De la Vega on the Case for Impeachment
Excellent item by Elizabeth de la Vega from The Nation: The White House criminal conspiracy. (Also via TomDispatch: De la Vega, Bush’s war, a case of presidential fraud?)
Conspiracies to defraud usually begin with a goal that is not in and of itself illegal. In this instance the goal was to invade Iraq. It is possible that the Bush team thought this goal was laudable and likely to succeed. It’s also possible that they never formally agreed to defraud the public in order to attain it. But when they chose to overcome anticipated or actual opposition to their plan by concealing information and lying, they began a conspiracy to defraud — because, as juries are instructed, “no amount of belief in the ultimate success of a scheme will justify baseless, false or reckless misstatements.”
I’m convinced. Impeach the bastard. Do it now.
Link discovered via Jane Hamsher of my new favorite weblog, firedoglake, at The chickenhawk conspiracy, where they also filed the serial numbers off this really excellent propaganda poster remix:
November 2nd, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Ahahaha. That must have taken some real convincing for you to be sold on this idea, JBC.
November 2nd, 2005 at 3:42 pm
Don’t forget to impeach “Cheney-Monster” while we’re at it.
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Impeachment, based on the prewar “lies”? Bring it on. I can’t wait. I would love to see those great leaders in the Dim party explain that they voted in favor of the Iraq war only because they were “lied to” about WMDs. In doing so, they must admit that they were derelict in their duties and responsibilities. A president can say anything he wants, but it is their responsibility to research the info backing up his statements before casting their vote.
It’s laughable, because they did research it, drawing their conclusions from the same information sources as the administration. Or, did they fail to even read (and research the validity of) the intel. Only Congress can pass a declaration of war, and most of the same jerks who whine and snivel about “being lied to” voted in favor of the war. Those fools don’t need email, they need Kleenex.
I don’t care if we went to war on the pretense of possession of contraband daffodils. It was necessary, and this president displayed tremendous guts and conviction in the face of predictable cowardice from political nay-sayers.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Who was a coward? People that suspected this whole war was been based on bullshit? I don’t call them cowards, I call them Patriots.
“Bring it On”?
Last time I heard a right-wing retard say that we ended up with over 2000 dead and 15000 maimed countrymen, sent there for what? Oil? Freedom? Terrorism? WMD? Whats the reason this week? End in sight?
I questioned this war right from the begining, so don’t you dare say that I don’t have a right to dissent, or call me unpatriotic because I do so.
If you think that fuckjob Bush has any guts and conviction I want some of the drugs you are on.
I see a leader in charge of a corrupt, unethical party that lead this country to war based on bullshit, straight up busllshit.
Unable to admit mistakes. Economy plunging. Poverty rising. Environment hurting. Bombs dropping. People dying. Tremendous guts and conviction? You are on drugs.
Please take your head out of you ass and try some common sense. Hell, why don’t you even try to make a list of noble accomplishments that this president has acheived.
Good luck with that.
November 3rd, 2005 at 3:25 pm
TeacherVet,
Damn right bring it on. Nothing would make me happier than to see both the democrats and republicans get burned here. It would be like a dream come true. They’re largely inept and most actions are politically motivated, and most of the promised ‘good’ is layered with heaps of pork which forces us all to lose in the long run. The sooner the general public sees that the status quo is only hurting us, the better. Partisanship be dammed — they all screwed the lot of us.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:04 pm
ethan, your comments and analysis come closer to echoing my own thoughts than you probably realize, especially the last two-thirds of your paragraph. By the way, I was not being sarcastic when I said bring it on – I just wish the Dims had the balls to hold their little pow-wow openly.
treehugger, you’re nuts. I get accused of being a “troll” because I support a Commander-in-Chief in a time of war. Let’s see if this right-wing retard can “take your head out of you ass” and try some common sense. I’ll be selective, not trying to respond to all of your parroting. By the way, do you proof-read before you hit the “Submit Comment” button?
Let’s look at the reasons you infer for “Bush’s War”:
Oil? Almost three years of the war, and we haven’t taken over a single oil rig. Personally, if that’s the primary reason for the war, I’m ready for us to take over all of the oil fields and enjoy the five-cents-per-gallon prices. Maybe next year we’ll do more than simply protect the number-one export for the people of Iraq, and the stupid analysis will become true.
Freedom? I would have to defer to the opinions of the vast majority of Iraqis who seem to be basking in the new-found freedom. Have you heard of WWII? If so, make a comparison of the time-tables in establishing the foundations of freedom and democracy. The progress has been amazingly fast, and has occurred while the fighting is still ongoing.
Terrorism? While you have the books open to discover WWII and it’s lengthy aftermath, you might research world events of September 11, 2001. Maybe I can break it down for you. The civilian population of the U.S. was attacked, with massive casualties, in an open declaration of war against us. This country responded with a retaliatory declaration of war against all terrorism, everywhere, and against anyone who supports the efforts of terrorists in any substantive way. Does that jog your memory? Various terror groups had been attacking us, killing (apparently insignificant) smaller groups of our people, for many years. I won’t detail each attack, but you might find references to them as you research history of the last few decades. They were not all al-Qaeda related, but all could be linked to global terrorism. It was past time for us to stop playing patty-cake with them and reverse the constant displays of weakness and cowardice. Have mistakes been made? Of course. We’re not mind-readers, and we don’t control their play-book – it’s called war, and it’s neither pretty nor enjoyable. The ostrich defense obviously wasn’t working, and it’s about time we had a “fuckjob president” willing to fight back.
WMD? If my home is searched for sandwiches, chances are that none will be found. You will find bread, ham, cheese spread, salami, dressings, etc., but no sandwiches – therefore, using the logic of today’s nay-sayers, I’m not guilty of sandwich possession.
You’re probably wondering what this right-wing retard is talking about, so let’s see if he can use some common sense to explain it. We have found all the necessary ingredients for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but none of them in a “ready-to-eat” form. The conclusion drawn by the loudest voices? Gotcha…Saddam had no weapons.
We have found 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, a fundamental ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons…but no actual, functional nuclear weapons, so you’re right, Saddam had none. We found many huge caches of newly manufactured gas masks, so perhaps we should conclude that Saddam was only an eccentric collector of such items. We found 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents – but of course that could mean that the poor guy simply liked lots of exotic spices with his meals.
Is it really necessary that I go on with my flawed logic? We found 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent with five times the killing power of sarin gas. We found more than 1,000 radioactive materials in powder form, which allows it to be dispersed over populated areas. We found roadside bombs filled with mustard and sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum effectiveness. Nope – Saddam had no WMD.
WMD means “weapons of mass destruction.” I’m trying to be simplistic for you….it means stuff that can be used to kill lots of people. All of the stuff we’ve found only serves the purpose of offensive, indiscriminate killing, and it serves no other function. None of it contributes to any healthy dietary plan, it has no defensive purposes, it was all in the possession of the poor little guy who was removed by the evil U.S., and all of it was obviously hidden and moved around to avoid detection by the wonderful inspection team (remember them? – the group that Saddam manipulated for several years?).
Your patriotism? I am now a teacher, but I established many life-long military contacts while working at Langley AFB for four years, and I assure you that most of the guys in the trenches are dangerously distracted by the mindless, careless, and childish bantering of the great patriots who voice disdain and mistrust for their every move. Their every correspondence reflects their concern for the lack of support for their efforts – indicating that it is a meaningful distraction, constantly on their minds in a life-threatening battlefield environment.
The “anti-war movement” is a misnomer – it is simply an “anti-Bush movement,” a political movement, and it is not patriotic to participate in a political movement that endangers the lives of our troops in the field. Did we learn nothing from the Vietnam experience? You can bet that our adversaries learned from it, and they are following the same course as the communist leadership in that era: they know they can only “win” by waiting for the anti-America crowd in this country to hand them a victory by tearing this country apart. Questioning can certainly be patriotic, but the current “movement” only consists of subjective guesswork and reckless finger-pointing, and that tactic is absolutely unpatriotic. If that glove fits….
Apologies for the lack of silly name-calling – I don’t have your expertise, and I won’t try to emulate your level of maturity. Have a nice day, from the right-wing, retarded troll himself.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
please provide some proof of these claims
by my count we found one IED with traces of some nerve or mustard agent
not a whisper about any of this other stuff you talked about
facts please
thanks
TV – “We have found 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, a fundamental ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons…but no actual, functional nuclear weapons, so you’re right, Saddam had none. We found many huge caches of newly manufactured gas masks, so perhaps we should conclude that Saddam was only an eccentric collector of such items. We found 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents – ” and “Is it really necessary that I go on with my flawed logic? We found 17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent with five times the killing power of sarin gas. We found more than 1,000 radioactive materials in powder form, which allows it to be dispersed over populated areas. We found roadside bombs filled with mustard and sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum effectiveness. Nope – Saddam had no WMD.”
Making gas masks does not mean you have strategically useful amounts of WMDs. Haven’t you ever heard of the term “ruse”? Think back to WWII and the inflatible tanks in SE england. And while we revisit your WWII analogy: four years on after Pearl Harbor, Hirohito and Tojo were crapping their pants on the deck of the Missouri. Where is Osama again?
Face it, we could have toppled Saddam without this useless war. Do you recall the list of countries that were with us for GW1? Nearly every Arab country in the region. Who could we bribe this time? I dunno TV, seems like this war has made more terrorists, not less. Last year had the largest number of terrorist attacks, ever. I will give credit where credit is due, but in general w has been a nearly unmitigated disaster (-afghanistan sorta… mb keeping our thumb down on Pakistan… lower taxes? meh, mostly for the rich… thats it).
You can be against a war, but for our troops.
I should like to put that more colorfully, but feeding the troll doesn’t help the troll see that other kinds and colors of trolls inhabit the same country as he and love it just as much as he does (perhaps more?)
The enemy isn’t the Dems or the Reps (Demon-craps or Rethuglicreeps ;-)
To my mind it is extremism. Perhaps treehugger is extreme in the same way teachervet is extreme. “A uniter not a divider”… yeah… uh huh… Do you think every liberal feels great about Hillary Clinton (and all the Dims vote for war?) As a NA (no affiliation) voter, I sure do not.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:24 pm
…but I liked playing patty-cake. It was kind of a stupid game, but at least we didn’t blow each other up when we played patty-cake.
TeacherVet, patty-cake aside, this war (Iraq, terrorism) is over oil. Stablizing the region and installing a democracy means a safe place to trade…oil. It is our primary interest in the region. If it weren’t for oil, we would treat the region like we’ve treated the entire continent of Africa. We’d have let the people in the region fight amongst themselves and express concern from a distance while the people who don’t look like us (or believe in the same god as us) kill each other.
No — we didn’t invite any terrorists to come and blow up our buildings. However, there are people very angry with us. Whether or not we agree with why their angry, or whose fault their situation is, they are very angry. They probably wouldn’t have been angry if we had just stayed away…but we couldn’t, because we wanted to trade for their oil. So we’ve tried to stabilize the region. Add terrorism to the mix and the situation tends to get worse and perpetuates itself…my point is that I really believe that our situation would have unfolded much differently if not for our massive energy demands. This is not directly about oil (and believe me, it took some convincing for me to believe it too), but deeply rooted int oil. I am not proposing a solution (shit…I love my goddamn petrol-burning vehicles, my warm house and stove, and make my living use machines manufactured using fossil oil), however, I’m under no illusion that this shit we’re involved in is not deeply rooted in oil.
While I’m at it, (I can’t sleep) I feel like going slightly OT ranting about the term ‘war on terror’. As far as I can tell, we’ve never won a war on anything that wasn’t a proper noun…in fact we have repeatedly had our asses kicked in nsuch situations. The war on drugs has been going on since the Nixon administration and after billions and billions of dollars spent and millions of incarcerations…we haven’t done a damn thing. Also, similar to the war on poverty. There were small gains in line with economic recovery, but hasn’t really changed since 1973. 12.1% of Americans are still living in poverty. The best we’ve done is shift the distribution amongst the age group of poverty-stricken folks. In my opinion, we sort of got our shit fucked up by that one. Finally (and this is a personal antecdotal observation), I’m not seeing any less terrorism since the war on it has begun. In fact, every day, I’m hearing about someone blowing themselves up in order to take out lots of other people who they didn’t like. Was this stuff happenning every day before our war on terra and the news media didn’t cover it because nobody gave a shit? Perhaps our leadership should further investigate the corelation between wars on non-proper-nouns and serious loss before foolishly entering into another campaign against a non-proper-noun. I suppose that they’re still trying to convince us (and themselves, perhaps) that this stuff is actually working. In any case, I’m glad that that we’re not warpped up in a war on wars. Man, that could turn into the worst disaster in history.
Damn…thas patty-cake talk has me thinking about sweet, sweet cupcakes with frosting. Let’s all have some fresh baked cupcakes. On me!
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:05 pm
TV: As JBC and others have pointed out before, Bush has already said the war was about oil. He admit so much in a speech he gave in sunny San Diego the day New Orleans drowned.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/31/bush_gives_new_reason_for_iraq_war/
I can actually appreciate oil as a justification for the war. While I may not like it, at least it’s an honest reason.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:10 am
And yet another pathetic example of how this war has affected the innocent: Programs for the disadvanted and individuals with modest incomes are being slashed to pay for this mess.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/04/congress.budget.ap/index.html
Bush’s Reaction?
….thanking the Senate for the cuts to health care programs for the elderly, poor and disabled…
There’s that noble, compassionate president we all love.
BTW, TeachVet – If you don’t want me to use name calling, then don’t be so fucking stupid.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:43 am
TreeHugger -you make good points, but you really need to chill the invective. It makes you sound like a palooka – which you obviously aren’t – and forces people to take sides when your arguments aren’t really devisive at all. The point is to show TeacherVet where he might be wrong, not bully him into submission. Remember: had the anti-war column figured out how to address the issue of this war without too often resulting to such insulting heavy handedness, more people might have listened before it was too late.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:48 am
Hm. I actually disagree with leftbehind’s prescription for action, at least as far as TeacherVet is concerned. He’s demonstrated an impressive ability to spout nonsense out of his ass on this particular topic, in blatant disregard of the available facts. So I think calling him names is exactly as useful, in terms of changing his mind, as giving him reasoned arguments. That is to say, both approaches are futile. So if calling him names makes you feel better, I say go for it. Likewise, if giving him reasoned arguments makes you feel better, you should do that. But either way, it’s not going to change his mind.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:56 am
I make the above statement as a formerly entrenched war supporter who would have looked at the situation a lot more objectively early on had I not bristled, as a lot of people still do, at the unseemly level of insult and invective that have too often typified progressive discourse for over four years now.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
JBC – Convincing TeacherVet is not the issue, really. The issue is persuading others of his bent who might come to this blog with a more open mind than his, which is certainly more of the case when you obviously realize.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Good point, leftbehind. To the extent convincing TeacherVet isn’t the issue, I’ll grant that being rational and non-insulting is potentially useful.
But there’s also basic human emotion to factor into the equation. After 9/11, when Ann Coulter was writing high-profile columns about invading “their” countries and killing “their” leaders and converting “them” to Christianity, it was pretty revolting. But it was also kind of understandable that someone who was really, really upset would say stuff like that. Similarly, when someone like me sees reporting of the US government operating “black” prisons in eastern Europe where people are imprisoned and tortured with no legal protection whatsoever, it makes me really upset.
When people are upset they sometimes say hurtful things. Hopefully they have a baseline of rational behavior they can come back to after the immediate emotional reaction has passed, but in the meantime, I think a certain amount of outrage can be forgiven, depending on the nature of the provocation.
TeacherVet says some really outrageous things here. For someone to respond with, “If you don’t want me to use name calling, then don’t be so fucking stupid” is kind of unfortunate on one level, but is also, in my view, kind of justified, at least in the heat of the moment.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
Teachervet – I still want some GOA-type facts for all that blab about all the tons of WMDs we found in Iraq. Something with a URL that doesn’t include the freepers or NRO (nor Malkin or Limbaugh or Kristol).
Teachervet and his ilk seem to gleefully anticipate a new civil war where they can skewer liberal babies and eat the hearts of the evil Demon-craps. My few republican x-friends out on N CA all seem to want a nuclear genocide for them evil brown folks (lets say they used more colorful language) all 1.2 billion of em. Then they are coming for everyone who doesn’t wear the brown shirt. And they say the Dems are the party of hate and racism and division. Cuckoo!
Try peaking in that other good book: the dictionary. Please look up the terms liberal and conservative. Which side of that line would you like to live your life? What would Jesus do? He’d vote for, live for, work for, die for peace, love and understanding (tip o the hat to Elvis C)
November 4th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
I see your point, John – well stated, but I think our friend Enkidu just illustrated that there is an inherent danger in giving in too totally to the heat of the moment – did he really say anything at all just now?
November 4th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
I guess nobody liked my cupcakes.
Enkidu – I think that your pro-genocide friends may be onto something…on an obscure level. In less kind and gentle times, burning, raping, and pillaging were all part of warfare. Now, we are more goal oriented, and such things are frowned upon.
Without a total victory which either crushes or demoralizes the entire populus into total submission, popular resistance is allowed to grow. Such things can lead to things like terrorism and insurgencies.
Personally, I prefer our kinder, gentler times. I’d rather not see burning rampages. However, the alternative is worth some kind of consideration – perhaps at this level, we would be a bit less cavalier about how we wage wars and truly see war as an absolute last resort.
Treehugger: What do you think gets hit when spending is cut? Certainly not the pork-barrel stuff. Not the military spending either (although this has been happenning more and more often). It’s the social hand-out programs. In any case, it is difficult to blame the war for stuff like this. If you look at Bush’s pre-war spending, it was out of control. My favorite thing to pick on was Bush’s farm bill. However, if you continued to the end of the article, you would notice what really alarms me. With the $35 Billion in spending cuts comes $35 billion in new spending. Much of it comes down to hand-outs for medicare, college tuition, medicaid, and some dairy subsidies. So after all of this, where are we? Right back where we started. It just proves to show that government spending is like a one-way faucet that can never be shut off. Those bastards will do whatever they can to burn our dollars in a careless and inefficient manner. No thanks.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
left behind
I’ll make some bullet points for you:
– TV, please show us some real facts/URLs regarding your WMD claims
– tighty righties would love to kill anyone/everyone who disagrees
– liberal = good things, conservative = back to the 1850s!
– Jesus would puke on W and his cabal of greed/warmongers
all in colorful language for children
November 4th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Only addressing the WMD I mentioned previously:
According to BBC News (always critical of Bush and the Iraq War), on June 23, 2004, U.S. forces seized 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium in a nuclear facility in Iraq. In the same operation, U.S. Dept. of Energy experts also removed 1,000 radioactive materials in “powdered form, which is easily dispersed,” according to Bryan Wilkes of the Energy Department.
BBC also reported that Marek Dukaczaski, Poland’s military intelligence chief, told them that their troops had received tips from Iraqis that chemical weapons were being sold to terrrorists on the black market. The weapons had been buried to avoid detection. Polish military officials bought 17 chemical-weapons warheads from Iraqis for $5,000 each to keep them from Iraq’s so-called insurgents. Those warheads contained cyclosarin, and were supposedly completely destroyed during the 1991-1998 UN inspector regime. These WMD survived. With a desert terrain that’s somewhat larger than my back yard, the odds are great that many more such weapons are buried throughout the country.
On August 8, 2005, U.S. soldiers stormed a warehouse in Mosul and found 1,500 gallons of chemical agents, the largest (but not the only) chemical lab found in Iraq.
Giving only a single incident to illustrate the point, a roadside side exploded near a U.S. convoy on May 17, 2004, containing the nerve agent sarin. An IED had been rigged to a 155mm artillery shell that contained the sarin gas. The shell was a binary chemical projectile, in which the two ingredients that produce sarin are separated by a propeller blade that spins while the shell is in flight, mixing the ingredients to produce the sarin. Since the shell was used as a bomb (not fired from an artillery piece) the internal rotor did not spin, so only traces of sarin were produced and released. The soldiers were hospitalized and decontaminated. Again, all such chemical weapons were supposedly destroyed in 1991, but Saddam’s WMD still threaten the lives of our troops daily.
In May, 2004, David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group found a projectile loaded with mustard gas attached to a roadside bomb. The mustard gas was “stored improperly” and was therefore ineffective – but it existed. It is believed to be a tiny part of the eighty tons of mustrd gas still unaccounted for. Does anyone really believe that the rest of the stuff is not hidden in the vast desert terrain.
In October 2003, David Kay told our Joint Intelligence Committees that his ISG had “discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq had concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002, including chemical, biological, and nuclear experiments.” He said his work was hampered by the Saddam regime’s policies of keeping secrets through fear and terror, with deception and denial built into each program, and testified that “deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict.” What was being dispersed and hidden if Iraq had no WMD?
Richard Butler, former UN chief weapons inspector, expressed frustration by Saddam’s illegal insistence on declaring many suspect site off-limits. He and his UN inspectors were shown “empty buildings, obviously sanitized for his benefit, while the Iraqi authorities stood around laughing and saying, ‘What did you expect? That we would show you anything serious?'”
Inspector Dr. Richard Spertzel, frustrated by Iraqi evasions and misrepresentations, directly asked Dr. Rihab Taha (head of Iraq’s biological weapons program), “You know that we know you are lying. So why do you do it?” She replied, “Dr. Spertzel, it’s not a lie when you are ordered to lie.” If Iraq had no WMD, what was Dr. Taha ordered to lie about? The mission of the inspectors was futile, given the restrictive conditions imposed by Saddam, with only 10 of the 130 primary suspect sites inspected when the program was curtailed (and those 10 had been thoroughly sanitized).
On another note, did you think I was being sarcastic about the oil? I was not. However, to quote a pre-war Paul Wolfowitz statement, “If we have to go to war – and I still hope we don’t have to go to war – this will not be a war for oil. If we wanted Iraq’s oil we could have had it years ago by dropping all the sanctions on Iraq.” I find nothing inaccurate in that statement. He never waid oil would pay for the war; he contended that it could help in Iraq’s reconstruction and development – and so far he has been right. Since the bogus charge will continue to be made regardless of continuing reality evidencing the contrary, it seems that we have nothing to lose in taking the oil fields. Let’s do it today.
jbc, I’m with you 100 percent on impeachment. Impeach the bastard. Do it now. I’m really tired of the Dim’s sniping, and it’s time for full-blown public exposure to actual facts. I understand the underlying motives as being a simple continuation of efforts to vindicate via vindictiveness, and honesty be damned. Clinton was an admitted liar, and it’s important to justify/vindicate by calling Bush a liar. Clinton was wrongly impeached for a stupid personal mistake, and payback will be sweet. Revenge is a beautiful thing, and I suspect that an impeachment process will expose juvenile revenge and frustration as the only motives – clarified for the American voters. Let’s go for it. Dontcha just love a good civil war!
November 4th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Not uncharacteristically, all conservatives are labeled as racists. I remember when blanket labeling was a serious concern of the Democrat Party.
You don’t know me, except as a conservative voice, but the blacks in my town would laugh at the racist notion with regard to me. I was named for a black man (Uncle Willie Moore), and reared by a black woman (Mamie Upshaw, husband of Nigger Upshaw – the only name he has used for 50+ years of my own memory) who hugged me when I need it, spanked my butt when I needed it, and nursed me when my mother was at work. Almost all of my role models in the teaching field have been blacks or Jews (Dr. Donald Barrett, Dr. Aaron Schmidt, Andrew Watkins, Mrs. Vera Gilmer – the classiest woman I’ve ever met), and 40 percent of my students are black. I can’t suppress a laugh when I read the stupid statements attributing racism to myself and all conservatives.
The only constituent of mine who still uses the “n word” frequently and maliciously is an outspoken Bush-hating Democrat. Should I conclude that all Bush-haters hate blacks? I know of church members who don’t follow the line- Should I conclude that all Christians are evil? I know a Dim government worker in Lancaster, California who calls all Mexicans “sand-niggers.” Should I conclude that all Dims, or all government employees, are racists? Perhaps I’m guilty of laughing too easily at stupidity, but I’m laughing.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Hi Ethan-P, I agree with what you said about spending cuts but I have to take issue with you refering to them as “handouts”.
My grandfather fought for this country, in a war that was actually about defending our freedom.
He is quite old now and obviously needs assistance paying for medicine and other obligations. I do not characterize that assistance as a “handout”, but rather as a payback, or a “thank-you”, from the people of America to my grandfather and countless others in his shoes for their service ans sacrifice.
But unfortunatley you’re right, it is the social programs that often get gutted first. A shame, really.
And I want to apologize if I offended anyone with my remarks to that Teachervet guy. I thought he was trolling so I let him have it. Is this guy for real? Reading through this site and some of his comments made me wonder! Sorry again.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
thanks TV – I’ll look into each of your claims as time allows
note that I am not calling you a racist… read carefully there please.
I stated that from my small sampling of Republicans nearly all of them are racist and genocidal. I’ll gladly put you in the sane category, but many of your posts are so out there, that it is hard to see the reasonable guy in between the lines. Heck some of those R’s are my own Father and one of my brothers. Not comfy to face the music in your own family.
As to your small sampling of “Dims” well, there is idiocy everywhere, intolerance pandemic, hate a cancer on our nation’s soul. To say that the liberals/Dems are so full of hate and racism etc etc is laughable. It happens way more often on your side of that line buddy. Fact.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
OK – bullshit claim #1 knocked down with 2 minutes of google searching
I added the bold for emphasis
note – bad/evil Saddam was no mr nice guy, he had em before GW1, we effectively defanged him during bush41 and clinton. But lets say the tighty righties WERE right about the WMDs… he had giga-tons of VX, sarin, nukes up de wazzoo… so… where are they right now? Good job george! or should I say brownie? or will TV label me a racist Dim, when I am actually referencing Michael “Brownie!” Brown former head of FEMA? stay tuned!
Chemicals Not Found in Iraq Warheads
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 3, 2004; Page A21
Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.
The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122-milimeter rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, “were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals.” The statement came just hours after two senior Polish defense officials told reporters in Warsaw, based on preliminary reports, that the rocket rounds contained deadly sarin and that actions by the Polish unit in Iraq kept them from being purchased by militants fighting coalition forces.
Yesterday’s coalition release also said that two other 122-milimeter rounds, found by the Poles on June 16 with help from an Iraqi informer, tested positive for small quantities of sarin but were “so deteriorated” that they would have had “limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces.”
The Poles’ discoveries generated renewed talk that prewar claims about Hussein’s stock of unconventional weapons might yet prove true. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for example, told an interviewer on Wednesday that the Polish defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, told him about the weapons last weekend at the NATO meeting in Turkey. Though Rumsfeld made it clear he had no personal knowledge of test results, he said that the Poles “believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons — sarin and mustard gas.”
Szmajdzinski told Polish radio that the rockets and mortars had probably been hidden from United Nations inspectors. “Our predictions and reports that Saddam Hussein did not come clean with a large sum of weapons, artillery shells and of weapons of mass destruction were proven true,” he said. “Some of those warheads were old, but it could not be ruled out some could still be used.”
Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, told Fox News on June 24 that “some” old sarin and mustard rounds have been discovered in scattered places, demonstrating “that the Iraqi declarations were wrong at least in . . . amount.” But Duelfer cautioned he was not ready to make any judgment whether there were any “still concealed” military-capable stockpiles.
Duelfer said the current danger he sees is that some anti-coalition forces and foreign terrorist groups are trying to tap into Iraq’s weapons expertise for use against the United States. “Former experts in [Hussein’s] weapons-of-mass-destruction program,” he said, “are being recruited by anti-coalition groups.” As a result, he said, his Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) is “keeping a very close eye on some anti-regime people.”
In Warsaw yesterday, Marek Dukaczewski, Poland’s chief of army intelligence, told reporters: “We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads. . . . An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine.”
Dukaczewski said the Polish unit in Iraq paid an undisclosed sum of money to buy the rockets last month after an informer there told the Poles that militant groups were seeking to buy such weapons for up to $5,000 apiece. “We bought all the shells available,” Dukaczewski said.
In Washington yesterday, a senior intelligence official said he was unaware that the Poles purchased rather than found the weapons. He said the United States had been told they were discovered at several sites, mixed in with conventional 122-milimeter rockets and without any distinctive markings.
Duelfer, who as CIA Director George J. Tenet’s personal representative directs the ISG’s weapons search, told Fox News that the rocket rounds were found in former depots but that so far “we’re not able to establish how these rounds got to where we found them” or “who had custody of them, if anyone.”
In January 2003, U.N. inspectors discovered a dozen old 122-milimeter rockets that chief inspector Hans Blix described at the time as “designed to carry chemical weapons.” Iraq later turned up several more, and all were destroyed. Blix later said he was not sure whether Iraq mentioned them in the 12,000-page weapons declaration it submitted in December 2002.
Correspondent Craig Whitlock in Berlin contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
November 4th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
just to be snarky, but I will follow up on this angle just to be sure…
where those nuke materials declared in the Iraqi WMD declaration?
point for TV
tho it specifically says none of these were in a weapons format.
true you could make a dirty bomb, but you can do the same thing with medical rad waste or a single stolen nuke power plant fuel rod (see note on Soviets below)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3872201.stm
I highlighted these paras to show how you can twist this any number of ways
‘Dirty bomb’?
The explosion of a so-called “dirty bomb” in a city by a terrorist group is a major concern of Western intelligence agencies.
Rather than causing a nuclear explosion, a “dirty bomb” would see radioactive material combined with a conventional explosive – probably causing widespread panic and requiring a large clean-up operation.
Iraq’s biggest nuclear complex was the Tuwaitha site south of Baghdad
Uranium would not be suitable for fashioning such a device, though appropriate material may have been among the other unidentified “sources”.
Mr Abraham added that the operation had also prevented the material falling into the hands “of countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons”.
The 1,000 “sources” evacuated in the Iraqi operation included a “huge range” of radioactive items used for medical purposes and industrial purposes, a spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration told AP news agency.
– end quote –
so this stuff couldn’t be used for a dirty bomb (effectively?)
and some of the 1000 sources are medical and industrial purposes (usually big heavy machines… like directed radiation therapy gear, perhaps Xray columnators, mb industrial NMR gear?)
and they flew the lot out on a single transport plane – draw your own conclusions
boo!
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/
the usa has 100 metric tons of enriched uranium, the former USSR has 150 (should we invade them because their security is lax? they DO have lots of yummy oil)
bottom line? I am glad we got that 1.77 tons of powdered uranium out of Saddam’s hands. But they weren’t WMDs. medical waste? come on! we produce giga tons of that crap every year!
hmmm depleted uranium, is that stuff dangerous?
you bet!
http://www.fpx.de/fp/WebLog/2003/iraq-du.html
(no idea about the accuracy of this data – so take it with a grain of salt or two)
Do the math: if the US expended 2000 tons of depleted uranium, that makes, at a concentration of 0.2%, 4,000 kilograms of pure U-235. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima contained about 25 kilograms U-235. Experts estimate that modern atomic weapons can be built with as little as one kilogram, using sophisticated conventional detonators to compress a uranium core into a critical mass. These advanced weapons require knowledge and research that is out of reach for terrorist organizations, so 25 kilograms can be considered the least amount these terrorists would need. But even after considering that it is impossible to pick up all 2000 tons of expended munition or even a sizable fraction of it, and also considering that it is impossible to extract all U-235 from depleted uranium, there is a wide margin to produce enough material for a single warhead.
November 4th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
wow – we DO make a lot of rad waste!
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0216/r2/#how_much_hlw
45,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants
thats just the USA, I shudder to think what the USSR and China have stored up… and God alone knows how securely…
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0216/r2/#what_is_llw
Where does low-level waste come from?
In 1998, low-level waste disposal facilities received about 1,419 thousand cubic feet of commercially generated radioactive waste. Of this 14.8% came from nuclear reactors, 6.7% from industrial users, 2% from government sources (other than nuclear weapons sites), 0.3% from academic users, 0.1% from medical facilities, and the rest was undefined.
where si the rest of it from?
hmmm – come here google, good boy, now FETCH!
so Saddam had a declared nuclear research program and had 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, could be nasty, but we could have had it watched… now on to google that hypothesis
November 4th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
hmmm, might have my replies out of order as one of my comments is being held for moderation
either too long or too many posts!
heh =P
November 4th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
Actually, I think it was “too many URLs”. The system holds comments if they have 3 or more URLs, I believe. Thank you, weblog comment spammers.
But yeah, I’ve previously determined to my own satisfaction that TeacherVet is willing to assert one-sided propaganda as evidence, so I just assume now that when his “facts” sound wacky it’s because he’s getting them from someone who doesn’t actually care about accuracy. But thanks for debunking some of those.
November 4th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
does the term fish in a barrel mean anything to you?
the warehouse was set up after our invasion
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html
“Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.”
wapo aint helping you out here
November 4th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
hey look I can pull foxNEWTS out of my ass!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html
only problem?
lets say u r mr. hadji haj, international terrorist (nutty as a 12lb fruitcake)
you have a few of these things on hand (hypothetically)
do you:
A) use it in a roadside bomb (chance of massive casualties, near zero)
B) lob it into the green zone (hello CNN!)
Use your noodle folks, if mr haj KNEW he had a bona fide bad ass WMD, he would have used it as such! Instead the results were so poor that the two guys from the ordinance team were sickened, but not killed (thank goodness/god/take your pick).
The Iraqi WMD declaration stated they didn’t know where every single shell might be (since it seemed they mixed em in with regular HE artillery rounds [now THATS insane]). Some were misplaced – I bet some were hidden too. Are you sure we have em all?
Same goes for your mustard gas attack – that shell wasn’t known to be a WMD by the nasty creeps who would have loved nothing more than to use it against us (as a WMD).
Now these shaped charge “IEDs” from Iran (mb), thats some serious sh!t for our men and women over there. But we stuck our noses into it, lets hope we can pull back and still have a face.
November 4th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Yes, guys, I’m for real (whatever that means). My comments are judged as outrageous and fucking stupid, predictably, because they don’t coincide with your own opinions.
enkidu, the entire Pincus article, after the introductory phrase, seems to bolster my point. Saddam illegally manipulated and frustrated the UN inspections to such a degree that his efforts only served to confirm suspicions that he was hiding something.
It’s funny that the entire premise of the Poles was debunked by the very people who are constantly charged with lying by the anti-Bush crowd, the Coalition Press Information Center, an arm of “Bush’s War” machine. In fact, every time a WMD find is debunked, it is done by folks who represent the Bush administration. How do you find it possible to believe pathological liars? (end sarc)
Reading the Bush speech, I can’t find where he said “the war was about oil.” That’s a neat spin on his words, though. The article paraphrases his comments: “protection of the country’s vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.” After an appetite-whetting headline, that’s the only mention of oil in the entire rambling, disjointed article. The terrorist extremists would love to destroy the oil fields–and Iraq’s infrastructure–not control them. Operation Iraqi Freedom–protection of their primary export product is primary, but it was certainly not given as a reason for the war.
Having just watched news coverage of violent riots by hooded patriots in Argentina….it could have been an early 20th-century Klan march. It must warm the hearts of the “peaceful” crowd, knowing that their goals are identical. A proud moment in world history.
November 4th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
I have shredded each of your points in turn and all you can say is the equivalent of “well, I think it bolsters my side!” (neener neener)
give me a break
your examples have been a joke thus far
I’ll debunk or give you credit for any reality that you might glance upon (since your orbit seems a bit to the right of Pluto). So far we have 1.77 tons of enriched uranium that I haven’t completely debunked… every other point is hogwash.
Since u bring up the klan, I wonder if they register as Rs or Ds, hmmmmm. Maybe they checked “nuts” instead. Rioters should simmer down. Doesn’t do much for your cause.
I have a pic on the side of my second mac’s CRT of that guy from Tienamen Sq who stopped a column of tanks while clutching not a molotov, but his groceries. On that pic I lettered the word COURAGE.
Now THAT is a hero.
I wish I knew his name (here google, here boy, just one more! come on!)
gooood boy!
http://www.answers.com/topic/tank-man
Wang Weilin, I salute you every single day.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
You shred points only to your own satisfaction, often using sources that are less than questionable with regard to their lack of bias. If I do exactly the same thing, I’m a troll?
My reading of your cut/paste news clip reveals several examples that do, indeed, bolster my point that Saddam continued to shelter various weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix describes rockets that are “designed to carry chemical weapons”…more turn up later…all were destroyed…all of what? Stuff that was supposedly destroyed in 1991? Charles Duelfer is still not willing to avow that there are no more “still-concealed” stockpiles. Duelfer mentions “former experts in the WMD program – an acknowledgement of the existence of such a program. Several points have not been “shredded”:
– 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium.
– “Harmless” warheads, supposedly destroyed during 7 years of UN inspections, buried to avoid detection. Why was it necessary to bury them?
– 1,500 gallons of chemical agents.
– David Kay’s mustard gas projectiles.
– 80 tons of mustard gas unaccounted for.
– “Not a lie if you’re ordered to lie.” Ordered to lied about what…nothing?
There are still lots of unanswered questions about Saddam’s WMD program. The UN inspection teams couldn’t find everything in many years of searching, and our guys certainly haven’t searched the entire country while dodging bullets, both in Iraq and at home, for 2 1/2 years. You folks are all satisfied, convinced that nothing else is buried in a vast desert, but I’m still doubtful. Saddam had a long history of deception, denial, and hiding stuff – including himself.
Political registration of klan members? I don’t know – but you might try asking Robert Byrd. He and almost all of the guys who opposed the civil rights movement in past decades were what, Republicans?
November 4th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
Enkidu –
‘my small sampling of Republicans nearly all of them are racist and genocidal…” “tighty righties would love to kill anyone/everyone who disagrees…” Paranoia, or do you just need to stop trying to meet new friends at the halfway house? I won’t go as far as TV and say that all, or even most Democrats or liberals are “full of hate,” but I could be forgiven for wondering if you are as hateful as you come across.
“Heat of the Moment” – not just a hit for the band, Asia.
November 4th, 2005 at 10:57 pm
so I used the BBC, the NRC (nuclear regulatory comission) and about 10 minutes worth of google searches to basically find out that you are embellishing every single point you made as irrefutable ‘fact’.
– I haven’t googled the 1.77 m tons of enriched uranium (yellow cake?)
was it declared? was it medical waste? cast off from their research reactors? when was it produced? the article specifically says it was not in a weapons feasible (fissible?) format. That is from the BBC. I think we can call that one a fact. Not factually WMD except in your fevered nightmares.
– so where are those war heads?
– 1500 gallons of chemicals AFTER we invaded
– I count one mustard gas projectile, also not used as a WMD
– so where are those 80 tons of mustard gas? on NYC hot dogs?
– our gov lies to us. So now we in the business of punishing liars in other countries? wow… get yer gun oiled up TV, cuz u gots lots o killin to do
As to being satisfied that there aren’t any WMDs you are completely wrong. I wish we would have found the tons of A, the gigaliters of B, the nukular C, but we haven’t. Basically all you have is a couple old artillery shells from GW1 and 1.77 tons of enriched uranium. I’ll be digging in a bit deeper to find out where that EU came from (maybe spend what – another ten minutes googling the answers? – I doubt you have done much more than reguritate the freeper pablum that keeps you whingers in your torpid state of un-belief in reality).
Basically you have spewed a bunch of half-truths and lies. Expecting that no one would actually check any of your bullshit. Well sir, I did check and you were wrong on every single item I have checked so far (haven’t finished with the list as the kids wanted to take Mom out to Crapplebees for her birthday).
But to get back to first principles, lets say its post-9/11 and Saddam is still in power. We suspect that he has some WMDs left over or some stuff he might be working on double super duper top secret background (just like Karl!). So lets say he DOES have these things in the quantities we feared. So how do we proceed on the best course to disarm this thug? We ratcheted up the inspections to be any time any place any where. We found nothing. With the best leads from defectors, CIA millions (ROCKSTAR bling didn’t buy jack except this stupid fookin war) and international intelligence agencies. If he really had all this crap we should have FOUND some of it. We haven’t. And instead of patiently building a true multinational coalition we go in with the Brits and a handful of other nations. And how many democratic Arab regimes? Errr none. In GW1 even the Iranians kept their noses out of it and nearly every Arab/Muslim country in the world supported us. Except the PLO. So instead of using the enormous feeling of solidarity with America after 9/11, cowboy george has to gitiyup and get it done. But only half-assed. We are breeding way more hatred in Iraq than we are building freedom. After all the hundreds of billions spent, after 2000+ men and women of the USA lie dead and about 10x wounded, after tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead and perhaps 10x more wounded (I know they sure love their new freedom [from legs]), is it really worth it? No. After 9/11 we could have removed Saddam with a well aimed fart and some diplomacy.
You and your cabal of half-truth neo-con chest thumping, flag draping, bloody shirt waving fucktards are making my children’s future more dangerous. To quote your hero Darth Cheney “go fuck yourself!”
so where are these gigatons of death?
they seem to have slipped your iron grip
from powell’s speech:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html
this link is from whitehouse.gov (I can see how you might question its veracity)
or
if you care to peruse a debunking of the powell song and dance please read all of this:
http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1971092
“Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters.
Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry–6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war–UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.
Iraq’s record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.”
in summation, where IS all this stuff???
November 4th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
leftbehind
Yeah, I am angry when I watch my country be torn to bits by the lies of the powerful and corrupt. My children are less safe because of dumbya and your ilk.
It isn’t paranoia that nearly every right winger I know is for genocide…
that even my Father is a Republican racist…
or that you are full of shit…
yeah, my wrap up on the Chinese tank guy as an exemplar of human courage and integrity sure was full of hate. I’ll tell you something I hadn’t thought of when reading that article on Wang Weilin: there were indeed TWO heroes in that picture. Wang and the driver of that lead tank. He refused to run over his countryman. I have the saddest feeling that if leftbehind or TV or cowboy or just about any right winger I know would have been driving that tank and it would have been Chicago or Kansas City, you would have gleefully run over that liberal scum and laughed.
November 5th, 2005 at 7:52 am
Well. somebody is certainly full of something, but I don’t think its me.
How many “right-wingers” do you know, and where in the world did you meet them? I was a Republican for most of my adult life and, as much as I dislike the current direction of the party, I don’t know that I have met any genocidal racists at the party functions I went to. Do you meet these people at some sort of AA or therapy meeting? (I don’t mean to pry, but the issues with your father raise a red flag.) Do you attend a lot of extreme metal concerts or gun shows? Do you sell blood often? Would you describe your community, or your father’s, as a “compound?” Genocidal racists seem to be a fairly marginalized group nowadays, and I would assume that most of us would have go well out of our way to meet as many of them as you seem to encounter on what seems to be a regular basis.
As far as the tank thing goes, I can’t speak for TV or Cowboy, but I wouldn’t be much of a threat in a tank because I can’t even drive a stick and, while I don’t know enough about armored vehicles to say with any certainty, I’m pretty sure they don’t come with automatic transmission standard. After reading some of what you’ve written here, I certainly hope that you can’t drive a stick either – or that you at least never get ahold of a tank. I might be crossing the street with some groceries when the big red “R” on my forehead starts flashing.
November 5th, 2005 at 9:32 am
It seems you are the one full of hate. I am just reporting about the few (hmmm say 34%?) die hard Republicans who can’t admit that reality is diverging further and further from their precious ‘beliefs’. Of course you choose to disbelieve my eye witness first hand account of real republican hatred and bloodthirstiness. And yes, it is a shame my father can’t get over his racism. I feel sadness for the few fanatical R’s who espouse the kind of racist genocidal hatred that the diehard Republicans seem to relish so. I try to reach out and discuss these delusions, but the vitriol and rabid violence that these folks are so full of is hard to overcome. I thank you for your well-reasoned and well spoken rebuttle of my WMD googling. OK so that last sentence IS satire… you’ve done nothing but hurl insults and added nothing to the debate.
You believe we have found WMDs eh? Well, every single point made by TV that I have researched thus far has been bullshit. The 1.77 tons of eUr are good to take out of circulation. Score a point there, but take half a point for it not being a WMD. Not in a weapons format. Not wrapped around dirty bombs. And I haven’t dug any deeper on that point thus far.
Where is all that giga-death that u folks have been blathering about for all these years? A 1 minute google-check of the next item in TV’s list is also BS, the 80 tons of missing mustard agent. Out of 3080 tons they are missing 80 tons from GW1. We haven’t found this stuff… so how in the world can you say this is evidence that we found WMDs? More belief, less fact mmmmmm vote R in ’06 and get more of the same!
You haven’t addressed any of the WMD debunking thus far and seem to take special pleasure in making stupid remarks about me, my family and friends. Go fuck yourself leftasshole.
And yeah, maybe you could seize control of the short bus that takes you to and fro and run over some lie-bral scum. You seem fully capable of that kind of hate. Go back to reading your leftbehind fantasy series and leave reality to those who can cope with it.
November 5th, 2005 at 11:47 am
Enkidu – Maybe I haven’t debunked your WMD argument because I’m pretty sure at this point that you are correct and maybe that is why my support for the war and the Republican adminstration has slipped so badly. Maybe I couldn’t agree with you more. Maybe you and I are, ultimately on the same side in that fight.
Having said that, I’m still going to have you give your presentation a “C.” You’ve done good research, and you make several good points, but you marginalize yourself by descending too far into unseemly hyperbole that casts the attention away from your arguments. No, I haven’t addressed your WMD debunking, but you’ve made it too easy for me not to by miring your good points in a morass of foolish generalizations that becomes deeper the more agitated you become. You’ve made it too hard to see the merit of your argument through the smoke of your firey rhetoric and aided and abetted me in turning what had been a serious debate into a silly argument over which political party is the most genocidal. Right wing bullshit merchants do this to people on the radio all day and that, JBC, is the danger of succumbing to the heat of the moment.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Yeah, I think you’ve got a point there.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
This is fiery rhetoric?
Wow
I visit the freepers and the malkins and the coulters (dig that adam’s apple!) of this crazy world and that is some fiery hate filled rhetoric. I have been polite until the very end, but when you disregard what was a pretty goodnatured back and forth btwn TV and I by throwing in all this bullshit about how I’m homeless or some such nonsense, don’t expect me to stay more than marginally polite with that BS.
treehugger and ethanp laid into TV with much more fiery rhetoric than I ever levelled against your BS. TV has remained on the whole polite and batted back any spurious or heated ‘profiling’ of stereotypes with admirable wit, wisdom and patience. Sure he is full of bull on the “we found teh WMDz!!!” thing, but he IS trying to communicate. You? not so much…
A pean to Wang Weilin is a call to common decency. To the brotherhood of all man. To courage. To real heroes instead of stunts in flightsuits (I could put it more crudely, but don’t want to bruise your delicate hot-house-flower-like sensibilities, goodness me o my no).
When I use the words your Great Patriot (Darth Cheney), please note that its just a direct quote from the floor of the US Senate. ;-)
November 7th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Good fact-based analysis enkidu.
I don’t see any refuting from the right, other than baseless allegations.
So, when is this bastard going to be impeached? What is his approval rating at? The last time I saw it was something like 34% Strongly Disspapprove of his performance. Oh, if only this was a year ago.
If there ever was a time – or more reasons – it is now!
November 7th, 2005 at 10:19 am
Oops, after reading my post I think I should have said 66% Strongly Approve while 34% approve of his job performance.
I think those 34% are the same people who buy crusty old grilled cheeses that have mold stains that resemble the Virgin Mary.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Err, Strongly Dissaprove .
Hey it’s Monday. But I thought I should re-correct myslef as it seems points can be rebuffed or ignored for a spelling/grammatical error.
November 9th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
OK, just to put a cap on it (or IN it as the street wisdom says nowaday)
point the first:
1.77 tons may not be all that much? I have seen numbers as high as 55,000 tons of crap we hauled out of Libya (credit due, 1 pt for all American POTUSs). Probably mostly reactor bits, lots of low level contaminated dross, but surely tons of eUr… job well done for getting them to cough it all up.
point the second:
http://www.boozman.house.gov/UploadedFiles/IRAQ%20-%20Weapons%20Threat,%20Compliance,%20Sanctions,%20and%20U.S.%20Policy.pdf
10 minutes of google searching does NOT make me an expert, but it sure seems like when I pull a US government doc (no authentication, so could be an extremely elaborate hoax? not) which clearly states that Iraq had multiple nuke programs before GW1 (and probably some they tried to get away with after), that as of Jan 2002 “As they had for the past three years, IAEA inspectors verified that several tons of uranium remained sealed” blah blah blah. (page CRS-5 not quite half way down)
So let me get this straight… we went to war to remove 2 tons of kinda somewhat enriched uranium that we sorta already had under IAEA seal. And knew where it was. Knew it wasn’t being made into a bomb. Knew we could take it out of there for any reason. Knew.
Here is what I know: that list of stuff Saddam and his ilk seem to desire so much makes me soil my armor. So… how best to wipe out the possibility of making a bad situation worse? Recklessly invade? No. If our case was so strong, we should have patiently built a real coalition of the neighboring countries and the rest of the world (see GW1). Unseating a tyrant is good. How we did it was bad imho. Do you really think we are defeating bin Laden and his craziness by invading Iraq? Tis a bold move to change the balance of power in the Middle East. We just shifted it more toward Iran (who IS trying to make a nuke, and IS trying to destroy US and Israel, and IS working with elements of al-Quieda). HFS. I wonder how Democratic (ooops, I mean Republican!) reforms are going in Saudia Arabia and Pakistan? Thank goodness those folks love us or we’d be in quite the pickle!
A fine mess you’ve gotten us in George.
November 11th, 2005 at 7:26 am
I found this thread and I have just a few comments in summary:
I am simply amazed how you liberals continually and constantly defend Saddam Hussein. It is amazing to me… mind-boggling.
It is amazing that the entire foundation of the Dimocrat party is based on hate, fear mongering, conspiracy theories, bashing, and smearing. So many haters and attacks, yet no solutions to offer. NONE. Why not contribute to making the country better instead of attacking..
Example: John Kerry “I do have a plan for our future in Iraq. Elect me President and then I will tell you what it is…” (I mean c’mon.. what a crock of shit… blackmailing the American public? what a pathetic loser – literally)
The Dimocrat party is in for rough times and are totally disconnected from the majority of the American public. No solutions whatsover, nothing to contribute to improving anything. You are just so focused on hate and bringing down the current administration, you have lost sight of the future.
In my opinion, I want to thank you. Keep doing what you are doing. You are doing great. Hats off to Michael Moore, Barabara Streisand, Al Sharpton, The Dixie Chicks, Hollywood and the other freaks. You have helped us win the election in my opinion. Barbara Boxer and the other loony-left-wing nutjobs.. you’re doing great! Keep it up.
I honestly feel sorry for the true Dems that really care about the country instead of hollywood and lunacy as these nutjobs do. Unfortunately, it is what it is..
Keep up the good work!! As a staunch Conservative Republican I can honestly say that I pray each night that Hillary Clinton is chosen to run for president in ’08… it will be another guaranteed win for us while the Dims will stand mouth ajar, scratching their heads on that cold November morn wondering what went wrong.
Thanks again Libbys!!! Better enjoy your scandals while you can, get your laughs in now, live it up while you can… Cause in Nov’08 its going to be just like last election… boo-hoo
suckers…
November 11th, 2005 at 10:08 am
did you just teleport in from 2 or 3 years ago Mr. “American”?
and did you read anything at all that I wrote?
every single one of TeacherVet’s “we found teh WMDzzz!!!” was balderdash, horsehockey, pigspit, bullshit, or as we reality based carbon life forms sometimes have the balls to put it: lies.
You have added nothing to the debate, nothing but your hate and belief in a failed president. A failed foriegn policy. A failed economic policy (unless u are über rich of course).
“66% of Americans think president bush is doing a poor job handling the war in Iraq, while the other 34% think that adam and eve rode dinosaurs to church.”
I would hazard to say you are in the lower few percentile of that 34…
November 14th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
American,
In calling Democrats Dimocrats, you’re prestating your bias, which doesn’t lead me to believe that you’re at all impartial, and (IMO) it ultimately hurts your argument. Further, when you state that you are a staunch conservative Rebublican, it make me question your bias even further. In being ‘staunch’, it shows that you don’t question the ideals which you have adopted. Why wouldn’t you question these ideals? Party lines change with the times (for example, the Republican party was more akin to the modern Libertarian party 30-40 years ago). Perhaps you should seriously consider what your political priorities are. Maybe you’ll find a party that you actually like better.
I don’t deny that Democrat regularly push their agenda using hate, fear mongering, conspiracy theories, bashing, and smearing. However, if you look closely at the Republican party, this is standard faire for them as well. It is a telling sign of how politics in the United States works. If you are as against these policies as you claim, perhaps you aren’t as a staunch Republican as you thought you were.
Oh, and whether or not you agreed with Kerry’s plan, it was freely avalible to anyone on his website all along. Blackmail? That sounds like conspiracy to me, no?
Enkidu,
In all fairness (while American still sounds like a total jackass), IMO judging Bush’s foreign policy as a failure it totally premature. Since Iraq was a long-term bigger-picture kind of thing, we won’t know for 15 years or so. That was the whole point — that ‘planting the seed of democracy’ would stabalize the entire region and allow us to trade safely and reliably. (Yeah, the WMD thing was bullshit, but read the neocon creedo…they wanted to invade Iraq and turn them into a democratic poster boy). I think that the Iraq thing may actually work (and I hope it does — for the many lives at stake now, and for the many lives already lost). For me, the real question is whether or not the ends justify the means. And in my opinion, they don’t.
-Ethan
November 14th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
OK, how about this…
w’s foriegn policy is well-nigh a complete failure
True, neither you nor I can see the future from here/now. But the results thus far are not looking so good. The last three years have had twice as many terrorist attacks worldwide as the preceeding three years to that (ie 0-3 years Bush/Iraq policy 2X attacks vs 4-6 years Clinton era bomb/contain/defang/debilitate). Muslims worldwide have a much more angry view of the US post-Iraq invasion. I don’t give a rat’s behind about what the Arab street thinks, but I do care if they are so pissed off that they collectively fly themselves into our buildngs and cities, I hope you do to. And want to do something constructive about it. Our current policy in the middle east is a mess.