A Crucial Vote

When John Kerry, Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold offer an amendment to the defense spending bill Wednesday calling on US troops to leave Iraq by July 1, 2007, only a handful of Senators voted with them.

If the American people had a say, the outcome would be different. A majority of the public supports setting a timetable for giving Iraq back to Iraqis. And the issue is particularly salient in Congressional districts in play this November.

MoveOn.org, with the help of the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, recently surveyed voters in the country's top 68 swing districts, two-thirds held by Republicans.

By 50 to 42 percent, these voters want Democrats to control Congress. Roughly half of the respondents are more likely to vote for Democrats, and against a Republican, because of the war. When Democrats embrace Kerry and Feingold's position, their lead increases to 54 to 41 percent over a stay-the-course Republican.

What's more, battleground voters prefer a Democrat who supports the Kerry-Feingold amendment over one who does not. A candidate who advocates bringing the troops home within a year polls three percentage points better than one who says the US needs a "new direction," but stops short of calling for an exit date.

A "New Direction for America," you may recall, is the latest slogan unveiled by Democrats last week. But the public wants specifics, not slogans.

And as election time approaches, the war is by far the most important issue to the Democratic base. Half of Democrats cite the war as their top concern in these swing districts, 20 points ahead of the next issue, jobs and the economy. Key constituencies, such as African-Americans and women, respond very favorably to candidates who favor an exit strategy.

If Democrats ignore the war, voters may ignore them come November.

Comments (149)

1. BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!

   A MoveOn.org poll??? Give me a fucking break....That is about as valid as a MaryMapes CBS LIB poll. The fact that any pullout was overwhemingly voted down last week and again will be this week tells me all I need to know....Even detestable traitorous LIBS in congress know how to vote correctly to keep their jobs. End of discussion!

   THE CRACKUP OF THE LOONY LEFT IS A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD!!!!!

   Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 11:32am

2. Show the Gang of 42 this poll. I bet their polling shows something different.

   Posted by woodyee at 06/20/2006 @ 11:47am

3. The American public is clearly yelling no more "Tax and Kill" politicians.

   Will the politicians hear before the elections or will they be replaced is the only real question.

   Posted by freedomplease at 06/20/2006 @ 11:50am

4. If this is the way the democratic party wants to go out, let it go out this way. It's no loss. As for crackups on the left, the assessor would certainly know cracked when he sees it.

   Posted by JRJunior at 06/20/2006 @ 12:24pm

5. Traitor McGasBag

   Would you believe it more if other polls support it? (Probably not, as your "selective realtiy glasses won't permit fact to shine thru the gloss of BS, but here goes regardless.)

   Pew Resarch Poll "Compared to recent Congresses, would you say THIS Congress has accomplished more, accomplished less, or accomplished about the same amount?"

   _________More___Less___Same__Unsure_________

   4/7-16/06 ___7%____41%____47%___5%__________

   CBS News/New York Times Poll. Sept. 9-13, 2005. N=1,167 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

   "Do you think Congress has the same priorities for the country as you have, or not?"

   ______________Does____Does Not__Unsure_________ 9/9-13/05_______29______63_______8_____________ 6/10-15/05______19______71______10_____________ 5/20-24/05______20______68______12_____________

   So in control of both houses for 5-6 years and the best you can muster is a tie between the same or worse?

   and to continue:

   Asked of those who answered "Less": "Who do you think is most to blame for this: Republican leaders in Congress or Democratic leaders in Congress?"

   ________________GOP_____DEM_____both____neither 4/7-16/06_______58%_____13%_____24%_____5%

   CBS News Poll. April 6-9, 2006. N=899 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (for all adults).

   "During 2005 and 2006, do you think Congress is accomplishing more or less than it usually does during a typical two-year period?"

   ___________More___Less___Same___Unsure

   4/6-9/06____15_____67_____9_______9

   "If the Democrats were in control of Congress now, do you think Congress would do a better job than it has with the Republicans in control, a worse job than it has with the Republicans in control, or about the same job as it has with the Republicans in control?"

   _____________Better___ Worse____Same______Unsure

   ALL adults______32______13______48_______7 Republicans______6______30______58_______6 Democrats_______61_______3______34_______2 Independents____30_______8______53_______9

   CBS News/New York Times Poll. Sept. 9-13, 2005. N=1,167 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. (a little dated, but a good question nonetheless) "Do you think Congress has the same priorities for the country as you have, or not?"

   .____________Does____Does Not___Unsure 9/9-13/05_____29______63_________8 6/10-15/05____19______71________10 5/20-24/05____20______68________12

   CONGRESS – Job Rating in recent news media/nonpartisan national polls

   Survey _____Approve______Disapprove____Unsure_____Approve minus Disapprove

   FOX/Opinion Dynamics RV_________________________________ 6/13-14/06_____29_________59____________12__________-30

   NBC/Wall Street Journal___________________________________ 6/9-12/06_____23_________64____________13__________-41

   CBS______________________________________________________ 6/10-11/06___26__________60___________14__________-34

   AP-Ipsos______________________________________________________ 6/5-7/06_____24__________73___________nd__________-49

   Cook/RT Strategies RV _________________________________________ 6/1-4/06_____27__________56___________17__________-29

   Diageo/Hotline RV__________________________________________ 5/18-21/06___29__________64___________7__________-35

   Gallup______________________________________________________ 4/10-13/06__23__________70___________7__________-47

   L.A. Times/Bloomberg________________________________________ 4/8-11/06__28__________61___________11__________-33

   So I guess ALL polls are machinations of the evil "Demoncrats" ...better start sleeping with one eye open nutbag...cause we're out there. Or better yet, just stop sleeping altogether! Look out the window...we might be looking in right now!

   Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 12:27pm

6. I wonder if the public opinion polls would ever ask this question to Americans

   Do you favor pulling out within a year, if that meant the USA loses and that the geo-political effects would make stability in that part of the world more problematic?

   Or do you favor a phased withdrawal as the BRAND NEW GOVT gets more and more on its own two feet?

   Posted by CPT at 06/20/2006 @ 12:29pm

7. CPT - Probably not. That would be a useless poll. It's a textbook example of a slanted poll question. They might as well ask: "Do you favor withdrawl if that meant the world would explode?"

   Posted by Hman23 at 06/20/2006 @ 12:38pm

8. Oooops....stupid blog parsing engine crap...pardon the format above in one poll, fixed below

   CBS News/New York Times Poll. Sept. 9-13, 2005. N=1,167 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. (a little dated, but a good question nonetheless) "Do you think Congress has the same priorities for the country as you have, or not?"

   .____________Does____Does Not____Unsure___________________ 9/9-13/05_____29______63__________8____________________________ 6/10-15/05____19______71__________10___________________________ 5/20-24/05____20______68__________12_________________________

   Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 12:39pm

9. Posted by CPT 06/20/2006 @ 12:29am

   Wow....he's a Cap'n AND a psychic. Do you read tea leaves on the side?

   Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 12:40pm

10. Another moral booster news piece for the Islamic terrorist. Keep root'n them on. The dems want to fight terrorist everywhere but Iraq. The lesson here, fight terrorism where it is easy. The result, cut and run!

    Posted by koza44 at 06/20/2006 @ 12:44pm

11. Posted by KOZA44 06/20/2006 @ 12:44am

    Typical bullshit....having a plan is "cut and run"

    from a bit posted just after Dubya's Iraq "field trip"

    Today, the AP reports that Iraq's Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, personally asked President Bush to set a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. forces the day before. Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, said he supported the request: Iraq's vice president has asked President Bush for a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, the Iraqi president's office said. Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, made the request during his meeting with Bush on Tuesday, when the U.S. president made a surprise visit to Iraq.

    "I supported him in this," President Jalal Talabani said in a statement released Wednesday. Al-Hashimi's representatives could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

    Is it "Cut and Run" if they ask us to go? Uh, no?

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 12:54pm

12. Posted by TRAITORLIBZ 06/20/2006

    A MoveOn.org poll??? Give me a fucking break....That is about as valid as a MaryMapes CBS LIB poll. The fact that any pullout was overwhemingly voted down last week and again will be this week tells me all I need to know....Even detestable traitorous LIBS in congress know how to vote correctly to keep their jobs. End of discussion!

    Ahh, classic reactionary rhetoric. You make unsupported assertions based on your own perceptions (rather than any evidence or research on your part), go on to equate those assertions with actions you support but that actually have very little relationship with the initial assertion (the logical fallacies of distraction by complex question and by appeal to authority rolled together), then declare the debate over unilaterally (the fallicy of appeal to force.) Wow! I love to analyze this kind of knee-jerk pseudo-logic.

    The simple fact is, my friend, that the survey was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a highly respected research firm that does not only work on progressive issues. Among their clients are such bastions of liberalism as the Business Roundtable, the Association of American Railroads, and the Athens Organizing Committee (yes, for the Olympics.) The survey was well constructed by any reasonable assessment, with a solid sample size and questions it would be hard to construe as leading. The simple fact is that the vast majority of Americans (and this is not a new result, poll after poll has shown similar results with respect to ending our involvement in Iraq) want us out.

    So why do Republican congressmen insist on loaded votes of "support" for the war? Because they have long since tied themselves to that issue and now can't back out without (they believe) showing a lack of resolve or steadfastness. Of course, since they are the same ones who have tried to make those vitrues into the only political virtues and claimed them as their exclusive province, they're now hoist on their own petard. If they did what any reasonable person (or business, or government for that matter) would do when confronted with an unpopular and demonstrably unwise policy, that is change it for a better one, then they open themselve to the charge that they have "cut and run" or "abandoned the cause" or are "traitors", etc. ad nauseum. So they keep flogging the dead horse and hoping that somehow it will spring to life again and pull the cart home. They even resort to telling everyone that the horse really isn't dead ("it's just resting, it's getting better")(yes, that was for all you Python fans.) In the end, the horse will stink so badly that they'll be arrested for creating a public nuisance and someone else will have to haul the poor dead thing away.

    Try opening your eyes and taking a look at real evidence for a change, before you open your mouth and boldly declare that not only is the horse alive, but anyone who says otherwise is crazy. You'll only get the stink on you and you won't actually accomplish anything until you you get past empty rhetoric and emptier policies.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 1:03pm

13. Rio,

    And you would know because you've been elected how many times to national office?

    Posted by freedomplease at 06/20/2006 @ 1:17pm

14. the fact remains that any pullout was bitchslapped down in voting last week, including traitorous dem's! Scum like john "band-aid, gold-digger" kerry, are in the minority, like USUAL! Any pullouyt would be detrimental to the iraqi people, the U.S., and the world. The only people that would benefit would be terrorists and democrats ( a perfect match ).

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 1:19pm

15. "Senators like Kerry are the perfect representation of the moral bankruptcy of liberalism and it's absence of moral fortitude and personal and national resolve."

    And I might add....THANK GOD the american people in their wisdom rejected that asshole along with his wife...the pickle princess

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 1:35pm

16. 2 excellent posts

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 1:43pm

17. Posted by KOZA44 06/20/2006

    Another moral booster news piece for the Islamic terrorist. Keep root'n them on. The dems want to fight terrorist everywhere but Iraq. The lesson here, fight terrorism where it is easy. The result, cut and run!

    You show your lack of understanding of strategy, propaganda, terroristic tactics, and just about every other relevant field in every word. Let me spell it out for you.

    First, the very nature of the invasion was the biggest boon to fundamentalist islamist organizations we could possibly have devised. We handed them a ready-made recruiting tool at a time when their popularity was at an all time low (post-9/11, they lost a significant amount of support in the muslim world, as every poll has clearly shown.) By acting in a unilateral and imperialistic manner (no matter our real motives, by the way) we gave them a boost they could not have gotten any other way. Pulling out removes that advantage by undermining the perception of imperialistic intent (again, regardless of our real motives.) Propaganda depends on perception, not on intent.

    Second, war is the absolutely worst possible way to fight groups that employ the tactic of terrorism (the idea of fighting a tactic itself, or of fighting a "war on terror", i.e. a war on an emotion, is nonsense from any logically derived strategic or policy perspective.) Terrorist organizations simply do not make themselves targets for traditional military force except when and where it suits their purposes or on the rare occasions when they miscalculate their vulnerability to such force (such as the former al Qaida camps in Afghanistan, which they mistaken believed would be protected by the sovereign status of the country that sheltered them.) Tradition militaries, in fact, make great targets for terroristic tactics. Throughout history, militaries have been plagued by these tactics and have seldom been able to counter them without resorting to what amounts to terroristic tactics of their own. Terrorist groups are best fought by police methods. Those have proved far more effective in the past and there is no reason to assume that the future will be any different in this regard.

    Third, terrorist groups were a very marginal (and hunted) element in Iraq before we invaded. Like all dictators, Hussein did not want someone else exercising force of any kind within his domain, and was pretty good at rooting it out. After all, he was willing to use methods that we are not (and that we should not, either, unless you really like things like random arrest, torture, etc.) We created twin problems in Iraq by our own action stemming directly from the invasion: 1) a void of power into which a relatively small number of foreign extremeists were able to insert themselves for the sole purpose of (are you ready for this?) attacking us over there so they wouldn't have to at home (not our home, theirs!), and 2) a far larger insurgency (which is not the same as a terrorist group, their goals and ideology are vastly different) that wants something that most Americans can easily understand, us out of their country. Insurgencies are almost as hard to fight as terroist groups and considerably more tenacious, since they have the added motivation of nationalism behind whatever other ideology they may espouse.

    Finally, as to the wisdom of having a strategic plan rather than a vague idea that we will probably do something in the future if some ill-defined conditions come to pass, well, if you can't see the logic in that then you're probably hopelessly lost to ideology rather than thinking about strategy rationally. "Cut and run" is rhetorical nonsense, not a description of a withdrawal plan no matter the details. Strategy requires that you have a defined goal in mind, a known way to achieve that goal, and the means to do so. Any other idea calling itself a strategic plan but lacking these elements is no strategy at all. The problem is, that is exactly what we have now because the original goals of the policy that got us into Iraq were based on fantasy, not reality, and nothing else could be constructed from that with any hope of a positive result.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 1:43pm

18. "HE WHO LIVES BY THE POLL DIES BY THE POLL"

    (A very telling perversion of a cliche that advocates solving problems by non-violent means.)

    Posted by drhammer at 06/20/2006 @ 1:44pm

19. "The lesson here, fight terrorism where it is easy."

    easy for you, armchair warrior. the islamists tremble before the shock and awe....of your keyboard

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 1:50pm

20. stwriley, cute but wrong!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 1:50pm

21. "the islamists tremble before the shock and awe"

    Zarqawi trembles no more....

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 1:52pm

22. johannesrolf, cute but stupid!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 1:53pm

23. Additionally, there is no small irony in the notion that BushCo is dying "by the poll", whether they subscribe or not.

    And all the winger talking heads who crowed about the "bounce" that never materialized after Zarqawi's demise belied the assertion that polls are meaningless. If the poll numbers were better, Fat Karl would be the first to exploit them, believe it.

    Politicians of any stripe ignore the will of the people at their peril.

    Posted by drhammer at 06/20/2006 @ 1:55pm

24. MASK Reality Check Time again....

    After the torture-deaths of the two soldiers and Abu Ayyub al-Masri taking "credit" for doing it personally...this AND the more timid Levin-Reid proposal will be shelved.

    Posted by Mask at 06/20/2006 @ 2:03pm

25. very fine contribution, Riley

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 2:03pm

26. If polls don't dictate policy (which is somewhat debatable - the government is of, for and by the people who respond to polls after all), then how about the new sovereign Iraqi government expressing their desire for us to get the hell out of their country? If we were there to establish democracy, we have. If we were there to topple big bad Saddam, we have. If we were there to defeat terrorism, we haven't and never will. We've done all we can do. Our continued presence does not make the Iraqi's any safer, since most of the violence is due to our presence in the first place.

    George should take whatever credit he's due: getting rid of Saddam, while not really vital to the nation's interest (but important to George's pride and oil buddies wallets) is a good thing. Staying (occupying) even after being asked to leave by the new leaders of the Iraqi government smacks of imperialism and pig-headedness.

    Posted by Turk33 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:16pm

27. Mary, whatta crock. and cynical to boot. NO, this war has hurt america deeply, not least the families of the soldiers, dead and wounded.and we ALL will have to pay the price.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 2:16pm

28. Posted by STWRILEY 06/20/2006 @ 1:43pm

    I found this post to be very thoughtful as well.

    In addition, I can't help but think back to the insurgents that drove one of the world's most disciplined armies off this continent.

    It's a far from perfect analogy, but it still serves to illustrate the perils of asymetrical warfare.

    Posted by drhammer at 06/20/2006 @ 2:18pm

29. Turk, while I disagree sharply with your analysis, I cannot help but agree with your conclusion. US out of Iraq.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 2:18pm

30. in warfare, fighting for your mother land is worth any number of divisions.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 2:20pm

31. MBB

    One of the biggest problems with poll in America is that Americans have been taught to believe that their opinions are important no matter how ill informed.

    But we still let them vote...no matter how ignorant or misguided. So do their opinions matter, or not?

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 2:21pm

32. "One of the biggest problems with poll in America is that Americans have been taught to believe that their opinions are important no matter how ill informed."

    Cynical doesn't begin to describe it.

    If I know absolutely nothing else, I know that I was born in a nation that guarantees that I'm part of a representative democracy, even if every other American is smarter than I am.

    And I've met a few politicians in my time. They may have all thought I was dumber than a box of rocks, but none of them ever told me that they didn't want my vote.

    Posted by drhammer at 06/20/2006 @ 2:27pm

33. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 06/20/2006

    No president, Republican or Democrat should ever take into consideration the results of a public opinion poll to influence his/her decisions as Commander-in-Chief.

    LBJ did it and deserved to step down rather than run for re-election. Nixon worried so much about the anti-war protesters, it led to the failure in Vietnam and his own political ruin.

    You are apparently forgetting that LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam because he bought into a false strategic concept (the "Domino Theory", a 1960's version of the "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" fallicy) not because he listened to public opinion polls. He stepped down when he realized he'd made a mistake and the public (or at least some of it) knew it. Nixon's failure was in reacting against his perception of public opinion by committing unconstitutional and illegal acts to secure political predominance. (Hmmm, might Georgie-boy take that lesson to heart?) Once again, the examples do not fit the contention.

    As I have said before, the US is fortunate to have George Bush as president during this time because he understands this fundamental principle of the role of Commander-in-Chief during time of war.

    What principle? Pigheaded inability to adapt to changing circumstance? That's hardly a virtue in a commander-in chief or anyone else. Besides, this too is predicated on a false concept, the notion the "we are at war" anywhere besides Iraq and Afghanistan. I'll say this once again, just so you can't miss it: There is no such thing as a war on terror. This is a concept that cannot be logically supported as I pointed out above. It is a convenient excuse, no more, for the use of powers that the principals behind Georgie-boy have been pushing since before he was out of college (especially Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their attendant familiars.) They have long desired an imperial presidency with unchecked powers based on the idea of the commander-in-chief. The fact that these ideas are patently unconstitutional and profoundly dangerous to all that this country was founded to be should be enough to give you pause. As to the war in Afghanistan, that is legitimate in so far as we needed to root out from the country that harbored them the actual people who planned the attack on us on 9/11 (at which mission Georgie-boy has demonstrably failed, unless you know of some secret prison where they're hold Osama bin Laden.) The war in Iraq is entirely illegitmate since it is a war of choice and was predicated on false pretenses and a doctrine of preventive (not pre-emptive) war that is unsupportable under both US and international law.

    It is obvious that the left lacking any real principles except their hatred of strength and perseverance remains puzzled by those who are more principled.

    Senators like Kerry are the perfect representation of the moral bankruptcy of liberalism and it's absence of moral fortitude and personal and national resolve.

    Hatred of strength? Where have you been? Almost all the wars of the twentith century in the United States were started by Democrats, and most were finished by them too (including all the successful ones.) I pass over little police actions like Panama and Grenada, so the only exception is Gulf I, and Bush sr wasn't all that eager to fight that one. He simply had no choice.

    As for perserverance, is this to be defined as running over the cliff because you refuse to change your course no matter what? If so, I'll give you that Georgie-boy has it in spades. If it means sticking to your principles rather than what's expedient or because you don't have any other ideas, then Kerry's got him beat hands down (and I'll warn you here that I'm not a great fan of Kerry myself, but I'll not stand by and let you slander a man by presenting false views of his character.) Kerry has had the integrity to admit he was wrong on Iraq and is seeking to fix the problems created. That shows a kind of perserverance we need, one who sticks to the task and tries to make it right no matter the cost to himself (and that certainly did include losing the chance to sit in the Oval Office.) Kerry has more morality in his little finger than Georgie-boy or his principals have ever had. He is the one who served his country by putting his life on the line, even though he could easily have avoided that like other rich kids (including Georgie-boy, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et.al., though not Bush sr who did stand up when his country needed him.) Personal and national resolve is only a virtue when it is in the right cause, otherwise it is at best misplaced, and at worst a detriment to the very nation it claims to be upholding.

    Try to come back to reasoned debate on issues. You're bad at this kind of attack and it simply reflects on your own lack of character. All you have is a parroting of radical right talking points, and your use of them shows that you don't even understand them as well as you should.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 2:28pm

34. Posted by BARRY25 06/20/2006

    stwriley, cute but wrong!

    How so? If you can't prove me wrong, why should we care? Join the debate for real and make your points, then you can call me "cute" (and I assure you, you'll be the first in a long time to do that!)

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 2:32pm

35. Riley -

    Thank you for some great posts here and on other recent threads.

    Posted by Hman23 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:35pm

36. Posted by DRHAMMER 06/20/2006

    In addition, I can't help but think back to the insurgents that drove one of the world's most disciplined armies off this continent.

    It's a far from perfect analogy, but it still serves to illustrate the perils of asymetrical warfare.

    Actually, the example is quite good from a military standpoint. Anyone who wants to know what an insurgency can do should study Nathaniel Greene's "fugitive war" in South Carolina during the Revolution. The British faced the same problem we do, they wee unwilling, in the end, to apply sufficiently brutal methods to supress the insurgency but kept going part way there and ended by ruining both their credibility with Loyalists and driving many neutral colonists into the insurgents' camp. Thanks for making the point DRHAMMER (and thanks for the praise, too.)

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 2:38pm

37. Posted by ZERO 06/20/2006 @ 2:33pm

    Well said Zero, well said. Strategy always requires the long view. Short-sighted thinking is what got us into this mess.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 2:42pm

38. Turk, while I disagree sharply with your analysis, I cannot help but agree with your conclusion. US out of Iraq.

    Posted by JOHANNESROLF 06/20/2006 @ 2:18pm | ignore this person

    Please explain - I respect almost all of your opinions, and am curious what I said that you sharply disagree with.

    Posted by Turk33 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:46pm

39. Kerry has the INTEGRITY to admit he was wrong on Iraq? What' you smokin man? Are you for real? It's blatantly obvious that Kerry has admitted he was wrong ( on the intelligence he was given first by the Clinton administration:a FACT you cannot spin )in order to try to frame Bush for lying about WMD's! It's sooooo obvious! More obvious than $90,000 dollars in the fridge of William Jefferson! Please, if John Kerry had an ounce of integrity, he would question the INTEL AGENCIES that gave the info. to CLINTON before Bush was elected! How is it that Kerry doesn't question Clinton's info. on WMD? After all, Clinton's intel made up , what, 98-99% of Bush's intel? You are out of your fucking mind with this drivel!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:46pm

40. stwrongly, please be consistent when you blast politicians who didn't serve in Vietnam! Bill " draft-dodger " Clinton would be a nice start!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:49pm

41. LL

    Nixon worried so much about the anti-war protesters, it led to the failure in Vietnam and his own political ruin.

    It wasn't paying attention to polls that caused failure in Vietnam, it was the unwinnable nature of the war caused by 1) the sheer ineptitude and corruption of a government we had backed in one way or another for a decade and 2) a US military approached that wasn't good counterinsurgency.

    As I have said before, the US is fortunate to have George Bush as president during this time because he understands this fundamental principle of the role of Commander-in-Chief during time of war.

    So the principal role of the C-in-C is to go into a war based on false assumptions, mishandle the occupation and stay out of sheer stubborness?

    Posted by brunowe at 06/20/2006 @ 2:49pm

42. "If we were there to establish democracy, we have."

    actually that is the only one I find fault with, Turk. I realize on second look that this was part of a rhetorical chain, and I see where you were going with that. I likewise find your posts cogent.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 2:51pm

43. B25

    ...to frame Bush for lying about WMD's!

    Wow, its really great to see a Republican be brave enough to admit Dubya lied. Its these first little steps that lead to bigger things.

    Bravo

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 2:53pm

44. stwrongly, I guess Dem's like Hillary, Dean, Osama...I mean Obama, will not get your vote due to the fact that they haven't served in the military or fought overseas? I mean, using your logic, they would not be qualified to make decisions concerning national security or war, now would they? Just pointing out your hypocrisy!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:54pm

45. STWRILEY, excellent posts! Welcome to the coliseum!

    Anyone who wants to know what an insurgency can do should study Nathaniel Greene's "fugitive war" in South Carolina during the Revolution.

    Have to differ with you guys on this one. Greene fought a brilliant war a maneuver, he didn't fight a guerilla war. He had a clearly designated army and relied less on melting into the population then on successfully using space against the British. In fact, he attempted stand-up battles, although he didn't win any of them (losing at Guilford Courthouse and Hobkirk's Hill and getting a draw at Eutaw Springs).

    Although there were insurgent-type organizations in the South (think Francis Marion, et al.), the colonials did try to establish regular type armies. There was a uniform code (although no uniforms until well into the war), and don't forget that Washington had is forces drilled in the European style by von Steuben.

    Posted by brunowe at 06/20/2006 @ 2:56pm

46. to FRAME, idiot! Get a dictionary!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:56pm

47. Oh, and by the way, if there ever is any factual evidence to show that Bush lied, I'll be the first to condemn him and push for his sentence of life in prison or even the death penalty! There is just one problem: to date, there is not a SHRED of evidence that he lied about anything!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 2:59pm

48. "Staying (occupying) even after being asked to leave by the new leaders of the Iraqi government smacks of imperialism and pig-headedness"

    Hmmm.....Last I heard and can post many quotes...the Iraqi goverment constantly BEGS us to stay until they can handle security on their own....They hear the catcalls by the traitorous left to cut and run and that scares them the most that President Bush would bow to such pressure.(Of course he wont because he has convictions)...but I am not surprised once again about liberal lies and the liars that post such shit....they will say or do anything to cause America to lose this war and cut and run just for some percieved belief that would help them regain power. How patriotic.....I say how IDIOTIC....

    THE CRACKUP OF THE LOONY LEFT IS A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:04pm

49. "to date, there is not a SHRED of evidence that he lied about anything!"

    In fact Barry every day as more and more of Saddams intellegence service documents are being translated it becomes more and more apparent not only did he have WMDS (Can you say 1.5 tons of enriched uranium...250 tons of lower grade yellowcake...take that joe wilson) but in fact had even more deadly ties to Alqueda than what was already known about his ties to Zarquwi before the war....Just hang on a bit longer....the lunitic and anti-american LIBZ will be made to look like such traitorous fools very soon I will ALMOST feel sorry for them when the political backlash and shit hits the fan.....Then again I will enjoy every minute of it

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:10pm

50. Zero, what is your point here?

    Riley is more than "not stupid". he is insightful.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 3:12pm

51. Aaaawwk! Cut and run!

    Aaaawwk! Stay the course!

    Aaaawwk! We'll stand down when they stand up!

    Aaaawwk! Bring it on!

    (Polly want some Kool-Aid?)

    Posted by drhammer at 06/20/2006 @ 3:15pm

52. B25

    Days before Dubya annouced to the world "we has found the WMDs" (the dreaded bioweapons trailers) he had in hand a DOD intel group report of the trailers which said they were for making hydrogen. (seems the stories were....inflated) He announced the lie to the nation and never breathed a word about the truth...it was a story that "leaked out" on its own.

    Story on bioweapons trailer lie: Its a Gas

    That and other lies are in the timeline here: TimeLine

    So we can count on you to do the right thing and write your congressman regarding impeachment, right?

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:18pm

53. Traitor-boy

    Wrong as usual. From an AP story when Dubya got back from his little Baghdad field trip:

    Today, the AP reports that Iraq's Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, personally asked President Bush to set a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. forces the day before. Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, said he supported the request:

    Iraq's vice president has asked President Bush for a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, the Iraqi president's office said. Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, made the request during his meeting with Bush on Tuesday, when the U.S. president made a surprise visit to Iraq.

    "I supported him in this," President Jalal Talabani said in a statement released Wednesday. Al-Hashimi's representatives could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

    Guess its not "cut and run" if they ask you to skee-daddle, huh?

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:21pm

54. Seriously now....

    after a 93-6 vote for what JOHN NICHOLS called "perpetual war" funding....how do you think THIS is going to go?

    Posted by Mask at 06/20/2006 @ 3:27pm

55. Yes Traitorlibz, the MSM has most people believing that it has been PROVEN ,beyond any reasonable doubt, that saddam didn't have WMD's, as if they possess a tool/device that could actually prove the unprovable! Regardless, the day will come when the undeniable truth hits the Dem's square in the face and we can all rejoice in the misery of the traitorous left!! The facts that you just posted have been mysteriously missing in almost all of the reports/shit spewing of the MSM! What MSM bias? I mean all of the journalists, anchors, and editors who have been fired or discraced in recent years have been liberals who were printing false stories about Bush or the military, but that's just a coincidence! Speaking of printing/writing lies...has anyone seen the great hero of the left, Ward Churchill?

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 3:27pm

56. "AP reports"

    Wasnt it AP (A LIB RAG) also say the we flushed korans down the toilet along with Time magazine....Just because liberal propaganda prints it hardly makes it so...Sorry fella...wrong again

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:29pm

57. "has anyone seen the great hero of the left, Ward Churchill"

    Or Dan Rather?????

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:30pm

58. LOC, no proof there..not a shred! Keep tryin'. And you lefties constantly cry"innocent until proven guilty"! Hypocites of the highest order! Let me predict your next post: "The Downing street memo", right? You're grasping at straws here!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 3:30pm

59. It was newsweek, and innocent people died because of it! Newsweek retracted the story! I wonder why the media didn't go after newsweek for being complicit in the deaths of innocent people?

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 3:32pm

60. Yes Newsweek....They should be proud of that accomplishment....Did we hear any outcry of the left after that one????

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:34pm

61. B25 & Traitor

    Question for the brain trust....

    If Saddam had WMDs do you think he might have used them when, oh I dunno, when we were rolling into Baghdad maybe? I know, maybe he had them hid off in that rabbit hole right?

    Or maybe he gave'em all to his gold old buddy OBL and they rode it "old school" camel-style into the mountains on the border. There they are even now preparing a new nuclear-powered anthrax strain using goat-skins and sticks which will be used to infect camels which will be give them to zoos throughout the US. The nefarious godless bastards...geez, we better surrender right now!

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:35pm

62. B25

    So lemme see...Dubya has in hand a report that says "trailer not used for bioweapons" and he gets on TV and says "we found the bioweapons trailers" and that is not evidence. Kind of a stretch dontcha think?

    Boy, must be especially blissful in your narrow, rosy bit of so-called reality.

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:38pm

63. "geez, we better surrender right now"

    Sounds like a Liberal campain slogan....Go for it

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:38pm

64. Dan Rather is one angry old man! He personifies the sick, twisted, and insane hatred the left has for this country!

    Recently, I watched a Dem. on MSN ( I think it was Chris Matthews ) sit up there and defend corruption charges against the UN ( the raping of children by supposed PEACE KEEPERS, and the oil for food scandal ). In the defense of the UN, this moron stated that we cannot condemn the UN for the actions of a few bad apples! This is the same hypocite ( can't remember her name ) that cries daily about how this administration and military employ torture ( abu graib ). Typical of the insane left! If it is your own military or administration , then you CAN judge all by the actions of a few, but when it's the corrupt UN, you cannot judge all by the actions of a few! This is the left's definition of CONSISTENCY!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 3:40pm

65. The risk of any particular Congressman losing his seat because of his particular vote on the war is about as likely as losing his seat over a mohair subsidy.

    Mary, my post was in response to this. this is cynical and wrong.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 3:41pm

66. MBB

    So we give them a social studies test when they come in to vote then! Or we get the candidates to sing and dance on a Simon Cowall special. Then they can phone in the votes! (Where' Bill Clinot and his sax when you need him?)

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:44pm

67. Zero, I like that deliberate understatement. I'm still puzzled by that post, say whaat?

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 3:45pm

68. The Party of Retreat and Defeat By Peter Collier and David Horowitz

    As the fall elections approach, the Democrats have formally unveiled their platform for the war in Iraq: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

    At the very moment that documents captured from the Zarqawi death site indicate that Al Qaeda feels it is losing its war against the Iraqi future and has become so desperate that its only hope to prevail is by embroiling the U.S. in war with Iran; at the very moment Iraq's democratically elected government is establishing itself as a functioning regime, and its increasingly capable military becomes more successfully engaged against the insurgents --at this critical moment for the future of Iraq and the Middle East, more than three quarters of the House Democrats have voted against a resolution to "complete the mission."

    For the first time in American history, a major political party wants America to run from a war we are winning.

    We have come to an historic juncture. It is not mere perversity or jockeying for position before the fall elections that makes the Democrats refuse to take yes for an answer on this war to liberate a Muslim people, break the hold of bloodlust and authoritarianism in the most benighted region of the world, and defeat terror on its central front. Nor is the Democrats' choice of capitulation simply a reflex-- like so many other positions they hold--of their pathological hatred of George Bush. In large part, in fact, their insensate hatred of Bush is hatred for what this war embodies: America taking up arms against a sea of troubles as turbulent as any it has faced before; America bringing freedom to the heartland of terror.

    That George Bush believes America can act unapologetically, without the quaking guilt his critics are convinced stains its history, is why the Democrats hate Bush.

    It is all the Democratic Party can do to keep from publicly embracing the assertion of the hard left as to why were are in Iraq: "Blood for Oil!" And the Democrats most certainly agree, with the malicious assertion of Michael Moore, although they are unwilling to repeat it in so many words, that the Iraqi insurgents are fighting an occupying power and are therefore the moral equivalent of America's Minutemen.

    Democrat leaders would have us believe that their present defeatism, which they labor cynically to present as statecraft, is a rueful acknowledgement of facts on the ground in Iraq. They wanted the U.S. to succeed, but because of Bush's bellicose mendacity they were forced to reconsider their support. Yet Nancy Pelosi, the Woman Who Would be Speaker, attacked the war on April 13, 2003, the day Americxan troops pulled down the statue to Saddam Hussein. It was but two months before the entire Democratic leadership was attacking the President for "lying" about Saddam's effort to buy fissionable uranium in Niger. The war against the war had begun even in the first flush of success. Within a few months, Ted Kennedy was claiming, "The president's war is revealed as mindless, needless, senseless and reckless."

    Given such views as these--the Democrats' version of bedrock principles--the difficulties the U.S. has experienced in Iraq have been for them a wish fulfilling fantasy. Their present position--America was foredoomed to fail--is just one short step away from Noam Chomsky's position--America had it coming.

    And the result of these attitudes can be seen in the way the Democrats and their media allies have conducted themselves throughout. For the Bush administration and the coalition troops in Iraq the battles have been for Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul and Basra, all engagements with the enemy in the field. For the Democrats and their media allies it has been Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha and Niger, all behind-the-lines battles against our troops and their commander-in-chief. For the Bush administration the chief prize has been Zarqawi, the beheader himself. For the Democrats it has been Scooter Libby. The Bush administration barely missed getting Osama bin Laden; the Democrats barely missed getting Karl Rove. The Bush administration's strategy is to defeat the forces of terror. The Democrats are conducting psychological warfare aimed at American morale – the decisive factor in war.

    It is hard not to conclude that the Democrats want America to be defeated in Iraq and that it is not only their electoral opportunism but their worldview that demands it. This shows how different the Democratic Party is from what it was a generation ago when its stalwarts assumed the moral leadership in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The current Democrats bear no kinship to the John F. Kennedys, Hubert Humphreys and Scoop Jacksons who saw this prior conflict in the same black and white terms as Bush does the present conflict, and whose disheartening moments were far bleaker than the setbacks the U.S. has experienced in Iraq. Such men would be read out of the Democratic Party today and reviled as yahoos for their patriotism.

    The worldview of the current Democrats was created generation ago in the first war that America lost on the home front, and it hasn't changed since. Notwithstanding the Democrats' timorous, and reluctant -- and quickly retracted -- support for the war in Iraq, and notwithstanding the disingenuous insistence that "anti-war" activists also "support our troops," the leaders of the Democratic Party left – Kennedy, Kerry, Carter, Gore, Pelosi, Murtha -- looked on the Iraq War from its onset as another Vietnam. Whenever there is the possibility of the use of American power against an enemy that can fight back, it is always for the Democrats a quarter past Tet.

    From the beginning of this war they have waited impatiently – if not eagerly -- for U.S. troops to sink in a desert "quagmire." For them a government elected by some eighty percent of the people is as corrupt and ineffectual as the Diems were in Saigon some forty years ago. An incident in Haditha for them is t another My Lai even before the investigation of what actually happened is complete. In their every act the Democrats echo the cry of the McGovern left from 1972: "Come home, America." Come home to the defeat and impotence that should always constrain American power to make the world a better place. Come home to contemplate the sins of arrogance and empire that originate with the founding of the nation. Come home even though it means inviting those who hate you to disrespect you as well and follow with their suicide bombs and subway poisons and hijacked deathcraft crashing into your national monuments and homes.

    Hanoi's General Nguyen Giap, the Democrats' Clausewtiz, famously said that his country could not win on the field of battle but would win in the streets of America. Divide politically and conquer militarily. That is what happened then; that is what the Democrats' leaders are working to make happen now. In the 1960s the Democratic Party elders watched the anti-war troops in the streets of America from the sidelines with melancholy resignation; today's Democrats have brought all the narcissistic passion and moral heedlessness of the antiwar movement into the center of their party and the chambers of government where they try to implement Giap's strategy a second time. How different are the incantations of Pelosi, Reid, Murtha and Kennedy from those of Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri: "Oh U.S. people, your government was defeated in Vietnam. … Your government is now leading you to a new losing war, where you will lose your sons and money."?

    The precise shorthand for the Democrats' decline into retreat can be found in the descent to Teddy Kennedy from his brother John. No president during the generation long Cold War sounded the call to arms more eloquently than he did, warning the enemies of freedom that America would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty." But that was before the anti-war movement launched by Amerian radicals had gotten under way, before Teddy and his colleagues had buffoonishly capitulated to its moral authority and acted out its agendas by terminating America's aid to the anti-communist regimes in Cambodia and Vietnam.

    What the Republicans "call cut and run" is right out of the playbook the Democrats adopted once they had left their Humphreys, Jacksons and Jack Kennedys behind: cut the commitment and run from the chaos this action causes. Then celebrate the disaster as a moral triumph.

    The tide of radicalism swelled with the presidential candidacy of Democrat George McGovern in 1972 and his campaign slogan, "Bring America Home," which if it had been successful would have emboldened the enemies of freedom across the globe. McGovern lost the election in the biggest landslide in American history, but in the ashes of defeat he and his allies were able to redraw the rules that governed the Democratic party and empower the radical forces that had moved inside it.

    The distance traversed by the Democrats in the last generation is epitomized by someone who has become their alpha and omega, another J.F.K. who was first a soldier in the war in Vietnam and then an opponent, first a supporter of the war in Iraq and then an opponent. While strategically Democrats had moved far from the robust foreign policies of John F. Kennedy by 2004, they were mindful that a majority of the voting public had not moved with them. Therefore, they reached for a candidate who could project a "patriotic" and even military image. As a decorated veteran who had voted for the war in Iraq, but was sponsored by its most vociferous critic had begun to move away from it himself, John F. Kerry seemed to be the man for the job.

    On being introduced at the Democratic Convention, the candidate saluted the faithful and declared, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." No convention in recent memory had been the scene of greater military fanfares. Kerry arrived with a "Band of Brothers," fellow Swift Boat veterans who vouched for his heroism under fire in Vietnam, and Vietnam – a war fought thirty years before became the convention's most emotional theme. But the Kerry campaign seemed not to appreciate that Vietnam had ended in America's only lost war, and that the military career of Kerry had ended in promoting and celebrating that defeat.

    Other Vietnam veterans did not share the views of Kerry's retinue. Many despised a man whom they associated with Jane Fonda and other anti-war activists who had welcomed a Communist victory and America's defeat. They remembered Kerry not for his military service, but for his widely televised claims that his comrades-in-arms were actually "war criminals" who deserved to be put on trial.

    In a moment that displayed the anti-war Kerry in all his glory, C-Span re-ran the June 30, 1971 segment of the Dick Cavett Show, on which a young Kerry confronted another Swift Boat veteran named John O'Neill. The war was still raging in Vietnam as they spoke. In an exchange that resonated with current events in Iraq, Kerry and O'Neill faced off:

    MR. CAVETT: No one has said that there'll be a bloodbath if we pull out, which is a cliché we used to hear a lot…

    MR. O'NEILL: I think if we pull out prematurely before a viable South Vietnamese government is established, that the record of the North Vietnamese in the past and the record of the Viet Cong in the area I served in at Operation [unintelligible] clearly indicates that's precisely what would happen in that country. …

    MR. KERRY: There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw. … I realize that there would be certain political assassinations, and that might take place. And I think when you balance that against the fact that the United States has now accounted for some 18,600 people through its own Phoenix program, which is a program of assassination, and when you balance that off against the morality of the kind of bombing we've been doing in Laos and the kind of destruction wholesale of the country of Vietnam, which amounts to some 155,000 civilians a year killed, then I think to talk about four or five thousand people is lunacy in terms of the overall argument and what we're seeking in Southeast Asia.[i][xiv]

    In other words -- in Kerry's view -- when compared to the Vietnamese enemy, Americans were the greater assassins and terrorists to be feared, while the Communists were only resisting a foreign occupation of their country, and were not interested in massacring anyone. History has now shown how wrong Kerry was (and how right John O'Neill and the Americans who opposed him were). The Kerry Democrats in Congress voted to cut off military and economic aid to the South Vietnamese and Cambodian regimes. Within four months of the cut-off, both regimes fell. The victorious Communists in Vietnam and their protégés in Cambodia then proceeded to massacre more than two-and-half million Indo-Chinese peasants, just as Nixon and others had warned they would. A hundred thousand were summarily executed in Vietnam – twenty times what Kerry had assured Americans they would -- while a million fled, half of whom died attempting to escape.

    But these lessons are not part of the Democrats' current curriculum. This moral and human disaster they facilitated in Vietnam is remembered as a moral victory for "anti-war" sentiment instead. And so they intone "Come home, America" once again. They draw tight the strings they hope will connect the false lessons Vietnam with Iraq -- "in telling and very tragic ways [they] now are converging" John Kerry claimed to the Take Back America conference – a gathering of the very anti-war veterans who brought us Vietnam.

    Yes they are converging, but not yet on the field of battle where America is winning and the Zarqawi terror front is failing. They are converging here at home, where an anti-movement is hoping to win a majority in Congress this fall and cut off support for the freedom forces in Iraq. Let's hope the American people will not listen to them and make the same mistake twice.

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 3:45pm

69. Traitor

    Gee, thnx. A history lesson. You can copy-n-paste with the best of them. Maybe you can get some sort of MicroSoft Copy-n-Paste Certification. At least it is "A" skill. Congrats, you've found your special purpose!

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 3:49pm

70. Traitorlibz, LOC really got you with that one! I think you got her/him cornered! Good work exposing those traitors on the left!

    Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 3:54pm

71. got it, Zero.

    when the employer pays the employee less and less each year,for the same work, who benefits from this unfair arrangement? that's the thief, advertent or inadvertent.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 4:05pm

72. Look the nitwit cant even post his replies to the right topic blog...The LIBZ are sure losing it!!

    Posted by traitorlibz at 06/20/2006 @ 4:08pm

73. Posted by BARRY25 06/20/2006 @ 2:46pm

    Kerry has the INTEGRITY to admit he was wrong on Iraq? What' you smokin man? Are you for real? It's blatantly obvious that Kerry has admitted he was wrong ( on the intelligence he was given first by the Clinton administration:a FACT you cannot spin )in order to try to frame Bush for lying about WMD's! It's sooooo obvious! More obvious than $90,000 dollars in the fridge of William Jefferson! Please, if John Kerry had an ounce of integrity, he would question the INTEL AGENCIES that gave the info. to CLINTON before Bush was elected! How is it that Kerry doesn't question Clinton's info. on WMD? After all, Clinton's intel made up , what, 98-99% of Bush's intel? You are out of your fucking mind with this drivel!

    First, I don't smoke. Now, on to real debate. Yes, the Clinton administration did believe (based on mid-1990's intel) that the Iraqis had a WMD program (but not actual weapons, those had been rounded up by the inspectors or the troops at the end of Gulf I, it was part of the cease-fire agreement.) Back then we did have some moderately good reasons to believe this and it turns out we were correct at that time. What kept Hussein from doing anything with this program was the inspection system, as we now know (and knew before 2003 as well) from Iraqi officials and defectors, including high ranking ones who thought Hussein's posturing on this point was foolish and sought to ensure it wouldn't harm Iraqi interests.

    That said, it simply does not have any bearing on the BushCo decision to go to war. They had far more and more recent intel and were being told by the CIA, the DIA, the State Department and the UN weapons inspectors that their contention that Iraq had a functioning program and actual WMDs was wrong. They chose to ignore that evidence and manufactured or inflated their own to justify what they already had decided to do. The fact that they inflated much of the Clinton era intel for their own purposes just makes it worse, but not for the Clinton administration. They had to fall back on this old intel because the more recent stuff showed them what they didn't want to see and every report we have now from the intelligence community shows that they strongly discouraged anyone from bringing this to their attention. The old intel wasn't wrong, just out of date and superceded by newer data.

    And by the way, you're overestimating the amount of Clinton-era data used by BushCo, they relied most heavily on newer but highly suspect intel fed to them by people who had (and were known by the Intelligence community to have) motives that were oriented toward getting the US to invade for their own purposes. The data was inconsistent, as many analysts pointed out, but anyone who pushed this too far was dealt with by BushCo (witness Joe Wilson. By the way, it was due to the outing of Valerie Plame that we now know so little about Iran's nuclear program since that was her most important non-proliferation portfolio. So we can thank BushCo for that debacle too.)

    This is not a matter of "framing Bush", he established his own guilt by his actions and by countenacing the actions of those around him. That's what's as obvious as $ 90,000 in Jefferson's fridge (and don't get me started on that cretin, he deserves whatever he gets) it's just that you refuse to see the evidence that's been right in front of your face for three years. My mind functions just fine, thank you, and it follows evidence wherever it takes me. In this case, it takes me to the conclusion that BushCo manufactured a war by misusing intel and ignoring the experts (from both the intelligence and military communities.)

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 4:15pm

74. Posted by BARRY25 06/20/2006 @ 2:49pm

    stwrongly, please be consistent when you blast politicians who didn't serve in Vietnam! Bill " draft-dodger " Clinton would be a nice start!

    No inconsistency in my contention whatsoever. Clinton was not the subject, the comparison of Bush and Kerry was and I extended that to those surrounding Bush (as Clinton was not for Kerry.) Besides, Clinton did not dodge the draft unless you count college deferment as doing so, in which case Bush did the same thing. After both were out of their deferment, Bush used his father's political connections to get a safe place in the Air National Guard (and didn't even live up to that committment) while Clinton took his chances with the draft. He simply got lucky with a high draft number and was never forced to serve. He also never made any pretense of supporting the Vietnam war, again, unlike Bush who talked the talk but wouldn't walk the walk. John Kerry did both, talking the talk both as a man supporting his country but also as a man telling the truth about what he encountered while doing so and walking the walk by not using his family's connections to get him out of serving in the war zone, and that is what integrity looks like.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 4:25pm

75. Posted by BARRY25 06/20/2006

    stwrongly, I guess Dem's like Hillary, Dean, Osama...I mean Obama, will not get your vote due to the fact that they haven't served in the military or fought overseas? I mean, using your logic, they would not be qualified to make decisions concerning national security or war, now would they? Just pointing out your hypocrisy!

    When one of them leads us into a war on false pretenses and ignores the advice of professionals, you'd better believe I'll castigate them and withhold my vote too. But of course, they haven't done these things, only your boy Bush has. Plenty of past presidents have lacked military experience of any meaningful kind (including Lincoln) but they managed just fine by applying themselves honestly and listening to good advice. You simply misconstrue my argument to pretend that I demand military service from our leaders. Do I smell burning straw?

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 4:34pm

76. CPT, obviously you are posing your 'poll question' rhetorically, but it really does raise an important point.

    Will withdrawing in a year mean that the USA loses (whatever that means) and/or that middle east peace will be unlikely?

    We tend to minimize the comparisons with Vietnam and I guess for good reasons, but the question of losing is a good area for comparison because the hawks there bruited about the idea of losing when it was obvious that by 1966 or 1967 and before the anti-war movement had much of a forum, that we had already lost. This is well documented in the vast number of documents that have since become public that basically everyone agreed in the defense-military establishment with very few exceptions (even amongst the hawks) that the war was lost and all was left was what later would be called peace with honor.

    Are we not at the same point here in Iraq? We have tried a la Vietnam to install hated leaders with predictable success, and now any leader whom we countenance will be hated if for only that reason. We lose, it just a matter of when and how.

    As for part two, the peace of the middle east. Well, it would be the hieght of ego to assume that such of this mess that is ours is dominated by Iraq now, rather than some 60 plus years of incessant interference by the United States (and longer by other powers, notabloy the Birtish). Have we made it worse? To be sure, will it be worse without US targets and the inevitable violence that is caused by this situation where people are forced to take positons for or against us with predictable results? I can't see how that will be. To pretend that our poorly run experiment in regime change (or imperialism depending on who you talk to), is going to materially effect the realities set up over all these years is the heighth of narcissism. The underlying problems here are exacerbated by our policies, but there is no talk at all of changing the policies that do contribute to the problem. Our interventionism, dual standards for Israel, Saudi Arabia and everyone else and most importantly our unflagging support for repressionist business partners at the expense of freedom and if not democracy, then societies that work to benefit all, rather than kleptocrat thugs (our favorite kind).

    Posted by smparsons at 06/20/2006 @ 5:08pm

77. very good, Parsons, succinct.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 5:11pm

78. B25

    I think you got her/him cornered!

    The proper response is Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

    Traitor

    Ooops, I guess its "HatesUSA now", right? So the Associated Press is a Liberal Rag? I guess you only believe stuff printed in the WingNut Weekly?

    And I note that neither of you cheerleaders has actually addressed the bioweapon trailer lie. Guess you'd have to admit that cluless leader has done a "bad thing." Of course for that they would what exactly? Excommunicate you, take away your WingNut Rewards card, or something more dire like mark you in the Book of Life as a Left-wing sympathizer (oh, the horror!)

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 5:37pm

79. the bush administration should try to create another Saudi Arabia out of Iran? ......it seems that people do not pay much attention to the history of the current disaster. Rather than comment on an editorial I have not yet seen, I'd just say that we have tried to do such experiments many times in the past with decidedly mixed results (or rather unmixed bad results). As I recall we tried to do this with Iraq about 50 years ago, more or less contemporaeneously with a similar attempt in Iran with the Shah. Ironic that we now have calls saying that the Bush administration is doing too little king making, when the problem is pretty clearly too much.

    Posted by smparsons at 06/20/2006 @ 5:46pm

80. Posted by BRUNOWE 06/20/2006

    Thanks Brunowe, I appreciate the encouragement (though if I were Christian I'd be looking for lions by now.)

    You're right that Greene himself didn't fight as an insurgent, but he did organize and coordinate with them. Many of their later attacks (like the actions against British frontier fortresses) were coordinated with and made possible by Greene's maneuvre warfare. I should have been clearer on what I was proposing and you were right to call me on it. I still think the link to Iraq works, with insurgents coordinated with more formal forces (militias, in this case, though a fair part of Greene's force would have fallen under that definition too despite his own professionalism and attempts to rely as much as possible on regulars.) Whether or not that goes as far in Iraq as it did in South Carolina during the Revolution is an open question.

    Elsewhere, your absolutely right that there was very little coordination. Washington, for one, didn't much care even for formal militia, much less "partisans" (as the insurgents were known.) But even in a place like Philadelphia, they were active. Partisan bands (some nationalists, some just criminals, just like Iraq) gave the British many problems around virtually every occupied city (Philadelphia, New York, etc.) and made venturing into the countryside something they did only in force or at great risk. Again, the parallel to Iraq is pretty strong. Sorry to go on at length, but I'm a military historian by training.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 5:49pm

81. I don't see the problem with North Korea testing a missile. am I wrong here?

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 5:50pm

82. allow me to take a moment to welcome some fine new posters.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 5:52pm

83. Posted by ZERO 06/20/2006 @ 2:58pm

    Thanks ZERO, I'll keep it under advisement.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 5:53pm

84. Traitor-HateUSA

    Since you don't like AP how about the South Carolina State.com N ews

    althouth it IS an AP fed item...but the board of AP is lotsa old rich folks...just the kind your tighty-righties like to see in charge! http://www.ap.org/pages/about/board.html

    (Nice hat btw: just your size)

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 5:56pm

85. I'm a military historian by training.

    do say. what do you think of Liddle Hart's history of WW2, professionally speaking?

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 5:56pm

86. Posted by BARRY25 06/20/2006 @ 3:27pm

    Speaking of printing/writing lies...has anyone seen the great hero of the left, Ward Churchill?

    Okay, I've been bypassing most of this self-congradulatory love-fest since it lacks anything like a logical argument or evidence, but this is just too much. I'll put this as plainly as possible so you can understand. This is the worst kind of strawman argument. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks Ward Chruchill's comments were justified, nor is he in any way a "hero of the left". If that's the best you've got, then your position is truely bankrupt.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 6:00pm

87. Posted by TRAITORLIBZ 06/20/2006 @ 3:45pm

    Ah! now we get to it and to the reason you're obsessed with Ward Churchill. You're devotees of David Horowitz. You have to understand that Horowitz is an extremely poor scholar (not for his ideology, but for his actual work, which is shoddy and poorly researched.) When you quote a disreputable ideologue like this, you simply show your own lack of good points. Come on, dare to make an argument of your own that you haven't already made.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 6:04pm

88. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 06/20/2006 @ 4:25pm

    Don't have time right now for a lengthy debunking (got to make that dollar!), but our newbie has now exposed himself as the partisan hacker that he is...his data is bunk. I have exposed this stuff before. He shows that he is not a real historian, but just another leftist relying upon distortions from leftist sites and his real ability to articulate the talking points as if they were his own.

    I suspect this is a paid leftist operative who has decided to join the fray.

    Once again, logical fallicices disguised as argument. Let's see, that would be an ad hominim atack, a reverse appeal to authority, and an attack by predjudicial language. Three in one!

    I too make a dollar now and then, LVLIBERTY, and all of it as a university profesor teaching history. I am, as I noted elsewhere, a trained historian specializing in military and strategic history. I am not a paid operative for anyone.

    Now that that's settled, bring it on if you can. So far I haven't seen anything from you but flawed logic and attacks in place of debate. Prove me wrong, make an actual argument and then see if it can survive my analysis. Show us some evidence of the claims you (and TRAITORLIBZ and BARRY25) have been making without s shred of support. I'll be glad to answer, because I value reasoned debate. Do you?

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 6:17pm

89. Posted by JOHANNESROLF 06/20/2006 @ 5:56pm

    do say. what do you think of Liddle Hart's history of WW2, professionally speaking?

    Old B.H. is an interesting fellow. While I like some of his writing on strategy, he's a little too enamoured with Montgomery for my taste. Not a bad historian, but not my favorite on WWII either. I'd rather read Weigley or Costello for that one. Both have a more nuanced and modern view of the war.

    Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 6:22pm

90. I did not find him so. I'll look for those guys.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 6:25pm

91. and he was the self proclaimed "inventor" of the Blitzkrieg.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 6:26pm

92. Show us some evidence of the claims you (and TRAITORLIBZ and BARRY25)

    don't hold your breath, Riley, those guys are just insulting trolls.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 6:29pm

93. Titles please of Weigley and Costello.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 6:39pm

94. Grabbing Ward Churchill as a hero of the left is a pretty facile bit of rhetoric off the Coulterian School of Polemics. Take something repulsive and ascribe the repulsive act to your foe. It's not very rigorous thinking, but it tends to be effective.

    I would recommend, however that those who have used Churchill as a whipping boy for the ACLU-wimpie liberal tpyes to actually read the thing here [kersplebedeb.com].

    Churchill is not a giant of academia, nor particularly a polemicist of the first water, nor second. But it would be best to resist the temptation to 'blurb' him to death without seeing exactly what it is he has to say. The piece, which is title "Some People Push Back" On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, basically states that, what do we expect? We bomb their children and starve them, do we really think that can go on forever without someone 'pushing back' or the 'chickens coming home to roost' (the latter quote coming from Malcom X commenting on the assasination of Kennedy). Eichmann is chosen because he enabled the structure that allowed the holocaust rather than actively particiopating in it (according to Churchill). Churchill believes that the Trade Centers, the people working in it, and the financial institutions lietrally there as well as metaphorically there have some moral equivalency with Eichmann in what he sees as a genocidal program against Innocent Iraqi children (his point is about the bombings and sanctions in Iraq prior to September 11). Of course Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 - but he admits that he 'might be wrong' about that in the epilog of the piece, and then goes into a laundry list of other 'oppressions' or what he views as genocidal acts historically against various, largely 'brown-skinned' peoples (including Native Americans).

    Whether one agrees with the moral comparison, or equivalency - there is a broad and not too controversial point here. That if you treat people as subservient to you, eventually people will say no and you can hardly blame them for the entirety of that act.

    I am not saying agree with Churchill, but beneath the acid rhetoric, there is a pretty mild point. One that most people have not read. In reality, Churchill's sin here is little more than calling names in the same manner that political ads compare candidate A or B to Hitler.

    The secondary point of whether these people were innocent is controversial, but Chuchill acknowledges that in his argument hat by participating in and profiting in the mechanisms that allowed what he saw as a push button war (with controllers sitting in air conditioned cabins away from any danger directing 'surgical strikes' that killed many innocent children), that these people did in fact sign on to the bad part of it as well. I don't think that's a strong, nor necessarily an appropriate argument (particularly for the kitchen workers at Windows on the World), but it's not quite as 'wacko' as it is made out to be.

    Posted by smparsons at 06/20/2006 @ 6:45pm

95. Posted by STWRILEY

    Welcome aboard. Glad to see another academic on site. In the sciences myself, but even arguing in your own domain holds little weight with the true cheerleaders for the right sometimes. There are a smattering of moderates though and there is real debate....however, you might need to push the "ignore" button once in a while (just for sanities' sake.)

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 6:52pm

96. Posted by STWRILEY

    "You show your lack of understanding of strategy, propaganda, terroristic tactics, and just about every other relevant field in every word. Let me spell it out for you."

    CAUTION: Cleaning Up The Mess Can Be Ugly

    the strategic plan of our 1990's foreign: 1---treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue 2---cut funds to human intelligence 3---send the FBI after homegrown right wing whack jobs 4---give North Korea Nuke technology in exchange for a promise of not building nukes 5---"the american people don't have the stomach for it" The last guy in the white house

    (these are strategic accomplishments?????)

    even if we tried to use your so called plan, Since the late 1960's and through out my entire life, the democratic congress has cut funding to all covert/human intelligence ops.

    to cry now is ridiculous.

    BTW, everything Bush said he was going to do, has for the most part happened.

    1-Toppled Saddam 2-National Elections 3-Democratically elected executive and legislative branch 4-Reconstruction of a security force

    (these are REAL strategic accomplishments?????)

    so yea, the democratic plan is CUT N RUN!

    The only thing that beat the USA in Iraq is if we quit. Keep root'n for them, and demoralizing the citizen....

    maybe, you (the left wing) will in the end get us to CUT N RUN!

    Posted by koza44 at 06/20/2006 @ 7:28pm

97. Partisan bands (some nationalists, some just criminals, just like Iraq) gave the British many problems around virtually every occupied city (Philadelphia, New York, etc.) and made venturing into the countryside something they did only in force or at great risk.

    Actually, I'm not all that aware of the irregular warfare in the North. I'll have to put that on my reading list. I actually have a soft spot for Liddell Hart as his history of the war was the first grown-up book I read. Having said that, I was quite taken with Weigley's Eisenhower's Lieutenants, especially for his analysis of the various approaches to armored warfare. I think I have Costello's history of the Pacific war lying around to read.

    Posted by brunowe at 06/20/2006 @ 7:30pm

98. 4-Reconstruction of a security force

    Koza - a bit weak claiming this. Especially as sectarian militia regualrly masquerade as police or army and disappear folks on an almost daily basis.

    Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 7:33pm

99. --treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue

    this actually worked quite well, where the bombing of WTC is concerned, the perps were arrested, tried, NOT tortured, and are in prison for life. which is more than can be said of Bin Laden.

    Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 7:36pm

100. 2-National Elections 3-Democratically elected executive and legislative branch 4-Reconstruction of a security force

     Iraq is still waiting for these. when you hold an election without the participation of the former gov't it cannot be called democratic. and if the security forces are so sterling, what need for US troops? that constitution also is a beaut, I hear.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/20/2006 @ 7:39pm

101. Johann....you heard of course, that the Iraqi Prez & VP asked Bush for a timetable! Ha-ha-ha, fat chance.

     Posted by leftofcenter at 06/20/2006 @ 7:53pm

102. We bomb their children, then starve them? The mental disorder known as liberalism is spreading like the plague! At this rate, I better go purchase a prayer rug and get to know allah real fast or it's off with my head! God help us all, the liberals and jihaddists are coming!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 9:25pm

103. Posted by JOHANNESROLF 06/20/2006 @ 6:39pm

     Titles please of Weigley and Costello.

     It seems that Brunowe has pretty much beaten me to this, but for Russell Weigley try The American Way of War and Eisenhower's Lieutenants and for John Costello The Pacific War. You might also look at H. P. Willmott's The Great Crusade. All have very interesting insights on WWII.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 10:13pm

104. O'rielly was talkin' about when liberals cross the line and give aid and confort to our enemies tonite! It's a great day for all Americans! Maybe now we can start the prosecution of the "enemy within" ( liberals who undermine our military and country )! Let the trials begin! Bring em' up on charges of sedition and incarcerate them! Hopefully the American people will finally get it and see these seditious, America-hating commies for what they truly are....a splinter group of radical islam!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/20/2006 @ 10:43pm

105. Posted by KOZA44 06/20/2006 @ 7:28pm

     Though some of this has already been answered (and well answered, I might add) I'll hit the points that haven't yet been touched on.

     the strategic plan of our 1990's foreign: 1---treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue 2---cut funds to human intelligence 3---send the FBI after homegrown right wing whack jobs 4---give North Korea Nuke technology in exchange for a promise of not building nukes 5---"the american people don't have the stomach for it" The last guy in the white house

     (these are strategic accomplishments?????)

     even if we tried to use your so called plan, Since the late 1960's and through out my entire life, the democratic congress has cut funding to all covert/human intelligence ops.

     Well, we'll take these in order: 1) as to treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem, I should remind you that the Clinton administration actually did prevent foreign terrorists from carrying out attacks on US soil (the Seattle and LAX plots.) Thus, it can be said that this was a successful strategy for dealing with foreign terrorists. It was BushCo who failed in this regard because they did not listen when intelligence gave them the info. 2) Actually, it was the Republican congress that cut human intelligence funds in the 1990's. They favored "technical means" that aided their defense-contractor friends. 3) Of course the FBI was sent after domestic terrorists and others who might be terrorists. There was this little problem in Oklahoma City, as you may remember, and it brought up something few had foreseen. And the solution, as you point out, was to use law enforcement to combat them (successfully too.) 4) We did not "give" the North Koreans nuclear capability, we tried to bottle it up by promising them other things they wanted in return. Monitoring was established and as long as we delivered the goods it succeeded. It was BushCo who ended that agreement and brought on the current situation. 5) Clinton was referring to Somalia after the "Blackhawk Down" incident, and he was right. Public opinion was strongly against that intervention and the Republican congress added their weight. BushCo ran their first campaign on a foreign policy plank of "no nation building" to take advantage of that public mood.

     That disposes of your list, but I'll add one to drive the point home: 6) Bosnia, where Clinton used a careful combination of diplomatic and military strategies to bring all parties into the Dayton Accords. Now, ten years later, the parties have reformed a combined federal state and, just recently, recombined their armed forces. I think ten years of peace for one of the great foreign policy problems of the 1990's counts as a strategic success. Now we have a stable Balkans region rather than civil war and ethnic cleansing on the doorstep of Europe.

     Democratic and Republican congresses have both cut Humint funding, so that hardly makes for a compelling argument on your part.

     I'll throw in a few extra points on BushCo that haven't been made yet, just to round this out.

     BTW, everything Bush said he was going to do, has for the most part happened.

     1-Toppled Saddam 2-National Elections 3-Democratically elected executive and legislative branch 4-Reconstruction of a security force

     Mission accomplished, eh? Only if the mission was strategic insanity. Here's the scoop on your points and why, thought they may be a strategy, they're really a bad one: 1) Toppling Hussein was a bad idea from a strategic standpoint, for the simple reason that we now have a destablized region and Iran (a government far less friendly to us and one that actually has the potential for developing nuclear weapons) is the main gainer at our expense. 2) and 3) These go together, since both are predicated on the idea that what has happened up to now in Iraq is a strategy BushCo was pursuing. It was not. It was only under extreme pressure (from the "friendly" Iraqis) that they allowed elections at all and even then the results were hardly democratic. Their real strategy was to keep an occupation authority in place as long as possible, so we'll have to call this a failure. 4) As others have noted, the Iraqi forces currently in place are hardly reconstituted. They are heavily infiltrated by partisan militias and insurgents and there is no hope that they can "stand up" (to use BushCo's quaint phrase) any time soon. So we'll have to call that a failure too.

     The point here is that strategy needs a direction that advances the goals of the nation, not a political party or a band of cronies, which is the only success that BushCo can claim. "Cut-N-Run"? We've already been beaten, because our vital strategic interests around the world have suffered for this misbegotten excuse for a strategy. Good strategists know when to cut their losses, no matter what those who have less strategic understanding may try to call it.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/20/2006 @ 11:07pm

106. Good work Riley. Welcome to the board. I see you have scared off Liberty/

     A leftist operative ... paid to post on The Nation! That's a good one, Liberty! Where do I sign up? Sounds like easy money!

     Posted by Hman23 at 06/20/2006 @ 11:44pm

107. The questions rest in the degree to which the entire Middle Eastern and Central Asian regions have been destabilized by the invasion of Iraq.

     Right. ClubMed Baghdad must have closed the day that we got there. THe middle east was the model of "stabilization" until the Yankees showed up.

     Afghanistan isn't growing jihadists like back in the day, and women can actually get out of the house for a change.

     Iraq isn't seizing/burning oil fields, gassing villages, paying Palestinian terrorists, firing scuds into Israel or Saudi Arabia, or annexing Kuwait.

     Libya (I know...it;s in Africa) cashed in their chips and went home since the neighborhood got rough.

     Iran is basically "contained" (Clintonites and UN fans should recognize this fact) with our guys on their port and starboard. Our presence in Iraq to this day is quite possibly preventing Iran from annexing Iraq.

     Lebanon is trying to restore the democracy that it once was by way of ridding itself of Syrian forces.

     My how the neighborhood has changed.

     Posted by Sliver at 06/21/2006 @ 12:05am

108. The US is fortunate to have George Bush as president during this time of war?

     Are you nuts? The war ended 3 years ago. This is occupation, not war. The war was successful- illegal, but successful. The occupation is a travesty.

     Posted by vozdoz at 06/21/2006 @ 03:25am

109. Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 06/20/2006 @ 12:27am

     LOC,

     As the practitioners are wont to say, the only poll that matters is the election, which makes one wonder what the polled voters are thinking about when they answer multi question polls like those.

     Been surprised how often a party has been returned to government when consistently faring very poorly, over a long pre-election period, on a series of polled questions like: Which party has the best economic/health/industrial relations/education/Iraq, etc policy. Makes you wonder what goes on inside the heads of many voters. Seems that the factors that the pollsters think should be election winners don't always register that way with the voters.

     The old adage that oppositions don't win government but governments lose office may be more appropriate, for some of the questions in your data. Will be interesting to see whether indeed that dissatisfaction, shown in your polls, is reflected in the way the electorate votes.

     Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2006 @ 06:35am

110. Posted by VOZDOZ 06/21/2006 @ 03:25am

     VD, (no pun intended)

     When is an "occupation" not an occupation:

     LEGAL STATUS OF THE COALITION PRESENCE (in IRAQ)

     "The multinational forces still exercise considerable power in the country and, with the New Iraqi Army, conduct military operations against the Iraqi insurgency. The role of Iraqi government forces in providing security is increasing.

     According to Article 42 of the Hague Convention, "[t]erritory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army." [2] The International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative states: "the wording of Security Council resolution 1546 . . . indicates that, regardless of how the situation is characterized, international humanitarian law will apply to it." [3]

     There may be situations... where the former occupier will maintain a military presence in the country, with the agreement of the legitimate government under a security arrangement (e.g., U.S. military presence in Japan and Germany). The legality of such agreement and the legitimacy of the national authorities signing it are subject to international recognition, whereby members of the international community re-establish diplomatic and political relations with the national government. In this context, it is in the interest of all the parties involved to maintain a clear regime of occupation until the conditions for stability and peace are created allowing the re-establishment of a legitimate national government. A post-occupation military presence can only be construed in the context of a viable, stable and peaceful situation. [4]

     The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546 in 2004 recognized the end of the occupation and the assumption of full responsibility and authority by a fully sovereign and independent Interim Government of Iraq. [5] Afterwards, the UN and individual nations established diplomatic relations with the Interim Government and began planning for elections and the writing of a new constitution.

     Despite the continuing insurgency, conditions were stable enough to conduct elections. John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, has indicated that the United States government would comply with a United Nations resolution declaring that coalition forces would have to leave if requested by the Iraqi government. "If that's the wish of the government of Iraq, we will comply with those wishes. But no, we haven't been approached on this issue -- although obviously we stand prepared to engage the future government on any issue concerning our presence here."..... "

     Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2006 @ 07:00am

111. Posted by LRJONES4 06/21/2006 @ 06:35am

     Amen to that!

     Posted by leftofcenter at 06/21/2006 @ 07:34am

112. Posted by SLIVER 06/21/2006 @ 12:05am

     Right. ClubMed Baghdad must have closed the day that we got there. THe middle east was the model of "stabilization" until the Yankees showed up.

     Afghanistan isn't growing jihadists like back in the day, and women can actually get out of the house for a change.

     There are several problems with the idea that we have "stabilized" the middle east by our recent actions. True, Baghdad wasn't exactly a vacation paradise, but that hardly equates to what you're implying. I'll take each of your examples in turn.

     Afghanistan: True, they are not growing jihadists these days, but that is only because we've returned them to practical feudalism. Warlords still, four years after our invasion, control most of the country and they ignore the government in Kabul as they wish. The Taliban is resurgent in the southwest (especially Helmand province) and there is little that either our forces or the Kabul government has been able to do about this. The one thing Afghanistan has been growing (rather than, say, its legal economy) is opium poppies. Production is at an all time high after being supressed by the Taliban. Women (BushCo's big publicity "success") may have freedom in Kabul these days, but the situation out in the provinces has hardly changed. In many places women are still laboring under the same restrictions they faced under the Taliban (and not just in the southwest.) It's awfully hard to argue that Afghanistan is stabilized in any meaningful sense.

     Iraq isn't seizing/burning oil fields, gassing villages, paying Palestinian terrorists, firing scuds into Israel or Saudi Arabia, or annexing Kuwait.

     Iraq: Well, since the only thing on this list that's happened at all since 1991 is "paying Palestinian terrorists", I'm not sure what your point here is. Iraq was hardly the only source (or a major one) of funding for extremist groups in Palestine (Iran, for instance, is far more involved in funding groups like Hamas) so there's really not much of a gain there. What has happened instead is that the country has been destabilized to the point where its breakup is inevitable and the very same kind of jihadist training ground we eliminated in Afghanistan has been recreated with the added bonus of live targets to practice on (our brave, betrayed soldiery.)

     Libya (I know...it;s in Africa) cashed in their chips and went home since the neighborhood got rough.

     Libya: This is an interesting case. It is possible that Khadafi was pushed by the US's recent aggressive attitude, but that tends to ignore the long diplomatic process (begun under the Clinton administration) that sought to use economic incentives to bring them to a more cooperative position. By all signs, this is what actually brought Khadafi around, especially the chance to sell his oil to us.

     Iran is basically "contained" (Clintonites and UN fans should recognize this fact) with our guys on their port and starboard. Our presence in Iraq to this day is quite possibly preventing Iran from annexing Iraq.

     Iran: "Contained" is an interesting word in this context. What has happened is that Iran has been re-radicalized by our occupation. The Iranian public was so alarmed by our actions in Iraq that they turned back to the very elements in Iran that we had long sought to get out of control by encouraging closer contact with the west. Throughout the Clinton era, Iran had been on a (admittedly slow) gradual path of reform and moderation, most of which has now been turned back. I'd hardly called that "contained". Besides, from a military standpoint, it is we who are "contained" by the situation. Because of the threat of Iranian control in Iraq (though not invasion or annexation, they learned their lesson about that back in the 1980's) BushCo feels it must keep a large percentage of the army there no matter what, thus making them unavailable for action elsewhere.

     Lebanon is trying to restore the democracy that it once was by way of ridding itself of Syrian forces.

     My how the neighborhood has changed.

     Syria: Syria had been working for the pullout themselves for some time. Like us in Iraq, it had become an occupation that was yielding diminishing returns. How much did BushCo contribute to this? Hard to say, though the actions of the French government probably had more to do with it than did ours.

     Yes, the neighborhood has changed, but not for the better by and large. In the long run, we've destabilized a large portion of the world and destroyed our own credibility in the process. Now, most of the world sees that a new bully is in this neighborhood and they don't like it very much. That alone is reason to count this as a failure.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/21/2006 @ 07:55am

113. very thorough, Riley. one quibble:

     "Because of the threat of Iranian control in Iraq (though not invasion or annexation, they learned their lesson about that back in the 1980's)"

     you are perhaps creating the impression that Iran attacked Iraq attacked Iraq, when in fact it was the opposite.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 08:22am

114. As an example of how police/intelligence work is still the way to deal with al-Qaida, note the recent story [cnn.com] of how a plot re the NYC transit system was deterred. That little operation did much more for my safety than 3+ years in Iraq.

     Posted by brunowe at 06/21/2006 @ 10:11am

115. Bruno, I heard that THEY called the operation off.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 10:17am

116. In response to "traitorlibz": Why don't you go foul your own sandbox? I don't bother to read fascist commentary and would rather not find reactionary diatribes on pages I do read. You aren't attempting to convince anyone of anything, you are simply venting, and confirming what must be obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence: fascists are stupid and have a limited vocabulary.

     Posted by agronomo at 06/21/2006 @ 10:30am

117. Posted by JOHANNESROLF 06/21/2006 @ 08:22am

     you are perhaps creating the impression that Iran attacked Iraq attacked Iraq, when in fact it was the opposite.

     Hmmm. You're right, it could read that way, I should have been clearer. I did not mean that Iran was the aggressor (that was Iraq, with our blessing and and backing, by some of the same team that pushed BushCo into Iraq.) I was trying to make the point that Iran learned then the extent of Iraqi nationalism and how dangerous it was to depend on their co-religionists in Iraq if push came to shove. The Iraqis generally (including a fair number of, though by no means all, Shiites) stood against Iran when they made some gains into Iraq during the course of the war. The Iranians would be very unlikely to risk anything like what Sliver was proposing as a result of that wartime experience. Sorry for the ambiguity and thanks for the check to clarify, Johannes.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/21/2006 @ 10:30am

118. Bruno, I heard that THEY called the operation off.

     True, but I have to wonder how much of that was because the operation had come under scrutiny--they might've gotten wind of either the dead man in Saudi or the missing laptop in Bahrain.

     STWRILEY

     Good points. It cut the other way too, with the Arabs of Khuzistan generally fighting for Iran. My understanding is the the leaders of SCIRI and al-Dawa are leery of Iran.

     Posted by brunowe at 06/21/2006 @ 10:35am

119. This site should promote civility...you know, that concept missing today in public debate. On the whole, The Nation presents the truth concerning most subject on which it comments. Those who disagree can do so in a reasoned fashion, absent the gutter language.

     Posted by trover at 06/21/2006 @ 10:46am

120. Traitorlibz, please read more carefully. "MoveOn.org, with the help of the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner..." It was a professional pollster that conducted the poll. MoveOn commissioned it, but the client doesn't control the methodology, the pollster does.

     Posted by mosesklein at 06/21/2006 @ 10:51am

121. Posted by STWRILEY 06/20/2006 @ 4:15pm

     STWR,

     Read elsewhere that you are a trained historian and you imagine that are also a logician. Most logicians I know are either mathematicians or hang around philosophy departments. Of course at the trivial level one could say the appeal to being an historian (so listen to me) is also an appeal to authority. Very naughty breaking the rules like that.

     Anyway let's check your claim that those in the Clinton Administration did not believe Saddam had actual WMD weapons. We'll start then with Kerry, who must have got his original information (see letter to President Clinton below) from the Clinton years ((mid-1990s intel, (your expression)) and then, if he was worth his salt as a Senator, must have checked it out against Bush's claims (that incidentally co-incided with much of the European and Russian intelligence, which if you know how to google you can check for yourself or others here can check to verify your claim that the later intelligence invalidated the "mid-1990's intel").

     Unless you belong to the school of post-modernist historians, which class can be very selective with facts, we can check your story to see if in fact you are not yourself moulding some little propaganda cameos for us rather than giving us a factual history.

     "Yes, the Clinton administration did believe (based on mid-1990's intel) that the Iraqis had a WMD program (but not actual weapons, those had been rounded up by the inspectors or the troops at the end of Gulf I, it was part of the cease-fire agreement.) Back then we did have some moderately good reasons to believe this and it turns out we were correct at that time. What kept Hussein from doing anything with this program was the inspection system, as we now know (and knew before 2003 as well) from Iraqi officials and defectors, including high ranking ones who thought Hussein's posturing on this point was foolish and sought to ensure it wouldn't harm Iraqi interests."

     The following quotes I suggest, at best, show you are a very sloppy historian:

     "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."

     - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

     "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."

     - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

     "One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."

     - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

     "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

     - President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 | Source

     "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbours with weapons of mass destruction."

     - Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998 | Source

     "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."

     - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 | Source

     "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

     Letter to President Clinton. - (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998

     "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region an he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

     - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

     "Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."

     - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

     "We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."

     - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002

     All these persons from the above knew what the "mid-1990s intel" was and should at least have queried "Bush's" claims if in fact it was as you say. The fact that none of them did, indicates that the "mid-1990s intel" did not substantially differ from the pre-war intelligence which in turn means that your own logical faculties were not in play and consequently you have indulged your self in unadulterated bullshit, to slur the Bush Administration, at the expense of the more credulous and "unbiased" members on this forum.

     Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2006 @ 11:19am

122. "This site should promote civility"

     yes but something like this:Traitorlibz,

     does not make a good start.

     thank heaven for the ignore button.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 11:20am

123. Jonesy, this is all sooo old. the fact is Bush invaded Iraq, none of those other people did. the blame is his alone, well it would be if he were really pres, I'll say Cheney has the blame.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 11:31am

124. The only poll with real legitimacy in America is the one we have on the first Tuesday of November.

     That poll, which put each and every one of those Senators in Washington, has thus far refuted every comment in Berman's piece.

     Posted by Jay Cline at 06/21/2006 @ 11:34am

125. The only poll with real legitimacy in America is the one we have on the first Tuesday of November.

     tell it to the nervous Tories who are trying to distance themselves from Bush and Cheney.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 11:43am

126. 1. MoveOn in its role as an antiwar organization never grasped the fact that the war itself is an international crime. This magazine has also been negligent in pounding this point home to its readers. We should leave immediately. 2. The people of Iraq, I am sure, understand that the BRAND NEW GOVERNMENT is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US/corporate America conglomerate. We are the ones who do not get it. New laws which were first issued by edict by J. Paul Bremer are now part of the new constitution which is also illegal under international law since an occupying force is prohibired from changing the constitution of the occupied. Therefore, when Saddam Hussein asserts that he is still president of Iraq, he is technically correct. What the new laws allow is the private ownership of every business in Iraq by foreigners and the removal from the country of 100% of the profits. I could go on, but surely you get the picture. Maniac in Massachusetts

     Posted by activex2 at 06/21/2006 @ 11:59am

127. "A CRUCIAL VOTE". It's a crime against the American people as well as our troops to keep them in Iraq. The results are becoming clearer everyday. I suppose no administration did the will of the people as per our constitution but this one has simply spit in our eyes and as much as told us to go to hell insofar as our opinions are concerned.

     Our troops have become a liability to the Iraqi's ever becoming an independant country. Moreover, they, themselves have become sick individuals as seen through the massacres that have recently come to light. What person, anywhere can maintain sanity when he is compelled to live under bone chilling fear 24 hours a day, when they don't know when and where a bullet or a bomb waits for them?

     Iraq, the war that should never have been, is seen by many as justified because of it's location to fight the war on terror! This decision was so misguided that it has become nothing more than a breeding ground for terrorist.

     Yes, it is time to bring our troops home, as Japan is pulling theirs out. They have one of two choices and that is to kill or be killed. Hell of a choice, isn't it?

     Posted by uglyduckling at 06/21/2006 @ 12:01pm

128. Posted by JOHANNESROLF 06/21/2006 @ 11:31am

     JR,

     It might be old but the story by the "historian" flies in the face of what you say. It is all part of the propaganda game. If you are a pacifist that is enough justification to oppose any war and be respected for a principled stand. However to imagine you need to hide behind a flimsy tissue of illogically stiched together "facts" to justify your opposition to a war brings you and others who go down that path no credit.

     The issue was not who did the deed but who knew about the "two streams" of intelligence and if there were any substantial differences in those streams of information (or was it one and the same stream but added to). The answer to that tells us whether Bush and his side was misled by faulty intelligence or was lying. Doesn't matter how old it is, truth is truth and lies are lies. The political game is to convince the electorate that your opponents cannot be trusted. That's what is at play here.

     As always we're still way out in front of you. 2.18am Thursday to be exact. So off to bed for me.

     Posted by lrjones4 at 06/21/2006 @ 12:18pm

129. LRJONES4,

     Of course STWRILEY can well tend to your argument, so I'll just point out the following--You challenge the Anyway claim that those in the Clinton Administration did not believe Saddam had actual WMD weapons.

     However, your quotes almost invariably refer to weapons programs. The '03 Kerry quote refers to a grasp for WMD; the '98 quotes talk about denying him the capacity for WMD and WMD programs, there's no assertion that he had them or was close to having them. Further, none of them said the situation required a full-on invasion. Clinton did one barrage of airstrikes but the policy was based on sanctions and pushing for the resumption of inspections. Further, none of them told whoppers like the Nigerien uranium or the so-called mobile bio-weapons labs.

     They also didn't engage in the conflation-by-insinuation of Iraq and 9-11.

     If you can't draw those distinctions, you're really in no position to be giving lectures about logic.

     Posted by brunowe at 06/21/2006 @ 12:20pm

130. truth is truth and lies are lies.

     yes, WMD, nuclear threats, biological weapons trailers, aluminum tubes, lies all. now what was your point?

     let's say that the "facts" presented to the pres were 50-50 in the above. when he then makes his case, without the opposing views, that is selective truth, in other words a lie.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 12:27pm

131. "New laws which were first issued by edict by J. Paul Bremer are now part of the new constitution which is also illegal under international law since an occupying force is prohibired from changing the constitution of the occupied. Therefore, when Saddam Hussein asserts that he is still president of Iraq, he is technically correct."

     I think you have just proved, through contradiction, if not the fallibility, then most certainly the irrelevance, of international "law".

     Posted by Jay Cline at 06/21/2006 @ 12:28pm

132. Despite the continuing insurgency, conditions were stable enough to conduct elections. John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, has indicated that the United States government would comply with a United Nations resolution declaring that coalition forces would have to leave if requested by the Iraqi government. "If that's the wish of the government of Iraq, we will comply with those wishes. But no, we haven't been approached on this issue -- although obviously we stand prepared to engage the future government on any issue concerning our presence here."..... "

     Conditions have apparently not been stable enough for this government to exercise any real authority, or to deal with the Lebanonization of Iraq. Likewise, the conditions haven't apparently been stable enough for Bush to give Maliki any notice of the trip to Baghdad.

     Posted by brunowe at 06/21/2006 @ 12:32pm

133. since things have improved SOOO much in Iraq, I guess there can be no point any longer of fighting the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them over here?

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 2:29pm

134. the politicians are stuck on the two extremes. remember when bush I geeked up the kurds and let them get slaughtered? the altruism of this whole project is suspect. unless we are going to stay there as we did in germany and japan; these people are going to be left to their own devices eventually. the money to be made in the interim hasn't been discussed enough; it is a WINDFALL. Like VietNam the sideshow is where the real interest of the media should lie.

     Posted by joebear9 at 06/21/2006 @ 4:59pm

135. Betraying the Kurds

     In fact, the U.S. has a long history of standing by Turkey during its repression of the Kurds. According to Amnesty International, the Turkish army has killed 26,000 Kurds in southeast Turkey and in the "so-called safe havens the West has set up for Kurds in northern Iraq." In addition, "the Turkish army has bulldozed over 4,000 villages in Kurdistan…[while] over three million Kurds have been driven from their homes."22

     The U.S. has also consistently betrayed its promises to the Kurdish people. Two decades after Henry Kissinger encouraged Kurds to rise up against the government of Iraq–only to then abandon them for an oil deal in March 1975–he said by way of explanation, "We did not know much about the Kurds–we thought they were some kind of hill tribe." A more honest observer later said that "the Kurds were just part of [an] arms deal for Henry."23

     But the Kurds, thinking they had the backing of the U. S., took up arms against the Iraqi government in 1975 and were brutally crushed. Some 200,000 Kurds were made refugees and thousands were killed, according to a government investigation:

     The president [Henry Ford], Dr. Kissinger, and the Shah [of Iran] all hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's [Iran's] neighboring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our allies, who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical enterprise.24

     When confronted about the betrayal, Kissinger simply said, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."25

     As veteran Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal notes, the betrayals continued:

     [S]uccessive American governments seemed outwardly unbothered by what had happened…In the closing period of the Iran-Iraq war, Washington took no punitive action against Saddam Hussein's use of chemical poison gas, which killed thousands of Kurdish civilians at Halabja in March 1988; thousands more succumbed to chemical weapons in the final months of the war; and still further thousands died even after the August 20 cease-fire ending that conflict.

     In February 1991, President George Bush encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein, then tried to turn a blind eye to their massive exodus when their revolt collapsed in part because of his own government's refusal to shoot down Iraqi helicopters spreading terror in northern Iraq.26

     While useful as a rhetorical tool–and sometimes as a destabilizing factor–the U.S. has no intention of allowing Kurds to fight for an independent Kurdistan, which would redraw boundaries in a region of unparalleled importance to U.S. interests and would threaten to bring the region's oil resources under democratic, rather than Western, control.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 5:39pm

136. Posted by LRJONES4 06/21/2006 @ 11:19am

     Read elsewhere that you are a trained historian and you imagine that are also a logician. Most logicians I know are either mathematicians or hang around philosophy departments. Of course at the trivial level one could say the appeal to being an historian (so listen to me) is also an appeal to authority. Very naughty breaking the rules like that.

     About my an historian, you read correctly. About any idea that I claim to be (or fancy myself) a logician, I don't. But that doesn't mean I'll pass on the responsibility to point out basic failures of logic from trolls who use widely known and discredited techniques. It doesn't take a logician for that. The formal logical arguments I'll leave to the mathematicians (because you're certainly not going to see a formal syllogism out of me, that's not what debate in this forum is about.) My post elsewhere, in which you encountered my "outing" myself as an historian, was in response to a charge that I was a paid operative, a charge I was refuting rather than seeking to use my professional status in that case. Oh, and an appeal to authority is only illegitimate if the authority in question is somehow misplaced in the debate (i.e., not an expert in the field.) Since what we were discussing at the time was history and strategy (my fields of expertise) we can lay your claim of a fallacy to rest. Now, on to your other claims (though some have already been ably answered by Brunowe.)

     Anyway let's check your claim that those in the Clinton Administration did not believe Saddam had actual WMD weapons. We'll start then with Kerry, who must have got his original information (see letter to President Clinton below) from the Clinton years ((mid-1990s intel, (your expression)) and then, if he was worth his salt as a Senator, must have checked it out against Bush's claims (that incidentally co-incided with much of the European and Russian intelligence, which if you know how to google you can check for yourself or others here can check to verify your claim that the later intelligence invalidated the "mid-1990's intel").

     I'll pass lightly over your jab about post-modernism (military historians are rarely post-modernists), your dismissive comment about "propaganda cameos", and get right on to the claims and assertions you make above and the quotes that supposedly back them. Sloppy history indeed, but not on my part.

     You begin with Kerry in 2003 and 2002. Both these quotes are irrelevant for a very simple reason. They are based on the intel given to the Senate (and that would naturally include Senator Kerry) by the Bush administration. It is this very intel that is now shown to be trumped up or based on discredited sources (especially the infamous "Curveball".) Kerry himself has apologised for accepting it in his admission of wrong in backing the decision to authorise force. The same caveat applies to the Levin quote you end with. The whole point of the debate over pre-invasion intelligence is that the administration held back or underplayed what did not agree with its viewpoint and provided Congress with only those sources that it liked (wrong though they were.) The only really relevant material here is that which actually comes from the Clinton administration. Using irrelevant evidence is the first sign of a poor historian.

     Now, the Clinton era quotes. As Brunowe has already pointed out to you, all of these quotes actually support my original contention, that the Clinton administration believed that Hussein had WMD programs and the intent to proceed with them if he could find a way to do so. Every one of these quotes comes from the period in 1998-1999 when we were in a stand-off with Iraq over the work of UNSCOM and Hussein's non-cooperation with inspectors. None mention (nor was it mentioned at the time elsewhere by the Clinton administration) any sign or belief that Iraq actually had WMD stockpiles or weapons. Every one is in reference to the attempt to ensure that he would not keep and rebuild his WMD programs that might enable him, at some future point, to once again build WMD and threaten other with them. I refer you to the complete transcript of Clinton's speech announcing the airstrikes [cnn.com] against Iraq on 12/16/1998 and the justifications found therein. Every one of the President's reasons is predicated on Iraqi efforts to prevent inspectors from examining site, equipment, and documents, not on the idea that they were hiding WMD themselves. And how do we know now that the Clinton administration knew there were no actual WMDs? Well, that would be because a high level Iraqi defector told them (and UNSCOM as well) that the weapons within Iraq had been destroyed at the end of Gulf I. That story was not known outside of classified circles at the time, but Newsweek broke the story [fair.org] on 2/24/2003 when it obtained a full transcript [fair.org] of the defector's testimony (which was given in 1995.) The defector in question was Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law and a high rankig general in the Iraqi army. He paid for that defection with his life, too. That is the relevant mid-1990's intel, and it differs significantly from the trumped up and manufactured pre-invasion intel fed by the Bush administration to Congress. No doubt you will ask why Kerry and his fellow Senators did not question this in light of the idea that they knew of the older material (and no, I am not begging the question in the proper sense, just anticipating where you'll go next since I've seen this line of reasoning before.) The answer is simply that the Bush administration was claiming it had new intel that superceded what we already knew. They claimed that Hussein had "reconstituted" his WMD programs and had produced stockpiles of WMDs, as well as constructing apparatus no one had ever seen before (the infamous "mobile biological weapons labs"), all of which we now know to be wrong. You stretch the bounds of fact by asserting from your Clinton era quotes that these are the same contentions as were made in 1998-1999. Try reading the entire source before you make an assertion based on one or two sentences.

     Oh, and before I forget, those Russian and European claims are all of a parcel with the Bush administration's favored data, since these are the essence of the "Curveball" reports and their associated material (he was vetted through German intelligence, who passed him on but considered him unreliable and probably an outright liar.) The evidence has been well reported for this process of intel selection, as have the counter-reports generated from within the American Intelligence community calling the favored intel into question, so much so that you doubtless had to go through a similar screening process yourself (if you actually did the Google searches for anything more than the quotes you use) in order to avoid them. If one of my students turned in a paper with this kind of highly selective and misrepresented sources as his basis, I'd flunk him.

     I'm afraid that you've flunked too, not only in your ability to do good history, but in your rude and contemptuous attitude toward someone you've never even engaged with before this post. The next time you want to debate, you might try being civil on the first approach rather than accusing your opponent of having "indulged your self in unadulterated bullshit". It helps as well if you can actually back up what you say. Here endth the lesson.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/21/2006 @ 5:57pm

137. Riley, nice slicing and dicing, that Benihaha guy has nothing on you.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/21/2006 @ 6:51pm

138. Well, well, well....STWRILEY is now using a single defector's claims as fact! And we all know that there are absolutely no high level defectors ( or Iraqi Generals ) who have made claims that there were WMD's or that Saddam himself told them that there were WMD's! A purely insane yet convenient selection of which info. is fact and which info. is false! Now nack to reality: there have been many high ranking Iraqi defectors that have made claims that Saddam had WMD's and recently it was reported that Saddams Generals believed he had them because he led them to believe it! Funny how you only chose to quote those who push your insane theories, and then state it as fact! Pathetic!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/21/2006 @ 7:14pm

139. Am I mistaken or isn't the vote going to take place tomorrow?

     In the meantime all those of us who are in favor of the amendment will be making the lives of those Senators who do not support the Kerry/Feingold Amendment a living Hell.

     They didn't appreciate the faxes and telephone calls during the Alito nomination and they won't appreciate being called on their vote now. I doubt many will change their minds, but we should at least put them on notice that we are watching and taking their vote into account.

     Posted by DynamicDems at 06/21/2006 @ 8:45pm

140. Posted by BARRY25 06/21/2006 @ 7:14pm

     Well, well, well....STWRILEY is now using a single defector's claims as fact! And we all know that there are absolutely no high level defectors ( or Iraqi Generals ) who have made claims that there were WMD's or that Saddam himself told them that there were WMD's! A purely insane yet convenient selection of which info. is fact and which info. is false! Now nack to reality: there have been many high ranking Iraqi defectors that have made claims that Saddam had WMD's and recently it was reported that Saddams Generals believed he had them because he led them to believe it! Funny how you only chose to quote those who push your insane theories, and then state it as fact! Pathetic!

     Barry25, we're not talking about any old general here, but Hussein Kamel, Saddam's brother-in-law that he had shot when he went back to Iraq (because his immediate family was still in Saddam's grasp.) This is a man who had nothing to gain personally from his defection and everything to lose (as indeed he did.) He is hardly alone among Iraqi defectors. What's more, we do not have to rely on his word alone, since he brought a treasure trove of Iraqi government documents (authenticated by UNSCOM) with him when he did. Not to put too fine a point on it, be he obviously didn't think his own testimony would be enough to convince the inspectors and brought the proof of what he claimed with him. Much the same kind of story came from other defectors who had inside knowledge of Iraq's WMD programs. While regular army field generals (as opposed to insiders like Kamel) may have made claims of WMD stockpiles, they were not in a position to know so it hardly matters what their testimony on this point was. It would be like you telling me that there is life of Pluto. I would have no good reason to believe you unless you could produce some actual proof since you are in no position to know such a thing.

     Meanwhile, most of the intel that was used by BushCo came from exiles who had everything to gain from American intervention (from Ahmed Chalabi on down.) They ardently desired an invasion in order to get themselves into power and were willing to do whatever BushCo wanted to get it. Now, who do we think might bend the truth in this case? The defectors who had everything to lose or the exiles who had everything to gain? Come on, Barry25, it's not that hard to do simple analysis of motive here. Work it out.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/21/2006 @ 8:56pm

141. Sarin and Mustard gas = WMD's you jerkoffs! Just found in Iraq by US troops! This was reported today! What ya' got to say now traitors! I'm sure the spin will include something to the effect that if we do not find a nuclear warhead then it's not really a WMD! You fools were wrong, the facts are in, Bush is exonerated, now move to France you quizzling litlle twerps! You sold out your country based on the liberal lie that there were no WMD's and now , once again, WMD's have been found. Apologize immediately, ask for forgivness from your master KING GEORGE, and then move to France scum!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/21/2006 @ 9:05pm

142. STWRILEY, is mustard gas or sarin gas considered a weapon of mass destruction? Now MORON, when you idiots claim that it is proven that there were no WMD's in Iraq because we haven't found any, you prove your stupidity! WE JUST FOUND MUSTARD AND SARIN GAS TODAY, FUCKWAD! I THOUGHT IT WAS PROVEN THAT WE HAD SEARCHED EVERYWHERE ALREADY AND NOTHING TURNED UP! SO, IT'S OBVIOUS THAT THE LONGER WE SEARCH THE MORE WE FIND! YOU SEDITIOUS LIBERALS HAVE BETRAYED YOUR COUNTRY AND THE PROOFF IS IN THE MUSTARD AND SARIN GAS! HOW ANY SANE HUMAN BEING CAN STATE THAT IT IS FACT THAT THERE WERE NO WMD'S IN IRAQ, WHEN THAT VERY CLAIM IS NOT PROVABLE, EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE, IS BEYOND ME! YOU LOWLIFE SCUM, FUCKING BASTARDS HAVE BEEN PROVEN WRONG AND I HOPE AND PRAY THAT EACH AND EVERY LYING DEMOCRAT WHO HAS ATTACKED THIS PRES. OVER WMD'S GET'S TRIED AND CONVICTED ON CHARGES OF SEDITION!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/21/2006 @ 9:17pm

143. sTWRILEY, i'M WAITING FOR A RETRACTION OF ALL YOUR CHARGES ON THIS BLOG! THE FACTS ARE IN! YOU WERE WRONG! WHILE YOU WERE WRITING THAT LAST POST, I WAS LISTENING TO THE REPORT ON THE SARIN AND MUSTARD stockpile FIND! I DON'T EXPECT YOU TO ADMIT WHEN YOU'RE WRONG BECAUSE YOUR HEART IS VESTED IN BLIND HATRED FOR THIS PRES. AND COUNTRY! ALL THE WASTED TIME AND GIBERISH YOU HAVE SPEWED HAS BEEN SHOT DOWN, NOT BY ME, BUT BY THE FACTS! MUSTARD AND SARIN GAS ARE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ( USED ON KURDS/ THERE ARE PICTURES TO PROVE IT) AND THIS CANNOT BE DENIED! IT'S OVER LOWLIFES! WHAT A GREAT DAY FOR THE US AND A BAD DAY FOR LIBERALS! TOLD YOU SO!

     Posted by barry25 at 06/21/2006 @ 9:23pm

144. Barry25

     I'm not even going to bother quoting your rather intemperate rants, no point. The real point is that this is actually based on things we already know. What they have found (and yes, I've looked at the FOXNews report, Santorum's comments, and the declassified "document" which is simply a summary of a few points from the actual report) are munitions that contained these agents. You, like most people unfamiliar with mil-speak, do not recognize the difference between chemical agents (the actual WMDs) and munitions (the carrying devices.) What has been found recently is the same thing that has been found before, munitions that show chemical signs they contained these agents. That is no surprise, we know that they did exist at one time in Iraq (pre-1991) and that the Iraqis had not destroyed the munitions themselves. The problem is that Santorum compresses what the summary actually says to try and make it more inflammatory. Here's the real scoop (from the declassified "document" itself) which presents these two statements as seperate points.

     Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

     That is, in three years all that searching has turned up 500 munitions (mostly artillery shells) that had been used to contain chemical weapons. The vast majority of those were found back in 2003 immediately after the invasion. This was known Barry25, not a new revelation. Every once in a while a few more turn up because once they were emptied the Iraqis stored them with other shells (not in the protected and controled environments that chemical agents actually need to be stored in.)

     Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.

     You'll note the relevant parts of this rather artfully constructed sentence, "pre-Gulf War" (that is, not the current invasion but Gulf I) and "assessed" (that is, they believe that they exist but have no actual ones in hand.) Whether filled or unfilled, still no WMDs (actual chemical agents, other than degraded trace) found.

     It is also worth noting that even the FOXNews article has a rather large caveat below the fold, a statement by a "senior Defense Department official" making it clear that this is no smoking gun.

     "This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

     Is that clear enough for you Barry25?

     I'll add this, just to make sure you get it. I know people who have worked on NBC issues (that's Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, for you non-military folks) for the US Army (a Lt. Colonel who is a personal friend most especially) and have been in Iraq. They give me the same assessment that this report contains, i.e., there are no new munitions and everything that's still there is, essentially, leftovers that the Iraqis disposed of improperly by trying to recycle them back in 1991 (something proper procedures would never do.) While the traces in the munitions are dangerous, they tell me, they are only so to the people who actually handle them. They are useless for weapons purposes.

     In the future, try waiting for a response instead of ranting like you've popped a circuit. Some of us have lives and jobs and don't spend every waking minute on this forum scanning for the latest post from a rude, offensive troll like you. But don't expect any further replies from me. I've shot down your latest attempt at relevance and now, rather than bother reading offensive garbage like your last two posts, I'm adding you to my ignore list. Goodbye Barry25, have a nice life fooling yourself and ranting to the wind.

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/22/2006 @ 06:41am

145. I pity you Reilly at the same time I admire you. as a rookie here, to use a sports metaphor if you don't mind, you have to wade through the foaming at the mouth nutcases that most of us have on ignore long ago. I hope these herculean labors don't exhaust you, as your intelligent commentary is a great asset here.

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/22/2006 @ 08:46am

146. STWRILEY

     Clearly B25's all-caps rant is just "cheerleading practice." On my campus in the summer, we often have any number of cheerleading camps occurring, although I must admit I've yet to see a GOP cheer camp.

     But of course, just like the mythical WMDs, just cause I've never seen one doens't mean they don't exist.

     Posted by leftofcenter at 06/22/2006 @ 09:12am

147. Riley instead of Reilly, ooops

     Posted by johannesrolf at 06/22/2006 @ 09:15am

148. A quick update on the Santorum/WMD story. Think Progress [thinkprogress.org] and DailyKos [dailykos.com] both have stories up now that add a bit to my points here. DailyKos in particular links to the Iraq Survey Group report [globalsecurity.org] that disproves this claim without equivocation and to BushCo's own admission [washingtonpost.com] (from the mouth of 43 himself, no less) that the WMD claimed by the administration did not exists. And the explaination for the apparent scoop of BushCo by Santorum and FOXNews? Here's where the "general" Barry25 mentions elsewhere comes into the picture. Think Progress reveals the he's FOX analyst Thomas McInerery, who claims that BushCo concealed the "truth" about WMDs to protect Russia, China and France as part of an international cover-up. He's actually claiming that these countries moved weapons out in 2002 (though he claims it was from Syria, not directly from Iraq) because they had (get this) sold them to Iraq in the first place. Mind you, he offers no evidence for this whatsoever (it is presented as his "personal opinion".) Well, if he's that good, I've got a few lost items I'd like him to find for me while he's prognosticating. This is the depths that Santorum and FOXNews will sink to. Shameful, isn't it?

     Posted by Stwriley at 06/22/2006 @ 12:00pm

149. Calling for immediate withdrawel from Iraq is a lose-lose situation for Democrats because to do so involves them in responsibility for the inevitable mess. Better to point out that the Bush junta is responsible for the deceiving Congress and the American public and going to war under false pretenses (one definition of TREASON from my dictionary: the betrayal of any trust or confidence; treachery; perfidy). Better to point out that there is no way to tell just what the circumstances will be when reasonable people are back in power and call for a convening of the best leaders whose advice was ignored (Zinni, Shinseki, Clark, etc) to come up with the best plan for ending the conflict. In the meantime it is their mess - let them pay the price for it. Speaking of polls, most worldwide polls found Bush to pose much more of a threat than Saddam Hussein. Bush is also responsible for several times the death and destruction than bin Laden and Zarqawi combined.

     Posted by SJuniper at 06/22/2006 @ 11:25pm