Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Scrat, ehem, did you really read your quotation?
And follow that link?

Funny, because my computer couldn't get the link to the article in "Age and the Sydney Morning Herald" - you are only quoting the objection!

These hateful and outrageous remarks...

cicerone imposter wrote:

These hateful and outrageous remarks...

Do you really want to go there? Nobody outdoes liberals and Democrats for hateful and outrageous remarks and tactics. NOBODY.

March 26, 2004 | A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted.

Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

During a 2002 segment on "60 Minutes" exploring Edmonds' initial charges of FBI internal abuses, Sen. Grassley was asked if Edmonds is credible. "She's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story," he said.

(CBS) Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.

"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.

The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.

IN APRIL OF 2001, Richard Clarke said he raised the specter of Adolf Hitler with Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to explain how serious a threat Al Qaeda was. In his book "Against All Enemies" Clarke said he told Wolfowitz, "sometimes, as with Hitler in `Mein Kampf,' you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do." Clarke said Wolfowitz responded, "I resent any comparison between the Holocaust and this little terrorist in Afghanistan."

This week, in his testimony to the commission on the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz said, "I can't recall ever saying anything remotely like that. I don't believe I could have. In fact, I frequently have said something more nearly the opposite of what Clarke attributes to me. I've often used that precise analogy of Hitler and "Mein Kampf" as a reason why we should take threatening rhetoric seriously, particularly in the case of terrorism and Saddam Hussein."

Even as he denied the specific charge, Wolfowitz reconfirmed the general obsession. The administration was so bent on demonizing Saddam Hussein that it may have missed an opportunity to focus on the masterminds of 9/11 who turned commercial flights into weapons of mass destruction.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Scrat, ehem, did you really read your quotation?
And follow that link?

Funny, because my computer couldn't get the link to the article in "Age and the Sydney Morning Herald" - you are only quoting the objection!

Ehem... I am quoting CI's link. Yes, I understand that the Sydney Herald took a different position. You'd have to be a moron to miss that.

Your citation notes that these "international law experts" found the notion that a US-led attack on Iraq would be illegal was "legally unsupported".

The "international law experts" quoted in the article were the ones writing the Sidney Herald article - arguing that the war would be illegal. As in: "Readers may have seen an article in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald last Wednesday, signed by a group of prominent lawyers and legal scholars, and arguing that any attack on Iraq led by the US would be illegal".

Now in response to that, "in an exclusive for Updates from AIJAC", one Professor Michla Pomerance of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem looked at the claims in that article and argued that they were "legally unsupported".

Now I don't necessarily think you'd have to be a "moron" to make the mistake you did - I think its just a particular overeagerness at thinking one has finally found the opinion of a group of international law experts subscribing to your opinion. Alas, you'll have to do with an Israeli professor and a emphatically pro-Bush e-zine to underpin the US/UK interpretation of international law here.

Bush used his father's political influence to move past many on the Texas Guard's waiting list. He was not required to attend Officer Candidate School to earn his commission. He lost his flight status after failing to show up for a required annual physical. These facts alone raise the eyebrows of those who took a different path in a war that for the Marine Corps brought more casualties than even World War II.

The Bush campaign now claims that these issues are largely moot and that Bush has proved himself as a competent and daring "war president." And yet his actions in Iraq, and the vicious attacks against anyone who disagrees with his administration's logic, give many veterans serious pause.

Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.

There is no historical precedent for taking such action when our country was not being directly threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.

At the same time, those around Bush, many of whom came of age during Vietnam and almost none of whom served, have attempted to assassinate the character and insult the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them. Some have impugned the culture, history and integrity of entire nations, particularly in Europe, that have been our country's great friends for generations and, in some cases, for centuries.

Bush has yet to fire a single person responsible for this strategy. Nor has he reined in those who have made irresponsible comments while claiming to represent his administration. One only can conclude that he agrees with both their methods and their message.

Most seriously, Bush has yet to explain the exact circumstances under which American military forces will be withdrawn from Iraq.