Just your opinion...luckily we all have one. I (heart) George Bush for leading our country as anyone should respect our leaders.

It amazes me how little the actual historical record matters these days...

It also occurs to me that a tell all book that didn't disagree with the established fact - not the innuendo and supposition - wouldn't sell all that well... I'm surprised that he didn't insert an affair or two...

Meh, none of it matters... I think I hear Nero fiddling off in the middle distance...

Yeah, there's that saying - opinions and a$$holes - everyone's got one.

Problem is, not everyone's opinions are worth the same - facts matter. Reality matters. Bush's administration has been extraordinarily corrupt, they've blatantly lied to the American people on dozens, if not hundreds of documented, provable things, and led us through lies and treachery into a war where thousands of American soldiers have died needlessly, and an entire country has basically been destroyed.

For what? To feed the ego of a petulant, simpering moron.

You're welcome to your opinion, but don't ever think it has any value unless it's base on reality.

...and if you base everything on the media... well you're entitled to your opinion as well...but sometimes you just dont know the whole story! As for namecalling, I'll leave that one to you.

we need a bad, uneducated prez every once in a while who destroys our economy makes many of enemies in the world, indirectly causes americans in a years time to go bankrupt because they have a choice to provide for their families or buy gas. each american including children spend 400 a year on a war. some families spend alot more and many more will. what have i??? gained from this war in iraq?

He gets away with it because there are too many sheep among republicans who can't see past his party status.

"..but sometimes you just dont know the whole story!"

True. But for a lot of things, you *could* know about it. Beck during the run-up to war, the Bush administration sold the country on the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Obviously, this wasn't true - ideologically, both groups are at odds with one another.

This kind of thing wasn't hard to find out at the time, but most people just didn't bother. They trusted the President, mostly because of the kind of mentality you're advocating, here - that they knew more than we did. They used that sort of line to push all sorts of things that were obviously blatant lies, and some things that were far more insidious, relying on the populace to be apathetic, credulous, and naive enough not to question them.

It's that kind of mentality that lets these criminals get away with murder.

If you want to remain willfully ignorant, hey, fine - it's a free country. But your opinion is worthless as a result.

wow...

so much for the free exchange of views...

I would hardly call your opinions - which is what they are - worthless, but you seem to have no difficulty doing that very thing to others by relying on a summary of the 'data' you have unearthed.

interesting...

care to cite your source(s) for the accusation "They used that sort of line to push all sorts of things that were obviously blatant lies,"?

I'd like to see your references ;) any one or two will do, but "all sorts" presumes you have volumes to share.

http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/nationalsecurity/2008/05/what-happened.html

I'm linking to this simply because it happens to be a pretty good summary of what was available at the time. I got my information largely through outlets like NPR, a large number of blogs, and by looking for information written by experts on the subjects at the time.

"Free exchange of views" doesn't mean that ignorant people's opinions have the same weight as informed people's opinions.

I don't have a problem calling ignorant people's opinions worthless - they ARE worthless.

Why would I give two s**ts about someone who doesn't have any clue what they're talking about spouting off like they know what's going on?

If you're considering NPR and Blogs as irrefutable sources for YOUR opinions, they're a bit suspect as well...

I had hoped you would have at least mentioned ITAR-TASS, Jane's or another decent news/intelligence outlet... maybe the Wall Street Journal... oh... wait.. the 'facts' you're referring to likely wouldn't have appeared there...

But I'll tell you what, you come up with one 'lie' and cite irrefutable evidence of prevarication, and I'll shut up.

If, however, you cannot, I would expect some form of contrition on your part.

*** Bonus Points *** Kudos to you for not calling anyone an idiot this time.

Test - Zoorag ate my last post.

Where to begin, really - I mean, there's a lot of the common stuff, like the aluminum tubes which were supposedly "only" suitable for enriching uranium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_aluminum_tubes

"A substantial part of the story was based on deliberate leaking of classified information to the Times reporters by Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.[4]"

The DOE, as specified in the article, had a different analysis - ". However, our analysis indicates that the specified tube diameter, which is half that of the centrifuge machine Iraq successfully tested in 1990, is only marginally large enough for practical centrifuge applications, and other specifications are not consistent with a gas centrifuge end use... the tube specifications and quantity appear to be generally consistent with their use as launch tubes for man-held anti-armor rockets or as tactical rocket casings."

There were other dissenting opinions at the time - from nuclear scientists, from mechanical engineers, and the like that stated that the tubes indeed likely had non-nuclear-related uses and were largely if not totally unsuitable for nuclear applications.

Something's going on - I can't seem to post more than a couple sentences at a time. I'll post the rest of this later.

just an interjection, but do you know how the intelligence community works? I refer to the standard processes and such.

Please describe the "standard processes" to which you refer and how that impacts the argument. Thanks.

For the record, and since I have no need to lead with half-formed insinuations, no, I don't have any insider experience with the intelligence community. I did, however, keep up with the information that was disseminated to the American public. In the intervening five years, I haven't seen anything that makes the bullshit the Administration fed the public any more true.

So, that's one. There's also the Yellowcake issue, the supposed link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the UAVs that were supposedly being used to potentially attack the US, pretty much everything Ahmed Chalabi pushed on the government, blah blah blah... the list goes on.

The thing is, one thing the administration did do effectively is that they made it hard to definitively catch them lying. Obviously, if you're going to go about lying to the public, that's something you'd want to do. But if you look at their record, it's clear that they're either lying or massively incompetent on the kind of scale that boggles the mind.

Thing is, it's not up to me to prove that they're lying *anyway*. They declared war. They sent our men and women into harm's way - the onus of proof is on *them* and they repeatedly failed to prove a genuine threat.

Hussein wasn't an immediate threat - they lied about the tie to Al Qaeda and the presence of WMDs. We didn't go there to "spread democracy" - that wasn't the rationale at the time that we invaded.

The Administration sold the public on a war based on false pretenses, and the ever-changing rationale is proof enough that they're willing to say or do whatever it takes to justify their monstrous flight of fancy.

ok.. let's take the yellowcake issue... you might be astonished to note that the British intelligence service is still saying that their data on Iraq attempting to aquire stocks is accurate.

so far as the link to Al Qaeda, there is proof that various terror groups, groups that also have and had ties to Al Qaeda, were in contact and training in Iraq prior to the war.

The documents for UAV designs are out there... Iraqi UAVs, that is...

one of these days when you have nothing more interesting to read, read the report on the search for WMDs... despite the executive summary used by the media to support the claim that no weapons were found - a gross and deliberate misstatement - the report gets into a lot of specifics on current (in 2002) and planned Iraqi weapons systems, contacts with other governments, intelligence ploys and the methods by which they intended - and in some cases were successful - in utilising the US media to their benefit, all gleaned from captured Iraqi documents.

so far as the reasons for going into Iraq are concerned, yes, WMD was one of those, and yes, I think it was over emphasized. but there were no less than 5 other baseline reasons for taking action, any one of which would have been good enough for me, including that Hussein put a hit out on 41...

oh, and point of order...

the U.S. has not been in a declared war since World War II.

You're really missing forest for the trees, here.

From Wikipedia, "On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell presented further evidence in his Iraqi WMD program presentation to the UN Security Council that UAVs were ready to be launched against the U.S. At the time, there was a vigorous dispute within the US military and intelligence community as to whether CIA conclusions about Iraqi UAVs were accurate.[84] In fact, Iraq's UAV fleet was never deployed and consisted of a handful of outdated 24.5-foot (7.5 m) wingspan drones with no room for more than a camera and video recorder, and no offensive capability.[85]"

Having plans for something, or having a nonthreatening version of something, is not the same as having a UAV that can deliver WMDs in an offensive capability on US soil.

We're not talking about the Administration being technically correct in the weaselliest way possible - we're talking about the Administration distorting intelligence information to sell the US public a war.

Whether that war is an "authorized use of force" or a full-blown declared war, the *result* is identical in this case and to quibble over the point whether this is a war or not is insipid to the point of extreme offense. Do the tens of thousands of Iraqis care whether war was officially declared? Do the thousands of US military that are dead, or the tens of thousands of grievously wounded soldiers care?

When the Administration sold the war, they sold it as an immediate threat - not that Al Qaeda's associates had some tenuous links with Hussein, but that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were working together in concert against the US.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda." - Bush

You're niggling about pointless trivialities being correct when the larger issues were totally wrong. If the war was sold on its merits, it would never have flown with the public. So distortions, propaganda, exaggeration and insinu

Really grea, thorough response here, helava. Just want to let you know that your response got cut off though so you might want to complete your thought.

Ah. Thanks!

You're niggling about pointless trivialities being correct when the larger issues were totally wrong. If the war was sold on its merits, it would never have flown with the public. So distortions, propaganda, exaggeration and insinuation became the order of the day...

...which brings us back to the original point of the article anyway.

Another point, related to this comment:

"so far as the reasons for going into Iraq are concerned, yes, WMD was one of those, and yes, I think it was over emphasized. but there were no less than 5 other baseline reasons for taking action, any one of which would have been good enough for me, including that Hussein put a hit out on 41..."

When the war was originally sold to the public, WMD - the *immediate* threat to the US - was the *ONLY* reason that were were going to invade Iraq. That's it. That is the *sole* reason that Bush was able to push the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

"Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." - Bush, Oct. 7, 2002

Any other justification lowers the bar for invading another sovereign nation so low that any nation could come up with justification to invade just about any other nation. Hussein putting out a failed hit on Bush Sr. doesn't justify invading a sovereign nation. I'm superficially curious to hear what your five other "baseline" reasons are, but you know, based on the discussion so far, I can't actually really imagine they'll be particularly compelling.

If this is the sort of justification you can muster for sending thousands of Americans to die, spending hundreds of billions of dollars that should have been spent strengthening the US instead of arbitrarily destroying another country... it's pathetic. I mean genuinely, depressingly, sadly pathetic.

Your "point of order" "gotcha" is perfect - utterly trivial, utterly meaningless, offensive in how it trivializes what we've *actually* done, and shortsighted and self-absorbed in the extreme.

Pointless, worthless garbage.

sigh...

words mean things.

I'm actually very unhappy that the war has gone undeclared as it places restrictions on how it can be waged that a declared war does not.

To me, the only thing you have succeeded in doing here is to show that you have decided that since what we know now differs from what we knew then, it constitutes a lie. (This point goes back to my question about what you know about the gathering and analysis of intelligence)

following that logic, all physicists who esisted before newton were lying about the lack of a thing called gravity.

I have MUCH more to say, but I have to work for a bit, so I'll be back to finish later.

And what I'm saying is that what we know now doesn't *actually* differ from what we knew then. Yes, there's uncertainties in information gathering/analysis - obviously. But the presentations weren't about uncertainties - they were about taking minimal possibilities, unlikely occurrences and largely disputed facts (that were disputed *at the time*) and presenting them as though they were incontrovertible *fact*.

That *is* a lie. It's a lie of omission, it's deceptive presentation, and it certainly doesn't meet any reasonable bar of truth that would justify sending our people to destroy a country and be killed in the process.