(updated below -- updated again with response from one of the Weekly Standard authors)
The most significant political success of the Bush administration over the last several months was the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which triggered a two-week deja vu tidal wave (and counting) of media adoration for the brave, heroic warrior-president hunting down the terrorists and (said with chest-puffing self-satisfaction) "bringing them to justice." As the dramatic media narrative goes, through the resolute perseverence of our Commander-in-Chief, we finally "got" the evil one. And it will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well.
The only problem with this moving storyline was that Zarqawi was able to spend the last three years terrorizing, exploding and beheading people only because the Bush administration indefensibly decided, back in 2002, that it would refrain from "bringing him to justice" when it indisputably had the chance to do so. It has been reported that the motive for the administration's decision to allow Zarqawi to remain free was that his presence in Iraq bolstered their pre-war claim of an Iraq-terrorist connection.
This rather grim and unflattering picture of the administration's conduct in letting Zarqawi remain free -- one which obviously ought to undercut, if not destroy, the recycled heroic Bush mythology -- has prompted Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Adam Whitehas, in yesterday's online Weekly Standard, to write this amazingly blame-shifting justification for the administration's refusal to get Zarqawi three years ago when they could have.
According to Gartenstein-Ross and Whitehas, the administration's timidity is all the fault of Senate Democrats, France and The New York Times, among others. It seems the administration knew that they would be criticized by this all-powerful confederation if they acted against Zarqawi, and therefore decided to accommodate the viewpoints of these political opponents rather than kill Zarqawi. The Weekly Standard assigns blame for the Commander-in-Chief's decision to let Zarqawi remain free as follows (the Truly Guilty Parties are highlighted, by me, in bold):
BUT TO SUGGEST that it was a no-brainer for the U.S. to attack northern Iraq in 2002 ignores a couple of key considerations. If the administration had struck Zarqawi then, it would have met a torrent of criticism for allegedly violating international law--criticism that could have interfered with its diplomatic efforts preceding the 2003 invasion. . . .
The lack of specific authorization for a NFZ [no-fly zone in Northern Iraq, where Zarqawi was located] resulted in critics on both the left (such as the New York Times editorial page) and the right (such as conservative national security law scholar Scott Silliman). . . . Thus, in 2002, as the Bush administration was attempting to amass support in Congress and the U.N. Security Council for an invasion of Iraq, broader rules of engagement in the NFZ would have undermined diplomatic efforts. Secretary General Kofi Annan made clear that America's claim to authority for the NFZs was not a popular position. . .
At a joint press Rumsfeld-Myers press conference in September 2002, reporters peppered the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with
challenges to the decision to enforce the NFZs so fiercely amidst the diplomatic process. To begin bombing installations that were not associated with Saddam's force projection in the region would have made the coalition's unpopular program even more problematic.
Previous expansions of the NFZ program had been met with fierce criticism. In 1996, when President Clinton expanded the southern NFZ, international allies (such as France) refused to cooperate with the new bombing operations. And that expansion targeted the machinery of the Hussein government; further expansion targeting Iraqi inhabitants whose connection to the government was a subject of dispute would have been more difficult to justify.
The summer before the Iraq invasion was one replete with Democrats calling for a slow debate of the Iraq issue. Rapid escalation of military operations under new rules of engagement would not have pleased those calling for restraint, including Senators Feinstein and Leahy, who introduced a resolution "expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not use force against Iraq, outside of the existing Rules of Engagement, without specific statutory authorization or a declaration of war."
This reads like a fear-crazed 10-year-old child who got caught doing something very wrong and then desperately and frantically tries to blame someone else -- anyone else -- in order to avoid having to accept blame himself. To excuse the President's failures, they even cite criticisms made by international "legal scholars" in a 2002 Boston Globe Op-Ed claiming that the administration violated international law -- allegations that the Bush administration always took so very seriously. In one short article, The Weekly Standard literally blames everyone they can find -- Democrats, the U.N., France, The New York Times, everyone -- for the Bush administration's decision to purposely let Zarqawi live and continue to engage in terrorism. As always, with everything this administration does, it's everyone's fault other than the President who ordered it.
These excuses are so self-evidently frivolous that they are literally laughable. Of course, everyone knows that the Bush administration -- especially in 2002 with presidential approval ratings at 65% or more -- never did anything that Senate Democrats might not like. And nothing impeded the administration in doing what it wanted to do more than a critical editorial in The New York Times. And nothing upset them more than when "reporters peppered" Don Rumsfeld with questions about their actions.
And few things were more horrifying to the administration than "criticism for allegedly violating international law." And France's view of U.S. military action received the greatest weight. And in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, nothing was more important to the administration -- nothing -- than diplomatic efforts at resolving the problem, and they would not have done anything, including "bringing to justice" an international terrorist, if it meant that it might rub other countries the wrong way. As a result, as much as The President so desperately wanted to, these critical pro-terrorist voices simply prevented The President from getting Zarqawi.
What is going on here is as transparent as it is important. There is no political faction which played a greater role in leading this country to invade Iraq than the neoconservatives at The Weekly Standard and its 9/11-exploiting allies and affiliates, exemplified by the Gerard Group, of which Gartenstein-Ross is a "senior consultant." Along with the ideologues in the administration, these are the individuals responsible for leading the U.S. to invade Iraq. The failures and disasters it has spawned are their doing. And when all is said and done, it will be time to assign guilt and blame to those responsible, and The Weekly Standard and their neoconservative allies and supporters are petrified -- rightfully so -- that responsibility for this war will be pinned to their foreheads forever.
As I have documented before, these most vocal war supporters are pursuing the only course of option open to them (other than accepting responsibility for their grave errors and deceits, which is far too honorable and forthright to make it a real option for them). They are desperately searching around for others to blame. It is the media's fault. It is Democrats' fault. Or it's all the fault of France, Kofi Annan, international law scholars, and all of those other uber-powerful forces who undermined the United States and prevented our glorious war plans from succeeding. It's often even the fault of the timid and cowardly Generals who run our military. Even when our Commander-in-Chief expressly decided not to take action against Zarqawi when he could have, it's still everyone's fault except for his.
As I wrote back in February when the President's followers rolled out their campaign in earnest to blame the media and "liberals" for the failure of their war fantasies:
Virtually every prediction the President and his followers made about this war has proven to be false, while virtually every prediction made by war opponents has proven to be true. The President and his followers controlled every part of this war with an iron fist, ignoring anything which their political opponents said and insisting on the right to exert full-scale, undiluted control over it. And now it has failed. And it’s everyone’s fault except theirs.
The Weekly Standard obviously recognizes that the real story in the Zarqawi killing is not that the Bush administration heroically killed him in 2006 but that it could have, but chose not to, eliminate him in 2002. And it made that decision for the basest and most corrupt of reasons. It was hell-bent on invading Iraq no matter the circumstances, and it needed Zarqawi's presence in Iraq to help "prove" the extremely precarious if not non-existent connection between Iraq and international terrorism.
The Bush veneration in the media over the Zarqawi killing is akin to revering a prison warden who purposely allows a violent prisoner to escape (in order to, say, bring more public attention to the violence of prisoners), thereby enabling the prisoner to go on a three-year killing binge, and then finally re-captures him and puts him back in prison. One could plausibly argue that the killings are as much the fault of the warden for deliberately allowing the prisoner to escape as it is the prisoner himself. In all events, praising the warden for re-capturing the prisoner whom he purposely allowed to escape would be perverse, to put it mildly. And yet that is exactly what our media, led by war proponents, have been doing over the past two celebratory weeks.
As a result of all of this, we are again subjected to the war proponents' favorite tactic of blaming everyone else -- especially those who opposed the war from the beginning -- for the war's profound failures and the administration's corruption and unfathomable lack of judgment. The Left and France and the U.N. are powerless and weak and irrelevant -- except when things go wrong with the Administration's war and its decisions, and then it is all their doing. Regardless of what else is true, the failures of this war are never, ever the fault of those who planned the war, advocated it, executed it and managed it.
UPDATE: The pure falsity of the Weekly Standard's excuses is further illustrated by the fact that the U.S. repeatedly bombed targets inside Iraq throughout 2002 and 2003 prior to the invasion (h/t Andy):
THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.
Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.
We were undertaking an intense air campaign inside Iraq for almost a full year prior to the invasion. What possible excuse is there for not having one of those bombs land on Zarqawi?
UPDATE II: One of the two co-authors of the Weekly Standard article, Adam White, courteously e-mailed me to let me know that he had posted a response to this post on his personal blog (see UPDATE II). In his response, White argues:
Attorney Glenn Greenwald also seems to miss the point of our article. (He doesn't miss an opportunity to call us "pathological," though.) He seems to think we're "blaming" people for the decision not to attack Zarqawi. Quite obviously that's not the case -- our point is that the Bush Administration's decision was justified. We'd never suggest that anyone be "blamed" for a justifiable decision.
Really, that response makes the Weekly Standard argument more, not less, indefensible. After all, we just spent the last two weeks being subjected to all sorts of melodramatic speeches about how the death of Zarqawi was a momentous blow for civilized humanity because is one of the most psychopathic, evil, murderous terrorists on the planet.
But courtesy of George Bush's decision, Zarqawi was able to spend the last three years alive and well, terrorizing the Iraqi population, murdering our troops, and uploading beheading videos onto the Internet. We could have put a stop to it but didn't, and White thinks that was the right decision all because France and Gail Collins would have objected had we killed Zarqawi? It was better to allow Zarqawi to engage in widespread terrorism than provoke some international objections? Is that really supposed to be a serious argument? Aside from being incredible on its face (who would possibly believe that the Bush administration thinks that way?), to defend the decision to allow Zarqawi to engage in terorrism against Americans and other innocent people all in order to avoid some criticism actually sounds morally monstrous.
And what makes this "let-Zarqawi-live" defense even more confounding is that it comes from the same people who insisted that we invade Iraq despite almost universal world anger over that invasion. So apparently, we should refrain from killing a homicidal, evil terrorist if other countries might object. But it's perfectly fine to start a war and invade another country, international opinion be damned. Does White really defend that as being a rational view, let alone a persuasive one?
What a Manly Deciderer he is, cowed by the French!
ReplyDeleteSmall wonder his stock excuse is "History will decide." He probably already realizes his legacy is already toast.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he can actually look in a mirror anymore.
A great irony of the Bush/Rumsfeld montage is their set of blinders that States not individual terrorists are the real enemies. They always work so hard to reframe every argument to deny power of the stateless terrorist ideology and reconnect it to a state, thus the Axis of Evil. And the irony is in the reframing they miss the single most important premise of terrorists and that is that they are a ground up, stateless ideology which is self perpetuating and like a rogue virus, when terrorist sect jump species/geography they become more dangerous each time. This is the real example of their famous, "Who could have imagined..."
ReplyDeleteGlenn, This is an excellent forensic analysis and presentation of the evidence against Bush and his administartion for not only the Zarqawi reign of terror but also for the Bush admin missteps and mismanagement of this "war." Their culpability in spreading misery and cruelty to innocent Iraqis not only includes direct attacks but also these horrendously calucltaed uses of inaction.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered what criterion the Bush admin uses for asessing responsibility. Given the current trend in the US to use business practices, you'd think that many would at least consider using them to judge Bush and his cohorts' mismanagement of this military campaign in Iraq.
Of course, there's always the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under these criteria, a commander is guilty for all actions--good or bad--that occur under his command. Even here, however, the Bush admin expects to take a free walk since, perhaps, they cite that they're civilians.
The most insidious aspect of modern bureaucracies is their facelessness. That is, no one does anything and no one is responsible in a buraucracy. Buraeucratic workings are just a matter of process and rules and regulations. Because of this innate obscurity, the empty notion of deniability has become a favorite way for politicans to evade responsibility.
I guess in a democracy you could say that the voters will judge this administration. Besides the fact that this is poor solace for the dead, it effectively lets all involved get off the hook.
The ancient Spartans--the most militristic and war-like tribe in ancient Greece--used to hold leaders responsibile for every mishap and every loss of death. Even though militaristic, they were always reluctant to go to war. And when they did, they always expected to win; and when they didn't they held the leaders responsibile. Guilty commanders were sent into exile. Of course, being men of honor they often committed suicide rather than face a life of ignominy. In a democratic age, though, such acts of honor and courage seem somewhat quaint.
In the best of all posssible worlds, it would perhaps behoove any democracy to always hold investigations of the actions--the successes and failures--of its leaders in times of war. This would be one way to curb the use of war as a political tool to domestically consolidate power.
The Bush veneration in the media over the Zarqawi killing is akin to revering a prison warden who purposely allows a violent prisoner to escape (in order to, say, bring more public attention to the violence of prisoners), thereby enabling the prisoner to go on a three-year killing binge, and then finally re-captures him and puts him back in prison. One could plausibly argue that the killings are as much the fault of the warden for deliberately allowing the prisoner to escape as it is the prisoner himself. In all events, praising the warden for re-capturing the prisoner whom he purposely allowed to escape would be perverse, to put it mildly. And yet that is exactly what our media, led by war proponents, have been doing over the past two celebratory weeks.
ReplyDeleteIf what all you report is true -- and I'm not necessarily doubting it, I just find it quite shocking and had not been aware of this news before -- then I can only ask: "Christ on a crutch, where has the media been?"
From davidbyron at 11:52AM:
ReplyDelete"It's also true that the Americans had been illegally bombing northern iraq for some time under Clinton."
I sincerely hope you aren't referring to Operation Desert Fox, circa November 1998.
I'd really hate to know you can't tell North from South, or that you're equating surgical strikes (Desert Fox) with the more indescriminate air strikes the current Administration is pursuing (often to no purpose).
hypatia: I just find it quite shocking and had not been aware of this news before...
ReplyDeleteAnd if you add to Glenn's evidence the fact that Hussein had an arrest warrant out on Zarqawi, a fact US intelligence knew, how does that affect this admin's cupability for decpetion? For they always maintained--and Cheney does to this day--that Huseein and Zarqawi were in cahoots. Indeed, it was Zarqawi's terrorists that the admin used to justify that link between "al-Qaeda" and Hussein, even though Hussein hated and despised not only Zarqawi but also bin-Laden. The feeling was mutual from the two terrorists. Few remember the statement issued by bin-Laden immediately before the US "liberation" of Iraq, which tried to persuade the Iraqi people to rebel against and replace Hussien, "the unbeliever."
Intel Dump addresses this issue of Zarqawi and Bush's decision not to go after him in 2002:
ReplyDeleteAs Daveed and I write, however, the decision not to attack him was perfectly justified in 2002, regardless of whether or not Newsweek's "different way" theory was true. As we detail, although Zarqawi was located in the Northern No-Fly Zone, an attack on his base would have represented an expansion of the already-controversial NFZ framework. To put a thumb in the eye of the international community in 2002 would have undermined the Bush Administration's efforts to gain the support of the Congress and the International Community if possible.
If what all you report is true -- and I'm not necessarily doubting it, I just find it quite shocking and had not been aware of this news before.
ReplyDeleteReports that we could have killed Zarqawi in 2002 but chose not to have been around for some time (check the 2004 article I linked to). That fact doesn't really seem to be in dispute. If you notice, not even The Weekly Standard disputes it. They expressly acknowledge that we could have taken out Zarqawi, and their whole article is an attempt to justify why we didn't (rather than dispute that it happened).
What might be in dispute is the motive for why Bush chose not to do anything. Reports from inside the administration are that they chose not to kill him because they wanted Zarqawi operating inside Iraq, because that helped them make their case that Iraq had a relationship to terrorists and we therefore needed to invade. The Weekly Standard attempts to dispute that motive by offering up others, but as I tried to demonstrate, their alterantive motives are so absurd - laughably so (we were afraid the French would object) that it strongly suggests that the real reason is indeed what Newsweek reported - Bush wanted a terrorist in Iraq to justify our invasion.
Either way, that we could have killed Zarqawi in 2002 but Bush chose not to does not really seem to be in meaningful dispute.
So, your counter-argument to the Standard piece is that since Bush never listened to NYT/UN etc. he should not have done so with Zarqawi. In other words, you are faulting Bush for not being Bush and going ahead and bombing Z. without consideration for criticism.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that this is a post-event justification. However, you seem to concede the Standard author's observation that there would have been criticism from the NYT/UN over this.
Other comments here note that bombing was common in the NFZ, so Bush can be faulted for not calling an airstrike in this case.
However, these comments ignore the context highlighted by the Standard article, that this was an especially sensitive time diplomatically, and that bombing Z. would have disrupted the anti-Iraq diplomacy at the UN.
While I know you are criticizing this defense of Bush, still your argument is - in effect - that Bush should have ignored international law and bombed Z. Essentially, done what you, the NYT/ Boston Globe yada yada criticize him for doing in general.
I know you don't mean to write comedy but this is hilarious.
ReplyDeleteAnd few things were more horrifying to the administration than "criticism for allegedly violating international law." And France's view of U.S. military action received the greatest weight.
I still remember with horror the degree to which reasonable voices were getting drowned out of the debate prior to the start of the war. Can anyone say "Freedom Fries"? How about "Dixie Chicks?"
Bush can and did do anything he wanted in that environment.
PS: If anyone cares to apologize to the Dixie Chicks for being right all along Click here.
Intel Dump addresses this issue of Zarqawi and Bush's decision not to go after him in 2002:
ReplyDeleteIntel Dump is simply one of the organizations to which one of the co-authors of this article belongs. You quote them as saying:
To put a thumb in the eye of the international community in 2002 would have undermined the Bush Administration's efforts to gain the support of the Congress and the International Community if possible.
It's unbelievable that someone could argue this with a straight face. All the Bush administration did throughout 2002 was "put a thumb in the eye of the international community." Whether or not it was the right thing to do (the so-called "international community" hardly has a monopoly on wisdom), the notion that the Bush administration didn't kill Zarqawi because it was afraid of alienating the "international community" is really too frivolous to merit a serious response. Does the Weekly Standard think that our memories are imparied?
I'd really hate to know you can't tell North from South, or that you're equating surgical strikes (Desert Fox) with the more indescriminate air strikes the current Administration is pursuing (often to no purpose).
ReplyDeleteNorth and South don't matter to David. Only one thing matters: it's all the fault of the U.S. (just like for the Weekly Standard, nothing is). Zarkawi was an angel until the U.S. turned him into a terrorist. Everyone is Good and Pure except the Nazi U.S.
He's a moron, an ideologue with teenage Marxist stupidity, and a liar. Glenn said he would ban him yesterday. For the good of the comment section, I really hope Glenn follows through.
The death of Zarqawi, apparently, was not a victory for our side as has been reported. It turns out that Bin Laden and Zawrahiri were not at all happy with Zarqawi's desire to foment an Iraqi civil war. Apparently some of the documents recovered in the recent attack have shown their frustration and displeasure with Zarqawi. Zarqawi's replacement wasted no time in abducting and (personally) murdering two American soldiers. According to some in the know, we will see much more of this as the focus shifts from al Quaeda being a wedge between Iraqis and back to the task of expunging the infidels. If all of this is true, we may have actually aided Bin Laden in his Iraq Campaign. Crazy, huh? Now we have the White House Version, the mainstream Media version, the cable Media Version, the Blogger version and finally the authentic version which seems to evenutally trickle out after the others and by then has lost most of its steam or been dumbed down by the former versions. I understand that everyone'sl vying for attention, advertising dollars, scoops, etc but. I find this prismatic (dis)information disturbing. How's a news consumer, like myself, to ever know what's really going on?
ReplyDeleteAccording to some in the know, we will see much more of this as the focus shifts from al Quaeda being a wedge between Iraqis and back to the task of expunging the infidels
ReplyDeletePlease link.
Thats a statement that needs supporting if its to be believed.
So, your counter-argument to the Standard piece is that since Bush never listened to NYT/UN etc. he should not have done so with Zarqawi. In other words, you are faulting Bush for not being Bush and going ahead and bombing Z. without consideration for criticism.
ReplyDeleteNo. I'm disputing the idea that the reason Bush didn't kill Zarqawi in 2002 is because he feared crticism from the U.N., international legal scholars, and the New York Times. That's the argument I made and that's the argument I intended to make.
While I know you are criticizing this defense of Bush, still your argument is - in effect - that Bush should have ignored international law and bombed Z.
Let me be clear. I supported Bill Clinton's efforts to kill Osama bin Laden and would support any efforts by the U.S. to kill or otherwise disable international terrorists who are intent on perpertrating attacks on Americans and American interests - regardless of what Kofi Annan or other countries might think of that. I think the U.S. -- like all countries -- has the right to defend itself and ought to do so regardless of criticisms from other countries.
But none of that is the point. The point is that whatever motivated Bush not to attack Zarqawi, the motives are NOT what the Weekly Standard claims they are. Any honest person would have to admit that. Since the only other reported motive is Bush's desire to have a terrorist in Iraq in order to justify our invasion, that seems to be the only explanation that enjoys any evidence or coherence.
It amazes me how completely in denial the Bushbots are. Seriously, do you think these people believe the BS they are spewing?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletedavid shaughnessy: PBS' The Dark Side is a brilliant expose of the Bush Administration's disasterous foreign policy. It details in compelling fashion how America's foreign policy was hijacked and grotesquely abused by Dick Cheney.
ReplyDeleteIt is brilliant. One of the amazing things to come to light in this expose is Bush's utter cluelessness. If there ever was evidence that the man is merely a front-man and cheerleader this program provides the evidence.
A more perspectival view would also note the way that insiders work in undermining democracy.
Clinton firing missles "into the desert" = Wag the Dog
ReplyDeleteBush giving Zarqawi a pass, then taking credit when they finall kill him = War President Hero
these wingers..so funny..
Cynic and David, I agree about Dark Side. I am going to order the DVD.
ReplyDeleteGlenn, this is off-topic, but after reading about Robert Kennedy Jr.'s desire to file a lawsuit regarding the 2004 election irregularities in Ohio I wondered why there has not been a class action suit filed? Is that possible? And why are chairpersons of candidates EVER allowed to be election officials? The system seems to be profoundly, fundamentally flawed. Would you please address these questions in a future post? Thanks.
Glenn writes:
ReplyDelete"Since the only other reported motive is Bush's desire to have a terrorist in Iraq in order to justify our invasion, that seems to be the only explanation that enjoys any evidence or coherence."
Where is this motive reported? The Newsweek/MSNBC piece you linked to DOES NOT support this statement. That article says the Bush Administration feared that bombing northern Iraq would impair the coalition it was trying to build - precisely the point made in the Weekly Standard piece. The money quote from your link:
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
So far, you have ZERO evidence that Bush wanted Zarqawi alive in Iraq to support a link between Iraq and the terrorists.
All the evidence is that he did not want to undermine the coalition by taking premature unilateral action.
Sloppy.
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteI almost do not know where to start with this amazing, but yet all to familiar, diatribe. Let's get to work...
The most significant political success of the Bush administration over the last several months was the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which triggered a two-week deja vu tidal wave (and counting) of media adoration for the brave, heroic warrior-president hunting down the terrorists and (said with chest-puffing self-satisfaction) "bringing them to justice." As the dramatic media narrative goes, through the resolute perseverence of our Commander-in-Chief, we finally "got" the evil one. And it will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well.
You must be kidding. Feel free to post a link to any article which claimed eliminating Zarqawi "will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well."
This is yet another of your hit and run claims which you cannot support with actual facts.
The only problem with this moving storyline was that Zarqawi was able to spend the last three years terrorizing, exploding and beheading people only because the Bush administration indefensibly decided, back in 2002, that it would refrain from "bringing him to justice" when it indisputably had the chance to do so.
I have had more than enough of this nonsense.
You are flat out lying. Nothing less. You know what you are saying is not true yet you continue to knowingly and intentionally repeat this slander.
When this slander was raised before, I challenged anyone here to prove that we had located Zarqawi in Iraq, were staged to kill him with a bombing or cruise missile strike and declined to do so as was the case on multiple occasions with bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 90s.
There is no evidence because this never happened.
The Zarqawi slander is based on the allegation in a NBC News story that we knew the al Qaeda camp existed in Iraq and declined to bomb it because we did not want to scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
As a syllogism, this slander falls apart easily.
The slander goes like this:
1) Bush knew al Qaeda had a base in Iraq.
2) Bush declined to bomb the base.
3) Therefore, Bush declined to bomb and kill Zarqawi.
However, the base is not the same thing as Zarqawi. There is no evidence that we had located Zarqawi at that base or anywhere else when we had the opportunity to launch a strike against him.
This syllogism might be enough to fool a child in grade school, but the adults who repeat it today have no excuse for repeating this lie.
This slander was originally invented by the Donkey left to excuse the revelations in the 9/11 Commission investigation that Clinton repeatedly declined to kill or capture bin Laden even though he was offered or located on multiple recorded occasions.
It has been reported that the motive for the administration's decision to allow Zarqawi to remain free was that his presence in Iraq bolstered their pre-war claim of an Iraq-terrorist connection.
This is nonsense as well.
Bush could have made big hay just after 9/11 bombing this particular al Qeada base and then claiming Iraq was sheltering more al Qaeda, which was completely true.
Weekly Standard: Thus, in 2002, as the Bush administration was attempting to amass support in Congress and the U.N. Security Council for an invasion of Iraq, broader rules of engagement in the NFZ would have undermined diplomatic efforts.
Glenn snarks: This reads like a fear-crazed 10-year-old child who got caught doing something very wrong and then desperately and frantically tries to blame someone else -- anyone else -- in order to avoid having to accept blame himself...These excuses are so self-evidently frivolous that they are literally laughable...And France's view of U.S. military action received the greatest weight. And in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, nothing was more important to the administration -- nothing -- than diplomatic efforts at resolving the problem, and they would not have done anything, including "bringing to justice" an international terrorist, if it meant that it might rub other countries the wrong way.
Glenn, this is the allegation of those claiming that Bush declined to bomb the al Qaeda camp in Iraq and upon whom you base your slander.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
Are you accusing your own sources of lying?
The Weekly Standard and their neoconservative allies and supporters are petrified -- rightfully so -- that responsibility for this war will be pinned to their foreheads forever.
Do you even read the Weekly Standard? They remain, as I do, proud supporters of the liberation of Iraq.
Virtually every prediction the President and his followers made about this war has proven to be false, while virtually every prediction made by war opponents has proven to be true. The President and his followers controlled every part of this war with an iron fist, ignoring anything which their political opponents said and insisting on the right to exert full-scale, undiluted control over it. And now it has failed. And it’s everyone’s fault except theirs.
Let's take a look at the various predictions made about this war by the left:
Saddam did not have WMD - We found at least 35 liters of sarin, tons of pesticide on military bases with the precursors for more sarin and biological agents, but not the stockpiles of finished WMD almost every intelligence service in the world expected. Where are they?
Saddam had destroyed his WMD - Wrong. This contradicts the recorded statements of Saddam's own WMD chief at a 1995 staff meeting. There are no witnesses, physical or documentary evidence that the WMD were ever destroyed.
Saddam did not have WMD programs - Wrong. This was confirmed by Duelfer and the ongoing translations of captured Iraqi docs, links to which I have posted here in the past.
Saddam did not have any relationship with al Qaeda. In fact, the secular Saddam and the religious al Qaeda were enemies - Wrong. It is beyond question now that Iraq negotiated with, sheltered and trained trained al Qaeda and other Islamic fascist groups. When this al Qaeda base was taken, the captured al Qaeda named their Iraqi intelligence contact to the SF. See The Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson. More importantly, several recently translated Iraqi documents indicate that by 1999 Iraq was recruiting and training foreign arab terrorists in suicide bombing to attack "US interests" and that Zarqawi was recruiting fighters for al Qaeda in Iraq in 2002 to fight us in Afghanistan.
An Iraqi Army could not be formed if we did not keep the original Baathist force - Wrong. There are nearly a quarter million Iraqi soldiers and security deployed and fighting.
The Iraqis do not have the foundations to form a democracy - Wrong. Three successful elections and counting.
The terror will keep Iraqis from voting - Wrong. Iraqi turnout is better than ours.
The Iraqis will never agree on a Constitution - Wrong. The Constitution was drafted and approved by over 70% of the voters.
The Sunni will never participate in the government - The Sunnis voted in the last elections and now participate in a unity government.
There is a civil war in Iraq - Where? Where are the armies? Where are the front lines? Where is the stated goal of taking over the government?
You claim the war has failed. Prove it. Which pre war objective have we failed to obtain?
1) Saddam removed. Check.
2) Iraq disarmed of WMD and WMD programs. Check.
3) al Qaeda no longer has a sanctuary to hide. Check.
4) Friendly and democratic government installed. Check.
:::whew:::
I gotta get back to work.
Glenn, post a retraction.
Where is this motive reported? The Newsweek/MSNBC piece you linked to DOES NOT support this statement.
ReplyDeleteWhat you just said is factually false.
First, the Weekly Standard article itself states that Newsweek reported that the administration purposely refrained from killing Zarqawi because they wanted to exploit his presence in Iraq to justify the war:
Such criticism reappeared last week in Newsweek's coverage of Zarqawi's death. The magazine attributed the decision not to strike Zarqawi to the administration's desire to "exploit" him as proof of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Second, the linked to article says what you claim it does not say about as clearly as it possibly can:
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.
Seriously - how can you come here and say that "the Newsweek/MSNBC piece you linked to DOES NOT support this statement" when it says EXACTLY that, and when the Weekly Standard ackonwledged that it does. Did you even read these articles before denying that they reported this?
Glenn misleadingly cites a different passage the Newsweek piece:
ReplyDelete"Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."
And the reason they feared bombing could undercut its case for war against Iraq comes from the only primary source quoted in the article:
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
So, the key language you rely on "undercutting its case for war against Saddam" was already described in the article - to wit, the bombing would undercut the case for war because it would harm efforts to build a coalition. The coalition was being assembled for multilateral action and unilateral action would scuttle the coalition.
The Newsweek has not primary citation, and neither do you, that the reason for not bombing was to retain a terrorism/Iraq link.
And the fact that the Weekly Standard also mistakenly cites the Newsweek piece in support of this claim just means your both wrong.
For they always maintained--and Cheney does to this day--that Huseein and Zarqawi were in cahoots.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who remembers that one of the main pieces of evidence the Cabal promoted as proof of Zarqawi's close connection to Saddam was that Zarqawi was treated in a Baghdad hospital -- where he supposedly had his leg amputated?
Is it already down the Memory Hole with that particular claim?
Thank you for this clarification.
ReplyDelete"Let me be clear. I supported Bill Clinton's efforts to kill Osama bin Laden and would support any efforts by the U.S. to kill or otherwise disable international terrorists who are intent on perpertrating attacks on Americans and American interests - regardless of what Kofi Annan or other countries might think of that. I think the U.S. -- like all countries -- has the right to defend itself and ought to do so regardless of criticisms from other countries.
But none of that is the point. The point is that whatever motivated Bush not to attack Zarqawi, the motives are NOT what the Weekly Standard claims they are. Any honest person would have to admit that. Since the only other reported motive is Bush's desire to have a terrorist in Iraq in order to justify our invasion, that seems to be the only explanation that enjoys any evidence or coherence."
I agree with you that the original motives are not what the Standard suggests. I appreciated your clarification, as it removes the suggestion of excessive partisanship (i.e., "We'll criticize Bush regardless of what he does"). Moreover, I would argue that your assertion of the U.S. right to protect itself and its citizens regardless of criticism from others (and not to submit to a Kerry-like "global test") is essential if Democrats are to regain standing on defense issues among the American people. Thanks again for the response and clarification.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteIn this debtae, it prove worthwhile for readers to peruse the "Zarqawi File" amassed by Juan Cole at Informed Comment. As evidence that Zarqawi and al-Qaeda had little contact and that there was no link between zarqawi, al-Qaeda and Hussein, consider the following news report quoted in full by Cole:
ReplyDeleteBy the time U.S. forces began massing on Iraqi borders in preparation for an attack, intelligence reports indicated that Zarqawi had already left Baghdad, possibly for Syria or Lebanon. When war broke out in March, U.S. intelligence believed that Zarqawi was probably hiding out in an Islamist enclave in Northern Iraq run by Ansar Al Islam, and [sic] extremist group which Powell also suggested had connections to both bin Laden and Saddam, even though it was in a part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam�s government.
U.S. intelligence now believes that Zarqawi may have escaped to Iran once again when U.S. and Kurdish forces routed Ansar Al Islam from its base during the war. Officials say they do not know whether he is free to continue to operate Al Tawhid from Iran, or whether he is in Iranian custody. Officials also say that while considerable evidence has turned up to support Powell�s claim that the Ansar Al Islam camp visited by Zarqawi was used as a refuge for Al Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan, little evidence has surfaced to validate implications by Powell that before the Iraq war, an agent placed by Saddam inside the Islamist enclave had helped to arrange Al Qaeda�s safe haven there.
The German government evidence appears to demonstrate how the Zarqawi story told by Powell to the Security Council was partial at best and misleading at worst, in the sense that it took Zarqawi�s tenuous relationship to Al Qaeda and his mysterious visit to Baghdad and lifted them out of context to imply evidence of a closer collaboration between Iraq and bin Laden than the facts demonstrated.
It's unfortunate that such a clarification should have been needed. But these days, any critics of the administration are publicly presumed by those who disagree to be unpatriotic, dishonest, fryers & eaters of kittens, kiddy diddlers, and on and on. They seem to presume that the ability to attack an administration critic ad hominem removes from them any obligation to address that critic's argument.
ReplyDeleteLook, it is not difficult to deal with the Iraq situation politically. We were promised that we would be out in months, not years. We were promised that the war would pay for itself. Yet THREE YEARS LATER, Iraq is worse off than when we went in and many times more expensive.
ReplyDeleteDemocrats, say this as if mantra: three years and counting, three years and counting, three years and counting . . . .
Anon writes:
ReplyDeleteSo far, you have ZERO evidence that Bush wanted Zarqawi alive in Iraq to support a link between Iraq and the terrorists.
All the evidence is that he did not want to undermine the coalition by taking premature unilateral action.
What utter horseshit. Zarqawi was an Al Qaeda ally and active partner with that organization -- you know, the sick fanatics that killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001? He has been the face of AQ in Iraq for 3 years, and the evidence Glenn presents seems dispositive -- read the freakin' Weekly Standard article, which says:
If the administration had struck
Zarqawi then [2002], it would have met a torrent of criticism for allegedly violating international law--criticism that could have interfered with its diplomatic efforts preceding the 2003 invasion.
So the Bush Admin repeatedly refused to kill a terrorist and his cell that were part of the alliance that KILLED AMERICANS on U.S. soil, and it did so in order to preserve whatever "diplomatic" efforts Bush felt would he helpful in invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein didn't kill Americans on 9/11, Al Qaeda did, and that is our first enemy and reason for the AUMF.
Whether some coalition to invade Iraq would have been undermined or not, the ENEMY who killed Americans was Al Qaeda; we had 3 opportunities to take out a close ally of AQ (a de facto member); we didn't. So he ran loose and he and his cohorts in terrorism beheaded and otherwise killed people, including U.S. troops, for another 3 years.
What is the matter with you, that you don't see how repulsive this is? I'm annoyed with myself that for whatever reason I either did not read, or did not pick up the significance of, the 2004 reports about this.
I agree with Glenn:
Let me be clear. I supported Bill Clinton's efforts to kill Osama bin Laden and would support any efforts by the U.S. to kill or otherwise disable international terrorists who are intent on perpetrating attacks on Americans and American interests - regardless of what Kofi Annan or other countries might think of that. I think the U.S. -- like all countries -- has the right to defend itself and ought to do so regardless of criticisms from other countries.
We had the right -- THE OBLIGATION -- to kill Al Qaeda terrorists wherever they were holed up and plotting more terrorist attacks, no matter what anybody thought of us for doing so. To be redundant one last time: Al Qaeda was the wretched group that brought down the Twin Towers, not Saddam Hussein, you Bush-apologist moron.
Says the favourite fan of the tactic of "'argument' by repeated assertion", HWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteThis is yet another of your hit and run claims which you cannot support with actual facts.
Physician, heal thyself.
FWIW, Glenn makes a claim that he believes is supported by inference from the materials he's presented. One is free to look at the materials and dispute his interpretation (as some have done here; none all that convincingly, IMO). But at least he produces links and quotes, compared to, say..... Hmmm, who was that I was thinking of?...
Cheers,
hypatia: Zarqawi was an Al Qaeda ally and active partner with that organization -- you know, the sick fanatics that killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001?
ReplyDeleteWrong. Read this Juan Cole point-by-point analysis of the evidence that Zarqawi and al-Qaeda were linked before 2004-05. Cole writes:
1) Ansar al-Islam was a small, mainly Kurdish little group operating under the protection of the US no-fly zone. Its radical Islamism would not have been allowed in Baath-controlled territory. Even the Iraqi Islamic Party (Muslim Brotherhood) was banned by Saddam, and it was not nearly as radical. Although the US did not sponsor Ansar al-Islam, it was the no-fly zone that made it possible. It was not "Iraq" that harbored the group, but the US no-fly zone. Ansar al-Islam destroyed Naqshbandi shrines and attacked traditional, Sufi Islam in the Kurdish regions. Much of what Safire alleges about it is said to come from Kurdish villagers who were fighting it. I'd take whatever they said with a grain of salt. The likelihood is that his source is not Kurdish villagers at all, though. Did they have a fax machine in their village? His source is more likely Mossad, Israeli intelligence, which probably had agents observing the situation in Kurdistan. Mossad, of course, has been wrong about Iraq all along and may be the source of some of the bad intelligence given to the United States.
2) A Jordanian who had fought in Afghanistan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hooked up with Ansar al-Islam, and there were probably some other Afghanistan veterans among them as well, though only a couple or a handful. (Certainly not all 400, as Safire says; and note how tiny the group is, upon which such monumental arguments are being hung!) They were mostly home-grown Kurdish fundamentalists. There is no evidence that al-Zarqawi is al-Qaeda in the strict sense of having pledged fealty to Bin Laden and having carried out a terrorist mission for him. But he was an "Arab Afghan" and had tenuous ties to Bin Laden's group. [my emphasis]
What possible excuse is there for not having one of those bombs land on Zarqawi?
ReplyDeleteWell, for one thing it would have meant that the Mission had been Accomplished prematurely, i.e., before siezing a Persian Gulf state.
That would be silly.
.
>>One of the amazing things to come to light in this expose is Bush's utter cluelessness. If there ever was evidence that the man is merely a front-man and cheerleader this program provides the evidence.<<
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry I did not see the program, but your point here is well taken. Could you elaborate specifically how this was shown? It has long been my supposition that a cabal of neocons chose George W. Bush to run for first governor of Texas and then president because:
1) He had an electable name.
2) He had no particular agenda, i.e., he couldn't have cared less about foreign or domestic policy and would go in whatever direction he was pointed.
3) He would be beholden to them for both his position and the ideas they would use to govern, for which he didn't have a clue.
4) He was not intelligent and had no intellectual curiosity, so he could easily be convinced of anything.
I am struck by how every now and then we get a glimpse of the "real" George Bush which, naturally, is immediately suppressed. Once in an interview he stated that the war on terror could never be won. He said it only once and it was never repeated.
He said fairly early on after the invasion of Iraq that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. He has since said once or twice that he never drew the connection. However, it has been demonstrated over and over again that he indeed DID draw the connection and that Dick Cheney has repeated that fabrication more often and more vociferously.
After the first tax cuts geared toward the wealthiest segment of our society, there was soon thereafter a proposal for another. The President said,"Didn't we just do this." Those really running things "straightened him out" on what really needed to be done.
I believe that the only way that he could be out giving as many speeches as he does and travelling all over the world all the time and vacationing so much is that he really doesn't need to spend much time governing. Others (read, Cheney) make all the real decisions.
Zarqawi was an Al Qaeda ally and active partner with that organization
ReplyDeleteNo, he was a critic-turned-wannabe who declared himself the 'head of al Qaeda in Iraq' after the invasion.
I get the impression that al Qaeda found him rather annoying.
.
Arne Langsetmo said...
ReplyDeleteBart: This is yet another of your hit and run claims which you cannot support with actual facts.
FWIW, Glenn makes a claim that he believes is supported by inference from the materials he's presented. One is free to look at the materials and dispute his interpretation...
I would love to. However, Glenn did not provided the materials. Thus the following request which you neglected to repost:
Bart: "You must be kidding. Feel free to post a link to any article which claimed eliminating Zarqawi "will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well."
If you agree with Glenn's claim, feel free to provide these links yourself.
All the evidence is that he did not want to undermine the coalition by taking premature unilateral action.
ReplyDeleteActually, there is no evidence of this at all, it's merely spin.
Zarqawi's presense was part of the administration's laughable case for war. Killing him would have been "premature" only in that it would make the invasion seem less necessary to a public that did not support it (until after the shooting started).
.
Bart spins, "...we did not want to scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq."
ReplyDeleteTo quote Bart: "::::chuckle::::"
I think you might more succinctly (and truthfully) phrase it thus:
"...we did not want to scuttle our rationale for our pending illegal invasion of Iraq."
As for the rest of your post: one stands amazed that "an officer of the court," a presumably rational actor in the public sphere, can have so internalized and so doggedly holds to the flimsy lies of Li'l Butch and Big DICK.
As for the rest of your post: one stands amazed that "an officer of the court," a presumably rational actor in the public sphere, can have so internalized and so doggedly holds to the flimsy lies of Li'l Butch and Big DICK.
ReplyDeleteIn the process, he so completely unmoors the words "negotiations," "coalition," and "liberation" from their actual and accustomed meaning as to render them useless for communicating meaning.
The right raged for years about relativists and nihilists who believed nothing and who would say anything. I used to wonder who they were talking about.
I realize now, it was all projection.
.
Robert1014 said...
ReplyDeleteBart spins, "...we did not want to scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq."
I think you might more succinctly (and truthfully) phrase it thus:
"...we did not want to scuttle our rationale for our pending illegal invasion of Iraq."
Folks, it is dishonest to take snippets of comments out of context for the purpose misleading the reader.
Here is the complete comment from which you have taken that snippet:
The Zarqawi slander is based on the allegation in a NBC News story that we knew the al Qaeda camp existed in Iraq and declined to bomb it because we did not want to scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
This is not my "spin." It is a summary of the NBC News report upon which the "Bush declined to kill Zarqawi" slander is based.
If you want to ridicule the conclusions of that hit piece, feel free. I don't give it much credibility at all.
Now, everyone. Let's be nice to Bart. At least he's consistent in his arguments and does his best to back up what he says.
ReplyDeleteHe's also as misled as a blind man being led by headless chicken, but that's only to be expected.
And, let's be honest, he's doing exactly what a lawyer should do when they can't argue either the facts or the law: pound the table and hope he can generate enough racket.
yankee:
ReplyDeleteRather than being "nice," I would have any of you attempt an honest rebuttal.
Given that none have been able to do so, I assume that you are conceding the points I made.
Same ol, some ol...
Bart, given your cult like following and unquestioning obedience of the Bush idiocies, a rebuttal would serve no purpose and be a waste of time.
ReplyDeleteAs long as your tax cuts are coming in ,you'd continue following this idiot over a cliff.
From bart at 2:19PM:
ReplyDelete"Given that none have been able to do so, I assume that you are conceding the points I made."
Once you've made some legitimate, arguable, intelligible points that bear *more* than a passing resemblence to objective reality, you'll have your debate.
Until then, feel free to keep pounding the table.
"Same ol, some ol..."
From you, we expect nothing less.
Interesting related article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/008010.php
Bart,
ReplyDeleteI guess you refuse to acknowledge the point of my post, which was that YOUR phrasing was dishonest. I have read the article you linked to, and I do not find this phrase anywhere: "...scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq." I see a couple of references to "overthrowing Saddam" and "war against Saddam," which do not equate at all with your pro-Bush spin.
We primarily were urged to war against Saddam as a pre-emptive defense against his surely imminent (sic) plans to attack us with his devastating WMD, (for which, read nuclear weapons, per the repeated references to "smoking gun...mushroom cloud"), with "liberating the Iraqis" (sic) thrown in as a little-noticed and little-emphasized rhetorical flourish to make ourselves sound selfless even as we warred to defend ourselves, as well as to simply beef up our overall argument for war. No one at the time saw Li'l Butch's promotion of attacking Iraq as being for any reason other than to defend ourselves against Saddam's intent to destroy America...oh, and, for those easily duped, to revenge ourselves on Iraq for its involvement (sic) in the attacks of 9/11.
The American people would NEVER have supported a war merely to "liberate" the Iraqis, and thus this humanitarian basis for war was never argued before the UN or before Congress or before the American people. This is why the lie of WMD was pushed: to play on our fear, in the wake of the unexpected attack on us on 9/11.
It wouldn't have mattered: our invasion of Iraq would have been as illegal if our reason had been to "liberate" the Iraqis as it was for the lies they chose to push.
peter said:
ReplyDeleteHowever, these comments ignore the context highlighted by the Standard article, that this was an especially sensitive time diplomatically, and that bombing Z. would have disrupted the anti-Iraq diplomacy at the UN.
The comments ignore that context because the context is false. It was not a diplomatically sensitive time, because this Administration by that time had already decided to go to war and (according to a previous post) had already started bombing. Throwing a bomb at al-Zarqawi wouldn't have had any effect on diplomacy, because the Administration had already moved past diplomacy.
What you fail to understand is that if al-Zarqawi was sooooo dangerous and killing him would have been such a greeeeeaaat triumph, wouldn't killing him be worth a little criticism from France, the UN, the NYT, etc.?
The answer is, yes, but only if your objective is to eliminate al-Qaeda. If your objective is to invade Iraq, however, then it makes perfect sense to let him stay alive in Iraq.
Here is a riddle for you- why is killing al-Zarqawi not worth the criticism of France, the UN, the NYT, etc. (i.e. the cost of killing Zarqawi in 2002), but is worth 2500 soldiers, 40,000 Iraqi civilians, $1 trillion total cost, chaotic occupation, etc. (i.e. the cost of killing Zarqawi in 2006)?
WASHINGTON - After a week of positive news for the White House — including the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the formation of a new government in Iraq — the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that President Bush's standing has slightly improved, especially when it comes to the situation in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteOk - so its short of will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well." but its very clear that that the MSM expected a Bush bounce that didn't occur.
"One could plausibly argue that the killings are as much the fault of the warden for deliberately allowing the prisoner to escape as it is the prisoner himself. In all events, praising the warden for re-capturing the prisoner whom he purposely allowed to escape would be perverse, to put it mildly."
ReplyDeleteAl Zarqawi as GWB's very own Willie Horton. Except it's even worse, because instead of being freed by a sloppily administered furlough program, he was freed for the basest and most cynical political expediency.
From Bart at 1:08PM:
ReplyDelete"When this slander was raised before, I challenged anyone here to prove that we had located Zarqawi in Iraq, were staged to kill him with a bombing or cruise missile strike and declined to do so as was the case on multiple occasions with bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 90s."
We're talking about Zarqawi, not Bin Laden. The failures of the Clinton Administration, while perhaps as numerous as Bush's, are not the issue here. Keep to the topic, please.
"Bush could have made big hay just after 9/11 bombing this particular al Qeada base and then claiming Iraq was sheltering more al Qaeda, which was completely true."
If his intention was to focus on Al Qaeda, this would have been true; any mention of this camp however was long after the fact and referenced only so to build the case against Hussein.
"Let's take a look at the various predictions made about this war by the left:"
"Saddam did not have WMD" - the inspection teams have found nothing usable or at least ready for use, so this panned out.
"Saddam had destroyed his WMD" As of 2006 (irregardless of whatever was said 11 years ago) there have been no stockpiles found despite extensive investigation; looks like this panned out as well.
"Saddam did not have WMD programs" The Duelfer Report states they haven't found anything, and the ongoing translations haven't yielded any clear evidence yet (mainly because translation, at last report, was being deliberately held up so's not to embarrass the Russians) that the programs were still in place. Again, this panned out.
"Saddam did not have any relationship with al Qaeda. In fact, the secular Saddam and the religious al Qaeda were enemies." Overlooking the small fact Bin Laden was stating Hussein and his regime were as much a target as the US, its long been established there were periodic but sporatic contacts between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda operatives; but actual collaboration and joint operations sanctioned by Baghdad? No evidence, and nothing to remotely suggest such collaboration was even considered. Again, this one panned out.
"An Iraqi Army could not be formed if we did not keep the original Baathist force." To date, Iraqi security forces, both military and civilian, have yet to show in any big, independent way. I'll say the juries out on this one.
"The Iraqis do not have the foundations to form a democracy." Its sad when an American lawyer, one who presumably graduated both High School and College, thinks three elections held under questionable circumstances and whose results could well be disputed are *all* that is required to establish 'democracy'. Where is the independent judiciary, the free press, the informed and involved electorate, the dedication to notions of debate and compromise? I'll again say the jury is still out, but this isn't looking good for anyone.
"The terror will keep Iraqis from voting." That was a strawman erected *after* the elections took place.
"The Iraqis will never agree on a Constitution." Funny, but as I recall only the Shi'a and Kurds agreed to the draft circulated; the Sunnis still object to several of the provisions (though maybe they've come to terms by now). And 70% of the population still leaves 30% rejecting the governing document, so its hardly universally accepted, isn't it?
"The Sunni will never participate in the government" And exactly how does this address the larger worry about ensuring the Sunnis aren't retalliated against for Hussein, especially given how they're still the minority within the country?
"There is a civil war in Iraq" A civil war, Bart, with rare exceptions is a chaotic mess *without* front lines or organized armies. You have a central government too weak to secure more than very, very limited tracks of territory, while those group(s) that oppose it (whether for ideological, religious, or other reasons) can attack from their own enclaves while themselves being perhaps too weak to establish wider control beyond those same enclaves. Sounds a lot like what we've got in Iraq right now, doesn't it?
"You claim the war has failed. Prove it. Which pre war objective have we failed to obtain?"
Which the 27+ justifications reported to date are you referring to?
"1) Saddam removed." Okay, check.
"2) Iraq disarmed of WMD and WMD programs." Okay, check.
"3) al Qaeda no longer has a sanctuary to hide." Never was in the first place, but lord knows its now a great training ground for them. Guess this wasn't a good one, eh?
"4) Friendly and democratic government installed." Increasingly unfriendly government whose commitment to democratic principles has yet to be demonstrated as either genuine or durable. Ditto from above.
":::whew:::"
Yes, it must be tiring, regurgitating the same stuff and see it shot down.
Given that none have been able to do so, I assume that you are conceding the points I made.
ReplyDeleteHere's the problem bart: you can't argue for shit. You consistently miss the point of issues, you obsessively focus on irrelevant details, and you ignore anything you don't know how to answer.
Now, have you ever been in an argument with someone who simply could not see the forest for the trees?
You are that guy. You cannot or will not find the glaring faults in your own arguments.
There is no real response to absurdities. If you fail to frame a cogent argument, feel free to declare yourself the "winner" when you are ignored.
It matters to no one but you. Facts are more important than feeling that one has "won."
93%? Surely that was some sort of bulk buy? Amazon has some explaining to do there...
ReplyDeleteThe best case for the Weekly Standard's defence of Bush is that Bush is apparently a weak president who allows political considerations to overrule the better judgement of sound national defence policy.
ReplyDeleteAside from Glenn showing that to be false, it's a pretty funny defence: Weekly shorter: "No, Bush isn't calculating and craven, he's cowardly and craven!"
At least his "capital" for killing Zarqawi is already spent on the fact that he chose not to do so earlier.
The right wingers will take this as another lesson to stop admitting the facts are true and instead make up their own reality where their decisions make sense.
Robert1014 said...
ReplyDeleteBart, I guess you refuse to acknowledge the point of my post, which was that YOUR phrasing was dishonest. I have read the article you linked to, and I do not find this phrase anywhere: "...scuttle the negotiations to form the coalition to liberate Iraq." I see a couple of references to "overthrowing Saddam" and "war against Saddam," which do not equate at all with your pro-Bush spin.
Perhaps you would prefer the phrasing "liberating Iraq from Saddam." Removing a mass murdering war criminal from power over a country is usually considered to be a liberation.
No one at the time saw Li'l Butch's promotion of attacking Iraq as being for any reason other than to defend ourselves against Saddam's intent to destroy America...oh, and, for those easily duped, to revenge ourselves on Iraq for its involvement (sic) in the attacks of 9/11... and thus this humanitarian basis for war was never argued before the UN or before Congress or before the American people.
Then you were not listening to what Mr. Bush said in his 2003 SOTU speech laying our his reasons to go to war:
The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages -- leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained -- by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Applause.)
And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.)
And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)
The President repeatedly gave four reasons for military intervention in Iraq - (1) Liberate Iraq from Saddam, (2) Disarm Iraq, (3) Eliminate Iraq as a terrorist sanctuary, and (4) Install a friendly democracy.
We have accomplished all four objectives now and will start to ramp down gradually over the next couple years leaving behind a small counter terror force ala what we are doing in Afghanistan.
The American people would NEVER have supported a war merely to "liberate" the Iraqis...
I disagree.
This is why the lie of WMD was pushed: to play on our fear, in the wake of the unexpected attack on us on 9/11.
1) What lie of WMD?
2) Based on his 180 degree change of direction after 9/11 from a "realist" who campaigned against "nation building" to applying the Reagan Doctrine of regime change and adding the twist of preemption against rogue regimes who support Islamic fascist terror, I can't help but conclude that Mr. Bush genuinely feared that the cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda could very well end up including WMD aimed at our country.
I personally supported the liberation because it finished what we failed to finish in 1991. 300,000 were outright murdered and another estimated 10,000 per year died under sanctions because we did not finish Saddam off when we had the chance in 1991. I will never forget the terrified Shia we left on the ceasefire line in Iraq after George I called us home. I often wonder how many were murdered after we left.
It wouldn't have mattered: our invasion of Iraq would have been as illegal if our reason had been to "liberate" the Iraqis as it was for the lies they chose to push.
How was it "illegal?"
We were never at peace with Iraq after the Persian Gulf War operations were completed. The Coalition granted Iraq a ceasefire so long as it followed the terms of that ceasefire.
The UN adopted the Coalition ceasefire and noted in over a dozen resolutions that Saddam violated the ceasefire.
So far as the US alone is concerned, Congress overwhelmingly passed an AUMF to recommence military actions in Iraq. That is the only legal requirement we need under our Constitution.
The trouble with these stories is that the MSM can imply anything they want, knowing that people often like to read between the lines and take from it what they want, even if the facts aren't there.
ReplyDelete[msnbc.com]
"In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide." [...]
"The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles" [...]
[globalsecurity.org]
"Zarqawi's activities were not confined to a small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day. During his stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad coordinated the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network." [...]
"On October 28, 2002, U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley, an officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, was assassinated in Amman, Jordan. ZARQAWI provided financial and material support for this assassination." [...]
"In late 2002, ZARQAWI traveled to Iraq where he initiated plans to smuggle additional small arms, explosives, and rockets (NFl) into Jordan for use by his terrorist cell." [...]
The msnbc article tells us that the target of the proposed cruise missile strike was the camp itself not Mr. Zarqawi.
Global Security tells us that US intelligence knew Mr. Zarqawi wasn't even at the camp in June, 2002 when the first plan to bomb the camp was proposed. Note also that Jordanian intelligence puts Mr. Zarqawi back in his native Jordan, not Iraq, soon after he left Baghdad in July or August of 2002.
yankeependragon said...
ReplyDeleteFrom Bart at 1:08PM: "When this slander was raised before, I challenged anyone here to prove that we had located Zarqawi in Iraq, were staged to kill him with a bombing or cruise missile strike and declined to do so as was the case on multiple occasions with bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 90s."
We're talking about Zarqawi, not Bin Laden. The failures of the Clinton Administration, while perhaps as numerous as Bush's, are not the issue here. Keep to the topic, please.
I am using the actual Clinton decisions not to kill bin Laden after he was located as an example of the type of evidence necessary to prove the "Bush declined to kill Zarqawi" slander.
I notice that you also cannot provide this evidence.
Case closed.
If you repeat this slander in the future, you are a liar - period.
Bart: "Bush could have made big hay just after 9/11 bombing this particular al Qeada base and then claiming Iraq was sheltering more al Qaeda, which was completely true."
If his intention was to focus on Al Qaeda, this would have been true; any mention of this camp however was long after the fact and referenced only so to build the case against Hussein.
Mr. Bush warned the Middle East that if you shelter al Qaeda, you will be treated like al Qaeda. The focus was on both al Qaeda and the Baathists who sheltered and trained them.
Bart: "Let's take a look at the various predictions made about this war by the left:"
[A repost of all the points I made in my first post]
Yes, it must be tiring, regurgitating the same stuff and see it shot down.
That weak retort is your idea of "shooting down" my rendition of the facts?
Case closed.
Fascinating as all these side issues about why we went into Iraq and whether the mission truly is/isn't accomplished, neither Bart nor the fly nor really any of the rest of our resident contrarians have offered a reasoned or compelling defense against the central point:
ReplyDeleteTo whit, the Bush Administration allowed repeated chances to at least try to eliminate Zarqawi to slip past as far back as 2003. As a result, he has been able to run rampant and contributed to the chaos in the region until his death two weeks ago.
If this were the Administration's only sin, it might be forgivable. When added to its already long, long list of mis-steps, miscalculations, and general stupidity, its barely registers as more than a footnote.
The sooner these walking jokes are out of office, the better.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteFrom Bart at 4:02PM:
ReplyDelete"That weak retort is your idea of "shooting down" my rendition of the facts?"
You didn't read a single rebuttal, did you?
"Case closed."
On you, yes, as your continued attempt at refocusing upon the previous administration's action rather than examine the current bunch's and your inability to actually engage in real discussion. You call alternative viewpoints and interpretations "slander" even as you bolivate with the thinest of background material.
Call this an ad hominim attack if you wish (as I know you shall). There's nothing more to be said to you.
So let me get this straight... you're complaining that Bush didn't kill somebody?
ReplyDeleteYes...Its called the war on terror because its against terrorists. Unfortunately terrorists aren't just who we say they are, so blowing up a building and then referring to the 17 people killed as terrorists because they were in the building doesn't cut it.
But actually killing people who were involved in the attacks on the US is pretty much the object of the game. The problem with Iraq is that it distracts from the war on terror instead of furthering it.
Its only by playing on people's ignorance that W was able to distract everyone from the REAL war.
And finally most people are now figuring that out, hence the 30% and the extra convolution needed to defend the President's position.
Nobody important and competent reads the Weakly Handjob, do they?
ReplyDeletePS. Does this mean killing has now been sanctioned by the left?
ReplyDeleteShooter's epiphany reveals a lot about how the right wing mind works in general.
He just can't get it through his head that there's a difference between legitimate self defense and wanton aggression. He can't understand that there's a difference between taking prisoners in a field of battle and interrogating them vs sticking light wands up their asses just for yucks. He doesn't realize that there's a difference between a joke based on the premise that the president is an idiot vs one based on the premise that 50% of the nation are traitors against the other 50%.
And lastly, he doesn't understand that there's a difference between using wiretap technology to detect and thwart those who would do us harm following the procedures set in place for the purpose vs. giving one agency carte blanche over the entire US communication infrastrusture and telling them to "have at it!"
One aspect to this constant blaming of outside forces that I rarely see mentioned is that in order for all those lamentations to be true this country must be perceived as weak and vulnerable to those outside forces or the logic of their argument falls apart. Anyone thinking this through would logically ask the question "If the US is the preeminent power in the world, and with the Republican neoconservative ideology so preeminent and powerful within its government, how can it also be so vulnerable to the mildest slight, the smallest editorial criticism or the mere asking of a question?
ReplyDeleteThese people must, for this logic to appeal to them at all, believe this country to be fundamentally wak and vulnerable, not powerful and dominant. Their excuses belie their ideological rhetoric. I would think critics would do a better job of pointing this out.
Basically this line of reasoning translates into "Republicans believe America is weak"
Shooter auditioning for the New
ReplyDeleteHee-Haw revival. Seriously, I hear Fox is going to bring it back. Funded by Scaife money. Only so much of that trailer trash pie to go around, ya know.
Shooter242 said...
PS. Does this mean killing has now been sanctioned by the left? Gosh, and someone threw a conniption for scaring people with a dog.
Well I guess by the theory of moral equivalence, all y'all are now in favor of killing in general. Who'd a thunk it.
yankeependragon said...
ReplyDeleteSmall wonder his stock excuse is "History will decide." He probably already realizes his legacy is already toast.
It's Cheney and Rumsfeld's fault. That's the actual ticket that was selected by the SCOTUS in 2000. Cheney/Rumsfeld. Bush is a puppet president. A beard.
Shooter242 said...
ReplyDeleteLOL. It's official, nothing Bush does, will ever be correct.
Bush only does what he's told, but yeah, this is the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Hee-Haw!
mainsailset said...
ReplyDeleteA great irony of the Bush/Rumsfeld montage is their set of blinders that States not individual terrorists are the real enemies. They always work so hard to reframe every argument to deny power of the stateless terrorist ideology and reconnect it to a state, thus the Axis of Evil. And the irony is in the reframing they miss the single most important premise of terrorists and that is that they are a ground up, stateless ideology which is self perpetuating and like a rogue virus
You engage in the same conflation they do. Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology.
Hypatia:
ReplyDelete... [I]t did so in order to preserve whatever "diplomatic" efforts Bush felt would he helpful in invading Iraq.
I can understand and forgive the circumstances, but there really ought to be a fine for puttting together those words like that in a single sentence.... ;-)
I will grant you you were kind enough to use quotes, though.
Cheers,
HWSNBN gets picky-picky:
ReplyDelete[Arne]: FWIW, Glenn makes a claim that he believes is supported by inference from the materials he's presented. One is free to look at the materials and dispute his interpretation...
I would love to. However, Glenn did not provided the materials. Thus the following request which you neglected to repost:
[HWSNBN for elsewhere]: "You must be kidding. Feel free to post a link to any article which claimed eliminating Zarqawi "will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well."
Yeah, this isn't the meat of Glenn's claims (which were linked). This is just a bit of hyperbolic (or perhaps not; hasn't HWSNBN heard the likes of Joe Klein or Chris Matthews lately?) characterisation of the fawning of the pundit classes about Dubya's looming "rebound" and such. Just pay attention, and you'll see that sentiment was all over the news....
Now back to the specifics of Glenn's claims about Zarqawi: Par for the course for HWSNBN to deflect from them...
Cheers,
Arne Langsetmo said...
ReplyDelete[Arne]: FWIW, Glenn makes a claim that he believes is supported by inference from the materials he's presented. One is free to look at the materials and dispute his interpretation...
I would love to. However, Glenn did not provided the materials. Thus the following request which you neglected to repost:
[HWSNBN for elsewhere]: "You must be kidding. Feel free to post a link to any article which claimed eliminating Zarqawi "will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well."
Yeah, this isn't the meat of Glenn's claims (which were linked).
Actually, it appears that Glenn started with his primary gripe - that the press might have something god to say about the war effort or most especially the evil President Bush.
In any case, you don't get a pass on making stuff up just because it isn't the main theme of your post.
This is just a bit of hyperbolic (or perhaps not; hasn't HWSNBN heard the likes of Joe Klein or Chris Matthews lately?) characterisation of the fawning of the pundit classes about Dubya's looming "rebound" and such. Just pay attention, and you'll see that sentiment was all over the news....
To the contrary, the theme of the Donkey press reporting was "Its nice that we killed Zarqawi, al Qaeda will go on without missing a beat."
The Elephant press was a bit more upbeat: Its great that we killed Zarqawi, it will hurt al Qaeda, but we still have a ways to go."
No one on either side of this issue claimed that eliminating Zarqawi "will not only single-handedly turn the war around, but is also going to save the Bush presidency as well."
The only one's discussing the Bush poll numbers were the worried Donkey press afraid that their assumed takeover of Congress will be thwarted.
Now back to the specifics of Glenn's claims about Zarqawi: Par for the course for HWSNBN to deflect from them...
Ummm, you stopped typing. Where are the specific facts?
It's funny to see people like Bart refuse to acknowledge what the article referenced acknowledges itself, and call everyone that disagrees with HIM a liar. Isn't that what his neo-Jacobin ilk accuse the left of doing all the time? I also noticed that he has no reply to the very apt rebuttal of his contention that Bush's 4 objectives have already been accomplished. Of course, only an idiot would make that assertion with a straight face anyway.
ReplyDeleteBart, Barbarian Lawyer, asks, "How is the war in Iraq illegal?"
ReplyDeleteThe mind boggles.
Here's a compendium of current and archived articles on the question:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/
security/issues/iraq/attack/
lawindex.htm
Here it is from the hore's ass, er, mouth, (i.e., Richard Perle):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/
Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html
From Kofi Annan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/
Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html
More:
http://www.information
clearinghouse.info/article6917.htm
More links:
http://www.robincmiller.com/ir-legal.htm
From Hans Blix:
http://www.commondreams.org/
headlines04/0305-01.htm
A good article from Counterpunch:
http://counterpunch.org/bacher05302003.html
Here's an indictment of Bush, Blair, et al for the crime of attacking Iraq:
http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrim2.htm
Here is a link to the Nuremburg Tribunal (Charter of the International Military Tribunal):
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/
projects/ftrials/nuremberg/
NurembergIndictments.html
From Bart:
ReplyDeleteBush's 4 main objectives:
1) regime change - accomplished
2) Iraq disarmed of WMD, destruction of WMD programs - not really, if they did have them we haven't found them yet, so they haven't been disarmed, and there is ZERO evidence that Saddam had an ongoing WMD program - not even the administration is willing to stick to that BS story. As an aside, does anyone other than Bart believe that if the administration truly believed at this stage (and I am still not sure that they didn't believe it earlier) that Saddam had all of those WMD and ongoing programs that they would translate all those documents themselves? Isn't it more than passing strange that if there were any remote chance of a smoking gun being found in those untranslated documents, they would not give a damn enough to translate said documents? That would completely blow away any argument against the invasion, yet the administration seems not to think it worth their time. Interesting.
3) Prevent Saddam from providing territory and aid to AQ - no evidence that it was happening, if you continue this slander you are a liar! As another aside, AQ is certainly there now, so either way that objective is not in any way accomplished.
4) Democratic (read "mob rule"), US friendly government - the jury is certainly still out on that one, therefore mission NOT accomplished on this front, either.
In other words, if Bart considers 1/4 to mean that all 4 objectives have been met, then he's correct. Otherwise, it is he that is the liar.
bart said, "2) Iraq disarmed of WMD and WMD programs. Check."
ReplyDeleteHe stopped something that wasn't in existence?
Should we be awarding credit to the invasion of Iraq for defeating attacking martians as well?
You're completely dishonest. And, by what grounds are you saying the war in Iraq was legal? By the UN? Son, you need to go and read those resolutions again, notice how the UN issued them, and the UN talked about action. They didn't provide a condition precedent that when met, anyone could take action. They were issued by the UN regarding action by the UN.
You can argue all you want that Iraq violated them, and I might agree with you. But you can't argue they authorized a non-UN force to interfere. Well, you can't argue that without being dishonest.
Neoconservatives love to bring up all of those UN resolutions when defending Bush's war, yet they do nothing but denegrate and denounce the UN the rest of the time.
ReplyDeleteHypocrites.
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteWe were undertaking an intense air campaign inside Iraq for almost a full year prior to the invasion. What possible excuse is there for not having one of those bombs land on Zarqawi?
Well, let's see...
Maybe, just maybe, we didn't have him located?
Bart,
ReplyDeleteBush = Hitler. OK, a kinder gentler Hitler. A fuzzy fascist.
Except that Hitler actually fought in a war, he didn't go AWOL, and he was a much more charismatic person and better orator.
Maybe old to some. Maybe new to others.
ReplyDeleteFeds want NSA suits united for D.C. trial
Facing two dozen legal skirmishes around the country over top-secret NSA surveillance programs, federal lawyers want to shift the battlefield to their home turf, where they will try to put an end to it all with a single shot.
Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic?
Salon exclusive: Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation.
AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours
AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials.
...
[The new policy] says the company "may disclose your information in response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process," omitting the earlier language about such processes being "required and/or permitted by law."
Quoting David Shaughnessy:
ReplyDeleteIt details in compelling fashion how America's foreign policy was hijacked and grotesquely abused by Dick Cheney.
What exactly can Cheney do without Bush's implicit backing?
I mean, if Bush doesn't want torture, but Cheney pushes for it, who does Congress listen to? Who is in the military's chain of command?
Bush said it best when he called himself "the decider". What is Cheney going to do if Bush overrules him? Refuse to break the next tie in the Senate?
I'm willing to believe that Cheney had some nasty ideas and has implemented them, and that, with another VP, different policy decisions would have been made. But in the end, the blame for all of those policy decisions rests with Bush.
But don't assume that Bush doesn't explicitly approve of these decisions. Having someone else do all the dirty work, so the face man looks clean, is an old political strategy.
Bush doesn't want to be seen as supporting torture... but if Cheney does, well, it's not Bush's fault, right? It's that awful Cheney, not that good, friendly, personable and good Christian, George W.
Bart does not even read your posts and supporting links.
ReplyDeletebart said...
Glenn:
We were undertaking an intense air campaign inside Iraq for almost a full year prior to the invasion. What possible excuse is there for not having one of those bombs land on Zarqawi?
Well, let's see...
Maybe, just maybe, we didn't have him located?
When the Americans attacked Afghanistan in 2001, Zarqawi and the remnants of his followers fled to northern Iraq (via Iran), where they set up shop with a group called Ansar Al-Islam in a remote mountain region beyond Saddam Hussein's control. Some American intelligence determined that Zarqawi and his cohorts were manufacturing crude chemical weapons there. The Pentagon developed plans to bomb the Ansar camp in 2002, but the White House withheld its approval. "He was up there, we knew where he was, and we couldn't get anybody to move on it," said a former U.S. intelligence official who had worked on the plans to take out Zarqawi, but who refused to be identified discussing military secrets. "We were told they didn't want to disrupt the war planning. It was a real opportunity lost."
That's the No Fly Zone, Bart. No Fly for the Iraqis because we had complete air dominance.
Bush is a wimp. He always has been. Cheney and Rumsfeld are both skilled and hardened bureacratic in-fighters. They look at him funny and he wets himself. He's an empty suit in way over his head. Think Cardinal Richelieu and an evil Regent to the Nth degree.
ReplyDeleteRobert1014 said...
ReplyDeleteBart, Barbarian Lawyer, asks, "How is the war in Iraq illegal?"
The mind boggles.
Try to concentrate then.
Here's a compendium of current and archived articles on the question:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/
security/issues/iraq/attack/
lawindex.htm
Folks, click onto the link at the top of this site to "British Attorney General's Advice to Blair on Legality of Iraq War (March 7, 2003)"
In my earlier post, I noted that the state of war between the Coalition and Iraq had never ended after the 1991 operations and had instead entered a ceasefire whose maintenance required Iraq to conform with the terms of that ceasefire. I further noted that Iraq repeatedly violated the terms of that ceasefire and thus restarted the state of war.
The United States has never ceded its sovereign warmaking power to the UN and did not require UN permission to use military force against Iraq for violating the ceasefire.
However, the Brits in the foregoing brief make a persuasive case that the UN did in fact provide its permission to militarily enforce the ceasefire through a variety of resolutions.
Good read. I commend it to you.
Here it is from the hore's ass, er, mouth, (i.e., Richard Perle): http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/
Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html
Perle voiced an opinion that: ""I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." There was not explanation of exactly what international law to which he was referring.
Mr. Perle's personal opinion is not law.
From Kofi Annan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html
Mr. Annan claims that the war somehow violated the UN Charter, but he doesn't say how.
Mr. Annan's personal opinion is not law.
More: http://www.information
clearinghouse.info/article6917.htm
Ah finally! This article at least makes a stab at an actual argument. Some European lawyers claim that preemptive wars violate the UN Charter's prohibition against wars of aggression.
Two problems...
1) As noted above, Iraq was in a state of war with the Coalition when it violated the ceasefire. No war of aggression.
2) al Qeada had attacked the United States. We responded in self defense with military actions against any nation sheltering al Qaeda, even if that nation itself did not attack us. Iraq easily fell into that category.
More links: http://www.robincmiller.com/ir-legal.htm
There is no particular law on this subject. There are simply the opinions of various lawyers and pundits which are summarized in your remaining links.
Oh: to those who are suggesting that Bush would have had problems with attacking a known terrorist in a bombing run after 9/11... have you forgotten what the world was like after 9/11?
ReplyDeleteThe worst Bush would have gotten is a public announcement that this country or that country does not approve, while getting a private reassurance that "the only crime would be if you missed the sonofabitch!".
From 9/11/2001, up until around December of 2002, people were willing to put up with a lot. It was only when the US seemed determined to bring the horrors of war to a nation of innocent people (admittedly, one ruled by a right evil bastard - but that's not the fault of the nation's people), when that nation did not pose a threat, and had not caused significant harm.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteGlenn: We were undertaking an intense air campaign inside Iraq for almost a full year prior to the invasion. What possible excuse is there for not having one of those bombs land on Zarqawi?
Bart: Well, let's see... Maybe, just maybe, we didn't have him located?
That's the No Fly Zone, Bart. No Fly for the Iraqis because we had complete air dominance.
Huh?
And exactly what does that have to do with whether we knew the location of Zarqawi so we could bomb him?
Oh: to those of you who still take Bart seriously... you should scroll back a few discussions to where he explains that "plenary" is a term referring to constitutionally granted power.
ReplyDelete"Plenary" refers to "total" or "complete", e.g., the "plenary indulgence" that completely and totally absolves a Catholic from time spent in purgatory. (So sayeth the ex-Catholic.)
I also find it humorous that in this discussion, he can't figure out what part of the UN charter might have been violated. How about the one that forbids warfare against other member nations, while explicitly excepting self-defense? The US invasion was not defensive in nature, and was not authorized by the controlling authority of the cease-fire agreement, thus it was illegal under the UN Charter, and under the Constitution (which makes ratified treaties the law of the land).
Sure, there've been sophistries that claim that the US had some form of implicit authorization fromn the UN... but the UN's final resolution, the one giving Iraq a final chance, was explicitly worded so as to make it clear that there was no authority to attack. That compromise, the removal of any automatic triggers for war, was specifically agreed to by the Bush administration to win passage (15-0) of that resolution.
Did that resolution last even a day before the Bushies started claiming it said something it explicitly did not? (Serious question; I'm honestly curious.)
But even if you believe those sophistries (as Bart claims to), that Bart can't figure out what part of the UN Charter Annan is referring to shows him to be an uninformed blowhard.
(Oh, Bart? Since you've apparently cried "ad hominem" before, while my statement is "ad hominem" (i.e.: directed "at the man"), it is not an example of the ad hominem fallacy. If I said your arguments were bogus because you were an uninformed blowhard, that would be the ad hominem fallacy. I have demonstrated that you're an uniformed blowhard, by pointing to specific examples where you demonstrated your lack in being informed. "Blowhard" is, of course, just an extraneous insult... a matter of opinion that, while not polite, nevertheless seems true.)
Arguing with such a person is a waste of time.
Actually, this calls back to whether to ignore Coulter (and her ilk) or not. One thing to keep in mind is that you should never *engage* with people like Coulter. You should never try to speak with such people, and expect them to respond in an honest manner. Exposing their lies is useful; attempting to speak to them is generally not.
DAVID BYRON - For the reasons I stated yesterday, you're no longer welcome to post here. I hope you will honor that request voluntarily so that I don't have to have your posts deleted as you write them.
ReplyDeleteGot WMD? My, my, my...
ReplyDeleteDocument Details WMD Recovered In Iraq, Santorum Says
By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
June 21, 2006
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically "sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles," in Iraq.
Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."
According to Santorum, "That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country."
Reading from the document, Santorum added, "Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the Black Market. Use of these weapons by terrorist or insurgent groups would have implications for coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside of Iraq cannot be ruled out. The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles. And I underscore filled."
[The fact that they are still hunting for WMD to keep them from the terrorists is probably why they have kept this under wraps]
Santorum said the "purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions."
While acknowledging that the agents "degrade over time," the document said that the chemicals "remain hazardous and potentially lethal."
The media has reported that "insurgents and Iraqi groups" want to "acquire and use chemical weapons," Santorum noted.
The Pennsylvania senator called the finding "incredibly" significant.
"The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false," Santorum said. "We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country."
> http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200606/NAT20060621e.html
Great post, Glenn.
ReplyDeleteThe commentary here has brought out a point too often missed, as well. This is not a "lefty" blog, in that there is no proscribed "lefty" agenda to be adhered to by the blogger, nor many of the regular commenters. While the opinions of all are welcome, this is primarily about the issue of the culture of lawlessness adopted by this administration.
I don't have to be a democrat (and, indeed, am not) to be offended by my President claiming the inherent right to interpret the Constitution to his own pleasure, without regard to precedent or opinion, legislative or judicial.
I, also, like Glenn, have no problem with killing the al-qaeda M*&!er F*&!ers who bombed us on 9/11, Shooter. The fact that you are still trying to play this card, this "If-you-don't-like-the-President's-war-policies-you-must-be-some-kind-of-extremist-left-wing-pacifist-wacko-pussy" card, in your kindergarten debate team is kind of frustrating. Please stop.
My problem with the war in Iraq is that we were lied to by our government to get in there, and they continue to lie to us now about it, and just about everything under the sun, years later.
Ken Mehlman can't go on The Daily Show and make a claim that the administration is "pretty open" with a straight face.
I wish this were funny. I mean, I kind of laugh, but shit - this guy sits at the left hand of the power tribunal and laughs about the fact that his job is to shovel a steaming pile of bullshit on the American public day after day. Actually, I wish it weren't funny, or something.
And Bart, the whole exchange about whether US forces knew where Zarqawi was or not...
You are being deliberately obtuse. From Anonymous' quote above: "He was up there, we knew where he was, and we couldn't get anybody to move on it," said a former U.S. intelligence official who had worked on the plans to take out Zarqawi, but who refused to be identified discussing military secrets. "We were told they didn't want to disrupt the war planning. It was a real opportunity lost."
That's the No Fly Zone, Bart. No Fly for the Iraqis because we had complete air dominance.
To which you reply:That's the No Fly Zone, Bart. No Fly for the Iraqis because we had complete air dominance.
Huh?
And exactly what does that have to do with whether we knew the location of Zarqawi so we could bomb him?
The statement "He was up there, we knew where he was, and we couldn't get anybody to move on it" from a senior intelligence official is pretty fucking clear, I think. Stop being so damn snarky and arrogant and actually engage in a discussion.
David Byron, you object to being lumped in with Bart yesterday by Glenn, call him a liar and proceed to whine about the poor treatment you get. Today, you support your right to be treated as a reasonable human being with such nuggets as By treaty and international law you had no such right. In fact Al-Qaeda had more of a legal argument to justify 9-11.
al-qaeda's legal argument to blow up the WTC and kill 3000 innocent people can be summed up in two words. Those two words are "Shut the fuck up."
CNS News?
ReplyDeleteSANTORUM???*
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Oh, MERCY!!!
Come up with some more "reliable sources" and "infallible authorities", Bart. Yer killin' me!!
You immidiately set about deleting my posts before I'd even heard of your "request". Pathetic behaviour Glenn. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteI explained my reasoning to in the thread from yesterday, when you made your original accusation that I fabricated "dozens" of facts in my book (without bothering to list any, even when I asked). I told you that making those accusations on my blog and then refusing to justify it or pvoide examples crossed the line for me. You then proceeded to do exactly that by refusing to provide any examples of these supposed fabrications. I know that you read that explanation because you responded to it multiple times. That is the reason why you are no longer welcome to post here.
And I'm not interested in debating this with you. You are the first person I have told not to post here. I didn't build my blog to have someone like you come and whimsically spit out extremely serious and defamatory accusations like that and then refuse to provide any support. You're free to start your own blog and make those accusations or post them somewhere else, but not here.
To Bart -
ReplyDeleteYou're willing to hang your hat with Santorum? And on what? The fact a paltry 500 'munitions' (no dimensions or specs given) which contained *degraded* (in other words effectively USELESS) choking or nerve agents have been recovered over the LAST THREE YEARS?
At what point did you become so desperate that you're willing to go this route, Bart?
Two responses:
ReplyDelete1) When this issue of "getting" Zarqawi in 2002 comes up, invariably the claim is made that we "could have killed him" then. I would point out that this buys into the idea that are smart weapons and our intelligence assets are somehow infallible. Smart weapons go astray, intelligence has often been wrong. According to the documentary "Why We Fight," of, IIRC, 57 "leadership" strikes during the initial phases of the Iraq war, not one hit an Iraqi leader. They did, however, kill many Iraqi civilians.
2) I think you miss a very interesting thing about this article: namely that the authors basically are saying that going to war aganst Iraq (i.e. all this stuff about trying not to upset world opinion so as to build a war coalition) was more important than getting a terrorist, which was, on its face, the purpose of the war to begin with!!
What is going on here is as transparent as it is important. There is no political faction which played a greater role in leading this country to invade Iraq than the neoconservatives at The Weekly Standard and its 9/11-exploiting allies and affiliates, exemplified by the Gerard Group, of which Gartenstein-Ross is a "senior consultant." Along with the ideologues in the administration, these are the individuals responsible for leading the U.S. to invade Iraq. The failures and disasters it has spawned are their doing. And when all is said and done, it will be time to assign guilt and blame to those responsible, and The Weekly Standard and their neoconservative allies and supporters are petrified -- rightfully so -- that responsibility for this war will be pinned to their foreheads forever.
ReplyDeleteOne of the truest paragraphs ever written. There should be an entire blog investigating the Weekly Standard. FDL should get on it right away.
Bill Kristol has had his murderous hand in things since he became Vice President (in reality) in 1988.
He is one the main architects of taking away the privacy of American citizens and has caused more innocent blood to be spilled than any single other person.
Let's see his blood tests. Why drugs is he taking? What would make a person sell out his country the way he has sold out the USA?
Why should his privacy remain uninvaded?
WHO IS BILL KRISTOL? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.
Captain Goto said...
ReplyDeleteCNS News?
SANTORUM???*
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Oh, MERCY!!!
Come up with some more "reliable sources" and "infallible authorities", Bart. Yer killin' me!!
Hero, the House Intelligence Committee demanded that CIA declassify its report on WMD in Iraq for months and they finally provided a declassified executive summary. Here is the link to the pdf:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/
pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf
As for your attack on CNS (and I presume Fox News, which carried the news conference live), the real question is why the Donkey media is not reporting the discovery of 500 mustard and sarin rounds, which even in degraded form could slaughter tens of thousands of people???
This reminds me of the Fox News interview of Duelfer after a secret briefing to the Senate Intel Committee where he dislosed having found 35 liters of sarin and expected to find more. Nothing but silence from the Donkey media.
Hat tip to The Ugly American
ReplyDeleteThat is the headlines across the blogs, on talk radio, and on cable news. General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war
> http://therealuglyamerican.com/
2006/06/21/wmd-found-in-iraq/
Santorum was interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt Show concerning the WMD report. Here is the link to the transcript:
ReplyDelete> http://www.radioblogger.com/
There appears to be a great deal which is not being disclosed about an ongoing search for these weapons to get to them before al Qaeda.
This is reason for the Kabuki dance about no WMD being found.
From Bart at 11:06PM:
ReplyDelete"As for your attack on CNS (and I presume Fox News, which carried the news conference live), the real question is why the Donkey media is not reporting the discovery of 500 mustard and sarin rounds, which even in degraded form could slaughter tens of thousands of people???"
Bart, unless you can produce detailed specs of the purity and concentration of the agents *plus* the physical condition of the 'rounds' themselves, let's save the theatrical hysteronics for Limbaugh. I expect a bit more thought on the issue from you, at least.
Senator Santorum was, by my reading, offering only his own non-technical opinion on what these so-called 'munitions' could do in their current condition. I will grant he has a point, that chemical agents (both choking and, more especially, nerve agents) could still prove dangerous even in degraded condition. Precisely how much so is dependent upon so many factors that this 'news' is far less worrisome at second and third glance than it first appears.
In other words, until we know A LOT more, its inaccurate and really rather irresponsible to declare "Ah-Ha! We were right!" on the issue based on this one, small tidbit.
And for the record, only the paranoid or blinding partisan think there's such a thing as "the Donkey Media", especially after the last six years.
Is Bart more dumb or more sad?
ReplyDeletewww.ThinkProgress.org:
Defense Department Disavows Santorum’s WMD Claims «
"Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.
Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.”
Even the Defense Department is disassociating itself from this idiocy. It's the Bart, Hugh Hewitts and Rick Santorums of the world clinging to the pathetic fantasy that Saddam had WMD's.
looks like Bart got some Santorum on his face (google is your friend).
ReplyDeleteEven Bush has said there were no WMDs found. Perhaps God told Santorum about the WMDs in their one on one Wednesday chat? Or maybe the guy he hires to turn lights on in his empty PA house figured it out? Or the teachers at the private school where he sends his kids with PA taxpayer money, despite not living in PA gave him the tip?
You're getting WEAK - citing Santorum and his garbage heap evidence. We went to war for that? That's as good as you can get. I suppose our next targets will be old janitors' closets with left over Pinesol.
"COMBS: Congressman, Senator, it’s Alan Colmes. Senator, the Iraq Survey Group — let me go to the Duelfer Report — says that Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there. And Jim Angle reported this for Fox News quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they already been degraded. And the official went on to say these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest beating at this Republicans are doing tonight thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the defense department."
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/21/dod-disavows-santorum/
but Hegh Hewitt said there were weapons!!!! You know, the guy who compared being in the Empire State Building to being in Baghdad.
ReplyDeleteYou know, this guy
http://www.fraterslibertas.com/Images/Hugh/Runnin3.jpg
longhairedweidro:
ReplyDelete(Oh, Bart? Since you've apparently cried "ad hominem" before, while my statement is "ad hominem" (i.e.: directed "at the man"), it is not an example of the ad hominem fallacy. If I said your arguments were bogus because you were an uninformed blowhard, that would be the ad hominem fallacy. I have demonstrated that you're an uniformed blowhard, by pointing to specific examples where you demonstrated your lack in being informed. "Blowhard" is, of course, just an extraneous insult... a matter of opinion that, while not polite, nevertheless seems true.)
Hey, hey, hey. Stop that! I'm the self-appointed HWSNBN-basher around here, and I own the patent on that kind of talk....
Good job, though. Guess I can take a couple days off, eh?....
Cheers,
Bart...This is reason for the Kabuki dance about no WMD being found.
ReplyDeleteBart, I think your kabuki make up got smeared. Ooohhhh, damn! That's not Kabuki make up. That's Santorum on your face! Eeeewwwww!
longhairedweirdo:
ReplyDeleteActually, this calls back to whether to ignore Coulter (and her ilk) or not. One thing to keep in mind is that you should never *engage* with people like Coulter. You should never try to speak with such people, and expect them to respond in an honest manner. Exposing their lies is useful; attempting to speak to them is generally not.
Which is why I have adopted the habit of refraining from directly addressing HWSNBN while commenting on his posts. Just make your point and move on; it's for the benefit of the lurkers and passers-by for the most part, anyway.
Speaking of long haired weirdos....
Cheers,
steve:
ReplyDeleteIf you have any al-Qaeda members within the geographic boundaries of your country, if any of them got treated at a hospital in your capital city, if there's an allegation that one of your government officials had some kind of contact with them at some point in the past, well then, it's SELF DEFENSE if we attack you!
Boy, Florida sure dodged the bullet, eh? Good thing it saw the voice of reason and went for Dubya in 2000....
Cheers,
HWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteGot WMD? My, my, my...
Document Details WMD Recovered In Iraq, Santorum Says
By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
June 21, 2006
HWSNBN was doing research on DUI investigations in 2003, so you'll pardon him if he missed the weekly "finds" of WMD, mobile bioweapons labs, and all, dutifully reported by the stenographic pool, all to disappear blissfully into oblivion the next week, at best mourned by a page 37 "correction" or "update" if that even....
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically "sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles," in Iraq.
Wow. Didn't know that "Man on Dog" Ricky was over there. Couldn't he have served better on "staked goat" duty?
Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
Whoopdedoo. AFAIK they found some 19 empty shells back early in 2003. As for "degraded", for the hard-of-reading, that means kaput.
No one said that Saddam never had chemical weapons (and for that matter, the U.S. has never said that the U.S. didn't have CWs either ... and for good reason; just ask the folks in Alabama). So finding old shells (you know ... like ... "degraded"???) is hardly some monumental discovery.
The f**king stoopidest senator on the face of the planet (outside of Coburn and Inhofe, arguably) said:
"The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false," Santorum said. "We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country."
Shorted "Mr. Man on Dog": "We have found weapons that we didn't find...."
And the troll HWSNBN cuts'n'pastes this dutifully. A RNC "Team Leader" tote bag is in his future, I can see....
Cheers,
I'm guessing that if the American public had been told that we had to invade Iraq because they have left over Sarin gas from before the Gulf War the support might have been a tad wanting.
ReplyDeleteHWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteHero, the House Intelligence Committee demanded that CIA declassify its report on WMD in Iraq for months and they finally provided a declassified executive summary. Here is the link to the pdf:...
Kind of like the massaged and orchestrated NIE (see here) is a "fair and balanced" summary of the state of intellegence estimates, eh?
But the troll HWSNBN does it one better and cherry-picks the most superficially "incriminating" parts (or more accurately, lets "Man on Dog" and the RNC "noise machine" do it for him), and even then they don't amount to a bucket of warm spit....
From the report (courtesy of John "I seeeee nothink!" Negroponte, I might add):
"Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."
That's basically one of eight sentences that comprise the entire body of this "astounding scoop" (and the others ain't any better)....
Of course, 15 year old CWs, by the accounts of experts, are thought to have pretty much degraded entirely.
And their being "assessed" to exist is just ... well, shall we say, typical Dubya maladministration "intelligence"?
And another thing:
Jaaayyzzuuus-Keeerrrisst-On-A-Stick, Bart, see if you can learn a smattering of HTML and put some proper links in your posts....
Cheers,
HWSNBN shouts breathlessly:
ReplyDeleteHat tip to The Ugly American
Yeah, we know. It was on Michael "Savage" and all the other "usual suspects" of the RW 'Mighty Wurlitzer'.....
That is the headlines across the blogs, on talk radio, and on cable news. General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war....
So the maladministration isn't going to "expose" the Axis Of Weasel for the shills, dupes, and enablers they are -- after maligning them, slandering them, and commenting on their hygienic practises and their mother's sexual habits in the run-up to the Iraq war? My, has some sense of propriety and politeness returned to the maladministration???? Yes, Virginia, there is [apparently] a cure for severe psychosis....
Just another dose of reality: "exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council..." Ummm, the Security Council has 13 members. Not that either Faux, Ugly, HWSNBN, or Hannity would have any clue....
Cheers,
HWSNBN unintentionally reveals maladministration thinking:
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be a great deal which is not being disclosed about an ongoing search for these weapons to get to them before al Qaeda.
This is reason for the Kabuki dance about no WMD being found.
So, we have this report that claims that it's "assessed" that there's lots more out there and they're daaaannngggerrouss.
So the maladministration, hitting a lull in the polls, worried about elections coming up, and needing a rerun of the "duct tape and plastic sheet" manoeuvre, decides to tell this to al Qaeda and the world. Rrrrrrriiiigghhht. Whether they're honest or not, mistaken or not, truthful or not, it's -- not matter how you slice it -- a bone-headed move. Typical for teh maladministration, though.
Cheers,
good pick up Arne.
ReplyDeleteTo further that, I like how we're still running around looking for them, but can't say that, cause it might tip off anyone else looking for them. So, by that logic, is Santorum aiding the enemy in saying there were WMDs?
David Byron,
ReplyDeleteYou say Glenn will start posting lies about you after you have gone.
I would like to beat him to the punch, so let me be the first to post a lie about your departure:
You'll be missed.
ewo:
ReplyDeleteDavid Byron,
You say Glenn will start posting lies about you after you have gone.
I would like to beat him to the punch, so let me be the first to post a lie about your departure:
You'll be missed.
In some ways, I will miss him. While there's others that are less enamoured of the "purity" of the U.S. WRT policy (even ignoring the horrible aberrations of the Dubya maladministation), David Byron did bring up serious points of contention as to overall U.S. policy. I won't agree with everything he said (nor would I stress even the points I agreed with to the extent he did in my own postings), but nonetheless he did bring up some substantial issues.
I'm just deeply disappointed that he let his own personality and mannerisms get in the way of his message, and insisted on being pointlessly rude and abrasive. Not only was it a loss to the blog here, but I think that it was deeply unproductive in achieving the things that David himself seemd to be so troubled about. If he's still reading here, maybe he'll take a hint and adjust his behavviour accordingly on the next blog he frequents. But, once again, a waste; I think that he won't find nearly as good -- or potentially as receptive -- a blog as this. You really shouldn't s**t in the best bed you have to sleep in.
Cheers,
bart said...
ReplyDeleteSantorum was interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt Show concerning the WMD report. Here is the link to the transcript:
> http://www.radioblogger.com/
There appears to be a great deal which is not being disclosed about an ongoing search for these weapons to get to them before al Qaeda.
This is reason for the Kabuki dance about no WMD being found.
LOL Bart, why aren't you screaming about traitors revealing classified information? Mabe Al Qaida didn't know any still existed until Santorum told them.
armagednoutahere:
ReplyDeleteDavid gets irritated at the mythological greatness we perceive in the founding of our country. We love our constitution and see it as the best attempt in history to codify all our highest and best beliefs about Justice and Equality. This drives David batty.
I tend to agree with David here; in this matter, he's right. A lot of Americans think they copyrighted constitutions and have the exclusive patent on democracy. Not so (hell, Iceland beat them to the punch by well over half a millennium). Add to this the rough edges (to say the least) of the United States' early rough draft (tolerance of slavery, longer than pretty much every country in the New World, as well as the "Trail of Tears" suppression of the native Americans), and you might even say that while it had the theory down, it had yet to reduce it to practise and that no patent shold be forthcoming.
Not to mention the fact that we didn't really redeem ourselve all that well in the 20th century, either. I'll once again plug the Stephen Kinzer book "Overthrow", which ought to get a Pulitzer nomination (and should be recommended if not required reading on this blog).
David points out some inconvenient facts about the realities of American history and our use and misuse of force around the globe, to undermine the claim that we are some kind of force for good in the world. We like to think our constitution is perceived by all the peoples of the world as a shining example of what life can be like when mankind seeks to embody the better angels of his nature in the Rule of Law. David thinks we're confused. And maybe we are.
The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, and YMMV.
While I am critical of various U.S. policies, I am quite aware of the good that the United States has done (and is still capable of doing); my parents were saved from Nazi occupation by the efforts of the U.S. (... and the Soviet Union, in a fact not given as much attention as it should, albeit the Soviets brought their own horrors).
I think that nothing the U.S. has done wrong is permanent or irreparable ... at least up to now. I think the wisest course would be to suck it up, tout the successes and the benefits, and to frankly come clean on some of the excesses and the problems. Other nations are loath to admit past failings as well; only a few such as Germany and the other "U.S.A." have made real efforts at this occasionally necessary introspection (I'd note that Japan continues a rather self-destructive policy WRT WWII; perhaps if we led by example, we could get them to do more to stop their perversion of history in their own schools).
If the United States could present itself as an example of the power of human good, despite the failings and temptations of human evil that occasionally intrude, maybe they could become that "shining city on a hill"....
Cheers,
gris lobo:
ReplyDeleteLOL Bart, why aren't you screaming about traitors revealing classified information? Mabe Al Qaida didn't know any still existed until Santorum told them.
You forget Rule #1: IOKIYAR.
Republicans are by definition not traitors; they're helping the preznit, and he's saving the world from Terra single-handedly, so by perfectly obvious syllogism, anything they do in furtherance of that is obviously not "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy even if it does. Dontcha see?
Cheers,
Arne Langsetmo said...
ReplyDeletegris lobo:
LOL Bart, why aren't you screaming about traitors revealing classified information? Mabe Al Qaida didn't know any still existed until Santorum told them.
You forget Rule #1: IOKIYAR.
Republicans are by definition not traitors; they're helping the preznit, and he's saving the world from Terra single-handedly, so by perfectly obvious syllogism, anything they do in furtherance of that is obviously not "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy even if it does. Dontcha see?
Your right, I did forget. ROFLMAO! :-))
armagedenoutahere:
ReplyDeletewhile some of the things David points out are true, and America has fallen far short of its expressed beliefs time and again, it's precisely our belief in the sanctity of our constitution that allows us to maintain a hope that one day we will live up to the stated goals of our forefathers.
reminded me of this
I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Price Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964
LOL -
ReplyDeleteNobel Price should be Nobel Prize
talk about Freudian slips...