Don't forget, conjectors do not count. We want physical evidence.
Anon-Voter wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Chickenhawks lack the courage to actually do some of the bleeding! They are big on mouth, and small on action!!
Anon
We are merely asking that assertions be backed by evidence. It is inappropriate to respond to such on-topic requests with speculations about the character of the posters.
It's not speculation!
However ... About imminent threats ... from Bush!
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html
Anon
I read the article at your link above. I am sorry, I may just be missing it, but I see no quotation by the president in which he calls the threat of Iraqi WMD or activities imminent. Would you please quote just that one bit? Thanks.
Ticomaya wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Chickenhawks lack the courage to actually do some of the bleeding! They are big on mouth, and small on action!!
Anon
We are merely asking that assertions be backed by evidence. It is inappropriate to respond to such on-topic requests with speculations about the character of the posters.
It's not speculation!
However ... About imminent threats ... from Bush!
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html
Anon
Bush's actual quote from that SOU speech:
Quote: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."
LINK
But don't let the truth get in the way of your desperate need to distort.
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
cicerone imposter wrote:Okay, Brandon, show proof of WMDs Bush and company said we were going to stop with his illegal preemptive attack on Iraq?
Evidence only counts here.
Why should I? I have never once claimed that there were still WMD in Iraq, only that the history made it seem probable. For instance, Hussein had had WMD, and had later forcibly prevented inspectors from looking in certain places.
Furthermore, no matter what my responsibilities are to cite things in this debate, I am not sure why you believe that would free liberal posters from the responsibility to support their specific assertions when asked to.
Anon-Voter wrote:
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
One needn't be brilliant to analyze that statement. It means that the threat has not yet fully emerged and that it would be unwise to allow it to.
So, in your mind it's okay to preemptively attack another sovereign nation on "probability?" With people like you, it's no wonder this country is in this quagmire.
Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
One needn't be brilliant to analyze that statement. It means that the threat has not yet fully emerged and that it would be unwise to allow it to.
So ... it being unwise to means what ...
Anon
Anon-Voter wrote:Ticomaya wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Chickenhawks lack the courage to actually do some of the bleeding! They are big on mouth, and small on action!!
Anon
We are merely asking that assertions be backed by evidence. It is inappropriate to respond to such on-topic requests with speculations about the character of the posters.
It's not speculation!
However ... About imminent threats ... from Bush!
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/iraqimminent.html
Anon
Bush's actual quote from that SOU speech:
Quote: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."
LINK
But don't let the truth get in the way of your desperate need to distort.
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
It doesn't take a brilliant mind to see it
doesn't mean he thinks the threat is "imminent."
Bush to Restate Terror Strategy
2002 Doctrine of Preemptive War To Be Reaffirmed
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 16, 2006; Page A01
President Bush plans to issue a new national security strategy today reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq.
The long-overdue document, an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities that is required by law, lays out a robust view of America's power and an assertive view of its responsibility to bring change around the world. On topics including genocide, human trafficking and AIDS, the strategy describes itself as "idealistic about goals and realistic about means."
The strategy expands on the original security framework developed by the Bush administration in September 2002, before the invasion of Iraq. That strategy shifted U.S. foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the United States.
The preemption doctrine generated fierce debate at the time, and many critics believe the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq fatally undermined an essential assumption of the strategy -- that intelligence about an enemy's capabilities and intentions can be sufficient to justify preventive war.
In his revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption policy, saying it "remains the same" and defending it as necessary for a country in the "early years of a long struggle" akin to the Cold War. In a nod to critics in Europe, the document places a greater emphasis on working with allies and declares diplomacy to be "our strong preference" in tackling the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
"If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," the document continues. "When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize."
Such language could be seen as provocative at a time when the United States and its European allies have brought Iran before the U.N. Security Council to answer allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons. At a news conference in January, Bush described an Iran with nuclear arms as a "grave threat to the security of the world."
Some security specialists criticized the continued commitment to preemption. "Preemption is and always will be a potentially useful tool, but it's not something you want to trot out and throw in everybody's face," said Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "To have a strategy on preemption and make it central is a huge error."
A military attack against Iran, for instance, could be "foolish," Ullman said, and it would be better to seek other ways to influence its behavior. "I think most states are deterrable."
Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has written on the 2002 strategy, said the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the strict sense is not an example of preemptive war, because it was preceded by 12 years of low-grade conflict and was essentially the completion of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Still, he said, recent problems there contain lessons for those who would advocate preemptive war elsewhere. A military strike is not enough, he said; building a sustainable, responsible state in place of a rogue nation is the real challenge.
"We have to understand preemption -- it's not going to be simply a preemptive strike," he said. "That's not the end of the exercise but the beginning of the exercise."
The White House plans to release the 49-page National Security Strategy today, starting with a speech by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley to the U.S. Institute of Peace. The White House gave advance copies to The Washington Post and three other newspapers.
This is a fore-warning to Iran - ahead of our preemptive attack. Bush needs to improve his performance rating before all republicans dessert him.
Tico,
Although I am quoting Snood, I am using this post to answer your question.
After doing a direct search on the phrase "imminent threat" I see there is a huge controversy about what what Bush "said". I will concede that in the SOU speech it appears that he did not use those words at all.
This gets back to the fear mongering and scare tactics used by the administration to push us towards war. I find many links to the phrase "imminent threat" which although not used directly in the SOU, were used by his administration to justify an immediate attack on Iraq.
Snoods links do a good job of pointing these out, but a direct search brings up reams of links that mention phrases that equate to "imminent threat".
As usual, you wish to play word games ... well play with your thesaurus for a while and see what you come up with in meaning when you evaluate what these Bush Administration phrases mean.
You're nothing but a Bush apologist and chickenhawk who hasn't the courage of your convictions, so I don't know why I have wasted yet more time on you, but yet ... I have! Just stupid I guess, because you will be an apologist, and a chickenhawk until you die!
This is one I will close with.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24970
Anon
snood wrote:This oft-recurring daft argument about whether or not the bushites tried to put the idea of imminent threat into Americans' minds, and what exact words were used, is an insult to anyone of average intelligence. It's just like "depends on what 'is', is". This argument is the one that started solidifying in my mind that the bushophiles don't care about truth one little bit - just in following their boy wherever he leads...
"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
- White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
President Bush, 7/17/03
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03
"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
- President Bush, 7/2/03
"Absolutely."
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
- President Bush 4/24/03
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
- Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
- President Bush, 3/19/03
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
- President Bush, 3/16/03
"This is about imminent threat."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03
Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03
Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
- Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03
"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03
"Well, of course he is."
- White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question "is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?", 1/26/03
"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. Â…Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
- President Bush, 1/3/03
"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
- President Bush, 11/23/02
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before?
When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
- President Bush, 11/3/02
"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
- President Bush, 11/1/02
"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
- President Bush, 10/28/02
"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
- President Bush, 10/16/02
"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
- President Bush, 10/7/02
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
- President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
- President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
- President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons. "
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
Anon-Voter wrote:Tico,
Although I am quoting Snood, I am using this post to answer your question.
<snip>
I didn't ask you a question.
Dick Cheney now wants to redefine "civil war."
Anon-Voter wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
One needn't be brilliant to analyze that statement. It means that the threat has not yet fully emerged and that it would be unwise to allow it to.
So ... it being unwise to means what ...
Anon
That is a different debate. The fact is that not only does this quotation not say that the threat is imminent, it implicitly says that it is not yet fully formed.
Ticomaya wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Tico,
Although I am quoting Snood, I am using this post to answer your question.
<snip>
I didn't ask you a question.
True! I won't make the mistake again!
Anon
cicerone imposter wrote:So, in your mind it's okay to preemptively attack another sovereign nation on "probability?" With people like you, it's no wonder this country is in this quagmire.
That is a different debate. You have claimed that Bush lied, I have asked for one single example, and so far you haven't provided one. I will be happy to debate other matters once we are finished debating whether Bush lied.
Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Anon-Voter wrote:
In your brilliant lawyer mind, tell me what this means!
"If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late," Bush said. "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
Anon
One needn't be brilliant to analyze that statement. It means that the threat has not yet fully emerged and that it would be unwise to allow it to.
So ... it being unwise to means what ...
Anon
That is a different debate. The fact is that not only does this quotation not say that the threat is imminent, it implicitly says that it is not yet fully formed.
Like in my post to Tico, I didn't know the huge "debate" was raging about what Bush actually "said". I offer the same post to you since Tico wasn't up to the info. Maybe you can do better.
Anon
Knight Ridder: White House Warned of Civil War in Iraq in 2003
By E&P Staff
Published: February 28, 2006 10:00 PM ET
NEW YORK In an article distributed by Knight Ridder's Washington bureau late Tuesday, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report that U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House, starting in 2003, "that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports."
Among the warnings was a National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2003 that concluded the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops. Its existence had not been previously disclosed to a wide public audience.
"The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration policymakers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time," Landay and Strobel relate.
"President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists - even as the U.S. intelligence community was warning otherwise."
Robert Hutchings, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005, told the reporters that the October 2003 study was part of a "steady stream" of dozens of intelligence reports warning Bush and his top lieutenants that the insurgency was intensifying and expanding.
"Frankly, senior officials simply weren't ready to pay attention to analysis that didn't conform to their own optimistic scenarios," Hutchings said in a telephone interview.
The office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte declined Tuesday to comment for the article.
The Knight Ridder article recalls Bush telling reporters in 2003: "There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. ... We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
As recently as May 2005, Cheney told a television interviewer: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
E&P Staff
Brandon9000 wrote:old europe wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:He did not. I defy you to find one single quotation in which the president claimed that the threat from Iraq was imminent. What he said was that he wouldn't allow a gathering threat to become imminent while he did nothing.
So when Scott McClellan, on 2/10/03, said that "This is about imminent threat." - he didn't actually mean that it was about an imminent threat, but rather meant that it was about a threat that shouldn't be allowed to become imminent?
How do you know, Brandon? Are you in close contact with Scott? Or are you not talking about the Bush administration, just about Bush? Well, how about this quote:
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
- President Bush, 10/2/02
Well, from Brandon's mouth, this becomes
"What he said was that he wouldn't allow a gathering threat to become imminent while he did nothing."
- Brandon9000, 03/20/06
No, this is what I was thinking of:
Quote:Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
- President Bush, Jan. 2003.
Bush never said that there was imminent danger of WMD use by Iraq. He was arguing that the danger was grave and not so very far off, but he did not say that it was imminent.
Source
Okay. I can't find a quote where he uses exactly the word
"imminent", so I'll go along with this statement:
Bush was talking about
a threat of unique urgency, when, in fact, that was not true.
Brandon9000 wrote:Why should I? I have never once claimed that there were still WMD in Iraq, only that the history made it seem probable. For instance, Hussein had had WMD, and had later forcibly prevented inspectors from looking in certain places.
But then, the invasion didn't take place many years ago. In March 2003, were inspectors forcibly prevented from looking in certain places?
cicerone imposter wrote:Okay, Brandon, show proof of WMDs Bush and company said we were going to stop with his illegal preemptive attack on Iraq?
Evidence only counts here.
CI,
I get it now. As I've said to the chickenhawk participants, I was unaware of the raging "debate". This one is a lock for Bush apologists. They need a defense to his fukups, and his incompetence. No matter what you bring up, this will be the vanguard defense for them!!
Only hardline backers can "stay the course" with the moronic thinking of George Bush.
More and more people are getting the message ...
In state's GOP heartland, questions
Many die-hard Republicans shaking
their heads over Bush, war
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/20/MNG01HQVP01.DTL
Quote:Oceanside, San Diego County -- Dennis Dalbey, armed with scissors, an electric hair clipper and a steady hand, has given dozens of Camp Pendleton's young Marines the regulation haircut before they head to combat in Iraq.
In his Cut-Rite Barbershop on the Coast Highway, he wears his loyalty to those customers openly -- the business is adorned with painted yellow ribbons, flags and "We support our troops'' banners.
But these days, Dalbey, a Republican and a self-described conservative who voted for President Bush, is not nearly as supportive of the commander in chief.
"Enough is enough,'' he said of the war while showing Lance Cpl. Aaron Kernell, 19, from Tennessee, to a red Naugahyde chair for a cut. "If they haven't got this thing settled by year's end, it's time to bring the boys home.''
Quote:"We've done what we needed to do,'' he said. "We could spend 10 years there and get the same thing. ... It doesn't matter, it won't change. These guys have been fighting each other for generations, and they're going to hate us no matter what.''
In nearby San Marcos, Herb Ranquist, 77, a retired Navy veteran perched on a stool in the local VFW hall, is equally perturbed, saying, "If we're going to war, we ought to do it right. If we let the generals and admirals do the job, we'd do OK.
"I voted for him two times, and I wish I hadn't,'' Ranquist said of the president. "It was probably one of the worst mistakes I ever made.''
Ranquist recalls how on May 1, 2003, Bush stood on an aircraft carrier off the coast near San Diego -- backed by a sign that said "Mission Accomplished'' -- and proclaimed that "major combat operations in Iraq are over.''
"I remember that,'' he said softly. "We all remember it.''
The Iraq war "did not protect us after 9/11. (Bush) was supposed to get bin Laden,'' said Marilyn Joy Shephard, 62, of Escondido, who has been a registered Republican since the Reagan era.
"But he wanted to go into Iraq, and I don't know why," she said. "I absolutely don't feel safer."
Shephard, a former high school teacher and financial adviser, survived the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center from the 66th floor of the second tower to be struck by a jetliner. Shephard said she ran down 66 floors and rushed outside -- only to see a young woman who had jumped from the skyscraper land on the ground nearby. She recalls in painful detail the sights, sounds and smells of that attack, adding, "I even still have the 9/11 cough.''
Shephard is bitter that the president "squandered his political capital'' on a conflict that has tallied 2,300 American deaths, thousands wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.
"It has been a wanton squandering, a waste of humanity,'' Shephard said. "It's a national disgrace.''
It takes wanton blindness not to see what is going on. But for those that are, there is no hope! These are the ones that George Bush said he wanted ... "The ones that could be fooled all the time!" We have a few of them right here!!
Anon
