You can't handle the truth!!!

"In addition, the use of the term "loony left" already implies the existence of a non-loony left."

Of course it does, and implies that you know the difference. It implies that yours is a non-loony "right" position.

You can name call all you like, but you can't deny practicing the art of mud slinging.


The proposition that the author offered - in the form of a rhetorical question - rested on presumptions that were either extremely ignorant or loony (or perhaps both, I guess). I addressed it, directly. You remain unable or unwilling to defend it.

You labeled it "loony" and left, rather than make a clear case so that any objective reader could come to that conclusion on their own.

You are the one who persists in pushing generalizations and personal accusations based on unjustified political assumptions and false characterizations.

Let's assume that is true. Let's assume I do nothing but push generalizations and personal accusations. Does it then make it right if you do it occasionally or at all? Would my wrong make you "right" when you do so because it is only occasionally?


When individuals wonder whether Saddam ever possessed WMDs, or, to give another example, whether there's really any proof that his regime was brutally oppressive and dangerous, they begin to seem loony. Such statements imply either extreme ignorance or a position so far out of the mainstream that they refuse to believe overwhelming evidence presented by major mass media, respected international organizations, etc.

The issue is not whether or not he EVER possessed WMD. No one denies that fact. The question is, was he in possession of enough WMD and with sufficient motivation to use them against the USA sufficient to justify pre-emptive military force against him? Bush claimed there was, yet to this point there is no CURRENT evidence to support that claim. We are there now, finding nothing and the Iraqi scientists are not saying anything to support our claims.

We could easily attack any country for what they did in the past on the basis of what they MIGHT do in the future with that policy.

You are continually twisting statements of mine or ignoring others in order to suit your pre-conceived notions.

Let's again assume that is all I do. Does this mean it is "right" for you to do so on occasion? Or are you telling us that you don't engage in this practice?

Indeed. If you think that, then why don't you stick to the facts instead of twisting statements and ignoring others while attacking me on the basis of your perception of my ideological affinities?

The facts are that Bush claimed evidence of WMD and intent to use them on the US. To this point, there is no evidence. That is twisting facts?

Are you denying that you have ideological affinities? Are you denying that you are not identifying with a particular wing, rather than a centrist position?

Very transparent, very annoying, very useless.

Prove the transparency. That you are annoyed is meaningless. That you find it useless is also meaningless.

If you really want to have a discussion, address statements with some minimal precision and stop engaging in the very practices that you decry.

My goal may not to be have a discussion, but rather to point out your bias, which I believe is not a sign of intelligence, and thus show people that although you may be a superior writer, that is not a sign of intelligence or being on the "right" side of an issue, nor trying to find the truth of an issue.

You continue to appear to me to be on a personal vendetta against me. I guess I'm 777's preferred target this week.

We are both free to have our own point of view, to describe things as they appear to us.

Pretending to be in favor of "dispassionate or objective thinking" is not the same thing as arguing dispassionately or objectively. The practices of continually distorting or ignoring another individual's statements, then occasionally pausing to offer insults or charges based on pre-conceived notions and guilt by association, suggest that you are an obstinate individual who may have difficulty thinking clearly, possibly due to mental defect or lack of emotional self-control.

You are entitled to your conclusions, I of course am equally free to my conclusions and their expressions.

I still see your pot calling the kettle black.

You leave me in the position of wondering whether any further dialogue with you could be useful for any purpose.

Your choice. Why would I care? Why the need even to express it? If you come to that conclusion, simply ignore me. But to wonder aloud is childish. You certainly know by now that I do what I want, irrespective of someone else's opinions.

If you don't want, or can't handle constructive criticism from total strangers, don't post on anonymous message boards is the easy solution.
 
'Apocalypse Now' Music Fires Up U.S. Troops for Raid
Sat Jun 21, 7:25 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops psyched up on a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film "Apocalypse Now" before crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen on Saturday, as Shi'ite Muslims rallied against the U.S. occupation of Iraq (news - web sites).

With Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" still ringing in their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers rammed vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided houses in the western city of Ramadi after sunrise as part of a drive to quell a spate of attacks on U.S. forces.


A previously unknown group, calling itself the Iraqi National Front of Fedayeen, vowed to intensify assaults on U.S. troops until they leave Iraq.


A man with his face swathed in a red-and-white headscarf read the threat on a videotape received by Lebanon's LBC television. There was no way to verify its authenticity.


"If they want their soldiers to be safe, they must leave our pure land," the man said, disavowing any link to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). He was flanked by three masked men with weapons.


Iraqi assailants have killed 17 U.S. soldiers since major combat was declared over on May 1, three weeks after the fall of Baghdad ended 24 years of Saddam Hussein's iron rule.


U.S. officials blame the attacks on Saddam loyalists. Many Iraqis say the resistance is fueled by resentment at the occupation and the behavior of U.S. troops.


"The Americans are occupiers and aggressors," said Sayyid Ali, one of about 2,000 Shi'ites who protested outside the vast palace compound in Baghdad now used by Iraq's U.S. rulers.


"They were supposed to free us from the oppressor, now they are only occupying us," he said. "We want to form a national government. "We want freedom and justice."


SOUR PERCEPTIONS


The United States and Britain say their forces will stay put until they can restore security, revive the economy and arrange a transition to an elected, sovereign Iraqi government.


However, they have failed to find Saddam or his alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction which they cited as their main justification for going to war on March 20.


U.S. officials in Washington said the deposed president's captured former secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti had told interrogators Saddam and his two sons were alive and in Iraq.


They said intelligence agencies were not certain Mahmud Tikriti was telling the truth, but that U.S. Special Operations troops and paramilitary intelligence agents were on an intense hunt for the three.


Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said the issue of Saddam's fate needed to be resolved one way or another, because uncertainty emboldened supporters of the toppled regime.


"It gives them an ability to say Saddam is still alive, he's coming back, and we're coming back, and what that does is it disinclines people who might otherwise want to cooperate with us from cooperating with us," Bremer told reporters on a visit to neighboring Jordan.


President Bush (news - web sites), floating a new explanation for the failure to find banned weapons, said suspected arms sites had been looted as Saddam's government crumbled.


"For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

A U.S. treasury official attending a meeting organized by the World Economic Forum (news - web sites) in Jordan for political and business leaders, said world donors must provide aid as well as debt relief to Iraq for postwar reconstruction.

BOOTS AND ALL

Before Saturday's robust sweep through Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, soldiers of the First Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment psyched themselves up at a base nearby in a musical moment redolent of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film about the Vietnam war.

Hit-and-run strikes on U.S. troops have been concentrated in Sunni Muslim towns such as Ramadi west and north of Baghdad.

One unit of troops dragged half a dozen men from their homes as women wailed. They seized weapons and a computer disk.

Officers said they aimed to capture five men from the Fedayeen paramilitary force, which put up some of the fiercest resistance to U.S. troops during their invasion.

The raid was part of Operation Desert Scorpion, launched on June 15 to crack down on militants and befriend civilians by helping with aid and reconstruction projects.

A U.S. military spokesman said on Saturday that 90 Desert Scorpion raids had captured 540 people. (Additional reporting by Andrew Gray and Michael Georgy)
 
The Masters of Spin

Why the Bush administration is the most arrogant in memory


NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE


June 20 — The long, hot summer has begun in Iraq. American GIs are dying almost daily. So are Iraqis. But that hasn’t stopped President Bush from embarking on a fund-raising spree premised on his triumphal role as commander in chief. Who needs reality when you’ve got spin?

THE PRE-WAR spin was all about weapons of mass destruction and the price of U.S. inaction. Bush said we couldn’t afford to wait until there was a mushroom cloud. Critics who suspect the intelligence data about Saddam’s nuclear program was hyped are brushed aside like gnats on an elephant. Bush says they’re engaging in “revisionist history,” which is on a par with calling Watergate a third-rate burglary.

Bush wins the spin for now. The debate over weapons of mass destruction is an inside-the-Beltway story; it’s not resonating with the public. The bigger question is existential: do the gods punish hubris?

This is the most arrogant administration in memory. Every day brings another issue where a careful observer of the political scene cannot believe what’s happening. The latest outrage has the White House spinmeisters editing a report by the EPA on the status of the environment to omit mounting concern about climate change. The spinners have already stricken the phrase “global warming” in favor of the more benign “climate change.” The offending line declared, “Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.” In its place, the White House inserted a bunch of gobbledygook about how the “complexity of the Earth system” and various “interconnections” make it a challenge to render scientific judgments.

Howls from environmentalists go unanswered. The administration’s attitude is like the phone company before the breakup of AT&T when Lily Tomlin, the comedic actress, appeared on stage as a telephone operator telling irate customers, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Karl Rove, the grand wizard of spin, is a smart man with a historical perspective. He is a student of the American consciousness, and he knows that the American public is disengaged from politics. That’s the reality that makes voters today uniquely susceptible to such deceptive spin. Apocalyptic assertions by Bush and other administration officials in the months leading up to the war created the impression of such an imminent threat that it’s not surprising Americans got confused. One third of those questioned in a poll taken by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland believe that U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons in the recent war.

Most Americans have no idea who the Democratic candidates are, and Bush’s fund-raising blitz is designed to envelop his re-election in an aura of inevitability. It’s summer in Washington even though the dreary, wet weather feels like April. If by Labor Day, U.S. inspection teams haven’t found WMD and Iraq is looking like a quagmire, then the public might wake up and credibility could become a serious issue for Bush. As insurance against that outcome, Bush is shifting the political conversation to a looming confrontation with Iran, which will keep war alive as an issue for 2004. An uninformed public disengaged from politics and an administration that knows no shame are the ideal conditions for Bush to win a second term.

Democrats once hoped that a return to domestic issues, where they hold an advantage, would be Bush’s undoing. But the White House spin machine succeeds here, as well. Republicans who ordinarily deplore big government are cheering the potential expansion of Medicare to provide a prescription-drug benefit to senior citizens. Never mind that the Rube Goldberg scheme under discussion in Congress won’t go into effect until 2006 or that millions of seniors would pay more for their drugs with the benefit than they currently do without it, Bush will strut like the greatest savior of seniors since FDR brought us Social Security.

The House just voted to repeal the estate tax permanently, a windfall for trust-fund kids that was sold on the false premise that it saves farm families from destitution at the hands of the IRS. Reporters in the farm belt failed to find a farmer with a hardship story that would illustrate the GOP’s argument. Even the American Farm Bureau Federation said it couldn’t cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes. The House votes tax breaks for millionaires while children of low-income families and military families get left behind.

One of the key strategies of the GOP is to portray Democratic critics as un-American. Remember the anonymous Bush strategist quoted some months ago suggesting Sen. John Kerry looks French. There will be two GOP campaigns: the flag-waving one on the surface that Bush is involved with, and then the sub-rosa campaign waged by surrogates that will be less gentlemanly. A very strong point in Bush’s favor is that there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil. He’s kept us safe, and he’s kept us fearful, a potent combination that Democrats haven’t yet figured how to crack.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

This is the most arrogant administration in memory.
More...
When the political parties are set aside, when the issues of right and wrong are argued into the ground and mostly forgotten as we move on to the latest event to capture our attention, when Afghanistan and Iraq and Saddam and Osama (remember him? it's been close to 2 years) are but distant memories, this visceral comment will still resonate with me. I've lived thru more administrations and presidential campaigns than I care to discuss, and thru all of them, both Republican and Democrat, I've seen lies, I've seen corruption, I've seen incompetence, and I've seen true humanity. But none have been as thoroughly and consistently arrogant as this one.... not even close.
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

The Masters of Spin

Why the Bush administration is the most arrogant in memory


... .
This is the most arrogant administration in memory. Every day brings another issue where a careful observer of the political scene cannot believe what’s happening. The latest outrage has the White House spinmeisters editing a report by the EPA on the status of the environment to omit mounting concern about climate change. The spinners have already stricken the phrase “global warming” in favor of the more benign “climate change.” The offending line declared, “Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.” In its place, the White House inserted a bunch of gobbledygook about how the “complexity of the Earth system” and various “interconnections” make it a challenge to render scientific judgments.

Howls from environmentalists go unanswered. The administration’s attitude is like the phone company before the breakup of AT&T when Lily Tomlin, the comedic actress, appeared on stage as a telephone operator telling irate customers, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

... .

One of the key strategies of the GOP is to portray Democratic critics as un-American. Remember the anonymous Bush strategist quoted some months ago suggesting Sen. John Kerry looks French. There will be two GOP campaigns: the flag-waving one on the surface that Bush is involved with, and then the sub-rosa campaign waged by surrogates that will be less gentlemanly. A very strong point in Bush’s favor is that there hasn’t been another attack on U.S. soil. He’s kept us safe, and he’s kept us fearful, a potent combination that Democrats haven’t yet figured how to crack.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
More...

Optional,

You just posted two lengthy excerpts on the global warming thread that showed there in fact is considerable scientific disagreement over this issue and that the EPA staff draft was at best overwrought and at worst just scare mongering propaganda. But now Bush is somehow arrogant because they edit the report, whcih they didn't have to produce at all, to make it accurate?

And how ironic is it that Bush is criticized for keeping us safe and fearful? We're supposed to be terrified of temperatures maybe rising a half degree in a hundred years, but Iran and N. Korea having nuclear weapons is nothing to worry about? I know one thing: I'd feel a whole lot more fearful if any of the Dem. candidates were president. For good reason.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:



Optional,

You just posted two lengthy excerpts on the global warming thread that showed there in fact is considerable scientific disagreement over this issue and that the EPA staff draft was at best overwrought and at worst just scare mongering propaganda. But now Bush is somehow arrogant because they edit the report, which they didn't have to produce at all, to make it accurate?

And how ironic is it that Bush is criticized for keeping us safe and fearful? We're supposed to be terrified of temperatures maybe rising a half degree in a hundred years, but Iran and N. Korea having nuclear weapons is nothing to worry about? I know one thing: I'd feel a whole lot more fearful if any of the Dem. candidates were president. For good reason.
More...

I don't equate the the articles on global warming and the article on Bush.

I think the American people should be aware that global warming is a possibility. My tendency is to think that pumping pollutants into the atmosphere, reducing the number of rain forests, etc. will have an impact on our planet. So I do think we need to keep it in our awareness.

The White House responded to the studies with a study of their own, funded in part by the oil companies, that of course came out with an opinion that supported maintaining the status quo.

Since we really don't know, my point is that we should err on the side of caution. Not to go whole hog in one direction or another, but continue to keep a close eye on the situation, and not summarily dismiss any results that come along one way or another.

I do think the administration was heavy handed in their tactics, and I am not sure why the OMB was involved in the decision, apart from the cost issues. Certainly they were not brought in to evaluate the science of it.

Now, when it comes to politicians, I am of the opinion that the party in power, Republican or Democrat, has their own agenda in mind.

I think that it is the duty of the press to keep the skeptical eyes open of the citizens. Let the leaders know that they are indeed being watched carefully.

I have no evidence to support a conclusion on the Bush administration, however, I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling about their tactics.

Some see their tactics as a sign of strength, other perceive it as heavy handed and shrouded in secrecy, keeping the tone of fear alive. It is true that it is politically advantageous to keep the citizens fearful, as it is easier to control people who are fearful.

In the end, I have to balance what fact I can find, with my gut reactions. I trust my gut to a great extent. My gut tells me that there is more than meets the eye going on with this administration. I may be proven wrong. We shall see.

As long as they know they are being evaluated by intelligence, and not fear, I am comfortable with that. I do believe in the political process, and in time, just like the markets, imbalances are corrected.

Some people think if you criticize the administration that you must automatically be a liberal, or unpatriotic. Nonsense.

I consider myself wanting what is in the best interest of the country, not in the best interest of a political party. I have no affiliation with any party, or any extremist thought when it comes to politics, beyond the extreme belief that we need transparency in government.

I have an extremely low opinion of Clinton, and think he personally wrecked the Democrat party for many years to come. He put himself and his own needs and wants over what was in the best interest of the country, and his own party.

Democrats need to fully understand this, and they don't. That is their weakness.

My own opinion right now is that things will probably have to get worse before they get much better. Leadership tends to come forth at times of crisis.

We shall see.

In the meantime, as much heat as possible needs to be kept on the leaders in Washington, to let them know we are always watching with our minds open yet careful at the same time.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

I'm all for watching what politicians do carefully. I think the media deserve equal scrutiny, as the recent multiple scandals at the NY Times show.
More...

Like most of the other institutions in this country, the media is not beyond the influence of human nature.

I would look to the agenda however, and see if the goal that lead to the problems at the NYT were of a political nature, or simply a case of sloppy, lazy, and not doing the what the job required.

If the media is seen to be acting in a purely political manner beyond the editorial pages, and lying about material facts to advance their agenda, that is horrific in my estimation.

Fair and balanced? We can only hope. If we don't trust the media, nor the politicians, who is left to trust?
 
Report Cast Doubt on Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page A01


In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, President Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda.

A still-classified national intelligence report circulating within the Bush administration at the time, however, portrayed a far less clear picture about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda than the one presented by the president, according to U.S. intelligence analysts and congressional sources who have read the report.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which represented the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, contained cautionary language about Iraq's connections with al Qaeda and warnings about the reliability of conflicting reports by Iraqi defectors and captured al Qaeda members about the ties, the sources said.

"There has always been an internal argument within the intelligence community about the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," said a senior intelligence official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. "The NIE had alternative views."

Similar questions have been raised about Bush's statement in his State of the Union address last January that the British had reported Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa, which the president used to back up his assertion that Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. In that case, senior U.S. officials said, the CIA 10 months earlier sent a former senior American diplomat to visit Niger who reported that country's officials said they had not made any agreement to aid the sale of uranium to Iraq and indicated documents alleging that were forged. Details of that CIA Niger inquiry were not shared with the White House, although the agency succeeded in deleting that allegation from other administration statements.

Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that "go back a decade." He said "we've learned" that Iraq trained al Qaeda members "in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." Although the president offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the national intelligence document, sources said.

The presidential address crystallized the assertion that had been made by senior administration officials for months that the combination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, committed to attacking the United States posed a grave and imminent threat. Within four days, the House and Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution granting the president authority to go to war.

The handling of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda has come under increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with some leading Democrats charging that the administration exaggerated the case against Hussein by publicizing intelligence that supported its policy and keeping contradictory information under wraps. The House intelligence committee opened a closed-door review into the matter last week; its Senate counterpart is planning similar hearings. The Senate Armed Services Committee is also investigating the issue.

Bush has defended his handling of intelligence before the war, calling his critics "revisionist historians."

"The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons, and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed," Bush said in his weekly radio address yesterday. He vowed to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."

Questions about the reliability of the intelligence that Bush cited in his Cincinnati address were raised shortly after the speech by ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence and armed services panel. They pressed the CIA to declassify more of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate than a 28-page "white paper" on Iraq distributed on Capitol Hill on Oct. 4.

In one of the more notable statements made by the president, Bush said that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," and added: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."

Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq. The intelligence report had said that the Iraqi president might decide to give chemical or biological agents to terrorists, such as al Qaeda, for use against the United States only as a "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." And it said this would be an "extreme step" by Hussein.

These conclusions in the report were contained in a letter CIA Director George J. Tenet sent to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, the day of Bush's speech.

While Bush also spoke of Iraq and al Qaeda having had "high-level contacts that go back a decade," the president did not say -- as the classified intelligence report asserted -- that the contacts occurred in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, was living in Sudan and his organization was in its infancy. At the time, the report said, bin Laden and Hussein were united primarily by their common hostility to the Saudi Arabian monarchy, according to sources. Bush also did not refer to the report's conclusion that those early contacts had not led to any known continuing high-level relationships between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the sources said.

The president said some al Qaeda leaders had fled Afghanistan to Iraq and referred to one "very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." It was a reference to Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a Jordanian. U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents, the sources said.

As for Bush's claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and use of poisons and deadly gases, sources with knowledge of the classified intelligence estimate said the report's conclusion was that this had not been satisfactorily confirmed.

"We've learned," Bush said in his speech, "that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." But the president did not mention that when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had referred the previous month to such training, she had said the source was al Qaeda captives.

The CIA briefed congressional committees about the National Intelligence Estimate but did not deliver the classified version until the evening of Oct. 1, just before a Senate intelligence committee hearing the next day, congressional sources said. At that closed-door session, several senators raised questions about qualifying statements made in the report, which was circulated only among senior national security officials.

On Oct. 4, three days before the president's speech, at the urging of members of Congress, the CIA released its declassified excerpts from the intelligence report as a "white paper" on Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda links. The members wanted a public document to which they could refer during floor debates on the Iraq war resolution.

The white paper did contain passages that hinted at the intelligence community's lack of certitude about Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda ties, but it omitted some qualifiers contained in the classified version. It also did not include qualifiers made at the Oct. 2 hearing by an unidentified senior intelligence official who, during his testimony, challenged some of the administration's public statements on Iraq.

"Senator Graham felt that they declassified only things that supported their position and left classified what did not support that policy," said Bob Filippone, Graham's deputy chief of staff. Graham, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, opposed the war resolution.

When the white paper appeared, Graham and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence panel member and at that time chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked to have additional portions of the intelligence estimate as well as portions of the testimony at the Oct. 2 hearing made public.

On the day of Bush's speech, Tenet sent a letter to Graham with some of the additional information. The letter drew attention because it seemed to contradict Bush's statements that Hussein would give weapons to al Qaeda.

Tenet released a statement on Oct. 8 that said, "There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the president in his speech." He went on to say, however, that the chance that the Iraqi leader would turn weapons over to al Qaeda was "low, in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses" weapons of mass destruction.

On Oct. 9, the CIA sent a letter to Graham and Levin informing them that no additional portions of the intelligence report would be made public.


© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:



I consider myself wanting what is in the best interest of the country, not in the best interest of a political party. I have no affiliation with any party, or any extremist thought when it comes to politics, beyond the extreme belief that we need transparency in government.

I have an extremely low opinion of Clinton, and think he personally wrecked the Democrat party for many years to come. He put himself and his own needs and wants over what was in the best interest of the country, and his own party.

Democrats need to fully understand this, and they don't. That is their weakness.
More...

Beautifully said!!! KymerF called me "indecisive" and "nothing but middle of the road" for having the same outlook.

There is, IMHO, everything right with questioning the decisions of our leaders, and everything wrong with being completely dedicated to supporting every single decision, comment, policy, and word of ANYONE just because of their name, position, or political affiliation.

AAA said the
"left" consisted of: "NYTimes/hollywood/media/europacifist/antiUS/antiglobalization/envirowacko crowd".

Has there been a more sweeping generalization than this?
I really hope AAA was intending to be funny when he made the statement! 'Cause it really is funny, and it's too bad that these posts are so often such a poor medium of communication in so many ways. I don't know if AAA said it with a chuckle, a smile, a straight face, a tone of sarcasm or strong enthusiasm. Just words. And the words don't cut it sometimes.

I read the op/ed pages of the Times, and I see about equal time given to Maureen Dowd and William Safire. I read about outspoken "Hollywood/Media types" and I hear a little Susan Sarandon, a little Charlton Heston, a sprinkling of Mel Gibson, a dash of Rupert Murdoch, etc.

I am not exactly sure what the definitions are of "europacifists" or "antiglobalization/envirowako crowd"s are, (anti-US I can figure out), but I never really understood what Spiro Agnew meant when he called his opposition "nathering nabobs of negativism" either. I do know that Safire wrote the speech and the words though. And now he's busy at the NY Times.

I may not agree with 1% of what Rush Limbaugh says, but I will listen to him just to hear another perspective. When I do, I am convinced he doesn't really believe a good portion of what he says either. But it is great entertainment.

I listen to Bill O' Reilly, and I agree with a lot of what he says, and disagree with a lot of what he says.

I listen to Phil Donahue, and to me, he is the Bizarro World version of Rush. But the thing is, none of them can be completely right or completely wrong. To many topics. Too little information in a lot of cases to even make arguments. (Saddam's WMD's are such a great example....what do we really know?).

If this kind of thinking makes me "middle of the road and indecisive", than I fess up. I must be. But I prefer the term "open minded" (Though I admit to believing "when in doubt, vote against the Republican/Conservative":))

I never doubted, for example that Saddam had to go. But I never ever believed we needed to go about deposing him the way we did. I said this so many times. And gave my reasons and my alternatives. But still, Kymer thinks I am "indecisive".

Despite being called "indecisive", I am very convinced that this was an issue that should have been left up to me. We would have had the same results at a fraction of the dollar cost, and a fraction of the danger and a fraction of the casualties (on both sides).

How do I know this? Simple.....just like most of us, though I may be a bit dimmer than average on the intellectual scale, I am still a little smarter than Dubya. I believe I can be a lot more objective. I have no oil interests whatsoever, and my dad died a few years ago, so I have nothing to prove to him.

And a few other reasons, but why open another can of worms???

:):):)

Peace,
RS
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top