As A Wise Man, Umm, Guy, Once Said

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
The belief that Iraq had taken these programs underground rather than destroying them was widespread at the time

incorrect

tsk, tsk. It most certainly was.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Should we be fortunate enough to have a Republican president succeed Obama, I can't wait to see the response of his or her critics to defenses based on no more that "But Obama did the same thing! or "It was Obama's fault!"

This.

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

When someone disagrees with your claim and states an opposing argument, you just descend into personal insult, rather than argue the topic. In an actual debate, you would be disqualified.

We're not having a debate, I'm not wasting my time debating with someone who'd prefer living in a fantasy land. There's absolutely nothing to debate.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
The belief that Iraq had taken these programs underground rather than destroying them was widespread at the time

incorrect

Of course it's incorrect, the only people who 'believed' such nonsense were those agitating for war. Nobody with any idea of what was going on believed such lies.

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

By definition, you can't eliminate the impact of intervening causes through the original action that sets events in motion. No matter how poor the Bush decisions or how poorly he and his Administration acted, they couldn't possibly have made future decisions or actions better or worse.

By the time Obama came along Bush had screwed things up so badly there was very little that could have been done either than get out.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

The Shiite resentment of the Sunni pre-dated the invasion. Toppling the regime allowed it to morph into action.

It's a bit late in the day to be saying that, Bush didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
The belief that Iraq had taken these programs underground rather than destroying them was widespread at the time

incorrect

Well, here's one example of someone who believed at the time that he might well have them.

From a speech Sen. Edward Kennedy gave on September 27, 2002 at the School of Advanced International Studies:

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Americans will believe anything, you've already proven than. Any non American, (or Blair cronies) sources?

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
When someone disagrees with your claim and states an opposing argument, you just descend into personal insult, rather than argue the topic. In an actual debate, you would be disqualified.

We're not having a debate, I'm not wasting my time debating with someone who'd prefer living in a fantasy land. There's absolutely nothing to debate.

You made an assertion: Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. I gave an argument that it was his actual opinion and, therefore, not a lie. You now say, "I'm not debating you because you have x bad characteristic." This doesn't mean that you're rising above anything. It only means that you are unable to defend your thesis and, therefore, lose the argument.

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
The belief that Iraq had taken these programs underground rather than destroying them was widespread at the time

incorrect

Well, here's one example of someone who believed at the time that he might well have them.

From a speech Sen. Edward Kennedy gave on September 27, 2002 at the School of Advanced International Studies:

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Americans will believe anything, you've already proven than. Any non American, (or Blair cronies) sources?

From an interview Jacques Chirac gave to "L'Orient-Le Jour" on October 16, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs."

3 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

From an interview Jacques Chirac gave to "L'Orient-Le Jour" on October 16, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs."

L'Orient-Le Jour is a Lebanese newspaper, publishing in French. Since that quoted interview isn't in their online archive, could you please give the link for it? (Chirac was in Beirut/Lebanon at the 17th of October to attend the Sommet de la francophonie)
Thanks!

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Found it as reprint at Libanvision. The interview really seems to have been in French and not in English as your quotation suggests. (If it is a translation, it should be done correctly.) And there's more than those sentences in the original version (if Libanvision archived the interview correctly)

2 Replies

@Brandon9000,

two people doesn't make many

especially when there was no evidence of the programs continuing to exist

I continue to be glad our prime minister wasn't sucked into the American idiocy that time round.

2 Replies

@McGentrix,

The belief that Iraq might have acquired more Chemical Weapons in the years no one was paying attention to him might have been widespread at the time by Americans, however, not that many people were biting off the bit to go to war so much so that they couldn't let the process of the weapons inspections play itself out and just when it was looking like it wasn't going their way, decide they just had to go to keep from us from an attack in the form of "mushroom clouds." Moreover, there was plenty of descent in the intelligence reports to spread enough doubt to at least wait until the weapons report and the UN thing got finished doing what they were sent in Iraq to do. In other words they rushed into war regardless of the wisdom of caution of which they had plenty of reason to wait and then said basically, "well we didn't know, oops."

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

I continue to be glad our prime minister wasn't sucked into the American idiocy that time round.

I only wish I could say the same.

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

As Walt has pointed out you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel with that source.

If what you're claiming is not complete nonsense there should be plenty of stuff to back up your ridiculous claims. The fact that you're using an obscure Lebanese source speaks volumes.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

The fact that you're using an obscure Lebanese source speaks volumes.

Actually, it isn't so much obscure (it's the leading French language daily newspaper in Lebanon, left leaning and Christian) but it's just a minor topic in that rather long interview about Lebanon, Israel, Palestine ...

http://i1334.photobucket.com/albums/w641/Walter_Hinteler/a_zps2d24b3ee.jpg

Besides that, those two sentences are taken totally out of context and seem to be machine-translated.

http://i1334.photobucket.com/albums/w641/Walter_Hinteler/b_zpsc5c7ac9b.jpg

(Sources: see above)

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

By the time President Obama took office the Surge and the Petraeus counter-terrorism strategy had stabilized the country. The Surge, of course, was opposed by Obama.

On December 14, 2011 Obama said in a speech:

Quote:

The United States is leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq

I'm open to any evidence that you or anyone else might offer that Obama's policy toward Iraq, once he took office, was anything more than staying the course of the plan developed by the Bush Administration.

So, by his own words, he, essentially acknowledged that the prior Administration had been successful in establishing a sovereign, stable and self-reliant nation.

You and I both know this was not the case. America left a nation for which there were indications that Iran wished to and was working towards compromising its sovereignty; a nation that was more stable than prior to the Surge, but which still simmered with sectarian resentment and disputes, and that wasn't at all self-reliant as the latest developments prove.

Obama said this because he wanted to put the best face on the withdrawal, and he said it at Fort Bragg to attempt to minimize criticism that by leaving Iraq without a SOFA, he was quitting the war while it was ongoing, and by so doing wasted the sacrifices of all of the American men and women who died there... in the unrealized effort to make Iraq a sovereign, stable, self-reliant, and democratic ally of the US.

We can't say for certain that a SOFA which resulted in a much smaller but still meaningful military presence would have resulted in ISIS being repelled, but it's a damned good bet that it would have.

People can believe that Obama wanted a SOFA but Maliki refused to agree to one, but then they probably also believe that 2 years of Lois Lerner's e-mail to the White house was lost and is irretrievable because her computer crashed, that there was nothing that could have been done to come to the aid of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, that the Administration didn't know about the extent of the problems with the VA until they read it in the papers, and that the White House could tell almost 100 staffers about the planned prisoner exchange involving Sgt Bergdahl, but couldn't tell Senators Feinstein (D) and Chambliss (R) because they couldn't be trusted not to leak it.

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

And whether or not he did, what possible relevance does it have to this discussion?

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
From an interview Jacques Chirac gave to "L'Orient-Le Jour" on October 16, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs."

L'Orient-Le Jour is a Lebanese newspaper, publishing in French. Since that quoted interview isn't in their online archive, could you please give the link for it? (Chirac was in Beirut/Lebanon at the 17th of October to attend the Sommet de la francophonie)
Thanks!

I cannot link you to the interview on the newspaper site, but here is another site printing part of the interview:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/167/35022.html

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

two people doesn't make many

especially when there was no evidence of the programs continuing to exist

I continue to be glad our prime minister wasn't sucked into the American idiocy that time round.

Did you expect me to give you millions of quotes? Here's another:

Current Secretary of State John Kerry said on October 9, 2002:

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

1 Reply

As A Wise Man, Umm, Guy, Once Said

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