Just in case anyone was thinking of voting for Hillary...

[ChicosBailBonds]

Murf --

No on is jumping to conclusions but you.

Congress never voted for the war. Never. Not once. They voted to authorize the use of force as a means of political pressure. This was to be used after every available resource was spent attempting to negotiate. We did not negotiate. We attacked.

You continue to mention the intelligence data that everyone and their uncle has seen. I assume you've been reading up on the Tenet situation, where he calls the use of the "slam-dunk" term misguided and misused by this administration. Then there was the report declassified last year that said the Senate Intelligence committee repeatedly questioned the ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda even while the administration was spinning the tale publically to garner support for the war.

The entire Congress does not get a copy of all security reports; typically only the committees get the entire thing. Is it that implausible to think that a congressperson would hear all of the distortions -- Tenet says its a slam dunk, al-Qaeda and Saddam are cohorts -- and then vote for, as the bill states, a threat of force?

Now, the question as to should have Iraq ben invaded. Some day, yes. But not in leiu of fighting the real war (the one that can't be fought with guns). Saddam repeatedly tried to capture Zarqawi. I am not and will not defend him (he deserved a fate worse than death), but in this instance, the devil you know was better than the devil you don't. There will never be a end to the war on terror (put it right next to the war on drugs), but had we actually maintained course and thouroughly disrupted the terrorist networks, we would have been able to use some of our 2 trillion dollar war time spending on building good will. There is no détente here. We're locked in an endless war now.

Nathan, you're being a bit disingenious on the Tenet stuff.  Read his comments from yesterday and watch the interview tonight.  Hell, even uber liberal Arriana Huffington isn't buying his stuff.

As Tenet said on Monday, the CIA believed Saddam had WMD.  So did every other major agency in the world.  He totally kills the "Bush lied" ultra crap from the left.

Excerpt


But, later they revisit the "Bush lied" scenario with Tenet.

...Tenet refutes accusations that he knew the data was false.

"That's just repugnant to me, I would never let the secretary of state ... someone who I was very close to, who represented the United States of America, in front of the eyes of the world, go out there and make a false statement. Never," Tenet said.

..."It's really serious for someone to say the director and the deputy director, essentially, cooked the books to go make the case for war and didn't tell the secretary of state. There's no way on this God's green Earth that that would ever happen, none."

Well, there you have it. The Bush administration did not "lie" about Saddam's WMDs. They acted on intelligence that may have been faulty, yes, but they did not act on "lies".

As Tenet says, "We wrote what we believed, we stayed true to it."

But, as ABC gives Tenet the room to tell his story, the focus is on Tenet and not on the Administration like it was during the many "Bush lied" stories. And that is because they wish to present Tenet as the "honest" guy who was ignored by the President.... even though he wasn't.

So, on one hand "Bush lied" about WMDs, yet on the other Tenet acted on the best known info available at the time.

Well, it seems to make perfect sense that if Tenet was acting on information that they were all sure was quite correct at the time, then Bush did not "lie" when using that very same information.

Right?

Tell it to ABC.

           






http://newsbusters.org/node/12434

[Murffieus]

Not only that ----but Hilliary, Kerry, Rockefeller ( minoity leader on the senate intelligence committe) along with Biden and others----- were trying to beat each other to the mike to denounce Saddam as a "direct threat to the USA with his WMD and was in the process of attempting to build nuclear weapons"-----I saw each of them on TV tonight expousing this in 2003 !

What hypocrytes!

[ChicosBailBonds]

[augoman]

actually, Tower, we're still trying to undo the effects of Jimmy Carter..., one of the worst presidents ever.  his arrogance even upset bill clinton when carter was sent to negotiate w/ north korea.  we paid more for a gallon of gas (adjusted for inflation) during his 4 years than we do now.  Reagan spent 8 years repairing our world image after the iranian punch in the nose (hostages) with no response.