June 09, 2008
Depends on your definition of "a lie"
All over town this weekend, on overpasses and chainlink fences along the freeway there were hand-lettered signs "The war is a lie." and "Bush Lied". I've been seeing them for months now, but it seems there was a concerted effort to add new signs this weekend, as there were more signs in the afternoon than in the morning along the same freeways.
These signs are highly amusing to me. Along with their partners "Impeach!" Impeach who? Yo Momma? Seriously. Finish your thought, ADHD child. Of course, some of the signs DO say Impeach Bush, but I have to ask, why? I mean, the man has about 6 months left in his term. How much of that time is actually useful political time? ZERO. And how long would it take to go through an impeachment process? Probably more time than he has left as President. Get off it.
But the "lie" meme perseverates. And congress commissioned a study of the available intelligence to determine whether the President actually lied. Senator John D Rockefeller led the Select Committee on Intelligence in this investigation. In a statement Thursday, the senator announced, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent[.]"
But is that really what the report says? Not really. Clearly the information at hand was overinterpreted, aka SPUN, into the message that the Bush administration wanted to present. Probably in an effort to convince the American people to get behind the push to war in Iraq.
However, the report finds that in many circumstances, and on a variety of subjects, the President's (and other administration officials') statements on the war "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates." These subjects include Iraq's nuclear weapons program, biological and chemical weapons capability, overall WMD capability, and support for AQ terrorists.
Which to me, raises a very important question, namely, How did our intelligence get so far off base? Did our operatives buy into the lies that scientists and supervisors were passing on to the regime? Or did the CIA et al. deliberately mislead both the Clinton and Bush administrations? Where is the actual failure, then? If the President is essentially parroting what the intelligence community tells them is fact?
So then what can we do with this knowledge, that our intelligence is, at best, flawed? How do we use it to plan and implement strategies for dealing with our enemies and their plots to thwart us? Knowing that such critical intelligence may be wrong makes it extremely difficult to build support for military endeavors, regardless of the import to national security.
Which brings me back to lying. Which is the lie then, Sen. Rockefeller's statement that the report finds that "Bush Lied", or the actual text of the report which shows that the intelligence community "lied" and Bush and Co. believed them?
h/t Babalu
Very logical train of thought... something I'm not capable of lately. ;)
I know what you mean about the intelligence... but I still believe that it was not wrong. Hussein had plenty of time to disperse/bury, etc... they have found huge weapons caches buried in the desert... and large quantities of ricin.
How much is enough I guess is what I'm asking...
That's a damn good point. How much is enough to count as "enough"?
Posted by: caltechgirl at June 9, 2008 01:38 PMsorry to go way off topic, but please consider yourself tagged
They also found a number (several hundred, as I recall) chemical warheads. And last I checked, that is not equal to zero.
Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at June 10, 2008 08:32 AMThink it could it have anything to do with the lack of human intel that former Pres. Clinton got rid of?
Posted by: NAVY CPO at June 11, 2008 10:29 AMWell the sad truth is the CIA wasn't wrong, and that will never be admitted. Once it was determined that it would be harder than thought, and libtards decided their VietNam syndrome had consumed their life once again, the way to lie was set, based upon 16 words in a SOTU speech that is absolutely 100% correct to this very day.
The key to understanding is in fact lies or as they so happily call it today "spin".
Ask yourself this, you surely ranted and raved over this endless news cycle during the Iraq war: " How did 300 tons of high grade weapons explosive, hdx.rdx and the like, some of which can be formed to compress a nuclear core to critical and incite the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion, simply DISAPPEAR right from under Bush' illegal occupation forces, the US military ?
We heard endlessly how it "wasn't guarded"... and.. that the nuclear research buildings alongside it DISAPPEARED AS WELL - and in fact were "systematically dismantled and moved by professionals who knew what they were doing".
Some of the HDX RDX N core better than C4 300 TONS, 600,000 pounds of explo were marked, as shown on xxxnews, with " drinking water " on their storage boxes...that came from the Oil for Food program....
In other words, not even the mighty UN, nor the CIA, not the USA, nor the David Kaye's have a clue what was there that is no longer....
We heard a few reports about "tagged" dual use and WMD productive items winding up in other nations "metal bins" - they wisely reported only those " apparently scrapped for metal weight"... but at the same time shrieked they were and are a tremendous danger to proliferation...
Well, why the heck did they leave them sitting in Iraq in the first place then, even if they had their glorious UN tags on em ? LOL
Look, 300 tons of WMD explosive disappeared. It took 1 pound to bring down the Lockerbie flight ...
No, it's not sexy WMD, like a nuke, but oh well...
In the edn the weapons inspector himself said " Invest in a digging company, it will take 100 years to dig up what Saddam has had buried in the sands of Iraq... ( that was David KAYE WHEN ASKED WHAT THEY COULD HAVE MISSED ).
It appears the entire US newspew and even the whole government has yet to yank their heads out of their own you know what's, but that's not unusual, it appears to be a requirement for reporting or speaking that they must tell a lie, especially when it's the all important 20/20 finger pointing shift the imaginary blame game, created by any of the various elements of spew involved in respewing the spew with the different spray pattern.
