Why Bush Should be Impeached

[BillyBob]

Good going! Capitalism rocks!!!!

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Good going! Capitalism rocks!!!! Indeed. I remember an old episode of Captain Planet (a cheesey program, I know, but occasionally amusing...) in which the villain started a war between two countries, all the while providing arms to both parties.

Truly ingenious.

[HerodionRomulus]

Libya'a Quadafi isa survivor. He goes which ever way the wind blows.

Once he was a Pan-Arabist, now pretends to be a Pan-Africanist. Once he was pro-Western, then not, now he has shifted once again.
His only concern is his survival. Do business with him if you wish, but don't trust him. Ever.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Hey Skeptic, you still haven't shouted in the 'Shout Box'. C'mon, do it just once....for me! I guess I have not done enough exploring on tOL. What is the 'Shout Box'?

[Behira]

We did not have to invade Iraq!
Saddam was cooperating with UN inspectors.

It's about oil and $. What do you think would have happened if GW had negotiated an end to sanctions against Iraq, and the return of US investment? Did GW try this with Saddam?

THE UN; was the idea of Saudi Arabia, came out of the League of Nations which was idea from Arab League of Nations, the NATIONAL LANGUAGE OF UN is Arabic. The U.S. doesn't have a national language of English; which it should; but the UN does. The UN Security Council those people who are supposed to quell all the wars and rumors of wars; are made up of mostly Terrorist Arab Nations; that's mostly what GW meant when he said they were irrelavant. Tell me what great good has the UN done in the last 10 years. Where is the UN in the Sudan? Where is the UN when Gadaffi intends to take over Africa?

Gadaffi announcing he will hand over WMD to UN is not really any great thing to celebrate considering what the UN did in Iraq; virtually nothing.

[Behira]

The terror began; just after the fall of Adam and Eve; and won't end until the restoration of all things. Terrorism has always been present on the earth; the difference now is that it can destroy all humanity. Must be stopped.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Behira
Tell me what great good has the UN done in the last 10 years. Tell me, how many times has the US exerted its UN veto and denied funds for its selfish interests at the expense of global concerns, in the last 10 years?

Gadaffi announcing he will hand over WMD to UN is not really any great thing to celebrate considering what the UN did in Iraq; virtually nothing. Then, why isn't Bush planning to invade Libya? He can't afford to - the military is stretched too thin and, after killing thousands of Iraqis unnecessarily in an unjust invasion, Bush could not win approval at home. And, it's the oil, stupid!

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Behira
The terror began; just after the fall of Adam and Eve; and won't end until the restoration of all things. Terrorism has always been present on the earth; the difference now is that it can destroy all humanity. Must be stopped. No, terror began millions of years ago, and will never end until the human species becomes extinct. However, humans could significantly reduce terrorism by (1) addressing the fundamental root causes of terrorism, not just killing them (more just keep coming), and (2) working to reduce religious fundamentalism (yes, Christian, Islamic, etc.) through reason and science.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I guess I have not done enough exploring on tOL. What is the 'Shout Box'?

Oh, it didn't occur to me that you wouldn't know what it is. Just hit the 'Active' icon at the top of the page and the TOL home page comes up. [They might call it something else] At the top right is a place to post called a Shout Box. It is only accessible to members and now that you're a member, I thought you should step up and shout occasionally.

I bet Knight a membership that you wouldn't so Knights gets 30 bucks out of the deal if you use it.

Merry Christmas!

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
I bet Knight a membership that you wouldn't so Knights gets 30 bucks out of the deal if you use it. Well, ... (wince) ... since you and I agree ... (cringe) ... on one or two more topics than than Knight and I, you get the 30 bucks.

Merry..... ah, I mean .... Happy Holidays.

[BillyBob]

:D

[Delmar]

Originally posted by Skeptic
No, terror began millions of years ago, and will never end until the human species becomes extinct. However, humans could significantly reduce terrorism by (1) addressing the fundamental root causes of terrorism, not just killing them (more just keep coming), and (2) working to reduce religious fundamentalism (yes, Christian, Islamic, etc.) through reason and science.

individual terrorists will stop when they stop breathing.

[Zakath]

Originally posted by deardelmar
individual terrorists will stop when they stop breathing. Now there's a profound, and unfortunately true, observation on the subject. :thumb:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by deardelmar
individual terrorists will stop when they stop breathing. Merely killing individual terrorists will do nothing to stop the flow of terrorists into the world. It may, in fact, increase the rate of flow, as would-be terrorists vow revenge for the death of their father, mother, friend or other relative.

What's so aversive about addressing the root causes of terrorism? Are you afraid that addressing root causes might someday reduce the number of terrorists to kill? Do you feel the same way about crime? Are you afraid that addressing root causes of criminal behavior might someday reduce the number of criminals we can lock up or execute? Nothing like a good killing or execution, eh deardelmar?

Which approach would your buddy, Jesus, have preferred?

[HerodionRomulus]

Jesus himself, being the Executed God would probably not have much good to say about executions or death of any kind.
After all he came to defeat death, not to increase it.

[BillyBob]

Skeptic;
What's so aversive about addressing the root causes of terrorism?

Billy;
Absolutely nothing. And since the root cause of terrorism is Islam, I propose we address it by wiping it out.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Absolutely nothing. And since the root cause of terrorism is Islam, I propose we address it by wiping it out.
I'm sure the IRA will be very surprised to find out that they are actually Muslims...

And somehow, I don't believe you are willing to systematically exterminate one sixth of the human population, men, women, children and infants.

Now, if you can show that you are capable of picking up a Muslim baby and breaking its neck...

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Skeptic;
What's so aversive about addressing the root causes of terrorism?

Billy;
Absolutely nothing. And since the root cause of terrorism is Islam, I propose we address it by wiping it out. Terrorism, as a method of rebellion, has been around long before the existence of Islam and will be around for as long as people are free to believe what they will. Perhaps we should work at changing the nature of what people come to believe? And I don't mean belief in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or other religions (even though the world could do without all of them), none of which are the root cause of terrorism. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, people can learn that there are other ways of dealing with problems than acts of terrorism. Don't you think this has a better chance of long-term success, BillyBob?

Please grab a cup of coffee and take the time to read this:
Islamic Terrorism? (http://www.alislam.org/library/books/mna/chapter_9.html)

[BillyBob]

Gerald;
I'm sure the IRA will be very surprised to find out that they are actually Muslims...

Billy;
Last I checked, it wasn't the IRA who flew planes into our buildings.

[BillyBob]

Skeptic;
Regardless of one's religious beliefs, people can learn that there are other ways of dealing with problems than acts of terrorism.

Billy;
I am sure that you would be welcomed in the Middle East as someone who is going to teach them not to terrorize.

Skeptic;
Don't you think this has a better chance of long-term success, BillyBob?

Billy;
No, I do not Skeptic. Killing them has a better chance of success than begging them to please stop. Well, maybe if you said "Pretty please with sugar on top", they might quit blowing themselves up.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Gerald;
I'm sure the IRA will be very surprised to find out that they are actually Muslims...

Billy;
Last I checked, it wasn't the IRA who flew planes into our buildings. So, only those who flew planes into our buildings, and those who funded and supported them, can be considered terrorists?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Merry..... ah, I mean .... Happy Holidays.

Don't you celebrate Christmas?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic
So, only those who flew planes into our buildings, and those who funded and supported them, can be considered terrorists?

No, I didn't say that. You do a pretty good job terrorizing this website.

Are you a Muslim? :shocked:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Last I checked, it wasn't the IRA who flew planes into our buildings. And if it had been, would you advocate the wholesale slaughter of the Irish population?

Even better, if it had been American Protestants...

Admit it, BB: you don't have the stomach for extermination; you have to be willing to kill children and infants, as well as adults.

[BillyBob]

Gerald;
Admit it, BB: you don't have the stomach for extermination; you have to be willing to kill children and infants, as well as adults.

Billy;
Whatever it takes.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Are you a Muslim? :shocked: That requires believing in a deity.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
No, I didn't say that. You do a pretty good job terrorizing this website.

Are you a Muslim? :shocked: Here's what you said: Originally posted by BillyBob
Skeptic;
What's so aversive about addressing the root causes of terrorism?

Billy;
Absolutely nothing. And since the root cause of terrorism is Islam, I propose we address it by wiping it out. So, according to you the root cause of terrorism is Islam. If you say there are such things as non-Islamic terrorists, you will have succeeded in contradicting yourself.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Whatever it takes. Yeah, right.

Who're you trying to convince, me or yourself? You don't have what it takes to pick up a baby and break its neck.

Someone could hold a gun to your head and you wouldn't do it.

Stop trying to be a tough guy.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald
That requires believing in a deity.

You guys have a new diety this week, Michael Jackson just converted to Islam.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald
Yeah, right.

Who're you trying to convince, me or yourself? You don't have what it takes to pick up a baby and break its neck.

Someone could hold a gun to your head and you wouldn't do it.

Stop trying to be a tough guy.


Depends on the scenario. If they were your children I would have no problem doing it.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
You guys have a new diety this week, Michael Jackson just converted to Islam. Michael who?

Oh, the white woman trapped in a black man's body.

Never heard of him...:p :chuckle:

[BillyBob]

Do you put little turbans on their heads and give them fake little beards? :baby:

[Skeptic]

Oh, BillyBob? Do you admit to contradicting yourself? :chuckle:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Depends on the scenario. If they were your children I would have no problem doing it. Just like I'd have no trouble with yours...or your mother...or your father...

(Are you sure you wanna go this route...?)

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Oh, BillyBob? Do you admit to contradicting yourself? :chuckle:


NEVER!!!

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald
Just like I'd have no trouble with yours...or your mother...or your father...

(Are you sure you wanna go this route...?)


It doesn't bother me...:chuckle:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob
NEVER!!! That's what I kinda figured. :chuckle:

[BillyBob]

:D

[BillyBob]

Hey, where did Gerald go????? His Mom musta put dinner on the table....:chuckle:

[Skeptic]

Italy Anarchists Suspected in EU Letter Bombs (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20031230/wl_nm/security_europe_dc)

Hey, these Italian anarchists can't be terrorists! Why, they aren't even Muslims!! Right, BillyBob? :chuckle:

[BillyBob]

OK, so we'll kill all Muslims and Italians. You gotta problem with that?

[Delmar]

Originally posted by BillyBob
OK, so will kill all Muslims and Italians. You gotta problem with that? :chuckle:

[Skeptic]

==========================
Published on Sunday, December 28, 2003 by the Toronto Star
Bush is Author of Dark Chapter for America
by Haroon Siddiqui

CONOOR, India—Up here in the tea estates of Nilgiri Hills, where teak-floored bungalows with vast verandas offer spectacular vistas, one feels grateful for the distance from the ubiquitous American media and for the time and tranquility to think and reflect.

As the year of the war on Iraq draws to a close, the larger perspective that emerges is clear: George W. Bush, a small man in a big job, has dragged America into one of its darkest chapters.

He commands unprecedented military power, but his word carries little or no weight in much of the world.

This odd equation remains unaltered by Saddam Hussein's capture, hyped in America but seen elsewhere as inevitable, given that Iraq is not an Afghanistan of a million caves. If anything, the video of his captivity exposed the Bush administration's desperate need to display a trophy catch.

Bush's next declared mission, that of toppling Yasser Arafat, only reinforces the image of the president as a king who knows not the boundaries of his kingdom, nor the limits of his power. Or, as a captive of pro-Israeli hawks hell-bent on remaking the Middle East to Likud designs.

While the president struts and smirks for the cameras in contrived situations — landing on an aircraft carrier to prematurely declare victory in Iraq or serving Thanksgiving turkey to soldiers in Baghdad — terrorism has increased under his watch. Not unlike the record rise in suicide bombings in Israel under Ariel Sharon.

Bush's use of fear as a key tool of governing has turned the world's most powerful nation into its most paranoid, despite two invasions and an expenditure of nearly $200 billion (U.S.).

The administration, invoking 9/11 and the murder of 2,900 innocents as its licence to wage unilateral wars, has so far killed about 10,000 innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's a guesstimate, since America does not count the Afghans and Iraqis it kills in the process of "liberating" them.

The gap between Bush's words and deeds gets bigger by the day, as does the disparity between his illusions and reality.

His war on Iraq was waged on a pack of lies, shoving aside the United Nations when it refused to play its part in the sham exercise of rubberstamping a predetermined course.

Just as he manipulated intelligence to tie Iraq to terrorism and portray its non-existent nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as a threat to America, Bush ignored the State Department's warnings of post-war troubles. He spoke instead of flowers greeting the U.S. liberators and oil revenues paying for the war and rebuilding of Iraq.

He invoked democracy but ignored its expression abroad and suspended its principles at home.

His war was universally opposed, even by the electorates of the governments that joined his "coalition of the willing" — Britain, Spain, Italy and Australia. His most enthusiastic allies were dictators and oppressors, the worst violators of human rights, who used the war on terrorism to stifle dissidents and kill secessionists.

He keeps delaying direct elections in Iraq for fear that the majority Shiites would win and won't be the puppet he wants installed in his subject kingdom.

His administration's violations of the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Constitution are not explained away by the need to cut corners to get at terrorists. Besides not catching any, his policies alienated the very groups whose help was crucial and also sapped the moral strength of his rhetoric and America's $240 million public-relations campaign in Muslim nations.

American courts are reasserting, as they always do, albeit slowly, the rule of law.

But the human and political damage is already done.

Bush promised to avoid a clash of civilizations, but that's what he is widely perceived as presiding over. The anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic discourse — often unapologetically racist — is supplied by Christian fundamentalists and pro-Israeli neo-conservatives, two key constituencies Bush dares not alienate.

The mollycoddled Sharon is thus set to blithely ignore Bush's road map and steamroll over Palestinian lands and Palestinians' human rights in hopes of imposing his version of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.

But this will no more bring peace than his previous policies did.

So long as the Israeli-Palestinian issue festers, anti-Americanism and, presumably, terrorism will keep growing. The link has been unmistakable.

Surveying these geopolitical ruins, it is politically incorrect to blame the American public. But its gullibility is alarming. Even now, a majority believes that Saddam had a hand in 9/11. The Bush crowd knows only too well the usefulness of Saddam, a former ally now a demon.

All of the above is self-evident, except to a majority of Americans and their apologists, including, sadly, some Canadians.

The latter are still whining over Canada's decision to sit out the Iraq war, which history will record as Jean Chrétien's finest hour — something Paul Marin would do well to always remember.

What of the future?

Saddam's trial should be conducted, not as Bush wants, by the Iraqis he controls, but by the International Criminal Court.

Saddam should be charged with crimes against humanity as well as war crimes — hundreds of thousands of Iraqis tortured, raped, mutilated, murdered; groups brutalized in Stalinesque campaigns: Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Shiites; neighbors Iran and Kuwait invaded, their civilians and properties destroyed.

Iraq should be turned over to the United Nations.

But since that's not likely, the United States should let the world body play as great a role as possible while keeping military control in American hands.

That would help improve security for Iraqis and American soldiers alike. It would attract international help, especially from those, like France, Germany, Turkey, Pakistan and India, who do not want to be caught dead cavorting with Bush.

Iraqi sovereignty belongs to Iraqis. They need to write their own constitution, elect their own leaders and make their own mistakes.

They could not possibly do any worse than their occupiers, who have been lurching from crisis to crisis for the last eight months in a haze of incompetence and ignorance.

From: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1228-03.htm
=============================

[BillyBob]

:vomit:

[Delmar]

Originally posted by BillyBob
:vomit:
yeah

[Sealeaf]

Bush should be impeached because tar and feathers are too good for him.

[BillyBob]

He should be honored by adding his likeness to Mount Rushmore!!!!!!

We could change the name to Mount Bushmore! :D

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
He should be honored by adding his likeness to Mount Rushmore!!!!!!

We could change the name to Mount Bushmore! :D Oh, right. Just knock those four other pansies off and put Duhbya's face up there.

For that matter, we could melt down the Statue of Liberty (after all, the (ugh) French gave it to us), recast it in likeness of G.W. Bush and call it the Statue of Conquest (picture him in Roman garb, bearing aloft a sword)...

[BillyBob]

Yeah!!! I Like It!!!!!!!

[brother Willi]

Originally posted by BillyBob
OK, so we'll kill all Muslims and Italians. You gotta problem with that?

hay
my wife is Italian
can I please keep her:D

[BillyBob]

I think there is a marriage clause which allows exemptions.

[brother Willi]

Originally posted by BillyBob
I think there is a marriage clause which allows exemptions.
good
it took me a long time to find a woman dumb enough, I mean smart enough to marry me

[BillyBob]

We all have that same problem. :chuckle:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
I think there is a marriage clause which allows exemptions. Are you sure that's wise...? Remember, the sweetest, most demure wives are often the most dangerous... :noid:

[BillyBob]

Do you sleep with one eye open? Or does your wife make you sleep on the couch?? :chuckle:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Do you sleep with one eye open? Or does your wife make you sleep on the couch?? :chuckle: Sleep? What's that?

I just swap out my plutonium power cell every 18 months... ;)

[Skeptic]

my bold:
======================
Published on Thursday, February 5, 2004 by TomDispatch.com
A Modest Proposal
by Chalmers Johnson

So the Bush administration -- under considerable pressure from people outraged that we invaded Iraq not only without U.N. approval but on false intelligence that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" -- has now decided to investigate itself. For this important task it is proposing a panel of former CIA officials (Robert Gates, Richard Kerr), former Congressional members with "intelligence expertise" (Warren Rudman, Gary Hart), and David Kay, the weapons inspector whose recent report and change of heart have so discomfited the administration. Unsurprisingly, if this administration has its way, the investigation will not make public its results until well after the November election.

The whole exercise smacks of "cover-up" and is about as trustworthy as asking Enron executives to investigate themselves. A group of men, deeply protective of their former colleagues, friends, and Washington connections, will doubtless tell us in due course that U.S. intelligence on Iraq was "thin" (at the time of the war it had been two years since there had been a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq). The now-famous misinformation about "yellow cake" being purchased from Niger will be blamed on England's MI6, the equivalent of our CIA. The real reasons why former ambassador Joseph Wilson's first-hand report on Niger yellow cake was ignored and Wilson's CIA wife subsequently outed will be conveniently forgotten. The real story of how and why the Bush administration went to war in Iraq will be lost in a miasma of words - and undoubtedly an endless commission report with endless appendices, some of which will surely be declared top secret and shielded from public view -- and no one in particular will be blamed (much as Robert McNamara now blames "the fog of war" and not himself for the failures of American policy in Vietnam).

Let me propose that if the Bush administration really wants to find out what went wrong with our pre-war intelligence on Iraq, it should appoint a commission consisting of first-class investigative reporters, including first and foremost the New Yorker magazine's Seymour Hersh and the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows. These two journalists have, in fact, already told us in damning detail what really went on inside the Bush administration. In several of his New Yorker articles, but particularly "The Stovepipe" (published in the October 27, 2003 issue), Hersh describes the process whereby a pro-war cabal within the administration -- Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others -- set out to cherry-pick the intelligence tidbits that supported their preconceived plans for war in Iraq.

In an equally well-documented Atlantic article in the January/February 2004 issue of that magazine, James Fallows explores why so much went so badly wrong after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Why the looting? Why the continuing guerrilla attacks? Why the failure to bring the mass of the population over to our side, even after the capture of Saddam Hussein? Fallows's answer is that most of what went wrong had long been predicted by non-governmental organizations that tried to work with the Pentagon but whose advice was studiously ignored.

Perhaps the most amazing discovery Fallows made with regard to intelligence concerns Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who taught for years at the National War College and who compiled a "net assessment" of how Iraq would look after a successful U.S. attack. Not only did Gardiner's predictions regarding the infrastructure prove devastatingly accurate, but his report was compiled entirely on the basis of information freely available on the Internet. No need at all for $30-plus billion worth of intelligence agencies. Of course, Gardiner's warnings went unheeded in large part because the administration was already bent on war and uninterested in anyone else's thoughts, let alone intelligence on the coming "post-war" era in Iraq.

In its desire to evade responsibility for its lying and reckless decisions, the administration is now trying, on the one hand, to place all blame on the Central Intelligence Agency while, on the other hand, protecting the CIA from the full brunt of such blame by carefully choosing an "old-boy" commission to absolve it. If we really want to know who skewed, manufactured, or otherwise diddled the data about Iraq (and who is doubtlessly still doing so), then we need some good reporters who can develop their own "deep throat" sources of information. Although journalists are not infallible, the best of them are incorruptible to the extent of being willing to be jailed in order to protect their sources. It is hard to imagine the administration's commission getting that sort of data from bureaucrats who want to keep their jobs and protect their families from retaliation. Since the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court have become so dangerously collusive and disregarding of the American public's interests, let's see what the "4th estate" can do to save us.
=========================

The last thing we need is for the Bush administration to control an investigation into WMD by handpicking the investigators. What we need is an independent public investigation of the Bush administration, including intelligence and whether it was used to "sex-up" the justification for invading Iraq.

[Skeptic]

my bold:
=======================
Published on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 by Knight-Ridder
Doubts, Dissent Stripped from Public Version of Iraq Assessment
by Jonathan S. Landay

WASHINGTON - The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies.

The stark differences between the public version and the then top-secret version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate raise new questions about the accuracy of the public case made for a war that's claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. service members and thousands of Iraqis.

The two documents are replete with differences. For example, the public version declared that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and says "if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade."

But it fails to mention the dissenting view offered in the top-secret version by the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as the INR.

That view said, in part, "The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."

The alternative view further said "INR is unwilling to ... project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening."

Both versions were written by the National Intelligence Council, a board of senior analysts who report to CIA Director George Tenet and prepare reports on crucial national security issues. Stuart Cohen, a 30-year CIA veteran, was the NIC's acting chairman at the time.

The CIA didn't respond officially to requests to explain the differences in the two versions. But a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained them by saying a more candid public version could have revealed U.S. intelligence-gathering methods.

Last week, Tenet defended the intelligence community's reporting on Iraq, telling an audience at Georgetown University that differences over Iraq's capabilities "were spelled out" in the October 2002 intelligence estimate.

But while top U.S. officials may have been told of differences among analysts, those disputes were kept from the American public in key areas, including whether Saddam was stockpiling biological and chemical weapons and whether he might dispatch poison-spraying robot aircraft to attack the United States.

Both documents have been available to the public for months. The CIA released the public version, titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," in October 2002, when the Bush administration was making its case for war. The White House declassified and released portions of the NIE's key findings in July 2003.

Knight Ridder compared the documents in light of Tenet's speech and continuing controversy over the intelligence that President Bush used to justify the invasion last April. There are currently seven separate official inquiries into the issue.

What that comparison showed is that while the top-secret version delivered to Bush, his top lieutenants and Congress was heavily qualified with caveats about some of its most important conclusions about Iraq's illicit weapons programs, those caveats were omitted from the public version.

The caveats included the phases "we judge that," "we assess that" and "we lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs."

These phrases, according to current and former intelligence officials, long have been used in intelligence reports to stress an absence of hard information and underscore that judgments are extrapolations or estimates.

Among the most striking differences between the versions were those over Iraq's development of small, unmanned aircraft, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles.

The public version said Iraq's UAVs "especially if used for delivery of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents - could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and the United States if brought close to, or into, the US Homeland."

The classified version showed there was major disagreement on the issue from the agency with the greatest expertise on such aircraft, the Air Force. The Air Force "does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents," it said. "The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability."

There was substantial difference between the public version of the estimate and the classified version on the issue of Iraq's biological weapons program.

The public version contained the alarming warning that Iraq was capable of quickly developing biological warfare agents that could be delivered by "bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the US Homeland."

No such warning that Iraq's biological weapons could be delivered to United States appeared in the classified version.

In a section on chemical weapons, the top-secret findings said the intelligence community had "little specific information on Iraq's CW (chemical weapons) stockpile." That caveat was deleted from the public version.

The classified report went on to say that Iraq "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents - much of it added last year."

"Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents," said the public report.

Deleted from the public version was a line in the classified report that cast doubt on whether Saddam was prepared to support terrorist attacks on the United States, a danger that Bush and his top aides raised repeatedly in making their case for war.

"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war," the top-secret report said.

Also missing from the public report were judgments that Iraq would attempt "clandestine attacks" on the United States only if an American invasion threatened the survival of Saddam's regime or "possibly for revenge."

John Walcott contributed to this article.

Following are excerpts from the public and classified versions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons capabilities. The first set of quotes is from the classified version of the report; the second set of quotes is from the public version, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," which the CIA released in October 2002.
Unmanned aircraft

Classified version

" ... The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability."

Public version

"Baghdad's UAVs — especially if used for delivery of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents — could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and the United States if brought close to, or into, the US Homeland."

WMDs

Classified version

"We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)"

Public version

"Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade."

Classified version

"We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. ... We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs."

Public version

"Iraq hides large portions of Iraq's WMD efforts."

Nuclear program

Classified version

"The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programs, INR is unwilling to ... project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening."

Public version

" ... most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Biological weapons

Classified version

"We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.

"... Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war.

"Iraq probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US Homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge.

" ... we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory."

Public version

"Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives, including potentially against the US Homeland."
=======================



In other words, Bush and his neocon buddies sexed up the evidence to justify invading Iraq, unnecessarily killing thousands of people in the process!

[wholearmor]

No 9-11, no attack on Iraq.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by wholearmor

No 9-11, no attack on Iraq. I agree!

This is because 9-11 was the excuse Bush and his neoconservative Pentagon buddies was looking for to launch an invasion of Iraq. Publicly, the invasion was to prevent Iraq from using their alleged vast stockpiles of WMD against America and other countries. Privately, the invasion was hoped to give Bush and his cronies a political, economic and strategic advantage.

No 9-11, no opportunity to capitalize on the paranoia of the American public and no excuse to invade Iraq as a part of an alleged "war on terrorism."

Killing thousands of people because of what Iraq MIGHT have done if given YEARS to develop WMD is NOT ethically justifiable.

UN inspections were working, before the invasion, nothing was (or has been) found, and Saddam was boxed in. Iraq did not pose a significant enough (if any) threat to warrant killing thousands of Iraqi people, and over 500 U.S. troops, spending billions of American tax dollars, and hurting the support the U.S. had following 9-11.

Invading Iraq was the WRONG thing to do, and Bush must pay!

[BillyBob]

There wouldn't have been a 9-11 if Clinton had imprisoned Bin Laden when he had the chances.

[Swordsman]

Originally posted by Skeptic

I agree!

This is because 9-11 was the excuse Bush and his neoconservative Pentagon buddies was looking for to launch an invasion of Iraq. Publicly, the invasion was to prevent Iraq from using their alleged vast stockpiles of WMD against America and other countries. Privately, the invasion was hoped to give Bush and his cronies a political, economic and strategic advantage.

No 9-11, no opportunity to capitalize on the paranoia of the American public and no excuse to invade Iraq as a part of an alleged "war on terrorism."

Killing thousands of people because of what Iraq MIGHT have done if given YEARS to develop WMD is NOT ethically justifiable.

UN inspections were working, before the invasion, nothing was (or has been) found, and Saddam was boxed in. Iraq did not pose a significant enough (if any) threat to warrant killing thousands of Iraqi people, and over 500 U.S. troops, spending billions of American tax dollars, and hurting the support the U.S. had following 9-11.

Invading Iraq was the WRONG thing to do, and Bush must pay!

Ah, without the left, the rest of this nation wouldn't have anything to talk about. Thank you Democrats for the Save the Whales, Marriage Penalty Taxes, Baby-murdering, Gay marriages, and all the other nonsensible things your platform has dreamed up since LBJ took office.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Swordsman

Ah, without the left, the rest of this nation wouldn't have anything to talk about. Thank you Democrats for the Save the Whales, Marriage Penalty Taxes, Baby-murdering, Gay marriages, and all the other nonsensible things your platform has dreamed up since LBJ took office. Hey, count your blessings; they aren't rounding up the Christians and gassing them...not yet, anyway...

Mwahahahaha...

:devil:

[HerodionRomulus]

[b]Originally posted by Skeptic
In other words, Bush and his neocon buddies sexed up the evidence to justify invading Iraq, unnecessarily killing thousands of people in the process!

"sexed up" Is that a new way of saying LIED?

"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all LIARS, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Rv 21:8 caps mine

[Swordsman]

Originally posted by Gerald

Hey, count your blessings; they aren't rounding up the Christians and gassing them...not yet, anyway...

Mwahahahaha...

:devil:

Philippians 1:21

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Swordsman

Philippians 1:21

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If you truly believe that, why have you not made your way to someplace like Sudan? There, I understand, they hunt Christians for sport...

[wholearmor]

Originally posted by Gerald

If you truly believe that, why have you not made your way to someplace like Sudan? There, I understand, they hunt Christians for sport...

Why haven't you?...then we would all find out if you're as tough as you say you are.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by wholearmor
Why haven't you?...then we would all find out if you're as tough as you say you are. Simple. I'm not a Christian. They'd have no reason to hunt me.

And anyway, it is Swordsman who's talking about how "to die is gain."

If he truly believes that, he should go someplace where he can die a proper martyr's death.

Far be it from me to not point the way, if possible...:chuckle:

[Swordsman]

Originally posted by Gerald

If you truly believe that, why have you not made your way to someplace like Sudan? There, I understand, they hunt Christians for sport...

See, its because you pick certain points in Scripture that totally negates your arguments. If you were at all honest with yourself, you would not have a reply like you did.

Paul is talking about in the latter half on Philippians 1 about while he is still alive to rejoice and to progress the faith throughout the world.

So yes. I truly believe that while I am alive (by God's grace) I will do the will of God, and when the day comes for me to depart this wretched world, I'll be with my Savior in eternity.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Swordsman
See, its because you pick certain points in Scripture that totally negates your arguments. If you were at all honest with yourself, you would not have a reply like you did.You are the one who started quoting Scripture; I just took your comment at face value.So yes. I truly believe that while I am alive (by God's grace) I will do the will of God, and when the day comes for me to depart this wretched world, I'll be with my Savior in eternity. But you have no interest in hastening that day by deliberately endangering yourself.

Interesting...:think:

[Swordsman]

Originally posted by Gerald But you have no interest in hastening that day by deliberately endangering yourself.

Interesting...:think:

No. Perhaps I'm here for a greater cause. You have to agree, it makes for interesting conversation between those like yourself and Christians.

So......... let's get it on! :box: (j/k) ;)

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Swordsman

Ah, without the left, the rest of this nation wouldn't have anything to talk about. Thank you Democrats for the Save the Whales, Marriage Penalty Taxes, Baby-murdering, Gay marriages, and all the other nonsensible things your platform has dreamed up since LBJ took office. So, your response to my specific points regarding the invasion of Iraq and the killing of thousands of people is to make some general off-topic remarks about the left and Democrats? This is your tactic? Paint anti-war folks with the broad brush of "liberalism," then there is no need to address their specific points? Just say "typical liberal ranting" and that's all you need to do? How rational is that?

[Swordsman]

Originally posted by Skeptic

So, your response to my specific points regarding the invasion of Iraq and the killing of thousands of people is to make some general off-topic remarks about the left and Democrats? This is your tactic? Paint anti-war folks with the broad brush of "liberalism," then there is no need to address their specific points? Just say "typical liberal ranting" and that's all you need to do? How rational is that?

I think I'm being just as rational as yourself. It seems lately all the left wants to rant about is the war in Iraq. What they don't realize (which is unrational, mind you) is that its such a small part of what is happening in the world today. Take the thousands of people dying here in the US with cancer, AIDS, alzheimers, etc. Or SARS in Asia. Just a few for you to think about.

But please, don't be ignorant. You and I both know it is the left that is running this anti-war campaign. Had Clinton invaded Iraq, you know the screaming would be coming from the right. So please. Be honest with yourself first.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by Swordsman

I think I'm being just as rational as yourself. It seems lately all the left wants to rant about is the war in Iraq. What they don't realize (which is unrational, mind you) is that its such a small part of what is happening in the world today. Take the thousands of people dying here in the US with cancer, AIDS, alzheimers, etc. Or SARS in Asia. Just a few for you to think about. But, if the invasion of Iraq was unjustified, and thousands of people were killed unnecessarily by the Bush administration, then this is a HUGE issue and gets to the heart of whether America should have a President who is willing to kill thousands in an invasion when there was significant reasonable doubt, even within the intelligence community, whether Iraq had WMD and was a threat!

But please, don't be ignorant. You and I both know it is the left that is running this anti-war campaign. Had Clinton invaded Iraq, you know the screaming would be coming from the right. So please. Be honest with yourself first. If Clinton had launched a massive invasion, killing thousands of innocent people in Iraq, given the shaky evidence we had before March 2003, I would have called for Clinton's impeachment for that reason! I could care less about Clinton's sex life.

[Skeptic]

=======================
Published on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 by TomPaine.com
Never Saying 'Sorry'
by Laura Flanders

When Halliburton, the vice president's former firm, received a no-bid contract to do billions of dollars worth of work in Iraq, the public was told that Halliburton got that contract, and that much money, in that way, because in a fast response situation like the one in Iraq, Halliburton was simply the best in the business. Now one Halliburton unit stands accused of over-charging the U.S. taxpayer for millions of dollars and its own internal reviewers are acknowledging that the unit took on work for which it was in fact, ill-suited.

Since January, the Pentagon has been engaged in a criminal investigation of Halliburton's unit, Kellogg Brown and Root. The Defense Criminal Investigative Unit, an arm of the Pentagon's Inspector General's office, is examining whether KBR engaged in "substantial overcharging" on millions of troop meals overseas. Pentagon investigators charge that KBR charged for nearly four million meals that were never served. There is also the question of whether KBR paid as much as $61 million too much for fuel last year by buying it from a Kuwaiti source rather than from cheaper sources in Turkey. The billings now under review bring the total cost to the U.S. taxpayer to more than $176 million.

The Wall Street Journal is virtually alone in following this juicy story. For months, staff reporter Christopher Cooper and his colleagues have been digging up revealing documents. In February, the paper reported that two former employees of Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root unit were "coached by their superiors to evade competitive bidding rules by breaking up purchases into small pieces." (Pentagon procedures require contractors to seek competitive bids on supplies costing more than $2,500.) The latest revelation is an internal KBR report which calls the company's cost controls "antiquated" and "inadequate."

The memo amounts, said the Feb. 27 Journal, "to a frank admission that Kellogg Brown and Root's critics are voicing valid concerns about the possibility of overcharges under the company's massive contract to supply U.S. troops."

The company's procurement system is "disorganized," and marked by "weak internal controls," declare the company's internal review team. As Cooper and company point out, KBR's reviewers also challenge KBR's President and CEO Randy Harl's claims made in January. The company has "a rigorous system of internal controls for government contracts" Harl said in a conference call on the company's fourth-quarter earnings. In fact, the memo acknowledges that KBR's "paper-based, labor intensive and bureaucratic procurement system isn't suitable for a fast-response situation like Iraq."

It boggles the mind why this isn't a bigger story.

Pressed on the appearance of impropriety last fall, Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke defended the no-bid contract awarded KBR. "If you actually look at the facts, there are actually very few companies around the world that are the size and scope to handle some of these tasks in the rebuilding of Iraq," Clarke told Paula Zahn on CNN last September."

Now the Pentagon itself is weighing criminal charges against KBR, the company has been forced to withhold billing on some $140 million while that investigation proceeds; KBR's own reviewers say the unit wasn't up to the Iraq work, and just one U.S. newspaper appears to be interested.

KBR has its defenders. Critics are just partisan, they allege. Until 2000, Halliburton was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, and the VP still holds stock and receives monthly deferred payments from the company.

"In spite of the many misleading and inaccurate reports you may hear or read, we are proud of the work we are doing and appreciative of the continuing confidence of our customers," Harl said in the Jan. 29 conference call.

The fact is, he's right. Being Halliburton seems to mean never having to say you're sorry. In the Balkans, Harl recalled, a similar situation arose in 2000. Indeed it did. KBR stands accused of overcharged the U.S. government for millions of dollars. (Among other things, KBR purchased plywood in Texas at inflated prices, instead of buying cheap wood locally.) "Issues like this do occur, and investigations can take a while," said Harl.

Meanwhile, since 2000, the number of U.S. contracts awarded to KBR has mushroomed—from $500 million in 2002 to $3.9 billion last year following the Iraq invasion and occupation. Halliburton is now the government's seventh-largest contractor in terms of work awarded. Allegations notwithstanding, the company recently signed some "impressive" new contracts for work in the Caspian, said Harl. In fact, "KBR is in a good position to expand our business in the rapidly growing Caspian market."

No matter how many strikes, Halliburton never seems to strike out. Can anyone give me three good reasons why this story isn't making headlines?
========================

I'll give you three: $ $ $

[BillyBob]

Skeptic;
No matter how many strikes, Halliburton never seems to strike out. Can anyone give me three good reasons why this story isn't making headlines?

Billy;
Because it is a 'non story'. You Libs can't find anything positive or solid to say about your man 'Kerry', so you have to invent some clandestined conspiracy and blame the Bush administration.

Pathetic.

[Emerald]

Does anyone really know what the Kerry platform is? I cannot find anything conclusive at all!

[BillyBob]

His platform?

'I'm not George Bush'!

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

His platform?

'I'm not George Bush'! Kerry was not my first choice. But, I'll vote for him.

ANYBODY (Democrat) but Bush!!

[BillyBob]

I'm glad to see that you have such confidence in your candidate's abilities to be President. What particular views of Kerry's do you agree with? Can you define his platform? Can you determine where he stands on any particular issue? All you really care about is that he is a democrat and you hate GW.

Kerry's Campaign Slogan: 'I'm Not Bush'

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

I'm glad to see that you have such confidence in your candidate's abilities to be President. What particular views of Kerry's do you agree with? Can you define his platform? Can you determine where he stands on any particular issue? All you really care about is that he is a democrat and you hate GW.

Kerry's Campaign Slogan: 'I'm Not Bush' Any Democratic candidate would have been better than Bush. I preferred Dean. However, Kerry will do. Anyone who favors repealing most of Bush's massive tax cuts for the rich, providing health care to the widest possible population, stopping the shipment of jobs overseas, providing REAL protections for our environment, and eliminating Bush's dangerous policy of military pre-emption, would get my vote.

Bush is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people in Iraq! Bush ignored the many reasonable doubts in the intelligence community that Iraq posed a threat, and invaded Iraq without clear hard evidence that they posed a significant and imminent threat to America or other countries. Yet, he still gave the order to massively invade Iraq, even though he knew thousands of people would be killed unnecessarily. Bush knew Iraq did not pose a significant imminent threat, but he lied to the American people anyway.

As far is Saddam is concerned, even though he was a brutal dictator who had killed many thousands of people by the late 1980s, he was not performing mass killings in the years leading up to Bush's invasion, and was not likely to do so, given the close scrutiny of the UN inspectors and the international community. There were other options for dealing with Saddam that did involve the unnecessary killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi people!

[Frank Ernest]

Looks like typical liberal Democrat politics to me. Kerry is the choice so far because he can declare firmly that he is on all sides of an issue. Being a liar, reprobate and opportunist, he continues the tradition of the traitorous Democrat party.

He could crumble to dust tomorrow and the liberals would all fall in lockstep behind the next Democrat saviour. However, as near as I can tell from weather-vane Kerry and the liberals, the current campaign goals are:

1. We need to complete the sell-out of American sovereignty and freedom and turn everything over to the anti-American and atheist socialist UN.
2. Taxes aren't high enough. We need to tax the US population into submission to liberals' tyrannical government. Equally-spread poverty is the key. Citizens must then beg government for their daily bread.
3. No more war. We must appease our enemies and give them anything and everything they want. The United States is the focus of evil in the world and liberals must expiate their guilt by allowing them to attack us, kill our citizens and take what they want without resistance.
4. We must get rid of all religion and morality and make the state into a god which would decide what we shall believe and how we shall believe it.
5. All opposition to liberals' government must be crushed and eliminated. That means getting rid of Christians, conservatives, especially Constitutionalists. Method and means make no difference. End justifies the means.
6. Thwart any attempt by the people to determine their own futures and destinies. This is done by installing "friendly" judges who will overturn any popular referenda deemed to be unliberal.
7. Weaken the military and make political decisions that will cause us to be defeated in any military engagement. (See item 3.) That way the United States can be embarrassed and demoralized which makes it easier for liberal saviours to take over.
8. Gut the intelligence effort so that we cannot find out what our enemies are up to. In combination with liberals spilling and selling state secrets to our enemies, this will defeat any unliberal foreign policy effort. Idea is to sow the seeds of defeat and dishonor, then liberals can claim they knew it all the time and have the perfect solution: absolute liberal power and control.

Far-fetched? See Canada.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Any Democratic candidate would have been better than Bush.

:darwinsm:


I preferred Dean.

:darwinsm: :darwinsm: :darwinsm:

However, Kerry will do.

Do what???

Anyone who favors repealing most of Bush's massive tax cuts for the rich,

...is a commie.

providing health care to the widest possible population,

...is a commie.

stopping the shipment of jobs overseas,

...is a commie.

providing REAL protections for our environment,

Such as?

and eliminating Bush's dangerous policy of military pre-emption, would get my vote.

The real danger is a President who does nothing to stop terrorism, look what Bill Clinton did for Al Queda!

Bush is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people in Iraq!

:darwinsm: You sound like a broken record. [or a liberal propagandist]

Bush ignored the many reasonable doubts in the intelligence community that Iraq posed a threat, and invaded Iraq without clear hard evidence that they posed a significant and imminent threat to America or other countries.

Bush said he was attacking Iraq before they became a imminent threat.

Yet, he still gave the order to massively invade Iraq, even though he knew thousands of people would be killed unnecessarily.

Hey, Saddam should have complied with the UN Resolutions and none of this would have happened. The only person to blame for any Iraqi who died is Saddam.

Bush knew Iraq did not pose a significant imminent threat, but he lied to the American people anyway.

Bush said he was attacking Iraq before they became a imminent threat.

As far is Saddam is concerned, even though he was a brutal dictator who had killed many thousands of people by the late 1980s,

He killed many hundreds of thousands.

he was not performing mass killings in the years leading up to Bush's invasion, and was not likely to do so, given the close scrutiny of the UN inspectors and the international community. There were other options for dealing with Saddam that did involve the unnecessary killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi people!

Saddam was a terrorist. He harbored terrorists. He funded terrorists. He trained terrorists. He is gone and the world is a better place because of the resolve of GW Bush. Even your buddy John Kerry was in favor of removing Saddam as recently as 2003.

[Duder]

Originally posted by BillyBob:

...is a commie.

...is a commie.

...is a commie.

You expect us to think you are that much of an ignoramus and a simpleton? Ain't no one here buyin' it!

I can see how there'd be some fun in coming off like an old, soiled undershirt-wearing, wife-abusing, cheap beer-drinking, uneducated red-baiter who is stuck in the year 1960. Perhaps you do it to make right-wingers look silly.

Yeah, that's it!


Boy, the way that Miller played
Songs that made the Hit Parade
Guys like us, we had it made

Those were the days!

And you knew who you were then
Girls were girls and men were men
Mister, we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again

Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee, our old La Salle ran great

Those were the days!

[BillyBob]

No, I mean every word of it. Any person who actually thinks that taxing people at different rates to illegaly redistribute wealth is a commie. John Kerry fits that description. Do you?

[Frank Ernest]

I've heard some older hard-core Roosevelt Democrats in this area say that they would vote for the Devil if he were a Democrat.

I suspect what they're saying is true.

[Art Deco]

Originally posted by Frank Ernest

I've heard some older hard-core Roosevelt Democrats in this area say that they would vote for the Devil if he were a Democrat.

I suspect what they're saying is true.


They have been true to their mis-guided word. They have been voting for the devil starting with "Please don't call me "Jimma," Carter. These Secular Humanist ignorant scum would vote for the Devil rather than support moral absolutes. This vile group of vipers have damned near destroyed this nation morally with there Secular Humanist belief system. This includes so called "devout" Christians that ignorantly vote for the Godless Secular Democrat Party.

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by Art Deco

They have been true to their mis-guided word. They have been voting for the devil starting with "Please don't call me "Jimma," Carter. These Secular Humanist ignorant scum would vote for the Devil rather than support moral absolutes. This vile group of vipers have damned near destroyed this nation morally with there Secular Humanist belief system. This includes so called "devout" Christians that ignorantly vote for the Godless Secular Democrat Party.

And what was so terrible about Carter? The fact that he plainly said he had been born again? That he seriously tried to change policy, esp. foreign to promote ethical values such as liberty, equal rights and human dignity, that he tried to make a serious dent in the nuclear stockpiles of the world?
Or that afterwards he personally supported agencies which were trying to make a real improvement in people's lives? How many times have YOU volunteered your labor and money to help someone buy and build a home? Are you a deacon in your church?

Unlike that practicing adulterer, Reagan whom the right venerates, even though he has never pretended to profess Christianity or to promote it's values.

Why do you hate so many people? Hate is NOT a Christian value.

[BillyBob]

Are you a Democrat, Herod? :noway:

[Duder]

Ode to Art and Billy

Art Deco's a funny debater
A secular humanist-hater
He's red, white and blue
And he wishes on you
A thermonuclear crater

That evil and Satanic nest
Of Democrats won't pass his test -
I laugh till I'm chokin'
But he isn't jokin'
And BillyBob's really impressed

Ol' Carter's a communist spy,
And Clinton in Hades will fry -
And without hesitatin',
They'll tell ya who's Satan -
That Frankin D. Roosevelt guy

BillyBob's blood prob'ly freezes
When reading quotations of Jesus
"If me you adore,
Take care of the poor -
Through a needle's eye no camel squeezes"

When Mary His mother was haulin'
The miracle child with a callin'
Did a commie accost her -
Produce an imposter -
The offspring of comrade Joe Stalin?

All over the earth, they see revels
Of commies or demons or devils -
Art Deco and Billy,
Can sound rather silly -
And mistaken on so many levels.

[BillyBob]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
John Kerry is a commie
And so are you

:D

[Frank Ernest]

My, my, my! To dispute Jimma and the boyz is "hate."

Typical liberal adhominemburger (with extra fries) when they have absolutely No Answer to the truth.

Well, Jimma, along with his born-again ethics and morality, tried to take over the oil industry. His wonderfully ethical foreign policy got us the Ayatollah Khomeini. And what is happening in Iran today? Jimma sure put a dent in the nuclear thingy. And, at home, we got 20% inflation, pardons for traitors, etc.

Reagan a practicing adulterer? My, my. Isn't that a little "hateful?" I would guess Herod has some evidence for that? Hope against hope tells me no.

Let me see, as I reckon my Bible history, Jesus never built a home, Jesus wasn't a deacon in his church, Jesus didn't form government agencies to improve peoples' lives. Guess Jimma was better than Jesus to ol' Herod. Seems like Herod the new is much like the Herod of old.

Roosevelt? In the 12 years of Roosevelt we had 8 years of economic depression and 4 years of world war. Quite a track record for you libbies.

Liberal Rule: If you can't attack the record, attack the person.

[Duder]

BillyBob -

Roses are red
Violets are blue
John Kerry is a commie
And so are you

You're writing in "dactylic monometer" - a kind of poetry meter in which there is just one foot per line, where each foot has four syllables - a stressed syllable, followed by a soft one, then another soft one, then ending with a stressed one - like this: "BOOM - ba - ba - BOOM"

. . . as in the line, " RO - ses - are - RED"

So your third line doesn't really work, does it? "John - KER - ry - is - a - COMM - ie" is an altogether different pattern:

"ba - BOOM - ba - ba- ba - BOOM - ba"

Too many syllables, and the stresses don't follow the pattern.

Try this line instead: "Kerry's a commie . . ." (Boom - ba- ba- BOOM - ba). That's five syllables, but it's permissable to sneak in an extra soft syllable at the beginning or the end of a line on occassion.


Duder's a Red,
Kerry is too -
Hearts that have bled,
Bigots eschew

Not very good, perhaps, but you see the dactylic monometer pattern.

[Zakath]

Originally posted by Duder

BillyBob -



You're writing in "dactylic monometer" - a kind of poetry meter in which there is just one foot per line, where each foot has four syllables - a stressed syllable, followed by a soft one, then another soft one, then ending with a stressed one - like this: "BOOM - ba - ba - BOOM"...
Good analogy! He'a musician, you'll communicate better when you put it in his terms:

:drum:

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Duder

BillyBob -



You're writing in "dactylic monometer" - a kind of poetry meter in which there is just one foot per line, where each foot has four syllables - a stressed syllable, followed by a soft one, then another soft one, then ending with a stressed one - like this: "BOOM - ba - ba - BOOM"

. . . as in the line, " RO - ses - are - RED"

So your third line doesn't really work, does it? "John - KER - ry - is - a - COMM - ie" is an altogether different pattern:

"ba - BOOM - ba - ba- ba - BOOM - ba"

Too many syllables, and the stresses don't follow the pattern.

Try this line instead: "Kerry's a commie . . ." (Boom - ba- ba- BOOM - ba). That's five syllables, but it's permissable to sneak in an extra soft syllable at the beginning or the end of a line on occassion.


Duder's a Red,
Kerry is too -
Hearts that have bled,
Bigots eschew

Not very good, perhaps, but you see the dactylic monometer pattern.


Typical commie, demanding that everything be strict and regimented.

Try this:

Each line is a measure in 6/8 time. The first line 'Roses are Red' would be written in quarter notes with 2 quarter rests at the end.
Same for the second line. The third line is written with the first word 'John' as a quarter note, then 'Kerry is a Commie' is written in 8th notes. It will sound exactly like a triplet in 4/4 time, but we are still in 6/8. The last line is easier to imagine in 4/4 with the word 'And' as a pick-up note from the previous measure with the last words 'So are YOU' as quarter notes leaving one quarter rest at the end of the measure. It's really quite simple.

[Zakath]

See, I told you he was a musician. ;)

[BillyBob]

No, I don't like it that way.

Try this:
Every line is a measure of 4/4. The first and second lines are triplets with the last two pulses written as rests. The 3rd line has the pick-up 8th note form the previous measure and then written in straight 8th notes with a quarter rest at the end. The last line has the word 'And' as a pick up 8th note from the previous measure then 'So are YOU' are just quarter notes with a quarter rest at the end.

Much better.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Zakath

See, I told you he was a musician. ;)

:guitar:

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by Frank Ernest


Reagan a practicing adulterer? My, my. Isn't that a little "hateful?" I would guess Herod has some evidence for that? Hope against hope tells me no.



Ronald Reagan was married to Jane Wyman, he divorced her and then married Nancy Davis. Jane Wyman is still alive.

"Mark 10:11NRSV "He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her;"

I assume you will accept the word of Jesus as evidence?

[Zakath]

The same situation describes many Christian pastors I know. :think:

Of course, that particular law about killing adulterers is almost always one of the ones that gets dropped when people want to re-instate OT law in modern society. :chuckle:

It's always much more comfortable to punish someone else's sin than one's own.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Art Deco
This vile group of vipers have damned near destroyed this nation morally with there Secular Humanist belief system.And we're not finished yet, nosirree!

Just you wait: any day now, the Red and Blue Lists will go into effect, and black-clad Agents of the Cabal™ will begin kicking in the doors of Good Christians™ and hauling them off to liquidation facilities.

Oh, go ahead and keep your guns; it won't matter, because the armor worn by Agents is very thick...

:devil:

[Zakath]

Originally posted by Gerald
...black-clad Agents of the Cabal™ will begin kicking in the doors of Good Christians™ and hauling them off to liquidation facilities.Oh no!!!! :shocked:

We're not gonna have to eat Soylent Green™ again are we? :chew:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Zakath

Oh no!!!! :shocked:

We're not gonna have to eat Soylent Green™ again are we? :chew:

Not to worry, we've got some new products on the way.

From the Doctor Geisel's Favorite Dishes collection, we have:

Soylent Green Eggs and Ham™.

:jump:

[Zakath]

I do not like them, Gerald man!
I do not Soylent Green eggs and :spam:! :chew:

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by Zakath

The same situation describes many Christian pastors I know. :think:

Of course, that particular law about killing adulterers is almost always one of the ones that gets dropped when people want to re-instate OT law in modern society. :chuckle:

It's always much more comfortable to punish someone else's sin than one's own.

Indeed, nearly half of marriages end in divorce and many remarry. The divorce rate among Southern Baptists is higher than the general population. Right Charles Stanley?

[Zakath]

And Pentecostals divorce rates are even higher than the SBC's, right Tammy Faye?

[BillyBob]

Considering re-marriage as an act of adultery committed against your previous evil, lying, selfish, vile, conceited, insane sister of Satan wife is ridiculous.

Jesus would never have said such a thing if he had spent 1 stinking year with my 'ex'!

Instead, it would have been more like:
"Any man who stays married to such an insanely evil woman will suffer in Hell on Earth long before he is ever dead."

Or something like that.....

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Considering re-marriage as an act of adultery committed against your previous evil, lying, selfish, vile, conceited, insane sister of Satan wife is ridiculous.

Jesus would never have said such a thing if he had spent 1 stinking year with my 'ex'!

Instead, it would have been more like:
"Any man who stays married to such an insanely evil woman will suffer in Hell on Earth long before he is ever dead."

Or something like that..... Ah, but you're missing the point; a few years of suffering in this life is a small price to pay for the Heavenly Bliss™ you'll get in the next one...

And consider: if your "evil, lying, selfish, vile, conceited, insane sister of Satan wife" murders you in your sleep, it just means you get to experience that Heavenly Bliss™ that much sooner.

See? You can't lose!

:chuckle:

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by Zakath

And Pentecostals divorce rates are even higher than the SBC's, right Tammy Faye?


Well, lacquered-up-big-hair-do's tends to put so much weighty pressure on the brain that sometimes it goes 'poof!" Just look at how the hairspray has ruined Benny Hinn.
:chuckle:


PS Some you who don't live in the South may not understand the big-haired Pentecostal phenomenon. Count yourselves lucky.
:help:

[Frank Ernest]

From Zakath:
"It's always much more comfortable to punish someone else's sin than one's own. "

I agree 150%! Which is why I enjoyed all the posts pointing out the moral failings of (yuck) christians.

[Zakath]

Originally posted by Frank Ernest
... I enjoyed all the posts pointing out the moral failings of (yuck) christians. It's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, though. ;)

[Frank Ernest]

From Zakath:
"It's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, though."

Or course it is! It's always easier to sit upon a Pharisaical (Luke 18:10-14) perch pointing out the flaws of singular "others" while disregarding and dismissing everyone else. Find some "bad" and define it as all bad.

I just love it when you talk logical "dirty" too. BTW, the logical flaw is called Inclusion. It is the assumption that because one member of a designated group has certain characteristics, all members of the designated group share exactly those characteristics.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

PS Some you who don't live in the South may not understand the big-haired Pentecostal phenomenon. Count yourselves lucky.
:help:

Are you a Pentacostal, Herod?

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Are you a Pentacostal, Herod?

Not really. I come from a high church Charismatic background.

[Zakath]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

...a high church Charismatic background.

Interesting mix of terminology. The only orthodox Christian group I've ever heard use the term "high church" is the Anglicans. So you were part of the Anglican Communion at one point?

I attended an Episcopal Church that was also Charismatic for several years. They were an interesting blend of high and low church...

[BillyBob]

I never heard of a 'high church'. What does that term mean?

[HerodionRomulus]

High church: liturgical service with all the trimmings, chanting, incense, bowing, kneeling, crossings and other trapping.

Visit St Andrews Episcopal in Green Hills for an extreme example.

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by Zakath

Interesting mix of terminology. The only orthodox Christian group I've ever heard use the term "high church" is the Anglicans. So you were part of the Anglican Communion at one point?

I attended an Episcopal Church that was also Charismatic for several years. They were an interesting blend of high and low church...

Zak, grew up Lutheran(LCMS) in college I attended a Charismatic Catholic church which was very Vatican II(folk masses etc) drifted from one thing to another, got hitched to a National Baptist and have in the past 10 years been sort of a mix of Bapti/Costal/Anglican.
No one 'flavor' does it all. :D

[Skeptic]

======================
CIA Chief Clueless on Neo-Con Intelligence Channel

Analysis - By Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Mar 10 (IPS) - Was Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet really the last person in Washington to find out that both the president and vice president were being fed phoney or ''sexed up'' intelligence about pre-war Iraq by a Pentagon office staffed by ideologically driven neo-conservatives?

It is highly doubtful, but in his desperate attempt to walk a tightrope between his increasingly irreconcilable loyalties to the administration of President George W. Bush and to his own intelligence professionals, Tenet is suggesting that he really was in the dark about what was going on just a few miles down the Potomac River from CIA headquarters.

Just a month ago, in a rousing defence of the intelligence community's professionalism, Tenet boasted to students at Georgetown University that he and only he was the sole purveyor of intelligence information to the president.

But on Tuesday he admitted to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was unaware until just last week that officials based in the Pentagon's policy office had given intelligence briefings directly to the White House.

''Is that a normal thing to happen, that there (is) a formal analysis relative to intelligence that would be presented to the NSC (National Security Council) that way, without you even knowing about it''? an incredulous Democratic senator, Carl Levin, asked Tenet during contentious hearings.

''I don't know. I've never been in the situation'', Tenet replied, insisting, ''I have to tell you senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects''.

''I know you feel that way'', Levin said, betraying a hint of sarcasm.

The exchange reflected the latest development in what is building into one of the biggest intelligence crises in modern U.S. history, one the administration is trying desperately, but with increasing difficulty, to quash.

The scandal, which is based on Washington's abject failure one year after invading Iraq to find any evidence to back up the administration's pre-war claims that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed massive stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons; reconstituted his nuclear-weapons programme (to the extent that, according to Vice President Dick Cheney, he had obtained weapons); and had operational ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, has been building since last summer.

But it gained momentum in January when the CIA's chief weapons inspector, David, Kay admitted that U.S. intelligence, including himself, had been ''almost all wrong'' on its pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities.

Both Kay and the administration, as well as members of Congress from Bush's Republican Party, immediately blamed the official intelligence community, which Tenet heads as CIA director, for the failure.

But opposition Democrats, backed up by former intelligence officials and some media reporting, charged the administration had systematically exaggerated and manipulated the intelligence by both intimidating the professional analysts who disagreed with them and by producing its own intelligence, much of which now appears to have been fabricated, through unofficial channels.

As a result, the intelligence committees in both houses have expanded their investigations in recent weeks.

While it is now clear that professional intelligence analysts made some serious errors assessing Iraq's WMD programmes -- largely through a combination of assuming ''worst-case scenarios'' in the absence of hard evidence and lacking reliable agents or assets in Iraq either as informants or investigators -- the ''Feith factor'' has now emerged as the key focus of the committees' work.

Shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith set up two groups, the Office of Special Plans (OSP) and the Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG).

They were tasked to review raw intelligence to determine if official intelligence agencies had overlooked connections between Shiite and Sunni terrorist groups and between al-Qaeda and secular Arab governments, especially Hussein's.

The effort, which reportedly included interviewing ''defectors'', several of them supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group close to neo-conservatives who support Israel's Likud Party, closely tracked the agenda of the Defence Policy Group (DPG), chaired by Feith's mentor, Richard Perle.

The DPG also convened after Sep. 11 with INC leader Ahmed Chalabi to discuss ways in which the terrorist attacks could be tied to Hussein. Neither the State Department nor the CIA was informed about the meeting.

The OSP, which was overseen by Abram Shulsky, brought on Michael Malouf, who had worked for Perle in the Pentagon 20 years before and specialised in obtaining authorisations giving the office access to analyses produced by official intelligence agencies, according to knowledgeable sources.

Malouf's operation, called the ''bat cave'', permitted hawks in the Pentagon and Cheney's office to anticipate the intelligence community's more sceptical arguments about the alleged threats posed by Hussein, and then to devise questions or develop their own evidence that would be used to challenge the more benign views of the professional analysts, according to these sources.

At the same time, OSP, which consisted of only two permanent staff members, but which employed dozens of like-minded consultants, developed its own ''talking points'' and briefing papers, one of which -- on the subject of Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda -- was leaked last November to the neo-conservative 'Weekly Standard'.

It consisted of 50 excerpts taken from raw, mostly uncorroborated intelligence reports from sources of varying reliability from 1990 to 2002, which purported to show an operational relationship between the captured leader and the group.

But when it was published, former intelligence officials dismissed the work as amateurish, unsubstantiated and indicative, even if most of the allegations were true, of the absence of any operative relationship.

''This is meant to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated'', former State Department intelligence officer Greg Thielmann told IPS at the time.

As recently as last month, Cheney referred to the paper as ”the best source of information” for intelligence on Iraq.

It was this paper that reportedly formed the basis of a briefing by Feith given to the NSC and Cheney's office in August 2002. Tenet said Tuesday he ''vaguely'' remember having received a similar briefing by Feith, but was never informed that it was also presented to the White House.

The presentation to the CIA reportedly omitted certain remarks made to the White House to the effect that the CIA was deliberately ignoring evidence of Hussein-al-Qaeda links.

''Did you ever discuss with the secretary of defence or other administration officials whether the Department of Defence policy office run by Mr. Feith might be bypassing normal intelligence channels''? Levin asked Tenet on Tuesday.

''I did not. I did not,'' he replied.

Why he did not remains a major question, particularly in light of the fact that several publications, including 'The New Yorker', Knight-Ridder news agency and IPS, were reporting already last July that Feith's office was constantly ''stovepiping'' intelligence directly to Cheney and the White House in order to circumvent official channels.

These accounts have now been accepted by Democrats and some Republicans on the intelligence committees. Last Friday, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives committee, Rep Jane Harmon, raised the issue directly in a speech at Perle's AEI.

''The president should direct a review of the activities of various (Pentagon) offices, particularly an early analytic unit that reported to Undersecretary of Defence Doug Feith, as well as the Office of Special Plans'', she said.

''Disclaimers notwithstanding, many in Congress and intelligence operatives in the field now believe these entities fed unreliable and ''unvetted'' intelligence to (Pentagon) policymakers and the Office of the Vice President''.

From: http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22788
=======================

[Zakath]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

Zak, grew up Lutheran(LCMS) in college I attended a Charismatic Catholic church which was very Vatican II(folk masses etc) drifted from one thing to another, got hitched to a National Baptist and have in the past 10 years been sort of a mix of Bapti/Costal/Anglican.
No one 'flavor' does it all. :D Well, if the flavors are complimentary, it makes life more interesting. :thumb:

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

High church: liturgical service with all the trimmings, chanting, incense, bowing, kneeling, crossings and other trapping.

Visit St Andrews Episcopal in Green Hills for an extreme example.

Doesn't sound like my cup o' tea.

Hey Herod, ever been to BCC? [Bellevue Community Church] It's pretty hip, lots of artists and musicans there. Check out a service sometime, I'm playing on the Worship Team the first weekend in April, come and say hello.

[BillyBob]

I love how everybody is ignoring Skeptic's latest post...:chuckle:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

I love how everybody is ignoring Skeptic's latest post...:chuckle: I don't care if anyone responds to the articles I post. I'm confident there are some on tOL who read them.

Just giving y'all information that you won't find from fundie right-wing conservative sources. :thumb:

[Frank Ernest]

You won't find them in "fundie right-wing conservative sources" because they're progressive (commie), left-wing lies, distortions, and conveniently rewritten histories.

[BillyBob]

:crackup:

[Keith73]

Skeptic,

Saddam lied about what he had, he refused to live up to the conditions his generals agreed to in good faith and generally acted like a schmuk.

Bush went on the best and most reliable information that he had at the time and in all honesty, I don't really care if Bush lied.

I'm used to politicians lie. It's what happens whenever they talk. Clinton lied. Kenedy lied, Reagan lied, Nixon lied, Carter was retarded.

Why does it surprise anyone anymore that politicians lie?

As far as I'm concerned I'm damn glad that America is the worlds police force. We are the only country with the military might and the ability to move that might at a moments notice to anywhere in the world, and don't let the press fool you.

The Middle East is spitting happy to have Saddam out and that's a fact so you can stop with your internal dialogue right now.

Now, here are some facts for you to digest.

UNSC Res687; Sec H; Para32 states "Requires Iraq to inform the Security Council that it will not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism;"

Does "Salman Pak" mean anything to you? Do a simple search, I'm sure that you will be scared by what you see. Some of the base's former commanding officers have openly admitted that Salman Pak was not only used as a biological weapons research center but that it also tought various Islamic terror groups the use of hijacking, explosive and bombings.

Strike one for Saddam.

UNSC Res1154; Para3 states "Stresses that compliance by the Government of Iraq with its obligations, repeated again in the memorandum of understanding, to accord immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to the Special Commission and the IAEA in conformity with the relevant resolutions is necessary for the implementation of resolution 687 (1991), but that any violation would have severest consequences for Iraq;"

What does this mean? Well, in a nutshell Iraq [a.k.a. Saddam] is being warned that his continued non-compliance with allowing the IAEA inspectors not only admittance to the coutnry but unfettered admitance at that will reasult in the "severst consequences for Iraq."

Strike two for Saddam.

And here comes the death blow, by the UNSC's own words.

UNSC Res1441 states the following:

"Recognizing the threat Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security,"

This part refers to the Al-Samoud missles found in Iraq by Blix's team. The missles clearly violate the distance regulations set forth by the UN after the 91 war. The UN, and not other legal body, ever received confirmation that these missles were destroyed prior to America's stepping in a deposing Saddam.

and

"Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area,"

Why is this last piece so interesting? Because in these very words the UNSC gave the US [ a "Member Nation"] the legal right to intervene if it felt that Iraq was not acting in comlianc e with any of the Resolution set forth by the UNSC. Please also note that this language was given just 17 resolution after 661, the ceasefire agreement of 91. Even this early in the game the UNSC realized that Saddam was going to be trouble. Also, there is no language in more recent resolution to remove or nullify this clause in any way.

Here are some more juicy excerpts from that very same Resolution.

"Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons, their components and production facilities and locations, as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material,'

"Deploring the absence, since December 1998, in Iraq of international monitoring, inspection, and verification, as required by relevant resolutions, of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, in spite of the Council’s repeated demands that Iraq provide immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), established in resolution 1284 (1999) as the successor organization to UNSCOM, and the IAEA, and regretting the consequent prolonging of the crisis in the region and the suffering of the Iraqi people,"

This section clearly states that from 1998 until 2002 there were zero arms inspectors inside Iraq. More than enough time for Saddam to get rid of what he had.

More

"Deploring the absence, since December 1998, in Iraq of international monitoring, inspection, and verification, as required by relevant resolutions, of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, in spite of the Council’s repeated demands that Iraq provide immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), established in resolution 1284 (1999) as the successor organization to UNSCOM, and the IAEA, and regretting the consequent prolonging of the crisis in the region and the suffering of the Iraqi people,

And now, my favorite piece.

"Deploring also that the Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism, pursuant to resolution 688 (1991) to end repression of its civilian population and to provide access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in Iraq, and pursuant to resolutions 686 (1991), 687 (1991), and 1284 (1999) to return or cooperate in accounting for Kuwaiti and third country nationals wrongfully detained by Iraq, or to return Kuwaiti property wrongfully seized by Iraq,"

with regard to terrorism - Here even the UNSC is saying that even they are not stupid enough to believe that Saddam is still not tied into terrorism in some manner.
repression of its civilian population - nuff said!
provide access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in Iraq - 50,000 people supposedly died due to the sancions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War and some how these deaths are put on Americas hands. Can some PLEASE explain this to me?
to return or cooperate in accounting for Kuwaiti and third country nationals wrongfully detained by Iraq - At least we give our "wrongfully detained foreign nationsl" decent lodging, clothes and food. I wonder what the conditions were like for the foreign nationals detained by Iraq.

All in all Skeptic, the US got a tad bit bored of the UN saying, "If you do this you will get punished" to Saddam, Saddam doing it and not getting punished.

For those who want you can read the entirety of UNSC Res1441 (http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm)

[Skeptic]

==========================
Published on Monday, March 22, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
Carter Savages Blair and Bush: 'Their War was Based on Lies'
by Andrew Buncombe in Atlanta

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticized George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgment to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.

In an interview with The Independent on the first anniversary of the American and British invasion of Iraq, Mr Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, said the two leaders probably knew that many of the claims being made about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were based on imperfect intelligence.

He said: "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'."

Before the war Mr Carter made clear his opposition to a unilateral attack and said the US did not have the authority to create a "Pax Americana". During his Nobel prize acceptance speech in December 2002 he warned of the danger of "uncontrollable violence" if countries sought to resolve problems without United Nations input.

His latest comments, made during an interview at the Carter Center in Atlanta, are notable for their condemnation of the two serving leaders. It is extremely rare for a former US president to criticize an incumbent, or a British prime minister. Mr Carter's comments will add to the mounting pressure on Mr Bush and Mr Blair.

Mr Carter said he believed the momentum for the invasion came from Washington and that many of Mr Bush's senior advisers had long ago signaled their desire to remove Saddam by force. Once a decision had been taken to go to war, every effort was made to find a reason for doing do, he said.

"I think the basic reason was made not in London but in Washington. I think that Bush Jnr was inclined to finish a war that his father had precipitated against Iraq. I think it was that commitment of Bush that prevailed over, I think, the better judgment of Tony Blair and Tony Blair became an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush policy".

Mr Carter's criticisms coincided with damaging claims yesterday from a former White House anti-terrorism co-ordinator. Richard Clarke said that President Bush ignored the threat from al-Qaida before 11 September but in the immediate aftermath sought to hold Iraq responsible, in defiance of senior intelligence advisers who told him that Saddam had nothing to do with the conspiracy.

With an eye to November's presidential elections, Mr Bush sought on Friday to use the anniversary of the Iraq invasion to say that differences between the US and opponents of the war belonged "to the past".

Speaking at the White House, he told about 80 foreign ambassadors: "There is no neutral ground in the fight between civilization and terror. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy."

But in the US and Britain, and elsewhere, there is growing anger among people who believe the war in Iraq was at best a deadly distraction and at worst an impediment to the war against al-Qa'ida - diverting resources and energy from countering those groups responsible for attacks such as the train bombings in Madrid.

Over the weekend millions of anti-war protesters poured on to the streets of cities around the world to call for the withdrawal of US-led troops from Iraq. It was estimated that in Rome - which saw the biggest crowds - up to one million turned out.

Mr Carter, 79, has recently published a novel. The Hornet's Nest is centered on America's revolutionary war against the British. That period had many lessons for the present day, Mr Carter said.

=======================

[Duder]

Thanks, Skeptic - I enjoyed that report.

Ya gotta love 'ol Jimmy!

[BillyBob]

Great Post, Keith73! :up:

Bad Post, Skeptic! :down:

[Frank Ernest]

Jimmy Carter wrote a book on the Revolutionary War?

Did he claim that our Founders started it because they had "bad intelligence" about the British?

It would be consistent with his brain-dead "analysis" of the current situation. Even Clinton wouldn't talk to him after the wonderful diplomatic work he did in Haiti and North Korea.

[Art Deco]

Originally posted by Frank Ernest

Jimmy Carter wrote a book on the Revolutionary War?

Did he claim that our Founders started it because they had "bad intelligence" about the British?

It would be consistent with his brain-dead "analysis" of the current situation. Even Clinton wouldn't talk to him after the wonderful diplomatic work he did in Haiti and North Korea.


Please don't call me "Jimma" Carter is a national disgrace and traitor to his country. As a charter member of the "Trilateral Commission," he systematically undermined the sovereignty of the United States at every opportunity.

He along with Clinton were and still are "Internationalists," "Globalists," "One Worlders." These traitors never saw an international treaty they didn't like, especially if it curtailed or restricted our national sovereignty.

[pwbayon]

Bush got the approval of Congress to go to war. He went through the appropriate legal channels. He made a valid case that Saddam was a risk to the world and to America. All the democrats could have voted against the resolution but didn’t. I think the WMD will still be found since we know he used them against his own people in prior years. The liberals never are willing to stand up for what is right but want to hide behind the UN and try to negotiate with evil. That will never work.

[BillyBob]

Exactly!

[Frank Ernest]

Yup. Yup. Yup.

And still the Neville Chamberlains keep trying.

Toward the end of the First Gulf War, Saddam sent his air force to Iran for safe-keeping. Why would anyone think he didn't do the same with his WMD?

Why did the Iranians call off the weapons inspections they had previously agreed to? Getting too close to the "stash?"

[Art Deco]

Originally posted by Frank Ernest

Yup. Yup. Yup.

And still the Neville Chamberlains keep trying.

Toward the end of the First Gulf War, Saddam sent his air force to Iran for safe-keeping. Why would anyone think he didn't do the same with his WMD?

Why did the Iranians call off the weapons inspections they had previously agreed to? Getting too close to the "stash?"


Right on Frank. Iraq was no friend of the United States. The country harbored and provided training for terrorists. They were a living cancer in the Middle East. We just took a knife to it and cut it out.

Only the demented Secular Anti-Christian Democrat Party could condemn such an action.

[Keith73]

Originally posted by Skeptic

==========================
Published on Monday, March 22, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
Carter Savages Blair and Bush: 'Their War was Based on Lies'
by Andrew Buncombe in Atlanta

He said: "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks,

Bush denying link between Saddam and 9/11 in article dated 18/11/03 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3118262.stm)

claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Let's face facts Skeptic, and you too Mr. Carter. Saddam hungrily wanted super-weapons. Whether it be the huge artillery gun that Britain stopped completion of, chemical weapons given to his by the US or nuclear weapons, Saddam wanted them. Dr Hamza, the highest ranking doctor to ever defect from Iraq said that Saddam not only had the fuel for nuclear weapons, taken from the nuclear reactor France gave them, but they had also had a complete mock-up of the bomb. The only thing that stopped them from actually making a bomb was the 1991 Gulf War.


Interviewer: So, the Crash program failed to deliver?

Dr. Hamza: Failed to deliver. It was close. They had the mock-up. All they needed was the fuel. And the fuel was there. All they needed was to process it. But it was not a deliverable weapon. It was a device that you could explode anywhere ... (inaudible) in a stationary form.

Interviewer: Who ordered the Crash program?

Dr. Hamza: Hussein Kamel...of course... on the orders of Saddam. It was a last, some sort of a last resort, a point of last resort, to demonstrate capability. Iraq was off-limits then to inspections. So, nobody would know if you had more of this or not. ...[B]ut it failed, because it needed a lot of work to miniaturize the device. Better explosives. Better manufacturing. Also, it needed the processing itself. They were not sure if they lost material, lost uranium, during the processing.

Dr. Hamza Interview (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/hamza.html)

This above section refers to events that took place in Nov. 1990. By his own words Hamza all but admits to helping build a bomb. Who are we to say that in 14 years Saddam was not able to finish them? As the Dr. says, Iraq was off limits for almost 12 years and while the arms inspectors might not have found any nuclear weapons they have found a great many thing in Iraq that he was not allowed to have. Mobile chemical agent processing plant. UCAV's. Illegal misslle sytems. You get my gist.

And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'."

First off, is has there ever been such a thing as "certain intelligence"? Certainly not in my military career. If there was then I would not have been called an "analyst".

Before the war Mr Carter made clear his opposition to a unilateral attack and said the US did not have the authority to create a "Pax Americana". During his Nobel prize acceptance speech in December 2002 he warned of the danger of "uncontrollable violence" if countries sought to resolve problems without United Nations input.

His latest comments, made during an interview at the Carter Center in Atlanta, are notable for their condemnation of the two serving leaders. It is extremely rare for a former US president to criticize an incumbent, or a British prime minister. Mr Carter's comments will add to the mounting pressure on Mr Bush and Mr Blair.

Mr Carter said he believed the momentum for the invasion came from Washington and that many of Mr Bush's senior advisers had long ago signaled their desire to remove Saddam by force. Once a decision had been taken to go to war, every effort was made to find a reason for doing do, he said.

"I think the basic reason was made not in London but in Washington. I think that Bush Jnr was inclined to finish a war that his father had precipitated against Iraq. I think it was that commitment of Bush that prevailed over, I think, the better judgment of Tony Blair and Tony Blair became an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush policy".

Mr Carter's criticisms coincided with damaging claims yesterday from a former White House anti-terrorism co-ordinator. Richard Clarke said that President Bush ignored the threat from al-Qaida before 11 September but in the immediate aftermath sought to hold Iraq responsible, in defiance of senior intelligence advisers who told him that Saddam had nothing to do with the conspiracy.

With an eye to November's presidential elections, Mr Bush sought on Friday to use the anniversary of the Iraq invasion to say that differences between the US and opponents of the war belonged "to the past".

Speaking at the White House, he told about 80 foreign ambassadors: "There is no neutral ground in the fight between civilization and terror. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy."

But in the US and Britain, and elsewhere, there is growing anger among people who believe the war in Iraq was at best a deadly distraction and at worst an impediment to the war against al-Qa'ida - diverting resources and energy from countering those groups responsible for attacks such as the train bombings in Madrid.

Over the weekend millions of anti-war protesters poured on to the streets of cities around the world to call for the withdrawal of US-led troops from Iraq. It was estimated that in Rome - which saw the biggest crowds - up to one million turned out.

Mr Carter, 79, has recently published a novel. The Hornet's Nest is centered on America's revolutionary war against the British. That period had many lessons for the present day, Mr Carter said.

I think that Bush Jnr was inclined to finish a war that his father had precipitated against Iraq.

Oh this precious gem is just to impossible to pass up. With these words it's time for our peanut farm-turned-politcrat to finally step in the mists of obscurity, where he once came from and where he so deservedly belongs. Can anyone please explain to me how Bush Sr. "precipitated" the 91 Gulf War cause I'm a bit hazy there.

Let's see. Saddam wants Kuwait's oil fields and riches back under Iraq's..excuse me...his own personal control so he concocts some rather silly argument that because Kuwait owes IRaq money he is annexing them. So the UN gets together and wags a collective finger at Saddam and they take their pitbull off it's leash [that's us by the way, the American Armed forces" and sets us in motion. Now, Bush Sr did everything that the UN resolution called for. He removed Iraq from Kuwait and restored Kuwaits ORIGINAL government to power. Had he done anything else then Bush Sr would have been in violation of international law as well as Saddam.

All in all, I'll say it again. Did Bush lie about some stuff? Yeah, sure. He's a politician so it's a bit of a given. Did he knowingly about everything? I highly doubt that. Truth be told, during most of my missions I fed what was I felt was right on target intel to various team members that turned out to be wrong and guess what. It got people dead. Does it bother me. Yeah, but it's the business I chose.

Bottom line is this. Saddam needed to be taken out. The Taliban needed to be taken out. North Korea, Syria, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. all need to be taken out. Everyone runs to America when they need their back rubbed yet no one wants to pay the piper when it comes time to collect those favors.

America is the worlds polic force. We've been such since 1945. If other countries don't like how we choose to enforce the law then let their lazy buts get out of bed and do it.

As for Mr. Carter, he should just clam up and go play with his peanuts.

[Keith73]

Originally posted by pwbayon

Bush got the approval of Congress to go to war. He went through the appropriate legal channels. He made a valid case that Saddam was a risk to the world and to America. All the democrats could have voted against the resolution but didn’t. I think the WMD will still be found since we know he used them against his own people in prior years. The liberals never are willing to stand up for what is right but want to hide behind the UN and try to negotiate with evil. That will never work.

How very true!

People, this has all happened before!

America was "negotiating" for peace or at least no aggression with Japan two days before Pearl Harbor.

Russia has a "non-aggression" treaty with Germany and they are attacked.

England's Parliment tried in every way to shut Churchhill down in regards to his warnings of Germany yet he was right.

Time and time again, we have been taught the hard lesson that we cannot "negotiate" with evil yet we systemmatically fail to learn the lesson.

Do we try to negotiate with cancer cell in our bodies? "Hey cancer, you take just my minorly valuable organs but leave my lungs, brain and heart alone." What malarky!

"You do not finght a junkyard dog with ASPCA rules. What you do is take the leash off your own bigger and meane junkyard dog!"

I heard that in some movie a few years back but that doens't mean that it's not a right as rain! As a solider I can say that I do understand the need for peaceful attempts being made first but after a while you just gotta give up the ghost.

[On Fire]

Amen, brother!

[Duder]

"You do not finght a junkyard dog with ASPCA rules. What you do is take the leash off your own bigger and meane junkyard dog!"

I have been forced to conclude that sometimes people who spoke in the Bible are either mistaken or misquoted. I see that you are of the same opinion. Was Jesus mistaken or misquoted when Matthew quotes Him as saying,
You have heard the commandment, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." But what I say to you is: offer no resistence to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Duder

I have been forced to conclude that sometimes people who spoke in the Bible are either mistaken or misquoted. I see that you are of the same opinion. Was Jesus mistaken or misquoted when Matthew quotes Him as saying,

Good one, Dud. There is absolutely no difference between two kids fighting in the backyard and a dictator lunatic with nuclear aspirations.

:kookoo:

[docpotato]

Originally posted by Keith73

Do we try to negotiate with cancer cell in our bodies? "Hey cancer, you take just my minorly valuable organs but leave my lungs, brain and heart alone." What malarky!



It IS malarky! CANCER CELLS CAN'T TALK!!!!!!!!

This is the funniest BAD ANALOGY I have ever seen! And I've been to WISCONSIN! :thumb:

[Duder]

Good one, Dud. There is absolutely no difference between two kids fighting in the backyard and a dictator lunatic with nuclear aspirations.

That's "Duder" - pronouced DOO-der. So that's what you call me - either that or "The Dude", or "His Dudeness", or even "El Duderino" if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

And your comments above are exactly right. We should send special forces units in with guns ablaze to exterminate misbehaven backyard kids.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Keith73
"You do not finght a junkyard dog with ASPCA rules. What you do is take the leash off your own bigger and meane junkyard dog!"Even better: you hang waaaay back and take it out with a sniper rifle.
As a solider I can say that I do understand the need for peaceful attempts being made first but after a while you just gotta give up the ghost. My experience has been that it is better to just cut to the chase and pound your antagonist into hash at the start.

Negotiating is for pansies. People only try to negotiate when they realize they're about to get their heads handed to them.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald


My experience has been that it is better to just cut to the chase and pound your antagonist into hash at the start.

Absolutely.


Negotiating is for pansies.

And democrats....oh...same thing.

People only try to negotiate when they realize they're about to get their heads handed to them.

Yep.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Duder
And your comments above are exactly right. We should send special forces units in with guns ablaze to exterminate misbehaven backyard kids.

No, no, no. We leave them both alone and see which one blows up the Earth first.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck
No, no, no. We leave them both alone and see which one blows up the Earth first. Why should that prospect bother you?

You're going to heaven no matter what, right? So you have nothing to worry about.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

Why should that prospect bother you?

You're going to heaven no matter what, right? So you have nothing to worry about.

Good point, but, I don't think everyone has heard the Good News.....yet.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck
Good point, but, I don't think everyone has heard the Good News.....yet. And as long as people keep reproducing, everybody won't.

Don'tcha just love feedback loops...?

:chuckle:

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

Don'tcha just love feedback loops...?

:chuckle:

No, but I love the fact that God has it all figured out and you don't.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

No, but I love the fact that God has it all figured out and you don't. There he goes again...

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

There he goes again...

Do you get these out of a book?

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck
Do you get these out of a book?
Like you have room to talk...:chuckle:

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

Like you have room to talk...:chuckle:

p. 17, right?

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

p. 17, right? 14.

The instructions for building an altar to Satan are on page 17.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

14.

The instructions for building an altar to Satan are on page 17.

That's last year's edition, fool.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

That's last year's edition, fool. You are mistaken.

And what are you doing with the EAC Handbook, anyway?

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

You are mistaken.

And what are you doing with the EAC Handbook, anyway?

Liar.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck
Liar. Prove it.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Gerald

Prove it.

You lie.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

You lie. About what?

Be specific.

[BillyBob]

Neener, neener, neener!

[wholearmor]

Originally posted by Gerald

14.

The instructions for building an altar to Satan are on page 17.

Like you'd need instructions.

[Skeptic]

=====================
Published on Thursday, May 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
March Orders
by Bill C. Davis

In March 2002 Bush interrupted a meeting between three senators and Dr. Rice as they discussed strategies for Iraq in relationship to the U.N. According to Time magazine the commander-in-chief stopped all the talk and said - "F*** Saddam - we're taking him out."

The order with its gangster sexual aggression - came from Bush - perceived by most people in the world to be our president but speaking as if he were Sonny Corleone or Tony Soprano. "F*** Saddam." Meaning what? Penetrate, humiliate, feminize?

That order - its tone - its twist - its thrust - trickled down to Abu Ghraib - to that man with the gloves - his arms folded -smiling over the anonymous cluster of hooded humanity in front of him. It trickled down to that androgynous creature with the perky damaged smile whose life is now as ruined as the moment she has been caught in forever.

That command oozes into the consciousness of the enlisted and the hired like a gas - like anthrax. It works its way into the cells and the nervous system of those who do the president's bidding. It was not depose, impeach or defeat - it was "F***." Whatever else he may have said from a podium or an aircraft carrier or the oval office - beneath it all was that order he announced in passing to Dr. Rice and the three senators - beneath it all are those pictures, which look like and are dark gothic dreams.

As Christ said - what you whisper in corners will be shouted from rooftops. Bush's whisper is now a full screen. The pathetic scapegoats are not the point - as much as they will be used as such. The president will say he could not have any idea that something like this could go on - the same way Dr. Rice could never imagine planes going into buildings. But in fact, the seed was planted in March 2002 and Abu Ghraib is the harvest.

He can't apologize because he moves forward with a certain color blindness. He'll speak when spoken to - i.e. caught - but to originate redemptive concepts is not what he was hired for.

What I hope we and the Iraqi people will remember are those Americans - dubbed as crackpot and treasonous at the time - who stopped their lives here and went to Baghdad to be human shields - and the protestors who crowded Washington, New York, San Francisco, Chicago - who knew that Abu Ghraib would be part of the sickening tapestry that war weaves. We have to remember those Americans who had no aspirations of approval or heroism but acted heroically on behalf of common humanity.

The Americans who were considered focus groups and marginal are now the only faces that have a chance of replacing the faces of the smiling sadists, which sadly for now stands as the real face of America to the world at large and who in some way got their marching orders in March 2002.

======================

[Skeptic]

========================
Published on Tuesday, April 6, 2004 by the Associated Press
Nader Calls for Bush to Be Impeached
by Maura Kelly

CHICAGO - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader called Tuesday for President Bush to be impeached for "deceiving the American people night after night after night" about U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"When you plunge our country into war on a platform of fabrications and deceptions, and you bring back thousands of American soldiers who are sick, injured or dead, and that war is unconstitutionally authorized to begin with, Mr. Bush's behavior qualifies for the high crimes and misdemeanor impeachment clause of the Constitution," the 2000 Green Party presidential nominee said to applause from about 200 students at Columbia College Chicago.

Nader said President Clinton was impeached for "far less of an offense."

"Lying under oath is not a trivial offense, but it cannot compare with deceiving the American people night after night after night on national television, staging untruths and rejecting the advice of his advisers," he said.

Merrill Smith, a spokeswoman for Bush's re-election campaign, declined to comment.

Nader previously called for Bush's impeachment during an anti-war rally March 20 in the president's hometown of Crawford, Texas, to mark the first anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Nader, a longtime consumer advocate, was in Illinois to gather the 25,000 signatures he needs before June 21 to qualify for the state ballot. He failed Monday to qualify for Oregon's ballot, but said he would try again under another option there.

Many Democrats blame Nader for Democrat Al Gore's loss to Republican George W. Bush in 2000, and have urged him not to run this time. They cite the vote Nader captured in close contests in New Hampshire and Florida and argue that Gore would have won if either state had gone to the then-vice president.

But Nader says Gore is to blame for his misfortune, and he rejected the idea that he could draw support away from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

In Portland, Ore., on Monday, former Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean warned that "a vote for Ralph Nader is the same as a vote for George Bush."

An audience member in Chicago was booed for suggesting something similar.

Nader responded: "What we have to tell the two parties in unmistakable terms is that this country does not belong to two parties."
============================

[BillyBob]

:darwinsm:

[Skeptic]

Has our nation abided by the Constitution regarding declaring war on Iraq? Read this.

(my emphasis)

=========================
John Bonifaz, Author of "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush"
April 29, 2004

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

If you’re like BuzzFlash, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how in the world could George W. Bush preemptively invade and occupy another country that was not an imminent threat to the United States, based on a heap of lies. Shouldn’t such an action that has killed and injured thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians be an impeachable offense and treated as a high crime? Why isn’t anybody talking about impeaching George W. Bush? Well help is on the way. John C. Bonifaz has written a new book, "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush," with a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr. that is a stinging indictment and a call for a grassroots movement to hold George W. Bush accountable for his illegal war in Iraq.

Mr. Bonifaz is also the founder and general counsel of the National Voting Rights Institute, a prominent legal center in the campaign finance reform field. Mr. Bonifaz is a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He is a 1992 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1987 graduate of Brown University.

In February and March 2003, Mr. Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of US soldiers, parents of US soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives Conyers and Kucinich) in a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld to launch a war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action. His book, "Warrior-King," is accounting of that case and its meaning for the United States Constitution.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Your new book is titled, "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush." Let me just play devil’s advocate for a second and ask you since Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, would never permit Articles of Impeachment to be drawn, why did you write this book when the outcome is fairly certain that George W. Bush will likely never be impeached?

John Bonifaz: I wrote the book to ensure that there would be a broader public debate about the illegality of this war. A President is not a king. He does not have the power to launch a first-strike invasion against another nation without a congressional declaration of war or equivalent congressional action. And this President has sent this nation into a war without any congressional authorization – a war that we now know is based on lies – and Bush ought to be scrutinized for the impeachable offenses that he’s committed. So the question of whether or not the President has committed impeachable offense is, in fact, a legitimate question to raise, and must be raised from the grassroots.

BuzzFlash: Explain to our readers your analysis and the substance of the Congressional resolution in the fall of 2002 that gave the President, as I remember, the authority to pursue means to enforce inspections in Iraq, and how the President took that resolution as an authorization to invade Iraq.

John Bonifaz: Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia was quite eloquent about this point. The October 2002 Congressional resolution sought to unlawfully transfer to the President the power to declare war, a power held by the United States Congress. When the framers drafted the war powers clause of the United States Constitution, they did so to ensure that this country would not be like the European monarchs of the past -- the European monarchs of the past who could send their subjects off into battle on their own personal whim. In this country, the President would not have that kind of power. Only the people, through the United States Congress, would have the power to make that awesome decision of sending our soldiers into battle.

BuzzFlash: How do you respond to people who say, well, there wasn’t a declaration of war with Korea or Vietnam. There wasn’t a formal declaration of war in the first Iraq war. What is your response when people bring up those arguments and say, well, why should there have been a declaration of war in this case?

John Bonifaz: Well, first the question of whether in Iraq there was a declaration of war needs to (be) expanded to determine whether there was even any equivalent Congressional action. This is not a magic words test. This is not the requirement that Congress must utter specific words in order for the nation to descend into war. But Congress must, in some way or another, authorize the President to go into war before the President may order military forces to engage in a war.

The President is the Commander in Chief. He has the power to determine how to prosecute a war, but it is not his power to determine whether to prosecute a war. That’s solely a power of the U.S. Congress. So while it is true that there’s been erosion of the war powers clause since World War II, it is also true that in these other wars, there had been other instances in which Congress had expressed its view. Congress had appropriated money for some of these military operations. Congress had passed a mandatory draft.

At the start of this war against Iraq, there was nothing except the resolution in October 2002, which sought to cede the power of declaring war to the President. There had been no appropriations for this military invasion. There had been no military draft implemented. And so this President had no authority to send this nation into war. And we now know that he tried to gain that alleged authority based on lies and deception, which is a separate impeachable offense.

BuzzFlash: As a constitutional question, you’re saying that the Congress cannot shift its own constitutional responsibility to another branch of government, even if it desired to. In other words, the Senate could not shift the authority to the President to levy taxes or confirm members of the Cabinet. The House of Representatives couldn’t shift the responsibility of drawing articles of impeachment to the Senate.

John Bonifaz: Absolutely. There are certain powers held by the United States Congress that are exclusively held by Congress. They are not shared with the President. Congress has the power to levy taxes, and only Congress does. Congress has the power to confirm appointments to the federal bench, and only Congress does. Congress cannot, all of a sudden, decide that it’s going to abdicate its Constitutional responsibility and hand over to the President powers that the framers never intended the President to have.

There’s a reason why we don’t want the President to have the kind of awesome power of determining whether or not to send the nation into war, or whether or not to levy taxes on the American people. We have a different system than the European monarchies of the past. And no one individual should have the awesome power to determine whether to send American soldiers off into battle, and off possibly to their deaths. That is a decision solely to be made by the United States Congress, representing the people as a whole.

BuzzFlash: Let’s imagine this scenario, that God forbid, Bush is reelected. But the House of Representatives miraculously goes back to Democratic control. What then? Can you still prosecute a case of impeachment against a President? Or would a reelection trump a President’s actions in the first term?

John Bonifaz: We, of course, have to remember that the Watergate break-in occurred in an election year, in 1972. And President Nixon was reelected. And it wasn’t until 1973 that there was a series of impeachment proceedings leading ultimately to the President’s resignation in 1974. It would be very unfortunate for this country to go through a process by which it reelects a President without any consideration of whether he’s committed impeachable offenses, only to then, assuming after that election, begin that process.

This process ought to begin now. There ought to be scrutiny engaged by the U.S. Congress today on whether the President has committed impeachable offenses. The Constitution lays out a specific process for addressing unlawful conduct committed by the President of the United States, and that’s called the impeachment process. These are high crimes that the President has committed, and he ought to be impeached for that reason. And this investigation ought to deal with the question of those high crimes. Elections are for questioning whether or not there’s popular support for the person in office or the person seeking office. But the impeachment process is for addressing the matter of high crimes. And it’s critical now for this nation and for the integrity of the Constitution that we engage in that process.

BuzzFlash: You filed a lawsuit in February of 2003 on behalf of members of Congress and military families to stop the war because it was unconstitutional and illegal. And the courts barred deciding the case on the grounds that it raised political questions that they did not feel they had the right to decide. In your legal opinion, how were the courts wrong?

John Bonifaz: First it’s important to recognize that the lead plaintiffs in this case were United States soldiers who were facing potential injury and death as a result of the President’s illegal actions. They had the courage to stand up and challenge this President’s authority to send them off into battle. Parents of U.S. soldiers and courageous members of Congress in fact, joined them. And the courts stood on the sidelines and refused to stop this President’s illegal march into war. And the courts used a barrier that should not have been placed in the plaintiffs’ way to prevent any kind of judicial intervention. They argued that Congress and the President were not in conflict, and therefore, there was no ability for the judiciary to intervene. Only if Congress and the President, on a matter of war, refused or were in conflict, then the judiciary could intervene and deal with that conflict.

Of course, that means that Congress can collude with the President to violate the Constitution and have the President send the nation into an illegal war, and the courts would have no ability to act. In fact, the courts have a specific duty to act to protect and uphold the Constitution, even if the other two political branches are colluding together to violate it.

So here is a story of all three democratic institutions failing us – the executive branch, the United States Congress, and the federal judiciary. And the book is really sounding an alarm for our future, for the Constitution, and for the nation. We now have a new preemptive war doctrine articulated by this Bush Administration and if combined with what’s happened with the Iraq war, will impact the future of our country. We now have a precedent that any future Administration can effectively tell us that whenever they see a threat that perhaps the rest of the country doesn’t see, the rest of the Congress doesn’t see, the President alone can make the decision to wage war. These are powers held only by monarchs and tyrants, and it cannot be allowed that these powers should be held by the president of a democratic nation.

BuzzFlash: I mentioned Korea and Vietnam earlier, but we’re seeing the complete erosion of Congressional authority over going to war especially after Bush’s preemptive invasion of Iraq. And as you stated, future presidents can and probably will use the preemptive strike doctrine to "protect" America. What does the future hold? What needs to happen for Congress to reassert its authority over matters of war?

John Bonifaz: I think this has to come from the people. I think the people have to demand that their Constitution be followed and that this social contract that exists between the people and the government be abided by. And, in fact, that the question of whether or not impeachable offenses have occurred needs to be addressed by the United States Congress.

There needs to be an investigation as to whether or not this President has committed high crimes. And the people have a responsibility – all of us – to demand that our nation be followed in terms of its principles. We seek to export the vision of democracy around the world, and yet here in this country, the vision of democracy is under attack. The Constitution is under attack – attack by an Administration that sees no interest in following its own Constitutional responsibilities, but rather extending powers beyond anywhere the framers intended, into powers held only by monarchs of the past. And so I think it’s important at this moment in history that we as a people stand up and demand our country back. This President has sought to exercise the powers of a king in sending this nation into illegal war, and he ought to be held accountable for it.

BuzzFlash: One of the most appalling responses when people suggest that Bush should be impeached, is that this is just payback for the Clinton impeachment, which is just utterly ridiculous. Deception about two consenting adults over sex and the impact on a civil case, versus the lies and distortions over the reasons and evidence for invading and occupying a country in a preemptive strike doctrine is just absurd to even mention the two incidents in the same sentence. And yet, that’s what the right-wing does. What’s your response?

John Bonifaz: I think it’s clear that if a President can be impeached for alleged charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, then a President surely should be impeached for sending this nation into an illegal war based on lies. No one died in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Here we have over 700 U.S. soldiers dead, thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, thousands more injured on both sides. And yet this President has yet to be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war based on lies.

You know, the questions of falsehoods and lies and deception that have been emanating from this Administration regarding this war, and the reasons for going into this war, are directly tied to the issue of whether the process of sending the nation into war was followed. Because if Congress had properly done its job to vet the information, to challenge the Administration to come forward with the evidence it claimed it had, then, in fact, we may not have gone off into war.

But beyond that, it shows how dangerous it is to rely upon one individual to tell us that we are in need of sending the nation to war based on some threat that that one individual sees. This is an awesome power held by this country, with the strongest and most forceful military in the world, and we cannot send this nation into war based on one individual’s perception, no matter how right or wrong he may be. And now that this has happened, we need to stand up for the Constitution and demand accountability for all the soldiers who have died, and those who have been injured, for all those on the Iraqi side who’ve died and been injured. We need accountability here. We cannot let this question of high crimes be unanswered.

BuzzFlash: John, thank you so much for speaking with us.

John Bonifaz: Thank you.

From: http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04022.html

[BillyBob]

:darwinsm:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

:darwinsm: You are always touting the idea that we need to abide by the Constitution. What's your take on the Constitutionality of the war with Iraq, BillyBob?

[On Fire]

:darwinsm:

Thanks for that, septic!

[Skeptic]

Other than a few exaggerated and out-of-date figures, this year-old commentary is right on!

=========================
BushCo Reams Nation Good
No WMDs after all, no excuse for war, too late for anyone to care anymore. Ha-ha, suckers
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
©2004 SF Gate

URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2003/05/14/notes051403.DTL

Ha-ha-ha oh man did we ever get smacked on that one. Conned big time. Punk'd like dogs. Just gotta shake your head, laugh it off. They reamed us but good, baby! Damn.

Turns out it really was all a big joke after all. The war, that is. All a big fat nasty murderous oil-licking lie, a sneaky little power-mad game with you as the sucker and the world as the pawn and BushCo as the slithery war thug, the dungeon master, the prison daddy. You really have to laugh. Because it's just so wonderfully ridiculous. In a rather disgusting, soul-draining sort of way.

See, there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No WMDs at all. Isn't that great? What's more: There never were. Ha-ha-ha. Gotcha!

No warehouses teeming with nuclear warheads, no underground bunkers packed with vats of boiling biotoxins, no drums of crazy-@ss chemical agents that will melt your skin and turn us all into drooling flesh-eating zombies -- unless, of course, you count the sneering vat of conservative biotoxin that is, say, Fox News, in which case, hell yeah baby, we gotcher WMDs right here beeyatch.

Go figure. Those lowly U.N. inspectors were right after all. Who knew? It was all a ruse. We've been sucker-punched and ideologically molested and patriotically sodomized and hey, what the hell, who cares anyway, we "liberated" an oppressed people most Americans secretly loathe and fear and don't understand in the slightest, even though that was never the point, or the justification, or the goal. Go team.

But wait, is liberation of a brutalized and tormented people now the reason? The justification for our thuggery? That is so cool! So that means we're going to blow the living crap out of Sri Lanka and Sudan and Tibet and North Korea and about 47 others, right? Right? Maybe Saudi Arabia, too, second only to the Taliban itself in its abuse of women? Cool! As if.

Ah, but screw the liberal whiny peacenik U.N. inspectors, you know? Let's ask the U.S. search teams themselves, ShrubCo's own squadrons of biologists, chemists, arms-treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts and Special Forces troops who've been in Iraq for weeks now, searching frantically.

Surely they've found something, right? Surely we can now prove that Saddam was fully intending to fillet our babies and annihilate Florida and poke the eyes out of really cute kittens on national TV for sadistic pleasure, right? Gimme a hell yeah!

Whoops. Bad news. As The Washington Post reports, the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the very serious-minded group heading up all U.S. inspections in Iraq, the group absolutely certain it would immediately find steaming neon-lit stockpiles of WMDs piled right next to Saddam's personal stash of gay porn and Britney Spears posters and opium pipes, is coming home with its tail between its legs. Found nothing. Nada.

Psychopatriots are a little nonplussed. Bush is merely "embarrassed." Peace advocates are sighing and drinking heavily. We have done this ghastly horrible inane hate-filled entirely unprovoked thing in the name of power and petroleum and military contracts and strategic empire building, our nation is numb and more bitterly divisive than ever and our leaders are not the slightest bit ashamed.

But of course you're not the slightest bit shocked. You knew it all along. The WMD line was just a ploy that, tragically, much of the nation bought into like a sucker pyramid scheme after being pounded into submission with hammers of fear and Ashcroftian threats and bogus Orange Alerts and having their tweezers confiscated at the airport.

And of course the capacity to be outraged and appalled has been entirely drained out of you, out of this nation, replaced by raging ennui and sad resentment and the new fall season on NBC. This is what they're counting on. Your short attention span. WMDs? That's so, like, last February. Hey look, the swimsuit model won "Survivor"!

Because now it's all done. Like a bad trip to the dentist where your routine cleaning turned out to be a bloody excruciating root canal and 50 hours of high-pitched drilling and $100 billion in god-awful cosmetic surgery, now the bandages come off. Smile, sucker. We're at peace once again. Sort of. But not really. Don't you feel better now? No? Too bad. No one cares what you think.

It's all over but the shouting. And the screaming. And the endless years of U.S. occupation in the Middle East, the quiet building of U.S. military bases in Iraq so we can keep those uppity bitches Syria and Egypt and Lebanon in line, forge ahead with the long-standing plan to strong-arm those damn Islamic nuts into brutal compliance with Bushco's bleak blueprint for World Inc. What, too bitter? Hardly.

Should we care that Osama, the actual perp of 9/11, is still running around free? That terrorism hasn't been quelled in the slightest? That the Mideast is more of a U.S.-hating powder keg than ever, thanks to BushCo? That the economy is in the worst shape it's been in decades?

Should we care that we just massacred tens of thousands of Iraqi (and Afghan) civilians and soldiers and suffered a little more than 100 U.S. casualties and have absolutely nothing to show for it except bogus force-fed pride and this weird, sickening sense that we just executed something irreparable and ungodly and karmically poisonous?

Nah. Just laugh it off. Have a glass of wine, make love, go play Frisbee with the dog. Breathe deep and focus on what's truly important and try to assimilate this latest atrocity into your backstabbed worldview, add it to the list of this lifetime's spiritual humiliations, as you wait for the next barrage, the imminent announcement that we're about to do it all again.

Steel yourself. Protect your soul. Because man, they reamed us good. Slammed this nation like a bad joke. Gotcha! Ha-ha-ha.

========================

[Gerald]

From the referenced article:
It's all over but the shouting. And the screaming. And the endless years of U.S. occupation in the Middle East, the quiet building of U.S. military bases in Iraq so we can keep those uppity bitches Syria and Egypt and Lebanon in line, forge ahead with the long-standing plan to strong-arm those damn Islamic nuts into brutal compliance with Bushco's bleak blueprint for World Inc.


Raaaaahhhh!!!

Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!

Now all we need to do is make being a nutbar towelhead (that's all of 'em, BTW) punishable by summary execution.

:Grizzly: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead:



:chuckle:

[Noelpark03]

Seems like Pres.Bush started to beat the hornet's nest with a weed-whacker. He would not listen to anyone else in the US or the rest of the world. Thats trouble when you believe you are carrying out the word of God. People can do awful things even behedding people!

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

You are always touting the idea that we need to abide by the Constitution. What's your take on the Constitutionality of the war with Iraq, BillyBob?

Our Constitution is a 'limiter' of US power over it's citizens. It is the law of the US, not the law of the world.

The President of the US has every obligation to maintain the safety of US citizens and if that means he has to use the awesome force of the US military to squash terrorists and rogue leaders, so be it.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald

From the referenced article:



Raaaaahhhh!!!

Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!

Now all we need to do is make being a nutbar towelhead (that's all of 'em, BTW) punishable by summary execution.

:Grizzly: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead: :dead:



:chuckle:

I'm with ya, Gerald! :up:

I'm ready to kill my share. [I wonder how many that is??] :think:

[Hmmmm ......I better get some more ammo.....]

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob

I'm with ya, Gerald! :up:

I'm ready to kill my share. [I wonder how many that is??] :think:

[Hmmmm ......I better get some more ammo.....]
Cool!

How's this for a deal: you wipe out the Muslims and I wipe out the Christians. Then everybody wins.

You get the oil you covet, and I get peace and quiet. What's not to like?

[docpotato]

While we're just killing people can I just kill whomever it is that annoys me or with whom I disagree?

[Gerald]

Originally posted by docpotato

While we're just killing people can I just kill whomever it is that annoys me or with whom I disagree? Well, they'll stop annoying you and disagreeing with you, won't they...?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Gerald

Cool!

How's this for a deal: you wipe out the Muslims and I wipe out the Christians. Then everybody wins.

You get the oil you covet, and I get peace and quiet. What's not to like?

Why would you want to kill Christians? They aren't out there beheading your fellow countrymen. They aren't flying planes into our buildings. They aren't preventing a peaceful transition in Iraq. They aren't bent on destroying you and every other American.

:nono:

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by docpotato

While we're just killing people can I just kill whomever it is that annoys me or with whom I disagree?

Yes, as long as they are Muslims.

[aikido7]

When small men cast large shadows, it is a sure sign the sun is setting....

[BillyBob]

You would know! :ha:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Why would you want to kill Christians? They aren't out there beheading your fellow countrymen. They aren't flying planes into our buildings. They aren't preventing a peaceful transition in Iraq. They aren't bent on destroying you and every other American. Why would you want to kill Muslims? As if all of them are out there beheading your fellow countrymen. As if all of them are flying planes into our buildings. As if all of them are preventing a peaceful transition in Iraq. As if all of them are bent on destroying you and every other American.

You and your right-wing buddies need to get over this irrational notion that America is at war with Islam. You should be able to understand why many Muslims are offended by the culturally insensitive actions of many Westerners, including Americans. But a vast majority of Muslims have no interest in killing Americans or Christians.

If you'd think for a minute, you'd realize that advocating the killing of Muslims is simply advocating for decades of conflict and slaughter on both sides. If the U.S. had a president that publicly advocated the killing of Muslims (as opposed to a relatively extreme minority of extremist terrorists) I would join the world in fighting for his or her overthrow.

I hope I don't have to resurrect this thread:

BillyBob is a potential terrorist! Call the police! (http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7684&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

Who did you pay off to delete that thread anyway?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Why would you want to kill Muslims?

Haven't you heard, the Muslims have vowed to kill Americans and Jews?

As if all of them are out there beheading your fellow countrymen. As if all of them are flying planes into our buildings. As if all of them are preventing a peaceful transition in Iraq. As if all of them are bent on destroying you and every other American.

Ah, so you admit that the Resistance in Iraq is just a small group of radical terrorists????????? You are finally waking up from your commie slumber.

You and your right-wing buddies need to get over this irrational notion that America is at war with Islam.

The Islamists have made that very decree. The simple solution would be to wipe out all the Muslims.

You should be able to understand why many Muslims are offended by the culturally insensitive actions of many Westerners, including Americans.

I don't give a flying crap what they are offended by. Besides, a culture that promote beheading cannot be offended by anything. That is a load of crap that you and your commie comrades have invented so you can blame the US for the terrorism that has been targeted against it. You lie to yourself about the causes of terrorism so you can be sympathetic with a barbarous group of sub human ingrates while blaming Bush for every atrocity incurred by the Iraqi's.

What a dope!

But a vast majority of Muslims have no interest in killing Americans or Christians.

So?????? If they want peace, they better do something to get their renegades in line.

By the way, I do not believe that the vast majority of Muslims have no interest in killing Americans and Christians. :nono:

If you'd think for a minute, you'd realize that advocating the killing of Muslims is simply advocating for decades of conflict and slaughter on both sides.

If you'd think for a minute, you would realize that They started it!!!!!!. :doh:

If the U.S. had a president that publicly advocated the killing of Muslims (as opposed to a relatively extreme minority of extremist terrorists) I would join the world in fighting for his or her overthrow.

You have already stated that you want to overthrow Bush.

::Calls the Secret service::

<Ring>

<Ring>

"Hello, Secret Service"

:BillyBob: "Yes, my name is BillyBob and I know a guy who wants to overthrow the President!"

"Uhhh, is his name Skeptic, by any chance?"

:BillyBob: "Why yes, yes it is. How did you know?"

"We have been watching him for some time now. He is an American Hating Commie, we have to keep track of his sort, you know. Don't worry, we have him under constant surveillance. If he gets within 10 miles of the President, we'll put a cap in his @$$. Thanks for the call."

<click>

:noid:





I hope I don't have to resurrect this thread:

Please do, it was a classic.


BillyBob is a potential terrorist! Call the police! (http://www.theologyonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7684&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

Who did you pay off to delete that thread anyway?

Why would I want that thread deleted, it means that my post count would go down???

[BillyBob]

:skeptic:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
Why would you want to kill Christians?
Because superstition in any form is a Bad Thing™, and anything that cuts down on the number of people who believe in "invisible friends" is a Good Thing™.
They aren't out there beheading your fellow countrymen.Wait.
They aren't flying planes into our buildings.Wait.
They aren't preventing a peaceful transition in Iraq.That's debateable. A peaceful transition in Iraq at this point will bite into short-term profits.
They aren't bent on destroying you and every other American.Give them time. Given half a chance, they'll come after the atheists, too...

[BillyBob]

You're paranoid! :noid:

Instead of postulating, let's stick with reality, OK?

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
You're paranoid! :noid:What, you haven't noticed the little eyes painted on my eyelids until now? :noid:
Instead of postulating, let's stick with reality, OK? Okay, here's some reality:
Superstition in any form is a Bad Thing™. It causes people to behave irrationally.

I trust that we agree that irrationality is bad, yes?

You just want to get rid of one irrational group, and I want get rid of another.

We're not all that different, in that respect...

[BillyBob]

The irrational group I want to get rid of is bent on murdering me.

The irrational group you want to get rid of is satisfied with waiting for you to die naturally so you can burn in eternal hell. At least they aren't trying to help you get there immediately!

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
The irrational group you want to get rid of is satisfied with waiting for you to die naturally so you can burn in eternal hell. At least they aren't trying to help you get there immediately! I didn't say I didn't want to get rid of the Muslims; it's just that so many already have that base covered.

And you haven't met some of the "Christians" I've met...

[BillyBob]

Well look who's up bright and early!!!

Nothing like a little extermination chit chat with that first cup of coffee, eh?

:D

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by BillyBob

The irrational group I want to get rid of is bent on murdering me.

The irrational group you want to get rid of is satisfied with waiting for you to die naturally so you can burn in eternal hell. At least they aren't trying to help you get there immediately!

Oh yeah?? That's because (as far as I know) Gerald isn't gay. If he was then there would be plenty of avowed "Christians" quite eager to use the coercive power of the state (capital punishment) to exterminate them.
Right Knight?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

Oh yeah??

Yeah!! :mad:

That's because (as far as I know) Gerald isn't gay.

I'm not so sure......:think:

If he was then there would be plenty of avowed "Christians" quite eager to use the coercive power of the state (capital punishment) to exterminate them.


When Christians start strapping on suicide bomb vests and visit gay night clubs, get back to me, I'll concede your point. :rolleyes:

[On Fire]

Originally posted by BillyBob

When Christians start strapping on suicide bomb vests and visit gay night clubs, get back to me, I'll concede your point. :rolleyes:

:darwinsm:

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
When Christians start strapping on suicide bomb vests and visit gay night clubs, get back to me, I'll concede your point. :rolleyes: Well, what with Deco making so much noise about civil unrest...

[Husband&Father]

Bush lied.
Lets impeach him.
Don’t forget to wrap your head in tin foil (shinny side out) grab some motor oil and meet me on the roof… The mother ship will be here soon to pick us up.

[Skeptic]

====================
Published on Thursday, June 17, 2004 by the lndependent/UK

Official Verdict: White House Misled World Over Saddam

by Andrew Buncombe in Washington

The liberation of Iraq removed... an ally of al-Qa'ida
- President George Bush,
1 May 2003

There's overwhelming evidence... of a connection between al-Qa'ida and Iraq
- Vice-President Cheney,
22 January 2004

Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qa'ida
- Donald Rumsfeld,
14 November 2002

Saddam was a danger in the region where the 9/11 threat emerged
- Condoleezza Rice,
17 September 2003

The Bush administration's credibility was dealt a devastating blow yesterday when the commission investigating the attacks of 11 September said there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had assisted al-Qa'ida - something repeatedly suggested by the President and his senior officials and held up as a reason for the invasion of Iraq.

A report by the independent commission said while there were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida operatives in the 1990s, it appeared Osama bin Laden's requests for a partnership were rebuffed. "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'ida co-operated on attacks against the United States," the commission said. It also discounted widespread claims that Mohamed Atta, the hijackers' ringleader, met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague.

The report forced the Bush administration on to the defensive, as it appeared to undermine one of its key justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

While Mr Bush has been forced to admit there was no specific evidence to link Saddam to 11 September, his deputy, Dick Cheney, claimed on Monday that the former Iraqi leader was "a patron of terrorism [with] long-established ties with al-Qa'ida''.

Last autumn Mr Cheney referred to the disputed meeting between Atta and an Iraqi official in the Czech Republic.

Critics of the White House say there was a deliberate policy to manipulate public opinion and create an association between Saddam and the attacks on New York and Washington. If true, such a plan has certainly been successful: a poll taken last September by the Washington Post newspaper found 69 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam was involved in the 11 September attacks.

The Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry seized on the commission's report last night. "The administration misled America and the administration reached too far," he told Michigan National Public Radio.

The commission's report - issued at the start of its final two days of public hearings into the circumstances surrounding the attacks - confirmed that in the early Nineties al-Qa'ida and Saddam's regime had made overtures to each other.

In 1994, for instance, Saddam had dispatched a senior intelligence official to Sudan to meet Bin Laden, making three visits before he finally met the al-Qa'ida leader.

Bin Laden requested help to procure weapons and establish training camps but Iraq did not respond, the report said. There were also reports of contact with Bin Laden once he moved to Afghanistan in 1996 but these "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship". It added: "Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qa'ida and Iraq." The commission's report also revealed that the initial plan for the attack on the US - drawn up by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior al-Qa'ida operative who is now in US custody - envisioned a much broader assault, simultaneously targeting 10 different US cities on both the east and west coasts.

That expanded target list included the FBI headquarters in the plot was to have been the 10th plane - on which he which personally have flown. Rather than attacking a building, Mohammed would have killed all of the male passengers on board, before contacting media and landing at an airport where he would have released women and children. He then was to make a speech denouncing the US. That ambitious plan was rejected by Bin Laden, who gave his approval to a scaled-back mission involving four planes and costing as little as between $4-500,000. Mohammed had wanted to use more hijackers for those planes - 25 or 26, instead of 19. It said at least 10 other al-Qa'ida operatives who were initially due to participate in the attacks had been identified. They did not take part in the mission for a variety of reasons including visa problems and suspicions by airport officials in the US.

The report also revealed that the plot was riven by internal dissent, including over whether to target the White House or the Capitol building that were apparently not resolved prior to the attacks. Bin Laden also had to overcome opposition to attacking the US from Mullah Omar, leader of the former Taliban regime, who was under pressure from Pakistan to keep al-Qa'ida confined.

The commission confirmed that al-Qa'ida, though drastically changed and decentralized since 9-11, retained regional networks that were seeking to attack the US.

"Al-Qa'ida remains extremely interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attacks," said the report. It said that its ability to conduct an anthrax attack is one of the most immediate threats. The network may also try to attack a chemical plant or shipment of hazardous materials, or to use industrial chemicals as a weapon.

The report said the CIA estimated the network spent $30m a year before September 11 on training camps and terrorist operations. The money was also used to support the Taliban.

=======================

[BillyBob]

:noway: News Flash! :noway: Saddam was a terrorist!

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Saddam was a terrorist! Call him what you will. But whatever Saddam was, there is no clear hard evidence he was a threat to America, other countries, or even his own people, during the months leading up to Bush's unnecessary bloody invasion. The evidence points to an unjustified, massive, U.S.-directed act of state-sponsored terrorism against Iraq in March 2003, during which as many as 10,000 innocent people were slaughtered.

That Saddam is gone is good. However, it would be better that Saddam was still in power, still boxed in and scrutinized 24/7 by the international community, than have him removed from power in a manner which resulted in the unnecessary slaughter of 10,000 innocent people.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Call him what you will. But whatever Saddam was, there is no clear hard evidence he was a threat to America, other countries, or even his own people, during the months leading up to Bush's unnecessary bloody invasion. The evidence points to an unjustified, massive, U.S.-directed act of state-sponsored terrorism against Iraq in March 2003, during which as many as 10,000 innocent people were slaughtered.

That Saddam is gone is good. However, it would be better that Saddam was still in power, still boxed in and scrutinized 24/7 by the international community, than have him removed from power in a manner which resulted in the unnecessary slaughter of 10,000 innocent people.

You function amazingly well for being deaf, dumb and blind.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Call him what you will.

No, I'll call him what he was, a terrorist.

But whatever Saddam was, there is no clear hard evidence he was a threat to America, other countries, or even his own people, during the months leading up to Bush's unnecessary bloody invasion.

He promoted terrorism. He supported terrorism. He financed terrorism. He trained terrorists. He had deals with Al Queda. He had ties with Mohamed Atta. He was a mass murderer. How much justification do you need, Skeptic? Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but we are at war with terrorists. Saddam having been one, was a justified target.

The evidence points to an unjustified, massive, U.S.-directed act of state-sponsored terrorism against Iraq in March 2003, during which as many as 10,000 innocent people were slaughtered.

You always write the same stuff, Skeptic. My response, as always, is that Saddam had a chance to step down from power without the need for any bloodshed. He had multiple UN Resolutions of which he ignored. Any loss of life is to be blamed solely on Saddam and no one else.

That Saddam is gone is good. However, it would be better that Saddam was still in power, still boxed in and scrutinized 24/7 by the international community,

The international community, including France Germany and the UN facilitated Saddam. They weren't scrutinizing him, they were his accomplices! The time for scrutinizing came and went when Saddam refused to submit to the UN Resolutions.

[HerodionRomulus]

Originally posted by BillyBob




The international community, including France Germany and the UN facilitated Saddam. They weren't scrutinizing him, they were his accomplices! The time for scrutinizing came and went when Saddam refused to submit to the UN Resolutions.

Au contraire.
One factor which affects US policy and French policy is that:
Only 8% of French electricity is derived from petroleum as opposed to 80something% in the US.

It's all about OIL.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

No, I'll call him what he was, a terrorist. Not one that needed to be taken out at the cost of many thousands of innocent lives.

I'm curious, do you believe that the U.S. has ever sponsored terrorism?

He promoted terrorism. Not to the extent that urgently warranted that he be taken out at the cost of 10,000 innocent lives in March 2003.

He supported terrorism. Not to the extent that urgently warranted that he be taken out at the cost of 10,000 innocent lives in March 2003.

He financed terrorism. Not to the extent that urgently warranted that he be taken out at the cost of 10,000 innocent lives in March 2003.

He trained terrorists. Not to the extent that urgently warranted that he be taken out at the cost of 10,000 innocent lives in March 2003.

He had deals with Al Queda. What deals?

He had ties with Mohamed Atta. Oh, you mean the alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague? Are you not aware that the FBI has long since concluded that Atta was actually in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting?

He was a mass murderer. You don't deal with mass murderers, whose dirty deeds were done over a decade earlier, by murdering 10,000 innocent people over a decade later to apprehend him.

How much justification do you need, Skeptic? Much more than you or the Bush administration have provided. For starters, how about some uncontroversial, clear, hard, verifiable, empirical evidence that Iraq posed a real and significant imminent threat to America or other countries?

Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but we are at war with terrorists. Saddam having been one, was a justified target. Removing Saddam from power with full international support (not a relatively small Coalition of the Coerced) and without slaughtering 10,000 innocent lives would have been justified.

You always write the same stuff, Skeptic. My response, as always, is that Saddam had a chance to step down from power without the need for any bloodshed. He had multiple UN Resolutions of which he ignored. Any loss of life is to be blamed solely on Saddam and no one else. Bush and Blair did not have to invade Iraq, killing many thousands of innocent people in the process, in March 2003.

Despite Saddam's response to UN Resolutions, there was no clear hard evidence that Iraq posed serious imminent threat to America or other countries. Therefore, Iraq could have continued to ignore UN Resolutions for years, and invading and slaughtering 10,000 people would still be unjustified without the necessary hard evidence that Iraq was a serious and imminent threat.

The international community, including France Germany and the UN facilitated Saddam. They weren't scrutinizing him, they were his accomplices! The time for scrutinizing came and went when Saddam refused to submit to the UN Resolutions. The UN weapons inspectors were not scrutinizing him, until Bush kicked them out of Iraq before the invasion?

The U.S. (once considered a part of the international community) and other nations were not monitoring Iraq 24/7 using the most sophisticated technology and intelligence gathering methods, looking for a significant threatening transgression as an excuse to drop more bombs on them?

I would say Iraq had been quite scrutinized for years by the U.S. and other nations of the world.

[HerodionRomulus]

Saddam was a mass murderer.
So?
The dictators of Sudan are mass murderers, esp. of Christians, they have PROVEN ties to al-Queda.
But their oil is under Western control, so Bush ignores it.

Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, but again, Shell and Chevron control their oil, so we ignore it.

How about Cuba? It's a despotic COMMUNIST regime (are you listening BB?) yet Bush allows Cuba to continue, even though it woud have been much easier than Iraq to overcome AND it would have restored the Monroe Doctrine, AND they have great beaches, but they have no oil.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

Saddam was a mass murderer.
So?
The dictators of Sudan are mass murderers, esp. of Christians, they have PROVEN ties to al-Queda.
But their oil is under Western control, so Bush ignores it.

Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, but again, Shell and Chevron control their oil, so we ignore it.

How about Cuba? It's a despotic COMMUNIST regime (are you listening BB?) yet Bush allows Cuba to continue, even though it woud have been much easier than Iraq to overcome AND it would have restored the Monroe Doctrine, AND they have great beaches, but they have no oil. Good points.

[BillyBob]

Cuba isn't committing terrorism against us, Saddam was.

Skeptic, didn't you hear??? Your beloved 9-11 Commission stated unequivocally that Saddam had ties with Al Queda. I thought you stayed informed.......

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

Au contraire.
One factor which affects US policy and French policy is that:
Only 8% of French electricity is derived from petroleum as opposed to 80something% in the US.

It's all about OIL.

Saddam's deals with the French were about technology, not oil.

[HerodionRomulus]

Cuba does support terrorists, Cuba attempted to assasinate LBJ, there have always been rumors that Cuba was behind JFK's death, though of course we now know it was really a Klingon plot to keep us from finding their base on Mars.

Cuba has exported revolution throughout the Americas and Africa.

And of course Cuba is COMMUNIST. What more do you need? I mean an attack on Cuba would guarantee Florida this time and he won't have to have his brother steal the election a second time.

:chuckle:

[On Fire]

In his own book, Clinton also said he met with President-elect George W. Bush and told him that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/clinton.book.ap/index.html

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by HerodionRomulus

Cuba does support terrorists, Cuba attempted to assassinate LBJ, there have always been rumors that Cuba was behind JFK's death, though of course we now know it was really a Klingon plot to keep us from finding their base on Mars.

Cuba has exported revolution throughout the Americas and Africa.

And of course Cuba is COMMUNIST. What more do you need? I mean an attack on Cuba would guarantee Florida this time and he won't have to have his brother steal the election a second time.

:chuckle:

Well, if we invaded Cuba now for terrorist acts that were perpetrated by them 40 years ago, I can imagine what the leftists would say, considering that they use the excuse that it has been a couple of years since Saddam was a mass murderer. :rolleyes:

Besides, Saddam tried to assassinate Bush 41 much more recently than Cuba's failed attempt to assassinate LBJ. I guess that gives us all the motive we needed to remove Saddam! :bannana:

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

In his own book, Clinton also said he met with President-elect George W. Bush and told him that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/clinton.book.ap/index.html

Interesting that Clinton told Bush about Osama but did nothing himself to stop him, even when he was offered Osama by the Sudanese Government!! :down:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck

In his own book, Clinton also said he met with President-elect George W. Bush and told him that the biggest threat to the nation's security was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Not Iraq.

[Skeptic]

my emphasis:

=======================
Senate Report to Detail Iraq Intelligence Flaws
Wed Jul 7, 2004 09:42 PM ET

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate Intelligence Committee report this week will sharply criticize the CIA for a predisposed mindset that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war, Senate and government officials said on Wednesday.

The report, scheduled for public release on Friday, will say that intelligence analysts did not question the long-held belief that Iraq had banned weapons and saw ambiguous information as supporting that view, a Senate source said.

The report was also expected to criticize intelligence agencies for using unreliable and inadequate sources.

"They used the thinnest sources to justify the grandest conclusions about weapons of mass destruction and other activity in Iraq," Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat on the panel, told Reuters.

The main U.S. justification for going to war against Iraq was the view that Baghdad posed a threat due to stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was attempting to develop nuclear weapons. No large stockpiles of banned weapons have been found since the U.S. invasion last year.

Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, said flawed intelligence resulted from a pre-existing belief that Iraq had banned weapons, pressure to reach conclusions in the face of ambiguity, and that all doubts were resolved in favor of the pre-existing beliefs.

"It's also important to have a devil's advocate, somebody playing the contrarian; I'm afraid some of that may have gotten lost," Bayh told Reuters.

Both Republican and Democratic senators on the committee, which voted on Wednesday to make the report public, said it would sharply criticize the intelligence agencies.

Republicans said the report was also meant to be a constructive factor in the debate of how to reform the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

"There's no question that if you look at the conclusions, they literally beg for changes and reform," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said.

"It's very critical of the reasoning that was used by analysts at the CIA," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, said. "There were a number of failures."

Some Democrats have written "additional views" to the report which will raise questions about whether the Republican Bush administration, including the White House and Pentagon officials, pressured the CIA to fit its conclusions with the administration's desire to go to war.

"Go to each of the key elements justifying the invasion of Iraq and you will find a failure of our intelligence agencies to properly assess the evidence given to them and to describe it to policymakers," Durbin said.

One main area of focus is the process by which the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was drafted. That key pre-war report, which compiles views of various intelligence agencies, concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Draft portions of that report are submitted to administration officials and various agencies and then the material is adjusted after comments.

"And in the last draft, all of a sudden, this material that has been thought to be erroneous by the CIA or has been said to be wrong, is now back in that report," a government source familiar with the Senate report said. "That's the kind of stuff that is problematic."

The report will also criticize the leadership at the CIA, including the agency's director George Tenet, whose resignation is effective July 11.

From: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=N3WX5NOINNGTYCRBAEZSF FA?type=topNews&storyID=5613953
=========================

[Gerald]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Senate Report to Detail Iraq Intelligence Flaws
Wed Jul 7, 2004 09:42 PM ET

By Tabassum Zakaria I'll bet this is a Moo Slim terrist...just look at that name! ;)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate Intelligence Committee report this week will sharply criticize the CIA for a predisposed mindset that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the war, Senate and government officials said on Wednesday.It's a conspiracy, I tell you! The Evil Secular Communist Satanist Democrats and their media lackies are behind this! ;)


From: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=N3WX5NOINNGTYCRBAEZSF FA?type=topNews&storyID=5613953
========================= Lies! All lies! Eastasia is our friend! We've always been at war with Eurasia!
;)

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Not Iraq.

Clinton said that Saddam had WMD and needed to be removed from power.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Clinton said that Saddam had WMD and needed to be removed from power. So did a lot of other people. They were all wrong!

It was ok to strongly suspect that Iraq had WMD. It was even ok to strongly believe that Iraq had WMD. But the bottom line is, when it comes to sending our sons and daughters into harm's way and killing many thousands of innocent people in a massive invasion, you had better have far more than just strong suspicions and beliefs - you have to have clear hard uncontroversial empirical evidence that there exists a real significant and imminent threat! Bush did not have such evidence and lied by claiming he did. As a result, many thousands of our sons and daughters were sent into battle unnecessarily, many hundreds of our sons and daughters died unnecessarily, and many thousands of innocent Iraqi people were killed unnecessarily!

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

So did a lot of other people.

Including your candidate.

They were all wrong!

So who are you going to vote for, then?

It was ok to strongly suspect that Iraq had WMD. It was even ok to strongly believe that Iraq had WMD. But the bottom line is, when it comes to sending our sons and daughters into harm's way and killing many thousands of innocent people in a massive invasion, you had better have far more than just strong suspicions and beliefs - you have to have clear hard uncontroversial empirical evidence that there exists a real significant and imminent threat! Bush did not have such evidence and lied by claiming he did. As a result, many thousands of our sons and daughters were sent into battle unnecessarily, many hundreds of our sons and daughters died unnecessarily, and many thousands of innocent Iraqi people were killed unnecessarily!

I keep reading articles which describe more and more WMD being discovered in Iraq. Yesterday there was a story about large amounts of radioactive material.

Oh, but that doesn't matter, Saddam should have been allowed to continue denying that he had any WMD or bad intentions or terrorist affiliations. If we allowed him to continue on his course, there would have been many more than a few thousand people killed, and most of them would have been Americans. But that's OK with you, isn't it? :down:

[BillyBob]

Hey Skeptic.

Kerry said that Saddam was an 'eminent threat'. If he believed that but failed to act on it [much like Clinton did with both Saddam and bin Laden], what kind of a President would he be?

What would you say about him if he failed to act [exactly the way Clinton ignored bin Laden] knowing that Saddam was a threat and he attacked us [exactly like bin Laden did]?
:think:

[drbrumley]

Skeptic,

I don't know why you cling to a party that is downright evil.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

So who are you going to vote for, then? Kerry. Bush must go!

It's one thing being wrong in one's beliefs. It's another thing acting on such beliefs in a way that could and does result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people, without first exhausting efforts to prove oneself wrong. Bush did the opposite! He looked for evidence (even that which was previously disputed by intelligence officials) that might prove him right. When thousands of lives are at stake, this is not the way an American president should run his foreign policy.

I keep reading articles which describe more and more WMD being discovered in Iraq. Yesterday there was a story about large amounts of radioactive material. You talk as if there was some new discovery in Iraq. The U.S. and U.N. have known about this radioactive material for years. The U.S. just decided to move some of it, without notifying the IAEA, claiming it posed a security risk.

U.N. scolds U.S. for moving uranium from Iraq (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5380542/)

Oh, but that doesn't matter, Saddam should have been allowed to continue denying that he had any WMD or bad intentions or terrorist affiliations. If we allowed him to continue on his course, there would have been many more than a few thousand people killed, and most of them would have been Americans. But that's OK with you, isn't it? :down: Pure and simple unfounded fear mongering. :down:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Kerry said that Saddam was an 'eminent threat'. If he believed that but failed to act on it [much like Clinton did with both Saddam and bin Laden], what kind of a President would he be? If Kerry had been President, and said that Saddam was an imminent threat, yet acted on this belief by launching a massive bloody invasion, without first demanding clear hard uncontroversial empirical evidence that this was indeed the case , then Kerry would have been as reckless and irresponsible as Bush has been.

What would you say about him if he failed to act [exactly the way Clinton ignored bin Laden] knowing that Saddam was a threat and he attacked us [exactly like bin Laden did]?
:think: If the hard evidence verified that Saddam was an imminent threat (which it did not) and that Saddam attacked us (which he did not), then it would have been irresponsible not to act.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by drbrumley

Skeptic,

I don't know why you cling to a party that is downright evil. I don't know why you cling to a belief system derived from a book full of old fairy tales and superstitions.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Kerry. Bush must go!

Funny. You guys don't even have a candidate that you can get behind and talk about his policies. All you can say is 'Kerry ain't Bush'. :darwinsm:


Pure and simple unfounded fear mongering. :down:

Pure and simple denial. :down:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Funny. You guys don't even have a candidate that you can get behind and talk about his policies. All you can say is 'Kerry ain't Bush'. It's funny how you ignore the major points I made in the post to which you are responding.

Bush is such a danger to America's future - domestically and internationally - that my motto is "Anyone but Bush!"

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

It's funny how you ignore the major points I made in the post to which you are responding.

I usually don't read the articles you post. It's all the same regurgitated commie swill.


Bush is such a danger to America's future - domestically and internationally - that my motto is "Anyone but Bush!"

Commie.

[On Fire]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Bush is such a danger to America's future....

Meet me back here 4 years from now so I can prove you wrong, commie.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by AtheistsSuck
Meet me back here 4 years from now so I can prove you wrong, commie. He'll probably be shipped off to the gulag before then, if he isn't arrested as a subversive and executed outright...

(You can only hope, right...? ;) )

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

I usually don't read the articles you post. It's all the same regurgitated commie swill. I'm willing to have an intelligent debate with you. Am I giving you too much credit?

Why aren't you willing to engage in a reasoned discussion that honestly addresses points raised on both sides?

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

I'm willing to have an intelligent debate with you. Am I giving you too much credit?

No, I enjoy a reasonable discussion. You usually just posts endless articles, some of which are notoriously lengthy. There is nothing wrong with supporting you views with an article, of course and it is the preferred method if the article contains facts. Most of the stuff you post are editorials which are slanted to the extreme left and I find them tiresome.

You continue to deny the fact that Saddam had numerous terrorist ties and activities because is doesn't help you forward your agenda.



Why aren't you willing to engage in a reasoned discussion that honestly addresses points raised on both sides?

I am willing, Skeptic, but I don't see you doing that. Your sole purpose for being seems to be to indict Bush for lying and illegal activities, regardless of the evidence that has been posted which shows the contrary. Congress approved our maneuvers in Iraq and it was endorsed by countless democrats including Kerry and Clinton along with many of our allies. It was the right thing to do and it's done. Saddam's gone, a democracy is planted, terrorists are on the run, the UN has been exposed for the corrupt organization it really is, Saudi Arabia is finally fighting terrorism, Iraqi's have been liberated and the rest of the world knows we will fight terrorism with or without their co operation. We should all be celebrating, instead, you want to berate the man responsible for this and replace him with a genuine commie. :confused:

As for information, face it, you would rather get your information from an extreme leftist like Michael Moore than from a moderate centrist like me. :angel:

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by BillyBob

No, I enjoy a reasonable discussion. You usually just posts endless articles, some of which are notoriously lengthy. There is nothing wrong with supporting you views with an article, of course and it is the preferred method if the article contains facts. Most of the stuff you post are editorials which are slanted to the extreme left and I find them tiresome. And you don't post things slanted to the extreme right?

Regardless of the slant on either side, the main points should be addressed in our discussions.

You continue to deny the fact that Saddam had numerous terrorist ties and activities because is doesn't help you forward your agenda. I only deny that Saddam had numerous terrorist ties and significant terrorist activities because this is the position of most experts who have studied this issue.

Remember, sporadic unproductive contacts do not equal "ties". Giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or allegedly "harboring" a few terrorists is not equivalent to being a significant terrorist threat worthy of a massive invasion and the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops, as well as many thousands of innocent Iraqi people.

I am willing, Skeptic, but I don't see you doing that. I read your posts. You say you don't read mine. Who is trying harder?

Your sole purpose for being seems to be to indict Bush for lying and illegal activities, regardless of the evidence that has been posted which shows the contrary. No, it's BECAUSE of the evidence that I indict Bush for lying and illegal activities.

Congress approved our maneuvers in Iraq and it was endorsed by countless democrats including Kerry and Clinton along with many of our allies. It was the right thing to do and it's done. If Congress knew then what is contained in today's report about U.S. intelligence failures and exaggerations, they would NOT have given Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

Saddam's gone, a democracy is planted, We have a long way to go to find out whether a democracy has really been securely planted in Iraq.

... terrorists are on the run, ... No thanks to Bush's bloody invasion of Iraq. Actually, terrorists are on the run all right ... they're running to the nearest al Qaeda recruitment center. And THAT is thanks to Bush!

... the UN has been exposed for the corrupt organization it really is, Faults in one program do not make for a "corrupt organization". I think that history will show just how corrupt the Bush administration really is.

... Saudi Arabia is finally fighting terrorism, Yeah, right.

... Iraqi's have been liberated :nono:

... and the rest of the world knows we will fight terrorism with or without their co operation. If Bush and company had not been such idiots with their foreign policy with regard to Iraq, we would have their cooperation, which is necessary to efficiently fight terrorism.

We should all be celebrating, instead, you want to berate the man responsible for this and replace him with a genuine commie. :confused: Kerry is hardly a "commie".

Rather than celebrating, we should all be outraged that the Bush administration succeeded in deceiving us into sending our brave sons and daughters into harm's way when it was not necessary to do so.

As for information, face it, you would rather get your information from an extreme leftist like Michael Moore than from a moderate centrist like me. :angel: :darwinsm:

Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

[drbrumley]

Kerry is not a commie?

Skeptic, then why is it the man supports all 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto? In fact, the entire democratic party supports the 10 planks without a doubt. Besides I have a thread with your name on it and have yet to see you post there. You want to debate, fine. Let's debate. BillyBob and I if he wants to against you and any pinko friend you decide. I'll go with that. But please don't spout off Kerry is no commie when evidence proves he is as well as his party.

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by drbrumley

Kerry is not a commie?

Skeptic, then why is it the man supports all 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto? In fact, the entire democratic party supports the 10 planks without a doubt. Besides I have a thread with your name on it and have yet to see you post there. You want to debate, fine. Let's debate. BillyBob and I if he wants to against you and any pinko friend you decide. I'll go with that. But please don't spout off Kerry is no commie when evidence proves he is as well as his party. Go ahead and list your "10 planks" and give your best analysis and examples that show how Kerry supports each plank.

[drbrumley]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Go ahead and list your "10 planks" and give your best analysis and examples that show how Kerry supports each plank.

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.

Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

[drbrumley]

Bush also supports some of these. But Kerry is in deep. I'll post Kerry's position on each of these alittle later. It will take alittle time to type it all up.

[drbrumley]

And Skeptic,

If you vote Democrat, you should repent, ask God to forgive you, and tell your neighbors that you're sorry. The Democrats have aggressively led the effort to destroy the morality and law that was the foundation of this nation. The Democrats celebrate the most despicable perversions known to man. Better than 98% of all Democratic leaders are destructive

[Skeptic]

Originally posted by drbrumley

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.

Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. Waiting for your best analysis and examples that show how Kerry supports each plank.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Skeptic

And you don't post things slanted to the extreme right?

Me??? Never! I'm a moderate centrist and an objective discerner. Basically, I represent mainstream America. :sam:

Regardless of the slant on either side, the main points should be addressed in our discussions.

They usually are, wouldn't you say?

I only deny that Saddam had numerous terrorist ties and significant terrorist activities because this is the position of most experts who have studied this issue.

So you are saying that there is an acceptable amount of terrorism?

Remember, sporadic unproductive contacts do not equal "ties". Giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or allegedly "harboring" a few terrorists is not equivalent to being a significant terrorist threat worthy of a massive invasion and the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops, as well as many thousands of innocent Iraqi people.

I disagree. Bush made it very clear after September 11th that "....any country who supports terrorism, harbors terrorists..." will be attacked. Saddam clearly fit that description. Not only that, Saddam had multiple UN Resolutions that he ignored and military retaliation was always known to be an consequence. Bush gave Saddam a chance to do the right thing and step down from power which would allow Iraqi's to start a democracy without the spilling of a single drop of blood. Saddam chose to ignore the obvious and literally caused the deaths of every person who died in Iraq due to the Coalition backed US invasion.



I read your posts. You say you don't read mine. Who is trying harder?

Me. I read your posts when you write them and respond accordingly. I usually don't read your voluminous extreme left
articles.


No, it's BECAUSE of the evidence that I indict Bush for lying and illegal activities.

Bush didn't lie about anything. He made good on his promise to fight terrorism.


If Congress knew then what is contained in today's report about U.S. intelligence failures and exaggerations, they would NOT have given Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

Why aren't you holding Congress equally culpable?


We have a long way to go to find out whether a democracy has really been securely planted in Iraq.

We have gone a long well to help ensure it. The best thing we can do to fight terrorism is to install democracy worldwide.



No thanks to Bush's bloody invasion of Iraq. Actually, terrorists are on the run all right ... they're running to the nearest al Qaeda recruitment center. And THAT is thanks to Bush!

Only because they feel the threat of extermination at the hands of Bush and the rest of the free world. :bannana:


Faults in one program do not make for a "corrupt organization". I think that history will show just how corrupt the Bush administration really is.

I think history will show whatever the writers of it want to show.


Kerry is hardly a "commie".


See, this is where the conversation always falters. Kerry is a socialist. Socialism is the same thing as communism. Kerry is a commie. Simple.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
The best thing we can do to fight terrorism is to install democracy worldwide.Or, failing that, install dictators who are friendly to US interests...

Different method, same result. A better method, actually: more efficient and predictable than an ungainly thing like democracy...

[Zakath]

I may have missed it, but did you hear that DOD has officially announced that Bush's payroll records from part of his military service were "lost" permanently.

So much for Bush's assertion that he's made "all his records" public... :chuckle:

This is starting to look a lot like the Clinton-Rose Law Firm silliness.

(Quick Hillary, hand me another box of documents for the shredder...).

[BillyBob]

Bush made public all the records that he could find. It's not his fault that the 35 year old payroll stubs from an insignificant National Guard flyboy somehow got misplaced.

Really, if Kerry wants to win this election, he's going to have to find something more conspiratorial than GW's service record.

Let's see, Kerry can't run on the economy, it's booming.

Kerry can't run on the Iraq war, Saddam's in prison and the Iraqi's have taken control of their own country.

He can't run on terrorism, there hasn't been an attack in the US in almost 3 years.

Yep, GW's service record is all Kerry has!! :darwinsm:

[Zakath]

Originally posted by BillyBob

Bush made public all the records that he could find. It's not his fault that the 35 year old payroll stubs from an insignificant National Guard flyboy somehow got misplaced.Then that's what the whitehouse should have said instead of beating around the bush (no pun intended).

It really makes them sound like the Clintons...

"It all depends on what "all" means." :darwinsm:

:think: I wonder if Bush is an OVer????

[BillyBob]

C'mon Z, Bush is nothing like the Clintons. :down:

You can't compare the missing service records from when he was barely out of his teens to the 'Whitewater Scandal' or the 'Rose Lawfirm Document Scandal'.

Big difference!!

[Zakath]

Originally posted by BillyBob

C'mon Z, Bush is nothing like the Clintons. :down:

You can't compare the missing service records from when he was barely out of his teens to the 'Whitewater Scandal' or the 'Rose Lawfirm Document Scandal'.

Big difference!! If it looks like a duck... ;)

Based on what I see from the people who surround him, I personally believe that "W"'s intentions (or those of his handlers) are much more pernicious than mere self-aggrandizement.

I honestly have concerns for personal liberty in this country if we are subjected to another four years of the current administration.

[BillyBob]

My biggest concern is what Kerry won't do to fight terrorism if he wins the election. Oh, ane he promises to raise taxes, too.

:sozo2:

[brother Willi]

W and John both suck

vote for Willi

[Zakath]

What would you expect Kerry to do differently than Bush regarding domestic terrorism?

[BillyBob]

Domestic terrorism is directly related to international terrorism. Kerry would relinquish our power to the UN and cow tow to France, Germany and Russia. He will pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the world will be a much more dangerous place.

[Zakath]

... and Bush is planning to pull 30,000 troops out of South Korea where they are keeping a known nuclear power run by a communist dictatorship in check... that's an improvement how?

[brother Willi]

right now, gettin rid of saddam was good, but the way it was done i fear created more terrorists then it eliminated.

we need to work with the good folks in countries like iraq, not make enemies

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Zakath

... and Bush is planning to pull 30,000 troops out of South Korea where they are keeping a known nuclear power run by a communist dictatorship in check... that's an improvement how?

That way, when we start nuking Nortrh Korea, our soldiers won't get hurt.

[Gerald]

Originally posted by BillyBob
That way, when we start nuking Nortrh Korea, our soldiers won't get hurt. Unless China decides to toss a few into Iraq...at places with lots of oil infrastructure...

Remember, radioactive petroleum is worthless and useless...:chuckle: