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You asked for a reply, but when a diatribe is so-o-o-o-o long, I tend not to read them, and hence reply to buried questions.
I know that reading through that much documentation and evidence is kind of a chore, but that's all part of being informed about the issues.
First of all, you did not address my point about the poll in which the majority of US citizens believed that the nationality of the WTC terrorist bombers were Iraqi, not Saudi, because the Bush Administration repeatedly made the connection between 9/11 and invading Iraq in speeches and in the media in the run up to the war.
Where do you think the public got that idea?
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The news media! I suspect that the majority of those that misunderstood were liberals.
Actually, the group most likely to hold the misconception that the people who flew the planes into the TWC were Iraqi, not Saudi,were
Fox news viewers, which I very much doubt are mostly liberals.
In fact, I would say that Fox News viewers are mostly conservative, and very conservative at that, wouldn't you?
The group least likely to think that the bonbers were Iraqi were those who listened to NPR, typically listened to by democrats, intellectuals and liberals.
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Bush did not state that the attackers were Iraqi.
No, which shows how skilled at manipulation they are. The news media, particularly Fox news, actually completely shirked their duty to be bullshit detectors and never raised the alarm bells about there being no connection between Al Quaida and Iraq.
Bush and Co. repeatedly talked about 9/11 and Iraq in the same breath. They did this over and over again, and a cheerleader news media and their own gullibility led them down the garden path.
Why, when the poll came out, didn't Bush put out a statement reminding everyone that almost all of the 19 bombers were Saudi, not Iraqi.
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Don't pin the misunderstanding on him.
Why not? He, along with Fox news, is the source of the misinformation.
Second of all, I also showed you that he was informed by the international weapons experts that there was no evidence of Iraq having WMD. That makes them liars.
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What???? You have weird logic. That is not a valid conclusion. He should ONLY listen to one source, and one that Saddam could dance around?
No, of course not. He should have also listened to Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke, and others, all of whom were putting out reports directly before 9/11 which said that Iraq was not a threat to us at all and had been effectively defanged by the first Gulf war and the sanctions.
All of a sudden, right after 9/11, Iraq became a major focus of the "war on terror", when just months before they were not considered dangerous to us at all?
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Once again, I am suffering from waste-of-time syndrome replying to your lack of logic. Now you know why I don't always respond to liberals.
Strawman. You are inventing an argument that I never made.
At the very least, Bush and his staff were grossly incompetant and were engaging in active self-delusion for ignoring Blix and taking as truthful Chalabi, now shown to be a corrupt con man, a single obviously forged document stating that Iraq was trying to secure enriched uranium, and several Iraqi defectors.
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It looks like Kerry and a bunch of others fell for our Intelligence reports, too. That does not make them "liars", though.
I will admit that this is troubling for me regarding Kerry, but I also understand that the political climate in the country at that time made it virtually impossible to criticize anything Bush and Co. did, because doing so was immediately branded as "unpatriotic" or "unamerican"
Do you admit that Bush and co. were grossly incompetant and self deluded, then?
I can't help but notice that you did not comment upon the 9/11 commission saying that there is no evidence that Iraq and Al Qaida were connected.
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You got the sound bite, but not the meat (as intended by the predominantly liberal leanings of the commission).
The commission is bipartisan.
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Your statement is incorrect. By your logic, that makes you a "liar". Realistically, it just means you are not paying attention to the facts. The commission did not make the statement you claim.
Um, I cut and pasted from direct quotes from the commission report. Did you read the link?
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They instead stated that the 9/11 event did not have an Iraqi connection evidence.
...well, right. What about that, Change?
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There is written evidence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and meeting with Saddam's regime, but just because there was no direct connection with 9/11 does not mean there was no future threat either financed or sponsored by Saddam.
OK, so are you saying then that we can and should invade and overthrow the government of and occupy any and every country who's leadership ever meets with any group which might sometime in the future might possibly finance or sponsor any terrorist attack in the US?
How insane is that? There are probably many dozens of countries right now, or more, that one could say that about. Why did we pick Iraq?
Oil, maybe?
There is also the former Bush speech writer, Frum, who says that the intent for the Bush administration to attack Iraq was in place long before 9/11.
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Once again we have a liberal chasing the "intent" business. If I recall, even Clinton had attack plans in case they were ever needed. This is common practice to have plans, just in case you need them. It's called "being prepared", something taught in Boy Scouts, too.
Um, Frum, a conservative Republican, freely admits that he was given the task to "justify a war in Iraq". It wasn't a contingency plan, it was an effore to
justify, to SELL a war on Iraq.
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Clarke has already been discredited. I see no need to go down a well-trodden path there.
Really? Where has he been discredited? I'd love to see your evidence. You know, that stuff that you are supposed to present to support your assertions, like I have been doing and you have not been doing?
What evidence do you have to show that much or any effort to find bin Laden is currently being undertaken.
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He is in a difficult and dangerous location to search.
Right, which is why we should have put all of our effort into Afghanistan, joined with 30 other countries, instead of pulling troops away into Iraq.
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Putting a massive search effort and still coming-up empty (and possibly losing troops in a failed mission) raises Osama to a higher cult following.
Are you saying that the most advanced, most powerful military in the world, combined with special forces units from 30 other countries, all bent upon finding Bin Laden, probably couldn't do it?
I have confidence that they could have done it, and very nearly the entire world would have helped us do it.
After all, Clinton was able to capture and bring to trial the original WTC bombers and they are in prison as we speak.
But no, bush wanted to invade Iraq, so we LET BIN LADEN GO.
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Meanwhile, it actually looks better to have him hiding, afraid to come out, and only a small set of troops to keep him hiding. Obviously, you disagree. But that does not prove a point.
I think it would look best of all to capture him, extradite him to a federal court in the US, convict and imprison him for the rest of his life in the United States of America, the country he hates the most in the world.
Why do you think he's less dangerous in hiding, anyway? Al Qaida continues to be active.
THEN WHY AREN't WE CONCENTRATING ON AL QAIDA?
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WE ARE CONCENTRATING ON AL QAIDA!!
No, we aren't.
We are concentrating on Iraq, not Afghanistan.
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WE CAN DO TWO THINGS AT ONE TIME WITH DIFFERENT RESOURCES!!
No, we really can't. Didn't you read what I pasted from the article?:
Much of the timing now is driven by the weather: as winter snows melt, troops can navigate in the high mountain passes and trails where many Qaeda and Taliban members are believed to be hiding.
When that moment arrived last year, many of the forces and American intelligence operatives now engaged in Afghanistan were tied up in Iraq.
We continue to lose opportunities to get Bin Laden because key operatives and forces
were in IRAQ, not Afghanistan.
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I guess you are ignoring the fact that Saddam offered money to terrorist families. I guess you are ignoring the fact that Saddam was willing to furnish weapons to terrorists.
No, of course not, but there are lots of countries which do this, not only Iraq.
Why didn't we invade Pakistan, because we know that they actually DID furnish weapons to terrorists, was sympathetic to Al Qaida, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons?
Do you think the United States government should have the right to arrest you, detain you indefinitely without making any charges, notifying your family, lawyer, or the media, and anyone subpoenad in connection with your case is subject to prison time if they complain to congress about any abuses they suffer at the hands of law enforcement?
Did you know that the Justice Department as requested that their biggest convictions, to date, connected to the "war on terror", be overturned, because new evidence has come to light which shows these people to be innocent of the charges?
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I grant there is potential for abuse, but the risk of allowing a terrorist to potentially destroy millions of lives is worth it until we have a better idea or until we have reduced the risk (of which I see none from liberals, other than to increase our risk).
You have not demonstrated that the risk of another terrorist attack is very great, though.
Bush and Co. want you to constantly be afraid, but why don't they ever tell us what the threat is? That's because the more afraid the populace is, the greater chance they will be able to slip their facist police-state agenda under outr nose.
We're free, except if we are made to "disappear", taken away by the government with no due-process whatsoever?
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Hmmm. Intriguing. Please answer MY question: What exactly is your real name? Where do you live and work?
Why do you want to know? Why is that relevant?
Why are we wasting billions of dollars, killing tens of thousands of people, in a war that is only good for oilmen and anti-American extremist recriters?
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What you and apparently many liberals don't understand or accept is that oil in the hands of terrorist-supporting states is a danger to the USA.
You mean like Saudi Arabia?
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It's OK for other regimes to handle their oil, as long as they are not funneling money to the terrorists.
Like the US, funding the Taliban and funding Saddam Hussein?
You do realize that George Bush hosted the Taliban as guests when he was Govorner of Texas, and when he became president he began sending the Taliban federal aid money, don't you?
We certainly knew that the Taliban was the most horribly oppressive fundamentalist Muslim government in the world, and that the Taliban had close ties with Bin Laden and Al Qaida, who we had long ago identified as a major terrorist threat to the US and had attacked us on our own soil in the first WTC bombing, but
Bush was sending them foreign aid money.
Bin Ladin must have been laughing his ass off when the towers fell.
This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-08-2004 11:01 PM
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