[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.

[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/....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.

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.

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/....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!!

[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.j...toryID=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.j...toryID=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?

[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]?

[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

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?

Pure and simple unfounded fear mongering.

[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]?

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.