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LA Times - Bush Never Lied About Iraq

Mike

Well-known member
Bush never lied to us about Iraq
The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception.
By James Kirchick
June 16, 2008
Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed that he had been hoodwinked.

"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.

Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.

The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress."

Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.

Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."

Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers.

"I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia," Romney elaborated in that infamous 1967 interview. That was an intellectually justifiable view then, just as it is intellectually justifiable for erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out -- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to is cowardly and dishonest.

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Ann Coulter, "Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment,..."

Looks like Ann has got a point....
 

Texan

Well-known member
Good piece, Mike. Thanks for sharing that. It will be interesting to hear what the resident libs have to say about it.
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
Texan said:
Good piece, Mike. Thanks for sharing that. It will be interesting to hear what the resident libs have to say about it.

The truth's gonna hurt, as usual. It is not about free hand out slop for their trough so it can't be the right thing.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
fff, "Where's your disdain for an Administration that lied, hid facts, twisted the truth as an excuse to go to war with a country that was no threat? Obviously, more Senators should have stood up to Bush. But they weren't told the entire truth."

You want to retract this, Frankie, or can your information source refute what Mike brought? The floor is yours.
 

fff

Well-known member
Mike said:
Bush never lied to us about Iraq
The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception.
By James Kirchick
June 16, 2008
Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed that he had been hoodwinked.

"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.

Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.

The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress."

Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.

Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."

Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers.

"I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia," Romney elaborated in that infamous 1967 interview. That was an intellectually justifiable view then, just as it is intellectually justifiable for erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out -- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to is cowardly and dishonest.

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.

Bush did lie about Iraq.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/?gclid=CMaIgvLT-ZMCFQEqIgod-hQCVg

and

"“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production of
biological weapons.” -George W. Bush,
September 12, 2002"

"“We have also discovered through intelligence
that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and
unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to
disperse chemical or biological weapons across
broad areas." -President George W. Bush - State
of the Union Address – 1/28/2003"

"Our intelligence sources tell us that he
(Saddam) has attempted to purchase highstrength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear
weapons production." -President George W.
Bush - State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003:"

"The British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa." -President
George W. Bush - State of the Union Address –
1/28/2003"

http://stopwaroniran.org/lieslieslies.pdf

Yes, Bush could cite agencies that made these claims, but at the same time, the CIA, State Department intelligence, Brits, German agencies were saying the info was NOT reliable. He knowingly repeated these claims over and over, as did Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Powell. They told these lies to the American people over and over and classified those intelligence reports that disagreed. Bush lied. Powell lied. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice all lied.

and

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040329/scheer

edited to add:

A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."

"Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

It's long been known that the administration's claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect, and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested the problems were faulty intelligence.

"We had the intelligence that we had fully vetted, but it was wrong," she said. "We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it."

But the Senate report, the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them, reached a different conclusion.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.

The report was approved on a 10-5 vote. Three Republican members of the committee, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Christopher Bond of Missouri and Richard Burr of North Carolina, denounced the report as "inconclusive, misleading and incomplete." Two Republicans, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snow of Maine, voted with the Democrats.

Continued here:

http://www.theolympian.com/672/story/470167.html[/quote][/b]
 

PrairieQueen

Well-known member
It was a joke! :roll:

Just mentioned to make the point about whether or not Bush relied on faulty intelligence from the CIA. Should he have known? Or trusted the CIA?
 

Larrry

Well-known member
Have you seen this delicious little quote from Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Paul Jankorski?

Why it would seem that Mr. Jankorski is admitting that the Democrats lied about what was going on in Iraq during the 2006 mid-term elections? Here's his quote:


"I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we ... the Democrats ... that if we won the Congressional elections we could stop the war. Now anybody who was a good student of government would know that wasn't true."


"But you know ... the temptation to want to win back the Congress ... we sort of stretched the facts, and the people ate it up."
 

nonothing

Well-known member
I do not see why peolpe keep defending GW Bush.....Do you people that back him really feel as a President he has done a awesome job overall for your countr???Or do you back him for the simple reason he is a republican...Correct me if I am wrong but did not more people vote for Gore then bush?

Second it was not a war but rather an invasion of a country....and if the invasion was to free Iraq why not free other countries people.What positive thing has come from this invasion........If it was to kill sadam that could of been done without an invasion.So many people will tell you they support the troops.but you rarely hear anyone say they support the Iraq invasion.

You can dig up dirt on any politiction fabricated or factaul,but that only muddy's the water...The truth of how good a president did thier job is decided by the people...So why don't you bush backers start a poll asking how many would like to see GW run your country for another 8 years..
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
nonothing said:
I do not see why peolpe keep defending GW Bush.....Do you people that back him really feel as a President he has done a awesome job overall for your countr???Or do you back him for the simple reason he is a republican...Correct me if I am wrong but did not more people vote for Gore then bush?

Second it was not a war but rather an invasion of a country....and if the invasion was to free Iraq why not free other countries people.What positive thing has come from this invasion........If it was to kill sadam that could of been done without an invasion.So many people will tell you they support the troops.but you rarely hear anyone say they support the Iraq invasion.

You can dig up dirt on any politiction fabricated or factaul,but that only muddy's the water...The truth of how good a president did thier job is decided by the people...So why don't you bush backers start a poll asking how many would like to see GW run your country for another 8 years..

People on here rarely back Bush, they back Bushes decision to attack Iraq and his war against the Terrorist! Big difference! In this regard yes he has been successful. Clinton was attacked like 5 or more times by the terrorist. Bush was attacked once and since then thousands of them have died including many terrorist leaders. Bush did not take crap and bury his head in the sand and wait for the next attack like Bill Clinton did. In this regard he was a success.

History will dictate rather he was a good president, many great Presidents were not considered so at the time they served! Do I think he will be considered a great President, NO, But in regards his attack on radical Islam I think he will be considered a good President.

And maybe you do not hear to many people in Canada saying they support the invasion in to Iraq, but I certainly have heard many support it. The biggest complaint I hear is that our soldiers are not allowed to take care of business in a way that would solve this radical Muslim problem.

If some Radical Muslim sneaks in a Nuke to one or more of our large cities and sets it off, even you Canadians will be crying like babies! Your economy and way of life will be destroyed just as much as ours will. It would serve your best interest for us to do everything we can to make sure that does not happen. And Iraq was just one piece of the puzzle that needed to happen for us to have 100% assurance that Saddam would not help Al Qaeda with WMD's.

As a country we can not afford to be only right 95% of the time in regards WMD's so if someone wants to bluff us and say they have them and then also say they are our enemy then they must die! Because that 5% error could kill millions and destroy the economy of all of North America. So if Iraq helped to increase that % of safety then so be it!

I know I sleep better knowing 100% that Saddam does not have WMD's, and with out invading Iraq we would never know that! And I will sleep a lot better once Iran is 100% free of future WMD's!

You just do not get how bad the outcome would be if you Liberals are wrong and we are attacked again!
 

Rambo

Well-known member
nonothing said:
I do not see why peolpe keep defending GW Bush.....Do you people that back him really feel as a President he has done a awesome job overall for your countr???Or do you back him for the simple reason he is a republican...Correct me if I am wrong but did not more people vote for Gore then bush?

Second it was not a war but rather an invasion of a country....and if the invasion was to free Iraq why not free other countries people.What positive thing has come from this invasion........If it was to kill sadam that could of been done without an invasion.So many people will tell you they support the troops.but you rarely hear anyone say they support the Iraq invasion.

You can dig up dirt on any politiction fabricated or factaul,but that only muddy's the water...The truth of how good a president did thier job is decided by the people...So why don't you bush backers start a poll asking how many would like to see GW run your country for another 8 years..

The biggest reason I don't like President Bush as much as I used to is he has gotten to soft and liberal. Caving in on the global warming BS. He is not tough enough on ILLEGAL immigrants. He should have started vetoing spending bill when he had a Republican majority. When you read the polls you can't assume that his low approval rating is for the same reason yours is. He has done OK in Iraq, should have worried less about collateral damage, and been more agressive from the get go. The press is giving the Dems that were war hawks a pass because they prefer their social programs.
 

Larrry

Well-known member
The biggest reason I don't like President Bush as much as I used to is he has gotten to soft and liberal. Caving in on the global warming BS. He is not tough enough on ILLEGAL immigrants. He should have started vetoing spending bill when he had a Republican majority. When you read the polls you can't assume that his low approval rating is for the same reason yours is. He has done OK in Iraq, should have worried less about collateral damage, and been more agressive from the get go. The press is giving the Dems that were war hawks a pass because they prefer their social programs.

Well said
 

fff

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
People on here rarely back Bush, they back Bushes decision to attack Iraq and his war against the Terrorist! Big difference! In this regard yes he has been successful. Clinton was attacked like 5 or more times by the terrorist. Bush was attacked once and since then thousands of them have died including many terrorist leaders. Bush did not take crap and bury his head in the sand and wait for the next attack like Bill Clinton did. In this regard he was a success.

Keep spinning and spinning. Saudi Arabia protected people believed to have been responsible for several attacks on this country. Which president has been shown holding hands and as kissing the Saudis? Take your pick of the Bushs. But it wasn't Bill Clinton. He turned the info on the Cole attack over the Bush when he left office. What did Bush do with it? Very little. When the World Trade Center was bombed, the Clinton Administration hunted the bombers down, caught them and tried them in an open court of law. They didn't spend billions of dollars hiding what they were doing from the American public. I'm proud of Clinton's response. He did what a reasonable, mature, responsible leader should do. Bush? Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to invade a country that had done nothing to US. Nothing. It was a personal vendetta, along with the lure of cheap oil, that led us to 4000+ dead Americans, millions of dead Iraqis, billions of dollars of debt. And now he tells us that "Al Qaeda is defeated in Iraq." Well, ain't that hunky dory? Considering there was no AQ in Iraq until Bush CHOSE to invade.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp

Then there's the sainted Ronald Reagan. The hero of the Conservatives. When terrorists bombed the marine barricks in Beruit in 1983, Reagan talked tough. But less than six month later, he pulled out. He cut and run from a direct terrorist attack! Shocking! Shocking, I say. :roll:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id413.htm
 

fff

Well-known member
The "War on Terrorism" gets a new name
Say you're reading today's print edition of the New York Times. On page A3 you find this headline: "Checkpoints are Thought to Have Hastened 2 Egypt Blasts." Then you flip to page A6, where you find this at the top of the page: "Police Name 2 of 4 Men Linked to Bomb Attempts." At the bottom of that page, there's this: "Londoners Grappling With Pervasive New Foes: Fear and Suspicion." In other words, you're reading the paper and it's not at all pleasant -- it's bombs, death, fear, terrorism, hate, ethnic conflict, apocalyptic dread, and you haven't even reached John Tierney's column yet.

And then you flip to page A9 and see this headline, which apparently represents our government's response to all these troubles: "New Name for 'War on Terror' Reflects Wider U.S. Campaign." That's right. Bombs are exploding all over, and the main revision George W. Bush will make in the war on terrorism is to change its name. From now on, the United States is no longer engaged in a "global war on terror," and instead, we're fighting a "global struggle against violent extremism."

According to officials interviewed by the Times, the name change came about after a series of Bush administration meetings held in January. The meetings prompted national security officials to decide that fighting terrorism is not only a military endeavor, but that it also requires diplomatic, economic, and political tools. "It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven Hadley, the national security adviser, tells the paper. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." Also significant: Karen Hughes, the Bush aide known for her sloganeering skills, has just rejoined the administration; the name change, the Times subtly suggests, has Hughes' fingerprints all over it.

Slate's Fred Kaplan has just posted about the most appropriate, pithy response to this news that we can think of: "It took four years for the president of the United States to realize that fighting terrorism has a political component?" Kaplan writes. "It took six months for his senior advisers to retool a slogan? We are witnessing that rare occasion when the phrase 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry' can be uttered without lapsing into clichi."

The new name doesn't signify a new strategy, by the way. The Bush administration clings to the idea that the war in Iraq has reduced the threat of global terrorism, even though there's no evidence to support its position -- and some evidence to refute it. Bush still maintains that we're fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to face them in New York, a theory that seems completely devoid of any political calculus.

What we've got here, in other words, is just a revised branding campaign, a new way to sell old soap. The War on Terrorism -- same ineffective policy, now with a catchier name!

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/07/26/newname/

Smarter people realized that the word "war" gave the impression that the military could win and they knew it would take more than that to be successful in Iraq. It would require political and diplomatic successes, too. So they wanted to change the name from "War on Terror". But, in the end, Bush refused to make the change.
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
fff said:
Smarter people realized that the word "war" gave the impression that the military could win and they knew it would take more than that to be successful in Iraq. It would require political and diplomatic successes, too. So they wanted to change the name from "War on Terror". But, in the end, Bush refused to make the change.

Those people have been at war for thousands of years. It is a way of life for them. We are infadels. They can surrender today and break their word tomorrow. More of their way of life. Your political and diplomatic success methodology doesn't hold water with their way of life. "Smarter" people realize what is being dealt with.
 

fff

Well-known member
backhoeboogie said:
fff said:
Smarter people realized that the word "war" gave the impression that the military could win and they knew it would take more than that to be successful in Iraq. It would require political and diplomatic successes, too. So they wanted to change the name from "War on Terror". But, in the end, Bush refused to make the change.

Those people have been at war for thousands of years. It is a way of life for them. We are infadels. They can surrender today and break their word tomorrow. More of their way of life. Your political and diplomatic success methodology doesn't hold water with their way of life. "Smarter" people realize what is being dealt with.

Two of the "smarter" people that were trying to change the name were Donald Rumsfeld and the Army Chief of Staff. They might have had some idea of what they were dealing with, don't you think? They understood that the military couldn't be successful in Iraq by themselves, that they needed successful diplomatic and political policies, too. But Bush liked the "War on Terror" name. So it stayed.
 

Mike

Well-known member
I would like to know the importance of any "NAME" to start with. :roll:

Call it what you want. Doesn't change the bottom line.

We're at war with Muslim extremists. Why not call it the "Extreme War"?
 
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