Rumsfeld proven a liar. Twice.

fishbob said:
If you got something against f*ckwits, why do you defend the White House so hard?
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You seem to have mistaken me for the kid who sat next to you in third-grade social studies, a class where I believe you should have paid a bit more attention. Would have saved you a great deal of embarrassment later in life.
 
Ray McGovern is completely nude. It was his agency which screwed up, and now he is behaving in a partisan fashion, which is a violation of the spirit and intent of career civil servantry.

There is overwhelming evidence that the Iraqi WMDs that haven’t been found was an intelligence failure at best, not a false excuse to start a war. The President and Defense Secretary acted upon intelligence information that had been accumulating for years.

There is also the worse case possibility that the Iraqi WMDs that haven’t been found simply haven’t been found yet.

While some like to use the situation to further their ideology or partisan political views on the uninformed, I find the situation beyond distressing. For example, was the intelligence failure due to the Iraqis successfully fooling several national intelligence services, or was it the result of disinformation or misinformation from Iraq as well as other foreign services?

Partisan Americans, bickering like fools about whether or not politicians lie, should focus more on why our intelligence community got their pants removed, and why (even after they are nude) they still don't seem to get the picture.
 
There is a big difference between being behind 911 and giving al qaeda a safe place to operate and possibly money. Just because a+b=c doesn't mean a-b=c. I remember the first couple years of the war seeing buildings filled with small arms and documents with enough links to them. Yes, it was after the fact the us invaded but...oops. I'm not sure Sadam would have agreed to that large of a plan knowing there would be more than an aspirin factory blowing up. Just from watching the trial and seeing the mass graves being dug up and prior evidence of wmd being used (I heard about it, but never actually saw it till on the news recently),they had reason to go in before 911, there just wasn't the smoking gun. The UN actually had the right to go in before that, and that's where i wish Bush would have waited. Do we really need to pick apart the gray areas of years of comments when we know the facts in general already? No one will dispute that they rushed into Iraq.
 
They rushed into Iraq and gave mistaken or false reasoning to go in. If Bush and company simply said "we are going in just because Saddam is bad" then he might not have gotten the support he needed. While the nation saw death and destruction on Sept 11th, Bush saw an excuse to invade Iraq.
 
thaiboxerken said:
They rushed into Iraq and gave mistaken or false reasoning to go in. If Bush and company simply said "we are going in just because Saddam is bad" then he might not have gotten the support he needed. While the nation saw death and destruction on Sept 11th, Bush saw an excuse to invade Iraq.
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Who are you responding to? I know you're not actually reading anything others are posting here, but it's common courtesy to at least pretend.
 
Tailgater said:
...No one will dispute that they rushed into Iraq.
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I do.

This ongoing and escalating chain of events started with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The most recent invasion and resulting occupation began in 2003.

There has been 13 years of war, withdrawal, aerial containment, UN arms inspections, evasion, denials, attempts at negotiation, etc. All of that and much, much more has been documented and accumulated.

I refuse to accept that as "rushing".
 
Huntster said:
I do.

This ongoing and escalating chain of events started with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The most recent invasion and resulting occupation began in 2003.

There has been 13 years of war, withdrawal, aerial containment, UN arms inspections, evasion, denials, attempts at negotiation, etc. All of that and much, much more has been documented and accumulated.

I refuse to accept that as "rushing".
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Rubbish. We went from stable containment to instability within a span of a few months, and the rationale for invading-- the existance of WMD in Iraq-- could have been eliminated if more time had been taken to investigate the WMD before invading. That's a rush, like it or not.

For those of use who would prefer not to throw our kids into a meat grinder unnecessarily, we would prefer to take the time beforehand to be REALLY REALLY sure that the country we're invading really is a threat to us.
 
As far as the wmds, every country in the world believed he had used them and still had them. If you saw people using drugs across the street and called the police, and those people knew they were coming and had time, do you think they would just stand there and hold them? No. They would give it to a close buddy to run out the back door with and hide it. They still think that the wmds exist, but they do look like fools not being able to find them. What I don't get is if we know he used them on his own people before, and there are holes filled with thousands of bodies that are still being dug up, why do we need to actually find them? Prior evidence of wmds, violating sanctions, known terrorists inside the country, consistent challenges from sadam, and later on the oil for food...this wasn't enough to "something"? Again, I don't think rushing a war was the smartest thing. Who knows? Pressure sadam to let a terrorist task force go in? Probably not. Wait for more info and UN support? Maybe (although the oil for food explains alot). I didn't need 911 to know that was going to go down eventually. Now how they are running the war is for a whole new thread.
 
BryanLower said:
Rubbish. We went from stable containment
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Whoah. Bi-weekly potshots at US warplanes, Oil-for-food corruption starving the population while Saddam and Co. got richer and richer, perpetually stonewalled inspectors, resolution after spineless resolution amounting to nothing but mounting embarrassment for anyone with dignity enough to be embarrassed (sit down, Russia, France, Germany, I wasn't talking to you)... That's your idea of stable containment, is it?

to instability within a span of a few months, and the rationale for invading-- the existance of WMD in Iraq-- could have been eliminated if more time had been taken to investigate the WMD before invading. That's a rush, like it or not.
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Well, had Saddam opened up as he was required to under the armistice, there would not have been a question of WMDs, would there? And you see, 12 years of this same obfuscation is precisely what put US intelligence (as well as practically everyone else on the planet) into the position they were in.

For those of use who would prefer not to throw our kids into a meat grinder unnecessarily, we would prefer to take the time beforehand to be REALLY REALLY sure that the country we're invading really is a threat to us.
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Frankly, considering what you consider "stable containment," I'm a little skeptical of what it would take to make you REALLY, REALLY sure.
 
I half agree with Bryan and huntster. Yes, there was years of buildup for it, like i was saying in last post. But at the same time, I think if they focused more on terrorist info for awhile and presented that to the public, it would've been easier to swallow. For one, because we KNOW they have been rounding up terrorists. Saying we were going after the wmds was like rolling the dice to find them and Bush lost. That's what I meant by rushing....maybe that's the wrong word.
 
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Jocko said:
Originally Posted by thaiboxerken :
They rushed into Iraq and gave mistaken or false reasoning to go in. If Bush and company simply said "we are going in just because Saddam is bad" then he might not have gotten the support he needed. While the nation saw death and destruction on Sept 11th, Bush saw an excuse to invade Iraq.
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Who are you responding to? I know you're not actually reading anything others are posting here, but it's common courtesy to at least pretend.
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From my cited link (In large, bold print):


Read the Documents
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Forty two documents are cited and linked.

You're right. Mr. thaiboxerken will not read them, because that would take too much time, be too difficult for him to understand, and will not support his opinion:

While the nation saw death and destruction on Sept 11th, Bush saw an excuse to invade Iraq
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Tailgater said:
...I think if they focused more on terrorist info for awhile and presented that to the public, it would've been easier to swallow.....
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They couldn't. The administration either didn't have "terrorist info", or that info was unreliable, incomplete, or all of the above. This indicts the intelligence community all the more, but it is very understandable.

U.S. intelligence (like the U.K.'s and Soviet/Russias) intelligence gathering had been leaning toward the technical and away from the human for years (and the American's had leaned that way more than anybody else's). To gather intelligence on terrorists, you need intelligence gathering capabilities beyond that used to spy on Saddam and the nation of Iraq.
 
The Japanese were in alliance with Germany. The Taliban had nothing to do with Saddam.
 
I think he would've wanted to, and put forth a case to do so. I don't know that it would've worked though. The fear from the Sept 11th attacks was what motivated the people to rally for Bush's war.
 
Upchurch said:
I think we would have. My guess is that 9/11 just push up the timetable.
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I certainly think it would have been pushed to an endgame, to be sure. Whether it had to be war is moot, I guess, since Saddam was defiant until the first wave was released.
 
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