bang

4/2/2006 3:05:34 PM

just turn on your radio and listen to on the media

maybe they will walk you through this

4/2/2006 3:10:32 PM

revoltnow might be the worst poster i have ever seen

from Revoltnow...

Quote :

"the president has two options. #1 admit we were wrong but say the world is still safer no matter what."

from a quick google search....
http://www.dawn.com/2004/10/09/top11.htm

then from the thing with Helen Thomas...

Quote :

"And we did, and the world is safer for it. "

idiot...

4/2/2006 3:38:51 PM

so if he said that (and no i dont trust a pakistan newspaper report from 2 years ago) then why could he not answer the question?
what was the threat he keeps talking about?

add:

Quote :

""It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said during his fourth and final speech before Thursday's vote for Iraq's parliament. "As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that." "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision," the president said. "Saddam was a threat and the American people, and the world is better off because he is no longer in power.""

from cnn. i repeat. WHAT WAS THE THREAT?
if there were no weapons of mass destruction and al'qaeda was not there, WHAT WAS THE THREAT!

[Edited on April 2, 2006 at 4:11 PM. Reason : d]

4/2/2006 4:03:30 PM

are you in college??


which part of a quote dont you believe?? either he said it or he didnt...

and EVERYONE thought there were weapons....that was the threat


and again....related to your "option #1"






[Edited on April 2, 2006 at 4:27 PM. Reason : asdf]http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/14/bush.iraq/index.html

[Edited on April 2, 2006 at 4:31 PM. Reason : asdf]

4/2/2006 4:26:12 PM

Quote :

"and EVERYONE thought there were weapons....that was the threat"

You have a pretty loose definition of "everyone", not even accounting for the fact that many of the people who did believe there were WMD were swayed by Powell's bullshit (his words, not mine) presentation to the United Nations on this topic.

4/2/2006 4:37:11 PM

sorry...good point....by everyone i obviously dont mean everyone...

i mean the FBI, MI5, Russian intelligence, etc. etc. etc.....toootally my bad

4/2/2006 4:44:28 PM

^

4/2/2006 4:47:22 PM

you listen to the Russian Intelligence?

are you a freakin commie or somethin?

4/2/2006 5:15:26 PM

i dont know if you should really count russian intelligence, seeing as russia was more inclined to support iraq

4/2/2006 5:20:00 PM

either he was a threat or we THOUGHT he was a threat.

if you say that we were wrong then you have to say that we were wrong about him being a threat to us. either that or come up with some new justification.

4/2/2006 6:29:52 PM

A better question for Helen Thomas would have been: "Could you please describe the threat that Saddam Huessein's regime posed to the security of the United States?"

4/2/2006 7:11:38 PM

I would definitely like to hear that question answered

4/3/2006 1:46:25 PM

A: He tried to hurt mah diddy!

4/3/2006 1:52:17 PM

I think most of America would at this point.

4/3/2006 9:18:27 PM

You folks seem to be missing the point. let me summarize:

Quote :

" Helen Thomas: "Mister President, why did you *really* want to go to war with Iraq?" George Bush: "We got attacked on September 11th ... and I vowed to protect our people and not allow safe haven to our enemy" Helen Thomas: "But they didn't do anything to us" George Bush: "Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al-Qaeda. That's where al-Qaeda trained" Helen Thomas: "I'm talking about Iraq" George Bush: *sputter* "

at least people are finally calling him on this bullshit. How long has it been since the CIA, white house and everyone else publicly acknowledged that Iraq posed no threat to us whatsoever, and yet he STILL tries to associate Iraq with 9/11 and Al-Qaeda.

Saddam Hussein kept the Islamicist loonies like Al-Qaeda out of Iraq. It's the bumbling chickenhawks in the Bush Administration who gave Al-Qaeda a free pass to set up shop.

4/4/2006 1:46:58 AM

I Like how we invaded Iraq and some shitty intelligence that says he MIGHT have bought aluminum tubes, and might have bought yellowcake(which turned out false anyway)

but yet, credible intel says Iran HAS aluminum tubes, and inspectors FOUND uranium hexaflouride, which is only used in enrichment, surveillance shows iranian facilities being buried under heavy layers of concrete and earth. North Korea ADMITS to have nuclear weapons programs, if not actual weapons. All of this and yet we invade IRAQ due to shitty intel reports claiming he MIGHT have tubes and yellowcake. What a crock.

4/4/2006 2:47:49 AM

^i thought about this some more, and i have decided it was brilliant

invade a country with no military and no wmds instead of a country with a much more capable military, a more cohesive (and fundamentalist) population, and probably with weapons of mass destruction.

4/4/2006 10:20:13 PM

Quote :

"at least people are finally calling him on this bullshit."

no no....this woman only accomplished one thing - the further defeat of her only cause which is to undermine the president

4/4/2006 10:35:08 PM

dude, i'm a registered republican

and i don't know what planet it is you're living on

4/4/2006 10:36:59 PM

undermining the president when his lies cause the deaths of 2000+ american troops makes one a traitor.

undermining the president when his lies concerned his marriage makes one a great american.

uhhuh.

4/4/2006 10:37:17 PM

dude...helen thomas is not trying to get any answers about anything...the only thing she is trying to do is make the president look bad

4/4/2006 10:39:13 PM

Quote :

"the only thing she is trying to do is make the president look bad"

and she did a pretty damn good job, that.

especially considering how scheduled, scripted, and preplanned these press conferences are.

gg Helen.

4/5/2006 1:00:53 AM

no dude...she did a terrible job of that...


her question was trite and predictable. the fact that you may agree with it has nothing to do with how the president looked. the fact is that the president made her look like an idiot.

4/5/2006 7:53:48 AM

first of all, she was barely said anything and he spent the whole time running around in circles unable to answer a simple question.
second, damn straight it was predictable. "what the fuck are we doing in iraq?" is predictable because everyone knows that we fucked up, and everyone knows that bush wanted to go to war with iraq from the get go. that does not make it invalid.

4/5/2006 8:49:27 AM

Quote :

"what the fuck are we doing in iraq?" is predictable because everyone knows that we fucked up, and everyone knows that bush wanted to go to war with iraq from the get go. that does not make it invalid. "

ok...well there is one way we know that this is total bullcrap. this is the same tired rhetoric that all libs were pushing before the election and guess what. bush still won. so keep coming with this junk. and keep losing.

4/5/2006 9:35:32 AM

hahah

you soapbox kids

4/5/2006 5:15:31 PM

Well since I saw the thing on TV, I must say that joe_schmoe has no idea what he is talking about. If you would read any non liberal news source, you would see that Bush apparently planned to call on her because he knew she was going to ask these questions and he had prepared a reponse accordingly. Bush absolutely put her in her place by demanding respect and not letting her pull the same BS that every liberal has been spouting the past 3 years. She has absolutely no proof that the president went into Iraq intentionally, and neither do any of you.

4/5/2006 6:05:07 PM

how did we go from helen thomas' questions to the outcome of the 2004 election?

the republican position on iraq played a lot better than kerry's. no one is going to argue that, mostly because kerry didnt really have a position.

but now that bush cant be elected again can we go back to trying to figure out why we are in iraq?

4/5/2006 7:44:36 PM

We are in Iraq because congress voted to go. Why did they vote to go? There was intellegance that Sadam had WMDs and ties to terrorist organizations. Also following 9/11, the majority of the country was on high alert to avoid future terrorist attacks. While we have not found any WMDs or links, we have resorted to helping Iraqis as another main cause (If I remember correctly, this was an idea that Dems liked in 02). The scandal charges are all about politics. One party wants to get above another. This has happened before almost every election since the party system took over.

4/5/2006 10:55:24 PM

the president said
"they (wmds) were not there"
we know they had nothing to do with 9/11

BUT, he maintains that they were still a threat even with what we know now. all i want to know is what was the nature of that threat.

4/5/2006 11:00:07 PM

Which intelligence are you referring to? The stuff from our drunk informant, a.k.a. "Curveball"? The forged memos?

4/5/2006 11:43:55 PM

seriously, who cares about this shit. we went to war. get over it. deal with what is happening now.

4/6/2006 12:05:16 AM

By just shutting up and agreeing with it...gotcha.

4/6/2006 12:10:05 AM

Quote :

"bigun20: Well since I saw the thing on TV, I must say that joe_schmoe has no idea what he is talking about."

well, you must be really smart and all, since you saw it on tv. anyhow, the actual tv coverage is available in its entirety as video at the link i posted above.

Quote :

" If you would read any non liberal news source, you would see that Bush apparently planned to call on her "

gol-danged librul media. NewsMax FTW!!!!!1 whos your main man for the straight dope, yo? OReilly or Limbaugh?

Quote :

" because he knew she was going to ask these questions and he had prepared a reponse accordingly. "

and that explains why he got completely tripped up when she called him on the "WE ATTACKED IRAQ BECAUSE THE TALIBAN AND AL-QAEDA TRAINED THERE" bullshit.

if he was prepared, the he needs to fire his preparer.

Quote :

" Bush Thomas absolutely put her Bush in her his place by demanding respect and not letting her him pull the same BS that every liberal neocon has been spouting the past 3 years. She has absolutely no a preponderance of proof that the president went into Iraq intentionally, and neither do any of you.as do the rest of the world"

oh where to start.

ever heard of the Downing Street Memos? they're from July 2002, almost a year before the war started. Confidential documents detail the high level meetings between Britain and US, where the US position is spelled out as being committed to military invasion Iraq, regardless of the outcome of the UN diplomacy or sanctions.

Ever heard of Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill? He was on the National Security Council. He detailed memos from the white house starting in Feb 2001 regarding planning for a "post-Saddam Iraq.

Ever Heard of Bob Woodward? The guy is a conservative republican. His book "Plan of Attack" details GWB's repeated meetings with JCOS Gen. Tommy Franks, on the subject of attacking Iraq, starting 10 days after the Jan 2001 Inauguration.

Ever heard of Richard Clarke, advisor on terrorism to Presidents Reagan, Bush the Elder, and GWB? how he testifies that when told that Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld replied "We need to bomb Iraq. There aren't enough targets in Afghanistan"

ever ... oh never mind. just fuck you.





[Edited on April 6, 2006 at 1:30 AM. Reason : ]

4/6/2006 1:01:47 AM

Quote :

"She has absolutely no proof that the president went into Iraq intentionally, and neither do any of you."

shouldn't the burden of proof lie with the person sending our citizens to die and to kill innocent civilians? not someone asking questions about it . . . .

4/6/2006 1:24:22 AM

[Edited on April 6, 2006 at 1:27 AM. Reason : asdf]

4/6/2006 1:25:30 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/world/middleeast/09report.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Quote :

"U.S. Study Paints Somber Portrait of Iraqi Discord WASHINGTON, April 8 — An internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical." The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials. The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials. There are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq. The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes — sometimes political, sometimes violent — taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet. The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts. The writers included officials from the American Embassy's political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Mr. Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said. The report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams. It is not clear how many top American officials have seen it; the report has not circulated widely at the Defense Department or the National Security Council, spokesmen there said. A copy of the report, which is not classified, was provided to The New York Times by a government official in Washington who said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated Jan. 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Recent updates to the report are minor and leave its conclusions virtually unchanged, Mr. Speckhard said. The general tenor of the Bush administration's comments on Iraq has been optimistic. On Thursday, President Bush argued in a speech that his strategy was working despite rising violence in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," suggested last month that the administration's positive views were a better reflection of the conditions in Iraq than news media reports. "I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality," Mr. Cheney said, "than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad." In their public comments, the White House and the Pentagon have used daily attack statistics as a measure of stability in the provinces. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters recently that 12 of 18 provinces experienced "less than two attacks a day." Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on March 5 that the war in Iraq was "going very, very well," although a few days later, he acknowledged serious difficulties. In recent interviews and speeches, some administration officials have begun to lay out the deep-rooted problems plaguing the American enterprise here. At the forefront has been Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, who has said the invasion opened a "Pandora's box" and, on Friday, warned that a civil war here could engulf the entire Middle East. On Saturday, Mr. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior military commander in Iraq, issued a statement praising some of the political and security goals achieved in the last three years, but also cautioning that "despite much progress, much work remains." Mr. Speckhard, the ambassador overseeing reconstruction, said the report was not as dire as its assessments might suggest. "Really, this shows there's one province that continues to be a major challenge," he said. "There are a number of others that have significant work to do in them. And there are other parts of the country that are doing much better." But the report's capsule summaries of each province offer some surprisingly gloomy news. The report's formula for rating stability takes into account governing, security and economic issues. The oil-rich Basra Province, where British troops have patrolled in relative calm for most of the last three years, is now rated as "serious." The report defines "serious" as having "a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment, and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations and extremism." British fatalities have been on the rise in Basra in recent months, with attacks attributed to Shiite insurgents. There is a "high level of militia activity including infiltration of local security forces," the report says. "Smuggling and criminal activity continues unabated. Intimidation attacks and assassination are common." The report states that economic development in the region, long one of the poorest in Iraq, is "hindered by weak government." The city of Basra has widely been reported as devolving into a mini-theocracy, with government and security officials beholden to Shiite religious leaders, enforcing bans on alcohol and mandating head scarves for women. Police cars and checkpoints are often decorated with posters or stickers of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric, or Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric whose party is very close to Iran. Both men have formidable militias. Mr. Hakim's party controls the provincial councils of eight of the nine southern provinces, as well as the council in Baghdad. In a color-coded map included in the report, the province of Anbar, the wide swath of western desert that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, is depicted in red, for "critical." The six provinces categorized as "serious" — Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and three others to the north — are orange. Eight provinces deemed "moderate" are in yellow, and the three Kurdish provinces are depicted in green, for "stable.""

4/9/2006 7:47:09 PM

Quote :

"The "critical" security designation, the report says, means a province has "a government that is not functioning" or that is only "represented by a single strong leader"; "an economy that does have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability"; and "a security situation marked by high levels of AIF [anti-Iraq forces] activity, assassinations and extremism." The most surprising assessments are perhaps those of the nine southern provinces, none of which are rated "stable." The Bush administration often highlights the relative lack of violence in those regions. For example, the report rates as "moderate" the two provinces at the heart of Shiite religious power, Najaf and Karbala, and points to the growing Iranian political presence there. In Najaf, "Iranian influence on provincial government of concern," the report says. Both the governor and former governor of Najaf are officials in Mr. Hakim's religious party, founded in Iran in the early 1980's. The report also notes that "there is growing tension between Mahdi Militia and Badr Corps that could escalate" — referring to the private armies of Mr. Sadr and Mr. Hakim, which have clashed before. The report does highlight two bright spots for Najaf. The provincial government is able to maintain stability for the province and provide for the people's needs, it says, and religious tourism offers potential for economic growth. But insurgents still manage to occasionally penetrate the tight ring of security. A car bomb exploded Thursday near the golden-domed Imam Ali Shrine, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens. Immediately to the north, Babil Province, an important strategic area abutting Baghdad, also has "strong Iranian influence apparent within council," the report says. There is "ethnic conflict in north Babil," and "crime is a major factor within the province." In addition, "unemployment remains high." Throughout the war, American commanders have repeatedly tried to pacify northern Babil, a farming area with a virulent Sunni Arab insurgency, but they have had little success. In southern Babil, the new threat is Shiite militiamen who are pushing up from Shiite strongholds like Najaf and Karbala and beginning to develop rivalries among themselves. Gen. Qais Hamza al-Maamony, the commander of Babil's 8,000-member police force, said his officers were not ready yet to intervene between warring militias, should it come to that, as many fear. "They would be too frightened to get into the middle," he said in an interview. If the American troops left Babil, he said, "the next day would be civil war.""

4/9/2006 7:51:25 PM