If Bush is a liar...

So is Ted Kennedy

(assorted quotes from one of his speeches, September 27, 2002.)

"Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.

We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Indeed, in launching a war against Iraq now, the United States may precipitate the very threat that we are intent on preventing -- weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. If Saddam's regime and his very survival are threatened, then his view of his interests may be profoundly altered: He may decide he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction himself or by sharing them with terrorists

But there is again no persuasive evidence that air strikes alone over the course of several days will incapacitate Saddam and destroy his weapons of mass destruction

Nor can we rule out the possibility that Saddam would assault American forces with chemical or biological weapons. Despite advances in protecting our troops, we do not yet have the capability to safeguard all of them.

Clearly we must halt Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction."

http://kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/02/09/2002927718.html

Why does the media single out Bush?

Cuse he's president.

Which makes him an easy target for everything.

Some people have made up their minds that Bush = Evil, and no new facts (even if they found a full fledged suitcase A-Bomb in Baghdad) will change that. That's not being objective, that's just stupid.

Yea, mass media is biased. (Wow, what a realization. )

If the current administration is deceitful, why are we finding out the information we are now? Why not "plant" weapons in Iraq and say we've found them? (Of course, if we found them, that's what the people who have already made up their minds will say, before they have any proof of it.)

Ukranian authorities say that aprroximately 100 'suitcase nukes' are missing from their formal arsenal. Andd an Arab newspaper just reported that Al Queda has a certain number of such weapons it is waiting to use.

I aint gonna look up the references for this. It was just reported within the last few days, so it shouldnt be hard to find.

Hmmm...

Maybe I should buy that NBC suit i saw pn Ebay?

(NBC == Nuclear, Chemical, Biological)

The reason the Libyans came clean and gave up their nuke program is that they are certain that a nuclear device will be detonated in the US sometime quite soon. They don't want to be a target of retribution

And? Newsflash -- they're politicians.. of course they're full of sh*t, it's in their job description...

But heres something to ponder on the tree of woe: Would that argument have flown with my parents? 'If I'm a liar so is my sister....' probably not.

Theres also the the point that Kennedy isn't running the show and probably never will..

And of course that two wrongs don't make something right.

From: someone

Why does the media single out Bush?

Because he is the figurehead... because ultimately he's the one that got on the sqwawk box and told us all how it was gonna be and why...

Also the fact that trainwrecks are 'newsworthy' -- in the TV biz theres a charming little saying that gets bandied around a lot -- 'if it bleeds, it leads'. Thats what people want to see, and thats what they get.

Siggy.

As far as I know, Kennedy hasn't started any preemptive wars (a first in the entire history of this country) based on complete lies at worst, or a complete failure of intelligence at best. Uhhhh... OOPS! Kennedy also didn't blatantly manipulate the pain of 9/11 by exaggerating spurious intelligence in order to frighten the populace to gain support for his invasion agenda, which predated 9/11. Bush's actions have killed tens of thousands, the vast majority of which were innocent people. How many has Kennedy killed? For the record I don't like Kennedy much. If Bush didn't lie, he made some of the worst decisions of any president in history.

Personally, I think he's a liar. Considering Powell and other high ranking officials made remarks four months prior to 9/11 stating that there was no evidence at all that Iraq was still trying to develop WMD and that the sanctions were keeping him nicely contained. So what startling new piece of evidence did they find in that four months? None. 9/11 happened and they opportunisticly milked it for all it was worth.

Compared to some of the military actions we have been in, such as the 1848 war with Mexico, a blatant land grab, totally unprovoked and fought mainly because Mexico had made slavery illegal, or our other interventions in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, etc etc, this war was at least dealing with a perceived threat. When the 3 megaton bomb goes boom in Dundalk, or Savannah or San Diego, Kennedy will be out there wanting to know why more precautions weren't taken.

I dont see what all the big fuss is about the war. IMHO you shouldnt need a big fancy reason to go to war.
Wars used to be started for one heck of a lot less than this. Say, because they were the "infidels", or because you wanted some more land.
The worse thing about democracy is that it empowers people to become insufferable whiners. More people died in car crashes than in the war against iraq, but you dont see anyone questioning the president about whats being done to prevent further car crashes.
Saddam was an evil dictator who rose to power through murder and stayed in power through murder. No one should need an excuse to get rid of him, in fact I think it should be god damn MANDATORY for the UN to remove people like him from the face of the earth.
We were under a fascist dictatorship from May 26th 1926 to April 25th 1974, and I'm sure we would be far better off now if you americans had helped us get rid of it sooner than we were able to overthrow it ourselves.

A lot of good things could also be said for Salazar's 40 year rule of Portugal. At least everything he did, he did for the continued growth and stability of Portugal. When he took over, Portugal was deeply in debt and extremely backwards. Salazar paid off the debt, modernized Portuguese industry, strengthened the military, so that Portugal was able to maintain their overseas colonies long after the other European nations had lost their own. More importantly, he avoided a civil war like that of Spain and steered a clear and profitable course of neutrality during WW2, all the while selling minerals and raw materials to both Germany and England and renting the Azores to the allies for a huge profit. After the war, the continued strength of the Portuguese military through the 1950's led to very cheap resources from the colonies. If all of this came at the course of a huge secret police force and grinding poverty in some of the colonies, at least Portugal was spared rebuilding your entire infrastructure, like so many other countries.

Thanks Eggy for an objective reminder of how the world really works.

I don't know where this concept got started that American has never "started" a war. They didn't teach that when *I* was in high school, so it must be an invention of Hollywood.

We Americans are of two minds, for policy we have an incredibly short attention span, for partisan politics we have infinite memory.

9/11 may have been a "wake-up call", but for many here the solution seems to be to just reach over and hit the snooze button. I see no prospect of that changing either.

Chip, I don't mean to flame, but didn't you read my first post? Kennedy supported the war... Whether or not he had the power to initiate it on is own is irrelevant (I'm pretty sure Bush didn't, though), judging from his words, he would have done the same thing as president. Unless he was just lieing for his own political gain? (heh)

"But there is again no persuasive evidence that air strikes alone over the course of several days will incapacitate Saddam and destroy his weapons of mass destruction."

And so on...

Did he say this and then vote "no" for regime change in Iraq? What I've read says he voted yes, so basically yeah he did help start a preemptive war.

I tire of the "well, that's because they're politicians" argument being used to justify lieing and 180 degree flip-flopping on issues for political gain. If you're going to hang one politician for it, you'd better be willing to hang them all. Double standards are not good. I won't defend Republicans or Independants' entirely politically-motivated actions (and to the best of my knowledge, I haven't), but I also expect the Democrats to be attacked equally. Is this wrong to ask for?

No, being a politician does not give you the right to lie and change your (so-called) views at whim. (Well it does allow this, but it shouldn't.) The fact that Bush is a bigger target than Kennedy excuses nothing, Kennedy is one of the "figureheads" of the entire Democratic party. This isn't news?

Most of the Democrats bent over and voted to support the war Garoad. They buckled under the same paranoia, and the same fear of being viewed as "unpatriotic" by their constuents as everyone else, with few exceptions. But using that as an argument to justify what we did is specious. It's the old "but all the other kids were doing it" argument. That doesn't somehow make it okay. Neither do all the past unsavory things this country has done (like helping to install the Taliban and Hussein in the first place).

Eggy, your car accidents analogy is a good one, but it's misplaced. I've used it myself, but in a different way. More people died in car accidents on American highways in the same month as the trade towers went down. On the list of things that kill people, terrorism has to be somewhere down at the bottom of the list. Yes it's a problem. Yes it needs to be dealt with, but currently it's not even serious competition to falling down in your bathtub. Sorry, but I object to the leader of my country trying to justify invading two countries (which my tax dollars get to pay to rebuild... our defecit is somewhere around $35000 per American currently) based on nothing but paranoia and half truths and spin.

I do think the world community should prevent people like Hussein from staying in power... but that's a whole lot different than the US taking unilateral action against the wishes of the majority of people in the world. We're supposed to be all about democracy, but I guess that only applies within our own borders. Apparently the opinions of US citizens are somehow worth a lot more than anyone else's, especially if you're French. That kind of arrogance makes me ashamed of my country, and the fact that we've always been that way doesn't make me just shrug my shoulders and accept it.

When I rant about Bush a lot of you think I'm ranting pro-democrat. I'm not. I'm just a Bush hater. What I think of the rest of his ilk is irrelevant. I seriously don't understand how people can continue to support Bush. It boggles my mind.

From: someone

No, being a politician does not give you the right to lie and change your (so-called) views at whim. (Well it does allow this, but it shouldn't.) The fact that Bush is a bigger target than Kennedy excuses nothing, Kennedy is one of the "figureheads" of the entire Democratic party. This isn't news?

No, it doesn't give you a right to lie -- and I never said it did. I did imply that it should be expected, and that when they do it should come as absolutely no suprise.

Is that news? Not really -- politician bullsh*ts, news at 11... hardly an awe inspiring headline, especially in ratings.

President caught out in some bullsh*t, yeah moderately more newsworthy -- and I don't think this is a Republicrat/Democrican issue either - the media was all over Clinton like fur on a weasle for his 'indiscretion'..

Honestly - who can forget that soundbite? "I did not have sexual relations.....'

I could hardly call the TV News industry 'liberal' -- more 'opportunist', and working in it I can honestly say that nothing quite encapsulated it better than Hunter S. Thompsons Quote:

"The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs."

Well, David, that's the whole point of fascism. The very definition of fascism encompasses an extreme-right-wing government that merges state and business leadership, focusing on economic growth to the detriment of civil liberties. The escudo was certainly worth one heck of a lot more during the dictatorship.
But what was the cost? And who were the ones to profit from it?
Portugal, as any fascist regime, was very deeply divided.
People STARVED in *continental* Portugal (heck, even in Lisbon), and dressed in rags. One of the reasons why I'm so fat is because our live-in maid had come from a place where everyone starved to death and so she fed me three lunches and instilled in me the habit of overeating from the cradle.
One could also come up with a lot of similar bright sides to the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, or Ceausescu, but if you were the one whose family was sent to the gas chambers by Hitler, or whose friend was put in the Caxias fort by Salazar's political police, where they stuck needles in your testicles and ran considerable voltage through them, I'm sure you would happily ignore these bright sides in exchange for the basic freedoms we enjoy in the modern democratic world.
So what if Spain went through a civl war? They are certainly a lot better off than we are. Portugal is STILL a backwards country, and our economy is crap.
As for the colonies, we should never have had them in the first place. The current state of things was brought upon precisely by imperialism and colonialism. We of the "western world" took over people's land, set arbitrary boundaries, completely ignoring the people who lived there, their history and ethnicity, and then suddenly left, creating a power vaccuum that lead to 964185 petty dictators and their military coups.
Which is why there's so many wars and so many people starving today.

Can one really compare car accidents or falling down in your tub with intentional acts of aggression? Whether justified or not? Whether instigated by terrorists or heads of state?

Are we doing enough to try to prevent automobile accidents? The national total for traffic deaths as of 2002 is down approximately 4,000 from 1998. (Note that the 55 mph speed limit has been done away with on most of the interstate system, and nearly altogether in some states. Also note there are more drivers on the road today due to population increases and more senior citizen drivers on the road). Seat belt usage is up in most states, and we collectively spend billions (private and public, i.e., AAA, NTSB, MADD etc.) on the auto accident problem. The federal govt. mandates future safety regulations that auto manufacturers must be complicit with in *X* amount of time. Strides in the right direction?

I guess what I am driving at here is that accidents are a somewhat unavoidable (while unfortunate) part of life, due to a choice of transportation with inherent risks, just as driving a Prairie Schooner 1000's of miles across the US was in it's day. Can the same be said for intentional bloodshed, such as flying a jetliner at max throttle into a huge structure full of people? Or a pre-emptive invasion of another country? Regardless of one's cause?

Yes, I think you can. The Iraq invasion was framed as a way of dealing with a threat to the safety of the American public so anything that's a threat to life and limb is open for comparison. Is a life lost in a building that a terrorist crashed a plane into somehow worth more than one lost in less spectacular fashion? We're talking about statistics and safety, not emotion and retribution or revenge. It you only look at the numbers for what kills people it seems to me that our reaction in some cases is way over the top. There's not much political gain to be had running on a traffic safety platform. There's lots to be gained running on an "us versus them, good versus evil" platform. It's easy for politicians to manipulate fear when it's something uncommon and frightening. It's a lot harder when it's a risk we've learned to take for granted. But strip away the emotion from the equation and it doesn't add up at all.

Actually, removing the 55mph cap on interstates has signifacantly raised the number of deaths in automobile accidents. Why did they raise them. Because our typically selfish and demanding citizens demanded they be raised, and ignored the limits anyway. I would say,'good' let the idiots kill themselves if they didn't take so many innocents with them.

Take a look at this webpage

http://www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

Don't get me wrong, I love my country but this makes for some interesting reading.

It does add up Chip even when you strip away the emotion. Bush essentially launched a pre-emptive strike that possibly saved thousands if not tens of thousands of people. We don't know what a crazy man like Saddam would have done had he stayed in power another 30 years. He was a threat to his neighbors and therefore a threat to America (this is quite obvious). The Iraqi people have also been liberated. How many of them would Saddam have killed over the span of 3 decades?

I'm glad a Republican has been in power and not a Democrat. I bet you $L 1000 that Al Gore would not have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11. This war requires guts, boldness and decisiveness not endless second-guessing and diplomacy a la U.N. (which doesn't and can't enforce resolutions without US military might). Do you want more terrorists attacks on U.S. soil? Of course not so damn what the rest of the world thinks. The terrorists are counting on us listen to some of the older and "wiser" nations. These are the same nations who wouldn't mind to see America humbled again. Britain is not of them though; we love the Brits and Tony Blair--you're a great chap Tony!

Pepper, your attitude is exactly what I find so disturbing about this war and it's supposed justifications. According to your standards and the bush administration's, all it takes to justify invading a country unprovoked is the thought that they *might* do something bad to us some day. That's frightening as hell.

Rest of the world be damned? Nice.

I might ad that cars are a lot safer, the last ten years or so, in many cases due to airbags. Accident victims now typically suffer horrendous leg fractures in accidents which would have killed them instantly ten years ago. I imagine that REALLY stiff penalties for using a hand-held, eating or drinking while driving would cut traffic deaths even more.

Um, I was playing the somewhat tongue in cheek devil's advocate. Still, I'm sure Salazar meant well. Very few of us actually get up and say "I'm going to be evil today!"

Hmm, I think we should invade France.