite the UNSCOM debacle in Libya?
In 2003, things like this made sense to me:
Again, my beef with grandstanders like Levin is that, according to official reports, they were loudly wrong on WMD in 1998, and they were loudly wrong on WMD through 2003. Both political parties examined the best and most current intelligence (and like Gephardt said, they didn’t just trust the Bushies — they went to the Clintonites, too!) and were loudly wrong. But somehow only the Republicans were “lying?”
chopper
saddam didn’t kick out the inspectors, dumbass. jesus, you rightists can’t even get the simplest of facts straight, even when they’re presented a few posts above. deep thinking, indeed.
and as we can plainly see now, saddam had no ability to rebuild WMDs. because there weren’t any.
his ‘programs’ you talk of (now called ‘WMD-related program activities’) were ‘programs’ in name only. the sanctions were doing a good job of keeping it that way.
chopper
oh, he was wrong all right. i’ve never once said that levin was right. you seem to be reading something other than my posts.
my point is, as it has been all along, that it was perfectly reasonable for people like levin to go by the assumption that there were still WMDs leftover in iraq, given the facts in front of them; inspectors had still not inspected all the unaccounted-for stuff, saddam was acting cagey and not allowing inspectors access to sites etc.
blix stated in no uncertain terms that iraq was complying with the inspection process.
Darrell
Incredible that the same person posted both of these statements
No doubt the irony is lost on him
Jimmy Mack
My question is this: how many people could a single one of those mustard shells kill? A hundred, a thousand? A dozen may not sound like much, but if they were launched into a crowd, say in Times Square, the effect could be disastrous. Even if those were the only WMD he had (and I’m sure there were others), that constituted an imminent threat. And I’m sure they are only the tip of the iceberg, based on our intellgience prior to the invasion.
Aaron
“Program”
Saddam still had a “program”? what were these programs you speak of? WMD program related infrastructure, i.e. roads??
I dont think anyone doubts that Saddam could have started again building a chemical weapons factory once sanctions had ended.
That was of course the beauty of his ‘non-compliance’ as i outlined above.
jake
Oops, never mind.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Except that this is fantasy, of course. Even according to Clinton, only about a quarter of the suspected Iraq WMD production, research, and storage sites were bombed (many “dual-use” factories that were almost certainly once used for WMD development but also had legitimate civilian purposes weren’t touched for the obvious PR reasons), and we have no way of knowing what we hit and what we didn’t because we didn’t have any “boots-on-the-ground” recon after the fact. As Clinton said, “We don’t know what we got. We could’ve gotten none of it. We could’ve gotten half. We could’ve gotten all of it. We just don’t know.” (Which leads to the obvious question, why bomb when you know that you’ll have no idea whether it worked or not to any extent…a cynic would add, and does the answer involve a blue dress?)
chopper
hans blix, 1/27/03:
then again, i’m talking to someone who still believes that saddam kicked the inspectors out, so doubt your fingers are still planted firmly your ears anyways.
TenguPhule
Shorter Jimmy Mack: No Signs of Intelligent Life Detected.
TenguPhule
Because Bush thought he could get a short victorious war.
He thought it would be *easy* and done with before 2004 came up. With that kind of capital, he could have rammed anything he wanted through.
Aaron
“Which leads to the obvious question, why bomb when you know that you’ll have no idea whether it worked or not to any extent…a cynic would add, and does the answer involve a blue dress?”
actually the obvious question is would Clinton have done anything more direct militarily had he not been hounded relentlessly by some scalp hunting republicans?
“wag the dog” comments were so stylish among the as-hole set back then…