By doing his job, you mean “staying the course” and continuing on the way we have been with the largerst Iraqi & US casualities. Too funny Joe!
Don’t you mean “largerst” this year?? The “largerst” month in Iraq is about one-fourth to one-third of an average month’s casualty total in Vietnam after the troop levels were escalated during that conflict.
As far as being allowed to do the job, that means not being sequestered at unnecessary hearings being conducted by grandstanding senators and/or representatives who voted for the war before they voted against it.
Quote (Mr Soul @ Nov. 09 2006,09:46)
But I’ll never forget Rumsfeld’s greatest line:
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Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.
–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on looting in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, adding “stuff happens,” April 11, 2003
No Don - people are not free to do what they want & commit crimes, etc., etc., etc.
They are in this country. Haven’t you ever seen what they do in Detroit on Halloween or how they celebrate sports championships??
Also, is there a reason you’re ignoring the perspective of Rumsfeld’s comment? At the time of that quote, we were less than a month into the war and we had a priority of chasing down Saddam and the elements of his regime, not policing the general citizenry.
Well, ksdb, what I meant was that if we agree that the present course has led to poor results, and we agree that the only other alternative approach to invasion would also have led to poor results, then it sort of sounds like we shouldn’t have gone in in the first place.
Well, ksdb, what I meant was that if we agree that the present course has led to poor results, and we agree that the only other alternative approach to invasion would also have led to poor results, then it sort of sounds like we shouldn't have gone in in the first place.
I don't remember saying anything about poor results. I merely questioned the assumption that a larger scale invasion would have been more effective than Rumsfeld's strategery.
The alternative to no invasion was letting the status quo go unchecked. Reports have come out recently that Saddam was only about a year out from having nuclear weapons. True or not, leaving Saddam in power was not a good alternative.
Being the cynical, skeptical bastage that I am, I wouldn’t believe any of them. I’d have to go see for myself. Too many morons running around with hidden agendas in our government IMO. What’s a man to do?
Actually, I would kind of like to see those reports as well.
You may have to wait a while.
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Iraq’s nuclear program was terminated in 1991, at which point micrograms of enriched uranium had been produced from a single test gas centrifuge.
- Duelfer Report, September 30, 2004
The Bush admin was always quick to point out Saddam’s intention was to restart the programs. Big deal - wanting to restart them is very different than actually starting them.
The Duelfer Report showed that sanctions worked. They would have continued to work if we had let the inspectors finish their job. We could have dealt with Saddam over time but he was by no means an immediate or immenient threat, like Rumsfeld et al. tried to make him. Rumsfeld even tried to deny that he had ever said that but Russert caught in on Meet the Press.
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Iraq’s nuclear program, which in 1991 was well-advanced, “was decaying” by 2001, the official said, to the point where Iraq was – if it even could restart the program – "many years from a bomb.
Again, being the cynical turd that I am… another point about nuclear weapons. Despite the Hollyweird movies where the kid builds an A-Bomb in his bedroom, a useable nuclear weapon is extremely difficult to manufacture even IF you do have fissionable material available and enough fissionable material is THE hardest thing to come by. (Thank God!)
I was always more concerned about other types of WMD Hussein could have laid hands on. I mean the wack job DID gas the Kurds… but a nuclear weapon? I’d have a better chance of building one. (Ssshhh… don’t tell anybody!)
That’s not true - we had just put the weapons inspectors into Iraq and there were still sanctions, so Saddam was not unchecked.
Sanctions and weapons inspections were not going to prevent Saddam from covertly aiding terrorists. Saddam was not cooperating fully with weapons inspectors and the reports substantiate that.
Quote (Mr Soul @ Nov. 09 2006,11:37)
Please prove this because I don’t believe it’s true. Saddam was no where’s near close to having nuclear weapons & I can prove that in the WMD report.
New York Times story from Nov. 3:
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Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
You need to read this a little more carefully. The article is saying that in the 1990’s he may have been as little as a year away, but he abandoned the program in the 1990’s as the Deufler Report indicates.
There’s no doubt that we needed to keep pressure on Saddam, and Bush definitely did that; however, the war was a mistake.
The war wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. Rumsfeld would not have ‘resigned’ if the election went the other way.
All this talk about methods, troop strength and tactics is a waste of air. Every reason provided for the invasion itself has been shown to be bogus, including this garbage that Saddam was one year from producing WMD or constituting a real threat the US, or supplying weapons to terrorists for that matter. None of that is true. Why have all the stated reasons come up empty ? What is the real reason ? It is a reason that connot be stated directly to the American people, because the great majority of Americans would not support it. Rumsfeld may indeed have had stupid ideas about how to run an invasion in Iraq, but the bigger culpability is with those who directed him to implement it.
They had the means AND the motive to start an unnecessary war. What will it take for ksdb and his ilk to acknowledge the possibility that Bush/Cheney’s intentions in Iraq were not in the national interest, but actually in the interests of the industries they represent ?
Here is a question. If you knew that guaranteeing your supply of oil, would require subjugation and disenfranchisement of a massive number of people in another part of the world, including death, torture and removing thier ability to ‘pursue happiness’ (something you consider to be an inalienable right), would you go ahead and demand your oil anyway ? Or would you say, hold on, lets find another way ?
Here it is - Key Nuclear Findings - from the Duelfer Report:
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Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and signifi cance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date. • Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. • Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. Nevertheless, after 1991, Saddam did express his intent to retain the intellectual capital developed during the Iraqi Nuclear Program. Senior Iraqis—several of them from the Regime’s inner circle—told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once UN sanctions ended. • Saddam indicated that he would develop the weapons necessary to counter any Iranian threat. Initially, Saddam chose to conceal his nuclear program in its entirety, as he did with Iraq’s BW program. Aggressive UN inspections after Desert Storm forced Saddam to admit the existence of the program and destroy or surrender components of the program. In the wake of Desert Storm, Iraq took steps to conceal key elements of its program and to preserve what it could of the professional capabilities of its nuclear scientifi c community. • Baghdad undertook a variety of measures to conceal key elements of its nuclear program from successive UN inspectors, including specifi c direction by Saddam Husayn to hide and preserve documentation associated with Iraq’s nuclear program. • ISG, for example, uncovered two specifi c instances in which scientists involved in uranium enrichment kept documents and technology. Although apparently acting on their own, they did so with the belief and anticipation of resuming uranium enrichment efforts in the future. • Starting around 1992, in a bid to retain the intellectual core of the former weapons program, Baghdad transferred many nuclear scientists to related jobs in the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). The work undertaken by these scientists at the MIC helped them maintain their weapons knowledge base. As with other WMD areas, Saddam’s ambitions in the nuclear area were secondary to his prime objective of ending UN sanctions. • Iraq, especially after the defection of Husayn Kamil in 1995, sought to persuade the IAEA that Iraq had met the UN’s disarmament requirements so sanctions would be lifted. ISG found a limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program once sanctions were lifted. • The activities of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission sustained some talent and limited research with potential relevance to a reconstituted nuclear program.Specifi c projects, with signifi cant development, such as the efforts to build a rail gun and a copper vapor laser could have been useful in a future effort to restart a nuclear weapons program, but ISG found no indications of such purpose. As funding for the MIC and the IAEC increased after the introduction of the Oil-for- Food program, there was some growth in programs that involved former nuclear weapons scientists and engineers. • The Regime prevented scientists from the former nuclear weapons program from leaving either their jobs or Iraq. Moreover, in the late 1990s, personnel from both MIC and the IAEC received signifi cant pay raises in a bid to retain them, and the Regime undertook new investments in university research in a bid to ensure that Iraq retained technical knowledge.
Of course all that was in no way as bad as getting a BJ in the Oval Office…not even close. Right, Rush?
Selling nuclear technology to Kim Jong-il AND
"The Clinton administration will not challenge a lawsuit filed by a Saudi businessman who said the bombing last year of his pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was a “mistake” based on faulty intelligence data.
The administration also agreed to release $24 million in assets that the businessman, Saleh Idris, had deposited in U.S. banks.
The Aug. 20, 1998, cruise missile attack, which the White House claimed was in retaliation for terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, came three days after President Clinton’s appearance before a federal grand jury investigating his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Hours after his grand jury testimony,
Mr. Clinton made a dramatic address to the nation admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with the former White House intern."
Hey Midget - I guess the voters in Virginia spoke & my guy won! Ha, ha, ha! Not only did my guy win there but they won pretty much everywhere’s, for the total effect of repudiating the Republican agenda.
Of course all that was in no way as bad as getting a BJ in the Oval Office…not even close. Right, Rush?
Selling nuclear technology to Kim Jong-il AND
"The Clinton administration will not challenge a lawsuit filed by a Saudi businessman who said the bombing last year of his pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was a “mistake” based on faulty intelligence data.
The administration also agreed to release $24 million in assets that the businessman, Saleh Idris, had deposited in U.S. banks.
The Aug. 20, 1998, cruise missile attack, which the White House claimed was in retaliation for terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, came three days after President Clinton’s appearance before a federal grand jury investigating his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Hours after his grand jury testimony,
Mr. Clinton made a dramatic address to the nation admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with the former White House intern."
" I did not have sex with that woman??"
To try and cover-up a blow job. Amazing.
I’d have said, "Ok you got me!! 8^}
MHR
just more proof that both parties are just as corrupt – read animal farm, it will do you alot of good. pigs are pigs, whether they eat with forks, bomb iraq or get BJs.
