Politics: J'accuse!

[Antiquity]

Originally posted by Not Me
Exactly. and yet you drew this conclusion:

You are Ms. Literal. I stand by my "conclusion," which was about as serious as bilmore's complaint about my quoting of Bush.

I wasn't trashing the guy. I was just pointing out that you know nothing about him. For all any of us know, he could have an axe to grind with the Bush administration.

And for all any of us know, he could be Dick Cheney's lover, anguished and torn about going public with his deep misgivings about what's happening in Iraq, and yet is convinced that he owes it to the American public -- and, on a deeper and more personal level, to Dick -- to share publicly his fears about the future of Iraq.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Antiquity
You are Ms. Literal.

It is Queen Literal to you.

Originally posted by Antiquity
And for all any of us know, he could be Dick Cheney's lover, anguished and torn about going public with his deep misgivings about what's happening in Iraq, and yet is convinced that he owes it to the American public -- and, on a deeper and more personal level, to Dick -- to share publicly his fears about the future of Iraq.

Quite possibly since Mary had to have gotten that gene from somewhere and there is no way it was from Lynn.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Not Me
Why are you comforted to have a "believer" in office? Is your comfort related to the fact that he believes in a Christian god? What if the god he believed in was allah? What if he were Catholic and let the Catholic church browbeat him like they are trying to do to Kerry on abortion by withholding communion. Would that comfort you?

Just curious and am earnestly asking you. Is your comfort related to the particular god he believes in?

Club, I will take your non-response to be a "Yes."

[Antiquity]

This interview with General Zinni, who was (among other things) the CENTCOM commander, is pretty instructive. Key points (trying to stick to his language):

• The inspectors, including Hans Blix in my mind, would have never given Hussein a clean bill of health.
• "I really did not think this was a major or imminent or grave and gathering or potential threat."
• Containment worked.
• Containment was done at very low cost.
• We've gotten distracted from the real war.
• There were insufficient troops on the ground.
• The worst-kept secret in Washington is that as soon as this administration came in there was talk about taking down Iraq from day one.
• "This is the dog that caught the car here. And now we've got to figure out what to do with it."
• "Our only hope is to stay there a few years and try to solve it."

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0430/p06s01-woiq.html

• The US and local leaders agreed to allow a new force, called the Fallujah Protective Army, to provide security starting Friday.

We have yet to see how this finally shakes out -- but it's hard to see the whole Fallujah battle as a win for us.

We went in ostensibly to capture or kill those who mutilated the American civilian contractors -- hasn't happened.

It then turned into (or involved from the beginning) a mission to defeat and disarm the organized militant resistance in Fallujah -- hasn't happened.

Plus, the Fallujah resistance "held out" for roughly two weeks against the U.S. Marines, before the parties negotiated the terms of a truce -- not a surrender.

The fact that the U.S. applied merely a fraction of its available power doesn't really matter. I think the bad guys see this as a win.

S_A_M

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
We have yet to see how this finally shakes out -- but it's hard to see the whole Fallujah battle as a win for us.

Isn't that because it's a humiliating loss, to which insult was added by pictures of an Iraqi general in his Saddam-era uniform striding into town to take over from the Marines?

Fallujah and Najaf have proven that Iraqi resistance can establish "no-go" zones - it's only a matter of time before it happens elsewhere.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Antiquity
This interview with General Zinni, who was (among other things) the CENTCOM commander, is pretty instructive. Key points (trying to stick to his language):

• The inspectors, including Hans Blix in my mind, would have never given Hussein a clean bill of health.
• "I really did not think this was a major or imminent or grave and gathering or potential threat."
• Containment worked.
• Containment was done at very low cost.
• We've gotten distracted from the real war.
• There were insufficient troops on the ground.
• The worst-kept secret in Washington is that as soon as this administration came in there was talk about taking down Iraq from day one.
• "This is the dog that caught the car here. And now we've got to figure out what to do with it."
• "Our only hope is to stay there a few years and try to solve it."

lets not paraphrase...he said:

I believed that Saddam Hussein was trying to pull a fast one on the U.N. inspectors in that he wanted them to give him a clean bill of health because they couldn't find a smoking gun. In other words, a stockpile. And I don't believe he had a stockpile. What he was very cleverly doing was building a framework that could start a program once he came out of sanctions. In other words, he had a missile system that he was allowed to have, the Al-Samud Missile System, that was limited in range. But within that missile program he could do research and development, develop special fuel systems. So it would have been easier just to extend the range and increase it as a weapons system. He had dual-use plants, pharmaceutical plants, pesticide plants, that could be turned over. He had the scientists all in place with the documentation. But what the inspectors did, what their charter was, was not to necessarily just look for a smoking gun or a stockpile, but that he was in compliance with the United Nations resolution in that he had dismantled that capability and didn't have the ability to restart it. In addition to that, to ensure that he had destroyed previous stockpiles. And I think, again, Hans Blix, just like his predecessors Richard Butler and Rolf (Akkaus), were on to him. And what annoyed Saddam is they wouldn't give him a clean bill of health until they could talk to the scientists, until they could assure themselves that that framework didn't exist. And the threat was the framework. And the inspectors, including Hans Blix in my mind, would have never given him a clean bill of health for two reasons. He was in non-compliance, he wouldn't give them access to the scientists and others. And there wasn't full accountability of previous stocks.

here's the difference between us and you, what I quoted means it made sense to do Iraq War. to you, we should have worried about 8 dozen things- (def com 4)

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Not Me
Club, I will take your non-response to be a "Yes."

It's actually a no. I take comfort in Joe Lieb as well. Probably would take comfort in a Muslim leader, so long as not radical.

efs

[Antiquity]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
lets not paraphrase...he said....:

here's the difference between us and you, what I quoted means it made sense to do Iraq War. to you, we should have worried about 8 dozen things- (def com 4)

(1) Most of what I said wasn't paraphrasing, it was direct quotes.

(2) He said all that, and concluded that Saddam wasn't a threat and was contained. You have cut off what immediately follows:

• Do you think Saddam had any stocks of banned weapons?
  
  I believe there probably might have been some laying around that he wasn't aware of. They would have been obsolete, even dangerous to move around. There might have been some that were destroyed, there just wasn't proper accounting. But he wasn't even focused on that; they (the U.N. arms inspectors) were. So my belief of what was there was the possible, the potential that you had to plan for, of old stocks, artillery shells, rocket rounds. There was probably about two dozen Scuds (ballistic missiles) that were unaccounted for at the outside that could have possibly been weaponized. But as time went on, these things would have been much more difficult to move, much more difficult to upload. If he possessed those tactical weapons, these things would have had maybe marginal tactical effect on the battlefield in the short term. But certainly nothing of a great threat to the United States. So I really did not think this was a major or imminent or grave and gathering or potential threat.
  
  What should we have done, then, in your view?
  
  Continue to contain them. Containment worked. The president has said containment didn't work. I disagree. First of all, containment worked with the Soviet Union, the Cubans, the North Koreans, thus far. Containment was done at very low cost. In Centcom, in my time there when we had the dual containment policy, there were less troops on a day-to-day basis in the entire theater than than report to work at the Pentagon every day in the entire theater.
  
  But if Saddam was preserving a capability –
  
  I wouldn't call it a capability.
  
  What would you call it?
  
  I would call it a framework to restart building a capability. It was not capable of threatening us. It was neither imminent nor grave and gathering.

That's not enough to justify a war, not in my book.

[sgtclub]

From OnlineJournal:

Remember Joe Wilson, the loudmouthed former ambassador who stirred up a kerfuffle last year by claiming that BUSH LIED!!!! when he purportedly said Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger? Now Wilson has a book out, and it seems he's changing his story. The Washington Post reports:

It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade--an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium. . . .

In his book, Wilson recounts his encounter with the unnamed Niger official in 2002, saying, he "hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium." Wilson did not get the Iraqi's name in 2002, but he writes that he talked to his source again four months ago, and that the former official said he saw Sahhaf on television before the start of the war and recognized him as the person he talked to in 1999.

Weird. Wilson was a cause célèbre on the Angry Left for awhile there (there was also something about his wife, if we remember right), but apparently for no reason.

[Antiquity]

Originally posted by sgtclub
From OnlineJournal:

What did Wilson say that is now revealed as a lie? Please be specific -- that piece is (tellingly) vague.

eta: C'mon, this is the weakest thing ever. You have an official of Niger speculating that an Iraqi official's trade visit was maybe about uranium. No corroboration (at least in this article, and I don't have Wilson's book) or even evidence -- just the speculation of some guy in Niger. And on that basis, we are to conclude Wilson lied, Plame justifiedly had her cover blown, and the President should have tried to scare the country in the State of the Union, notwithstanding the views of the CIA? Have you completely abandoned your critical-thinking skills?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by ironweed
Isn't that because it's a humiliating loss, to which insult was added by pictures of an Iraqi general in his Saddam-era uniform striding into town to take over from the Marines?

Fallujah and Najaf have proven that Iraqi resistance can establish "no-go" zones - it's only a matter of time before it happens elsewhere.

The only reason that this has happened is that we were worried about civilian casaulties and the insurgents were using mosques and women and children as shields. We could have leveled the city and won this no problem.

The other thing that has to be recognized is that there are quite a few Iraqi former army types and former Baathists around. If you don't try to integrate them back into society, what are you going to do with them? Kill them? You have to do something with them.

And how does anyone know that those who were responsible for the 4 contractors deaths haven't been killed themselves? Last estimate I saw showed about 1500 dead insurgents.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
It's actually a no. I take comfort in Joe Lieb as well. Probably would take comfort in a Muslim leader, so long as not radical.

efs

What if he were a Jehovah's Witness?

What is "efs"?

[Not Me]

Found this on the infirm politics board:

1) Go to www.Google.com

2) Type in - weapons of mass destruction - (DON'T hit return)

3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, NOT the "Google search"

4) Read the "error message".

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by sgtclub
From OnlineJournal: "Weird. Wilson was a cause célèbre on the Angry Left for awhile there (there was also something about his wife, if we remember right), but apparently for no reason."

Yes, I remember something - wasn't it - no, wait - yes, it was that thing about outing an active CIA undercover operative?