Political ThreadsThis section is for Political Threads - Enter at your own risk. If you say you don't want to see what someone posts - don't read it :hihi:
Then do me a favor and ignore me and I'll ignore you. And I apologize to all for leading us to have to ignore another Debutch post (see I can insult you too).
you should read his posts...ignore(ance) is bliss, you might learn something...I read yours, can't say I've learned much from them because most of them are just rehashed talking points and insults, you do seem very cranky and you just say the same things over and over.... you never have anything nice to say either, try being nice
Thanks ScottW for the original thought (at least it wasn't the usual unattributed cut and paste). I'll have to go back and reread all your posts to see how someone who so frequently argues w/people and makes prob. more snarky and snide comments than anyone else here thinks others are cranky.
"Rehashed talking points" - from the king of the cut and paste?? That is funny
Paul, John Kerry says he was misled, and that's it? He says it, so it's true? You said that Kerry never said he was mislead so I showed you that he did say it. Now your just dismissing it.
PaulS, if Bush willfully misled the Senate into voting for the war, I have one simple question for you. Why wasn't Bush impeached when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006?While there was a popular support for impeaching him I believe that the reason the Dems. didn't was that they saw how the backlash against the Clinton impeachment hurt the Rep. I also think Bush's approval ratings were so low at the time that they saw no "upside" in impeaching. His ratings weren't going to go any lower, so they prob. figured there was no upside for them. This was during a time when we were still at war so it was a real hot button issue.
Thanks ScottW for the original thought (at least it wasn't the usual unattributed cut and paste). I'll have to go back and reread all your posts to see how someone who so frequently argues w/people and makes prob. more snarky and snide comments than anyone else here thinks others are cranky.
"Rehashed talking points" - from the king of the cut and paste?? That is funny
Paul, so now you are qualified to speculate on why they didn't impeach Bush.
They didn't impeach Bush, because he (unlike Bill Clinton) didn't commit an impeachable offense.
Yes, there were a lot of folks who wanted him impeached. Mouth-breathing, unquestioning, morinic simpletons, who believe everythiyng they hear when it comes from those who despise Bush.
Bush was wrong (as were a whole lot of Democrats in the senate, and Bill and Hilary Clinton, as well as the democrats' new hero, Colin Powell). Being wrong, is not the same as lying. If it were, you would be a textbook compulsive liar. Because yu are wrong almost every time.
Paul, let's see the evidence that Bush knowingly manufactured false evidence, without which the Senate would not have voted for war. You made that accusation, so please either back it up, or admit that it's about as valid a theory as saying Obama is a Muslim (which would be less disturbing that Obama's true religion, Black Liberation Theology)
Here's what happened. Many of the Dems in the Senate voted for the war because, like Bush, they believed there were probably WMDs. When there weren't, and when the war became very unpopular, those same Dems had to distance themselves from the now-unpopular war. The easiest way to do it? Blame Bush. That's how it all started, that was Ground Zero for Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Paul, what do you think of US senators who lied about why they voted for the war, simply because public sentiment changed? Those flip-floppers are the ones who lied. Because they know they weren't 'duped'. But unlike Bush, most of them don't have the integrity to say "I made a mistake".
If there was any evidence that Bush lied, that 2006 Congress would have impeached him in a nanosecond. They hated Bush, because Bush beat them like a dog. That 2006 congress ( a huge victory for the dems) was elected with one mandate - get us the hell out of Iraq. And not only did Bush prevent them from getting out of Iraq, he forced them to go along with the Surge, which they said was doomed to fail, yet it worked like a charm. They had colossal egg on their faces, they got completely destroyed by the dumb hick Bush. They hated him for it, and they still hate him for it.
There's no way they would have decided not to impeach him, if they had a chance of doing so.
oh brother...Spence, quick, say something about Susan Rice.....
I'll say somehting about her...she's precisely what I would expect from Obama, an incompetent liar who is invulnerable to criticism. She is invulnerable to criticism, because anyone who dares to criticize her is either a sexist or as racist. This is, of course, happening already. And when you flat-out accuse a titanic hero like John McCain of being a racist, you are revealing how pathetic you truly are.
And I love Obama's Rambo impression at the press conference (you wanna come after her, then you better come after ME!"). very dignified and presidential.
I hope she gets confirmed, i hope the GOP just lets him do everytihng he wants to do, so that the collapse will be that much more spectacular and undeniable in root cause.
don't know about all of that but Obama did win and the Republicans are in the minority in the Senate and McCain can't complain about anything as he's a panderer extraordinaire, the same people that will pat him on the back and extoll the virtues of the "maverick" when he's being "reasonable" will viciously attack him at the first opportunity on something like this and call him a racist, shouldn't surprise anyone, there are many things that are currently unavoidable....4 more years of Obama is one, further implementation of Obamacare is another(although, I just read an article in The Hill detailing the many issues they're having setting up the exchanges which will cause major problems)....a day of reckoning is coming regarding Federal spending and they can't increase taxes enough to keep up with spending and there is no will to reduce spending and more Americans seem to become dependant on government with each passing day, I think many Americans have "checked out" in many ways.....there are unavoidable problems abroad both economically and militarily which will compound problems here....Obama has not only fundamentally changed America, he's effectively divided it and will continue to because that is the key to his success, with the majority of the media acting as a propoganda machine for him the Republicans only play into his hand when they oppose him on something like this.....
don't know about all of that but Obama did win and the Republicans are in the minority in the Senate and McCain can't complain about anything as he's a panderer extraordinaire, the same people that will pat him on the back and extoll the virtues of the "maverick" when he's being "reasonable" will viciously attack him at the first opportunity on something like this and call him a racist, shouldn't surprise anyone, there are many things that are currently unavoidable....4 more years of Obama is one, further implementation of Obamacare is another(although, I just read an article in The Hill detailing the many issues they're having setting up the exchanges which will cause major problems)....a day of reckoning is coming regarding Federal spending and they can't increase taxes enough to keep up with spending and there is no will to reduce spending and more Americans seem to become dependant on government with each passing day, I think many Americans have "checked out" in many ways.....there are unavoidable problems abroad both economically and militarily which will compound problems here....Obama has not only fundamentally changed America, he's effectively divided it and will continue to because that is the key to his success, with the majority of the media acting as a propoganda machine for him the Republicans only play into his hand when they oppose him on something like this.....
"call him (McCain) a racist, shouldn't surprise anyone"
First, we shouldn't be surprised by it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be appalled by it. Second, I bet it comes as surprise to his adopted daughter, who isn't white.
Paul, so now you are qualified to speculate on why they didn't impeach Bush.
You're a joke. You ask why he wasn't impeached and then when I give you why I thought he wasn't, you insult me. Just as before when you state Kerry never said he was mislead. I copy a quote where he said he was and then you say it wasn't true. You ask me why Pres. Bush wanted to go to war and I told you why I thought and what R. Clark said and again you insult me.
If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question.
You're a joke. You ask why he wasn't impeached and then when I give you why I thought he wasn't, you insult me. Just as before when you state Kerry never said he was mislead. I copy a quote where he said he was and then you say it wasn't true. You ask me why Pres. Bush wanted to go to war and I told you why I thought and what R. Clark said and again you insult me.
If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question.
Paul, I asked why he wasn't impeached. You didn't know the answer, so you invented a hypothetical that supported your previous (also false) conclusion that Bush clearly committed an impeachable offense.
You did indeed show a quote where Kerry said he was duped, and I credit you for that. Although, with no evidence, that seems about as valid a claim as Trump claiming that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
"If you don't like the answer, don't ask the question"
You're making up answers out of thin air, answers which, shockingly, support your conclusions.
Where is the evidence that Bush intenionally fabricated evidence, without which the Senate would have voted against the war? All of your theories are based on that assumption, that the senate was 'misled'. OK, let's see it.
And situations where Bush's conclusions were wrong, are not the same as intentional deception. I'm sure you agree there's a difference between an honest mistake and a lie.
The notion that Bush lied in order to give him a pretext to invade, just because he wanted to finish what Daddy started, is absurd. When you consider the irrefutable fact that Bush gave Saddam dozens of chances to avoid war by complying with the UN treaties, your entire premise falls apart. If you 'want' war with someone, you don't give them dozens of opportunities to avoid war.
If you want to say (with the benefit of hindsight) that Bush jumped the gun, you can make a compelling case for that. To say that Bush intentionally deceived the US Senate, the UN, and all the other nations that provided troops, is anothe rmatter.
Try not to get another thread shut down if you can, please.
"While there was a popular support for impeaching him I believe that the reason the Dems. didn't was that they saw how the backlash against the Clinton impeachment hurt the Rep"
OK. So the very best you could do, was to speculate that Bush wasn't impeached because the Democrats didn't want to deal with the fallout. Even if that's true (which it's not), you're admitting that the Democrats cared more about getting re-elected than they cared about seeking justice for getting suckered into war. Is that what you think of your Democratic elected officials?
I think most of the threads that get shut down are when people return the anger and hate that you post.
Here are 2 easily found posts that shows he mislead the American public. (The one about curveball is from wikipedia)
In October of 2002, a National Security Estimate summary called a President's Summary, was written specifically for George W. Bush. In that document, Bush was told that despite the buzz that Iraq's procurement of aluminum tubes was "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."
This memo, however, did not stop Bush from announcing, three months later, in the State of the Union speech, that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes in order to build a nuclear weapon. Later that year, when then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley did a review of documents, and discovered the President's Summary, Karl Rove gathered White House aides together and explained that it would look bad if the American people knew that Bush had been advised that the aluminum tubes were probably harmless.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان, Rāfid Aḥmad Alwān; born 1968), known by the Central Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is an Iraqi citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.[1] Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.[2][3]
Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.[1][4] On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity.[5] Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth."[1]
And an interview with Lawrence Wilkerson about curveball
Colin Powell was lied to and ‘manipulated’ into supporting the invasion of Iraq, it was claimed last night.
The former Secretary of State was deliberately not told that information he used to make his famous speech justifying the war was bogus, a former colleague claimed.
Instead the George W Bush White House abused his good reputation to give the push for war much-needed credibility.
The claims were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s former chief of staff, in an angry and revealing interview.
He spoke out after the main source for Powell’s report justifying the Iraq invasion which he presented to the UN Security Council in February 2003 admitted he made the whole thing up.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, or ‘Curveball’ as he was known by the CIA, said he let his imagination run wild with claims about Saddam Hussein and that he was doing it just to overthrow the regime.
When he saw Powell relaying the fabricated information to the UN he was stunned.
Speaking to America’s NBC, Wilkerson said he did not believe that when Powell gave his speech - which came just a month before the invasion - he knew the truth.
‘I never heard a single word of doubt expressed about what we were told were four separate sources which proved the existence of mobile biological labs,’ he said.
‘What I’ve found out since makes me very angry.
An Iraqi defector, codenamed Curveball, left, says he lied about Saddam Hussein's bioweapons programme in order to encourage the United States to declare war and topple the dictator.
‘I cannot come to any other conclusion that we were flat out lied to, especially when I have discovered that no U.S. people were present when Curveball was interrogated.
‘I have some serious doubts, I think there was some manipulation of this material and some outright lying.’ Asked if the office of former Vice President #^&#^&#^&#^& Cheney manipulated Powell into giving a speech, he replied: ‘Absolutely. Absolutely.’ He added that Colin Powell had the credibility that none of the others had because he was a war sceptic surrounded by hawks.
‘The were using him,’ Wilkerson said.
Powell has said that he wants to know why the doubts about Curveball were not raised before he gave his speech, which was seen as a crucial factor in persuading other countries to support the invasion.
But Wilkerson said that in the end even if Powell did know it would have made little difference.
‘Had Curveball not even existed we still would have gone to war because George W Bush and #^&#^&#^&#^& Cheney were determined to do so,’ he said.
And I dont (I'll leave that misspelled for Scott) think the Dems. are any better than the Repubs. at "politicing".
Paul, some guy saying that things were made up, is not proof. Again. I can find guys who say Obama was born in Kenya, I can find guys who say 09/11 was an inside job.
Paul, for every report you cite saying the tubes were for conventional weapons, I can cite one that says they were likely for nukes.
"The C.I.A agents said the tubes were destined to become the rotors in a gas centrifuge program to create enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The CIA agents acknowledged there was another possible use for the tubes "
"
Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke on Fox News Sunday, saying "And as we saw in reporting just this morning, he is still trying to acquire, for example, some of the specialized aluminum tubing one needs to develop centrifuges that would give you an enrichment capability"
"
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs" and "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."[8] "
Again, I have zero doubt you can make a case (especially with the benefit of hindsight) that Bush was wrong. Being wrong, i snot th esame as lying. To prove Bush lied, you need to show me that he knew the tubes could not have been used for nukes, but he claimed that they were. That's lying.
And one last time, if Bush wanted to go to war so bad that he was willing to lie, why did he give Saddam dozens of chances to avoid war by complying with the UN Sanctions? It doesn't pass the common sense smell test Paul, it just doesn't. If you can take off your tin foil hat for a moment, you'll see it makes no sense whatsoever, to give Saddam literally dozens on chances to avoid war, if your desire is to launch war.
Paul, analyzing intelligence is almost always an inexact science. The fact is this...back before the invasion, very few people were denying the claims of Bush (and Bill Clinton) that Saddam had WMDs.
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction..."...Nancy Pelosi, 1998
"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on weapons of mass destruction..." Clinton SecState Madeline Albright, 1999
So Paul, how do you explain the fact that Nancy Pelosi and Maedline Albright made these statements BEFORE Bush became president? Wait, I know...Bush kidnapped them, and replaced them with exact replicas, which were actually #^&#^&#^&#^& Cheney in disguise?
"he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons"...Al Gore, 2002
read the quotes in that thread...Bill Clinton, Terd Kennedy, John Kerry, Robert Byrd...all stating with no ambiguity, that they believed Saddam either had, or was developing, WMDs.
Paul, sometimes the evidence leads rational people to the wrong conclusion.
At least Bush admitted he was wrong. That's more than Obama will do regarding Benghazi, where 4 Americans died, in large part due to the administration's refusal to grant Stevens' obviously legitimate request for extra security. Rather than admit he made a mistake, Obama concocts a cockamamie fantasy abouta youtube video. God forbid Obama admit that he got caught with his pants around his ankles, when there was a ton of evidence suggesting that terrorists were increasing activity in that area. That's precisely why they are bending over backwards to convince us that it wasn't terrorists. If it wasn't a terrorist plot that Stevens was afraid of when asking for extra security, then this administration didn't put Stevens at risk by rejecting his claim.
Bush admits he was wrong when he concluded that there were no WMDs. Obama admits no culpability for the fact that on his watch, an ambassador was murdered for the first time since Carter (coincidence?) was president.
Obama can't be responsible for random, unforseeable acts of violence. In this case, everyone on the ground in Libya thought imminent terrorist activity warranted extra security. The Obama administration figured they knew better. We all know how that worked out.
Last edited by Jim in CT; 11-26-2012 at 07:29 PM..
I'd note that much of PaulS' most recent posts are "unattributed cut and paste"....albeit..."easily found"? unattributed cut and paste..yes.....located from MOTHERJONES and in an interview with Ed Schultz on MSNBC...just sayin', great sources .....we can figure out which is from Wiki by the little numbers Paul but thanks for mentioning it
Lawrence Wilkerson is great...Google him...talk about hate and anger and painting a group of people with a broad brush....he went on MSNBC with Ed Schultz and stated quite vociferously that the Republican party is mostly racists...
"In the real world, portraying the smart, tough, and strong-willed Susan Rice as an “easy” target would be humorous -- except for what the president was implying: If Rice’s critics were not going after her on the merits, why were they doing so?
This was the dog whistle part, and it was both heard and heeded by Obama’s supporters in the Democratic Party and the media.
“It is a shame that anytime anything goes wrong, they pick on women and minorities,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat recently installed as the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. “There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by Sen. McCain and others.”
In USA Today, the headline over a column by DeWayne Wickham proclaimed, “McCain uses Susan Rice to re-launch war on women.”
Seizing on McCain’s contention that “this administration has either been guilty of colossal incompetence or engaged in a cover-up,” South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn maintained, “These are code words.”
“This is really down in the gutter,” MSNBC’s Ed Shultz added in a show stoking the “code words” angle. Richard Wolffe, another MSNBC commentator, called it a “witch hunt” against “people of color.” When asked point-blank if McCain was driven by racial prejudice, he replied that there “is no other way to look at it.”
There is, of course, another way to look at it: Republicans believe that Susan Rice’s excellent foreign policy qualifications were undermined by her hyper-partisanship. There was even a bit of presidential sleight of hand involved in singling out Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Those two men were joined in expressing reservations by two Republican senators whose names went unmentioned by Democrats: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine."
They say when a person falls in love there is are chemical reactions within their brain that alters the thought process. That is why people stay in abusive relationships. These chemical reactions of attraction block signals that would normally give the person reason to pause. They ignore the advice of others including family and friends who can see the person as they are without chemicals altering the thoughts.
I have a feeling it works the same for hate. How else can you explain the filters people have about Bush and the war.
I have defended Bush so I guess that makes me a guy who loves Bush.
this Curveball dude is pretty interesting...after locating the easily found wiki attribution I was reading about him....
apparently as late as June 26, 2006, The Washington Post reported that "the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels."
and initially...Germany's intelligence service (BND) classified him as a "blue" source, meaning the Germans would not permit U.S. access to him (red sources were allowed American contact).[8] Later evidence indicated that he was in fact pro-American, and that the Germans were guarding their source.[9] The Germans, however, did pass on information to the American intelligence agencies and the informant was given the codename "Curveball".
The Germans listened to his claims and debriefed him starting in December 1999,[12] continuing to September 2001. Although the Americans did not have "direct access" to Curveball,[13][14] information collected by the BND debriefing team was later passed on in part to the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States.[15
the defector had shown up for medical tests with a "blistering hangover",[19] and he "might be an alcoholic".[20]
finally ...In February 2011, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi admitted for the first time that he lied about his story regarding Iraq's secret biological weapons program.[6
Curveball is still living in Germany under strong protection of the German police. Danish TV filmed Rafid on the streets and recorded clips of conversation with him, before he surreptitiously called the police and had the TV-crew banned from his neighbourhood.
so this lying, sketchy, probably alcoholic, extortionist, manipualtive to the point that some of the largest intelligence agencies can't decipher truth from fiction taxi driver who caused a major conflict pretending to be someone that he couldn't possibly have been smart enough to have been is still living under the "strong protection of the German police" and apparently on the public dole and can simply make a call to the police and have inquiring minds banned from his neighborhood as recently as 2011.....very strange, he's practically a Kennedy but with a better driving record
I think Paul Pillar said he best when he remarked that the intelligence community "bent in the wind" to provide the Iraqi intel, or perhaps better said directly by the Brits, the "facts were being fit around the policy".
I've never said Bush lied about Iraq and still believe he felt he was doing what was necessary to protect the American people...that's why he wasn't impeached...Bush's failure was to surround himself by ideologues hell bent on exploiting 9/11 to execute an agenda that politics had to date prevented.
We've discussed the opinions of Congress at length, there's no need to go into great detail there, but it's safe to say that Democratic members didn't support unilateral action and were heavily influenced by a "marketing" effort to support the policy.
The problem here is that the war machine is so big once it gets going there really is no stopping it...
It's interesting that as more info about Benghazi has been revealed the primary attack dogs are backing away. Let the investigation help determine a better security policy so we can prevent another tragedy, but now that the election is over there doesn't seem to be as much need for a scandal as there was a month ago
it's safe to say that Democratic members didn't support unilateral action and were heavily influenced by a "marketing" effort to support the policy.
-spence
I'm curious as to why you feel that is 'safe to say', since none of the Democrats who voted for the war, were saying that, at the time. So you must have a deep, unique insight into what happened. Senators Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer, Charles Schumer, Diana Feinstein all voted for the war. To my knowledge, none of them claimed they were coerced, not until the war became politically popular.
When the public supported the war, those Democrats voted in favor of it. When the war became unpopular, those same folks, all of a sudden, claimed that they were never "really" in favor of the war.
Spence, if what you say is true, those senators are in gross deriliction of their duty, as they are supposed to lead. If they thought the war was wrong, they are supposed to vote that way, like Ted Kennedy did.
If what I say is true, they are a bunch of lying flip-flopers, who wuill say whatever happens to be opopular at the moment.
I think you are being very fair to Bush. As to the Democrats in the senate who voted for the war...how can you respect them, if they only voted for the war (sending kids to a horrible death) because of 'marketing pressure'? If what you say is true, how can you respect those folks? After all, there were plenty of Democrats who had sufficient conviction of their beliefs to oppose the war. Sounds to me like yuo are claiming that all of those folks I mentioned, showed a total lack of conviction and leadership.
I happen to agree with you. I'm just surprised to hear you say it.
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