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Impeach Bush?

IXP said:
You are correct, NRC was wrong.

Please substitute "United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission" for NRC then dispute what I am saying instead of nitpicking.

Thank you
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Alright, here goes: Saddam was obligated to do MORE than just provide access to sites. He was required to provide full cooperation and full accounting. He never did either. Whether or not his disclosures were "closer" to the truth than our estimates is irrelevant. He was the only one in a position to know the details prior to our invasion with any certainty, he had a binding agreement to tell the truth, and he did not. He WAS in fact found to have prohibited weapons, and prohibited chemical weapons have in fact been found in Iraq. He was, therefore, not in compliance. He was never in compliance.
 
Ziggurat said:
Alright, here goes: Saddam was obligated to do MORE than just provide access to sites. He was required to provide full cooperation and full accounting. He never did either. Whether or not his disclosures were "closer" to the truth than our estimates is irrelevant. He was the only one in a position to know the details prior to our invasion with any certainty, he had a binding agreement to tell the truth, and he did not. He WAS in fact found to have prohibited weapons, and prohibited chemical weapons have in fact been found in Iraq. He was, therefore, not in compliance. He was never in compliance.
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Those are some pretty light standards by which to commit this country to war. Saddam was obligated? What on Earth is Bush obligated to before he commits hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives to a losing war?
 
hgc said:
Those are some pretty light standards by which to commit this country to war.
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That is a separate question. IXP questioned whether or not Saddam was really failing to comply. But the record is, in fact, quite clear on the topic: Saddam never complied with his obligations. What to do about that non-compliance is a separate question, and one which involves judgment calls and even value decisions, but the FACT of his non-compliance should not be in debate. Sadly, it seems for some people it still is.

Saddam was obligated?
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Uh, YES. Have you been paying any attention at all? He was obligated because he signed AGREEMENTS stating he would comply, in order to stop the first gulf war. He was obligated because he ACCEPTED that obligation. Had he not wanted that obligation, the option was available at the time to refuse those terms.
 
Ziggurat said:
I couldn't agree more. Republicans should have impeached Clinton over that rather than Lewinski. Glad we're on the same page on that one.
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One of the lamest comments in the history of this board. Bush's decision to go to war and his inept/corrupt handling of the resulting occupation is likely to ending up costing the country the lives of thousands of our soldiers, more than a trillion dollars and the lives of ten's of thousands of Iraqis.

Most Americans today would trade Bush for Clinton with however many Lewisnky's Clinton wanted in a nanosecond.

While you and others with similar knee jerk biases have sat back and believed and defended the crapola from this administration the US has been devastated by it. Is it time for Cheney to tell us the insurgency is in its last throes again?

In case you missed it and I guess you did the administration lied about the aluminum tubes, it lied about the evidence for chemical weapons and it lied about the evidence that Hussein was seeking uranium. It then proceeded to take the country to war based on those lies and then it proceeded to run the resulting occupation like it was the private piggy bank for their crony companies while it ignored advice from all sides about the problems of their approach. Now four years into it, the president has acknowledged that stuff is bad and he is so proactive that he is going to sit on hands for the next month or so while he mulls over what to do about it.

But after all this, your idea is that somehow bringing up Lewinsky is relevant? I don't know what biases drive your thought processes, but they scare me.
 
davefoc said:
One of the lamest comments in the history of this board. Bush's decision to go to war and his inept/corrupt handling of the resulting occupation is likely to ending up costing the country the lives of thousands of our soldiers, more than a trillion dollars and the lives of ten's of thousands of Iraqis.
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Ah, but the post I responded to didn't address the decision to go to war OR the handling of that war. The post I responded to ONLY addressed the portrayal of intelligence regarding Saddam's WMD possession and programs, and made the claim that there should be consequences for portraying Saddam as possessing such weapons and having such programs. If that is the relevant issue, then the Clinton administration, and indeed most of the democratic congressional leadership, should face those same consequences, because they made the same claims. If your objection is not to the claims that were made, but to the decision, then THAT is what you should object to. But that issue was totally absent from the post I responded to. Your inability to understand what was actually being discussed is not my problem, however.

But after all this, your idea is that somehow bringing up Lewinsky is relevant? I don't know what biases drive your thought processes, but they scare me.
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You can't even figure out what I'm talking about, so the fact that you can't understand my thought process is hardly surprising, and really of little concern. I'd worry about your inability to follow the logical sequence of a conversation first, if I were you.
 
Tricky said:
Lots of people mentioned this before the invasion. Many loudly. They got shouted down and called traitors and worse. Don't you remember?
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I remember.

At the time, I also remembered how the Bush administration had been talking about Iraq prior to 9/11. Then 9/11 came and for a brief period of time, Iraq went away and it was all about Al Queda, OBL and Afghanistan. And then, after a quick military victory but no OBL, we were suddenly and inexplicably talking about Iraq again, but this time within the context of 9/11.

I didn't keep up with politics as much back then and maybe that shielded me from some of the WMD spin. However, when we started talking about Iraq again after 9/11, it seemed rather obvious to me from the long view that the administration was trying to piggy-back their pre-9/11 obsession onto the momentum of their post-9/11 action. I was told that I didn't know what I was talking about, which was true and part of the reason why I never pushed it much.

I read a lot about it since then, but I never manage to buy into the rationalization. Both the WMD story and its timing were just too convienent. I mean, wasn't it amazing that, of all the countries that hated us over there, it was the one country we had a mad-on for before 9/11 that then posed the greatest eminent threat by working with people that they previously hated just as much as or more than they hated us?

Call it hindsight all you want, but if I picked up on it with just a casual understanding of the situation, we all should have.
 
davefoc said:
I think I got it:
Lies about a blow job = Lies used to initiate a war

Was that your point?
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No, you rather do not have it, and that was rather explicitly not my point. And at this rate, you're never going to get it either. But your incomprehension is not my problem, so there's really not a lot I'm willing to do to solve your problem for you.
 
Ziggurat,
Let me try one more time.

Your point is that since Clinton thought that Hussein had WMD and he was wrong impeaching Bush for his lies about the strength of evidence for WMD would mean that Clinton should be impeached for claiming that Hussein had WMD?

OK, I need to go do some useful work so I won't be here to respond to any comment you make, but I would like to say this:

I did misjudge the intent of your posts and the posts were clear enough that I shouldn't have. I apologize for that.
 
lol @ this thread

Still PO'd about Clinton's impeachment eh
 
Funny, I thought we went into Iraq because they supported terrorism, we needed democracy to take hold in the middle east to have a chance at peace in our children's lifetime, and we a had a legal reason to do so because of his non-compliance vis a vis WMD. That's what Bush clearly laid out in the state of the union running up to the war (can you call it a war or a resuming of hostilities since there was a ceasefire whose terms were broken?)

Oh wait, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason (keep repeating it until the mind virus sits in). Ergo if there are no WMDs then we need to pull out immediately and impeach Bush.
 
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corplinx said:
Funny, I thought we went into Iraq because they supported terrorism, we needed democracy to take hold in the middle east to have a chance at peace in our children's lifetime, and we a had a legal reason to do so because of his non-compliance vis a vis WMD. That's what Bush clearly laid out in the state of the union running up to the war.

Oh wait, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason (keep repeating it until the mind virus sits in). Ergo if there are no WMDs then we need to pull out immediately and impeach Bush.
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Well, here is Wikipedia's summary of what Rumsfield said.

To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were:

  • Self-defense
    • find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
    • collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
  • Humanitarian
    • end sanctions and deliver humanitarian support (According to Madeleine Albright, half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
  • United Nations Security Council Resolution
    • Resolution 1205, made in 1998.
  • Regime Change
    • end the Saddam Hussein government
    • help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
  • Economic
    • secure Iraq's oil fields and other resources
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As far as the War on Terror went, we were there because of the WMD's. That is why they were an eminent threat and that is why we had to go in there at that time instead of putting it off in favor of much more pressing concerns.
 
corplinx said:
Funny, I thought we went into Iraq because they supported terrorism, we needed democracy to take hold in the middle east to have a chance at peace in our children's lifetime, and we a had a legal reason to do so because of his non-compliance vis a vis WMD. That's what Bush clearly laid out in the state of the union running up to the war (can you call it a war or a resuming of hostilities since there was a ceasefire whose terms were broken?)

Oh wait, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason, WMD was the only reason (keep repeating it until the mind virus sits in). Ergo if there are no WMDs then we need to pull out immediately and impeach Bush.
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To the American People: We want to launch this war to democratize the Middle East. Do you approve?

Nope, didn't happen that way.
 
davefoc said:
Your point is that since Clinton thought that Hussein had WMD and he was wrong impeaching Bush for his lies about the strength of evidence for WMD would mean that Clinton should be impeached for claiming that Hussein had WMD?
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Yes, that's basically correct.

There was a massive intelligence failure regarding WMD's. But that failure was systematic, it did not start with Bush, and it was not confined to the Republicans. The only thing I really blame Bush for in this regard was giving Tennet that medal, after it had become clear how badly Tennet's CIA had screwed up.

But regardless of your opinion of the policy Bush formed in response to that failure, impeachment is a very bad solution for for what are ultimately policy disagreements, regardless of how significant those disagreements are and regardless of how big a mistake any of those decisions may have been. There's a very different process for providing consequences for policy mistakes in a democracy: elections. Impeachment over an issue with sharp partisan divides, as the only two impeachments so far have been, are not likely to produce a conviction or do any more good for the country than they have in the past.
 
Ziggurat said:
Yes, that's basically correct.

There was a massive intelligence failure regarding WMD's. But that failure was systematic, it did not start with Bush, and it was not confined to the Republicans. The only thing I really blame Bush for in this regard was giving Tennet that medal, after it had become clear how badly Tennet's CIA had screwed up. . .
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Intelligence Failure. Come on. What we've seen in the media indicates that Bush and Company knew exactly what they were doing with the pre-Fiasco so called WMD intelligence. Bush clearly wanted this war for an as yet unknown reason and the WMD intelligence was clearly massaged to sell the war.
 
joe1347 said:
Intelligence Failure. Come on. What we've seen in the media indicates that Bush and Company knew exactly what they were doing with the pre-Fiasco so called WMD intelligence. Bush clearly wanted this war for an as yet unknown reason and the WMD intelligence was clearly massaged to sell the war.
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And yet, what he was saying regarding Saddam and WMD's was basically the same thing that democrats were saying prior to Bush taking office. That dastardly Rove with his time-traveling mind control rays!
 
Upchurch said:
Not me, but I am a little PO'd about Bush's
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Well sure, who isn't?


joe1347 said:
Intelligence Failure. Come on. What we've seen in the media
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...which, as we all know, is not only omnipotent but totally objective :alc:

indicates that Bush and Company knew exactly what they were doing with the pre-Fiasco so called WMD intelligence.
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Evidence?

Bush clearly wanted this war for an as yet unknown reason and the WMD intelligence was clearly massaged to sell the war.
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I don't discount the possibility, but....

Evidence?
 
I'd like to ask anyone in this thread to spell out, in a suitable format and in language that could be used to argue before the House, the high crimes and misdemeanors, which includes specificity of crimes and misdemeanors, that will fill the charge sheet presented to the House upon which the impeachment proceeding will be founded.

Having preferred charges on persons in the past, I'd like to see if anyone contributing to this discussion can present something coherent enough to follow up on.

Go for it, seriously. I am very interested in what you think is the correct set of charges to prefer.

DR
 

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