Feinstein: I Wasn’t Briefed On Bank Records Program Until Administration Knew NYT Was Publishing
Feinstein: I Wasn’t Briefed On Bank Records Program Until Administration Knew NYT Was Publishing
During the last week, President Bush and other members of the administration have lashed out at the New York Times for printing a story about a government program that monitors bank records. Bush has insisted that Congress was briefed appropriately on the program:
Q Sir, several news organizations have reported about a program that allows the administration to look into the bank records of certain suspected terrorists…if neither the courts, nor the legislature is allowed to know about these programs, how can you feel confident the checks and balances system works?
THE PRESIDENT: Congress was briefed…And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America. What we were doing was the right thing. Congress was aware of it…
Today on ABC, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that she wasn’t briefed until after it was clear the New York Times was publishing the story. Watch it:
The administration is required under law to brief the entire intelligence committee on all intelligence programs.
Transcript:
STEPHANOPOULOS: The White House said they briefed the Congress on this matter and there is no law called into question. Do you believe that a law is called into question and that this program might have been illegal?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I’m on the Intelligence Committee. I can tell you when I was briefed and when the committee was briefed — and that was when it became apparent that the New York Times had the story and was going to run it. And that’s when and why they came to us and briefed us.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you knew nothing about it before the New York Times was asking questions?
FEINSTEIN: That’s correct.
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In the Bush administration, Democrats are the first to go and the last to know.
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:12 pmI’m sorry Senator Feinstein but saying you were briefed when you were briefed was a secret. Revealing that there is no oversight and that our administration only reacts when caught is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I say prison to any member of congress who embarasses the president.
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:13 pmThats because Senator Feinstein is a terrorist sympathizer. Nobody but Bush knows what is good for USA. Constitution is old and has no meaning. This is perfect time for dictatorship. We must eport our democracy to Iraq and import the dictatorship.
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:30 pm“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” T. Jefferson
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:49 pmLie, Lie, Lie…once again georgie boy shows that all he or the gloms that work with/for him know how to do before the American People is lie. That he told select members of congress what he was doing does not meet the requirements of the law. But then, he is above the law. Impeach Now
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:52 pmTHE PRESIDENT: Congress was briefed…
In other words,
“Yo, idiot, we told ‘em we were doin’ this, if your representatives in Congress didn’t let you know, then maybe you should take it up with them, cuz they ain’t doin’ their jobs…They were supposed to keep it secret? Well, you don’t want the terrorists finding out about it, do ya? Why do you hate America?”
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:53 pmUS government under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush nurtured and supported Saddam Hussein despite his repeated use of chemical weapons.
The work of the National Security Archive, a dogged organization fighting for government transparency, has cast light on the trove of documents that depict in damning detail how the United States,[Rummy, Bush, Reagan] working with US corporations including Bechtel [Cheney], cynically and secretly allied itself with Hussein’s dictatorship.
Dint you guys know that Goopers are nefarious constant liars?
This is many call them the LIE-O-CONS.
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:57 pmI guess it depends on what the meaning of “congress” or “was” or “briefed” is.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:02 pmEveryone knew about this program anyway, according the NY Crimes. Everyone except Dianne.
BTW, the idiots at thinkparanoid don’t even know how to spell her name correctly.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:03 pmoh boo hoo hoo to diane ‘tokyo rose’ feinstein!
congress, we don’t need no stinking congress! when will you fools understand that we are at war! drink blood from the skulls of dead iraqi children with me…the constitution is only god as my hermaphroidic tampon!
go to church today you stinking liberals!
kisses,
ann
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:04 pmAs eager as I am to slam the Fuhrer^H^H^H^H^H^HPresident at every opportunity, I’m compelled to point out one thing:
One of the chief defenses we’ve cited for the NYT is that the fact that this bank surveillance program was no surprise at all, since the President himself had alluded to the government tracking the terrorists’ money on several occasions. But now Diane Feinstein is saying she had no knowledge of the program? How exactly can a member of Congress not possess information that is clearly in the public domain?
I’m not saying that the two are mutually exclusive, since it is possible to have unofficial knowledge without having officially been briefed, but if that is the case, shouldn’t the Congress critters that were allegedly left in the dark have concerned themselves with the question? I mean, if the President is stating in public speeches that the administration is tracking the money trails of terrorists, and yet you’re unaware of any such program, shouldn’t this be a question you’re asking?
If these questions were asked, and went unanswered, the public needs to know, and this needs to be added to the ever-growing mountain of offenses that Dubya & Company has perpetrated upon this nation. If, however, the questions were never asked, this points to a dereliction of duty by Congress, and needs to be addressed appropriately.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:09 pmShowing your bias a bit there memphis minnie?
If the Senator was not briefed, if there any way to verify that? Other than a “he said, she said” scenario? Is there a record of meetings, briefings and who was present? Even if it is classified the Senators would be able to verify.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:09 pmI really don’t get the point of the trolls spewing their hate speech on progressive blog sites. It just goes to show how SCARED little sheeples they are, with no morals or personal honor – can’t think for themselves, or can’t handle anything more than sound bites, have zilch compassion, tolerance, or understanding of humanity, lets the MSM think for them, and believe all the lies, even though they have been proven wrong over and over and over, like lying over and over makes it the truth. I think they are just plain mean-spirited, human mistakes.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:10 pmShultz wanted to make it crystal clear that US criticism of the use of chemical weapons was just pablum for public consumption, meant as a restatement of a “long-standing policy, and not as a pro-Iranian/anti-Iraqi gesture,” as State’s Lawrence S. Eagleburger told Hussein’s emissary. “Our desire and our actions to prevent an Iranian victory and to continue the progress of our bilateral relations remain undiminished,” Eagleburger continued, according to the then highly classified transcript of the meeting.
So claims on weapons of mass destructiond are to be used for ‘public pablum’ when the goopers decide it fits their agenda.
Reagan took Iraq off the terrorist list so he could sell them wmd, and gas the Iranians, and look the other way.
A decade later, another war monger gooper, along with many of the same crazies in tow…
And this same ‘public pablum’ flows the mouth’s of the goopers today.
Anne Coulter loves slimy lying war mongering terrorist appeasers such as above.
Manne Coulter what a skank.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:12 pmThe vast majority pays no attention to follow-up details like this. They pay attention to initial story and move on. The N.Y. Times is evil, that’s what sticks in the casual viewer’s head.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:16 pmHow exactly can a member of Congress not possess information that is clearly in the public domain?
That answer lies in Michael Moores film.
The Senator replied “We don’t read that stuff”
The aides do all the work
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:16 pmthe sentaors do golfing and fishing trips
of course they don’t have time to read =)
TripMaster Monkey
While the fact that Bush was monitoring the bank accounts of known terrorists was general knowledge, that he was monitoring the bank accounts of a whole lot of American citizens as well wasn’t.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:18 pmHey you brilliant trolls. Cant read eh?
She did not say that she was not aware of what was going on. What she said was “I was not briefed on this program”.
Little bit of difference there, eh what?
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pmre: 18: This is what I read…
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you knew nothing about it before the New York Times was asking questions?
FEINSTEIN: That’s correct.
Doesn’t make sense.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:53 pmbeep52 – she knew they were supposed to be monitoring TERRORISTS, not the average AMERICAN! IDIOT.
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:54 pmSenator Feinstein is simply goofy and besides she mostly supports Bush’s Iraq occupation fiasco > her husband has made millions off Defense contracts related to the Iraq conflict! They just purchased last year a 22 million dollar stone mansion and estate on the California coast!
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:59 pmGod help me, she’s my senator…
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:20 pmI think she’s just pissed off that she wasn’t invited into the big boy’s treehouise, It’s a little late to stand up the the junta now, Di, we could have used your support a while ago. I think she’s just playing the role of the outraged senator for the cameras.
Wrong.
The average person doesn’t even know what paper published the story. All they know is “Did you here? The government is looking into financial records.”
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:29 pmBush broke the law. IMPEACH HIM.
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:31 pmEither Bush is lying or Feinstein is lying… get rid of whoever is lying.
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:36 pmSince when did a little thing lika a law stop these corrupt bastards?
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:36 pmI don’t think junior’s crime family are making out quite as well as they had hoped.
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:52 pmThe Slime-balls are being brought out into the open.
I think Feinstein is telling the truth here.
Hell when has Bush EVER told us the truth until his shenanigans are exposed for the lies they are? Why would I believe him now? They didn’t brief anyone but a few “SELECT REPUBLICANS” on the Senate Intelligence Committee beforehand and that is what they called OVERSIGHT. You know it and I know it. If you look back this is exactly the same scenario as the domestic spying BS. The Bush Administration is made up of nothing but serial liars. I trust them with NOTHING.
It’s time to IMPEACH.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:10 pmits time for diane to find another job.i`m a liberal yes,but this lady,shit can`t describe it,female joe lieberman.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:20 pmHow many more years and terms it will take a Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Executive Branch, and all three supported by a Republican appointed Supreme Court to get around to doing anything correct? While the Republicans debate gay marriage and flag burning, guess who is still alive and kicking and thumbing his nose at the neocon boobs in this inept Administration? Remind me again what the Republicans are doing to try to catch the man who murdered 3,000 Americans on American soil? Answer that, trolls.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:38 pmFlimsy excuses…
As the fallout of the disclosure of the SWIFT banking surveillance program expands, more right-wing conservatives are jumping on the band wagon and bashing the news organizations that published the story. One of my favorite conservative blogs, the Cali…
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:38 pmAllowing the Mad King George administration to toss aside the Constitution and ignore laws prohibiting illegal search and seizure because “We are at War with Terror” is like shooting a pharmacist in the head because “We are at War with Drugs” or placing landmines in homeless shelters because “We are at War with Poverty”.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:42 pmmighty aphrodite,
For somebody who pretends to be a lawyer, you sure don’t do a very good job at it. A real lawyer would know the difference between “knowing” about something” and being completely breif on a program as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Also, the program may be super secret in the way it is carried out, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of people know about it or that Bush has spoken about the program on International television in 2004.
None of your blather changes reality. You just confuse other stupid people like yourself.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:43 pmKnowing that there was some type of financial monitoring going and being briefed on the specifics of the actual monitoring program as required by law are two different things. Stupid fucking Monkey!
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:48 pmBush’s neocon clown show is failing America at every turn and their only tool to make things better is to attack the press? The New York Times ain’t what’s wrong with America. Karl Rove’s bag of tricks is getting old–he’s finding out that the American people aren’t as dumb as he thinks they are. Unending war in Iraq, gas @ $3.00/gallon, spying on Americans, no Osama –this GOP will make a voter’s decision an easy one in November. A vote for the GOP is a vote for more death–debt–corruption.
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:49 pmThese are tough times to be a “conservative” particularly after the neocon crowd to over. Every damn week it’s another leak and another illegal Bush program to defend. It must be nearly impossible to keep putting a positive spin on all the neocon shit Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove keep putting out there for “real” conservatives to have to defend. With control of the White House, and both houses of congress–how long do you think people are going to keep believing what’s wrong with America is the Democrats’ fault?
July 2nd, 2006 at 4:58 pmwhy are they allowed to continually say were at war?
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:05 pmWhat declared war are we involved with? It starts and stops right there.
tHIS JUST SHOWS THAT bUSH IS OUT OF CONTROL. He obviously believes that all decisions are his and his alone to make. This over-reaching has to be reported somehow to the nation and we have to require him to go thru the proper steps, like letting the Congress know about his decisions.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:15 pmShut up, cheap fascist. Disgraceful is the way you send kids to die for your freaking war, killing thousands of civilians just to put another dictator in a puppet government; just like you did before.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:19 pmDoes this idiot sleep well at night? I doubt it: all those dead people follow him everywhere.
#34- “Insightful” observations by Spudge-Boy “Also, the program may be super secret in the way it is carried out,….”
*****Squishy – Not if the NYT has its’ way….& the fact doesn’t change that Bill Keller would deliver his own grandmother to Osama if it would ensure GWB going down in flames. You might even think it’s a GREAT idea that the NYT thought the public should see the security lens in the birdhouse flanking the entrance to the Rumsfeld property in Maryland and told us all about the Cheney’s place. They are Pigs and Hypocrites!
“…but that doesn’t mean that a lot of people know about it or that Bush has spoken about the program on International television in 2004…..”
*****OK, Squishy – your friends on Capitol Hill were saying – “Bush had been telling folks – what’s the BIG deal?” But apparently, Keller and Pinchey THOUGHT it WAS a big deal as MOST newspapers put NEWS on the FRONT page – (Apparently,Squish, you try to convice your friends and adversaries that you ACTUALLY read (!!) newspapers, – I doubt it….)
See ya’
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:21 pmIn summary, I am scared to death. Burn the Constitution if that gives me some piece.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:25 pmComment by mighty aphrodite
peace. What an ass. Sorry.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:29 pm#34 – Squishy’s pathetic attempt to be “insulting”: “For somebody who pretends to be a lawyer….”
****ANYBODY who is more than simply “acquainted” with attorneys (besides holding the door open for them in elevators) understands that attorneys trained in the Socratic method can argue both sides effectively AND take the oppositions’ words – and turn them – using their words.
This might be difficult to follow for someone who pretends to be an American. But maybe someone will invite you for BBQ on Tuesday….
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:30 pmthe right wing–as witnessed by the commments from same here–sees nothing wrong with the governments secret activities to protect the homeland, even when the judiciary has ruled that the government’s actions were not legal. the right has no problem with the governemnt and like the leader of the government itself, acuse the press or endangering the homeland and helpign the enemies of the homeland. the right wing attacks all those who criticize t6he government and calls them traitors and denounces them as worhty of death in the gas chamber. nazi germany 1933, amecia 2003. nazis turn on a free press, pass nuremberg laws that restrict some citizens civil rights and right to marry. germay 1933, no america 2006!
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:51 pmMA > go cook some hotdogs on your barbecue or some greasy horse meat burgers > lol.
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:02 pmThis SWIFT banking surveillance program represents only a slice of the picture of where the Bush administration has made a concerted effort to bypass the Constitutional separation of powers, Congressional oversight, and the judiciary branch of government. A good biographical article posted on http://www.truthdig.com on David Addington (Cheney’s chief of staff) goes a long way in explaining not only the motivations for the administrations (and right wing punditry’s) current outrage about the recent press publication of this story but why lawmakers on the Hill have repeatedly had to go before the media stating they were not aware or fuly informed about the recently disclosed programs. Combined with the warrartless wiretaps, data mining of phone records, outsourcing of information collection, etc. this latest revelation simply affords the administration the ability to achieve what Congress balked on early on in Bush’s first term–John Poindexters (Iran-Contra scandal) Total Infomation Awarness Program. In the above referenced article, Addington promoted (with the prodding of Cheney) the inherent power of the President and absolute secrecy (even Rice, Powell, the top military brass were not briefed about executive orders condoning torture, Gitmo, et.al. until after they were developed by Addington, aproved by Cheney, and signed by the President). Poindexters program (rebuffed by Congress on civil liberties objections) were simply broken up, assinged different names/locations and began by executive orders. It is no wonder members of Congress are left in the dark about their existence or scope of operations or that the Supreme Court had to interject themselves into the recent decision about Gitmo, tribunals, and that the President was indeed not above the rule of law, the Constitution, and Treaties the United States had signed onto. The Congress and the Judicial system were never intended to be a part of the process in the eyes and intentions of this administration. This is not, or never has been, about whether the press has the right to do investigative journalism. That right is guaranteed in the First Amendment. It is also not about whether they compromised national security. The press has bent over backward carrying the water for this administration, witheld stories for weeks to a full year (NSA), and has not published items (troop movements, sites of black prison sites, etc.) that would harm national security. Futhermore this information was bandied about by various administration officials, including the President himself (when it suited the administration politically to trump up their national secrity credentials), published in the U.N. records (2002), and on the SWIFT internet homepage (how much more public can that be–THE worldwide web). The sole reason the administration (and its group of well know right wing bloggers, pudits, and other well known “harpies”) have their britches pulled so tightly up the crack of thier backsides is it is another piece of the puzzle falling into place of how this administration intentionally decided to punk Congress and the courts (not to mention over 200 years worth of precedent) and go it alone, do what they alone saw fit ,and be damn with everything this Country has represented for their own political gain and expediancy. What you see on television is not moral patriotic outrage coming from the President, Vice-President, et.al. but the realization from a CEO that was just handed proof of looting his company, bamboozaling his stockholders, and lying to the judge about his ill-gotten gains. And to think a no-acconting, subpar, insubordinate typesetter in the front office fingered him for the crime! How embarrassing!
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:11 pmIf Congress was briefed by the president then there should be some minutes written about it, huh? You know, time and place, huh? Lets find them, and uh, and let the president know that he can’t use “National Security” as an excuse not to produce them, huh? How ’bout it, huh? Huh?
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:16 pm[...] trancript via Think Progress: [...]
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm“page – (Apparently,Squish, you try to convice your friends and adversaries that you ACTUALLY read (!!) newspapers, – I doubt it….)”
Read newspapers? Media consolidation has many papers beholden to bushit, so who can trust many newspapers? It’s pretty obvious that wingnut garbage is commonly published, when it is equally obvious that it is crap. Why would anyone want to read newspapers? If newspapers were to lose readership from those who are tired of wingnut horseshit maybe they would be forced to have the relationship to readers that they should have, to play their part in our democracy.
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:48 pmHe’s lied so many times, what’s one more? He keeps getting away with the lies and no-one
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:59 pmseems to hold him accountable. Come on journalists, lets get to the truth and put it out for
the public to see.
It is revealed that this program was instituted well before 9/11. They never had time to brief the intelligence committee? How many years? Since it is the law to brief the Intelligence Committee on ALL programs, I would say the administration failed miserably and broke the law. Informing just before a news story comes out with the program the committee was suposed to already know about when it was instituted, is at best, showing the administration knew it was breaking the law, otherwise they never would have bothered telling the Intelligence Committee at all.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:01 pm[...] conradd said The program is legal and there are built in safeguards. Members of Congress have been briefed. Feinstein says that the intelligence committee wasn’t briefed until after the administration learned that the NYT was going forward with the story. So, it took the fourth estate to prompt that particular check/balance from one of the other branches. Maybe the argument here is that there are members of al Qaeda in congress? -JP __________________ Aces Full of Links is Dr. Momentum’s blog [...]
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:01 pmEveryone knew about this program anyway, according the NY Crimes. Everyone except Dianne.
BTW, the idiots at thinkparanoid don’t even know how to spell her name correctly.
Comment by memphis minnie — July 2, 2006
Dianne is a joke but if you want to talk about idiots, you and aphrodite win in a walk. I’m curious, since you support obviously support Bush, which do you like more: The destruction of the constitution or the growth of Al Qaeda? Because I don’t think anyone but you’re hero could have accomplished both. Do you even know how crazy you are?
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:07 pmyour hero
Also, whatever happened to all those alerts? Even when we supposedly have guys ready to blow up the Sears tower we don’t get an alert now.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:09 pmDemocrats have always been soft on terrorism. If they want to show they’re not soft on terrorism, they need to begin impeachment proceedings against the Terrorist in Chief, Osama bin Shrubbery.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:20 pmHmm, how quicky do you think Bushie will croticize his Saudi friends for this about Somalia (from Raw Story)?
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:25 pmSaudi Arabia has become a leading financier of the Islamic takeover of Somalia. On June 29, Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer told the House International Relations Committee that despite U.S. opposition Saudi funding was reaching the Al Qaida-aligned movement in Somalia. She said another U.S. ally, Yemen, has sent weapons to the new Islamic regime in Mogadishu.
if you have a bank account in EUROPE you know what SWIFT is. Everyone has a SWIFT code number on their flippin’ bank statements!!! If the terrorists had accounts, they knew that SWIFT was watching.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:25 pmThis is stupid….
“This is stupid….”
Politics is stupid, democrats and republicans. Democracy is entertainment, haha yay!!!!!
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:37 pmThinkProgress in incorrect. The law does not require the entire intelligence committee be briefed. Under certain circumstances, rhe President of the United States, at his or her discretion, may limit the briefing on covert actions to the so-called “Gang of Eight,” comprising the leaders of each of the two parties from each of the two houses of Congress and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees of each of the two houses of Congress. See national Security Act of 1947 and Intelligence Authoritzation of 1991.
The current “Gang of Eight” comprises:
J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House Leader
Bill Frist, Republican Senate Leader
Harry Reid, Democratic Senate Leader
Peter Hoekstra, Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Jane Harman, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
John D. Rockefeller, IV Ranking Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Note that Sen. Feinstein is not among the Gang of Eight. Accordingly, her briefing was not required under the law.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:49 pmThinkProgress is incorrect. The law does not require the entire intelligence committee be briefed. Under certain circumstances, rhe President of the United States, at his or her discretion, may limit the briefing on covert actions to the so-called “Gang of Eight,†comprising the leaders of each of the two parties from each of the two houses of Congress and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees of each of the two houses of Congress. See national Security Act of 1947 and Intelligence Authoritzation of 1991.
The current “Gang of Eight†comprises:
J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House Leader
Bill Frist, Republican Senate Leader
Harry Reid, Democratic Senate Leader
Peter Hoekstra, Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Jane Harman, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
John D. Rockefeller, IV Ranking Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Note that Sen. Feinstein is not among the Gang of Eight. Accordingly, her briefing was not required under the law.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:50 pmit’s time to put on the ski mask, pick up a brick . . . and throw it!
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:52 pmThis is fascist -inspired hysteria. Not sure how it’s catching on in the hinterland. Probably not well. Most Americans understand the concept of freedom of the press, and this program wasn’t even secret. This outburst will appeal only to those who would already be foaming at the mouth against lib’rals, and no one else. A Fourth of-July orchestrated distraction. Soon to be subsumed by concerns about the sinking value of the almighty dollar, which will affect the ones now foaming at the mouth over … nothing.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:07 pmI am shocked and appalled that our President, the drunken AWOL lying coward, would be telling us something that is not true…!
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:26 pmThis is stupid….â€
Politics is stupid, democrats and republicans. Democracy is entertainment, haha yay!!!!!
Comment by God is a nihilist — July 2, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
$hit that is really good! nihilist, I’m still LOL.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:28 pm“our President, the drunken AWOL lying coward,”
Ken, you are confused…Clinton has not been president since Jan. 20, 2001.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:28 pmThere is a big difference between knowing that something is going on and knowing WHAT is going on exactly(ie…being briefed). The President has a legal obligation to BRIEF the Senate Intelligence Committee and he chose not to do that in violation of his Oath of Office. The Right can spin this anyway they want..the bottom line is that Bush violated his Oath.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:36 pmit seems that this entire congress is a joke. the administration is a dangerous sick joke. there may be a bit of hope for the supremes.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:39 pmafter reading the comments from the readers, makes one wonder whether they got in the wrong line: instead of buying lotto tickets, most managed to get in the line to have cranial chips implanted..geez!
i think some of the trolls here are being facetious. or at least i hope they are; otherwise they are sad human beings filled with hatred that really don’t understand what it means to be american. in that case i’m fine with them posting also, as long as they clearly identify themselves as either conservatives or republicans. that way normal, rational thinking people can see the right-wing whackjobs for what they are… please, ann coulter, minnie, moonbat patrol and all the rest, continue to spew forth your irrationality and hatred. there is nothing that will more effectively marginalize you faster (unfortunately).
funny how as soon as senator feinstein makes the point that bush is misrepresenting the facts about “briefing congress” the whackjobs are here to change the subject once again. this is the second senator that has indicated the briefing came only when bush knew they were going to get caught.
but go ahead, change the subject and admit that the program wasn’t secret at all. of course, that sure does make the “down with new york times” hysterics of last week look an awful lot like a totalitarian smear attack and — oh, this is a surprise — a lie.
in case you haven’t noticed, the administration has very idiotically backed themselves into a corner by embracing this ‘unitary executive’ argument. it puts them at odds with the constitution. and as we saw last week, the constitution usually wins (thankfully – as long as we still have 5 justices that are willing to put the wisdom of american jurisprudence over petty ideologies).
this is really getting funny, the gordian knot of deception republicans have constructed for themselves, that is. just about every position they’ve staked out on the war and executive authority is trying to have it both ways… “they hate us for our freedoms” vs. “we need to restrict our freedoms to fight the war on terror” … “bomb the times for exposing an ultra super top secret program” vs. “everyone knew about this program anyway, the president didn’t need to brief congress”.
frankly, they’ve been acting paranoid for quite a while now. it won’t be long before we reach critical mass as far as the public is concerned — people usually figure out who the hypocrite is when someone starts blaming everyone else (it’s the media! it’s the liberals! it’s the supreme court! they’re all terrorist-sympathizers!) and has no other strategy, no defense against the charges that are being made, and is making no effort to do anything different than the last 5 years, despite a clear public majority that desires a change in direction.
that it’s taken so long has been mind-boggling. seriously, if you were in a room with four other people and three of them pointed to the remaining one and said “that guy’s breaking the law,” to which he responded “YOU’RE ALL TERRORIST-LOVERS AND YOU HATE AMERICA!”, well, i don’t know, how long would it take you to come to the conclusion: “we need to get rid of this guy”?
because, america, i’m still waiting for the obvious answer to that question.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:44 pmYou all deserve everything that dictator does to you You fools. thats rights fools. You bend over and he sticks it to you , over and over again. Then when something does happend then you look supprised and say ah ah ah I didn’t know. You are so full of crap. Everyday you loose more and more of what used to be called Freedom. But like the song says Freedom is just another word when yo got nothing left to loose. What a joke. Hey when is that presidental dictator going to start classifling people that disagree with him or his policies and brand them a terroist also.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:50 pmoh, i forgot the other useless canard that exley just rolled out: blame clinton. yes, that old chestnut. what can you say, exley, if it worked for 13 years… and that’s the hilarious part, because it didn’t work — clinton’s approval ratings reached their highest point while you whackjobs were trying to bring him down. you failed, and yet you still cling like a hopeless dwarf princess to the notion that you can ‘blame clinton’ your way out of this disastrously incompetent bush administration.
and i thought it was the democrats that had run out of ideas.
but go ahead, remind everyone how america was a better place when clinton was president — it’s just another thing that helps democrats. we were at peace, the economy was booming, our prestige internationally was much higher than it is now, poverty was declining, the budget was balanced. people remember that.
full disclosure: i never voted for clinton! but people like you, and the last 5 years with bush have made me wish we could have him back. we wouldn’t be in this mess.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:01 pmProgressaurus Rex…Relax, dude. You’re too tense. #67 was kind of a joke…But I notice that you focused on that instead of the fact that at #61 I utterly demolished your somehwhat ignorant assertion that Bush was “misrepresenting the facts” about the briefing of Congress…But then again, what else could you do but ignore it. The facts and the law are against now…
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:19 pmProgressaurus Rex…Relax, dude. You’re too tense. #67 was kind of a joke…But I notice that you focused on that instead of the fact that at #61 I utterly demolished your somehwhat ignorant assertion that Bush was “misrepresenting the facts†about the briefing of Congress…But then again, what else could you do but ignore it. The facts and the law are against you…
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 pmi can only assume that “ex” is writing from another country (as i am, admittedly — american ex-pat). so, ex, what country are you writing from, if it’s not a secret?
c’mon, now, don’t be a hypocrite. tell us where you live so that we may so fairly judge your government and your subservience to it. it’s only fair…
if we’re really “fools” like you say, you should have nothing to worry about.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:23 pmI still can’t forgive Feinstein for co-sponsoring the Flag Protection Amendment. She has lost all credibility in my book. It took clear headed Republicans to avert an extraordinary waste of time that would have completly played to the GOP’s base. Feinstein needs to know that she was out of line.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:25 pmgood joke, exley! way to distance yourself from your own idiotic comments.
also, nice debunking, exley, except for the fact that harman has also already come out and said exactly what feinstein is saying here — the president only briefed them after he knew he was caught.
that’s the reality, so i’ll let the supreme court decide where the facts and the law are. but like i was saying before, you go ahead and defend this president’s actions over the constitution and the rule of law. the administration looks crazier, more desperate and more paranoid by the day. and by extention, so do you.
“utterly demolished” — exaggerate much? your credibility is almost nonexistent.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:41 pmPoor Progressaurus Rex …I can tell you are embarassed that you didn’t know about the “Gang of Eight” provisions of the National Security Act of 1947 and Intelligence Authoritzation of 1991…But hey, don’t worry. That is why I am here. To teach the ignorant. You are welcome.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:50 pm#67 That should be deserter(AWOL > 30 days). From a veteran.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:51 pmHow does it feel to be a “conservative” in the Bush-era of neocon big government, uncontrolled spending, debt that would make Ronald Reagan blush, FEMA’s Katrina response, your “war on terror” in Iraq, and one constitutional crisis after another. Don’t you yearn for the days when “scandals” were about cum stains on blue dresses and campaign calls form the White House? These neocons in control have really stuck you “conservatives” with a stinky bag of shit to bring to the party. Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Executive Branch, and all three supported by a Republican appointed Supreme Court—and your “man’s” approval rating is at 30% Looks like the flag burners and gays are in for another bashing come November.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:57 pmI was never a fan of Sen. Diane Feinstein until last Monday. She was wonderful during the 99% Dem committe meeting regarding pre-war intelligence. It’s all been a lie, it’s been proven before members of congress in an open meeting. WMD, a mushroom cloud, biological weapons, blah, blah, blah, all the result of Dick’s wild imagination.
Catch the pre-war intelligence committee stuff on CSPAN, then go see The Dark Side on at Frontline.org and you’re done. You know now how Dick and Rummy did it. No one really explains the “why”, but you’ll now absolutely know the truth about “how” the neo-cons did it.
Bottom line,
IT’S ALL A TOTAL LIE.
DO YOU LOVE AMERICA ? DO YOU, ON THIS JULY 4th?
THEN STOP KILLING THE BRAVEST AMERICANS FOR ABSOLUTLY NO REASON.
STOP SUPPORTING THE KILLING OF AMERICANS !!!!
IF YOU CAN’T GET ON BOARD WITH THAT, THEN — YOU — ARE AGAINST AMERICA.
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:58 pmBut speaking of Rep. Harman (one of the few Democrats who appreciates the threat posed to this nation by terrorists), did you see that she beat her left-wing, “anti-war” primary challenger June 6 by a landslide 62 percent to 38 percent … Heh! Yeah, you folks here and at Daily Kos are making reeeeeal political inroads, aren’t you???
July 2nd, 2006 at 9:59 pmLasty,
WHY IS OSAMA ALIVE?
How on Earth can you be any weaker on Terrorism than the current administration? It’s not possible. How can you be more inept? If Rep. Harman is one of the few Dems who comprehends terrorism than that’s one more person than all the GOP put together because they have done nothing. THEY ATTACKED THE WRONG COUNTRY !!! HELLO?
Note to President, OSAMA attacked us on 9/11 not Sadam?
What a dumb ass? You can’t be any weaker on terrorism than the GOP. Unfortunately, OSAMA is LIVING proof.
The fact that some people can’t see this means that they are totally blind to reality.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:08 pmAbove the clouds,
“How does it feel to be a “conservative†in the Bush-era of neocon big government, uncontrolled spending, debt that would make Ronald Reagan blush, ” and the ‘war on terror†in Iraq…”
I agree with you that the Bush administrations unrestrained spending on liberal social welfare programs is disappointing and that social welfare program spending needs to slashed dramatically. So, we are in agreement there…
As for how do I feel being a conservative during the War on Terror — Pretty darn good! I am quite pleased that the U.S. government is now — after a decade of negelect in the 1990s — going after the barbrous Islamist terrorists that killed so many at the Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the U.S.S. Coal — all of which, of course, paved the way for the atrocity on 9/11…
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:08 pmWhere is that big airplane that hit the pentagon. hmmm 2 or 3 small pieces. Still looking for it after all these years. I still can’t find a couple hundred tons of metal that should be right there in front of that building. But the Govt. keeps saying that its there.. Show me; and then The President said ” Quit shoving the Us Constitution down my throat. Its nothing but a Goddamn piece of paper. Now I thought that piece of paper was fighting for. I thought that he swore upon the bible to uphold and protect it. But if the President of the US thinks that it’s nothing but a Goddamn piece of paper. hmmmm
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:08 pmas for my location. Nope sorry…. Will not help those that might try to find me… No I am not paranoid… Hmmmm That German that was minding his own business when they picked him up thought that it couldn’t happen to him either or the other person in Italy thought that it couldn’t happened to him. Maybe all the other people that weren’t classified as terrorist are now classified as one because as Bush said either your for me or against me and if your against me then your unpatriotic.
Exley: Speaking of threats, while the “conservatives” debate newspaper stories, gay marriage and flag burning, guess who is still alive and kicking and thumbing his terrorist nose at the neocon boobs in this inept Administration? Remind me again what the Republicans are doing to try to catch the man who murdered 3,000 Americans on American soil? The quagmire in Iraq is the wrong answer. It’s encouraging to see Bush’s Administration engaging in a war of rhetoric with bin Laden–they clearly have no plans for “justice” for that brutal killer.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:09 pmI know there’s a lot of Hitler=Bush stuff, but this is interesting. See what you think. “Many Germans continued to be enthusiastic supporters of Hitler after he suspended Constitutional rights and passed the Nurenberg law which legally isolated Jews.” My question is who are Geroge Bush’s “Jews” are they Gays or Liberals or the Press?
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:20 pmAbove the Clouds wrote:
“Remind me again what the Republicans are doing to try to catch the man who murdered 3,000 Americans on American soil?”
There are approximately 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
There are several thousand NATO troops in Afghanistan.
There are ongoing covert intelligence activities, which have, so far nabbed a number of senior Al Qaeda leaders, including Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
They are interrogating captured Al Qaeda leaders (I am glad you agree with me on the need to interrogate captured Al Qaeda leaders…Many of your fellow psters on this site want to close detention facilties holding Al Qaeda members, such as Gitmo).
There are daily flights of CIA Predator drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As you recall just recently, a missile from a Predator drone killed a number of Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan (Unfortunately, we just missed Al Zawhiri…See:
US hunt for Al-Qaeda leaders may be gaining: US analysts
In-Depth Coverage US intelligence appears to be getting closer to top al-Qaeda leaders despite a seemingly hit-and-miss hunt that has left behind civilian casualties and bruised relations with allies, analysts say.
Pakistani officials said four or five “foreign terrorists” may have been among the dead in the latest action, a missile strike in a remote triabl area late Thursday or early Friday aimed at Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s number two.
With 18 civilians also reported killed and Pakistani condemnations pouring in, the strike underscored the cost of a secret hunt that has so far failed to net either Zawahiri or Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
But analysts said a series of successful strikes by armed Predator drones controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency over the past two years point to a more disciplined effort than in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“They are working on better intelligence, and they are not launching an attack like this unless they do have hard intelligence,” said Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2006/060118-alqaeda-hunt.htm
Hope tha answers your question, Above…
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:22 pmAt election time people are going to see what today’s Republican Party is really about, and for whom they are really fighting…and it is not the average American or their family. They are fighting for the richest of the rich at the expense of everyone else. Gas at $3.00 per gallon, unending war in Iraq, spying on Americans, and a blantant disregard for laws–this is the GOP that will try to convince the voting public that what’s wrong is the fault for newspapers and liberals. Bush and the neocons have no genuine plan to deal with Iraq, nor are they capable of creating and implementing one. People are dying because Bush doesn’t know what he’s doing.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 pm“We’re at wr with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States.” Yes indeedy. Those people are Bush, Rumsfield, Cheney, and a slew of right-wing politicians and media assholes.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:25 pm“after decade of negelect in the 1990s”
Not exactly true. Remember, daddy Bush was still in office and actively selling and giving Iraq biological and chemical weapons for the first couple years of the 90s. You do remember that don’t you. If not go check the Congressional record. It was talked about at the time, daddy Bush had many of his own people who said it was a bad idea. But you know the Bush clan when it comes to Arab dictators, they just love ‘em. Like father like son.
And you do remember that a bit before then, we actually funded and trained Osama and his bad of merry men. You do know that he’s a product of our CIA under Reagan and daddy Bush. You do know that don’t you?
What’s incredible?
The GOP creats these people
The GOP is on watch when they attack
The GOP is totally inept in their response
And the Dems are to blame.
Ya… Right.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:27 pm[...] During the last week, President Bush and other members of the administration have lashed out at the New York Times for printing a story about a government program that monitors bank records. Bush has insisted that Congress was briefed appropriately on the program: [...]
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:30 pmExley: Thanks for the cut and paste from Ken Mehlman’s talking points email. In November–people will need one simple reminder: Osama Bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, killed Americans on American soil. All else is details.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 pmSB…
“Remember, daddy Bush was still in office and actively selling and giving Iraq biological and chemical weapons for the first couple years of the 90s. You do remember that don’t you. If not go check the Congressional record.”
Got any evidence of that???? A link? A newspaper article? A citation in the Congressional Record?
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 pmgoing after the barbrous Islamist terrorists that killed so many at the Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the U.S.S. Coal — all of which, of course, paved the way for the atrocity on 9/11…
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:33 pmComment by Exley — July 2, 2006 @ 10:08 pm
It is good to see your a humanist. Really horrified by horrifying events. But I am curious, you are horrified only by events that took place against american population or installations? On the examples you gave above does not appear one against Iraq population, even if some were done by Saddam? Do you forget that one of the arguments of your president for this war was exactly atrocities made by Saddam against his own population? Or this pretty sincere feeling of yours also emerges in you when 100,000 + civilians has been killed by american forces in Iraq, thousands in Afghanistan? Because if not, you can say simply you dont give a fuck about others. And then you will be discredited along with your thrashy rethoric.
ridiculous, exley. where from my comments do you deduce that i don’t know about the gang of eight? that’s a false assertion. but par for the course.
i notice you won’t actually rebut what i said: harman — a member of the gang of eight — has already confirmed what feinstein says here. bush didn’t brief until he knew he was caught.
bin laden is the albatross around your necks, exley. 15,000 troops in afghanistan (where bin laden is), vs. 150,000 in iraq (where he NEVER WAS). 5 years later, the man we say is responsible for 9/11, the man we say is public enemy number one is still on the loose and we have 10X the amount of troops trying to fight him where he isn’t, and you’re forced to defend the administration’s incompetent actions.
your defense underscores the failure. it’s a sad statement about you personally — that you will defend a failure.
don’t worry exley, we’ll make sure and judge you by the company you keep.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 pmfailure.
Rex: That’s what I’ve been saying–these neocons in control have given the “conservatives” NOTHING to defend but lies, death, and corruption. Yet, they keep defending and standing by these liars, thus revealing their own lack of principles. How many kicks to the nuts does it take for the average man to say, “Enough, already.” HAD ENOUGH?
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:42 pmAbove the Clouds…You are welcome…You asked. I answered with the facts.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:43 pmonce again exley:
harman — a member of the gang of eight — has already confirmed what feinstein says here. bush didn’t brief until he knew he was caught.
so where are those “facts” you keep talking about? seems you want to ignore the realities here. what a surprise — a faith-based debater.
above the clouds: true, we can’t seem to get the republicans to keep from screaming BE AFRAID!! BE AFRAID!! 9/11!!! TERRORISTS AND FLAG-BURNERS AND GAYS, OH MY!! all the time. republicans don’t want brave americans, they want fearful, subservient americans, like exley. if you examine their message that’s what you’ll find.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:57 pmProgressaurus Rex,
Harman (whom I am sure you just love!) is the only member of the gang of Eight claiming she was not briefed until much later on:
“Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), had been informed of the operation before the full committee briefing. A spokesman said Hoekstra was told of the program shortly after he became chairman in 2004. Harman said she did not know why she had not also gotten an earlier briefing.
The Treasury Department, which runs the program, had briefed ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee periodically since shortly after the program was launched” LA Times
If true, seems like an oversight to me…The other seven were briefed, including the Democrats.
Nice try, though.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:57 pm— after a decade of negelect in the 1990s — going after the barbrous Islamist terrorists that killed so many at the Khobar Towers, the African embassies, the U.S.S. Coal — all of which, of course, paved the way for the atrocity on 9/11…
Comment by Exley — July 2, 2006 @ 10:08 pm
A decade of negelect in the 90’s exley? According to the republicans, the fact that there hasn’t been an attack ‘on US soil’ since 9/11(5 years) supposedly proves that Bush is a genius. Guess that makes Clinton a super-genius, since he prevented another attack for 8 years. As for Khobar, ect. you’re not suggesting that there hasn’t been any attacks on Americans abroad since 9/11 are you? Because according to Bush we’re being attacked by terrorists in Iraq all the time.
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:58 pmReply to #86:
Above the Clouds,
Assuming that bin Laden truly is responsible for 9/11 (which is a pretty big assumption, given the FBI admits there is no evidence linking bin Laden to 9/11), he isn’t likely to be ‘thumbing his nose’ at anyone, seeing as how he’s been dead since 2001.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:04 pmIs that the same Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) who jumped under the bus with Santorum babbling on FOX News about the “recently found” WMD that Reagan sold to Iraq?
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:05 pmExley, start with this: http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.30A.byrd.wmd.htm
I know you’re going to say, sky is falling, it’s from Truthout.org. OMG! But, son, I’m really getting too old to do you’re homework for you. Look into it. I shit you not. See, we here really do care about America and Americans so we do our homework before we climb on board some progam to kill, kill, kill which leaves many of them and too many of us Dead.
I am certain Osama was behind 9/11. Are you all confused about that?
I am certain Boy George sat in a classroom chair for a really long time after Mr. Card told him “America is under attack.” By the way, that’s the moment I became a “Bush Hater”
I am certain that Condi Rice lied before the 9/11 commission; I watched her do it with my own eyes on live TV — “It was an historical document” — are you confused about that?
I am certain that for years our men and women have not been provided proper armor
I am certain we did not put in enough ground troops, I watched our Secretary of Defense LAUGH at the looting going on as if that wasn’t a sign of anything.
I and others could go on and on and on, what part of this are you missing?
PS: your president is a not so reformed alcoholic, who had a significant drug problem, who has raised a couple of pretty wild kids, who brags about not reading, who can barely get through a single sentence without “put food on your family” or “doctor’s can’t practice their special love with their patients”, or “this would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship, provided I was the dictator”, or on and on…
I can see he is an idiot. What signs are you missing?
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 pmThe saddest thing about this serial liar in the White House is that he’ll retire, collect money from our taxes and think that he was a success. The man couldn’t pass a middle school English exam and has lied and cheated his way through his entire life, and there have been enough shit-head Republicans, including George H.W. Bush and his fat cat buddies, who worry more about the flaq than about the constitution, who have been his enablers.
And just below that in terms of lamentable facts is that a lot of these Bush supporters are average Joes, secretaries, construction workers, middle level hi-tech workers, etc., who get their news from the News Toilet of the World — Faux News, and who don’t realize that that same White House liar has his hand in their pockets, and is stealing the country right out from under them–assisted by a cowardly press, a stacked court system, a congress of prostitutes, etc., while Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice send the least fortunate among us to Iraq to die.
May they roast in Hell.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 pmJuan C,
Of course, I was outraged and disgusted by the genoicidal and murderous policies of Saddam Hussein. That is one of the reasons I am very happy that the U.S. and its allies did the moral thing in removing him. He was a threat not only to United States, Europe, and Israel, but to his own people. And the Iraqi people know that to…That is why as the U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, you saw Iraqis dancing in the streets and chanting George Bush’s name..I was never prouder to be an American than on that day…That is why we need to stay in Iraq and make sure the murderous Baathists and Islamists, who have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis with car-bombings and suiide bombings (They are the ones killing innocent Iraqis, not the U.S. military, which, as you know, does not target civilians) don’t take control of that country and restore the reign of terror that held the Iraqi people in its grip for so long. I am sure you join me in supportingthe U.S.’s efforts to help the Iraqi people create a democracy in their homeland.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 pmIf bin Laden id dead, his “Greatest Hits” tape is getting a lot of White House airplay.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:07 pmExley: You’re hilarious! I like your comedy bits: “I am sure you join me in supportingthe U.S.’s efforts to help the Iraqi people create a democracy in their homeland.” you should have added, “After we staged an unprovoked attack and occupation of your nation, raped and killed your civilians, destroyed your infrastructure, tortured your people, created an insurgency that kills at will, disarmed your security forces and created a civil war.”
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:16 pmRight on Ken. Bush is a lying coward and has no concern about all the people who have died . As for Darth Cheney; he had more important things to do to help defend our country. How many times was he defered?????
By the way, I just subscribed to the New York Times.
Fed-up!!!
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:31 pmComment by TripMaster Monkey — July 2, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:43 pmNice link. Thanks.
just once i’d like to have a debate with a troll that doesn’t have their own separate reality.
let me add what exley left out:
“Of course, I was outraged and disgusted by the genoicidal and murderous policies of Saddam Hussein.” [a former cia operative whose rights abuses were not only ignored but condoned and even assisted by both the reagan and bush administrations.]
“That is one of the reasons I am very happy that the U.S. and its allies did the moral thing in removing him.” [and in the process continued to morally kill innocent iraqis after he was removed]
“He was a threat not only to United States, Europe, and Israel, but to his own people.” [with no wmds, no air force, an autonomous kurdish region in the north and every shred of his authority dependent on his need to bluff the international community into thinking he had chemical and biological weapons]
“And the Iraqi people know that to…That is why as the U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, you saw Iraqis dancing in the streets and chanting George Bush’s name..I was never prouder to be an American than on that day…” [yes, what a great day to be proud of being an american, the day we discovered that saddam was in fact no threat whatsoever and the reasons for this preemptive war were completely disproven. and many of those "liberator" scenes were, in fact, staged by chalabi's group.]
“That is why we need to stay in Iraq and make sure the murderous Baathists and Islamists, who have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis with car-bombings and suiide bombings” [which in fact never occurred in the history of iraq before we occupied it]
“(They are the ones killing innocent Iraqis, not the U.S. military, which, as you know, does not target civilians)” [ongoing military trials, news reports, eyewitness reports and firsthand testimony of american soldiers disputes this]
“…don’t take control of that country and restore the reign of terror that held the Iraqi people in its grip for so long. I am sure you join me in supportingthe U.S.’s efforts to help the Iraqi people create a democracy in their homeland.” [regardless if that wasn't the reason we gave for going in there in the first place. what you're describing sounds suspiciously like nation-building, something bush said he'd never do.]
in other words, exley is now willing to say anything to cover up for a monumental policy failure and willingly spray perfume on this bush administration turd. meanwhile, $500 billion would have been better-spent INSIDE america on schools, border security (and labor enforcement of those who hire illegals), securing ports and national landmarks, mine safety and regulation, renewable energy and the fight to end energy dependence. and hey maybe a subsidy for a new american fireproof flag manufacturing industry. those u.s. flags they make in china burn too easily.
i’m sure you’ll join me in supporting our troops by not sending them to fight and die in a fake war in iraq when they’re supposed to be going after the real terrorists responsible for 9/11, who aren’t — and never were — in iraq. at this point these are the indisputable facts, exley: we have found neither bin laden nor the wmd’s. that is failure. and you’re a cheerleader for it.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:46 pmaphrodite takes a break from beating her children for having wrinkled brown shirts to post. how nice.
get back to ironing those brown shirts, frau tripey. in the new bush america you’ll have to reacquaint yourself with the subservient role of women. praise the lord!
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:51 pmno, but i’m sure she would accept what you say as a compliment. frau tripey is a sociopathic troll that can’t keep “her” story straight, except when it comes to defending the failure that is the bush administration.
she has been proven demonstrably wrong on any number of points, not the least of which are her own claims about herself. she’s a bush turd polisher.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 amI am sure you join me in supportingthe U.S.’s efforts to help the Iraqi people create a democracy in their homeland.
Comment by Exley — July 2, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
No. I am in favor of people deciding their own faith. Not others deciding for them. Would you like having the French (which is a democracy, you know, where people elect a government) telling you that your fraudulent past elections are no good and put in the US government some Gerrard Depadieu? Because according to you, they will be entitle to do that, since they are protecting the world from having Ohio-Florida type democracies (meaning an illegal government), and you,it seems, are extremely concerned about democracies, right? Now, as I said, democracy is where the majority rules, with some small representation for the minorities. Hows that so far in US? last time I checked 31% of US citizens approved BUsh. Buddy, you have to do something cause democracy is not happening in your country.
I remind you. My opinion does not mean I am in favor of Saddam Hussein…US put him there in the first place!!! My opinion doesnt mean I hate US or people who think like you. I am in favor of justice and freedom, but I wont use a sledgehammer to make you understand about what I think is right. Also, Bush is a threat for your own liberties, yet you totally support him, why? He lied about WMDs, there is evidence that your “honorable” troops raped and killed civilians in Iraq (Pentagon confirms that), just as they did in Vietnam, Bosnia, East Timor, Nicaragua, and a lot of other countries who never posted a threat on you or your family, yet you are OK with that. I am sure you are OK with having palestinians killed and agree with Israel in its war. Would you like the chinese going to your home and proclaiming the living room for them arguing religious reasons? That would suck, right? Wake up, you are supporting a system that excludes you from knowing the truth. They are killing children in your name and you are OK with that. You have blood on your hands, shame on you.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:09 amThank you, Mighty Aphrodite…I am patient with them, like a teache needs to be patient with his children.
And excellent point about the high gas prices…But maybe this is a good thing. Apparently, even liberals like Above the Clouds. in citing the $3 per gallon gas prices as a problem, have now seen the light and see the need to repeal the gas tax and began drilling for oil in ANWR…
Welcome aboard, Above the Clouds…We always welcome converts on this side of the political spectrum. We’re a big tent…
Anyone else want to join Above the Clouds in admitting that Bush, Mighty Aphrodite, and I have the right idea when it comes to energy policy????
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:10 amAnyone else want to join Above the Clouds in admitting that Bush, Mighty Aphrodite, and I have the right idea when it comes to energy policy????
Comment by Exley — July 3, 2006 @ 12:10 am
Yeah, spending 500 billion for 5 years of Iraq´s oil. Good move, chief.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:19 amjuan,
in one way it’s too bad that those like exley and frau tripey are two-dimensional thinkers (i.e. ‘with us or against us’). it kills the debate and makes us have to put up with these frustrating and imbecilic diatribes.
but on the plus side, they’re losing support, they know it, and hence they will continue to act more desperate, paranoid, and frankly, ridiculous. if the constitution and american rule of law weren’t at stake it would actually be entertaining to watch.
look for the REALLY crazy behavior to begin after they officially hit sub-30% approvals with no hope of a rebound (as if that isn’t a scary prospect given what we’ve seen so far).
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:19 amOh, Juan C, come now…You know that the U.S. did not put Saddam in power “in the first palce.” That is just false history…As you know, Iraq became a Soviet client state in the 1970s, soon after Saddam took power in a 1968 coup. Their military equipment was primarily supplied by the USSR, with some French support, as well…It was only in the 1980s that the Reagan administration reached out to Iraq because of the ongoing war between that nation and Iran. As we all know, the U.S. did not provide weapons to Saddam Hussein, but did offer some limited satellite intelligence to Iraq on Iranian military positioning. However, the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq never cut off the ground. Saddam was displeased when the U.S. condemned his use of chemical weapons against the Iranians, and later the Kurds.
The left really needs to stop perpetrating this “Saddam was an ally of the U.S.” myth. It is patently false. And every time you are corrected, your side just seems more and more silly. Stick to the facts, boys and girls.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:21 amI have the right idea when it comes to energy policy
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:23 amComment by Exley
I am betting a lawyer that fears the wrath of god and its building another ark in her backyard (Mighty Aphrodite) and you, a professional copy-paster, knows a lot about energy policies. What is energy in the first place, buddy?
Now its my turn to copy & paste:The U.S. maintained a close alliance with Iraq all through the 1980s. In 1983, and again in 1984, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then the special envoy of President Reagan, traveled to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein and negotiate a renewal of full U.S.-Iraqi diplomatic relations. Despite at least two face-to-face meetings, Rumsfeld never expressed to Saddam Hussein any U.S. displeasure about Iraq’s use of illegal chemical weapons. (The State Department claims Rumsfeld did mention it separately to Tariq Aziz.) In any case, Washington restored full diplomatic relations by November 1984, extending financial support, agricultural credits, military technology and intelligence, the seed stock for biological weapons, and political support to the regime in Baghdad, then, as now, led by Saddam Hussein
Gee. You were there, you supported the guy and, well…now he is a evil-doer according to your 50 IQ president. You are cleaning your own shit…2531 soldiers appreciate that.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:32 ambut on the plus side, they’re losing support, they know it, and hence they will continue to act more desperate, paranoid, and frankly, ridiculous.
Comment by Progressaurus Rex
We can only hope, buddy. Chomsky said that this empire would last 500 years. I think Prof. Chomsky made them a big favor.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:35 am*sigh* Looks I still need to teach Progressaurus Rex some history:
let me add what exley left out:
“Of course, I was outraged and disgusted by the genoicidal and murderous policies of Saddam Hussein.†[a former cia operative whose rights abuses were not only ignored but condoned and even assisted by both the reagan and bush administrations.][I have already dismantled that myth...See posting #123]
“That is one of the reasons I am very happy that the U.S. and its allies did the moral thing in removing him.†[and in the process continued to morally kill innocent iraqis after he was removed]{{Again, a myth…It had been the Al Qaeda/Baathist terrorists who have unleashed a terror campaign against the civilian Iraqi population, by car bombings in market places and suicide bombing in mosques. The U.S. military does not targey civilians, as you well know}
“He was a threat not only to United States, Europe, and Israel, but to his own people.†[with no wmds, no air force, an autonomous kurdish region in the north and every shred of his authority dependent on his need to bluff the international community into thinking he had chemical and biological weapons][His lack of fully constituted WMDs, an air force, and the autonomous Kurdish region in the north were all thanks to who?? That's the right, the United States military in the first Gulf War, Operation: Desert Fox, and in enforcing the no-fly-zone...But you miss the point. s we saw on 9/11, foreign terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein don't need an air force and missile system to wreak tremendous death and destruction in another nation...It is truly amazing how the left has already completely forgotten the horror and lessons of 9/11) Oh, and you seem to forget, it was discovered that Iraq was indeed illegally producing prohibited Al Samoud missiles capable of reaching Israel].
“And the Iraqi people know that to…That is why as the U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, you saw Iraqis dancing in the streets and chanting George Bush’s name..I was never prouder to be an American than on that day…†[yes, what a great day to be proud of being an american, the day we discovered that saddam was in fact no threat whatsoever and the reasons for this preemptive war were completely disproven. and many of those “liberator†scenes were, in fact, staged by chalabi’s group.][Sure, they were, PR...Sure they were...I love that whenever the left has no facts to back up their argument, they resortto conspiracy theories..."It was all Chalabi's doing! The Irqis weren't really happy to see a murderous tyrant deposed!"]
“That is why we need to stay in Iraq and make sure the murderous Baathists and Islamists, who have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis with car-bombings and suiide bombings†[which in fact never occurred in the history of iraq before we occupied it][No, instead they had secret police torturing and murdering innocents, Saddam commiting genocide against the Marsh Arabs (look them up), using chemical weapons against his own people, and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and throwing them into mass graves with some estimates going as high as 500,000...Yeah, you're right, PR, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a REAL paradise].
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 am“(They are the ones killing innocent Iraqis, not the U.S. military, which, as you know, does not target civilians)†[ongoing military trials, news reports, eyewitness reports and firsthand testimony of american soldiers disputes this] [And here you have put your finger (however inadvertently) on difference between us and Saddam Hussein..Whereas he used rape and murder as official policy, whenever a U.S. soldier commits a crime, they are investigated, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and punished. It is not the U.S. military's policy to target civilians. It was indeed Saddam's policy to torture, rape, and murder innocent civilians...Again, it boggles my mind that you are so ignorant of Iraqi life under Saddam Hussein.]
“…don’t take control of that country and restore the reign of terror that held the Iraqi people in its grip for so long. I am sure you join me in supportingthe U.S.’s efforts to help the Iraqi people create a democracy in their homeland.†[regardless if that wasn’t the reason we gave for going in there in the first place. what you’re describing sounds suspiciously like nation-building, something bush said he’d never do.][It is true that in the 2000 campaign Bush said he was opposed to nation-building, especially in nations in which the U.S. had no strategic interest. But 9/11 changed much of our thinking. Now we know it is unntenable to allow terrorist and terrorist supporting regimes to stay in power. They must be taken out an d replaced with democratic, peaceful regimes if U.S. security is going to be protected. And that is what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan].
another failure, exley. you may as well say you belong to the failure party.
there is only one right energy policy, and that’s energy independence. to argue against that would be utterly maladroit and irresponsible.
anwr will only provide a very brief solution to american oil dependence — and that’s only if we don’t sell that oil to japan and china, which is one of the main proposals for it.
what about the athabascus tar sands, you say? or the trillions of barrels of oil in the slopes of the rocky mountains? currently not feasible, as they take as much energy to exploit as they could provide. and sure, let’s stagnate with the old industries. let’s not improve our condition. let’s remain dependent on fossil fuels forever. that’s great energy policy, ex(xon)ley.
funny how it’s so hard for some people to admit the obvious — renewable energy sources are better for humanity, better for the environment, and even better for the economy. the economy needs new technologies and new industries. the human species needs to progress and improve in order to move forward. weening ourselves off of fossil fuels and moving towards energy independence will prove to be a more significant achievement for mankind than going to the moon.
so let’s recap…
your energy policy: stagnate, remain dependent on fossil fuels, perpetuate the national security disaster that is our reliance on oil from countries like saudi arabia, yemen, iraq, iran, and so on. continue to allow oil companies to control our foreign policy, economic policy and influence our federal elections.
my energy policy: ween off of fossil fuels. strive for renewable energy and energy independence. force energy diversification, reward innovation, seek new industries (and the millions of new jobs they will provide). end our national security nightmare now by eliminating dependence on oil completely. no more war on terror, no more dead u.s. servicemen in wars about chasing oil.
anyone here want to vote on which they prefer?
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 amLets Talk about the “HYPOCRISY” of the Dems vs. Republicans
Dems: Getting a BJ + lying about it = impeachment!
GOP: Lie about WMD’s and just about everything else leading up to the war in iraq + Countless illegal SPYING programs on U.S. CITIZENS and the such = ummm…wtf are the dems waiting for… (also add STEALING elections)
Fascism at its finest…priceless.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:54 am#125…heh! I love how Juan C copies and pastes a whole passage, butt the refuses to say from which publication he copied…Most likely he knoews once he reveals which publication, we all see that it is some left-wing propaganda rag….So, what did you get that “history,” Juan C????
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:59 am#129….read posting #61. Your questions have already been answered. In short, no one is saying Feinstein is lying. However, because she is not a member of the gang of Eight, she did not have to be briefed. Go on and read…
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:02 amUh oh! Juan C and Progressaurus Rex caught in another falsehood…Here ya go, kids:
Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Interests Section in Iraq. “U.S. Chemical Shipment to Iraq,” March 4, 1984.
Indicates that a shipment of 22,000 pounds of phosphorous fluoride to Iraq was held back at JFK airport because of “concern over Iraq’s possible intention to use the chemical in the manufacture of chemical weapons.” Washington asks the U.S. interests section in Baghdad to remind Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.’s grave concern about chemical weapons, and to inform it that the U.S. will publicly condemn their use in the near future. The interests section is to reiterate the request that Iraq not use chemical warfare, and to say that the U.S. opposes Iraq’s attempts to acquire chemical weapons related material from the U.S.: “When we become aware of attempts to do so, we will act to prevent their export to Iraq.”
Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act
I accept your apologies on behalf of the United States…
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:07 amHere is a little more facts about the U.S. policies towards Iraq in the 1980s:
“Rumsfeld affirmed the Reagan administration’s “willingness to do more” regarding the Iran-Iraq war, but “made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights.” He then moved on to other U.S. concerns [Document 32].
Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad in late March 1984. By this time, the U.S. had publicly condemned Iraq’s chemical weapons use, stating, “The United States has concluded that the available evidence substantiates Iran’s charges that Iraq used chemical weapons” [Document 47]. Briefings for Rumsfeld’s meetings noted that atmospherics in Iraq had deteriorated since his December visit because of Iraqi military reverses and because “bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use, despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge sooner or later”
So, in other words, despite the myth so dearly held by the “wanti-war” crowd, not only did the U.S. not supply Iraq with uncoventional weapons in the 1980s, but publicy condemned Iraq’s use of such weapons which enfuriated Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Unlike Juan C, I will provide th source of thisinformation. It comes from the georhe Washington University’s National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:21 amEdited by Joyce Battle, February 25, 2003 (available on-line along with contemporary documents from the Reagan administration obtained through the Freedom of Information Act)
Here is a little more facts about the U.S. policies towards Iraq in the 1980s:
“Rumsfeld affirmed the Reagan administration’s “willingness to do more” regarding the Iran-Iraq war, but “made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights.” He then moved on to other U.S. concerns [Document 32].
Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad in late March 1984. By this time, the U.S. had publicly condemned Iraq’s chemical weapons use, stating, “The United States has concluded that the available evidence substantiates Iran’s charges that Iraq used chemical weapons” [Document 47]. Briefings for Rumsfeld’s meetings noted that atmospherics in Iraq had deteriorated since his December visit because of Iraqi military reverses and because “bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use, despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge sooner or later”
So, in other words, despite the myth so dearly held by the “wanti-war” crowd, not only did the U.S. not supply Iraq with uncoventional weapons in the 1980s, but publicy condemned Iraq’s use of such weapons which enfuriated Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Unlike Juan C, I will provide th source of thisinformation. It comes from the georhe Washington University’s National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:21 amEdited by Joyce Battle, February 25, 2003 (available on-line along with contemporary documents from the Reagan administration obtained through the Freedom of Information Act)
American Patriot:
“As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein was privy to this information. Plain and simple…”
Wishing will not make it so. I have explained the law to you. Accept it and move on.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:23 amok exxonley,
1) your “dismantling” has, in turn, been dismantled by juan c in #125.
2) i point again to the numerous military trials, news reports, eyewitness reports, and firsthand accounts from american soldiers that indicate that innocent iraqis have, in truth, been targeted. i, unlike you, am not a two-dimensional thinker, so i can differentiate between policy, intent, dishonor, and inadvertant killing. so contrary to your warped attempt to paint me as an absolutist america-hater, i understand this isn’t a broad-brushstroke issue. all americans are not targeting iraqis and it is not military policy to do so. and yet it still happens to an unfortunate degree, which helps our post-war rationale of “spreading freedom” exactly none. but then soldiers tend to lose control if they sense that their leadership has no moral compass. war atrocities happen when soldiers lose faith in the mission, or when they sense the mission isn’t actually a noble one. it’s what happened in vietnam, and it’s what is happening in iraq.
3) please refer to my post #100, specificially the part that includes “BE AFRAID!! BE AFRAID!! 9/11!!! TERRORISTS AND FLAG-BURNERS AND GAYS, OH MY!!” yes, that’s right, i’m mocking you for being a coward. saddam hussein, as you so rightly point out, was exactly zero threat to anyone outside his own borders.
4) it boggles my mind that you are so ignorant as to not know that all of the human rights offenses committed by Saddam Hussein were already well-known before 1991. this is a very convenient outrage you have in 2006. where was the outrage in 1983? where was it in 1991, when we were at his doorstep and knew he had wmds, and knew he was a brutal dictator who killed his own people? why i do recall one dick cheney, at that time, saying we were right to not go in? so is that dick cheney admitting he and poppy bush allowed this dire threat to american national security to persist? why, oh why, if all of these atrocities were so bad, weren’t they addressed before they so nicely dovetailed into covering the administration’s failure to find wmds in the present day? your whole premise is predicated on having to believe an alternate reality.
5) saddam was known to despise the “islamofascists” — he certainly wasn’t helping them as they posed a threat to his own secular regime. yes, and 9/11 changed some people’s thinking so much that they’d gladly sacrifice the constitution and rule of law in america. you have been goaded into fear, exley, and you have no concept whatsoever of the history of american foreign policy. iran was a democracy once, before 1953. we sure fixed that. look up operation ajax sometime. you might be surprised to find that we overthrew a functioning democracy in iran; why? to ensure that the oil flowed freely. free the oil IS our foreign policy and it has been for a very long time. sorry you got duped into thinking it was all about freedom there, buddy. that was just what the bush administration wanted you subservient cowards to believe.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:28 amSource: IPS
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:29 amYeah, so you are the good guys as long as who the fucks knows decides otherwise…then you go with the flow, right, Exley? You are in favor of killing people, as long as your government say it is ok. You must be a really nice person, Exley. You still have no comments about whether you like if another country decides what should happen in yours or not. I am betting you prefer that foreigns do not involve in your affairs. I bet you also would not like foreigners to place a prison right outside your home and then told to get the fuck away if you are curious enough to see what is in there. I bet you would not like being taken by KGB ex agents to a nice interrogation dungeon in Georgia and being the object of old Kossak torture. I bet you would not like being a kurdish, albanian, iraqi, afghan, indonesian, somalian etc, fleeing his home due to war supported by american financing and military support. I bet you are just confused and scared.
Progressaurus Rex,
Actually Juan C’s posting was painfully amateurish. He cut and paste from some obvioysly biased publication (and was afraid to reveal from where) which got its facts wrong as I pointed out in posts 133 and 137.
And, I have said many times that the U.S.’s actions in Iran in the 1950s was a tremendous mistake, the implications of which we still with to this day.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 ami see exxonley has resorted to absolute fantasy in posts 136 and 137.
unfortunately, it’s also known that saddam possessed strains of anthrax that were developed at the university of iowa state (these are known as the”ames strain”).
surely you can’t forget how, when the anthrax letters were turning up at news outlets and legislative buildings in 2001, it was the good old right wing noise machine that was screaming that this proved saddam was behind 9/11.
because they knew saddam had anthrax, and they knew how he got it. there is absolutely no way saddam could’ve ended up with anthrax developed at an american university without u.s. complicity.
and no one here was saying american was an “ally” of hussein, by any means. the reagan admin was playing both sides of that fence, lest you forget the iran-contra affair.
seriously, exxonly, you’re making this way too easy.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:40 amIPS???? The Institute for Policy Studies?! Heh! Wow…A left-wing think tank printed something that supports left-wing Juan C’s viewpoint (Although I imagine even IPS does not accept Juan C’s oft-mentioned theory that 9/11 was an “inside job.”)
By contrats, I supplied information from a major and respected university that backs up its narrative with official government documents from the 1980s obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
heh! Not even close, Juan…You are going to have to do a lot better than that to support your rather….well, let’s just say, “unique” ideas…
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:43 am“made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights.â€
Comment by Exley
You can post anything you want but you have to remember that people lie. Remember how Bush swore with a hand on the bible to follow the Constitution? How Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell lied about WMD´s? Well, they lied, buddy, no matter what they said. That crap you just posted about human rights can only be believed is these assholes stop the war, but they dont. They dont give a shit about civilians, dont give a shit about soldiers, and let me surprise you, puppy, they dont give a shit about you. They just care about how many bucks can they get into their pockets. Common sense cannot be copy & pasted…too bad for you.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:43 amSorry, so it all depends whether you believe the source of information or not? Why dont you tell me where do I have to take the information from? Travel around some day and then you will learn something.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:47 amPoor PR…He finds himself confronted with the facts as reported by information from a major and respected university that backs up its narrative with official government documents from the 1980s obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and he can manage to stuuter in his utter frustration at having been bested is “i see exxonley has resorted to absolute fantasy in posts 136 and 137.”
Heh! Weak, weak response….Nutthe again..What else could he say? The facts are against him
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:47 am131. here is the link. Maybe research a little and then when you dont believe it go to 10 other sites and add the info together and divide out the inconsistencies and that will give you the best chance to understand something more than talking points. And for the energy you put into your posts, maybe you could direct that energy to a true study of past events. And like pee wee herman used to sing, ” connect the dots…la la la….connect the dots…la la la….”
http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/primer4.htm
Also, i fear that you will not, and have never made an erudition of truth. The fact is : all governments have blood on their hands and due to the nationalism of the predomenantly good people, that i believe even you are part of the population of, a paralyzing yet bouying effect keeps the government’s legitimicies’ head above water. Just today Tony Blair asserted that mere faith was keeping his government alive. (faith translates for me into nationalism) And from this bouying effect of legitimicy through nationalism rather than legitimicy through public approval or representation of the public’s will, at a time when change can most easily happen, our ability to affect change is strangled by reactionary nationalism instead of being given impetuos by progressive rationalizing.
And, yes, since i believe most of us are good people, i write anywhere, hoping for improvement; as i believe you try to as well. And the amount of research involved is crippling my life. I am addicted to truth. and it seems to be worse than any addicition i have known. But please be rational, thoughtful and yourself. By the way, anything someone taught you or you read somewhere is not yourself. Anything you believe is not yourself. Only when you ask yourself an honest question and in turn actively , honestly answer it, do you become yourself outside of the culture you are living in and finally become an asset and not a liability to progress.
Won’t it be funny if i buy you a pint someday
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:49 amcheers:)
Still, have not said a word about your definition of energy or if you would like to be an iraqi civilian? mmmm…simple questions and you have nothing to say. Quick, google some more!
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:51 amjuan C, “so it all depends whether you believe the source of information or not? Why dont you tell me where do I have to take the information from? ”
Ummm…yeah! There are credible, neutral sources of information and then there are biased sources that have an agenda. I cited the former. You the latter.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:52 amthere is no neutral source; no objectivity due to the inherent bias of the author.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:54 amAh…Juan, I didn;t realize your questions were anything other than rhetorical. No, I would not want to be an Iraqi or a citizen of any other country for that matter…I love being an American, a citizen of the greatest nation on earth. …
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 amnice work exxonley. you delve in complete fantasy as far as saddam’s interaction with america from 1979-1991 is concerned. he most unfortunately did receive all manner of weapons from america. this is a matter of public record, as are the nice diplomatic statements you cite (and a nice job of cover-your-ass diplomacy that was on schultz’s part).
but as the joke goes: how did we know saddam had wmd’s? we still have the receipts!
incidentally, i think it’s a travesty that you can approach the 1953 iran coup d’etat with such clarity and not see iraq as what it is: just another in a string of oil grabs. it has nothing to do with the war on terror, it was a monumental policy blunder, a tactical failure, and it has weakened america extensively.
conversely, it did prove that bush has the leadership skills of a rock. rocks don’t change course. rocks don’t change anything.
and you didn’t address my other points from #139. what, no rebuttals? i must be right, then.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:59 ampost 147 is for Exely
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 amPR, Sorry, but it ain’t fantasy…It’s history, as the supporting documents show
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:01 amPR, There is a HUGE difference between Iran in the 1950s and Iraq…One involved a democrtaically elected government and the other involved a murderous genoiciaal dictator who supported terrorist groups, includingthose who killed 3000 innocent people on 9/11…
Well, gentlemen…It is late. Until next time. Good night.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:04 amAnyone promoting one country over another in the name of History , as exley is doing, obviously has a weak grasp of the balance of nature and the nature of observation of it
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:05 amI love being an American, a citizen of the greatest nation on earth. …
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:06 amComment by Exley — July 3, 2006 @ 1:57 am
Good to hear that. I am also an American (from America, the continent, ignorant) You dont even have a word to describe where are you from. As for the second part of your sentence, Ronald McDonald has done a great job on you. Well done.
Anyone promoting one country over another in the name of History , as exley is doing, obviously has a weak grasp of the balance of nature and the nature of observation of it
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:08 amComment by Frank — July 3, 2006 @ 2:05 am
Totally agreed. Nice balanced posts, pal.
to put an end to this fantasizing by exxonly right now:
that is from the congressional record.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:13 amthat is from the congressional record.
Comment by Progressaurus Rex — July 3, 2006 @ 2:13 am
Ouch!!!
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:18 amalso from that report:
so, as i said, exxonley — you present a complete fantasy.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:20 amand the money shot:
yes, reagan was an american icon — he gave us the rise of BOTH osama bin laden and saddam hussein (with the help of rumsfeld, of course).
maybe we should put him on mt. rushmore — so i can stand on the top of his head and piss down his face.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:29 amProgressaurus: Aussie fella, nice blog you have. Good night.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:38 amthanks, juan…
i’m actually a dual citizen — grew up and went to college in america. am registered to vote there (florida) and do care about what’s going on immensely. i’m not going to stand by and let america be hijacked by bush/cheney/rumsfeld, or their supporters exxonley, frau tripey, et al. i will oppose them anywhere.
laterer.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:58 amHEH! I love how PR keeps misrepresenting his posting, saying his information comes from the Congressional Record. What he deliberately fails to say is that what he is sending is actually a Newsweek article being read into the Congressional Record. It is not fom any offical government document…
Nice try, Progressaurus Rex…Maybe you fool someone like Juan C who apparently has no understanding of how the U.S. government functions but your dishonesty does not work with me…Better liuck next time, junior!
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:25 am[...] In an appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolous, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not briefed on the bank surveillance program until the White House knew the New York Times was publishing the story. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: The White House said they briefed the Congress on this matter and there is no law called into question. Do you believe that a law is called into question and that this program might have been illegal? DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Well, I’m on the Intelligence Committee. I can tell you when I was briefed and when the committee was briefed — and that was when it became apparent that the New York Times had the story and was going to run it. And that’s when and why they came to us and briefed us. STEPHANOPOULOS: So you knew nothing about it before the New York Times was asking questions? FEINSTEIN: That’s correct. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:55 amyou are an absolute idiot, exxonley.
go back and look at that link again. it’s eleven pages long. it’s not just newsweek that’s being read into the congressional record there, buddy.
it’s also reports from the department of commerce and the center for disease control, both of which provide detailed lists of all of the viruses, retroviruses, bacteria, and fungi that were sent to iraq.
from much deeper in that link, where cowards fear to tread:
it would be waaaaaaaay too tedious to list everything in the report here – it is eleven pages afterall – so you’ll have to go back and read it. it’s a pretty shocking list. reagan shipped the plague to saddam? what a saint.
you’ll find most of the substantive evidence nearer to the end of the link, exxonley. sorry you couldn’t take it upon yourself to read that far. i know how anxious you are to find the truth.
interesting how earlier you asked for proof from the congressional record, then once that proof was provided, you attacked it after only having taken enough time to read one paragraph. that’s republican fact-finding for you – only find the facts that support the ideology. ignore the rest.
you don’t want facts, exxonley. you want a silly chest-puffing ideology for subservient cowards that’s all about who can scream their version of the truth the loudest and demonize those that don’t think like you. to you “dishonesty” is anything that contradicts your ideology.
enjoy your alternate reality, exxonley. while it lasts.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:42 amI miss the rule of law. If only we had something like an opposition party if not a congress that respected the Bill of Rights and Consititution.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:01 amOnce again, Chimpy BREAKS THE LAW and then LIES LIKE A RUG about it. C H I M P E A C H!!
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:03 amHe said, she said? There is no doubt that “he” is lying. It is doubtful that “he” has ever told the truth about anything in his entire life. He knows not what “truth” is.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:10 amIMPEACH!
Why have the checks and balance system ? The Republicans are getting away with all this illegal stuff. Where are those brave Republicans who will stand up to this president? Bush is proving to the world that this check and balance system can be full of flaws. Our forefathers must be turning over in their grave to see where our country is now.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:17 am155 couldn’t leave this out there–the offhand comment that Saddam Hussein was “a murderous genoiciaal dictator who supported terrorist groups, includingthose who killed 3000 innocent people on 9/11…
murderoud genocidal dictator–yes
supported the terrorists who killed over 3000 people on 9/11–no
The bipartisan 9/11 commission found no credible evidence that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda on ANY attacks on the US http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46254-2004Jun16.html
President Bush has himself admitted there was no link between Iraq and the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/no-saddam-qaeda.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm
I don’t know what is meant when someone says Saddam Hussein “supported” those who attacked us on 9/11. I really don’t. But the statement suggests that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, which it most certainly did not, as the 9/11 commission and the President agree.
I posted this because there has been a lot of confusion as to whether Iraq was involved in 9/11. As recently as Feb. 2005, nearly half of those polled in a Harris poll believed Saddam Hussein helped “plan and support” the 9/11 terrorists. 44% erroneously believed that some of the terrorists were actually Iraqis. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=544
When people make sloppy, unsubstantiated statements that Saddam Hussein “supported” the 9/11 terrorists, other people develop the erroneous ideas reported in the Harris poll.
It is important to be precise about these things. Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11. The people who attacked us were not Iraqis. Statements that suggest otherwise are really insidious as they may fool people into believing something that’s just not true.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:40 ameblair,
No one has said that Saddam Hussein had a role in or had foreknowledge of the 9/11 atrocity. As you correctly point out, even President Bush has expressly said as such.
However, what is beyond doubt is that Saddam Hussein maintained a relationship with and likley provided training, nerve gas expertise, and an offer of safe haven to Osama Bin Laden. This has been confirmed by the 9/11 Commission and has been widely reported in the media. Even Richard Clarke is on the record as saying there is intelligence linking Al Qaeda and Iraqi nerve gas experts.
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:54 amTO THE COMMENT MADE BY MARK. BUSH DOESN’T NEED FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO EMBARRASS HIM, HE EMBARRASSES HIMSELF ON A DAILY BASIS.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:18 amAh, progressaurus rex , now that I have smoked out some of your less than completely honest postings (such as misrepresenting a Newsweek article as an officual congressional finding) I am glad you finally have submitted something like real evidence. It makes your argument much more credible when you stick to the facts (Although, your name-calling is a tad immature…Work on that, will you?)…Now, as to the substance of the Riegle letter and the other documents attached: There is really nothing new here…The fact that the U.S. sent Iraq dual-use biological samples is fairly well-established. What is not at all clear (to my knowledge) is to what extent, if any, those dual-use samples were used in Iraq’s BW programs. As UNSCOM reported: “This suggests that the Iraqi government may have been experimenting with the materials cited above (E. coli and rDNA) in an effort to create genetically altered microorganisms (novel biological warfare agents).” A less than concrete conclusion, wouldn’t you say?
But let us, for the sake of argument, say that some of the dual use samples we sent to Iraq in the 1980s were indeed used in Iraq’s BW program — Does that fact mean the U.S. has no responsibility to rectify its mistake? Indeed, I would argue the reverse is true. If the U.S. had any responsibility in helping to creat Iraq’s BW capability, it was our moral obligation to correct that and remove Saddam and destroy his WMD programs. Even the Newsweek article you are so fond of citing writes, “America’s past stumbles, while embarrassing, are not an argument for inaction in the future.”
As I said to you yesterday, the U.S.’s actions in Iran in the 1950s were a tragic mistake, for which we are still paying the price. ISimilarly, to the extent (and that extent is debatable) we had any role in allowing Saddam to produce BWs, we had a obligation to rectify that error.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:31 amSo let’s root root root for the home team if they don’t win it’s a shame..
It’s all over folks, the great experment has left the world.
Happy Independance Day, what ever that means.
Rule of law, rule of law, rule of law. This message has been removed for your protection.
The party’s over, and our team lost.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:36 amnone of what you say is beyond doubt. actually, just the contrary is true. The 9/11 commission found that Saddam Hussein never provided training to Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. a quote from an article I referenced before: “Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein’s secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46254-2004Jun16.html
as for “safe haven” I assume you’re referring to the claim against Zarqawi. This claim is not confirmed–it is disputed–by the CIA: “like the uranium yellowcake claims—since determined to be fraudulent—that are at the heart of the CIA leak case, the administration’s original allegations about Zarqawi’s trip also seem to be melting away. An updated CIA re-examination of the issue recently concluded that Saddam’s regime may not have given Zarqawi “safe haven” after all.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831216/site/newsweek/
I don’t think Bush ever directly said Iraq was involved in 9/11, but he often mentioned Iraq and 9/11 in the same breath. see http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:39 amI think this sloppiness (which I believe was intentional) led people to believe Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, which is reflected in the Harris poll I cited. That’s why my antennae go up when I see a slippery comment like yours, that Iraq supposedly “supported” Al Qaeda, which you then backed up with assertions which, as I have shown here, are either disputed or flatly wrong (and which you incorrectly described as “beyond doubt”)
sorry, post 178 was in response to Exley, 174
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:41 ameblair, I understand your confusion and i don’t mean that sarcastically). That Washington Post article is perhaps the most cited article by those who claim that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately for those who so use it is the fact that it was rather strongly and publicy repudiated bt both Tom Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and Lee Hamilton, Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Soon after that article came out (which reports on a staff report, not the ultimate findings of th Commission, which came out a month later), both Kean and Hamiltion said:
THOMAS KEAN: Well, first of all, this is a staff report. It’s not the report of the commission or the commissioners as yet. But the staff in their investigation has found that, yes, there were contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.
MARGARET WARNER: What about the testimony that we played that the U.S. Attorney, Mr. Fitzgerald, was commenting actually on an indictment from ‘98 about sort of least an understanding between al-Qaida and the government of Saddam Hussein about not doing operations against each other, maybe in the future collaborating. Where does that fit in?
LEE HAMILTON: I don’t think there’s any doubt but that there were some contacts between Saddam Hussein’s government and al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s people.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/jan-june04/commissioon_6-16.html
More from LEE HAMILTON: “I must say I have trouble understanding the flack over this. The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government. We don’t disagree with that. What we have said is [that] we don’t have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein’s government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me.”
Then there is this from Richard Clarke in 1999 during the Clinton admnistration:
“Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of thesubstance was
produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence
exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi
nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.”
The Washington Post
January 23, 1999; Page A02
Embassy Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says; Official Cites Gains
Against Bin Laden;
There are examples of evidence showing the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Butthis sample is a good place to start.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 pmMaybe you fool someone like Juan C who apparently has no understanding of how the U.S. government functions
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:12 pmComment by Exley
I lived in South America: Argentina, Chile and sometime in Nicaragua when I was a kid. Believe me, I understand how US foreign policy works. You probably should get up from the desk, stop jerking around with google copy-pasting and take a look around in the world. I assume you have not traveled too much, probably Disneyland and you may think that is a great city. McDonalds and The Gap are not the only things this world has to offer (fortunately). You talk freely about Iraq, Afghanistan and some other country filled with american haters (sic) but you have to meet people, talk to them, discuss topics, try some other food, breath fresh air and you are going to find out that all your media has tell you is simply a lie. Until then, you are just a pathetic little poster.
Real substantive posting there, Juan C….Really thoughtful…
“you are just pathetic little poster…” Says the man who has embarassed himself countless times here with his lunatic finge “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy theory.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 pm“you are going to find out that all your media has tell you is simply a lie….”
Like the “lie” that 9/11 was perpetrated by members of the Islamist terrorist group Al Qaeda???? Is that the kind of “lie” to which you refer. Juan C????
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pmExley 180–Hamilton and Kean alluded vaguely to “shadowy” contacts and “some contacts”. They did not repudiate the commission’s findings that I cited before. I truly don’t mean what they’re alluding to–their comments are so vague. what are these contacts? who knows–they certainly did not specify
in contrast, you made some very specific assertions — you said it is beyond doubt that Saddam Hussein “provided training, nerve gas expertise, and an offer of safe haven to Osama Bin Laden. ” As I pointed out, your assertions re: training and safe haven are in dispute. The quotes you cite re: shadowy contacts or “some” contacts do not support your point–some contacts could simply mean that Bin Laden contacted Iraq to ask for help and was rejected (which was alluded to in the 9/11 commission findings I mentioned before– as quoted before “Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons”)
here is a bit more about what the Commission had to say, which suggests that there may indeed have been contacts (years ago), but that they led to nothing
“Staff Report 15, released by the commission Wednesday, detailed how a senior Iraqi intelligence officer “reportedly made three visits to Sudan” and met with bin Laden in 1994. At that meeting, the report concludes, bin Laden sought permission to establish training camps in Iraq and help in obtaining weapons, “but Iraq apparently never responded.” “There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,” the report continued. “Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/18/MNGP278BI61.DTL
Kean and Hamilton’s comments were so vague that, in a different context, they could apply to the US’s relationship with Saddam Hussein. Strictly speaking, it would be accurate to say there were “contacts” between the US and Saddam Hussein. There is a famous photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein, we gave Hussein loan guarantee assistance during the 80s, as well as providing secret intelligence and military support. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
I am NOT saying the US secretly loved Saddam Hussein. I think we made a serious mistake in the 80s in believing Hussein was someone we could work with and support. My point is that the fact that there were “contacts” between 2 parties doesn’t prove a lot. It certainly doesn’t prove the specific assertions you made about Saddam Hussein helping Bin Laden. There were “contacts” between Iraq and Bin Laden? so what? the real questions are: did they work together? did Saddam Hussein help Bin Laden? did Iraq participate in 9/11 or help with 9/11? the answers to all these questions are no, though many Americans believe otherwise–and, unfortunately, continuing to insist that Iraq supported Bin laden–and making the specific, and incorrect, assertions, that you did, give people a reason to think there was an alliance between Iraq and Bin Laden, when there was not.
Richard Clarke has also said “There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml I don’t know who the “Iraqi nerve experts” are that are referenced in the piece you quote. I spent some time trying to research this, but couldn’t find much detail. I know those on the right like to criticize Clarke as a flip flopper, but I don’t know what to make of the piece you quote in light of the staterment I quote here, in which Clarke is unequivocal about there being no evidence that Iraq supported Al Qaeda
the bottom line about all this, is that it is far from undisputed that Saddam Hussein supported Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. To the contrary, there is no evidence of a meaningful relationship or alliance, beyond allusions to a few shadowy contacts.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:56 pmExley, I will be away for a few hours. if you have further posts, glad to respond as soon as I can. just wanted to say my lack of response to further posts does not indicate agreement!
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:00 pmeblair,
First of all, I want to thank you for debating this topic in a civil and reasonable manner. You make your arguments well and back up your assertions with evidence and data. There are too many on this site — on both sides of the political spectrum — who choose to engage in mere name-calling and who do not offer any proof on support of their arguments. Folks like you, Wayne Schneider and a few others are a notable exception.
Now, as to the subtsance of your posting — I understand and agree with you that the extent of the contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda were ’shadowy” and the extent of those contacts are unclear. But far too many people here and in the media all too often make absolutist statements to the effect that there were never any contacts, that Saddam and Osama would nver consider collaborating…That, as you seem to agree, is simply not true.
My feeling is that in the wake on 9/11, the evidence we have — going back to the 1990s — that establishes there were contacts and negotiations and possibly weapons training — between Iraq, a country that had a long record of supporting terrorists and producing WMDs, and Al Qaeda, an organization that slaughtered 3,000 innocent people on 9/11, and has vowed to launch additional such attacks, made it untenable to allow the status quo to remain in place. I believe the evidence justified the deposing of Saddam Hussein. Obviously, some people disagree and have evey right to do so. I just wish they would register their disagreements while citing the actual facts — and not creating their own.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:11 pmIn oter words, eblair, I supportd the deposing of Saddam Hussein for the reasons cited by Richard Clarke in 2000:
“We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens,” says Clarke, brushing aside suggestions that a preoccupation with bin Laden has caused errors in judgment, such as the decision to retaliate for the attack on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 by bombing a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, suspected of
producing chemical agents. “We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in acourt of law,” Clarke says.
Washington Post,
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:22 pmApril 2, 2000
I suppose for the leftist “parse and paste” crowd will be schreeching (in typical “progressive” fashion!) for Bill Kellers’ resignation for LYING about the international anti-terrorist bank program. “What LIE?” one or two intellectually curious progs ask.
a.) if “Everybody knew about the program”, why was it considered “news”?
b.) Important “news” is generally placed on a newspapers prominent front page.
c.) The MOST important “news” is placed above the fold.
d.) Perhaps everybody did not know the “news” as some valuable intelligence was gained by the program.
e.) Keller spoke yesterday that while “everybody knew about the program President Bush told us about, we just filled in the details.” Thank God Keller and Pinchey weren’t in a position to know or desseniate any info about the Manhattan Project!
“My dear friend Bill, I am heartened that sympathetic and enlightened people have come to the defense of the “Newspaper of Record” – your subscription drive should be a GREAT success, God willing.
P.S. Thank you for the comprehensive information. Salaam to my dear friend and ally. Your brother in hating GWB, UBL.”
Progressive hypocrites – another chapter in loathing….
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:33 pmSays the man who has embarassed himself countless times here with his lunatic finge “9/11 was an inside job†conspiracy theory.
Comment by Exley — July 3, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
Just one or two.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:51 pmWit that argument you refuse to accept that you have never left, let alone US, your hometown, right? Remember I said I wont post more 9/11 shit. Well, I wont, no matter how fool and cheated you are going to feel the day it is confirmed. But you see, I am not happy either. This is not about you or me winning the discussion. You can post anything you want, but I am sure you are not happy with the increasing number of dead soldiers, yet you support the war. It is really sad; you may think it is cool how fast you can look for information, but the bottom line is that people are dying. Do you agree with this? I am starting to feel you dont give a shit about your own people, you just want to make the other (me, in this case) like an ass for your personal pleasure. I dont mind being an ass, I have been that before and certainly I will be that again.
mmmm…I can see, how desperate you are to google me some really cool post about legal facts, yet you can say nothing from your own experience…you have to live in order to do that.
JuanC – We call ALL of your VAST, wide-ranging and impressive CV of “personal experience” ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE….You might try combining your “own experiences” with a healthy dose of objective information. Your prejudices are just as corrosive as the prejudices of people on the other side of the spectrum.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 pmJuan C, you would be better off emulating eblair and arguing your points calmly, backed by evidence….Your efforts to play Kreskin and discern my travel history are not only unhelpful to your position, but also kind of … well…bizarre.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:14 pm#188 The big story, the one that makes this front page above the fold, is that the NYT knew about this program before Congress did.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:40 pmDear Kermie – The BIGGEST story of all is that Bill Keller is incapable of keeping HIS story straight – who knew???
P.S. The second BIGGEST investigative report in this whole banking program expose:
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:59 pmJust how many far-flung ex-pats have had their ability to donate $$$ to their favourite Muslim terrorists compromised??
Kermit…You bae just blown a major hole in The New York Times’ “What’s the big deal? Everyone know about this already” defense….
“#188 The big story, the one that makes this front page above the fold, is that the NYT knew about this program before Congress did.
Comment by Kermit the Freedom Frog — July 3, 2006 @ 3:40 pm”
Was kept Congress in the dark? Or did everybody already know about it, so there was no harm to national security?
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:06 pmJust how many far-flung ex-pats have had their ability to donate $$$ to their favourite Muslim terrorists compromised??
Comment by mighty aphrodite
None, if they still have the protection of Bush’s Saudi and Pakistani friends.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:06 pm186 Exley
thanks–and thanks to you too. I also appreciate posts without personal attacks, and with citation when relevant. As you say, this, unfortunately, comes from both sides (the personal attacks and uncited claims)–and boy is it frustrating!!
as for your point. Yes, it does sound like there were contacts between Saddam and Osama (though far from clear that these contacts were at all meaningful). But your original assertion–that it is undisputed that Saddam provided training and weapons to Al Qaeda–does not seem to be supported. I will leave that now–don’t mean to belabor the point. I think what you say next is the real issue: whether it was the right decision to attack Iraq.
I think your argument sounds like the “one per cent solution” associated with VP Cheney and the title of a recent book by Ron Susskind. That is, essentially, if there is ANY chance that someone will do us harm, we must act to take out that threat.
I do not reject this argument out of hand. I take the threat posed by Al Qaeda very seriously. I was in NYC 9/11 (not that this gives me special authority or insight) and I will never forget what happened (though not suggesting others will forget).
What really bothers me about our decision to invade Iraq is that I think we misapplied the “one per cent” doctrine. And I think the administration knowingly misled us about the threat. They made it seem like they were certain about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, when it seems that there was actually a great deal of uncertainty e.g. as to whether Iraq really had WMD, whether there was a real imminent threat from Iraq.
If the president had spoken plainly to the American people and said “look, I don’t know for sure if there is a threat in Iraq, but I don’t believe we can take any chances here”, at least that would have been an honest argument for going to war. Still not sure if I would have agreed, but I can understand that argument.
But that’s not what he and others in the admin said. They made it seem like the threat was absolutely certain. They used overheated language that gave no hint of uncertainty or complexity. (for examples of this see http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24970 ) The message was: Iraq is an imminent threat, if we don’t do something they will use the WMD–which we know for sure that they have. They have the ability to hit us and they are the biggest threat we face right now.
As Dick Cheney put it in an August 202 speech, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
In fact, there was doubt, and the administration knew it. When a CIA aide tried to point out there were red flags associated with some of the intelligence, he was ignored. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/iraq_usa_post_dc Relatedly “Bush administration officials dropped qualifications and expressions of uncertainty presented by U.S. intelligence analysts.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/08/iraq/main592207.shtml
What really shook me up, and I remember this very clearly, was an article in the Wash Post a few months before the war. I have the link at home–can post it if desired. The article looked at a couple of specific claims Bush was making about Iraq–(1) that Iraq had drone planes capable of reaching the US with chemical weapons and (2) that an IAEA report showed Iraq was 6 months from going nuclear. As the Post article explained, the information cited to support these claims was incorrect. This was amazing to me, and it is not a very complicated or ambiguous point–what Bush was saying simply was not factually correct. As I said, I can get the link if you’re interested–it’s an article from late 2002 by Dana Milbank
I don’t know what really went on. I think the admin really did believe Iraq was a threat, but it is clear that they exaggerated that threat.
If we are going to follow the one per cent doctrine, we have to be damn sure we are right. What happens when we are wrong? People won’t trust us. I think much of the world now sees the US a clumsy bully, and the next time we say someone poses a threat (e.g. Iran), we will not be taken seriously. We have lost credibility–it is like the boy who cries wolf from the childrens’ story. I think Americans feel this way as well–I think that is part of the reason why Bush’s numbers are so low, there is such ambivalence about the war in Iraq, and there is a strong feeling that the country is on the wrong track. Just speculation, but I think many people have a sense that they were misled.
This has been long so I will stop soon. One more point though. This one drives me crazy. There was a very real threat, that EVERYONE agreed was a threat in 2002-3. That was Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. If Bush had focused resources singlemindedly on tracking down Bin Laden, rooting out Al Qaeda cells, and finishing the job in Afghanistan, I think we would have had broad support both at home and abroad. But he took his eye off the ball. No one questioned that Bin Laden was a threat. We all saw what happened on 9/11. The threat posed by Iraq was much more nebulous and uncertain. It seemed possible to contain Saddam Hussein–though life in Iraq was hardly a picnic (which is a very separate question from the one at hand), he had not posed a threat to the US since the first Gulf War.
I agree that the threshold for acting against possible terrorist threats is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”. But I don’t think the evidence was there that Iraq posed a threat, even applying the one per cent doctrine. I think the case for war was exaggerated, things that were actually uncertain were made to sound certain, and people were misled. That is my complaint.
My feeling is that in the wake on 9/11, the evidence we have — going back to the 1990s — that establishes there were contacts and negotiations and possibly weapons training — between Iraq, a country that had a long record of supporting terrorists and producing WMDs, and Al Qaeda, an organization that slaughtered 3,000 innocent people on 9/11, and has vowed to launch additional such attacks, made it untenable to allow the status quo to remain in place. I believe the evidence justified the deposing of Saddam Hussein. Obviously, some people disagree and have evey right to do so. I just wish they would register their disagreements while citing the actual facts — and not creating their own.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:07 pm186, 197–sorry — I accidentally pasted a paragraph of Exley’s post from 186 into my post at 197–as the last paragraph–I don’t agree with that last paragraph! sorry for my mistake
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:13 pmAmerican Patriot,,,,I am glad you “appreciate a civil debate.” But then later on you say, “So please, do not waste any more time or space defending Bush or his indefensible actions.” Sounds to me that you don’t appreciate ANY debate? Is ThinkProgress.org an echo chamber where everyone presents sits around and agrees with one another? Sounds pretty dull.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:13 pmeblair,
A thoughful and detailed response…Let me say this: “If we are going to follow the one per cent doctrine, we have to be damn sure we are right. What happens when we are wrong? People won’t trust us.” I actually couldn’t agree with you more…Look, I would have supported the deposing of Saddam Hussein regardless of the WMD issue. My feeling after 9/11 (I too was in New York that day) was that any leader or nation that had ANYTHING to do with Al Qaeda was “fair game.”
But doubtless you are correct. The intelligence failures in Iraq do make it more difficult to build support and trust for future preemptive actions…And, as a result, unfortunately, some very real threats may be left unaddressed untl it is too late.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:20 pmyeah, that’s my concern–is Iran a threat now? I have no way to know for sure–but I am concerned that if it is, we won’t be able to gather international support…I guess if you really buy the one per cent doctrine (I guess I just don’t), then being wrong 99 times is ok as long as you’re right once. I’m concerned that when we are wrong, we increase the danger out there for us (and squander resources, including brave soldiers, better devoted elsewhere).
not to seem cantankerous, but if any leader or nation that had anything to do with Al qaeda was fair game, did you/ do you support invading Saudi Arabia? “For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al Qaeda. And for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem.†http://www.cfr.org/publication/5080/
what about the Sudan– Bin Laden operated there for 4 years http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134544,00.html Under pressure, Sudan did kick Bin laden out. But surely this at least meets the “contacts” test you applied to Iraq
I am sure Bin laden had “contacts” with other countries as well–Pakistan, the UAE, other Middle Eastern and/or Muslim countries. do we invade each one?
Not to be pedantic, but I think the real point here is that dealing with the people who attacked us on 9/11 is a very different kind of enterprise. There is a saying that generals always fight the last war. I think we are trying to treat the Al Qaeda threat as a traditional one–as one posed by a nation. When another country attacks you, you attack it. That’s the kind of war we know, that’s the way we fought in the past e.g. during WWII. Al Qaeda is not a country and Bin laden is not the head of a state. It is much more complicated to determine how to deal with this threat.
Unfortunately, when some have tried to address this reality, they have been ridiculed e.g. as when Kerry discussed the need to use law enforcement to go after terrorist cells.
I don’t think we will win this war by invading and occupying every country that had “contacts” with Al qaeda. I think priority one should have been, and should be, Bin Laden and those that follow him and act in his name (Al qaeda itself is a loosely organized group that some have compared to a franchise–this is also part of the problem. Those who act in the name of Al qaeda may never speak to Bin laden and may not even know him…)
I don’t know how you win this war. Or if it even is a “war” in the traditional sense. There are often no battlefields, often no armies standing against us. My guess (and I am far from an expert) is that it is more like the hunt for terrorists that followed the killings at the Olympic games in Munich. But I don’t like what we’ve been doing since 2002. I think Iraq has been a major diversion, and a sad and unnecessary cause of many lost lives, many wasted dollars, and much wasted energy that could have been better used going after people we KNOW mean us harm, and have the ability to do us harm
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:40 pmExley and Mighty Aphrodite…Thank you for your answers. NOw I know you dont know anything about other people but what your media told you. That saves a lot of typing. Keep on the good desk work.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:23 pm[...] via ThinkProgress Today on ABC, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that she wasn’t briefed until after it was clear the New York Times was publishing the story. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 6:55 pm#194 – “So please, do not waste any more time or space defending Bush or his indefensible actions.” Comment by american Patriot
******Wow!!! This sounds like a “new and improved” debating technique. But seriously, the debate MUST include the unwillingness of Saddam Hussein to comply with terms of the 1991 Cease Fire Agreement, Saddam’s conspiracy to commit the murder of President Bush the Elder, the entreched status of the Sunnis, the oppression of the Kurds and Shi’ites, the collusion of Saddam and Syria’s Assad to smuggle weapons and money, the payment of terror checks to Palestinian suicide bombers, etc. A fact readily dismissed or completely ignored by many opposing the US position in Iraq is the highly educated status of many Iraqi’s (including women) and the large percentage of the population with a more tolerant secular tradition.
You may want to revise your comment, “I also appreciate a civil debate.” to “I also appreciate a civil debate, as long as you see things my way…”
Happy Fourth of July, American Patriot!
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:08 pm[...] From ThinkProgress.org Diane Feinstein says the Senate Intelligence Committee wasn’t briefed by the administration regarding the bank transactions monitoring until it knew for sure that the NYTimes was running the story… This shows that The ChimpCo Secrecy Brigade will not inform the people who need to know about these things unless it is forced to do so. Thank you New York Times for holding these crooks accountable. [...]
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:24 pmnice to see exxonly try and take the high road here after what has been a continual stream of truth-denying, willful ignorance of facts provided, and pure ideological bloviating. how “civil and reasonable” of you.
let’s recap-
ex #61: feinstein didn’t need to be briefed under the law, she’s not a member of the gang of 8.
me #77: ahh yes, but harman, who is a member of the gang of 8, has said the same thing — bush didn’t brief until after he knew he was caught.
ex #78: pretends to know my mind, claims i don’t know about the gang of 8, even though i’ve just rebutted his point.
ex #89: trumpeting administration “accomplishments” in afghanistan, fails to note that we pulled out majority of our troops without finishing the job, it’s 5 years after 9/11, bin laden still at large…
ex #95: angered by the accusation that reagan and poppy bush gave saddam weapons, indignantly, “Got any evidence of that???? A link? A newspaper article? A citation in the Congressional Record?”
me #97: again, harman — a member of the gang of eight — has already confirmed what feinstein says here. bush didn’t brief until he knew he was caught. also some comments about exley defending failure.
ex #101: claims that i love harman, again seeks to associate me with his own erroneous opinion. says, rightfully so, that hoekstra says he was briefed. then makes the illogical leap to conclude, “The other seven were briefed, including the Democrats”. no citations, no proof, just an assertion. exxonly must be omnipotent. still, neglects to acknowledge that harman’s contention that she wasn’t briefed is in fact a problem for the white house. she is, after all, a member of the gang of 8.
ex #107: pure neocon boilerplate. ideological platitudes. an obvious attempt at the old ‘let’s make two-dimensional, black and white arguments in order to get to our favorite right-wing pasttime: accusing people of being terrorists and traitors!’. because that’s so “civil and reasonable” after all.
me #114: a point-by-point rebuttal of exxonley in #107.
me #115: giving frau tripey all “she” deserves. there is no point debating with a sociopath like tripey.
ex #119: displaying that endearing paternalistic quality that is just hard not to love, exxonley says, “I am patient with them, like a teache needs to be patient with his children”. no, that’s not condescending. i wonder why anyone has a problem with exxonley (who at this point begins to sound suspiciously like sEiXXON…). like a teache[r] needs to learn how to spell…
ex #123: now begins with the outright lying. says, “As we all know, the U.S. did not provide weapons to Saddam Hussein” — offers no evidence to back up this sweeping claim. credibility officially ended.
ex #127: a sad failure at debunking, which actually at some points serves to reiterate my points. nice one on the chalabi thing, though. i guess i should’ve added this.
me #128: rebuttal to exxonley’s preposterous energy policy proposition, which, incidentally, still goes unchallenged.
ex #133: an attempt to use diplomatic statements made by george p schultz in 1984 to disprove the us-iraqi weapons connection. again, nice try, but total cherry-picking and insubstantial. par for the course (see #167 for the truth in this matter). neglects to mention these inconvenient details about george schultz.
ex #136: exxonley proudly touts a source that does much more to disprove his own assertations. a thorough reading (and not the neocon skim and cherry-pick version) bears this out. once again, choosing the facts to fit the ideology.
me #139: a rebuttal of the ridiculous claims made by exxonley in #127, highlighting the right-wing selective and convenient outrage with respect to saddam. where was the outrage in 1983? where was the outrage in 1991, when we were at saddam’s doorstep, we knew he had wmds, we knew he was a brutal and ruthless dictator, and dick cheney was secretary of defense? the “moral choice to remove saddam” argument dies a lonely death.
ex #141: response to #139 that completely ignores all points made except the first and last. beginning to see a trend in exxonley’s ability to skim and cherry pick. by this point exxonley has chosen to ignore multiple debunkings of his erroneous assertions.
me #142: further proof of saddam’s possesion of the “ames strain” of anthrax, developed at iowa state university. based on claims that surfaced in 2001 at newsmax, of all places.
ex #146: attacks, makes no effort to address the anthrax statements from #142.
me #152: pointing out that exxonley has now fallen way behind in responding to my statements.
ex #155: exxonley bids us good night, but not before trotting out the fantasy line, “a murderous genoiciaal dictator who supported terrorist groups, includingthose who killed 3000 innocent people on 9/11…”. this is pure fiction, and has been wholly disproven. you can quote the 9/11 commission all you want, but we must remember that their report is incomplete (doesn’t even address the collapse of wtc 7) and at current time is incongruous with both the fema report and the nas report.
me #159, #161, #162: i quote the congressional record about the us giving saddam weapons. exxonley specifically requested a congressional record citation or a newspaper article in #95.
ex #165: unbelievably, exxonley rejects the citation from the congressional record. clearly not having read it all, he dismisses it as “actually a Newsweek article being read into the Congressional Record”. however, it is very compellingly much more than that, including official government documentation from the department of commerce and cdc of the biological agents that were sent to saddam. as an aside, i must note that i was under the impression that newsweek was a reputable news outlet, and i do seem to recall that in #95 exxonley did ask for “A link? A newspaper article? A citation in the Congressional Record?”. but now a newspaper article isn’t good enough. and of course the right-wing no longer want a free press, so why am i surprised?
me #167: i have clearly lost patience with exxonley, for now after i have given him exactly what he was asking for (in #95), he off-handedly rejects it as “dishonesty” — not because it is wrong or untrue, but because it repudiates his ideological viewpoint. there could be no clearer indication here: exxonley has been proven wrong and has chosen to willfully ignore the plain facts from the congressional record: anthrax, dengue virus, the plague, all shipped to saddam. exxonley has also been proven to be a skim and cherry-pick right-winger, as his assertion that the congressional record link was only a newsweek article is blatantly untrue. he didn’t even read the link past the first paragraph.
finally, ex #176: exxonley here trying damage control. spinning reality, this he writes to me- “now that I have smoked out some of your less than completely honest postings (such as misrepresenting a Newsweek article as an officual congressional finding) I am glad you finally have submitted something like real evidence”. i misrepresented nothing. he acts like he’s referring to two separate sources, where in fact the link i provided was only one source — the congressional record! i reiterate: i was under the impression that newsweek was a reputable news outlet. the presence of the article in the congressional record merely underscores that. the link, in fact, gives you everything you asked for in #95 — a link, a newspaper article and a citation in the congressional record — yet you attack, you call it “dishonesty”, you refuse to accept it. you are a hypocrite, exxonley.
this is the guy that claims to be “civil and reasonable”. yet in the face of clear factual evidence, he retreats into ideological neocon-land where the only facts that matter are the ones that agree with your ideology. i have presented here numerous postings of fact and evidence, only a few of which have actually been responded to by exxonley with little more than “ha! we all know that’s a lie!”
exxonley taking the “high road” and praising himself about how fair and civil he is, well that’s pure fantasy, which has been my point this entire time. he’s guilty of skim and cherry pick debating, convenient and selective outrage over saddam’s brutality, and myopic fact-checking that disregards all facts that disagree with his ideology.
exxonley, you have no credibility and you live in a fantasy world.
back on topic, a fact to which you have still not properly responded:
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:21 pmharman, who is a member of the gang of 8, has said the same thing — bush didn’t brief until after he knew he was caught.
I was born in California, and I am a Democrat who now lives in Georgia, but that pic of Sen. Feinstein on here makes me quesy! She looks like an old hag who dyed her hair black to hide the gray, and her support for the Iraq fiasco occupation is plain revoltingly disgusting! She acts like Lieberman’s nasty sister > sorry to say that, but true!
July 4th, 2006 at 1:53 am207 – yes, unfortunately in america we have political fiefdoms — shelby in alabama, lieberman, lugar, byrd (since 1959!), lott & cochran from ms (’79 & ‘89), ted stevens of alaska (’68), mccain, biden, dodd, inouye (’63), kentucky sen mcconnell and , the massachusetts contingent (’62 & ‘85), the iowa contingent (’81 & ‘85), new mexico (’73 & ‘83) and my favorite: conrad burns.
burns beat an incumbent in montana on a campaign of pushing for term limits, making the promise that he’d leave after 2 terms. he’s now running for his 4th term.
term limits are a good idea. too bad burns isn’t a man of his word.
that is a weird picture of feinstein, i agree…
July 4th, 2006 at 2:28 am“AMERICA, FROM FREEDOM TO FASCISM”
July 4th, 2006 at 3:12 amThe scariest goddamn film you’ll see this year. It will leave you staggering out of the theatre, slack-jawed and trembling. Makes ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ look like ‘Bambi.’ After watching this movie, your comfy, secure notions about America — and about what it means to be an American — will be forever shattered. Producer/director Aaron Russo and the folks at Cinema Libre Studio deserve to be heralded as heroes of a post-modern New American Revolution. This is shocking stuff. You’ll be angry, you’ll be disgusted, but you may actually break out in a cold sweat and feel a sickness deep in your gut; I would advise movie theatre managers to hand out vomit bags. You may end up needing one.”
….Todd David Schwartz, CBS
#201: “There is a saying that generals always fight the last war.”
You mean instead of dealing with the present threat of al Qaeda, we attacked Iraq again? Hmmm…
July 4th, 2006 at 1:17 pm211–yeah, that works too…sadly
maybe the new saying should be “presidents always fight the last war”
July 4th, 2006 at 1:46 pm210–AP–yes, polls show Americans don’t support Bush and think we are on the wrong track as a country
here’s hoping that translates into Dem victories this fall, and that the Dems can start to fix things
I am not a blind Dem loyalist and don’t see them as saviors. But I am hoping they can do better than those currently in power.
Can anyone fix the situation in Iraq? not sure. But the first step is to acknowledge what a mistake we made there and what a mess we have placed our soldiers in the middle of
July 4th, 2006 at 1:49 pmCan anyone fix the situation in Iraq? not sure. But the first step is to acknowledge what a mistake we made there and what a mess we have placed our soldiers in the middle of
Comment by eblair #213
eblair,
…the “thinking”, patriotic American electorate can…
…had we voted in a new regime in ‘04…
…the world would now be helping us to solve the problem in Iraq that the TREASONOUS criminal Bushite junta…
…and his TREASONOUS inbred loyalists…
…created…
If in ‘06 we vote to take back the Congress from the TRAITOR Repulsivescum fascists…
…and proceed to impeach and offer up for prosecution the criminals Bushiva and L’il Dick et al……
…I firmly believe the world will rally behind us…
…and Iraq will see success due to international aide…
July 4th, 2006 at 3:01 pmoops! Forgot to post what I was going to on Feinstein!
…she’s an AIPAC moll…
…i see the way of Lieberman in her future…
July 4th, 2006 at 3:03 pmI hope so big papa
July 4th, 2006 at 3:51 pm218–AP, would be nice to see Dems get the House and/or Senate in November–hope they win big. Webb does seem like one Senate candidate who has a good shot–Casey is another (v. Santorum).
happy 4th to you too
July 4th, 2006 at 9:23 pmOkay lets get a couple of things straight. First in my opinion every Senator, Congressman, Congresswoman to include Bush & Co. should be charged with TREASON against the USA. They should be arrested and tried in a Federal court of Law. If you can find one that is not controlled in one way or another by them. Why do I think this? First when I heard that Saddam was invading Kuwait in 1990 I believed them until….. I learned and found out that…
1. The reason that Saddam had invaded Kuwait was because the Sandi’s were drilling for oil on the border and there drill holes were boring at an angle that went into Iraq. Yep that’s right.
2. When that woman from Kuwiat sat before congress and described how the Iraqi soldiers had went into one of the main hospitals and dumped the newborn babies onto the floor and stole the pre-neo units. I found out later that that was a lie also. First the woman that testified before congress lied, that the incident didn’t happen. It was a multi media ploy to win support against Saddam. Now it’s a Federal crime to testify before congress and lie under oath. But it seems that this woman was a diplomats daughter and had diplomatic immunity.
3. Seems like old Saddam stepped out of line by going into Kuwait and the Oil barons were afraid that their precious profits were going to go down.
4. 9/11 Now thats a good one. Yes I an sorry that so many people lost there love ones at that tragic event and my sympathy goes out to every family that lost a love one there. But first of all how do you use a cell phone at 25 to 35,000 feet, (look up how a cell phone works, I mean really look up and see how it works.
What was that strange object underneath the second airplane that hit the twin towers. Why did building 7 fall the same was as the two towers did when it wasn’t that close to the twin towers. It seem that building 7 fell the same way the two towers fell. Now your saying to your self RIGHT. How is it that the heat from the airplanes crashing into the twin towers caused them to fall. First of all no matter how many times the Govt. tell the same lie the LIE just doesn’t add up. Don’t believe me? Then look up the melting point for steel, and how it is forged and what ever. You might find out that your conclusions come out different also. Next WHY…. were there only a 1 minute section on the news about all the gold and silver that was in the bottom level underneath the one tower. There was a Full tractor trailer fully loaded with gold in one of the tunnels, No guards,nobody even around it. NO the tunnel was not damaged either.
Why were only the Saudi’s allowed to fly on proceeding daysafter 9/11 and no one else not even Bush’s daddy himself, all traffic flights had been closed, but not for the Saudi’s.
. Why are 6 of the so called terrorist still alive and in other countries. They reported that their passports had been stolen after having heard that there names were on the FBI’s most wanted list. AHHHH No you don’t get the point. The point is that the people that the FBI has had on there list supposedly died but yet here are the real people saying, there alive and they had noting to do with the situation.
I could go on and on but the matter of the fact is that corruption is so rampart in America that you need a computer to wade through the bullshit and the lies. Yes the lies. You can believe what you want but a LIE is still a Lie no matter what lawyer says that its not true. Its only misinterpretation of the truth.
So now we have a war. No we didn’t go there to liberate the Iraqis, to give then the freedom that they should so richly deserve. To be a democratic society and be part of the World community. It was so that the main Oil companies could gain control of their Natural resources. Again if you don’t believe it. Iraq produces a lot of Oil every day yet I keep hearing how much money we are spending there. BUT NO RESULTS.
The Iraqi’s were paying 3 cents a gallon. THAT’s RIGHT!!! 3 CENTS a GALLON. But Haliburton charged the taxpayer 2.97 a gallon from kuwait. Hmmmmm The Whitehouse said it was so low because of govt. was help ing subidize gas there. Thats a lie also.
With all the Lies over and over again why should we believe anything any politician has to say..
July 5th, 2006 at 9:45 pmLt. Tom Cotton writes this morning from Baghdad with a word for the New York Times:
Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:
Congratulations on disclosing our government’s highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)
Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato’s guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months’ salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.
Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion — or next time I feel it — I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others — laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
Very truly yours,
Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq
And if you question the reality of this letter: Check out THIS at Snopes.com . So again, I reiterate: I know where the whiners stand as far as their patriotism of dissent.
Tom Cotton
Claim: Letter from U.S. Army lieutenant serving in Iraq criticizes the New York Times for publishing information about a secret government program.
Status: True.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Lt. Tom Cotton writes this morning from Baghdad with a word for the New York Times:
Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:
Congratulations on disclosing our government’s highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)
Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato’s guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months’ salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.
Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion — or next time I feel it — I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others — laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
Very truly yours,
Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq
Origins: The
above-quoted letter from Tom Cotton, a U.S. army lieutenant serving in Iraq, criticizing the New York Times for its controversial decision to publish information regarding a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions (contrary to requests from senior administration officials to withhold the story), appeared in Power Line on 26 June 2006. (New York Times executive editor Bill Keller subsequently published an opinion piece defending his paper’s decision to run the story.)
Much discussion has since ensued over whether Lt. Cotton is a real person (especially since “Tom Cotton” is also the name of a Hobbit who appears in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings). But earlier news accounts, such as this article from the Houston Chronicle, do indeed describe a Houston man named Thomas Cotton who left a law practice in January 2005 to enlist in the Army and train at Officer Candidate School:
Local Army recruiters said a Harvard-educated lawyer left his practice in Houston and departed for basic training, which will be followed by Officer Candidate School.
Thomas Cotton, 27, was in his third year of law school when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, said Lt. Col. Roger Jones, commander of Army Recruiting Battalion Houston.
Cotton decided to enlist, Jones said, but first wanted to get his law degree and work long enough to repay the money he had borrowed for his education.
He added that Cotton left without talking to the media because “he didn’t want the publicity to enhance his military career.”
Last updated: 7 July 2006
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/tomcotton.asp
July 8th, 2006 at 5:21 pmHalliburton’s “Sweetheart” deals in Iraq
If you are a slave to the normal sources of news, you probably are under the belief that Halliburton, former employer of our esteemed vice president, has been awarded a myriad of “no-bid†contracts for work in Iraq. You may also be under the impression that this is why we went to war with Iraq, to line Halliburton’s, and by proxy, the Friends of Bush’, pockets.
Leading the attack is California Democrat Henry Waxman, but it was quickly picked up and amplified by all manner of traditional media.
Some facts for you:
In the early 1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers decided they needed to retain a US company under a long term contract to provide random services to the Army as needed. The Army needed a method to get things done on short notice without having to go through the exhaustive government procurement and bidding process for every project. This was dubbed “Logistics Civil Augmentation Program“, or LOGCAP.
In 1992 Halliburton won the bidding process for this contract, and lost it in 1997 to Dynacorp.
Despite having lost the contract in 1997, Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract by the Clinton administration to conduct work needed by US Peacekeepers in the Balkans because it made little sense to change contractors in mid-stream. Halliburton already had boots on the ground, and had experience doing what the Army needed them to do. In fact, Halliburton became one of the Clinton administration’s favorite outsourcing contractors, doing work for them in Haiti and Somalia, as well as Bosnia.
In 2001, Halliburton was again awarded with the LOGCAP contract, after the requisite bidding process.
In the months leading up to the current conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was asked (under LOGCAP) to formulate a contingency plan to deal with Iraqi oil fires, should Saddam Hussein repeat his crimes of the first Gulf War by setting his oil wells on fire. Halliburton had put out 350 such fires in Kuwait, so they seemed the logical choice to turn to for such advice. “To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root [Halliburton] was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort,” said the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. General Robert Flowers.
In February of 2003, on the eve of hostilities, Halliburton was tapped to implement the contingency plan it had created, under the LOGCAP contract. “Only [Halliburton], the contractor that developed the complex, classified contingency plans, could commence implementing them on extremely short notice“, wrote Lt. General Flowers.
Not knowing how many oil wells would be set ablaze by Saddam, the Army estimated the value of this contract at “between $0 and $7 Billion“ (the fires in Kuwait had cost $2.5B to extinguish). The actual value of the contract is now estimated to be around $600M, but the detractors still cling to the $7B number when attacking the administration about it.
So what are we to conclude by this episode?
Halliburton: The Bush/Iraq Scandal that Wasn’t
The president’s critics come up empty.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This appeared in the July 14, 2003, issue of National Review.
On March 24, Halliburton, the giant energy-services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, announced that a subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had signed a contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires in Iraq, as well as to evaluate and repair the Iraqi oil infrastructure. The announcement set off an angry reaction in some circles on Capitol Hill. On March 26, California Democratic representative Henry Waxman wrote a letter to the Corps demanding to know why the contract was signed “without any competition or even notice to Congress.” On April 8, Waxman, joined by Democratic representative John Dingell, requested a General Accounting Office investigation, writing that “ties” between Cheney and Halliburton “have raised concerns about whether the company has received favorable treatment from the administration.” On April 10, Waxman wrote the Corps again, demanding more information. More Waxman letters followed on April 16, May 6, and June 6.
Liberal voices in the press followed Waxman’s lead. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Michael Kinsley called the Halliburton contract “nation-building, Republican-style, with huge contracts awarded in secret to politically connected companies.” The New York Times editorialized that the contract “looks like naked favoritism” and “undermines the Bush administration’s portrayal of the war as a campaign for disarmament and democracy, not lucre.”
One element missing from all the criticism was a serious examination of what the Halliburton contract actually involved and how it came to be signed. For example, was it really reached without competition, as Waxman charged? As it turns out, the evidence that is publicly available (some of it remains classified) suggests that Waxman’s accusations are misleading at best and flat wrong at worst. It appears not only that there was not “naked favoritism” at work in the Halliburton contract, but that the Corps of Engineers, and the Bush administration, acted reasonably and properly in awarding the contract — no matter what Waxman says.
THE FIRES THIS TIME?
Waxman has made three basic accusations about the Halliburton deal. The first is that it was signed without appropriate competition. The second is that it called for Halliburton to be paid under an arrangement that — Waxman says — often results in overcharges to the government. The third objection is that it is a questionable use of federal money because of what Waxman calls Halliburton’s “troubling” performance record.
First the competition issue. Last year, as administration officials made plans for war in Iraq, they were greatly concerned that Saddam Hussein would set fire to his country’s oil fields, just as retreating Iraqi troops had done in Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf War. That, military planners knew, would result in a huge economic and environmental disaster. “The model we were looking at was what the Iraqis had done in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War,” says Lt. Col. Eugene Pawlik, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. “We had to consider the possibility that the Iraqis would set that many or more wells on fire in Iraq and what it would take for us to throw a maximum response at a maximum destruction scenario.”
Last November, the Corps assigned Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton since the 1960s, to do a classified study of potential damage and repairs in the Iraqi oil fields. Contrary to Waxman’s assertion, the work was done under a competitively awarded contract system known as the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. The LOGCAP system came about because of the military’s need to perform complex jobs — peacekeeping in Bosnia, intervention in Haiti — on sometimes very short notice. In such situations, American troops require lots of logistical support; camps have to be built, utilities have to be supplied, food has to be cooked. By the early 1990s, as the size of the active-duty force shrank, the Pentagon began to “outsource” much of that work, that is, pay civilian contractors to do it rather than tie up soldiers with non-essential tasks. Instead of going through a months-long competitive-bidding process for each job, the military came up with LOGCAP.
LOGCAP is, in effect, a multi-year supercontract. In it, the Army makes a deal with a single contractor, in this case Halliburton, to perform a wide range of unspecified services during emergency situations in the future. The last competition for LOGCAP came in 2001, when Halliburton won the contract over several other bidders. Thus, when the oil-field study was needed, Corps officials say, Halliburton was the natural place to turn. “To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort,” Corps commander Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers wrote to Waxman in April.
In February 2003, with the study done, the Corps of Engineers decided to issue a contract to actually execute the plan that KBR had drawn up for dealing with problems in the Iraqi oil fields. At the end of that month, Army headquarters authorized the Corps to issue a sole-source contract to KBR. (The assignment seemed logical for another reason: Halliburton/KBR put out 350 oil-well fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.) “Only KBR, the contractor that developed the complex, classified contingency plans, could commence implementing them on extremely short notice,” Flowers wrote Waxman. “The timing was driven by Central Command’s operational requirement to have support available in advance of possibly imminent hostilities.” Flowers added that the contract was always intended as a temporary “bridge” to a more permanent contract that would be offered for competitive bidding.
The next question was how large the contract should be. That was a difficult problem, because no one knew how big the problem would be. Would all the fields burn? Would none of them? Just a few? The Army assumed a worst-case scenario and decided the contract would be worth any amount between $0 and $7 billion (a common contracting practice known as ID/IQ, which stands for indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity). The $7 billion cap was thought to be sufficient to handle any emergency.
When the Army told Waxman that, he immediately began calling the KBR deal a $7 billion contract. “We are told it was a short-term contract for very little money, then it turned out it was a $7 billion contract,” he said on National Public Radio in early May. What Waxman did not say was that he had been told a month earlier that the contract would not be worth anywhere near the cap amount. Because most of the anticipated disasters did not take place, the Army has asked KBR to do much less work than the original worst-case scenario envisioned, and the contract has therefore been worth far less than it might have been. “We will come nowhere close to the $7 billion figure,” says Lt. Col. Pawlik. As of mid June, Pawlik says, the task orders issued to Kellogg Brown & Root totaled about $214 million. It’s estimated that, in the end, costs will probably amount to around $600 million. While that is not pocket change, it’s also not $7 billion — contrary, again, to Waxman’s assertion.
Army officials also suggest that critics consider what might have happened had the Iraqi situation worked out differently. Suppose the wells had been torched and the Army, following Waxman’s advice, had begun a long, complicated competitive-bidding process to find a company to put out the fires. “I don’t think people would have been satisfied for the wells to have been burning while we were going through standard contract practices,” says Pawlik. “I think we would have been getting a lot of questions about why did we pursue that course of action.”
HALLIBURTON — THE CLINTON CONTRACTOR
Waxman’s second objection concerns the way the company will be paid for its services. The LOGCAP payment method, known as a cost-plus-award, calls for KBR to be paid its costs plus a profit of 1 percent. According to the General Accounting Office, KBR could also earn “an incentive fee of up to nine percent of the cost estimate, based on the contractor’s performance in a number of areas, including cost control.” In one of his letters to the Corps of Engineers, Waxman says that the cost-plus-award system is “generally discouraged in the executive branch because it provides the contractor with an incentive to increase its profits by increasing the costs to the taxpayer.” But in fact, the cost-plus-award method is an extremely common arrangement throughout the defense-contracting industry; one can leaf through the pages of Defense Daily and see many hundreds of contracts handled on the same basis. Given such widespread use, it is hard to conclude that the cost-plus-award method somehow makes the Halliburton contract a sweetheart deal for a politically favored company. (Nor is the contract unusually generous; the LOGCAP’s range of a 1 percent to 9 percent fee is in line with standard government/industry practice.)
[Editor's note — Since this article was published in National Review magazine, Halliburton has said that while the LOGCAP that was in effect from 1992 until 1997 called for a one-to-nine percent profit range, the LOGCAP in effect now calls for significantly less, a one-to-three percent profit margin.]
Finally, Waxman objects to what he calls Halliburton’s “troubling” performance record, suggesting that Halliburton would not have gotten the contract had Vice President Cheney not once headed the company. But Waxman’s charges — and their echoes in outraged editorials — overlook Halliburton’s extensive history of defense work for earlier administrations. Indeed, far from having a “troubling” past, one could argue that Halliburton was a favorite contractor of the Clinton Pentagon.
The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992, as the first Bush administration (including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney) was leaving office. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root, as it was known at the time (Halliburton changed the name to Kellogg Brown & Root after an acquisition in 1998). The multi-year contract was in effect during much of the Clinton administration. During those years, Brown & Root did extensive work for the Army under the LOGCAP contract in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; contract workers built base camps and provided troops with electrical power, food, and other necessities.
In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, Halliburton/Brown & Root lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to Halliburton/Brown & Root to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company “had demonstrated the ability to support the operation”; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army’s sole-source Bosnia contract with Brown & Root lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . Halliburton/Brown & Root. The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.
That work received favorable notices throughout the Clinton administration. For example, Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton’s performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled “Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics,” Gore’s reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and Brown & Root, which the report said provided “basic life support services — food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services — transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance.”
In 2001, after the Bush administration came into office, the giant LOGCAP contract expired again and another competition was held. Once again, Halliburton won the contract, and it was under that arrangement that the Iraqi-oilfield analysis was done. As the record shows, Halliburton won big government contracts under the Clinton administration, and it won big government contracts under the Bush administration. The only difference between the two is that Henry Waxman is making allegations of favoritism in the Bush administration, while he appeared untroubled by the issue during the Clinton years.
INVESTIGATE, INVESTIGATE, INVESTIGATE
That is not to say that there have not been problems with Halliburton’s work — under both administrations. For example, Waxman cites a case last year in which the company paid a $2 million fine to resolve fraud allegations stemming from its work on a California military base. He also suggests that Halliburton/KBR overcharged the military throughout the Bosnia mission.
In the California case, the company clearly engaged in wrongdoing. But the scope of the problem, when considered in light of the enormous amount of work Halliburton/KBR does for the government and the fact that the issues have been resolved, does not seem a reason to cut Halliburton off from future work. As far as Bosnia is concerned, while critics correctly point out that the company’s payment far exceeded original estimates, they fail to mention that a 1997 General Accounting Office report placed the blame mostly on the Army, and not Halliburton/KBR. “Our review shows that the difference in the Army’s estimates was largely driven by changes in operational requirements once the forces arrived in Bosnia,” the GAO wrote. “Specifically, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Army, Europe, decided to increase the number of base camps from 14 large camps to 34 smaller ones and to accelerate the schedule for upgrading troop housing.” Halliburton/KBR was paid more because the Army wanted more.
Now the company is doing major work in Iraq. And while Halliburton’s record is generally good, it seems clear that projects of such enormous scope and cost warrant constant scrutiny from government accountants. Because of that, Waxman’s request for a GAO investigation of the Iraqi oil contracts seems entirely reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that by the time he made the request, the GAO had already decided to study the issue. The study will be part of a long line of GAO investigations of military matters. For example, from 1991 to 1993, the GAO published 75 reports on all aspects of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. It would not be unreasonable to expect as many from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The problem, from Henry Waxman’s perspective, is that the investigation will likely show that both the government and Halliburton/KBR acted properly. Such a conclusion won’t help Waxman’s ongoing campaign to suggest that there is something inherently corrupt in the relationship between the Bush administration and Halliburton. Nor is the New York Times likely to editorialize about it. But if the president’s critics really want the truth, they’ll have to accept the results of the investigations they have demanded.
July 8th, 2006 at 5:24 pmHmmmm I wonder which govt agency did the investagation. The one that concluded that the Saddam had wmd’s, or manybe Tom Cotton, or even one of the presidents own people. Have you ever witnessed a inspection in the Army. Sometimes its even called a supprised inspection. Its a supprise alright.The whole world knows that their coming to inspect. So What’s the point here you ask. I have you ever tried having a thief judge a thief, or maybe a govt that is corupt investagate it self? Hmmmm
July 9th, 2006 at 9:09 pmOh its late I don’t even make sence to myself lol… nite all…
July 9th, 2006 at 9:11 pmComrades,
I believe our Liberal Senator Diane Feinstein when she claims she wasn’t briefed!
But, you’re loosing focus again! There is a greater, clearer and more dangerous threat too our party that will shortly perpetrate our air-waves on ABC’s “The Path to 9/11â€
These traitors at ABC are betrayers of our new mother land. Where I come from, this Robert A. Iger would be dragged through the streets in front of the tomb of our glorious leader Vladimir Lenin and shot in public. The producers, directors, writers and anyone associated with this propaganda would be picked up in the early hours of the morning by our State Security Chief Lavrenty Beria (The Black Hand) and taken to a Siberian labor camp never too be heard from again.
For many years I have been loyal to ABC and the Pravda (truth) that our Socialist Liberal ally has put forth in order to progress our ultimate goal; the decline and absolute destruction of America and the capitalist traitorous pig’s like ABC.
I ask you Mr. Robert A. Iger, “Have you no shame Sir�
Comrades, we must not give up the fight. It has taken us many years to groom you and your elected leaders.
Remember what our great leader Nikita Khrushchev said:
“ We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism ”
It’s more important now then ever before that we stand together and stay focused! We can not allow this abomination of propaganda to go forward.
We must do whatever it takes to keep this film from airing on Sunday the 10th, 2006, we only have a few hours left.
It is your duty as loyal Liberal Socialist Democrats to rise up in solidarity and put a stop to this immediately!
Senator Harry Reid, one of our courageous and distinguished Senatorial leaders from the state of Nevada, reminded the capitalist traitorous pigs at ABC of their license from the FCC. Please Senator Reid, we’re your loyal comrades in arms and begging you to use all the glorious power you possess. You must stop this film! You must push forward with an iron fist and crush this despicable display of propaganda.
If this film isn’t stopped from airing on ABC, Sunday night, I’m afraid all our efforts since the cold war and the aspirations of our great leaders from glorious years past and Nikita Khrushchev’s dreams and predictions will have been lost.
If we loose now, the great Liberal Socialist Democratic Party, we have nurtured, will decline into the ash heaps of history never too be heard from again.
Where are our great defenders the A.C.L.U.? There silence is deafening. Their founder; Roger Nash Baldwin a supporter of the Communist Party would not let this despicable propaganda go unchallenged.
Remember comrades, we destroyed Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in the 1950’s while attempting to exploit and expose us.
This should be an easy task. We already have many supporters in positions of power. If we wish to control this country, then we must be more diligent in our efforts to stop this ABC film.
You must!…. I repeat, you must contact our comrades in arms at their offices in Washington.
Now I’ve done all the work all you have to do is contact our “elected officials†below by e-mail or call:
Clinton, Hillary Rodham- (D – NY) Class I
476 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4451
Web Form: clinton.senate.gov/contact
Reid, Harry- (D – NV) Class III
528 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3542
Web Form: reid.senate.gov/contact/email_form.cfm
Kerry, John F.- (D – MA) Class II
304 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2742
Web Form: kerry.senate.gov/v3/contact/email.html
Landrieu, Mary L.- (D – LA) Class II
724 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5824
Web Form: landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Levin, Carl- (D – MI) Class II
269 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6221
Web Form: levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Rockefeller, John D., IV- (D – WV) Class II
531 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6472
Web Form: rockefeller.senate.gov/services/email.cfm
Schumer, Charles E.- (D – NY) Class III
313 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6542
Web Form: schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm
Kennedy, Edward M.- (D – MA) Class I
317 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4543
Web Form: kennedy.senate.gov/senator/contact.cfm
Feinstein, Dianne- (D – CA) Class I
331 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3841
Web Form: feinstein.senate.gov/email.html
Leahy, Patrick J.- (D – VT) Class III
433 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4242
E-mail: senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
Stabenow, Debbie- (D – MI) Class I
133 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4822
Web Form: stabenow.senate.gov/email.htm
Durbin, Richard- (D – IL) Class II
332 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2152
Web Form: durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm
Lincoln, Blanche L.- (D – AR) Class III
355 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4843
Web Form: lincoln.senate.gov/webform.html
Feingold, Russell D.- (D – WI) Class III
506 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5323
E-mail: russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov
Harkin, Tom- (D – IA) Class II
731 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3254
Web Form: harkin.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm
Bayh, Evan- (D – IN) Class III
463 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5623
Web Form: bayh.senate.gov/WebMail1.htm
Biden, Joseph R., Jr.- (D – DE) Class II
201 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5042
E-mail: senator@biden.senate.gov
Boxer, Barbara- (D – CA) Class III
112 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3553
Web Form: boxer.senate.gov/contact
Menendez, Robert- (D – NJ) Class I
502 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-4744
Web Form: menendez.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm
Nelson, Bill- (D – FL) Class I
716 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5274
Web Form: billnelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
Obama, Barack- (D – IL) Class III
713 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2854
Web Form: obama.senate.gov/contact/
Byrd, Robert C.- (D – WV) Class I
311 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3954
Web Form: byrd.senate.gov/byrd_email.html
Cantwell, Maria- (D – WA) Class I
717 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3441
Web Form: cantwell.senate.gov/contact/index.html
Conrad, Kent- (D – ND) Class I
530 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2043
Web Form: conrad.senate.gov/webform.html
Dayton, Mark- (D – MN) Class I
123 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3244
Web Form: dayton.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
Dodd, Christopher J.- (D – CT) Class III
September 10th, 2006 at 8:48 pm448 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-2823
Web Form: dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3130
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