Walcrowe,
Vice President Cheney has appeared on MTP and mentioned Iraq/Saddam/WMD pre-liberation thusly:
September 16, 2001:
MR. RUSSERT: Saddam Hussein, your old friend, his government had this to say: "The American cowboy is rearing the fruits of crime against humanity." If we determine that Saddam Hussein is also harboring terrorists, and there's a track record there, would we have any reluctance of going after Saddam Hussein?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
MR. RUSSERT: Do we have evidence that he's harboring terrorists?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is--in the past, there have been some activities related to terrorism by Saddam Hussein. But at this stage, you know, the focus is over here on al-Qaida and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein's bottled up, at this point, but clearly, we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned.
MR. RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.
December 9, 2001:
RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. When you were last on this program, September 16, five days after the attack on our country, I asked you whether there was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack and you said no.
Since that time, a couple of articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 terrorists attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out.
And this from James Woolsey, former CIA director: ``We know that at Salman Pak, in the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eye witnesses--three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors--have said, and now there are aerial photographs to show it, a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers, trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives.''
And we have photographs. As you can see that little white speck, and there it is.
RUSSERT: The plane on the ground in Iraq used to train non-Iraqi hijackers.
Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.
Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point. But that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.
RUSSERT: What we do know is that Iraq is harboring terrorists. This was from Jim Hoagland in The Washington Post that George W. Bush said that Abdul Ramini Yazen (ph), who helped bomb the World Trade Center back in 1993, according to Louis Freeh was hiding in his native Iraq. And we'll show that right there on the screen. That's an exact quote.
If they're harboring terrorist, why not go in and get them?
CHENEY: Well, the evidence is pretty conclusive that the Iraqis have indeed harbored terrorists. That wasn't the question you asked the last time we met. You asked about evidence involved in September 11.
RUSSERT: Correct.
CHENEY: Over the years, for example, they've provided a safe harbor for Abu Nadal (ph), worked out of Bagdad for a long time.
The situation, I think, that leads a lot of people to be concerned about Iraq has to do not just with their past activity of harboring terrorist, but also with Saddam Hussein's behavior over the years and with his aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
When we go back and look at 1981, he was pursuing nukes. The Israelis preempted when they hit the Osirak reactor and shut down the program. In 1991, 10 years later, when we went in, we found evidence of a very aggressive nuclear program.
For the last three years, there have been no inspectors in Iraq, and he has aggressively pursued the development of additional weapons of mass destruction. He's had significant sums of money from smuggling oil that are outside the oil for food program that are available to him to undertake these activities.
And we know, as well, he's had a robust biological weapons and chemical weapons program, and unlike just about anybody else in the world, he's used them. He used those weapons against the Kurds in Iraq and against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War.
RUSSERT: You were very critical of the Clinton administration for not inspecting for two years. It's been a full year since you've been in office. Why hasn't the Bush administration demanded and gotten inspections?
CHENEY: The president's made it clear, and did the other day in connection with a question he was asked, that he believes that the inspectors ought to go back into Iraq. Of course, Saddam Hussein subsequently rejected that option. We've not yet made a decision about how best to proceed.
But clearly, given the events of September 11, given the vulnerability of the United States that's now been demonstrated, given the increasing linkage, if you will, between terrorist and weapons of mass destruction, we have to be very deliberate in terms of how we proceed to make certain that the United States is not vulnerable to that kind of an attack.
And so, all of those considerations will, I'm sure, influence the president's decision. But he'll ultimately have to make the decision about what kind of policy we best want to pursue with respect to Iraq.
RUSSERT: John McCain, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, a lot of others have that they have authorized an appropriate amount of money to fund the Iraqi opposition. When will the administration allow that money to be spent?
CHENEY: Some money has already been spent, and I'm sure more will.
RUSSERT: Soon?
CHENEY: Well, I would expect so.
March 24, 2002:
MR. RUSSERT: Iraq's Saddam Hussein--when we spoke on September 16, five days after the tragic day of September 11, I asked you if any evidence of linkage between Saddam Hussein and Iraq and al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. At the time you said no. There's an article in The New Yorker magazine by Jeffrey Goldberg which connects Iraq and Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida. What can you tell me about it?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I've read the article. It's a devastating article I thought. Specifically, its description of what happened in 1988 when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in northern Iraq, against some his own people. I was aware that he had used chemical weapons against the Kurds. That's been general knowledge, but what the article is very good at is pointing it out in depth that he may have struck, if the article's correct, as many as 200 towns and villages over a 17-month period of time and killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqis.
What's even more depressing is the apparent medical legacy that's left of continuing increased rates of infertility, birth defects, rates of liver cancer among children, etc., as a result of these attacks. It demonstrates conclusively what a lot of us have said is, that this is a man who is a great danger to the region of the world, especially if he's able to acquire nuclear weapons.
With respect to the connections to al-Qaida, we haven't been able to pin down any connection there. I read this report with interest after our interview last fall. We discovered, and it's since been public, the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, but we've not been able yet from our perspective to nail down a close tie between the al-Qaida organization and Saddam Hussein. We'll continue to look for it.
MR. RUSSERT: In this same article, August Hanning, the chief of the German BND, their CIA, says, quote, "Iraq will have the atomic bomb in three years." Do you agree with that assessment?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm reluctant to put that kind of time frame on it. I don't think we can be that precise, but we do know that he was working on it back in 1981 when the Israelis took out the Oseric reactor. We know he was working on it before the Gulf War. We know as a result of things we found after the Gulf War, as a result of defectors, for example, his own son-in-law came out in 1995 and talked about all of this, that he had an aggressive program throughout that period of time. And now, of course, for the last three years there've been no inspectors and there's good reason to believe that he continues to aggressively pursue the development of a nuclear weapon.
Now will he have one in a year, five years? I can't be that precise. I don't know enough to be able to put that kind of time frame on it. All I know is he's got enormous resources because of his oil wealth. There's nobody watching. He's had the technical expertise that he put together in the past to pursue this kind of a program and that he's one man out there who's not only acquired weapons, he's used them--chemical weapons against the Kurds and against the Iranians. I think it would be a great tragedy if Saddam Hussein were to be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and that's one of the concerns I shared as a traveled through the region last week.
MR. RUSSERT: Will we allow that to happen? Will we allow him to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: The president's been very clear that we will do everything we need to do to make certain that that doesn't happen.
MR. RUSSERT: The Arab League announced today that at their meeting on Wednesday, they will say the United States should not preemptively attack Iraq to take out any weapons of mass destruction. Reports from your trip around the Mideast that Arab country after Arab country said to you, "Don't do that, Mr. Vice President. Don't you dare attack Iraq." Tell us the best you can what happened inside those meetings? And are you able to say to those Arab countries what the president said to the world after September 11, "Either you're with us or you're with Saddam Hussein. Make a choice"?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: That's not the way that I would describe, first of all, their opinions. I had private, confidential meetings at nearly every stop. And those meetings, obviously, were and need to remain confidential. Secondly, I did not find a situation in which my hosts were unconcerned about Iraq. They're all very concerned about Iraq. They live in the neighborhood. They know Saddam Hussein better than we do. Many of them know that right after us, they're high on his list of governments he'd like to do in because of the historic relationships there. And that applies to virtually everybody in the region. I had good conversations with our friends there about how we might best proceed to deal with this problem. They're actively engaged in offering advice and counsel and in mutual discussions, and I expect those discussions will continue.
MR. RUSSERT: So what was reported publicly seems to be in stark contrast to what was said privately?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I wouldn't believe everything I read in the newspapers. I mean, the fact of the matter is that--well, I had, as I say, private, confidential meetings. That's one of the reasons I went was to be able to hold confidential meetings with our friends. And they are able, under those circumstances, because we know each other, to talk honestly and frank with one another, and that's exactly what we did.
MR. RUSSERT: Is the bottom line in the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein is evil and he must go?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I would say there is grave concern on our part. That's been heightened partly by the events of September 11, which demonstrated our vulnerability, partly by virtue of the fact that we've seen the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda now, with major efforts to acquire these capabilities. We don't have any evidence yet that they actually acquired them, but we know they were trying very hard on chemical, nuclear and biological weapons. We're worried about the possible marriage, if you will, on the one hand between the terrorist organizations and on the other, weapons of mass destruction capability, the kind of devastating materials that Saddam used against his own people in '88. So this whole subject is at a higher level of concern--excuse me, Tim--than it was previously, but I think it is for everybody out there, too. And I think that the president's made abundantly clear this is a top priority for us, and that we'll spend whatever time we need to seeing to it that this threat is, in fact, dealt with.
MR. RUSSERT: And if we need to go it alone, we will?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We'll just leave it right where it's at.
MR. RUSSERT: Tony Blair of Great Britain led the way in making the case against Osama bin Laden. There are now plans for him to come forward with a portfolio against Saddam Hussein and his plan to build weapons of mass destruction. Are you aware of that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I am.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you expect that to happen?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can't speak for his government. But there are--you know, the evidence is overwhelming, and one of the things we need to do, not only from the standpoint of our friends in the region, but the international community at large, our friends in Europe, for example, as well as the American people, is to make the case, lay it out there. This is the evidence. This is what he's done. This is what he's doing. This is the threat to the United States and to our friends around the world.
MR. RUSSERT: Lay the predicate for a potential attack.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Lay the predicate for doing whatever is necessary to make certain that the United States and our friends and allies are not threatened by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.
And then there was the March 16, 2003 Meet the Press interview which was all about Iraq - a transcript can be found here:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.html
And that, Walcrowe, is it - Vice President Cheney NEVER went on Meet the Press (or anywhere else, for that matter) and said, "Simply stated there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons."
You are believing a lie about the Vice President - and all of the rest of your "evidence" is outright lies, or gross distortions of the truth.
Complete the entire quote Leo before you screaming so early in the day. Murtha said that there are four ways, all of which are facts. Popular opinion, elections, impeachment and the purse.
Well said. I hate Murtha. He came to MN to support Rowley, if I remember correctly. The College Republicans around here protested his arrival.
I don't think he ever supports impeachment... he simply says it's another step if needed.
The tide is coming... This administration is the poster child for gross incompetence. The approval rating for this President and the War is plummeting.
"We would be greeted as liberators"
"Imminent threat"
"No doubt they've acquired nuclear weapons"
"Oil profits to pay for war"
Katrina - Abramhoff - Plamegate - Attorney firings - Wolfowticz scandal - Guantanamo - Torture Prisons - Declining approval worldwide ---
These are only off the top of my head...
The President works for the American people. Do you remember 2004 and winning by 1% of the vote? And saying mandate? The people have spoken so stop whining. We won. You lost. Live with it.
Well the tide is changing. And, it's time for you to bend to the will of the people.
And if the people (more than 50%) think he is incompetent then it is time for the 30% still clinging to the pipe dream to stand back or get mowed over...
You've had 6 years. And you have nothing to show for it. You're incompetent. We need a change (remember November?). If you won;t bend to the will of the people then it is the duty of Congress to force you to do so. AND that is what America is all about. The will of the people. By democracy. Maybe 51% does make a mandate.
I M P E A C H
"You were privy to every piece of intelligence that Bush had."
Do you think that you can magically make this statement true just by stating it as if it were a fact?
The White House had all sorts of intelligence, and background material on the intelligence gathering, that it did not share with Congress. Try to keep up!
Murtha's a war hero. Dick "five Deferments" Cheney and George W. "Mission Photo-Op Accomplished" Bush are pathetic.
Is there anyway we can get rid of him, SERIOUSLY?Piece of garbage is right!
We have people here that hate the Constitution.
I thought this was a thread about George Tenet.
ha ha ha !
Walcrowe,
Rather sad that you've filled your mind with so many lies...
Katrina was a natural disaster incompetantly managed by the State and local government; Abramoff lobbied Democrats as much as Republicans (which is all extensively detailed in our book, Caucus of Corruption); Plame wasn't covert and her name wasn't leaked; US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President - he can fire them for any reason he chooses, or for no reason at all; Wolfowitz acted in a completely above-board manner; Gitmo exceeds all the requirements of the Geneva Convention which the inmates are not covered under; we don't torture; we weren't popular before 9/11, either...
We were greated as liberators; no one said Iraq was an imminent threat; no one ever said Iraq had nuclear weapons; no one ever said that oil profits would pay for the war - that oil belongs to the Iraqis, not to us.
In the past six years we have liberated 50 million people from horrific tyranny; massively increased AIDS funding for Africa; worked out trade agreements to help bring prosperity to third world nations; developed an effective SDI; successfully overcome the recession we inherited; have made the budget on track to balance no later than FY2010, and it will probably balance FY2009 (provided Democrats don't come in an spend us into oblivion - do you really think we believe you when you say your in favor of fiscal discipline?); real after-tax personal income has risen 10% since January, 2001; average annual growth since 2001 has been 3% - and when you factor in the inherited recession, the Clintonite corporate scandals and the 9/11 attacks, this is a spectacular achievement; productivity has increased 2.8% since 2001 (seems small, but the highly productive American worker has only small room for improvement); more than 7.8 million jobs have been created since we got out of the inherited recession.
Yeah, nothing to show for it - a criminal and incompetant government...if you live in an Alternate Universe, that is.
Uhm, google is your friend...
re: We were greated as liberators;
'We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators' - Cheney
From Meet the Press, March 16 2003
True we were... but only until we destroyed their infrastructure, and turned our armed forces into a police force with no exit strategy.
---------------------
re: no one said Iraq was an imminent threat;
Bush's Mushroom Cloud as a Smoking Gun Speech
Monday, October 7, 2002
CINCINNATI, OHIO
-----------------------
re: no one ever said Iraq had nuclear weapons;
"Simply stated there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons"
Dick Cheney on MTP - August 27, 2002
--------------------
re: no one ever said that oil profits would pay for the war - that oil belongs to the Iraqis, not to us.
"The oil revenues of that country could bring in between $50 (billion) and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years,”“We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction.”
Paul Wolfowitz on Face the Nation Aug 20 2002
And yes I agree that oil is theirs... I'm simply quoting :-)
---------------------------
Reality is a nice place to live you should visit it sometime.
Mark,
The libs will always be in an alternate universe, because the world as it is, is too scarey for them. The idea that they need to fight and defend the freedoms that they have goes against every fiber of their beings. Of course, with no experience they are sure they can manage a war better than the generals. I understand that since I have no military experience I need to leave that to the experts (in the military) just as I would leave surgery to an experienced surgeon.
oh and let's not forget...
"Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"
The 2003 State of the Union
even though this statement was based on forged documents discounted by the CIA... twice.
If that isn't setting a tone for "imminent threat", misleading the public then what is?
------
And what about leaking false information to Judith Miller who writes an article about Aluminum tubes used for nuclear weapons...
THEN going on the Sunday talk shows with the newspaper stating, according to the NY Times... Saddam has aluminum tubes used only for nuclear weapons... EVEN though they themselves leaked the story... WHICH was debunked by nuclear scientists worldwide based on the size & shape of the tubes in the photos.
This is what you call criminal conduct. This is grounds for I M P E A C H M E N T
Step away from your foolish party standing and ask yourself if Clinton had done any of these things would you accept it?
I'm not a fan of Clinton either. Personally, I think politicians are all corrupt to a degree. our system no longer allows a person to achieve the rank or Senator, Congressman or President without getting dirty.
And if you think differently, and always find yourself defending your party while vilifying the opposition then you are part of the problem.
Democrat or Republican. If you mislead the American Public in any way let alone to lead it into a WAR then you are without a doubt guilty of treason of the highest order and should be subject to whatever punishment fits th crime.
I M P E A C H M E N T is getting off easy.
If you read this, and think I'm some partisan hack who cheers a party like a sports team you're 100% wrong. And maybe, just maybe you should look in a mirror.
America deserves better than this...
Mark, if you're right and Bush's tenure in office has been such a rousing succession of triumph after triumph, why are his approval ratings plummeting? Are you casting aspersions on the American electorate? Or have they just been duped by the dastardly left-leaning media?
kjstrouble: Of course, with no experience they are sure they can manage a war better than the generals.
Which generals would those be? As far as I can tell, the "libs" (although I would qualify that to say the "Dems") can point to a rather large group of generals that have expressed similar sentiments. For example, Gens. Clark, Zinni, Hoard, Batiste, Abizaid, Casey, Pace, Odom, Eaton, among others, have all criticized the "surge" strategy. And I should note that I have limited my list to those with recent top tier experience. And of course, Bush "retired" Gens Abizaid, Casey (actually he got kicked upstairs), and Pace precisely because they didn't agree.
In contrast, how many generals of similar credentials have criticized Murtha? That's a question I only recently asked myself, so I haven't done a thorough search. But so far the only one I know of to offer any sort of criticism is Pace, who said that Murtha's bluntness about not being inclined to enlist, given the present circumstances, might hurt recruiting, given the present circumstances. But I know of no others off the top of my head. I'd appreciate it if anyone could fill me in.
Walcrowe,
From Wikipedia:
MTP is a Sunday show...August 27th, 2002 was a Tuesday.
What your bogus assertion is based on is the Vice President's speech to the VFW on August 26, 2002 in which he said this vis a vis Saddam and nuclear weapons:
For each and every assertion you have made, it is easily demonstrable as an outright fabrication, or a gross misrepresentation of what happened. You can now take this knowledge and start to rethink your views...or you can just ignore it, stick your head in the sand and go happily about in your Alternate, Anti-Bush Universe.
Yeno,
President Bush's popularity is low because the war is a long grind, just as he said it would be - but people lose patience, especially in modern America. Of course, we also haven't had this sort of continual public opinion polling in a long war before - Vietnam had a bit of it, but not even remotely as much as we have in the War on Terrorism and as for WWII, WWI, Civil War...well it was nonexistent for all intents and purposes.
One has to wonder, though, what a CNN/USA Today Poll would have shown after our troops were hungup in the Bocage country...or while we were slowly grinding our way into Aachen...or while we were having Marine units suffer as much as 70% casualty rates trying to breach the Shuri Line...or during the long grind of Wildnerness to Petersburg...
Oh yes. Impeachment with no actual crime to charge. Try it. Please, really, try it.
Ricorun,
The premise of your question is absurd. “[] how many generals of similar credentials have criticized Murtha?” By your count, you have introduced less than a dozen “Generals” that would not agree with the strategy of the current commander in the field, yet you fail to specify how many of them have "criticized" General Petraeus. If the issue is agreement with the current strategy, I’m compelled to point out that there are over 400 retired Marine Corps Generals alone, counting Admirals and Generals from the other branches, there are anywhere between 3,100 and 6,300 retired admirals and generals.
If the verbosity of the critics to the plan is your indication of opposition; I’ll take the silence of the remaining 97%-98% as approval.
Good job, walcrowe, but as you can see denying reality is pretty much Noonan's raison d'etre.
Sixty million to find a semen stained dress. Not a quarter of that was spent on the 9/11 commission.
A thousand times that amount has been spent in Iraq. Maybe it's time Bush answered some questions about it.
Clinton had to face the music. Let Bush face it, too. Maybe he'll play the piano as well.
Mark about corruption in Congress: Since most of the recent (2000-2006) votes were basically along party lines why would anyone want to bribe the minority party ? Wouldn't this be counter-productive ?
CORRECTION:
I asserted earlier that Dick Cheney had stated "Simply stated there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons" on MTP on AUG 27 2002 - unfortunately that was the date the article was written
to clarify and open the eyes of the blogger who
is trying to cloud the truth by showing this statement as untrue I am adding a link below to the statement
please notice where this link is coming from...
yes
THE WHITE HOUSE. GOV
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2002/08/20020826.html
It's about 3/4 of the way down.
All of your assertions are simply opinions - mine are documented facts.
Go climb back into your hole. Me, I'm gonna keep searching for the truth irregardless of party affiliation.
Fat Jack a war hero!!!!! what a joke...he admitted he got his medals dishonestly..
As someone said...Clinton trails dishonesty like a plume of bad cologne...well, Murtha is a close second.
Sees,
You really need another moniker...I demonstrated, conclusively, that Walcrowe has it wrong...
Me, I'm gonna keep searching for the truth irregardless of party affiliation.
First, you may try searching for a dictionary. There's no such word as "irregardless." However, you can find "moron" in the dictionary. Look it up. You'll find a picture of yourself...
Following are excerpts from a speech yesterday August 26, 2002 by Vice President Dick Cheney to a national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction;"
Change a few key words, the location of the statement, then insist you're telling the truth.
Hypocracy, thy name is liberal!
Walcrowe,
Vice President Cheney has appeared on MTP and mentioned Iraq/Saddam/WMD pre-liberation thusly:
September 16, 2001:
December 9, 2001:
March 24, 2002:
And then there was the March 16, 2003 Meet the Press interview which was all about Iraq - a transcript can be found here:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.html
And that, Walcrowe, is it - Vice President Cheney NEVER went on Meet the Press (or anywhere else, for that matter) and said, "Simply stated there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons."
You are believing a lie about the Vice President - and all of the rest of your "evidence" is outright lies, or gross distortions of the truth.
Rathaven: If the verbosity of the critics to the plan is your indication of opposition; I’ll take the silence of the remaining 97%-98% as approval.
Here's the thing... Murtha has been the centerpoint of opposition to Bush's strategy in Iraq for well over a year now. In that time he has been characterized by various pundits and politicians (and numerous times on this web site) as a stark, raving lunatic.
So... is he a lunatic? At the time Murtha first expressed opposition to Bush's strategy in Iraq, and has said many times since, "nobody talks to people in the Pentagon more than I do." So if that weren't true, and especially if what he portrayed as their consensus opinion weren't true, you'd think he'd have a big, bold target on his back. Someone at some time would have taken it upon themselves to expose his dishonesty. Yet in all that time, (again, as far as I know) no high-placed military commander has criticized him on any level, with one exception: Gen. Pace, said Murtha shouldn't be saying that he wouldn't enlist, given the present circumstances. Fair enough, I think. But other than that... nothing but crickets from the military brass.
Doesn't that make you wonder? It does me. And if silence equals approval... there you go. But then again, I think it's absurd to equate silence with approval. I don't know what your experience is like, but my experience with military brass is... it doesn't work that way. They usually have to be pretty pissed off to speak out in public.
Murtha was certainly then, and is still now to some extent, an enigma to me. He talks in almost hopelessly broad strokes, often heatedly, and in a way that makes him sound downright silly at times. But at the same time it should be kept in mind that soon after Murtha initially announced his opposition to Bush's strategy in Iraq back in Nov 2005, none other than Fred Kagan (one of the primary architects of the current surge strategy) came to his defense. By the way, Kagan cites in his article another by Korb and Katulis, which he says fleshes out what Murtha means better than anything Murtha has said publicly. I'm inclined to agree. It also reads like a rough draft of one aspect of the Baker/Hamilton ISG report that came out about a year later.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Murtha never talks about his contacts within the Pentagon. In fact, I've never heard him say anything like, "one guy I talked to said..." Not concerning policy anyway. As far as I know, he has never individualized the source of any comment he has passed on even to that extent. So it's impossible to say how many in the Pentagon agree with him, or on what level. The only exception is a conversation he had with Gen Abizaid, which came to light only because Abizaid mentioned it to Bob Woodward. That was the one where Woodward claimed (later confirmed by both Abizaid and Murtha) that Abizaid held up his thumb and index finger a quarter of an inch apart and said to Murtha, "you and I are this close".
Now, all that makes it sound like I support Murtha. The fact is, I support Bush's surge plan -- but only insofar as he manages to fulfill all its aspects. And he hasn't done that yet. To borrow a phrase from Gen. Petraeus, the Iraqi clock is ticking more slowly than the Washington clock. And if Bush doesn't figure out a way to make the Iraqi clock tick faster, he is in trouble. Not only him, but the GOP in general. If he does, then the Dems could be in trouble. Either way, I don't think the Dems will pull the plug. But that's a whole other topic.
We can go back and forth, but the simple truth is this administration led us to believe that Iraq was an imminent threat that needed to be dealt with immediately.
They also had half the nation believing that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, and that he was working with Al Qaida.
You can deny this, or show how they used different language here and there, but no matter how you slice it they rammed this war down our throat through fear mongering and most of us ate it up.
Even I fell for the famous "16 words" in the SotU.
The biggest problem I have is how most of you defending this administration are probably sitting all cozy at your computer and are rubbing your hands together in blood lust over Iraq when Bin Laden is still out there. Or worse, dead and never to be found thus a powerful recruitment tool for terror.
We need to find BIN LADEN. Bring HIM to justice.
The Iraq war is going to haunt us for generations. I lost my father in Vietnam. I cannot tell you how painful it is... not that you care because you believe I'm some soulless American hating liberal.
You guys simply labeled me without knowing the facts. Typical.
I was born & raised a Republican. Hell, I setup a rally for Reagan. I love this country and am furious with this current administration. Not because it's Republican. Not because it's Conservative. But, because it's Incompetent.
There are over 3300 Americans dead. How many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons or daughters does that effect???
Do you even care??? I doubt it. Why? because your loyalty to your party trumps your loyalty to this country.
We both think we're right. Only history will show if one of us led to the falling of a great nation.
God help us all.
You really need another moniker...I demonstrated, conclusively, that Walcrowe has it wrong...
No, Noonan, you demonstrated for the umpteenth time that you would much rather deny reality (for the sake of defending your beloved administration) than acknowledge it. Walcrowe got it right, and he provided evidence to support it. You made a laughable attempt at rebuttal and then call that "demostracting, conclusively" that he is wrong and you are right. Why do you cling to false reality so much, Noonan? What do you think you're going to get out of it? Is it just that ignorance is bliss for you?
Posted by: Mark Noonan at April 30, 2007 01:02 PM
Great post, Mark Noonan!
Walcrowe,
Huh? We can go back and forth? No, we can't - Vice President Cheney never said what you accused him of saying...for your own sake, just admit that, at least to yourself...I won't ask you to come here and confess that you were duped (though that would actually be good for you if you were to show that sort of moral courage).
As an aside - those 16 words in the SOTU? 100% accurate - as you would know, if you actually went past the anti-Bush website and looked at the original source documents.
Sees,
I would say that you are a hopeless case, but despair is a sin...so, I'll just pray for you.
Actually, the White House has said that the 16 words in the SotU were wrong, and have retracted them. Unfortunately retractions never get the news that the statements themselves get.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm
And here is part of the dance around in retracting the 16 words. Again, in typical politico mumbo jumbo nothing is answered concretely as to blame, but the White House DID retract the 16 words...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/
20030714-11.html
Again, this is from the White House itself.
The date of the above link is just after the SotU - since then it's been additionally confirmed that the CIA pulled the statement twice before, and that they had debunked the Niger Docs as forgeries.
This is not partisan trickery. Just look it up. But make sure your sources are not Fox News or DailyKOS or their ilk. Just search for the truth through the whitehouse.gov site or statements from their own mouths via youtube etc.
FACT: Niger Docs were fake.
FACT: The CIA debunked them before the SotU
FACT: White House retracted its statement
Whether this is intentional would fall into partisan beliefs.
But no matter how you slice it these IMPORTANT words were FALSE and helped lead our country into war.
This isn't opinion. It isn't hard to find the truth. Just be careful where you look for it. If you spend all your time reading DailyKOS, Huffington post, or moveon.org wouldn't you think you'd have a slanted truth shoved at you? Why wouldn't that be any different if you were looking at far right sites for the truth?
I'm not hurt by your words, or offended. I'm just disappointed that we've turned our political parties into sports teams where we cheer when they've gotten away with a bad call.
This is about my country. Not my party. I'm proud of my beliefs, and I'll still probably vote Republican in 2008, but I'll also breathe a sigh of relief that this corrupt administration is no longer in power.
Yes, better you pray than educate yourself and submit to reality, Noonan. That certainly explains a lot.
Perfect example of Noonan's refusal to accept facts. He claims that the 16 words are true, when even his Dear Leader has retracted them. He gives no sources, just waits for the second-tier sheep to come in and cosign him. Real big-thinkers like "navydad" and "LibsIHate" and that MENSA "Jeremiah" These are the people Mark and Matt will count on to miss a trailer payment and buy their book. It's all so sad.
Let me pre-empt Mark...
Post deleted - far too much veracity.