Bush "mis-informs" Congress?

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

Sasha said: You say that Bush "side-stepped" the issue.

Well, the "side-stepped" is a quote from the article from the link you posted.

Sasha said: What more do you want?

Only what I said. A simple, straight forward retraction from the man that said it in the first place; President Bush. Would it make George W. Bush somehow "less presidential" to say it himself?

Aside from that, I did say it was... "Good."

What more do you want?

 

[DieselDave]

Re: Bush

I can tell you what I want....A 32" inch waist again but I don't think either of us will get our wish. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

If a President personally came out and apologized for everything he said that was incorrect he would certainly need far less staff and Willie would have needed his own network. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

You know, since I posted this a month ago, a lot more has come out about this issue.

I saw the ambassador that checked out the story about a year before the speech interviewed on Meet The Press last weekend. He made it clear that his report debunking the story of Iraq getting uranium from Africa had been circulated to all regular intelligence channels including the White House specifically. Condolezza Rice (Nat'l Security Advisor to Bush) on that same program a week or so before had characterized the report as "maybe someone in the bowels of the intelligence agency knew (that the report was wrong and based on forged docuements)...but nobody else did".

That doesn't seem to be true.

So, the President's administration assembled all of our best intelligence to build a case to bomb, invade and occupy a foreign country even though some of our major Nato allies refused to help us. Shouldn't we be able to trust that the President or his National Security Advisor (who is supposed to advise on Nat'l Security...yes?), would be sure to double check our facts before committing American sons and daughters to battle? I mean, if nothing else, doesn't our credibility with our world partners demand being VERY careful with what we state as facts?

The report debunking that "Uranium from Africa", was circulated months before it was used in the speech.

I frankly am amazed that some of you are angry about Clinton lying about Monica Lewinsky...but that you don't think that reporting wrong intelligence ( known wrong intelligence) in convincing Congress to go to war is a big deal.

What if Clinton had said this instead of George W. Bush? Would you feel differently about it?

 

[Greta]

Re: Bush

Um... I wasn't aware that that one piece of intel was the single reason we "invaded" Iraq. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

 

[DieselDave]

Re: Bush

Pleaseeeee,

There is a very fundamental difference in bald face lie after lie and bad information that was a very, very, very small part of the reason we went to war with Iraq.

Take the sentence out of the SOU speech and you have the same speech with one less sentence.

I know many people want this to be the Holy Grail for the democratic party and undoubtedly someone or more will be fired but it's not Watergate or Whitewater.

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

Sasha said:
Um... I wasn't aware that that one piece of intel was the single reason we "invaded" Iraq. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

Didn't say it was...did I?
Hmmm...I thought my post was about being sure of our facts so our credibility is preserved with our world partners.

Like I say in my earlier post, apparently it doesn't bother you that our administration didn't check all of its facts on such an imporant issue? ...and, would you have cut Clinton the same slack?

 

[tsg68]

Re: Bush

12 years of trying to evade UN resolutions and continue a hostile build up of weaponry that threatens his neighbors and our allies coupled with trafficing arms and giving aid to known terrorist groups, by a known tyrant and human rights abuser and certified enemy to the United States and folks are attacking the president over one sentence evolving from one bad piece of Intel. If we judged the ways Wars were fought on bad intel alone we've lost them all. Look at the Battle of the Bulge during WWII, bad intel, and it was pushed upward through the channels despite the better judgement of some individuals and that is one historical example. The intelligence process does not always work ideally and is subject to failure at all levels. The end outcome was the same and anyone who is convincing themselves that the lack of that one sentence would have changed the course of a possible war is kidding themselves, we would have gone to war anyhow. The time to strike the Iron was while it was hot and it was cooling rapidly after the waffling of the UN and the do nothing security council whom we are about to bail out yet again in Liberia (another group of tyrants is the UN human rights commission, if you don't believe me look at the member countries' dossiers of human rights violations). The speed of the war was not just a testament to the professionalism of the American soldier but was also a testament to the fact that only the die hard loyalists that profited from the regime were willing to defend it (and the job isn't over). If you take issue with it show it in the polls.

TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

DieselDave said: Pleaseeeee,

There is a very fundamental difference in bald face lie after lie and bad information that was a very, very, very small part of the reason we went to war with Iraq.

Take the sentence out of the SOU speech and you have the same speech with one less sentence.

Hmmm. Well, it looks like you and Sasha are "cut from the same cloth".

Like I say in my earlier post, apparently it doesn't bother you that our administration didn't check all of its facts on such an important issue? ...and, would you have cut Clinton the same slack?

I haven't mentioned White Water (let's see, a hugely expensive, time consuming investigation of Clinton that proved nothing about him?) or Water Gate (an investigation that led to Nixon's resignation rather than face certain impeachment and removal for the misuse of presidential authority to cover up campaign misdeeds).

I haven't talked at all about this one sentence meaning our whole reason for invading Iraq is baseless. You must just be expecting that discussion. My post is about an administration doing its homework thoroughly before announcing "facts" to the whole world. I'll say it again, I'm amazed that people do not regard our credibility on "facts" our president says to the whole world as being important.

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

tsg68 said: If you take issue with it show it in the polls. TSG /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Well...my post isn't about this, but have you seen the polls about support for the war and the President? You haven't noticed any drop?

 

[GJW]

Re: Bush

I think it all rests on the point that its only an important issue to Bush detractors.
Five (at least) well reasoned and well-documented reasons for removing Saddam from power and you want to focus on one sentence.
Like DieselDave said, remove that one sentence and you have the same speech.
Show us one Country that committed troups because of that one sentence.
Show us one Congressman that voted because of that one sentence.

You can argue the sentence was misleading and you can believe it was intentional.
But to claim it's important to the world?
I don't see it.

 

[tsg68]

Re: Bush

I 'm not talking about media sponsored public opinion polls, those change with the wind direction and are right now influenced by folks who want the troops back home, which shouldn't happen till the job's done. I'm talking about voting at the election polls.

 

[Greta]

Re: Bush

This MIGHT be an issue if there were other MAJOR incidences of not thoroughly investigating information, etc etc. But so far, I haven't seen any other incidences. Should we be concerned if our government is going around declaring war on nations based on false information? SURE! I'm not gonna pretend that's not an issue. But it's NOT the issue in this case. I guess that's the point we're trying to make, Ikendu. You really are asking us to take a stand on a hypothetical situation. This whole "incident" is inconsequential... to everything!! It means nothing. It influenced nothing. No one but the Democrats really gives a rat's *** about it. And it is my contention that the only reason that they care is because it's all they've got.

Have I noticed the drop in the president's ratings? Yeah... and? ... I've also noticed that the Dems can't even come up with someone to run against him. Check out This article.

Would we be so nonchalant if this were Clinton? No. But that's because he lied so much to the American people that we had and have a right to get pissed at him and his gang of incompetants.

 

[GJW]

Re: Bush

[ QUOTE ]
Sasha said:
Would we be so nonchalant if this were Clinton? No. But that's because he lied so much to the American people that we had and have a right to get pissed.

[/ QUOTE ]

And if it had been Clinton his supporters would have argued that the statement was "factually" correct similar to BillClinton's argument above.

 

[tsg68]

Re: Bush

This matters as much to the world community as say the fact that Jacques Chirac is considered as notoriously corrupt as Clinton was, that Gerhard Shroeder followed public opinion on the war on his relection platform then abruptly about faced after he won the election and that Vladimir Putin is a former KGB bully-boy.

TSG

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

Well...there you go.

I guess the positions are clear.

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

tsg68 said: I'm talking about voting at the election polls.

Well... I thought I was done with this thread...but then I had one more thought.

So...what's important to you is the "voting at the election polls". Good. That IS highly important.

I suppose that since Gore got more "voting at the election polls" in the last election than Bush did...that you feel like the person in the White House is not the person that the people of our country voted to elect?

Sorry. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif It was just too hard to resist when I hear someone tell me that what really matters is the "voting at the election polls".

There are people that believe that what really matters is what happens with votes in the electoral college (that is the "law of the land" after all)...and if the delegates to the college are contested (based on contested counts from "voting at the election polls")...that what REALLY matters is what the Supreme Court does in regard to halting a legal challenge to those "voting at the election polls" counts.

That is what happened in our last Presidential election. The State Supreme Court of Florida upheld that the Gore count challenge was legal. The Supreme Court over-ruled the lower court ...not by ruling that the vote count challenge wasn't legal (they let that part stand), but just that it would be better to not take the time to finish the hand recount (which only had a day or so left to go). So...the legally constituted recount was stopped by court degree (not by law). The court even went so far as to point out that their decree should have no future impact on elections...just that one.

I'll finish by re-stating what I said before.

It's good that the White House issued a retraction of one sentence in the President's SOTU speech that has since been shown to be known by our gov't intelligence agencies (including the White House) at the time of the speech as being wrong.

 

[Brotherscrim]

Re: Bush

I think the problem many of the people are having with what you're talking about, Ikendu, is that while you claim to just be talking about the specific situation of this intelligence snafu, you do, with relative frequency, turn this into a partisan issue, at least since the thread's resurrection. I don't think your original post did that, and I think a few folks here tried to characterize that post that way with a quickness, but now I don't see how what you're doing is any different.

I agreed that the president had a responsibility to retract the statement, and that was done. I agree that in public (or perhaps more accurately, in person), the president is not dealing with the issue. I agree that he shouldn't hand-wave the issue so readily, if for no other reason than to cut down on his inaccurate use of the term "rewrite history."

That said, I neither agree nor care about how some of the posters here are applying a double standard on how this administration is handling business. For many people here, the fact that there were untrue statements made in Bush's SOTU address wasn't an issue worthy of discussion - let alone retraction. If it wasn't an issue before the retraction, it's not going to become one by yet another Bush/Clinton comparison.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I do think at this point, this thread is more about which party is the bad one than the rather specific discussion the original post was meant to create.

 

[pedalinbob]

Re: Bush

on the iraq war (scroll down the page a bit):

http://www.boortz.com/may7-03.htm

on the 2000 election (scroll down the page a bit):

http://www.boortz.com/may52-03.htm

some people (Liberals) imply that the election was decided by the supreme court. that is untrue. the election result, decided by the voters, was UPHELD by the supreme court.

gotta love the liberal spin.

have a nice day!
Bob

 

[ikendu]

Re: Bush

Brotherscrim said: Ikendu...you do turn this into a partisan issue

Well... you may notice that in my posts, I criticized:

Clinton ...for lying about his sexual affair
Gore ...for his weasel-y worded "no controlling legal authority"

and Bush ...for the casual process apparently used to include the "uranium from Africa" sentence is his SOTU speech.

Hmmm. I criticized 2 Democrats and 1 Republican. You are thinking that is partisan? On which side?

Brotherscrim said: I agree that he shouldn't hand-wave the issue so readily

My basic point.

Brotherscrim said: ...this thread is more about which party is the bad one

Well...I try to be pretty even-handed.
Even my comments about the Supreme Court are simply factual. Others might say that Bush was "selected" instead of "elected". You don't see that in my post. I merely point out that the Supreme Court did stop a legal challenge (held as legal by that state's supreme court). That's just a fact. Our Supreme Court didn't even rule that the Gore challenge was illegal...just that it should stop. Honestly, if there are constitutional scholars out there...I'm not even sure the Supreme Court (SC) has that authority by the constitution. If someone is doing something legal...can the SC order it to be stopped without ruling that process as illegal or unconstitutional?

 

[keithhr]

Re: Bush

This isn't really a democratic/republican issue, people on both sides historically alter facts and perspectives to support their particular view or opinion. All of the issues discussed about Clinton/Bush/Gore and any other politician usually come down to one denominator, money. It seems that at the bottom of every issue, you will find someone or some group financially affected by the outcome of that issue. I'm really tired of seeing issues being defended by an argument that doesn't reflect the true motivation of the person and their argument. From my perspective, communism was doomed to failure because it tried to deny the virtues of the human spirit and the desire of modern man to make tomorrow, somehow a bit better than today. Capitalism on the other hand rewards the greediest and most manipulative people. The last people that should be politicians are the only people that striving to become politicians. Giving money to politicians and then pretending that it wasn't done to influence decision making is absurd. As you might guess, I'm not defending either side but am repulsed by both.
We didn't have the goods on Iraq, we had nothing. we only had the desire to somehow get there for whatever reason(read money). People on both sides hate each other, Liberals hate Bush they think he is nothing more than a boob puppet, put into office to carry out the prime directive of arch conservatives. Conservative still hate liberals and especially Clinton because they say he lied. I was wondering the other day what any man would say when first confronted with the question of whether he cheated on his wife. I don't know of any man in the spotlight who would cop to it, it's called denial. I'm not defending Clinton, I'm just saying get real. Clinton wound up abusing his position in office. Clinton was standing in the way of someone making some money is my guess. Bush on the other hand appears to have knowingly given out false information on intelligence issues. I'm not sure why people are using this argument but I suggest all motivation on both sides had more to do with the ability or inability of someone to make some money ,or to keep someone from making money. Both of them lied and I'm not sure how to assign a value that will equally compare them to each other.