President Bush: Is He a Liar?

Yes, and how many of these hits are actually lies that he told, versus people like you who just don't like to lose elections.

Brandon, You've probably been missing important information from our media for the past several years. Here's a clue; North Korea has the WMDs and means to deliver them to the US. Saddam never had the capability. DUH!

Duh, indeed! We don't invade North Korea for the simple reason that we cannot. They are already nuclear. It's too late. We made the mistake of allowing them to succeed. Should we invade, they would have the option of killing a million people in the first hour of the war. It was precisely to prevent Saddam Hussein from achieving this sort of near invulernability that we invaded Iraq.

Brandon, You justify Bush's attack on Iraq based on faulty intelligence about Saddam's WMDs that killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Yet, you justify why Bush has not "protected Americans" from North Korea's WMDs with known information that they have nukes and the means to deliver them to the USA.

Your logic is nonexistent.

Oh, btw, the point is you're an idiot like the incompetent bush.

You may not remember this, but Bush claimed "we do not torture our prisoners." With reports like the following, you continue to ignore the obvious.


Military Prison's Closure Is Urged
U.N. Panel Faults Detention Policies

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 20, 2006; A01

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 -- A U.N. anti-torture panel Friday called on the United States to close its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to expressly ban controversial interrogation techniques, and to halt the transfer of detainees to countries with a history of abuse and torture.

The U.N. panel, charged with monitoring compliance with the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which the United States has ratified, also asserted that the CIA imprisonment of suspects in secret detention facilities without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross constituted a clear violation of the treaty.

Bush administration officials countered that the U.N. Committee Against Torture had not given the United States a fair hearing, that it had overreached its authority by calling for Guantanamo's closure, and that its report is riddled with errors and misstatements.

"We acknowledge that there were serious incidents of abuse. We've all seen Abu Ghraib," the State Department's top lawyer, John B. Bellinger III, told reporters. But "clearly our record has improved over the last few years," he said.

The 11-page report was issued one day after two Guantanamo Bay detainees tried to kill themselves by overdosing on antidepressants. The attempts brought to 41 the number of inmates who have tried to commit suicide since 2002, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of Guantanamo Bay detainee operations, said Friday.

After the unsuccessful suicide attempts, Guantanamo Bay inmates rioted, attacking guards with electric fans and other improvised weapons after a prisoner lured them into a cell by faking an attempt to hang himself. Guards subdued them by firing sponge grenades and five rounds of rubber balls from a 12-gauge shotgun, Harris said.

The U.N. report was a rebuke for the Bush administration and some of the main counterterrorism approaches it adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was delivered as the United States faces increasing pressure from international critics, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. The administration has engaged in an internal debate over the fate of the controversial island facility.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that President Bush has made it clear "he doesn't want the United States to be the world's jailers, that we at some point in the future would very much like to see Guantanamo Bay closed down." But, McCormack added, "at the moment, it's housing some dangerous people."

The U.N. panel, made up of nine international experts, said the United States "should cease to detain any person at Guantanamo Bay and close this detention facility, permit access by the detainees to judicial process or release them as soon as possible."

The committee urged the Bush administration to establish a law criminalizing torture and to eliminate some of its most controversial interrogation techniques, including sexual humiliation, the use of dogs to induce fear and "water boarding," a practice that involves simulating the sensation of near-drowning. It also pressed the administration to "promptly, thoroughly, and impartially investigate" senior military or civilian officials responsible for "authorizing, acquiescing or consenting" to torture committed by subordinates.

The report urged the United States to disclose and publicly condemn the existence of any secret prisons. The Washington Post reported last year that the CIA has maintained secret facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The panel said the United States "should ensure no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control." It said: "Detaining persons in such conditions constitutes, per se, a violation of the convention."

There are about 460 foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. About 287 detainees have left the facility, including 192 who were released and 95 who were transferred to more than 16 countries. The United States recently transferred 15 Saudi nationals to the Saudi government's custody and sent five Chinese Muslims to Albania.

White House spokesman Tony Snow defended the Bush administration's policies at Guantanamo Bay, saying that "everything that is done in terms of questioning detainees is fully within the boundaries of American law."

The Bush administration sent a large delegation to Geneva earlier this month to answer the U.N. committee's questions. It also submitted a 184-page defense of its treatment of detainees in its fight against terrorism. "It was not a particularly auspicious time for the United States to have to be filing a periodic report before the convention against torture, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib," said Bellinger, who headed the U.S. delegation. "But we take our obligations seriously, and we did not shy away from going to Geneva."

Bellinger said that the United States "has respect for the committee" and that it will comply with a request to provide additional responses to questions by next year. But he said the committee's report is "skewed and reaches well beyond the scope and mandate of the committee."

For instance, there "is nothing in the convention that says anything about holding people indefinitely . . .," he said. "So it's outside the scope for them to be calling for the closure of Guantanamo."

Human rights and civil rights advocates have raised concerns about the fate of those kept at Guantanamo Bay, and of those who are transferred to other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, which has a history of abusing political detainees. They noted that the committee's report has undercut confidence in the United States' ability to ensure the safety of detainees who are transferred abroad.

"The message from the torture committee leaves no doubt that the U.S. policies and practices at home and abroad violated bedrock principles against torture and abuse," said Jamil Dakwar, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rights advocates pressed the United States to accept the committee's recommendations. Gabor Rona, an expert on the committee at the New York based-advocacy groups Human Rights First, urged the United States to "take immediate steps to implement" legislation by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would establish "a single clear interrogation standard for all U.S. officials that clearly prohibits all forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. custody, anywhere in the world."

In the report issued Friday, described as an "advance unedited version," the committee said it welcomes the U.S. commitment that officials from all U.S. government agencies, including contractors, "are prohibited from engaging in torture at all times and in all places." It also welcomed the U.S. pledge not to transfer terrorism suspects to countries where they would "more likely than not" face torture.

But the committee expressed skepticism about the United States' commitment to comply with such pledges, citing concern about the adequacy of a U.S. policy of obtaining "diplomatic assurances" against torture from countries with poor rights records. It called on the United States to "cease" the transfer of "suspects, in particular by its intelligence agencies, to states where they face the real risk of torture."

Researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

Bush continues to struggle:

Here's the video and text of Bush's interview with Suzanne Malveaux.

"MALVEAUX: You came into the second term with a lot of confidence and political capital. Clearly, it is your lowest approval ratings at this point and congressional Republicans are going in their own direction.

"What do you do to become -- at least not risk -- becoming irrelevant?

"BUSH: Look, yesterday I signed a bill extending capital gains and dividends. We're making -- we've had a very strong legislative record. I will continue to sign good law because I'm working with members of the House and the Senate. I, you know, we're going to win the war on terror. I'm doing my job, what the American people want me to do."

Oh, so that's the Bush line your going with? In case you change your mind, here's the checklist of reasons provided so far (I already marked your answer for you).

We went to war in Iraq because:

[x] Saddam was going to get WMD at some future point in time
[ ] Saddam had WMD
[ ] Saddam had WMD programs
[ ] Saddam was engaging in WMD related program activities
[ ] Saddam supported Al Qaeda and was linked to 9-11
[ ] We did it for the Iraqis, since Saddam was a tyrant who killed his people
[ ] We wanted to spread democracy to the Middle East
[ ] F*ck it, why not? After all, this was the guy who tried to "kill Bush's dad at one time." (Bush quote, Houston, Texas, Sep. 26, 2002)

Brandon hasn't been keeping with the news on Iraq's new government, and the increased terrorism activities perpetrated by the Iraq people themselves against their own.

His continued defense of Bush the incompetent tells us more about Brandon than it does about "our" government.

My God, I didn't say a word about delivering them to the United States. I said that should we invade North Korea, they would have the means to kill a million people immediately, say South Koreans and US soldiers. We haven't invaded them because the nukes we foolishly allowed them to acquire confer virtual invulnerability on them. This answers both why we invaded Iraq and why we don't invade North Korea.

Well, I know that giving my responses makes it easier for you, but that's not what I said. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, it was very unclear whether Saddam Hussein still had hidden WMD and WMD development programs or not. Therefore, there was a certain probability that he was continuing to hide them and a certain probability that they no longer existed. Were the former probability true, then in the near future, we might face the terrible problem of a Saddam Hussein with a stockpile of nukes and/or bioweapons. We couldn't take the chance. Nor will we be able to when it happens again and again in the future with other very dangerous regimes pursuing WMD.

And the fact that you're constitutionally incapable of simply arguing the topic like a gentleman, rather than trying to impeach the character of your opponents says quite a lot about you.

The Liar in Chief has his "Read My Lips" moment. "NYT: Bush breaks pledge made in 1999 to veto any tax increases"

RAW STORY
Published: Saturday May 20, 2006


President Bush appears to have broken a pledge he made in 1999 to veto any tax increase bills, according to an article set for Sunday's New York Times, RAW STORY has found.

"The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed last week tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase," reports David Cay Johnston.

In 1999, the conservative group Americans For Tax Reform convinced Bush - and the other candidates seeking the GOP nomination for president at the time - to sign anti-tax increase pledges (link).

"If I were elected president," Bush pledged. "I will oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes."

So what aspect of "gentleman" do you not understand?

Gentleman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

For the Reggae musician, see Gentleman (musician).

The term gentleman (from Latin gentilis, belonging to a race or "gens", and "man", cognate with the French word gentilhomme, the Spanish gentilhombre, and the Italian gentil uomo or gentiluomo), in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of good family, the Latin generosus (its invariable translation in English-Latin documents). In this sense the word equates with the French gentilhomme (nobleman), which latter term was in Great Britain long confined to the peerage. The term "gentry" (from the Old French genterise for gentelise) has much of the social class significance of the French noblesse or of the German Adel, but without the strict technical requirements of those traditions (such as quarters of nobility). This was what the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century meant when they repeated:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the Gentleman? [1]

John Selden in Titles of Honour, (1614), discussing the title "gentleman", speaks of "our English use of it" as "convertible with nobilis" (an ambiguous word, like 'noble' meaning elevated either by rank or by personal qualities) and describes in connection with it the forms of ennobling in various European countries.

To a degree, "gentleman" signified a man who did not need to work, and the term was particularly used of those of them who could not claim nobility or even the rank of esquire. It was at times applied genuinely or ironically to all men who did not work, leading to the phrase "gentleman of leisure" to mean "unemployed". Widening further, it became a politeness for all men, as in the phrase "Ladies and Gentlemen,..." and this was then used (often with the abbreviation Gents) to indicate where men could find a water closet, toilet, lavatory, bathroom, or restroom without the need to indicate precisely what was being described.

What reason to invade Iraq? Well, the best reason anyone could ever find.

The admonition from the former President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, who, as even his enemies know, was brilliant in the area of foreign relations.

Clinton said: In his speech of Dec. 18th when he gave a rationale for his pre-emptive strike on December 18th.

quote:

"First, without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to RETAIN and begin to rebuild its CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS SYSTEM in months, not years>"

and the second quote, and more important---

"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, THE SECURITY OF THE WORLD.

Now, Mr. Just an Observer and Mr. Imposter, these quotes have been placed before you several times on this thread--
I can only assume that you have not read them--

or you don't understand them---

or you do not know how to rebut them---

But they exist as perhaps one of the best rationales for the invasion of Iraq.

Unless Bill Clinton lied>..No one has claimed that.

Or he was mistaken? Could the most intelligent policy wonk in the past one hundred years be mistaken? If the answer is yes, then anybody could be mistaken.

************************************************************

Brandon---Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just an Observer's refusal to face President Clinton's quotes is complete proof that they do not have a handle on their claims....

************************************************************
Also, Brandon as I am sure you are aware, President Bush OBTAINED AUTHORITY for the invasion of Iraq from the Congress of the United States in an overwhelming vote---296-133 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate( It is obvious by looking at the numbers that this was a bi-partisan vote which included many Democrats voting to give President Bush the authority)

I wonder if Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just An Observer think that the members of Congress 296 in the House and 77 in the Senate are so stupid that they would vote to invade a country if there were not a great deal of evidence to back that invasion?

Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just An Observer certainly know that the committees in the Senate and the House are privy to the latest Intelligence.

Brandon- Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just an Observer don't have an argument that holds up unless they can meet and explain President Clinton's quotes head on.

THEY WON'T BRANDON AND I WILL REPOST THIS MATERIAL TO REMIND THEM THAT THEY ARE DODGING!!!-( as you would expect anyone without a case),

What Clinton said has no bearing on actions taken by Bush. DUH! Bush doesn't listen to anybody but Rove and Cheney - or haven't you noticed that simple fact?

Really? Who told you that, Mr. Imposter? Do you really mean to say that a new president takes NOTHING from the former administration that is of value or may be of value?

That is completely untenable and you know it.

So-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What reason to invade Iraq? Well, the best reason anyone could ever find.

The admonition from the former President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, who, as even his enemies know, was brilliant in the area of foreign relations.

Clinton said: In his speech of Dec. 18th when he gave a rationale for his pre-emptive strike on December 18th.

quote:

"First, without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to RETAIN and begin to rebuild its CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS SYSTEM in months, not years>"

and the second quote, and more important---

"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, THE SECURITY OF THE WORLD.

Now, Mr. Just an Observer and Mr. Imposter, these quotes have been placed before you several times on this thread--
I can only assume that you have not read them--

or you don't understand them---

or you do not know how to rebut them---

But they exist as perhaps one of the best rationales for the invasion of Iraq.

Unless Bill Clinton lied>..No one has claimed that.

Or he was mistaken? Could the most intelligent policy wonk in the past one hundred years be mistaken? If the answer is yes, then anybody could be mistaken.

************************************************************

Brandon---Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just an Observer's refusal to face President Clinton's quotes is complete proof that they do not have a handle on their claims....

************************************************************
Also, Brandon as I am sure you are aware, President Bush OBTAINED AUTHORITY for the invasion of Iraq from the Congress of the United States in an overwhelming vote---296-133 in the House and 77 to 23 in the Senate( It is obvious by looking at the numbers that this was a bi-partisan vote which included many Democrats voting to give President Bush the authority)

I wonder if Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just An Observer think that the members of Congress 296 in the House and 77 in the Senate are so stupid that they would vote to invade a country if there were not a great deal of evidence to back that invasion?

Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just An Observer certainly know that the committees in the Senate and the House are privy to the latest Intelligence.

Brandon- Mr. Imposter and Mr. Just an Observer don't have an argument that holds up unless they can meet and explain President Clinton's quotes head on.

THEY WON'T BRANDON AND I WILL REPOST THIS MATERIAL TO REMIND THEM THAT THEY ARE DODGING!!!-( as you would expect anyone without a case).

***********************************************************

Every administration takes, and indeed must take a great deal of information, material and intelligence from that gathered by the last administration--if only to see what has been done SPECIFICALLY.

I am very much afraid- Mr. Imposter--that you have not kept up on your reading as to how goverment works.

Show us anything Bush used from any previous administration that we can consider "it had any value?"

As a matter of fact, show us anything Bush has done during the past five years that can be consiered "valuable?" Just show us what Bush has done right, and balance that against all the things he has done wrong.

Clinton said he had no intention of invading Iraq.

Bush invaded because he was after its oil. In fact, he had maps drawn up that showed the division of oil fields by US oil companies. He also invaded for political capital, feeling that a quick and easy victory would give him the backing to achieve whatever else he wanted.

Even assuming arguendo that Saddam had WMD, he had no effective delivery systems. Further, he knew full well that an attack on the USA would mean that Iraq would be reduced to cinders.

Bush lied repeatedly that Iraq was connected to 9/11. There was zero evidence of this. He lied about yellow cake, having been told that Iraq wasn't purchasing it. He lied about the use of aluminum tubes, having been informed that they were for rockets, not nuke production.

Advocate, WELCOME to A2K. Glad to see you on board. It's pretty clear the Bush apologists will never admit they made a mistake by backing this liar and killer of humans. They're about as low as they come; they continue to make excuses for our bad excuse for a president that doesn't know the difference between defense and aggression.