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Challenge Wacky Authority
Keith Olbermann had some great things to say last night about the junta-longing Donald Rumsfeld. Since too few of you watch it (I guess you’d rather laugh at Bill O’Reilly’s Stephen Colbert imitation) you can watch it here.
Video clip digitized by Crooks and Liars. For those of you not interested in politics – a kitten.
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about 4 years ago
Thank you for the kitten!
about 4 years ago
I come for the politics. I stay for the kittens.
about 4 years ago
Needs more :patriot: emoticons.
Hot damn, did he ever slam dunk that one.
about 4 years ago
…and it only took 5 years too…
that kitten has a W sticker on his litter box, but it’s okay because it’s on the bottom.
about 4 years ago
Impressive commentary (by Olbermann). I would say more, but I’m too busy being distracted by the kitten.
about 4 years ago
I thought you were the token non moonbat dev?
about 4 years ago
Well, it’s nice to see a mass media figurehead given the go-ahead to show some testicles, but I have reached a kind of self-defeating attitude by now. Not only is he late to the party, he has yet to realise just how important he was four years ago when we really needed that kind of criticism then.
about 4 years ago
How interesting that Olbermann missed the real irony of Rumsfelds’ address which is that the Nazis themselves used his( Rumsfelds ) very tactics/arguments to stifle any opposition to thier policies before they became strong enough to just disappear thier opponants.
I claim immunity from Godwin’s law since this post is about Rumsfeld having broken it in the first place.
about 4 years ago
How interesting that Olbermann missed the real irony of Rumsfelds\’e2\’80\’99 address which is that the Nazis themselves used his( Rumsfelds ) very tactics/arguments to stifle any opposition to thier policies before they became strong enough to just disappear thier opponants.
I don’t think he wanted to give Rumsfeld any ideas on that one.
about 4 years ago
Compare the Patriot Act to the Enabling Act and you’ll see they already had those ideas.
about 4 years ago
I agree with the sentiment that this is 5 years too late. I would say that even 3 years to late because reelecting Dubya really did the damage.
Declaring a war on terrorism is declaring the war on one tactic our forefathers used against the British. It makes baby jebus cry like a little girl.
And that is ONE DAMN FINE KITTEN!!!
about 4 years ago
They should sit down every kid in grades 6-12 and show them that video.
about 4 years ago
now why doesn’t this brilliant bastard have his own primetime, major network, nightly news show?
CBS had to go with the Pumpkinhead, right? ugh…
about 4 years ago
Thanks for the nice kitty.
I would stay focus on the nice kitty except that the kitty looks a bit sad or constipated. Probably ubset by something Donald Rumsfeld said. Gotta see what made the nice kitty sad.
about 4 years ago
So, lemme get this strait. The people that want to execute my wife for going out to check the mail without a total body shroud are not the enemy. They control Iran, the “insurgence” in Iraq, Hezbollah, and the Palastinians. They want to control the US and every country world wide and impose Shari’a law. They are not the enemy, the Bush admin. is. Ok then. Al Zarqawi(ALQUADA!) was in Iraq since the Clinton admin and Hussein paid HUGE amounts of money to suicide bombers and let Al Quada train in Iraq, and boasted about having WMD during the Clinton admin means Bush an Co. LIED. Please, get with reality. As for Cheney and Bush profiting personally, SHOW ME! Why is gas still $3 a gallon here? If its all flowing free to the oil companies?
So Don R. is a quack. Please, Keith makes the most obtuse connection to the Nazis i think I have ever heard. About how the minority, the dissent is unheard. LAME! The Nazis were “appeased” to avoid war and that didn\’e2\’80\’99t work. He compares us to the Nazis because I assume we are willing to bring the fight to the people that want to execute my wife for getting the mail. He is missing a HUGE point in his little rant and that is, no matter what the Nazis said they were going to CONQUER YOU! Sound familiar?
Don never had all the facts? The media is WAY to interchanged to let that happen. That Don had all the facts is a total LIE. It makes me sick to hear that Olberman thinks that the gov is saying the things that were said 60 years ago. Olberman says the powers that be were downplaying the Nazis, and i think that is so, but he makes it sound like DR and GW are doing the same. If they are, why are we in Afghanistan and Iraq?
As far as I can tell the only truth that Olberman is looking for is that the US is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and should pullout of the Middle East and that will make everything better!
Why do I think that? Because I have to assume it. He offers no solutions at all. I think that if I read his screed 100 years from now I could assume nothing else.
If you think I sound stupid look at some old speeches against Nazism and/or slaver and their rebuttals.
Sorry about the spelling and such, just ignore that. It’s late so cut me some slack!
BTW, I dont like cats, sorry.
about 4 years ago
What’s the kitten’s stance on the new fascism, anyway? Is he guilty of fuzzy thinking?
about 4 years ago
No, they are the enemy too. The are just weaker and farther away than our government.
about 4 years ago
I should lecture the liberals too. Olberman has been saying this stuff for years. Since before 04. Nobody was listening. A significant portion of the populace still isn’t.
about 4 years ago
DeQoy, you appear to have missed the whole point of Olbermann’s commentary, which is basically:
It is not only OK to dissent from the government’s view, but the *duty* of every citizen to hold their government accountable, and doing so is not disloyalty nor appeasement, as the Bush Administration brands it every damn chance it gets.
For bonus points, Google “Joe McCarthy” and find out the origin of the Edward R. Murrow quotation that Olbermann re-purposed.
about 4 years ago
BTW, I dont like cats, sorry
The knee-jerk uber-”patriot” diatribe I can handle. But if you don’t like kittens, you need to leave this forum.
about 4 years ago
DeQoy,
Jessica pretty much covered it. The people that started an insurrection against the government of the British Colonists (we call them the “Founding Fathers” these days…you know, those guys Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington…that whole pack of crazy fun-loving guys) believed in the seperation of Church and State, the seperation of Powers, the Bill of Rights. And like Jessica said, they believed in holding their governments accountable.
And if Rumsfeld feels that some people lack courage in the face of our enemies in Iraq, then I think he should put his money where his mouth is, pick up a rifle and help patrol Baghdad. I’m sure Dick Cheney would be glad to give him some marksmanship lessons.
about 4 years ago
I feel like whenever I’m debating the missteps of the overbearing Bush administration with a Bush supporter, they always, as DeQoy just did, accuse the left of defending Islamic fundamentalist regimes. So let’s be clear: no one is defending Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Everyone is opposed to Islamic fundamentalist regimes. See the widely bipartisan support for the invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11.
What alarms and angers many on the left (and right) is how the Bush administration ostentatiously and uniformly dismisses any and all dissent or even skepticism regarding its security policies. Calling those in disagreement “morally confused” is to deny that two reasonable people can possibly disagree on these issues – nuanced, complicated issues. It is indeed to deny the presence of nuance or moral ambiguity.
Whether or not you agree with the reasons for invading Iraq or the fact of compromising the privacy of American citizens in the interest of preventing terrorism (the issues we’re talking about here – not whether Islamic regimes are good), you surely must realize that reasonable people can reasonably disagree with these policies. To call these people “morally confused”, though, just belittles and angers them. To compare them with Nazi supporters is much worse. It’s counterproductive to helping solve the very real issues and controversies that surround these policies. These issues require and deserve real and thoughtful debate and discussion. The last thing we need when dealing with issues of this magnitude are unilateral decrees.
Although he obviously has them, Olbermann never voiced an opinion about any specific Bush policy in this piece, which is appropriate because this doesn’t involve any specific Bush policy. This is about the attitude of the Bush administration toward its opposition. If Bush were a democrat this would be just as bad, and conservatives everywhere would be up in arms.
There are valid points to be made by conservatives about these policies. They can honestly defend them with real points and facts. But the attitude they have, and what Rumsfeld is doing here, is undermining their own arguments by substituting valid debate with hollow rhetoric.
This is in many ways similar to what Michael Moore and Al Franken (in my opinion) do for the left. What I always think when watching a Michael Moore documentary is, “You have an honest and good point to make! Why are you undermining it with emotional manipulation and twisted facts?”
Sorry for the overly long comment.
about 4 years ago
Olbermann is good at what he does, and I wish more commentators thought like him.
Scott is not a moonbat. He’s a mongbat. Important distinction.
about 4 years ago
Jessica Mulligan said:
“It is not only OK to dissent from the government\’e2\’80\’99s view, but the *duty* of every citizen to hold their government accountable, and doing so is not disloyalty nor appeasement, as the Bush Administration brands it every damn chance it gets.”
Here’s the problem with this kind of statement. Nowhere has anyone from the administration ever said that anyone was being disloyal. Appeasement, yes, and I’ll get to the “immoral” part soon, but they have not accused anyone of being disloyal. In fact, I’ve heard them say explicitly that it was not disloyalty but rather misguided or plain poor judgement. By adding in that little word, you’ve taken your accusation against the administration a step beyond into false accusations that make them seem worse to anyone who doesn’t watch all that’s going on.
If I’m wrong here, please show me where anyone from the administartion has called anti-Bush people “disloyal” to America.
————–
mrdowns said:
“you surely must realize that reasonable people can reasonably disagree with these policies. To call these people \’e2\’80\’9cmorally confused\’e2\’80\’9d, though, just belittles and angers them. To compare them with Nazi supporters is much worse.”
And again, the same thing is being done. Where did Rumsfeld compare people with Nazis? He compared them to the Europeans before WWII who could have prevented the German build up but instead played the political pacification game, which led to the greater evil that WWII was.
You two certainly aren’t alone in making accusations that aren’t true, just look at Olbermann’s rant.
Olbermann:
“For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence – indeed, the loyalty – of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land”
Rumsfeld was indeed attacking the intelligence and the morality of the anti-Bush administration people, like him. But to take it a step beyond that and say that he is attacking their loyalty to America is not only misguided and wrong, but it has a purpose. If you’ve watched much of Olbermann you’d know that he is extremely against the Bush administration.
And here’s where the immoral part comes in. Olbermann is a news reporter. He’s supposed to report the news, not make up extra details. He does this and makes Rumsfeld, and thus the administration, appear to have wrongfully accused people of disloyalty to Americans and others. He’s adding his own interpretation as if it’s fact, when his interpretation plainly can’t be backed up.
From the L.A. Times, which is far from a Bush supporter…….
“In recent speeches, Bush has acknowledged public concern about the war, saying last week that the conflict was “straining the psyche of our country” and that he would never question the patriotism of those who disagreed with him.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-legion30aug30,0,7356486.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Back to Olbermann….
“That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld\’e2\’80\’99s, had a monopoly on all the facts.”
-that tends to happen with all governments.
“It, too, had the secret information.”
-does anyone have a question on why governments keep information secret sometimes? Does it get abused? Of course, for a variety of reasons, but the question also has to be asked if the people of a land really want their government to not keep ANY secrets, too. Does the mere fact that they do keep secrets make it a bad practice overall?
“It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld\’e2\’80\’99s – questioning their intellect and their morality. That government was England\’e2\’80\’99s, in the 1930\’e2\’80\’99s.”
-Don’t we all? The question really is…who is right? In the case of Great Britain under Chamberlain they were wrong, proven wrong over time, so very wrong. That is, after all, the point Rumsfeld was making.
“Most relevant of all – it “knew” that its staunchest critics
needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile – at best morally or intellectually confused.”
-This one really makes me laugh, in genuine amusement. This is exactly what Olbermann and others have been trying to do to Bush all along since the threat to invade Iraq started by the administration. (I’ll make a point on Iraq later.) And now he’s accusing them of doing this? That’s rich.
“Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.”
-I’ll agree here, if we want to keep to political figures and leave out, you know, Olbermann. And we should leave him out in this, because he is talking about only political leaders. But what’s wrong with this? Can political leaders not state their claims? Are they alone not allowed the freedom of speach that we all enjoy?
“History – and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England – had taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty – and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.
Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.”
-I can agree with his point here, except that I don’t believe the backwards part.
“His government, absolute and exclusive in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government\’e2\’80\’a6 of Neville Chamberlain.”
-Says Olbermann.
“That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:
This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count – not just his.”
-We all agree on this, including Rumsfeld I think, because I don’t have anything on him saying contrary. And neither does Olbermann.
-Oh, and last time I checked, we still had a thriving and free republic where guys like Olbermann can say what they want, and guys like me can, and guys like Rumsfeld can too.
“Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -”
-Oh come on, when have they ever said they were perfect? They said they were right about particualr things that some may dissagree with, but never made any claims like this.
“about Osama Bin Laden\’e2\’80\’99s plans five years ago -”
-Everyone screwed up on that, including previous administrations.
“about Saddam Hussein\’e2\’80\’99s weapons four years ago”
-They did find WMDs in the form of chemical and biological, but agreed on the nuclear stuff. But that doesn’t mean Iraq wasn’t trying to get into it. We simply don’t know, and the US government may not want anyone to know if there are nuclear bomb plans or equipment hidden in Iraq, so others don’t try to find them before they do. I’m speculating, but this may be why they didn’t say anything about the chemical and biological stuff untill after they found it all. They didn’t want others, like Iran or Syria, or terrorist groups, finding it before they did. Again, speculation on my part.
“But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note – with hope in your heart – that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light and we can too.”
-Olbermann is flatly claiming that they have done something wrong? He can do that if he wants, but where’s the proof? If they have, there will be proof somewhere, someday. But untill then, it does strike me as immoral to make such claims. Not illegal, mind you. Just immoral and misguided.
“And about Mr. Rumsfeld\’e2\’80\’99s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.” As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that – though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.
This country faces a new type of fascism – indeed.”
-Strong accusation. With what does he back it up?
————-
I said I’d say something about Iraq, so here goes. I strongly believe in the invasion of Iraq. Here’s why….
-Saddam had stores of chemical and biological WMDs, and after the Gulf War was supposed to get rid of them. He said he did, but hid them and gave the UN inspectors the run around to maintain his secret stockpiles. We found these after invading Iraq.
-Saddam had a nuclear bomb program and was supposed to stop. He said he did, but was actively seeking to buy “duo use” equipment. And we did find that one set of documents burried under a rose bush or some such place. We may never know where he was on that. But to believe that he gave up on it seems strange to me, considering all else.
-Saddam was running the “Oil for Food” scam. He was making billion off it, and this money was under the radar and could be used for anything. The extent of the scandal is still not completely known, thanks largely to Kofi Annan’s blocking of the investigators attempts to get to UN documents. Kofi Annan’s own son is involved. What is clear is that influencial people from France, Germany, and Russia are involved in this scandal too.
-Saddam tried to assassinate the former president who destroyed his plans for conquest. How can we tolerate this?
-If we had not taken Saddam out, we would have a world today that has all the problems we face with countries seeking nukes and delivery systems and the terrorism, some of which is sponsored by countries, along with Saddam backed by his network of bribery undermining the UN and influencing countries, and all working against us.
Saddam saw us as his number one enemy, his only real obstacle, and so do others, all of who want to do things that none of us want to see happen.
Even we, the most powerful nation in the world, can be overwhelmed.
about 4 years ago
-Saddam had stores of chemical and biological WMDs, and after the Gulf War was supposed to get rid of them. He said he did, but hid them and gave the UN inspectors the run around to maintain his secret stockpiles. We found these after invading Iraq.
…what political porn have you been reading, anyway? This is flat out untrue, and has been acknowledged as untrue by Bush, the CIA and just about everyone in Congress. How many newspaper articles and TV news reports do you have to ignore to still believe this?
Does G.W. Bush need to come to your house personally to give his 2005 “intelligence failure” speech again?
about 3 years ago
Nevermind the content, I’m tempted to watch Olbermann just for his refusal to dumb his commentary down to a 5th grade vocabulary like every other talking head (or their copy writers).
about 3 years ago
“Where did Rumsfeld compare people with Nazis?”
Retracted. What I really meant was “Nazi sympathizer,” but even that’s probably too strong. We are emotional creatures.
“To… say that he is attacking their loyalty to America is… misguided and wrong”
So Olbermann is overstating his case. Fine.
“Rumsfeld was indeed attacking the intelligence and the morality of the anti-Bush administration people”
And this is why Olbermann ends up overstating his case. The Bush administration is showing a distinct lack of respect for those who disagree with them. They’re being dismissive. Just as I got a little worked up and said he was calling us Nazis, so Olbermann is getting a little worked up and going on a tirade about disloyalty. People generally don’t like to be disrespected or dismissed, nor should they generally be. Not that he’s saying anything new, but he’s making a good point underneath the seething anger.
The Bush administration seemingly fails to even consider the arguments of the opposition. Or if they do, they make no mention of it. As I said before, these are complicated issues that deserve intelligent debate, not unilateral affirmation.
Note also that I’m not saying the opposition is spotless on these counts. Far from it. But that doesn’t justify the actions here.
“Olbermann is a news reporter. He\’e2\’80\’99s supposed to report the news, not make up extra details.”
But this was an editorial, and not a news report. Not that it’s OK to make up details in either case, but they’re not trying to pass this off as unbiased fact.
“[having a monopoly on all the facts] tends to happen with all governments”
This seems rather defeatist. I personally feel we should strive for far more transparency in government. Maybe you don’t think so, but if you’re conservative (I don’t know if you are) I would guess you’re in favor of smaller, less-powerful governments.
“Does the mere fact that they do keep secrets make it a bad practice overall?”
No, but this is a rare case where I advocate and appreciate distrust. I think it’s essential that we distrust the government whenever they’re keeping a secret. Otherwise we give our implicit permission to the government to keep more secrets.
This is especially true when those secrets are used as justification for broad policy changes that stare down our civil liberties. It just looks fishy, and it makes me nervous. In twenty years, we may all look back and laugh, but I think it’s important now to look at it with suspicion.
Re: Iraq, my problems with the invasion mostly rest in the question of, “Why not someone more important?” I mean, I don’t think we should’ve invaded anyone at all, but the justifications the president used for invading Iraq can all (to my knowledge) be more saliently applied to other countries.
WMDs: shouldn’t North Korea and the former Soviet Union be more concerning than Iraq?
Terrorism: surely Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria are bigger threats than Iraq.
Oppressive regime: again, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, the list goes on. Iraq was tame compared with many of them.
The timing of the invasion also bothers me. We were waist deep (and still are) in Afghanistan, trying to clean up that mess. The invasion of Afghanistan was something that most people actually agreed with. They were clearly harboring terrorists that were a direct threat to us. So fine, we invaded. But then we suddenly divert attention from an incomplete Afghanistan and devote more than half our resources to a more questionable endeavor? Shouldn’t we at least use our resources to get Afghanistan all set up first?
The best argument that I’ve heard for invading Iraq is that Saddam was in violation of the treaty we made with him after the Gulf War. He kicked out UN inspectors and was shooting at planes in his territory. Fine. You can argue that we should’ve punished him as soon as he broke that treaty, and are now making up for lost time. But this justification was never used by the Bush administration in any public address (that I know of). Instead, he clouded it with talk of the war on terror, WMDs, and oppressive regimes.
And one more point before I finally declare this reponse Way Too Long.
“along with Saddam backed by his network of bribery undermining the UN and influencing countries, and all working against us”
Wouldn’t it be more effective in the long term to root out the corruption in that organization than to preemptively invade only one of the corrupting countries in question? Just my opinion.
about 3 years ago
Hail to the Kittens.
about 3 years ago
Ok, I watched it. All I can say is that I hope, after 2008, we have a president who won by a sizable majority working with a divided government. The tortured analogies of the political minority in this country are becoming increasingly hysterical.
Rumsfeld and Chamberlain? Right. Need anyone even point out the obvious; that the substantial point of Rumsfeld’s foreign policy and Chamberlain’s are exact opposites? Or that, adjusting the English for more modern word choices, the exhortations of Chamberlain are completely indistinguishable from the point-scoring, empty nonsense declarations from Congressional suits.
Bush may or may not give a damn about our troops, but it’s the other 299,900,000 of us that should concern serious foreign policy observers.
about 3 years ago
Need anyone even point out the obvious; that the substantial point of Rumsfeld\’e2\’80\’99s foreign policy and Chamberlain\’e2\’80\’99s are exact opposites?
No, one need not. Need anyone point out that that point has exactly nothing to do with the comparison?
Whatever the issue or political leanings of the speaker, (the left is certainly guilty of the same type of posturing from time to time) denigrating the morals, intelligence and courage of those who point out your mistakes reflects worse on you than on them.
about 3 years ago
Aufero said:
“\’e2\’80\’a6what political porn have you been reading, anyway? This is flat out untrue, and has been acknowledged as untrue by Bush, the CIA and just about everyone in Congress. How many newspaper articles and TV news reports do you have to ignore to still believe this?
Does G.W. Bush need to come to your house personally to give his 2005 \’e2\’80\’9cintelligence failure\’e2\’80\’9d speech again?”
Aufero, here’s a link…
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008568
It’s notable that the President and his cabinet aren’t talking about this even to save their own political asses.
It’s also notable that the news networks aren’t talking about this, and even FOX news quickly stopped talking about it after some brief mentions of it. If you go to the United Nations web site and do just a little poking around, you’ll see that they now consider the Iraq WMD issue “unresolved”.
Mrdowns, that was very well said. I don’t completely agree with you on a few things, but I won’t argue against that last post because it’s well thought out and a very valid point of view. If I can point out one thing though, it’s that Saddam’s network of bribery and influence pedalling was an extremely powerful thing. We can’t just invade anyone we want to, we need at least a token acceptance from the rest of the world. Otherwise we would face the backlash, and that would be very harmful to us and all of our interests, no matter how justified or moral they might be.
If, after WWII, we could have just walked away from rebuilding the world into a better place (along with other nations), we wouldn’t be in the situations we face today. But then we’d be in other situations that probably would be far worse in scope. Imagine a world filled with communist dictators, all grasping for power and survival through aquisition. Imagine a bunch of North Koreas.
about 3 years ago
here\’e2\’80\’99s a link\’e2\’80\’a6
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008568
It\’e2\’80\’99s notable that the President and his cabinet aren\’e2\’80\’99t talking about this even to save their own political asses.
Did you actually read that piece? The whole point of it is that the Bush administration refuses to supply any information on the subject. (Aside from the findings of the presidential commission set up to investigate and the Duelfer report, both of which had access to far more information and came to the conclusion that we’d been completely wrong about WMDs in Iraq.)
Since a good part of Bush’s political unpopularity in the last few years has rested on the fact that there was no evidence found for WMDs in Iraq, it’s fairly obvious he’d have swiftly declassified any proof that existed. In particular, the claims of having found remnants of stockpiled mustard gas and sarin gas were debunked more than two years ago, for anyone who was paying attention. (What was found turned out to be traces of industrial solvents.)
Hoekstra and Santorum might as well have entitled that piece “We’ll never believe we made a mistake, no matter what anyone says.”
about 3 years ago
Then try this one….
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf
I think it’s you who won’t believe anything that doesn’t suit your desired perspective. You missed every point that didn’t meet your own views.
about 3 years ago
The Bush Administration built support for the war by telling us there was incontrovertible proof that Saddam was mass-producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, developing germ warfare devices, and racing to build a nuclear bomb. They repeatedly stated or implied that Saddam had conspired with Al Qaeda and was connected to 9/11. They said Iraq was an imminent danger to America, and scared everyone by repeatedly saying the smoking gun would come in the form of a mushroom cloud. They called it “a slam-dunk” case, remember?
It was clear when Bush & Co, talked about WMD, they were talking about a growing threat, a vast new arsenal poised to strike Israel and the United States. They most clearly were NOT talking about 500 abandoned pre-1991 Gulf War artillery shells containing traces of degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent. Everyone knew those shells were there long ago. A CIA report from 2002 plainly stated that “Iraq has not accounted for about 550 artillery shells filled with mustard agent.”
These shells are battlefield weapons and are not of any use to terrorists. A 155mm shell is huge, heavy, and requires a 55 ton, 12-foot long howitzer cannon to fire it. It is far more likely that terrorists will get their weapons of terror from other sources (including things from our own stockpile that have gone missing over the years, and things from the Russians that Bush made no effort to try to secure and demilitarize) rather than try to extract ancient chemicals that undoubtedly have lost much of their effectiveness from these antiques.
Of course, Pete \’e2\’80\’9cI Won\’e2\’80\’99t Serve More Than Six Terms\’e2\’80\’9d Hoekstra and Rick \’e2\’80\’9cMen Will Marry Dogs\’e2\’80\’9d Santorum will do or say anything to win against Kotos and Casey this fall, respectively. But it should be clear to you that if there was anything to this tortured interpretation of theirs, Bush would be trumpeting it from the rooftops. It is a nonstory to everyone except wingnuts like Little Green Footballs and FreeRepublic, and their mainstream counterparts, the WSJ Editorial Page and Fox News.
about 3 years ago
“The Bush Administration built support for the war by telling us there was incontrovertible proof that Saddam was mass-producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, developing germ warfare devices, and racing to build a nuclear bomb.”
No, that’s not right. They said he had capabilities in all these or working on capabilities, and was hidding it in the face of UN investigations.
“They repeatedly stated or implied that Saddam had conspired with Al Qaeda and was connected to 9/11.”
No they didn’t. They said Saddam was dealing with Al-Qaeda and building a foundation to wage terror on the world. They said from the beginning that he wasn’t involved in 9-11.
“They said Iraq was an imminent danger to America, and scared everyone by repeatedly saying the smoking gun would come in the form of a mushroom cloud. They called it \’e2\’80\’9ca slam-dunk\’e2\’80\’9d case, remember?”
Yes, here you are correct except for the “imminent” part.
Bush said “we won’t know untill it’s too late.” Remember?
What makes you think there were no nukes found in Iraq? Because the government said there weren’t, just like they said for a long time that there were no chemical or biological weapons found, untill this recent revelation? Do you see my point? Now, I don’t know any more than you, and maybe they did overstate and even lie in making the case to invade.
The point is that they did have to make a case to invade Iraq, both for world opinion and for US opinion. They had to have at least some backing.
Now, if Saddam was a part of a growing threat, worldwide, then we had two choices. Pacification and appeasement or to go on the offensive. The first never works, as proven by history. That was Rumsfeld’s point, which was twisted all around by Olbermann.
Saddam, at the very LEAST, was subverting the UN through corruption. The world needs the UN. This is an absolute. For all it’s failings, the UN does remarkable work in feeding and helping to build entire nations. The UN also is the only worldwide body to work through for a better world in general. And Saddam was corrupting it. This was a tremendous threat to the world, and to us in particular, because he was having success in alienating us from the rest of the world. But we, the USA, are not the bad guys. Saddam is, shown by his willingness to invade others, to use WMDs, and then to corrupt the biggest tool for world peace in the UN.
Maybe Bush had to lie. Maybe he didn’t lie at all. But are we children to worry about what the case may be in the face of the threat?
The time was right to take care of Saddma’s part of the threat. The opportunity was presented. It had to be done. Somehow.
“Everyone knew those shells were there long ago.”
Yes, but Saddma claimed they were destroyed. Hans Blix couldn’t find them because Saddam had them hidden away, and Blix stated that his investigation concluded that there were no more WMDs of any kind in Iraq. Again, Saddam, through dishonest efforts, was successful. But now we did find them after all.
“A CIA report from 2002 plainly stated that \’e2\’80\’9cIraq has not accounted for about 550 artillery shells filled with mustard agent.\’e2\’80\’9d “
And so many people, like and including Olbermann, were ranting on about how the CIA is so bad, how Bush is lieing, and not having any faith in the US government at all.
They’d rather believe what Saddam had corrupted.
“They most clearly were NOT talking about 500 abandoned pre-1991 Gulf War artillery shells containing traces of degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent.”
Traces? Where did you get that? These appear to be filled. And degraded or not, these agents are still very dangerous. If removed and used by terrorists, the people of the nation it was used on would have a lack of faith in their government to protect them. It would undermine stability in governments that stand against the terrorists objectives. Not good.
“These shells are battlefield weapons and are not of any use to terrorists. A 155mm shell is huge, heavy, and requires a 55 ton, 12-foot long howitzer cannon to fire it.”
As I just said, what’s to stop someone from removing the deadly agents to use otherwise? G.W. Bush is, but so many don’t want to admit this.
“It is far more likely that terrorists will get their weapons of terror from other sources (including things from our own stockpile that have gone missing over the years, and things from the Russians that Bush made no effort to try to secure and demilitarize)”
Reagan tried, Bush senior tried, Clinton tried, but lets blame G.W. for this, right? He was in office for a little over 8 months before 9-11 started the war on terror, where the others had more than a decade to work on this. They could only succeed to some extent, but G.W Bush is blamed now for this?
I’ve heard this accusation somewhere else….lets see….where was that….oh yes, Olbermann. Among many others.
“rather than try to extract ancient chemicals that undoubtedly have lost much of their effectiveness from these antiques.”
Why are you assuming that? Do you want to work in a building while some people open them up in the garage?
\’e2\’80\’9cMen Will Marry Dogs\’e2\’80\’9d
And no, I don’t believe everything I read. I have no idea….
http://newsfromrussia.com/fun/2002/04/17/27738_.html
about 3 years ago
What Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Feith, Tennet, and others said about Iraq is a matter of public record. They said and intentionally implied exactly what I said they did. I could sit here all night and link quotes for you, but you obviously would find some alternate way to interpret them that fits your worldview.
The implications made were clear to the majority of Americans as shown in poll after poll: Iraq was a clear and present danger, Iraq worked with Al Quaeda, Iraq was responsible for 9/11. All of those mistaken beliefs have been proven to be wrong, yet they persist to this day thanks to the Administration staying “on message”. I call that “lying”. Where do you think 70% of Americans got the idea that “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks”?
Apparently you think it was a-okay if Bush overstated and even lied in making the case to invade, because Saddam was “part of a growing threat”. Whereas I am saying that Saddam never was the threat Bush made him out to be, therefore the ends don’t justify the means.
Yes, Saddam subverted the UN and did not fully comply with UN directives. Why didn’t Bush make his case for war based on that, the truth? Because people would have said sanctions and inspectors were working (and they were). They would have said give them more time to work (he didn’t). They would have said that the time was NOT right, as you insist, that we should instead finish the job in Afghanistan, put the Taliban down once and for all, eradicate the opium, and capture bin Laden (none of those things happened). They would have said that maybe Bush should have understood the difference between a Shiite, a Sunni and a Kurd (he didn’t), and come up with a plan for getting them to live together peacefully instead of assuming they’d all join hands and sing “God Bless America” the minute Saddam was gone (they didn’t, and now Iraq is at the brink of civil war and nowhere close to a democracy). They would have said it’s not worth turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists (which it now is). They would have said it’s not worth throwing the U.S. into a record budget deficit and record national debt (though Bush’s many tax breaks for the wealthy must share the blame there). They would have said that it’s not worth 2,874 soldiers (U.S. & coalition) killed, 350 non-military contractors killed, 46,307 Iraq civillians killed (and many more dead as the result of sectarian violence), 19,323 U.S. soldiers wounded (some maimed for life, and many more with debilitating mental problems).
So what did Bush do? He lied. He lied so well people like you still beleive Saddam was a threat. You actually believe that the few pre-1991 Gulf War munitions we found over there constitute the same WMD that Bush & company were talking about pre-invasion, the “biological weapons”, the “mobile laboratories”, the “materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent”, the “significant quantities of uranium”, the “reconstituted nuclear weapons”, “some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” And if you reply, “well, he DID have that stuff but he destroyed it”, isn’t that exactly what we wanted him to do? Doesn’t that neutralize the threat and eliminate the need for immediate invasion at a time we could least afford to do so?
Maybe we should have waited, finished the job in Afghanistan, found bin Laden, dealt with North Korea, dealt with the Russian stockpiles of nuclear materials just lying around to be used by terrorists (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/a-ticking-nuclear-time-bomb.html), did something about the genocide in Darfur, or any one of the thousand other pressing problems that took a backseat to Iraq. Maybe that $312.6 billion and counting would have been better spent on other priorities, while Bush did a little more careful planning on how to tackle the Iraq issue (like listening to his generals about the number of troops needed, for starters, instead of running them out of town for daring to disagree).
P.S. – Why won’t I even call sarin and mustard gas “WMDs”? Because they’re not, not in the form they were found. No, I wouldn’t want to open those shells in my garage, but that doesn’t make them WMDs (sarin degrades quickly… 15 year old sarin would be useless; mustard gas might stick pack a punch, but it is a blistering agent and rarely causes death even at full strength). Again, this is clearly not the same order of magnitude as the weapons Bush was POSITIVE were there and Rummy knew right where they’d be found (and weren’t). We’re not talking nukes here. Why don’t I beleive nukes will be found in Iraq? The final report of the WMD Commission makes me think it is highly unlikely: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmdcomm.html.
I leave you with a quote:
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
- George W Bush, 5/24/05
about 3 years ago
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html
“BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 — U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday.”
“Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123680,00.html
“\’e2\’80\’9cWhen we have investigated certain labs and contacted certain former experts in the WMD program, we have found that they are being recruited by anti-coalition groups,\’e2\’80\’9d Duelfer told FOX News. \’e2\’80\’9cThey are being paid by anti-coalition groups. We\’e2\’80\’99re seeing interest in developing chemical munitions.\’e2\’80\’9d”
Do you still think that the only thing we’re finding in Iraq are degraded old munitions that are pretty much useless?
about 3 years ago
Sometimes I’m afraid from my young American friend who lives south of our border.
Sometimes I’m afraid for myself, and my family that America will one day implode and we, by virtue of our proximity, will suffer the fallout as well.
I’m so sorry you chose the leader you did. And I’m sorrier still that the events of 9/11, while tragic, are made even more terrible in that your own government uses them as a weapon against you. Yes, they cite it as often as they can to cow you, to keep you afraid, and maintain the cloak of general fear they choose to govern with.
about 3 years ago
Amaranthar, I have no doubt that the insurgents and foreign fighters in Iraq have cooked up all sorts of nastiness in the time since the invasion, but we were talking about the threat in Iraq BEFORE the invasion…the reasons for invading in the first place, remember? That article you linked to tends to refute your postion, not prove it, and it is pretty much useless without a discussion of what those “chemical precursors” were, who made them, or how they were to be used. Given that I can find no follow-up articles, the whole thing may just have been determined to be common chemicals for industrial use. I am sure we all have many “precursors” to potentially dangerous weapons in our homes right now.
about 3 years ago
Ahh, Robin, I know I’ll never convince you.
Yeah, I know it’s after the fact. But I wanted to point out that we don’t see anything like this in Afghanistan. Why does it all center around Iraq? If Al-Qaeda was developing a WMD program as proven, why aren’t they doing the same thing there?
Can you accept as a possibility that the expertise came from Iraq?
about 3 years ago
I’m sure it did (whereas the Taliban did not have those capabilities). I don’t dispute that Iraq has chemical weapons experts, has used chemical weapons in the past, and, prior to the invasion, could have rebuilt its capacity for producing the same type of weapons it had previously used on Iran and on the Kurds in fairly short order. I think those are pretty much established facts.
But that is far, far below the threat level Bush sold them as. And it doesn’t change my opinion that this was the wrong war at the wrong time. I beleive it has been conducted very poorly, has put us in a no-win postion, and has drawn our attention away from other threats that should have taken precedence. And I beleive it has drawn all sorts of threats to our troops and to Americans in general; it has stirred up all these threats and provided them a breeding ground instead of keeping them contained and minimized.
So, no, I guess we won’t convince each other, but I thank you for being civil about it and not saying that I support terrorism or hate America. Now back to the games…
about 3 years ago
For the record, the Mosul lab cited in #37 was later established as being used by the insurgency for creating explosives, not chemical weapons.