Undeniable proof that Bush has lied about the war on terror and Iraq.

Magic,
I was wondering when you would grace us with your presence. Thank you for your words of logic and reasoning.......there is always a but

I have a quote for you.

Bush says it is impossible to distinguish between Al qaeda and Saddam... "You can't distinguish between Al qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." [President Bush, 9/25/02] says Saddam had no role in Al qaeda plot "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11." [President Bush, 9/17/03]

Bush made both of these statements. Can you say that they are both true? Could you deny that he lied in one of them? For me, it is fairly clear in his own words.

Hey, what channel is that AL-Kider Network on? I heres alots of people a talkin bout it but I cants find it on my tel-e-o-vision mo-chine. And I went to the Best Buy store and I couldn't believe they didn't have one Cd of the Tally-Band? I reakons theys so popolar that they just caint akeep em in the stock rack

Originally posted by KTM
Hey, what channel is that AL-Kider Network on? I heres alots of people a talkin bout it but I cants find it on my tel-e-o-vision mo-chine. And I went to the Best Buy store and I couldn't believe they didn't have one Cd of the Tally-Band? I reakons theys so popolar that they just caint akeep em in the stock rack

Am I supposed to reply to this? I think you may have O.D'd on robitussin and are babbling incoharently.

The Point Of The Exercise

Originally posted by Kidfinger
Bush made both of these statements. Can you say that they are both true? Could you deny that he lied in one of them? For me, it is fairly clear in his own words.

My point, as mentioned in my previous post, is that I don't know.

In this case, Bush made a statement that Al Qaeda and Saddam were essentially indistinguishable in terms of the War on Terror. My opinion is that it would be wise to distinguish between them, but his opinion is that I shouldn't.

I'll stick with mine for now.

The second statement claims that we have no evidence that Saddam was involved in 9-11. That statement does not contradict the first. Many of Saddam's ties with Al Qaeda are well-documented publicly. There was something going on between them, and based on what I have seen, we don't know the half of it.

But just because Saddam may not have been involved with 9-11 doesn't mean Saddam and Al Qaeda didn't have ties. You are facing me with a false dichotomy, and I won't be playing along with it.

That's my point: what is being done here does not actually establish anything either “undeniable” or even necessarily true. Framing the discussion in these terms does not allow for a meaningful outcome.

To the best of my knowledge, and as repeatedly stated by Bush administration members but conveniently ignored by their detractors, WMDs were just one of a laundry list of reasons for invading Iraq – and not the most compelling reason by far.

By jumping on the WMD bandwagon, however, many people have completely overlooked and even denied that maybe, just maybe we had other reasons for taking such a huge strategic risk – that maybe we really do have good reasons for sending Americans to die in Iraq.

But no, it's easier to buy into the Cults of Bush that worship the man as either a demon or a saint. He is neither: he is a human being who is President of the United States. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to deceive you, and if you buy into this personality cult nonsense, they have succeeded.

From my perch out here in the wilderness, what I see is a lot of willful self-deception on the part of those who dance in a circle around Bush – either to praise him or malign him. Both types of worshipers give the man power, and in my opinion, he has too much already.

I think a more fruitful line of discussion would revolve around seeking to understand the real reasons for the War in Iraq.

Having done such an exercise personally, I can say it has proven to be more enlightening than getting hung up on whether America's leading politician is a liar or not.

Whether we “prove” Bush lied about Iraq “undeniably” or not, I think we already can take a fairly good guess at the answer. Hint: If Bush doesn't lie, he would be the first man to hold the office that doesn't.

But that's just my opinion, not absolute truth coming down from on high.

The more compelling question is why we aren't being given the “true” story. Answer that, and now you're getting somewhere.

Originally posted by Majic

But just because Saddam may not have been involved with 9-11 doesn't mean Saddam and Al Qaeda didn't have ties. You are facing me with a false dichotomy, and I won't be playing along with it.

No, that is not what I was doing.

.......................that maybe we really do have good reasons for sending Americans to die in Iraq.

This kind of ties in to the whole reason I decided to post my comparison. Bush may well have had good reason to invade Iraq. He just did not tell us what his true reasons were. Not the way to act while president during war time.

I think a more fruitful line of discussion would revolve around seeking to understand the real reasons for the War in Iraq.

And herin lies the problem. How can we ever truly know what the true reasons were for invading Iraq? Unless Bush comes out and says "here is why we really went", There is no way we will know. Also, even if Bush did come out with this statement, he has been so dishonest that I doubt many will hear him.




You also made a statment that there was a long list of reasons being overlooked for the invasion of Iraq. Well, to this, I say, there was just one original reason we invaded. Bush said they had Nukes. That was it. The rest of it did not get tacked on untill the invasion was already in progress. The WMD is what the whole Halibaloo at the UN was about before the invasion.

[edit on 1/30/05 by Kidfinger]

Demanding A Loose-Lipped President

Originally posted by Kidfinger
This kind of ties in to the whole reason I decided to post my comparison. Bush may well have had good reason to invade Iraq. He just did not tell us what his true reasons were. Not the way to act while president during war time.

This statement makes no sense to me.

President Roosevelt didn't discuss Allied strategy during WWII, President Lincoln didn't publish Union strategy during the Civil War and General Washington didn't do the British the courtesy of broadcasting his next moves to them via the press during the Revolutionary War.

All of them made many misleading statements to the public during these wars, as well. Are you going to denigrate them for that?

What kind of president would publicly reveal a U.S. war strategy? Why are you criticizing this?

Hopefully you can see why I'm skeptical of taking a narrow view of what is going on. It leads to folly.

Reasoning A Lack Of Reasons

Originally posted by Kidfinger
You also made a statment that there was a long list of reasons being overlooked for the invasion of Iraq. Well, to this, I say, there was just one original reason we invaded. Bush said they had Nukes. That was it. The rest of it did not get tacked on untill the invasion was already in progress. The WMD is what the whole Halibalo at the UN was about before the invasion.

Ignore them if you like, I remember reading about them and following the metamorphosis as those reasons were quietly swept out of the public spotlight and the campaign for “disarming Iraq” took center stage.

My take on the issue at the time was that the WMDs were selected as a lever because U.N. resolutions were tied to them and it was a relatively easy flag to wave compared to “stopping the flow of money to known terrorist groups” or “countering a growing strategic threat to regional oil reserves” (which definitely were reasons, by the way), but there were several other reasons, I'm sure.

The attempts to link Saddam and 9-11 -- which the Bush administration had been pushing for months – didn't seem to be getting any traction. You might remember some of the scandals and controversy surrounding those claims.

Look it up for yourself, because there was a lot more than Iraqi WMDs being talked about in those days oh-so-not-very-long-ago. Or you can continue to deny what actually happened and feed your own illusions. Your call, not mine.

I'm saying there were other reasons, you're saying there weren't. On its face, which position do you honestly think is more likely to be correct?

Ironically, I'm going off the narrowly-defined topic, so it's probably best if we leave this where it is in this thread.

God knows there's no shortage of threads about Bush, Iraq or America to choose from whose charters are better suited to a more balanced analysis of what the U.S. is really doing in Iraq.

Magic,

To the best of your knowledge does not substantiate claims that Saddam had ties with Al-Queda; can you provide us with evidence, please?

Deep

Originally posted by Majic
Demanding A Loose-Lipped President

What kind of president would publicly reveal a U.S. war strategy? Why are you criticizing this?

My take on the issue at the time was that the WMDs were selected as a lever because U.N. resolutions were tied to them and it was a relatively easy flag to wave ...

The attempts to link Saddam and 9-11 -- which the Bush administration had been pushing for months – didn't seem to be getting any traction. You might remember some of the scandals and controversy surrounding those claims.

True - there are always more reasons - and always political positioning. So what?

Good leaders achieve a balance - they play the necessary politics, maintain discretion AND maintain integrity in their relationship with the nation and the world.

...The problem with Bush is that he has no integrity - instead of negotiating honorably, he lies, manipulates and grabs.

Being discreet does not require lying. Negotiating is not manipulating. Bush never learned the necessary skills. As a result, he is not trustworthy.

.

Strange Bedfellows

Originally posted by ZeroDeep
To the best of your knowledge does not substantiate claims that Saddam had ties with Al-Queda; can you provide us with evidence, please?

Nope, I don't have any evidence at all.

I've seen some, and am satisfied that there were some contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda, but I have nothing in my hot little hands to substantiate it one way or the other.

As for what's documented publicly, the shorthand version is available through Google:

Google for “al qaeda” “iraq” “intelligence” (about 1,080,000 hits)

Of course, which of those sources you choose to believe is up to you. For my part, I'm skeptical of claims that Iraq and Al Qaeda had any sort of extensive ties. But there are documents that strongly suggest Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda did have somesort of connections, and where there's smoke in such matters, there is usually fire.

Saddam preferred to support other groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas or Abu Nidal, and I think it's highly unlikely that he would have wanted to get too close to Al Qaeda after 9-11.

However, prior to 9-11 he doesn't seem to have had strong feelings about them one way or another. The interest in them seems more a focus of his underlings in Iraqi intelligence than a personal interest on the part of Saddam, which is probably why they never seem to have gotten all that close to one another.

Know Thy Enemy

An important thing to remember, however, is that Al Qaeda itself habitually operates through surrogates.

So instead of some guy in an Al Qaeda uniform saying “Hi, I'm a guy from Al Qaeda” you would see contacts between Iraq and “The Al-Tikriti Glorious Martyrs of Allah Brigade” or whatever the nom du jour happens to be for the Al Qaeda affiliate in question.

Or maybe just some guy named “Abu Mohammed” like 100,000 other people, except this one is an Al Qaeda leader – or a honey merchant, or a civil engineer, or a Sunni imam, or a used car salesman, depending on who you talk to.

One of Al Qaeda's strengths is its amorphous nature. If they weren't so slippery, they'd be long gone by now, so looking for “hard evidence” of an organization that specializes in covering its tracks is like searching for a stick with one end.

Also, for those who seem to think anti-terrorism efforts should focus solely on Al Qaeda and in ignorance of the thousands of other terrorist groups that are currently operating, I recommend taking a little time to learn more about the true scope and nature of the War on Terrorism.

This is much, much bigger than Al Qaeda. It's also bigger than terrorism itself, but the awareness of that is only available to those who choose not to close their minds to what is really going on.

But Getting Back To Bush

But now we're really going off-topic, and I think I've addressed the actual thesis of the thread about as well as I'm going to.

I think it's silly and self-deceptive, and of course others will disagree, but that's fine as far as I'm concerned. I've spent far too much time in this thread as it is and have other things to study that are more interesting to me.

For those inclined to do so: please feel free to enjoy all this Bush-bashing/worship nonsense, and don't let me get in the way of a good old-fashioned public finger festival.

After all, that's what freedom is for, isn't it?

Anyway, sorry for the digressions. Let us now return to our regularly-scheduled “Bush Lied” catharsis clinic.



[edit on 1/30/2005 by Majic]

Well that was a nice diatribe in regards to the modus operandi of Al-Queda, however, it still does not allow me to see past this inherent myopia of mine: Saddam had no feasible ties to Al-Queda and terrorist activity: more so, Saddam did not ebett Al-Queda terrorism. Your "Google" means nothing: I can look up, "homosexuality is a form of bio-terrorism" and gather hundreds of sites; what exactly does that prove? The first link regects such terrorist links,

news.bbc.co.uk...

There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News.
The classified document, written by defence intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past.


Iraqi intel having ties with Al-Queda is as interesting as the CIA having men involved within these terrorist cells as double agents, no?

Deep

Originally posted by Majic
Demanding A Loose-Lipped President


What kind of president would publicly reveal a U.S. war strategy? Why are you criticizing this?

I am not criticizing the war strategy. I am criticizing the lies that brought about the need for a strategy. Big difference there.

Originally posted by Kidfinger
You also made a statment that there was a long list of reasons being overlooked for the invasion of Iraq. Well, to this, I say, there was just one original reason we invaded. Bush said they had Nukes. That was it. The rest of it did not get tacked on untill the invasion was already in progress. The WMD is what the whole Halibalo at the UN was about before the invasion.

Ignore them if you like, I remember reading about them and following the metamorphosis as those reasons were quietly swept out of the public spotlight and the campaign for “disarming Iraq” took center stage.

I am not ignoring anything. I never saw, heard, or read any other reasons for going to war with Iraq at the beginning other than WMD. Can you please show me what other claims were made as reasons for going to war before we went?

“stopping the flow of money to known terrorist groups” or “countering a growing strategic threat to regional oil reserves” (which definitely were reasons, by the way), but there were several other reasons, I'm sure.

Neither were given as reasons for going to war before the war though. This is what I am asking for.

I'm saying there were other reasons, you're saying there weren't. On its face, which position do you honestly think is more likely to be correct?

I think it is correct to say that Bush did not tell the truth when he forced a war. He was dishonest and did not give the true reasons for going. I never said ther were not other reasons for going to war Magic. I ONLY said that Bush did not tell us the truth about why we went in the first place.

No, Bush would never lie...Would he?
Get real, just about every word that comes out of that little turd's mouth is a lie. I'm sick of meandering synonyms used by the Bu#es and our media like "misrepresented" or "misunderstood", "misinterpreted", "faulty intelligence". When are you deluded supporters of the Bush Dynasty going to wake up and smell the fumes? The man has lied more than he has told the truth, publicly mocked deathrow inmates, funeralgate, Bin Laden family business ties, ties to the Enron scam, coc aine snorting, possibly even rape, that little turd should never have made it out of court in Texas.
What do you mean he HASN'T lied?!??!
Here's a novel concept for you Bu#es, instead of hollering proove it, why don't you proove it. Proove that Bush has not lied. I hope you like apples.

A good opportunity to update my Ignore-list! thanx.

Originally posted by chinditz
A good opportunity to update my Ignore-list! thanx.

How about a little contribution? You could at least tell us who you are ignoring

No, Bush would never lie...Would he?

So you must be a member of his cabinet, or his child, or his wife, or at least a fly on his wall. You make some pretty tough insinuations for a person with absolutely no proof. You sound like yet another liberal that's pissed that Republicans control Washington again. Thank God they do. We would be in terrible shape if they didn't.

Originally posted by deesw

No, Bush would never lie...Would he?

So you must be a member of his cabinet, or his child, or his wife, or at least a fly on his wall. You make some pretty tough insinuations for a person with absolutely no proof. You sound like yet another liberal that's pissed that Republicans control Washington again. Thank God they do. We would be in terrible shape if they didn't.

Speaking of someone with no proof to back up what they say..........

Thank God huh? Yeah. Thank God we have an administration that lies to the people and refuses to be held accountable for mistakes and broken legal policy. Thank God we have an administration that Rapes the second ammendment when it sees' fit. Thank God we have an administration that will go to war and never reveal thier true intentions on the matter. Thank God indeed.

Originally posted by deesw
You make some pretty tough insinuations for a person with absolutely no proof. You sound like yet another liberal that's pissed that Republicans control Washington again. Thank God they do. We would be in terrible shape if they didn't.

No, I don't make insinuations, I research. I read from sources other than my own little narrow minded opinions. I spend a great deal of time reading and sorting through various sources, and I don't believe in blind faith. I am not a liberal, I am a radical, and unlike yourself, I don't buy into a two party illusion. There is but one political party in this country, the Industrialists. Yeah... Thank god they're in power. Anyone who can openly support the Bush Regime is in serious need of research and reality. You really need a good semister at the Barry Seal School of Bush Family Values.

Well, I seem to have found another article showing where the Bush administration is pressuring people to skew the facts. Though this does not pertain to the war's, it certainly does show another example of Bush attempting to mislead the public.

Bush Administration Pressures Agencies to Skew Facts:


The Bush administration's attempts to "enshrine religious beliefs in government agencies" have led to the release of altered or misleading reports on important health issues. Despite the absence of scientific evidence proving that abstinence-only programs are effective in reducing teen sexual activity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) removed a link from its website to a list of sex education programs that combined abstinence education with information on contraception. The CDC and the U.S. Agency for International Development hid scientific evidence proving that condoms were an effective means of preventing HIV/AIDS. The National Cancer Institute misrepresented the scientific evidence that having an abortion does not make a woman more likely to contract breast cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration refused to allow the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception, overruling the recommendations of the FDA staff and two advisory panels. In addition to these examples, the Environmental Protection Agency has reportedly been pressured to issue misleading reports to protect Bush's allies in big agriculture and the mining and oil industries.


Source: Philadelphia Daily News, "Bush sells out people's health to religious zealots, corporate contributors," Carol Towarnicky, Sept. 23, 2004

Agian with the berating? How old are you?

I am old enough to appreciate our President and to stand behind him and our troops in Iraq, what difference does my age make? I told you I was in Desert Storm didn't I. Think about it. Mr. Bush has done a far greater job than Clinton ever did. He spent millions defending his sex life, and hardly nothing going after Bin Laden whom he had the chance to capture at least 7 times. Perhaps if people like you would step aside and let the man do his job, things would go a whole lot smoother.

You really need a good semister at the Barry Seal School of Bush Family Values.

I think that we are now finally getting down to the heart of the issue. Seems a few people on here have a problem with Bush having strong Christian values. That is the real issue. He takes a stand on what he believes, like so few presidents have done in recent years and that ticks some people off.