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Bush spins and many still defend him

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Those who still defend the invasion of Iraq are having a harder and harder time refuting the evidence. And as the evidence piles up that shows our President mislead the American people, his approval rating continues to drop. More Americans have already died in Iraq this month, April, than died the entire month of March. Almost four months after the election, the "government" can't come together. While they argue, Iraqi citizens and Americans are dying. We're coming out of Iraq. How many other young Americans will die before that happens and how will their deaths help capture Osama Bin Laden, the man who actually did attack the USA? Entire article, link below; my emphasis.

"As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller -- but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus. A Bush-appointed commission later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House -- weeks after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official," speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.

Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's speech a few months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.

Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the Niger remarks.

In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention of Niger or uranium.

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916.html
 

Karl

Well-known member
And the Washington Post I'm sure has never lied, decieved ,twisted or spun anything either. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you want to post anyting that pertains to anything political I suggest you do not post anything from a liberally biased media.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Karl said:
And the Washington Post I'm sure has never lied, decieved ,twisted or spun anything either. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you want to post anyting that pertains to anything political I suggest you do not post anything from a liberally biased media.

And as usual you Bush groupies can't refute the article, so you throw mud at the source.

The Washington Post isn't responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. They aren't responsible for turning the first Federal budget surplus in my memory into the largest Federal budget deficit in history. They aren't responsible for the huge growth in drug costs for seniors. They aren't cutting the budget for veterans. George W. Bush is.
 

BBJ

Well-known member
Disagreeable said:
Karl said:
And the Washington Post I'm sure has never lied, decieved ,twisted or spun anything either. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you want to post anyting that pertains to anything political I suggest you do not post anything from a liberally biased media.

And as usual you Bush groupies can't refute the article, so you throw mud at the source.

The Washington Post isn't responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. They aren't responsible for turning the first Federal budget surplus in my memory into the largest Federal budget deficit in history. They aren't responsible for the huge growth in drug costs for seniors. They aren't cutting the budget for veterans. George W. Bush is.


Your right dis the Wash. post is not responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq, saddam is.
NO such thing as a surplus in govt. :p
They aren't responsible for hurricane katrina, gas prices, the weather, air quality, price of milk, rice, meat and the list goes on and on and on and on. Bush is to blame we know. You have told us the same old rhetoric time after time. Get a new soapbox please, your not changing nor have you changed one persons view on the war. I am ALL FOR IT. :wink:

Oh and I think your losing a step also. :p :p :p
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
With Dis it's "same song, second verse, could get better, but it's gonna get worse"...

She has posted this stuff for so long now, I really think she is starting to believe it.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
BBJ said:
Disagreeable said:
Karl said:
And the Washington Post I'm sure has never lied, decieved ,twisted or spun anything either. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you want to post anyting that pertains to anything political I suggest you do not post anything from a liberally biased media.

And as usual you Bush groupies can't refute the article, so you throw mud at the source.

The Washington Post isn't responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. They aren't responsible for turning the first Federal budget surplus in my memory into the largest Federal budget deficit in history. They aren't responsible for the huge growth in drug costs for seniors. They aren't cutting the budget for veterans. George W. Bush is.


Your right dis the Wash. post is not responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq, saddam is.
NO such thing as a surplus in govt. :p
They aren't responsible for hurricane katrina, gas prices, the weather, air quality, price of milk, rice, meat and the list goes on and on and on and on. Bush is to blame we know. You have told us the same old rhetoric time after time. Get a new soapbox please, your not changing nor have you changed one persons view on the war. I am ALL FOR IT. :wink:

Oh and I think your losing a step also. :p :p :p

George W. Bush is responsible for the death of every man, woman, and child that has died in Iraq since he invaded the country.

He's not responsible for Katrina, but he's certainly responsible for the disasterous FEMA response because he has appointed incompetent people to important jobs. Gasoline prices are to be laid at his door. There's no excuse for high gas prices; we're simply being gouged by the big oil companies. They bought and paid for Bush years ago. He has lowered air quality standards, mileage requirements for cars... yes the list goes on.

Why? I like this sandbox. I think you're wrong. There have been people on this board who say my postings have made them rethink position on the Iraqi war. And a lot more people read postings than post.

You can make excuses and support this war all you want. But Bush told us we were going to war because Saddam had WMDs and could give them to terrorists who would then bring them to the US. That wasn't true. More people every day are starting to agree with me.

The latest poll I saw was very telling. 48% of the people polled said Iran should be stopped from getting a nuke. But 55% said they didn't trust the Bush Administration to do the right thing about Iran. Quite a delimma, this Administration finds itself in, huh?
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Faster horses said:
With Dis it's "same song, second verse, could get better, but it's gonna get worse"...

She has posted this stuff for so long now, I really think she is starting to believe it.

Ah, some humor. Not very good humor, though. Of course, I believe it. You know it's true, but you are afraid to admit it. I mean, if you lost your faith in George W. Bush, what do you have left?

Did you see the video of George Bush being briefed that the levies might not hold the day before Katrina hit the New Orleans? Did you see the video of him saying no one thought the levies might not hold? He lied.

Did you see George W. Bush telling us that a court order was required before he could listen in on our convesations? At the same time his NSA program is sweeping up thousands of conversations of normal, everyday people like you and me. He lied.
 

BBJ

Well-known member
Since dis thinks the high price of a gallon of gas is the Administrations fault here's something I found interrresting. :wink:

http://www.awwa.org/Advocacy/learn/info/PricePerGallon.cfm

Price Per Gallon
Here are some prices to purchase a gallon of these products. Tap water continues to be one of the only items that can be purchased for under one cent per gallon.

Cost per gallon:
Chanel No. 5 Parfum: $45, 056
Revlon Nail Enamel: $983.04
Visine Advanced Eye Drops: $741.12
Vicks 44D Cough Syrup: $96.67
Coppertone SPF 45 sun-block lotion: $90.11
Pepto-Bismol: $58.52
Evian bottled water: $21.19
Mocha at Peaberry coffee (tax included): $22.28
Corona beer: $12.89
Snapple: $10.32
Tide liquid detergent: $8.39
Coca-Cola: $2.64
Tap water, Denver Water - .00186 cent for 11,000 gallons or less per month, including monthly service charge

*Source: Denver Post, BusinessWeek, and Denver Water

Now in my opinion gas is a luxury and if you don't like paying the price then don't buy it. WALK! Gasoline is NOT A NECESSITY. Life goes on without it. Now focusing on the list, do you, dis, think the Bush administration should make Evian lower the price per gallon of their water. I know the tap water price per gallon is very reasonable but what about the poor and homless that don't have the luxury of tap water. WATER IS A NECESSITY in my book so should we be worried more about the price of bottled water instead of gas?

When people really get fed up with the gas prices they will take care of it not the govt.
 

theHiredMansWife

Well-known member
Now in my opinion gas is a luxury and if you don't like paying the price then don't buy it. WALK!

I just realized something; you don't actually farm or ranch, do you.
because neither a farmer, rancher or anyone else who lives out of town for their livlihood would think fuel is a luxury... :?
 

BBJ

Well-known member
theHiredMansWife said:
Now in my opinion gas is a luxury and if you don't like paying the price then don't buy it. WALK!

I just realized something; you don't actually farm or ranch, do you.
because neither a farmer, rancher or anyone else who lives out of town for their livlihood would think fuel is a luxury... :?

How do the Amish survive? How did the farmers, ranchers or anyone else who lives out of town make it before we got gasoline?
Odd isn't it?

Again you "assume" something about someone you know nothing about!

I'm not a big timer like you and the hired man but I do own 13 acres and a year old house. Only have 4 cows right now and my mare but that will change. How many do you own? Not how many does the owner of the ranch you work for own but you yourself?

I don't guess numbers matter much because I known of people going out and buying 50 head and not know what they are doing so you really don't have to answer I guess. :wink:
 

theHiredMansWife

Well-known member
And you make a living off those four cows?
confused-smiley-013.gif
Because that's what we were talking about remember?

So far as the Amish, they aren't exactly a competitive aspect of the market. :roll:
Do you have any realistic examples of people who don't need reasonably priced fuel to grow their product? You're trying to prove that fuel is a luxury afterall...
 

BBJ

Well-known member
theHiredMansWife said:
And you make a living off those four cows?
confused-smiley-013.gif
Because that's what we were talking about remember?

So far as the Amish, they aren't exactly a competitive aspect of the market. :roll:
Do you have any realistic examples of people who don't need reasonably priced fuel to grow their product? You're trying to prove that fuel is a luxury afterall...

Show me where we were talking about making aliving off of cattle. :shock: I never said one time anything remotely close to making a living on 4 cows much less anything else. I "assume" since you didn't answer the question about how many you own, that you own nothing you simply work for someone else. :frowns:
 

floyd

Well-known member
news flash, "the Amish" also use fuel. motive power may be equine, but forecarts with motors are very common.

Depends on whicj market one looks at in terms of "the Amish" making their presence felt. Lot of horse drawn machinery is manufactured by "the amish". Harness, saddles etc.
 

theHiredMansWife

Well-known member
Show me where we were talking about making aliving off of cattle. I never said one time anything remotely close to making a living on 4 cows much less anything else. I "assume" since you didn't answer the question about how many you own, that you own nothing you simply work for someone else
This is the statement I made that you were arguing with, remember?

because neither a farmer, rancher or anyone else who lives out of town for their livlihood would think fuel is a luxury...

which I made in reply to your statement that fuel is a luxury.
Now, all of your tangents are interesting (and your assumptions incorrect, btw), but they aren't supporting your point that fuels are a luxury.

Do you wish to modify that statement maybe?
 

BBJ

Well-known member
theHiredMansWife said:
Show me where we were talking about making aliving off of cattle. I never said one time anything remotely close to making a living on 4 cows much less anything else. I "assume" since you didn't answer the question about how many you own, that you own nothing you simply work for someone else
This is the statement I made that you were arguing with, remember?

because neither a farmer, rancher or anyone else who lives out of town for their livlihood would think fuel is a luxury...

which I made in reply to your statement that fuel is a luxury.
Now, all of your tangents are interesting (and your assumptions incorrect, btw), but they aren't supporting your point that fuels are a luxury.

Do you wish to modify that statement maybe?

lux·u·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lgzh-r, lksh-)
n. pl. lux·u·ries
Something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort.


ne·ces·si·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-ss-t)
n. pl. ne·ces·si·ties

The condition or quality of being necessary.
Something necessary: The necessities of life include food, clothing, and shelter.


To make it real simple for you. If the worlds "fuel" supply vanished tomorrow, I would not throw my hands up and say I quit. You might just roll over and give up but not me.
 

the chief

Well-known member
How do the Amish survive? How did the farmers, ranchers or anyone else who lives out of town make it before we got gasoline?
Odd isn't it?

Again you "assume" something about someone you know nothing about!

So, BBJ, you mean to tell us you are Amish? And you own and operate a computer without electricity? Wow, that's amazing! :shock:

:wink:
 

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