Federal Appeals Judge Compares People Who Say Bush Lied To Rise Of Nazis

[Ulaven_Demorte]

I'm glad you are admitting Saddam had chemical weapons in 2003, at the time of the invasion. He denied having them and that and his ability to make more were what caused the war to break out in 2003. The manufacturing equipment may not have been functional in 2009 or even 2003, but how easy would it have been for him to start it up again?

According to news reports, ISIS has been using chemical weapons. Where else would they have gotten them? http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/is...ve-access-chemical-weapons-iraq-syria-n234871

Jesus Christ.. THAT is what you got from the wholesale refutation of every single point you posted?

Buried in your link, near the bottom, forgetting that the entire article you linked is speculation and unverified.
"Neither the United States nor any other official independent agency has been able to verify the use of chemicals by ISIS in combat."

What they do know, is that ISIS has used Chlorine gas (which is NOT a banned substance) to hinder defense forces when attacking posts. This is what the majority of the article you linked refers to when they mention "chemical attacks".

 

[RobDownSouth]

Jesus Christ.. THAT is what you got from the wholesale refutation of every single point you posted?

Buried in your link, near the bottom, forgetting that the entire article you linked is speculation and unverified.
"Neither the United States nor any other official independent agency has been able to verify the use of chemicals by ISIS in combat."

What they do know, is that ISIS has used Chlorine gas (which is NOT a banned substance) to hinder defense forces when attacking posts. This is what the majority of the article you linked refers to when they mention "chemical attacks".

Using generic terms like "chemical attacks" allows the RWCJ to insinuate that the bad guys are using WMDs. They're hoping you won't notice the difference.

You'll recall Vetty tried to equate tear gas with WMDs not too long ago too.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yes, Bush lied about Iraq: Why are we still arguing about this?

*sigh* Nothing but a full C&P is gonna get the point across.

Tuesday, Feb 10, 2015 11:06 AM EST

Yes, Bush lied about Iraq: Why are we still arguing about this?

Sorry, WSJ: Reminding everyone that George W. Bush lied about Iraq is good and necessary -- because man, did he lie

Simon Maloy

It seems clear now that we, as a nation, will never stop relitigating the Iraq war. Owing to partisan loyalty or (for the politicians and pundits who personally backed the war) gross self-interest, most of today’s conservatives will stridently argue that the war George W. Bush started on false pretenses was justified (despite the lack of justification) and on track for a successful conclusion (despite every bit of evidence to the contrary) before Barack Obama came in and threw away all of Bush’s good work.

In this vein, the Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed yesterday by Laurence Silberman, the conservative federal judge who co-chaired the 2004 Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. In the piece, Silberman takes objection with Ron Fournier (of all people) blithely asserting that George W. Bush “lied” in order to make the Iraq war a reality. Saying Bush “lied” is a bad, hurtful argument, Silberman writes, because he Bush didn’t lie; he just got every single thing wrong and that’s totally different:

Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.

It was just bad intelligence! Everyone was fooled! You can’t say Bush “lied” about Iraq pursuing WMDs or about the Saddam Hussein regime having ties to 9/11 because he was just echoing what the intelligence community said, which was wrong.

This is a line of argumentation that Bush administration officials and Iraq war boosters have been clinging to ever since it became clear that U.S. troops would found no mobile biological weapons labs and no Mutual Admiration Society correspondence between Saddam and Osama. “We were wrong just like everyone else” isn’t a particularly compelling argument, though I suppose that if you’re responsible for one of the modern era’s most significant foreign policy disasters, “shared incompetence” is a more appealing excuse than “willful deception.”

But the Bush administration absolutely did engage in willful deception. Quite a bit of it, in fact. It’s one thing to simply repeat an intelligence assessment that is wrong, and quite another to take a disputed, credibly challenged intelligence assessment and state it as uncontested fact. That’s a lie, and senior Bush officials did it often. There’s no better example of this than the aluminum tubes.

If you were following politics in the six months or so leading up to the actual invasion of Iraq, then you probably remember how much importance senior Bush administration officials put on the fact that Iraq had tried to obtain a certain type of aluminum tube that was, per those same officials, only suitable for use in uranium centrifuges. The tubes were at the heart of their case that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and had been cited as evidence of Hussein’s intentions by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell. They even earned a mention in George W. Bush’s now infamous 2003 state of the union address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving.

This was all wrong. And they knew at the time that the intelligence regarding those tubes was nowhere near as strong as they made it out to be. A number of intelligence agencies believed that the tubes were, in fact, made for uranium enrichment. There were, however, a number of dissenting views, including from the State Department and the intelligence arm of the Department of Energy, the agency responsible for maintaining the United States’ nuclear arsenal (i.e. the people who actually know this stuff). DOE determined that the tubes were completely impractical for use in uranium enrichment, and were probably intended for use in conventional rockets. The State Department came to a similar conclusion.

Senior policymakers, including President Bush, were aware of this debate over the tubes by October 2002. But with Dick Cheney calling the shots and applying pressure where necessary, the administration disregarded the dissenting views, prioritized the assessments that aligned with their preferred policy outcome, and hid the debate from the public while offering up the tubes as incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein was in the process of developing nuclear weapons.

That falls pretty squarely in the “lie” category, to my judgment. But if the tubes don’t do it for you, there’s plenty more to choose from – like Dick Cheney’s repeated false insistences that the 9/11 ringleader met with an Iraqi agent in Prague.

But perhaps what angers me most about Silberman’s Op-Ed is his garbage explanation for why it’s “dangerous’ to call the Bush administration the irresponsible and destructive liars that they were:

The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.

Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.

Nazis. Always with the god damn Nazis. This self-Godwinning is doubly stupid because we already know what the political fallout of Bush lying about Iraq was: the Democrats briefly took control of Congress, a black guy was elected president, and they teamed up to pass a successful healthcare reform law. You may consider that a travesty depending on your political and social views, but Kristallnacht it ain’t.

“Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action,” Silberman continues. Sometime in the future after we’re all dead? This happens literally all the time. President Obama has launched military campaigns in Iraq and Libya and I feel pretty confident saying that the case he presented to the public was based on intelligence reports. What’s unclear is why the current president, or any president, deserves the blanket assumption of credibility that Silberman believes they’re entitled to when launching military action.

Here I thought the lesson of the Iraq war is to not blindly trust the president when he or she waves around intelligence supporting their intention to put U.S. military personnel in harm’s way. But apparently I was wrong: the real lesson is to be careful when calling a lying president a “liar” because doing so may imperil future misbegotten military adventures.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.

Is it just me or does this sound eerily familiar to "conservatives" claims re: Vietnam?

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

The report said this:

"Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media"

But Simon has to insists it supports his narrative that Bush lied, when it says no such thing.

Once again you miss, or ignore, the point:

But the Bush administration absolutely did engage in willful deception. Quite a bit of it, in fact. It’s one thing to simply repeat an intelligence assessment that is wrong, and quite another to take a disputed, credibly challenged intelligence assessment and state it as uncontested fact. That’s a lie, and senior Bush officials did it often. There’s no better example of this than the aluminum tubes.

If you were following politics in the six months or so leading up to the actual invasion of Iraq, then you probably remember how much importance senior Bush administration officials put on the fact that Iraq had tried to obtain a certain type of aluminum tube that was, per those same officials, only suitable for use in uranium centrifuges. The tubes were at the heart of their case that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and had been cited as evidence of Hussein’s intentions by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell. They even earned a mention in George W. Bush’s now infamous 2003 state of the union address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving

This was all wrong. And they knew at the time that the intelligence regarding those tubes was nowhere near as strong as they made it out to be. A number of intelligence agencies believed that the tubes were, in fact, made for uranium enrichment. There were, however, a number of dissenting views, including from the State Department and the intelligence arm of the Department of Energy, the agency responsible for maintaining the United States’ nuclear arsenal (i.e. the people who actually know this stuff). DOE determined that the tubes were completely impractical for use in uranium enrichment, and were probably intended for use in conventional rockets. The State Department came to a similar conclusion.

Senior policymakers, including President Bush, were aware of this debate over the tubes by October 2002. But with Dick Cheney calling the shots and applying pressure where necessary, the administration disregarded the dissenting views, prioritized the assessments that aligned with their preferred policy outcome, and hid the debate from the public while offering up the tubes as incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussein was in the process of developing nuclear weapons.

That falls pretty squarely in the “lie” category, to my judgment. But if the tubes don’t do it for you, there’s plenty more to choose from – like Dick Cheney’s repeated false insistences that the 9/11 ringleader met with an Iraqi agent in Prague.

 

[RobDownSouth]

You mean Bush lied according to Simon "Salon" Maloy, right?

The report said this:

"Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media"

But Simon has to insists it supports his narrative that Bush lied, when it says no such thing.

Oh and the Communists (Obama's mentors) are quite capable of employing and exceeding the Nazi propaganda successes using the Big Lie technique. It's been quite effective at fooling you, UD, Rob, and many other hapless fools.

Lying as usual, as is typical for a Vietnam-era Marine (devoid of honor, dignity and class).

The simple fact of the matter is that the NIE was "stove-piped". Information that supported the administration's position was put in the main report, information that did not support the administration's position was conveniently classified in a report annex.

At the time, no one in Congress would suspect a sitting America president would resort to such craven and cowardly gimmickry, but all of America is now sadder and wiser....and 4000+ troops now moulder in their graves due to Dubya's fecklessness.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Lying as usual, as is typical for a Vietnam-era Marine (devoid of honor, dignity and class).

The simple fact of the matter is that the NIE was "stove-piped". Information that supported the administration's position was put in the main report, information that did not support the administration's position was conveniently classified in a report annex.

At the time, no one in Congress would suspect a sitting America president would resort to such craven and cowardly gimmickry, but all of America is now sadder and wiser....and 4000+ troops now moulder in their graves due to Dubya's fecklessness.

Not to mention a disputed but clearly large number of Iraqi civilians. You know, the people the Coalition forces where there to liberate.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Jesus Christ.. THAT is what you got from the wholesale refutation of every single point you posted?

Buried in your link, near the bottom, forgetting that the entire article you linked is speculation and unverified.
"Neither the United States nor any other official independent agency has been able to verify the use of chemicals by ISIS in combat."

What they do know, is that ISIS has used Chlorine gas (which is NOT a banned substance) to hinder defense forces when attacking posts. This is what the majority of the article you linked refers to when they mention "chemical attacks".

You know, I can find a lot more references. Here are some:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/isis-seizes-chemical-weapons-plant-muthanna-iraq

http://www.ibtimes.com/saddam-era-chemical-weapons-now-under-isis-control-reports-1705144

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/kurds-fear-isis-chemical-weapon-kobani

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...dam-era-chemical-weapons-complex-in-Iraq.html

I'm not saying these weapons are as effective now as they were when Saddam had them; all I'm saying is that Saddam did have them in 2003, when the second Gulf War started. If they were available when ISIS attacked, they had to have been available 12 years earlier, which means reports of their presence were not lies.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Not to mention a disputed but clearly large number of Iraqi civilians. You know, the people the Coalition forces where there to liberate.

Mist of the dead Iraqi civilians were murdered by other Iraqi civilians in religious strife.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

You know, I can find a lot more references. Here are some:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/isis-seizes-chemical-weapons-plant-muthanna-iraq

http://www.ibtimes.com/saddam-era-chemical-weapons-now-under-isis-control-reports-1705144

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/kurds-fear-isis-chemical-weapon-kobani

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...dam-era-chemical-weapons-complex-in-Iraq.html

I'm not saying these weapons are as effective now as they were when Saddam had them; all I'm saying is that Saddam did have them in 2003, when the second Gulf War started. If they were available when ISIS attacked, they had to have been available 12 years earlier, which means reports of their presence were not lies.

Did you actually read those articles? Every single one of them that talked about ISIS using 'chemical weapons' are littered with qualifiers like "could be", "possibly", and "reportedly" but go on to mention that none of this was actually verified by anyone. The only verified use of chemical weaponry was chlorine gas, which is not a banned substance.

I'll type this really slowly... Nobody said that there were never any WMDs in Iraq, we all know that he used them on the Iranians and the Kurds. We know that degraded relics from the Iran/Iraq war were found buried in the desert, even one of your articles acknowledges the fact that the contents of the former chemical weapons plant captured by ISIS were degraded chemical remnants, material that dates back to the 1980s and was stored after being dismantled by UN inspectors in the 1990s. IN other words, militarily useless.

None of this shows that Iraq's chemical weapons program was still active or had been active since the UN Sanctions began in the early 90s. This is important because that was one of the lies that was told to the American people and to Congress in the lead up to the invasion. Their Chemical weapons capability was nil, their nuclear program was non-existent. the Ba'ath Party is a secular organization, which don't tend to harbor religious extremist terrorists for the most part. Because they would be a target of those extremists. The only charge against the Iraqi regime that actually stood up to investigation was that he was a brutal dictator that tortured and killed his own people.

So when do we invade North Korea? Who has an active nuclear program, starves and tortures their people on a regular basis.

 

[RobDownSouth]

You know, I can find a lot more references. Here are some:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/isis-seizes-chemical-weapons-plant-muthanna-iraq

http://www.ibtimes.com/saddam-era-chemical-weapons-now-under-isis-control-reports-1705144

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/kurds-fear-isis-chemical-weapon-kobani

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...dam-era-chemical-weapons-complex-in-Iraq.html

I'm not saying these weapons are as effective now as they were when Saddam had them; all I'm saying is that Saddam did have them in 2003, when the second Gulf War started. If they were available when ISIS attacked, they had to have been available 12 years earlier, which means reports of their presence were not lies.

Chlorine gas and mustard gas are battlefield "area denial" weapons, and are NOT "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

 

[unregistered]

 

[cowslinger64]

I did read it.. I'm not vette.

February 6, 2004 - President George W. Bush names a seven-member commission to investigate the nation's intelligence operations, specifically to study the information about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.

October 6, 2004 - The final Iraq Survey Group report is released. The report concludes that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

December 2005 - U.S. inspectors end their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

March 31, 2005 - The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction reports that the intelligence community was "dead wrong" in its assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities before the U.S. invasion.

When they are employed against population centers, they are WMDs. In your case, anything that kills you would be classified as a weapon of mass destruction.

Seems the people that actually know, disagree. They must have been confused.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Chlorine gas and mustard gas are battlefield "area denial" weapons, and are NOT "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

How about sarin? That was included in the last link.

I hope you know that both mustard gas and chlorine gas, when concentrated, can be deadly.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Mist of the dead Iraqi civilians were murdered by other Iraqi civilians in religious strife.

Yes, I know (though it was, like the Irish Troubles, really more ethnic strife than religious). Hussein kept a lid on all of that for years, and when we took him out -- it was like Tito's passing in Yugoslavia. A result which might have been foreseen.

 

[CandiCame]

That title needs a comma somewhere. Right now it reads like a sentece fragment whereing Bush lies to Nazis

 

[RobDownSouth]

How about sarin? That was included in the last link.

I hope you know that both mustard gas and chlorine gas, when concentrated, can be deadly.

Oh yes, Sarin is deadly. Hard to get and harder to use, but deadly.

And yes, both mustard gas and chlorine gas can theoretically be deadly. Mustard gas has a maximum fatality rate of a whoppin' THREE percent historically (which means, of course, a 97% chance of survival according to my reality-based math calculator) and chlorine gas has an EIGHT percent fatality rate.

You'd have to gin up a whole lot of the stuff to hurt a great number of folks, and better pray they're in a confined area with no wind.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

How about sarin? That was included in the last link.

I hope you know that both mustard gas and chlorine gas, when concentrated, can be deadly.

So can carbon monoxide.

The fact is, you keep bringing up that there were still remnants of the old weapons programs around as if that proved the allegation that Iraq had an active weapons program and stockpiles of WMDs that they were hiding from inspectors. This was simply not the case. The allegations that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes for nuclear enrichment efforts was false, as were the allegations that they were importing yellow cake uranium from Nigeria.

Every single bit of chemical material and weapon precursors that were found were from before UN sanctions were put in place in 1991. Improperly stored, buried in the desert, sunk in a lake, etc. degraded and useless as military weapons.

 

[Boxlicker101]

So can carbon monoxide.

The fact is, you keep bringing up that there were still remnants of the old weapons programs around as if that proved the allegation that Iraq had an active weapons program and stockpiles of WMDs that they were hiding from inspectors. This was simply not the case. The allegations that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes for nuclear enrichment efforts was false, as were the allegations that they were importing yellow cake uranium from Nigeria.

Every single bit of chemical material and weapon precursors that were found were from before UN sanctions were put in place in 1991. Improperly stored, buried in the desert, sunk in a lake, etc. degraded and useless as military weapons.

But still dangerous.

 

[cowslinger64]

But still dangerous.

Not reason enough to invade Iraq, waste the lives of 4500+ American Soldiers, trillions of dollars wasted, countless Iraqi lives ended and affected... Along with creating a huge quagmire in the middle east by removing a horrible despot but one that kept things in check.

 

[KingOrfeo]

But still dangerous.

Only in the sense that industrial toxic waste is dangerous. Which it is, but I hope we would never invade a country just for having some lying around.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

There's a big difference between weaponized chemical weapons and industrial waste. The convoluted gymnastics you assholes go through to cover your phony narrative are staggering.

I wish you'd tell your buddy miles about this. The Judenazi was yammering recently about some soldiers that got sick entering a chemical storage depot and how that "proved" weaponized chemical munitions existed.

 

[KingOrfeo]

There's a big difference between weaponized chemical weapons and industrial waste.

Not at the time of the invasion, there wasn't.