What I Heard About Iraq

[Jason McCullough]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html

Someone put together a list of all the lies. Depressing.

[John Reynolds]

What's even more depressing is that there'll never be an ounce of accountability from the Bush administration because his base demands none. . .other than staying in power, because they apparently lack faith in the God they profess to believe in to such an extent that they feel they must protect their morality through a political medium rather than trusting His will to see things through, and if latching onto a creature born of unadulterated political and corporate nepotism will serve, so be it.

[Nick Walter]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html

Someone put together a list of all the lies. Depressing.

Considering how many of your posts end up with some expression of angst or sadness or depression over normal run-of-the-mill politics I suspect you might want to look into counseling or something Jason ;-)

A list of quotes, especially ones with no context given, doesn't really paint a convincing picture of a liar. People contradict themselves, their mind changes, the facts change, etc.

Someone with too much free time and too little perspective compiled a similar list for Clinton:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RA...TICS/LIES.html

I don't really think that list is meaningful either, but I thought I'd throw it out just to show how silly this whole topic is.

[Midnight Son]

I keep forgetting what an absolute pillar of morality and sobriety Duyba is! Thanks for reminding me, oh Heartland Patriot!

[Brian Koontz]

I don't really think that list is meaningful either, but I thought I'd throw it out just to show how silly this whole topic is.

Clinton is one of the most dishonest presidents (verbally) historically (of course, the media frenzy gave him a lot more *opportunity* to be dishonest than most presidents have been allowed), and the conservative position is that Bush's Administration is Clinton dishonest times 1000 in some sort of self-preservative *reaction*. The theory goes that Clinton's dishonesty was effective, so WE had better be dishonest so we can be effective too.

Its fair to say Clinton scared conservatives, a lot. Its also fair to say Conservatives were not forced to react with their own version times 1000... they could have taken the high road that they CLAIM they are all about. Its obvious what path they chose.

Its funny looking back... I thought the Clinton stuff was overplayed but I definitely didn't like Clinton lying and the indiscretions were adolescent in their clumsiness. The conservatives could have turned it into a REAL gain for themselves... if they were *truly* moral they would have had that advantage over Clinton. I suspect the theory that they were overplaying it in order to set up their own machination is correct. Its all gamesmanship to them... Clinton isn't BAD for his deceit... the problem is that he didn't go far ENOUGH. He was an *amateur* AT deceit. THEY would show who the real manipulators are.

And boy, was America ever shown.

Now, this sort of gamesmanship of who can be the greatest deceiver, the greatest manipulator... is this really the best thing for politics, the best thing for America?

This is why, after all, John Stewart is right and Al Franken is wrong. Al Franken wants to enter Liberals into the battle of deception, hopefully out-shouting and out-manipulating. He *begins* the manipulation with merely stating that he is offering an "alternative" to Right Wing Talk Radio.

Al, you mean like the Neocons offered an "alternative" to low-level Clintonian deception? Our own version, times 1000 (not that I think Franken is capable of doing Rush Limbaugh times 1000, at least anytime soon).

John Stewart wants to abort the whole process. Rewind politics back to the days of debate. He's a New Conservative.

[Jason McCullough]

That Clinton list is a different type from the Bush administration list. It's "he said this, then this other source said he's wrong."

By contrast:

In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein ‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’

I heard Colin Powell at the United Nations say: ‘They can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 30,000 empty munitions, and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.’

What the hell is the explanation for *that*?

By comparison, here's the first entry from the Clinton page:

July 1991: Question: "Have you ever used Marijuana or any illegal drugs?" Answer: "I've never broken any drug law." - Arkansas Gazette, July 24th, 1991, p. 8B
Asked this 3 times, on 3 separate occasions, by 3 different interviewers, your Great White Hope repeated this claim. Until faced with irrefutable proof, that is.

Then he said:

March 29th, 1992: "I've never broken a state law. But when I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two..."

Later, in that same interview, "No one has ever asked me that question point-blank."

So Clinton basically never did any drugs in *the US*, and using the ol' legalistic dodge, no one ever got specific enough to get "I smoked pot in England" out of him. Clearly comparable to doing a 180 on a casus belli for war. There's some highly amusing shifting campaign rhetoric, though.

[Jason McCullough]

BTW, is the new angle on me that I'm just being a worrywort that we're slaughtering Iraqis for no apparent reason? Hey, lighten up! At least you won't get drafted to do it!

Silly me, being all concerned about who have to live in weekly-rental motel rooms because their jobs suck, and no one cares.

[Prodigy]

What I really don't get is the "why" of all this. Oil ? No, I'm not fond of that theory, it would have been much simpler to deal with Saddam, like some of our companies did, and some US companies probably did too. Personal revenge ? Nah. The redisigning of the Middle East, with the belief that by imposing a democracy in the region all the islamic regimes would fall one after the other ? Installing US army bases in the area ? Killing arabs ? Making the wrongest choice ever to avenge americans after 9/11 ?

I really don't get it. What I'm sure of, on the other hand, it's that it was not to export freedom [size=1]TM[/size] and democracy ©. That's a load of crap.

[shift6]

BTW, is the new angle on me that I'm just being a worrywort that we're slaughtering Iraqis for no apparent reason? Hey, lighten up! At least you won't get drafted to do it!

Silly me, being all concerned about who have to live in weekly-rental motel rooms because their jobs suck, and no one cares.

I think you're just being a worrywort in general. On the other hand, it has certainly motivated you to post ever-increasingly here on QT3. :P

[Tim Partlett]

All politicians lie, there is nothing new here, but the level and brazenness of the lies from Bush, and Blair for that matter, has exceeded all my previous expectations of political deceit. Telling me that you "didn't break a law" to avoid admitting you smoked marijuana is the kind of lie I expect from a politician. Telling me that there are nuclear weapons in a country that has none at all, just so you can go in and kill thousands of people and jeopardise my personal safety, is something completely different altogether.

[Nick Walter]

All politicians lie, there is nothing new here, but the level and brazenness of the lies from Bush, and Blair for that matter, has exceeded all my previous expectations of political deceit. Telling me that you "didn't break a law" to avoid admitting you smoked marijuana is the kind of lie I expect from a politician. Telling me that there are nuclear weapons in a country that has none at all, just so you can go in and kill thousands of people and jeopardise my personal safety, is something completely different altogether.

Well said.

I personally believe that Bush has his own reasons for the Iraq invasion and cloaked them under the WMD scare to drum up public support. I can't say I approve of that kind of tactic, but perhaps history will show he really did belive the WMD story and just wasn't selective enough about who he listened to.