A poll sheds light on the question of whether or not the media filter or semi-direct knowledge affects one's opinion about the war in Iraq. "People with friends or relatives serving in Iraq are more likely than others to have a positive view of a generally unpopular war, an AP- Ipsos poll found. - - - "A solid majority of those who did not know anyone in Iraq said they thought the war was a mistake, 61 percent, compared to 36 percent who thought it was the right decision. Those who had a relative or friend there were almost evenly split, 49 percent right decision, 47 percent mistake. - - - "Those who know someone serving in Iraq were more likely to approve of the Bush administration's conduct of the war _ 44 percent, compared to 37 percent overall. - - - "'From most of the information I get, the people over there fighting basically are proud to be there and feel they're doing something good,' said Sally Dowling, a bank employee from Mesa, Ariz., who said her boss's son is serving in Iraq. 'That brings it home more than if I didn't know anybody.' - - - "Overall attitudes about the war _ while negative _ haven't changed dramatically through the summer. A solid majority, 60 percent, want U.S. troops to stick it out until Iraq is stable." MORE AT http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/26/D8C7RDP00.html
Not surprising - most people in the military like to at least believe that what they are fighting for is important. My best friend is in Iraq right now. He was almost shot by friendly fire while interpreting for a Marine Corps. squad outside of Baghdad. Does the fact that he is there change my opinion of the war? No -- I was always against it and even more today. Nothing, certainly not anything a President who lies at the drop of hat would change my mind.
field report from Mosul, Iraq On Friday, radio host Hugh Hewitt (HH)interviewed freelance repoter Michael Yon (MY) in Mosul (see http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/ ): HH: Have you seen any other mainstream media journalists in Mosul? MY: Oh yeah, occasionally. For instance, a New York Times writer came through, Rich Opal. He spent three weeks. He was in particular working on something for the ISF. But you don't see too many. It's pretty...it's not common. It's only been a handful in the months that I have been here. HH: Are Americans getting a distorted view about how the war is going? MY: Absolutely. Clearly, you're getting mostly body counts and bombings and that sort of thing, which are very real. I mean, I see those things here. They absolutely occur. We fight here every day. But what they don't see is that we fight less and less here every day. For instance, Deuce 4 [1st ID, 24th] has not been hit with an I.E.D. in about two weeks. We used to get hit like twice a day. Now, it's been like two weeks, and we have not been hit at all. So, you know what I'm saying? HH: Yup. MY: There's some remarkable changes here. http://www.radioblogger.com/#000926 ---------------------- Yon's remark about dimminished IED's explains and confirms something I've wondered about. A year ago, injuries to US soldiers were over 800 - this year, about one-tenth, despite August being a bad month for our dead. Statisics show that car bombs and other suicide attacks are Al Qaida specialties, while IEDs are the preference of ex-Batthist/Sunni pro-Saddamites. If the former are increasing the size of their explosive devices, it is a sign of terrorist desperation (just as Cheney's much maligned July remarks indicated), intended to compensate for fewer attack and still reap news-headlines. By contrast, the huge drop in IEDs confirms that last January's election broke the back of that form of resistance; Sunni's needed - as Muhlahs told them in February - to join the political process and get counted in. In other words, what superficially looks bad and paradoxical actually breaks down into good but testy news. Things are getting better, just not fast enough because the challenges are changing! -Orson
Mere "belief" is one thing - but as the above interview with Yon shows, facts on the ground are often quite another! So, Mr. Engineer - does that mean you trust media coverage? Why are you "even more" against the war now than before? -Orson PS The claim "Bush lies!" followed by no examples always amuses me. I mean, I listen to Air America for grins, and I know the difference between facts and opinion - but other than easily countered lies like those from "Farenheit 9/11," I don't _know_ what you mean. (I'm a non-Bush voter, by the by.) Frankly, I'm convinced it's a cult belief ("Nothing...would change my mind"), like horoscopes were in the 70s... ("what's your sign?"). "Bush lied" is in fact last year's BIGGEST lie: I'm writing a September 11th anniversary piece about it.
Orson The fundamental flaw in your logic is that you too "beleive" that Bush is telling the truth. Are you telling me that you choose not to believe Richard Clarke and many others who dissented (who were subsequently fired because they beleived their first obligation was to the truth and not to the President). Either way, that is YOUR beleif. Have you ever noticed that Bush stays on message? The reason is because Karl Rove set the pace for GW and told him to repeat things. If you repeat a lie (WMD, connection between Iraq and 9/11, etc) some people start thinking it is the truth. What I have found is that the CONS don't beleive the mainstream media, but believe in the Druge Report (a blogger) or the Fox News Network (which IMHO is the most biased "mainstream" news on the air today) I never listen to Air America. As I mentioned before, the myth of the "liberal media" is getting old For every "liberal" station in the SF Bay Area, there are at least 3 that are CON.
Part 1 of 2 Uh, huh. So, then, Orson... based on the degree to which -- and that about which -- you're clearly brainwashed and deluded, I'm guessing you're a FOX NEWS CHANNEL fan, no? You wanna' talk filters? Fine. Let's talk filters. Right you are, Mr. Engineer! The FOX NEWS CHANNEL is not only the most provably biased, conservative, pro-Bush43 mainstream news out there, but those who watch it are more misinformed than those who watch any of the other mainstream news out there. Don't believe it? In 2003, with the help of the Menlo Park, California-based polling/research firm Knowledge Networks, The Center on Policy Attitudes and The Center for International Security Studies -- both at the University of Maryland -- did a study as part of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). The title of the study was "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War" (PDF), and it contained some interesting findings... Regarding Iraq’s connections to al-Qaeda, 22% of those polled thought that Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks while 35% believed Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks. Only 7% were of the opinion that there was no connection while 30% believed that a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials. This was well-known, but what was surprising was that 48% thought that the US had found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Also, 24% of the people surveyed believed that the US had found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And, strangely, 20% thought that Iraq used chemical or biological weapons in the war that Bush43 stood on the deck of that aircraft carrier and told us had just "ended." Americans, of course, have a very high opinion of their effect on the world... to the point, it seems, of hallucinating about world opinion... a little like you, Orson, seem capable of doing. A quarter of the people in the survey thought that a majority of the people of the world favored the US going to war while another 31% believed that world opinion was equally divided on the matter. The survey actually looked at three major misconceptions related to the war: Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found. Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. World public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq.[/list=1]The findings were scary: "Misperceptions were not limited to a small minority that had repeated misperceptions. A majority of 60% had at least one of these three unambiguous misperceptions, and only 30% had no misperceptions. […] "Thirty-two percent had just one of the misperceptions (and no more), 20% had two of the misperceptions and just 8% had all three of the misperceptions." Support for the war, the researchers found, was heavily dependent on these misperceptions. 58% of those who believed that Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks approved of the US going to war without UN approval... leaving one to wonder if the other 42% were thinking that Iraq attacked us despite the fact that we're nice people and didn't really want to go to war. This support for war among dropped to 37% among those who thought that Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks. It was similar, at 32%, for those who believed that a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials; while 25% of those who didn’t see any connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq still wanted war. Among those who believed that the US had found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaeda, a full 33% did not support war (meaning that 67% from among that group did supported). Those 33% get an award for accomplishing the fete of holding two contradictory thoughts, as well as believing in ourright falsehoods. Only 29% of those who thought that the US has not found clear evidence support the war. 74% of the people who think that the US had found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction support the Iraq war, while 42% who believe that WMD have not been found do. Are your eyes glazing over yet? Don't worry... here's where it starts to get interesting. If one looks at all the numbers that are behind all of the above eye-glazing statements, one begins to see that support for war was greater among those who were misinformed. Gee. What a surprise. At one end of the scale, people who suffered from just one of the earlier-listed misperceptions were the least misinformed; and at the other end of the scale, people who suffered from all three misperceptions were the most misinformed, to wit: Among those with no misperceptions, 23% supported war. Among those with only 1 misperception, 53% supported war. Among those with 2 misperceptions, 78% supported war. Among those with all 3 misperceptions, 86% supported war. But wait... it gets better. By far the most interesting finding was the correlation between the misperceptions about the war, and the respondents' source of news, to wit: Code: [b]MISPERCEPTIONS: FOX CBS ABC CNN NBC Print PUB[/b]* None 20% 30% 39% 45% 45% 53% 77% 1 or more 80% 71% 61% 55% 55% 47% 23% 2 or more 69% 51% 41% 38% 34% 26% 13% All 3 45% 15% 16% 13% 12% 9% 4% *PUB = Public broadcasting (PBS and/or NPR) In the above table, of those whose primary news source is public broadcasting (NPR/PBS), an impressive 77% had no misconceptions; only 23% had 1 or more; only 13% had 2 or more; and a nearly statistically insignificant 4% had all three. Contrast that with: Of those whose primary news source is the FOX NEWS CHANNEL, a paltry 20% had no misperceptions; a whopping 80% had 1 or more; a stunning 69% had 2 or more; and an embarrassing 45% -- nearly half -- suffered from all three misperceptions. It seems that FOX NEWS CHANNEL viewers have a few problems with the facts... as has many times been my observation in these fora and elsewhere. NOTE: And perhaps this explains why the Republicans are always trying to cut funding to public broadcasting; and/or to get control of it so that they can make it "more fair and balanced." But I digress. But wait... just when you thought it had gotten about as fun and entertaining as it was gonna' get, along comes the study's interesting third finding: That political party affiliation, surprisingly, doesn't really have all that much to do with it, either; and that, instead, who the respondent planned to vote for in the then-upcoming 2004 presidential election actually did. Worrying that Republicans might watch more FOX than do Democrats, and that that, therefore, might account for the above findings, the researchers wrote: Looking just at Republicans, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 43%. For Republican FOX viewers, however the average rate was 54% while for Republicans who get their news from PBS/NPR the average rate is 32%. This same pattern obtains with Democrats and independents. But when researchers asked respondents who they planned to vote for in the then-upcoming 2004 presidential election -- notwithstanding their political party affiliation -- it became stunningly clear that support for Bush was the critical factor in having these misperceptions. Oy. Here is the average frequency of key misperceptions among those who plan to vote for: Code: [b]SUPPORTER OF: AVG. MISCONCEPTION FREQUENCY[/b] President George Bush 45% Democratic nominee 17% [b]BUSH DEMOCRAT MISCONCEPTION: SUPPORTERS SUPPORTERS[/b] Evidence of links to al-Qaeda 68% 31% Weapons of mass destr. found 31% 10% World public opinion favorable 36% 11% And it doesn’t matter whether you are Republican, Democrat or independent. The researchers wrote: "Among Bush supporters, Republicans, Democrats and independents were similarly likely to believe that the US has found clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda (pro-Bush Republicans 68%, pro-Bush Democrats 77%, pro-Bush independents 66%)." But if they were both a supporter of Bush and they watched the FOX NEWS CHANNEL, oh, lawdy! The researchers wrote: "Seventy eight percent of Bush supporters who watch FOX NEWS thought the US has... (Continued in next post...)
Part 2 of 2 (...continued from previous post.) ... found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, but only 50% of Bush supporters in the PBS and NPR audience thought this. On the other side, 48% of Democrat supporters who watch FOX NEWS thought the US has found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, but not one single respondent who is a Democrat supporter and relies on PBS and NPR for network news thought the US had found such evidence." But, wait... it gets even weirder: The study also found that being a supporter of President Bush has the same effect on one as watching Fox News; that the more (and the more closely) one follows the FOX NEWS CHANNEL, the more misinformed one becomes, to wit: Code: [b]LIKELY TO LIKELY TO FOLLOW FOX NEWS: SUPPORT BUSH SUPPORT DEMOCRAT[/b] Not closely at all 40% 22% Not very closely 43% 20% Somewhat closely 44% 16% Very closely 54% 11% So the bottom line seems to be: People who watch the FOX NEWS CHANNEL -- especially if they also voted for Bush -- tend to be statistically more likely to get it wrong! Now, there's a surprise, eh, sports fans? (Filters, shmilters.) And... oh, yeah... one more thing... Okay, chuckles, I'll say it: Bush lies. But this time, just for you ('cause... you know... we wouldn't want you to become too amused), I'll also follow with some examples that seem to have somehow escaped your notice... which, as we've seen herein, watching the FOX NEWS CHANNEL will do to a guy: Is there really any doubt, now, that his very first lie was hiw vow to "restore" honor and integrity to the Oval Office? Well... wait a minute... maybe not. He said, during his campaign: "I have been very candid about my past." Ha! Bush brazenly misrepresented intelligence data and relied on dishonest arguments to whip up support for war with Iraq? He looked America in the eye and lied, saying, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapon ever devised." I kept waiting for his pants to burst into flames. In September 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency concluded "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has – or will – establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." In January 2004, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on WMDS in Iraq concluded that the evidence prior to the war indicated that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and its chemical weapons had lost most of their lethality. In addition, the report concluded that the administration "systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs." Former Treasury Secretary O’Neil, who was a member of the National Security Council, indicated that "in the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction." According to the CIA's Duelfer’s Report, Iraq had no WMDs; had no strategy ... or plan for the revival fo WMD after sanctions ended; faile to acquire any kind of long range nuclear weapon capability prior to or following the 1991 end of the Gulf War; and unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chamical weapons stockpile in 1991. There is no credible indication, the report said, that Baghdad resume production of chemical munitions after the end of the Gulf War; and in spite of exhaustive investigation, no evidence could be found that that Iraq possessed, or was developing biological warfare agent product systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons. WMD just weren't there. Period. It was all a huge, shameful lie! How 'bout when he made numerous false statements about the provisions and effects of his super-sized tax cuts? He talked about "[t]ax relief for everybody ... while still reducing our national debt and funding important priorities..." and said that "[m]ost of the tax cuts went to low and middle income Americans, and now the tax code is more fair, 20 percent of the upper income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we structured the tax cuts." But, in fact, the top 1/5th of earners receive 2/3rds of all benefits and the bill excluded extending the child tax credit to 4 million low income families who do not qualify. Middle class earners will receive an average cut of $162 in 2005. Or how 'bout when he offered disingenuous and misleading explanations about the 9/11 attacks, the war on terrorism, and homeland security? There's not enough room on this entire web site to cover all those here! Not good enough? Fine. How 'bout when he lied about his connections -— and those of his administration —- to corporate crooks? Or when he presented deceptive claims to sell controversial policies on the environment, stem cell research, missile defense, abortion, energy, Social Security, health care, education, and other crucial issues? In a State of the Union address, he said, "By the year 2042, the entire [social security] system would be exhausted and bankrupt." Well that's funny, 'cause the head of the non-partisan General Accounting Office testified before Congress that Social Security "does not face an immediate crisis." In fact, there exists a substantial trust fund now invested in US treasury bonds that will make up the shortfall for several decades. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected the trust fund will be exhausted in 2052, not 2042, which is an older figure that came from the Social Security Trustees, who used a different set of economic assumptions. Even after 2052, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has stated that the system could still pay out 80 percent of normal benefits without new taxes or borrowing. That's a far cry from "exhausted" or "bankrupt." And much can happen between now and then. Much. And his budget statements... c'mon! As the budget deficit emerged; Bush assured us that the deficits would be "small and temporary." He also said "I remember campaigning in Chicago and one of the reporters said, 'Would you ever deficit spend?' I said, 'Only... only in times of war, in times of economy insecurity as a result of a recession or in times of national emergency. Never did I dream we’d have a trifecta.'" The White House repeated this "trifecta" claim throughout 2002. But, in fact, Bush never made such a statement in Chicago... or anywhere else, for that matter. It was just a lie. In fact, these three caveats on deficits were stated on several occasions by Vice President Gore. Bush's attempt to pin the deficit on the war also is a misstatement, since the cost of the Bush tax cuts is three times the cost of the response to 9-11, and the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq! How 'bout his prescription drug cost estimates? The Bush administration sold its Medicare prescription drug plan to conservatives in Congress as having a cost of $400 billion over ten years, enabling it to narrowly win passage in December 2003. In fact, The White House knew the costs were $551 billion -- more than 25 percent higher. The administration threatened to fire Medicare’s top financial analyst (Richard Foster) if he released the information. Two months after the President signed the law, the administration revised its costs estimates to $534 billion. One month after passage of the bill, the White House revealed that the program costs actually were $534 billion -- more than 25 percent higher. AARP, which worked with the administration in drafting the bill, revealed that these higher estimates were "well known in the fall" but is only now being made public. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based budget watchdog group claim Congress got "suckered by a classic financial bait-and-switch by the administration." Do we dare talk about the clean air act? The Bush administration claims it has imposed "stringent new rules on power plant emissions." But, in fact, the new Bush rules gutted Clean Air Act restrictions to allow utilities to avoid having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when they modernize their plants. The EPA’s civil enforcement chief resigned in protest, while another senior EPA lawyer wrote to EPA boss Christie Whitman that the administration "seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce." A study commissioned by the administration demonstrated that current policies on power plant emissions lead to the death of 24,000 people each year. And I could go on and on and on and on and on... but, instead, I'd rather you'd just stop wasting my time and go look 'em up yourself! Bush has consistently relied upon duplicity to wage political and policy battles. The examples are too numerous to even list all of them here! If you don't think he lies, then precisely what will it take to convince you? Bush lies! And he's not even good at it. If you think otherwise, Orson... man-oh-man are you ever livin' in a dream world! Woe be unto anyone who reads your threatened 9/11 anniversary piece... and is stupid enough to believe a single thing in it.
Third of three issues Greg raises... Greg- Thank you for raising such a substantive question in such fulsome detail. You see, I live In Boulder, Colorado - a town that votes left like Seattle but because better educated, thinks even better of itself. I swim in the left, and have for most my life. (For example, Boulder is the home of "the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center" - home of principled pacificists, Trots like Noman Soloman (an epigone of FAIR), and Stalinists alike.) Therefore I'm quite familar with the findings of FoxNews study and its limitations. But first, consider - who said THIS: "So first, let's just take a step back and consider why meeting the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is important to our security in the new era we are entering. "This is a time of tremendous promise for America. The superpower confrontation has ended; on every continent democracy is securing for more and more people the basic freedoms we Americans have come to take for granted. [...] "But for all our promise, all our opportunity, people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals. 'We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information and ideas. "And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. "There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us." - - - - - - - - - - - So - said the above? - - - - - - - - - Your claims amount to three, the first two being connected: 1) FoxNews watchers are misinformed, and Bush voters who are such are especially so regarding the links - if any between Saddam, Al Qai'da, and terrorism; 2) There is no such link and it'sd stupid to believe otherwise; 3) Bush lied (and lies and lies)! Let me begin with the last first. Your many claims of "Bush lies" are a combination of many things. Some are personal ("I have been very candid aobut my past"), and have been subject to American's disapproval or acceptance twice already; reasonable people can disagree about the sufficiency of his veracity, but few will claim it's the equal of Clinton's abject dissembling "I did not have sexual relation's with that woman!" Other claims are policy issues (tax policy, social security reform, and the environment) about which there is much considerable debate. But again, the claim that these are lies is a strong claim - not just that he's wrong. For example, Bush argues that long-term SS policy is jeopardized by changing demographics because fewer workers will be available to support greater numbers of the retired. Is this false? Clearly not because it's a historical truth. At inception there were 30 or 40 people (I forget exact ratios) to support a retireee; since then, eligibility and Great Society expansions like disability have increased SS obligations; people are living longer and having fewer children (and but for immigration, we'd be Europe's mess and have a declining population). If SS benfits are a reciprocal social contract, the demographic most cheated are black men - because most never live long enough to collect on what they paid in. And you, as (I presume) a Democrat, would defend this to them? In short, there are many variables that go into future projections, but the reasonability for refrom of the current system is based on the rationale of earlier SS reforms in the 80s, passed under a Democrat congress. So can we plausibly call Bush's arguments "lies"? Not without equally impugning earlier increases in payroll taxes as delusional. Another example, environmental policy. Many claim Bush policy is wrecking the environment. But a look at actually measured pollutants show no such problem. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=710393 In fact, no less a liberal environmentalist tha Gregg Easterbrook has argued that Bush is better for the environment than Clinton. "Conventional wisdom says that George W. Bush has 'declared war on the environment.' Yet actual instances of Bush anti-environmental policies are few, while the new president has received no credit for significant actions to reduce air pollution." ("Everything You Know About the Bush Environmental Record is Wrong" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=315801) Thus, while long-term outcomes of changed environmental policy by the Bushies can be doubted, the short-term cannot be described as a disaster. And if reasonable people can disagree, where's the "Bush lie?" Likewise with tax policy. And since all spending bills must constitutionally orginate in the House, how does Bush alone bear responsibility for these "lies?" Obviously, he doesn't. If there be blame, it must be shared, but your screed, Greg, gives no indication of this. A small point. The notion that Bush lied in 2002 in explaining deficits as the unwanted resulting "trifecta" of war, recession, and national emergency is a good example of context dropping. Claiming that he never said this before when the full quotation clearly shows he told it to a reporter - who may not have reported this story - means it wasn't public knowledge, but rather something later publicly told (June 7, 2002), after having been told in private. This "lie" is utterly piciunne (sp?), if only because the notion of this tripartite justification for deficit spending has long been an elementary macro-econ justification for deficit spending. [cont'd below]
Now, to get back to a substantive assertion of "Bush lies," regarding Iraq: "Bush brazenly misrepresented intelligence data and relied on dishonest arguments to whip up support for war with Iraq? He looked America in the eye and lied, saying, 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapon ever devised.'" I'll get to this last reckless claim at the end. But the first raises the salient question: what was this intelligence data? If you've been paying attention to the news on this subject in recent years, then you've learned three things and we likely agree about all of them. First, our government spends TENS of billions of bucks on it second, we don't get our money's worth; and third, Bush hasn't held these institutions and their leadership properly accountable for their worthlessness. Greg, your post further reads: "According to the CIA's Duelfer’s Report, Iraq had no WMDs; had no strategy ... or plan for the revival fo WMD after sanctions ended; faile to acquire any kind of long range nuclear weapon capability prior to or following the 1991 end of the Gulf War; and unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chamical weapons stockpile in 1991. There is no credible indication, the report said, that Baghdad resume production of chemical munitions after the end of the Gulf War; and in spite of exhaustive investigation, no evidence could be found that that Iraq possessed, or was developing biological warfare agent product systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons. WMD just weren't there. Period. It was all a huge, shameful lie!" Of these many claims, Greg, only the first and fourth lines are true and indisputable. Here's CNN's story from earlier this year: "In October [2004], [Charles A.] Duelfer [of the Iraq Survey Group] issued a preliminary report finding that in March 2003 -- the month of the invasion -- Saddam did not have any WMD stockpiles and had not started any program to produce them. "The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended the country's nuclear program after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. [So far, we agree Greg; now for where we disagree:] "The report found that Iraq worked hard to cheat on United Nations-imposed sanctions and retain the capability to resume production of weapons of mass destruction at some time in the future. "'[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted,' a summary of the report said." http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/12/wmd.search/ So strong was Saddam's intent to disguise and resume WMD, that (1) he retained some 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium (now in US posesssion); (2) among this was somewhat less than 2 tons of lightly-enriched uranium; (3) that someone previously unsuspected lay title to being "Saddam's [nuclear] Bombmaker" - one, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi (Colorado School of Mines graduate). In "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind" (September 2004), he discusses how he buried machinery and plans in his lawn to make the cruicial gas centrifuge needed to refine uranium into fissionable material. Obeidi's early centrifuge experiments ended in failure in January 1988. But with the help of American, French and above all German scientists, he was able to create a reliable prototype by the spring of 1990, paving the way to mass production of enriched uranium. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/25/sprj.irq.centrifuge/ (But Mother Jones is on the story just this month.) Obeidi asked in the NYTimes, "Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers." (Oct. 6, 2004) The last is hyperbole, no doubt, but indicative of intentions deeply harbored. Therefore the concerns that resulted in a trade embargo against Iraq, and eventually war, were actually well-founded despite the failure to find usable WMD. Finally, the State Department decided to retain some 120 of saddam's scientists in order to divert them from WMD mischief, and that missles in violation with UN resolutions (illegal range; could have threratened our allies Saudi, Kuwait, Turkey adn Israel). After being found in Iraq, they were destroyed. Even the UN's Hans Blix, the Swede more concerned about global warming than war, once admitted her thought Saddam had WMD "My gut feelings, which I kept to myself, suggested to me that Iraq still engaged in prohibited activities and retained prohibited items, and that it had the documents to prove it." ("Disarming Iraq" as quoted in the Lord Butler report, p. 112) "[M]y gut feeling was still that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction." Although Saddam destroyed nearly all WMD, he was also obligated to show the products of their destruction - under UN resolutions - in order to authenticate this. But he deliberately did not! The fact that tons of chemical weapons were not accounted for even troubled the pacifist Han Blix. NOW, even if the above constituted "Bush lies," you, Greg, have not shown how. The fact remains that the quotation near the top was not by Bush - it was President Clinton's words in February 1998. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/transcripts/clinton.iraq/ By August, the president had gained congressional approval to make Iraq regime change and bring about Saddam's ouster offical US policy. Although initiated because of Saddam's terror threat, he had ceased to cooperate with UNSCUM and PL 104-235 was passed intending to bring about and support a democratic future for Iraq. http://www.usembassy.it/file2002_09/alia/a2091905.htm IF Bush lied about this, how could Clinton have failed to have lied (and continued to lie until recently) too? And Congress as well? -Orson
Anyone can declare day night, and night day, and then openly wonder what's wrong with the opponent who can't see it. If done with a sufficiently straight face, many will believe. You're a very misguided person, making desperate arguments. I've already made my arguments... and stand by them, even now. Nothing you've argued or cited in reply changes either that or them.
