Topic : News, Politics and Current Events

Prof,

You have no idea how dead on your question was!! LMAO  Today's answer is 362 to go!  The countdown calendar was a Christmas gift which includes all sorts of wonderful Bushisms.  Here's one "See, one of the interesting things in the oval office-I love to bring people into the oval office-right around the corner from here-and say, this is where I office, but I want you to know the office is always bigger than the person."  1/2004.  The leader of our country folks!!!

One of my b-day gifts last year was a political humor book called "Bad President".  Only problem is that it has both humor and facts and some of the facts make me want to vomit.  From the book "On April 8, 2004, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testified before the 9/11 Commission that there was "nothing that suggested there was going to be a threat to the United States" in the Presidential Daily Briefing Document on August 6, 2001.  However, Rice proceeded to admit that the title of the document was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

So true about the impeachment and I don't think at this point it would be in the best interest of our country.  Hmmm, how bout the war crimes though in '09????  I know, I know, it will never happen but I can always hope that somehow, someway, someday he and his administration will be held accountable for the damage that they have done to our country.

Forgot the link, just in case no one else posted it on this board. Thanks for sharing with us on the RD board Penny.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/anonymous-attac.html

War on Scientology Link:

http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology

dang...they are serious!

So I read this today and I must say I am soooo very pissed off.  Of course I knew this but it is about damn time that someone did a "study".  I would love to see a special prosecutor do a "special study" as well.  Our government held impeachment hearings against Clinton (who was an idiot to do what he did) but Bush can make "false statements" (when my kids do it I call it a lie) and get away with it!!!  Not only do I think that he should have been impeached long ago, I would think that if you attack another country unprovoked, being tried for war crimes might be appropriate.  Okay I am ranting but this just so ticks me off.

I am curious, you dont see the difference between what Clinton did and what the entire Executive and Legislative branch did?  I can see if one person said something, but we are talking about pretty much everyone, starting when Clinton was the President.

Do you think we should have joined WWI or WWII?  If your basis on doing something is that we are attacked.  If that was the case then the US should never have gotten into WWI and should have only fought against Japan in the Pacific.  In WWII we didnt find out about the concentration camps until almost the end of the war, when we started liberating the people and it was then we actually saw what was going on.

Playing devil's advocate here.

What is the point of your first paragraph? It sounds like two unrelated Clinton-bashes.

Comapring Iraq to the two World Wars is like comparing apples and mangos -- not even CLOSE. "Sadand Insane" was pretty well contained after Operation Desert Storm in the early '90s. The Kurds were doing their own thing in the North; the "No-Fly Zones" in both North and South were holding. Yes, intel as far back as the Clinton era suggested that Iraq might have WMDs, and Clinton at one point did consider "doing something," but abandoned those plans well before he left office.

Whom had Iraq invaded, or what terrorist organization was Iraq giving "direct aid and comfort" to, to justify our invading them? NOBODY: The purported link between Iraq and Al-Qaida has been debunked many times over.

In both WWI and WWII, there were clear aggressors who had INVADED not one, but many other sovereign countries -- the CLEAR goal of these folks was global domination, and they were ACTING in ways to meet those goals. Neither did the US enter either conflict early on. In WWI, although we aided the Allied cause, we didn't officially declare war until three years after hostilities began (and, yes, a US-flagged ship was sunk by German U-boats). In WWII ( and I just double-checked this at www.worldwar2.net), we declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor, then Germany and Italy declared war on US -- then we reciprocated by declaring war on Germany and Italy on December 11, 1941. Your comments about the WWII-era concentration camps are true, but irrelevant.

Prof

Comapring Iraq to the two World Wars is like comparing apples and mangos -- not even CLOSE. "Sadand Insane" was pretty well contained after Operation Desert Storm in the early '90s. The Kurds were doing their own thing in the North; the "No-Fly Zones" in both North and South were holding. Yes, intel as far back as the Clinton era suggested that Iraq might have WMDs, and Clinton at one point did consider "doing something," but abandoned those plans well before he left office.

So is that why everyone in Congress talked about Iraq and WMDs, such as Sen. Levin, Sen. Kerry, Sen. Clinton, I can go on if you would like.

I am guessing you think right before he left office he was still saying this is weel before, then you are correct.  There are quotes from Former President Clinton that talks about Iraq.

I brought up WWII because the US believed that Germany was making an atomic bomb, which we didnt find out until the end of the war that wasnt exactly true.  Einsten actually took this information to Roosevelt and we built and dropped the bomb first.  We knew what would happen if Germany got to it before us.

We didnt have the luxury of hindsight back then and President Bush did what he believed was true from the knowledge that was given to him. 

Why the impeachment of just President Bush, why not the entire Congress, who agreed to such a thing, CIA and FBI who supplied this information.  If we are going to start, we might as well get rid of all of them right?

"So is that why everyone in Congress talked about Iraq and WMDs, such as Sen. Levin, Sen. Kerry, Sen. Clinton, I can go on if you would like."

Was it discussed during the Clinton era? YES. Was it a concern? YES. Did Clinton go far in planing, let alone actually execute, an invasion? NO. There is a HUGE difference. One of the MAJOR reasons for the "shift" in thinking was the alleged link between Saddam and 9-11,  a link that was tenuous at best, that turned out to be utter rubbish.

For comparison, you cited WWII. Yes, we believed that Germany was developing THE BOMB. That engendered the Manhattan Project, but had a 1939 document been used as justification for entry into WWII, that entry would likely have occurred before Pearl Harbor. As it was, the US would remain "non-belligerent" until that event. You also brought up WWI, where WE WERE ATTACKED. You suggested otherwise.

"We didnt have the luxury of hindsight back then and President Bush did what he believed was true from the knowledge that was given to him."

We never do have the "luxury of hundsight" when we need it, do we? However, if  the best that can be said is that President Bush et al. believed what turned out to be inaccurate or false information, should there not still be some accountability here?

"Why the impeachment of just President Bush, why not the entire Congress, who agreed to such a thing, CIA and FBI who supplied this information.  If we are going to start, we might as well get rid of all of them right?"

Sigh. What a long way we have come from "The Buck Stops Here."

Prof

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

In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency, under George Tenet, was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with President Bush that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, V.P. Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret program was "stovepiped" to the Vice President and presented to the public. In some cases, Cheney’s office would leak the intelligence to reporters, where it would be reported by outlets such as The New York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the intelligence, referencing The New York Times as the source to give it credence.[71]

In late February 2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate dubious claims about Iraq's attempted purchase of yellowcake uranium from Niger. Wilson returned and informed the CIA that reports of yellowcake sales to Iraq were "unequivocally wrong." However, the Bush administration continued to allege attempts to obtain yellowcake as justification for military action - most prominently in the January, 2003, State of the Union when President Bush said that Iraq had sought uranium, citing British intelligence sources.[72] In response, Wilson wrote a critical The New York Times op-ed in June 2003 saying that he had personally investigated claims of yellowcake purchases and believed them to be fraudulent. Wilson's report did not clarify the matter for analysts, but they found it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales.[73] Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed in a column by Robert Novak. Since it is a felony to reveal the identity of a CIA agent Novak's column launched an investigation by the Justice Department into the source of the leak. In March, 2007, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby was convicted of perjury in the Plame leak investigation. The source of the leak was found to be Richard Armitage. He was never charged.[74]

A British government memo was published in The Sunday Times on May 1, 2005. Known as the "Downing Street memo," it contains an overview of a secret July 23, 2002 meeting among United Kingdom Labour government, defense and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the Iraq war—including direct reference to classified U.S. policy of the time. The memo states, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."[75]

On September 18, 2002, George Tenet briefed Bush that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Bush dismissed this top-secret intelligence from Saddam's inner circle which was approved by two senior CIA officers, but it turned out to be completely accurate. The information was never shared with Congress or even CIA agents examining whether Saddam had such weapons.[76] The CIA had contacted Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who was being paid by France as a spy. He informed them that Saddam had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.[77]

You are absolutely right, we should get rid of those supplied this information.  So I ammend my statement to include Cheney and Rumsfeld in the war crimes trial.

And regarding the rest, Prof got to it before I did and stated it very well.  And yes, the buck should stop with Bush but it never will.

We never do have the "luxury of hundsight" when we need it, do we? However, if  the best that can be said is that President Bush et al. believed what turned out to be inaccurate or false information, should there not still be some accountability here?

So what you want is every time someone makes a poor decision that is in the course of the official duty is to impeach them?  Let's not look at that when this was decided by the President and the Congress they believed it was correct and the best thing to do for the USA.  All you care about is that it turned out to be wrong, hence impeach?  Wow, there is going to be a lot of impeaching going on then because things always turn out different then what is originally planned.

Sigh. What a long way we have come from "The Buck Stops Here."

You are right it has been a long way from that.  Seeing that people want to impeach elected officials.  Isnt that why we elect people, 2, 4 or 6 years?  That if they do something that we (as citizens of the US) dont agree with, we will elect someone else.  But, screw what has worked for years, I dont like you or what you think, so I want to impeach.  Brilliant plan.