I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
If Saddam denies knowledge or commission of the ricin attacks in Bill Frist's mailroom, does that mean he committed them?
When the history of this time is written, it will be clearly shown how the American media was just as responsible for what is going on in this country as the current administration is.
Have a nice, hot Cup O' Joe!
Pincus did a Pulitzer-worthy job, but Bart Gellman will win a Pulitzer for his "weapons of mass destruction" articles. Why? Pincus's articles were the ones that fell behind the screen of the Post's editorial decisions. Gellman had the advantage of doing his work post-invasion, when he was the first to start skewering Judith Miller. For Gellman's last article, the post did a huge graphic that showed the extent of Bush's misrepresentations.
A leader must make important decisions with limited information. All the world leaders had limited / semi reliable information on Iraq. Mr Bush with his leadership skills choose ignore the "may" and "coulds" in the intelligence reports. He chose war. Other people nodded in agreement, but he and his administration pushed war on the grounds of WMDs/AQ. Now WMDs/AQ haven't been found. As a leader he made the wrong choice. Leaders of other countries, and even Clinton saw the same information. They choose limited options (bombing, sanctions) that fit the threat. Bush decided half the army needed to be stationed in Iraq for the next 5-10 years. He thought that was the best use for our defense force. That choice is now looking stupider by the day. He bought us a 1% increase in security with 50% of our defense force. He mislead us to think we would get 50% increase in security for 20% of our defense force.
A leader must make important decisions with limited information. All the world leaders had limited / semi reliable information on Iraq. Mr Bush with his leadership skills choose ignore the "may" and "coulds" in the intelligence reports. He chose war. Other people nodded in agreement, but he and his administration pushed war on the grounds of WMDs/AQ. Now WMDs/AQ haven't been found. As a leader he made the wrong choice. Leaders of other countries, and even Clinton saw the same information. They choose limited options (bombing, sanctions) that fit the threat. Bush decided half the army needed to be stationed in Iraq for the next 5-10 years. He thought that was the best use for our defense force. That choice is now looking stupider by the day. He bought us a 1% increase in security with 50% of our defense force. He mislead us to think we would get 50% increase in security for 20% of our defense force.
Most major newspapers are controlled by one of a few megaconglomerates. A similar situation as TV and radio, but the concentration is not yet quite as extreme.
People looking for evidence that many of these papers are "liberal" can turn to the editorial pages. Some of the newspapers still have a liberal slant.
However, the editorial staff is separate from the news staff. People looking for an economic conservative slant to the papers need only perform an analysis of front page headlines over a period of months. Contrasting the stories selected for the front page (most importantly, the top half of the front page) with those ignored or buried. And looking at the slant of the headlines over time.
Usually, such a study needs to be done on paper-by-paper basis, as each locality is unique. On occasion, however, all the megacorporate papers take the exact same slant on a given day. Two examples:
1) The day after Powell's UN presentation. A fair headline, even at the time, might have been: "Powell presents case for Iraq War; Opponents challenge his claims". Instead, the headlines were uniformly huge type, lavishing praise on the presentation, and making it appear that his presentation had no opposition. "Irrefutable" my local, formerly-liberal but now owned by Gannett, paper screamed.
2) The day after the Miami Herald study was published the headlines, including the Herald's, all screamed "Bush would have won recounts." The next day the Herald ran a front page story that served as a correction, saying that Gore would have won most of the scenarios, and in any event, had most of the votes case for him. No other paper carried this on the front page, and many didn't mention it at all.
"as many as five years" actually means between zero and five years hence.
Just thought I'd help you understand that.
Let's play Guess the Pumdit!
After the war, in May, on Polish television, President Bush said, "We found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories." No, we did not. "So what's the difference?" said the president in December about the failure to find WMDs, because "if [Saddam Hussein] were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger." Such casualness, which would be alarming in any president, is especially so in one whose vaulting foreign policy ambitions have turned his first term into Woodrow Wilson's third term, devoted to planting democracy and "universal values" in hitherto inhospitable places.
Once begun, leakage of public confidence in a president's pronouncements is difficult to stanch. This president's certitude that $400 billion "is enough to meet our commitments" for 10 years under the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement was followed by a one-third upward revision of the estimate. Especially dismaying was the fact that the president seemed not to know -- or, worse, care -- that an inherent problem with vast welfare state expansions is that no one can know crucial variables, such as, in this instance, the number of people choosing to participate and the coming menu of new drugs.
Republicans are swiftly forfeiting the perception that they are especially responsible stewards of government finances. It is surreal for a Republican president to submit a budget to a Republican-controlled Congress and have Republican legislators vow to remove the "waste" that he has included and that they have hitherto funded.
Give up? Hint: He wears a bow tie. He likes baseball. He hasn't voted Democrat since Stephen Douglas.
"The probability of him initiating an attack . . . in the foreseeable future . . . I think would be low,"
If a President had chosen inaction based upon assessments such as this, and 30,000 or 300,000 people had subsequently been massacred, would you now be applauding his caution?
Can someone teach me to read?
If a President had chosen inaction based upon assessments such as this, and 30,000 or 300,000 people had subsequently been massacred, would you now be applauding his caution?
Fuckwit:
As many as 10,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 500 American soldiers have been killed. They are not hypothetical numbers. They were real people who are now deceased because Georgie just couldn't wait to blow a few innocent people into oblivion.
Do you EVER get tired of being completely wrong? Ever?
Hussein, he said, could deploy "sleeper cells armed with biological weapons to attack us from within -- and then deny any knowledge or connection to the attacks."
Quite true. The most probable route would have been to provide Al Qaida with funding, training and experienced technical staff, performing the actual manufacturing in a third country. The lead times may have been as long as one to two years, depending upon the security requirements and the amount of deniability which he sought.
This risk is no more. An excellent thing.
Those who pretend that any leader in a post-9/11 environment would choose inaction after having evaluated this risk are just liars, haters and partisan drones.
"As many as 10,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 500 American soldiers have been killed. They are not hypothetical numbers."
It's a genuine tragedy, isn't it? What a terrible choice for a leader to have to make.
" They were real people who are now deceased because Georgie just couldn't wait to blow a few innocent people into oblivion."
Ah, I see that you are partisan scum.
"Do you EVER get tired of being completely wrong? Ever?"
I am right and you are wrong.
(OK, the last bit was just empty schoolyard gainsaying. But you started it, and this is atrios's site, where such is the rule).
saddam should have disarmed the weapons he didn't have. you people are morons.
It's a genuine tragedy, isn't it? What a terrible choice for a leader to have to make.
The point, of course, is that he didn't have to do any such thing. He chose to do so, either for Cheney's benefit, or for his own insatiable ego. It hardly matters.
Atrios was right though: you're well on your way to being the Dumbest. Troll. Ever.
Um - err -- but --
my head is -- ike -- spinning
Didn't Bush HIMSELF say there were no links to Al Queda? What was it that Krugman said -- "It's easier to find links between Bush and the bin Ladens than between Hussein and Al Queda"?
Isn't it pretty much proven that Hussien was terrified of a fundamentalist leader like bin Laden? These people who populate the Middle East are not all A-RABS, all planning on terroristic ventures. There are significant differences, even within Iraq itself. Hence, our current situation....
I just can't keep up.
I guess I'm just a partisan drone -- damn. I always thought I was a rational human being who examined facts. So much for that thought.
Summary of Meet the Press interview..
That hour will be more sterile than a delivery room in the hospital....
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sun...ics/
7901198.htm
There's going to be a massive tv campaign to tell American people that GeorgeIII is right and everybody else is wrong. That's what the Guardian says, anyway. I thought that we have had this massive media campaign for over three years. Silly me.
OT: The Guardian also writes:
"But Bush may have nullified one potentially explosive area of Democratic attack. The independent commission will only report its findings in March 2005, long after the presidential election has been fought."
What about starting an alternative investigative commission; one by the citizens of the U.S., appointing Scott Ritter on it, and setting a deadline well before elections?
Most major newspapers are controlled by one of a few megaconglomerates. A similar situation as TV and radio, but the concentration is not yet quite as extreme.
well I'm not disputing the rest of your post but actually, thanks to Clear Channel, radio is even more concentrated in the hands of ONE corporation (a very, very pro-GOP corporation) than either newspapers or TV.
I think we should just kill all the furriners, because someone somewhere might do something bad to 'Murricans.
If some furriner kills an American, that American's blood will be on YOUR hands, you America-hating libruhls, because you didn't let us kill all the furriners before they killed us.
Those who pretend that any leader in a post-9/11 environment would choose inaction after having evaluated this risk are just liars, haters and partisan drones.
No one is saying any other leader would choose inaction.
A true leader would not have chosen THIS action. It was, truly, a terrible decision with repercussions that will plague us for a long time to come.
From Andy's link:
Bush also defended his own military record in the interview, but NBC withheld that exchange until Sunday. Critics have accused Bush of shirking his duties as a member of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
White House officials insist that Bush fulfilled all his military requirements in the early 1970s and note that he was honorably discharged.
Just release your service record, georgie. Everyone else has done this.
Why won't you?
I speak here not only to those with military experience, but also to those with ordinary commonsense. I maintain that the Bush "heritage" of serving this nation is a complete and utter lie. Everyone, I assume, has seen the grainy footage of Bush I being fished out of the sea by the crew of a submarine, after he (ostensibly) ditched his aircraft. This most people would accept as the truth (though I have my doubts). What doesn't pass the smell test, however, is his claim that he was "put on watch" aboard the very submarine that had just rescued him. Are we expected to buy into the notion that this submarine was so short of qualified personnel that the captain had to put a man who had been just hauled out of the sea, a man with no previous experience on a submarine, on watch duty. I call bullshit. If you want to believe it, fine. I don't.
The most probable route would have been to provide Al Qaida with funding, training and experienced technical staff... This risk is no more.
I don't know what planet you're from Hat, but on this world, Saddam never funded or trained al Qaeda and never showed any intention of doing so.
Pincus has very close ties to the intelligence community, and his articles are generally what the CIA wants heard.
don't confuse me with the facts, Beth. Facts are stupid things.
Hat[e] drooled onto his keyboard and it came out something like:
Those who pretend that any leader in a post-9/11 environment would choose inaction after having evaluated this risk are just liars, haters and partisan drones.
WTF does 9/11 have to do with the decision to go to war with Iraq?!?!
9/11 didn't change any international treaties. 9/11 didn't change the US Constitution. 9/11 didn't change the Sadaam Hussein into a bad guy that we hate from a good guy that we send money and weapons to.
9/11 certainly changed the lives of a lot of people. It briefly changed the way many people in the world view the US (we've since blown that!)
I am SO FUCKING TIRED of the 9/11 changed everything excuse!
Beth is right, and the documents in his recovered briefcase show it. He had no use for religious extremists of any stripe, because Hussein knew they were gunning for him, too.
"Page A17" (or 22, or 31......)
Might be a good title for a blog dedicated to all the news that's fit to print.....but not up front where everybody might read it!
Yes, a Pulitzer for this guy, hear hear!
Whatever qualities Bush did display, leadership was not among them. Bush never had any intention of taking any other path than the one that led to war with Saddam, a war based only on the unexplained timetable of George W. Bush. Once again, repeat after me - Saddam allowed weapons inspectors into Iraq. They were there in Iraq, doing their job, and Tariq Aziz was trying to negotiate. Bush refused to listen. Why? Because Aziz was saying, "We no longer have WMD. They have been destroyed." All Bush wanted to hear was "We have massive WMD. We will lead you to them now." Instead, Bush, I repeat, Bush, not Saddam, kicked out the weapons inspectors and started a war. The war was started because Iraq claimed to no longer have WMD. Iraq was not allowed to tell the truth, because Bush had already made up his mind. Ironic, no? It is Bush who lied, and it is Bush who caused this war.
The Europeans were fixing to lift the Sanctions in the UN. Go back and look at the records.
That's why Bush couldn't wait. And once he had troops in theater, there was no way he would back down and be called a coward. The Generals were probably all itching to go before the weather got bad.
Weapons? Please. Didn't Wolfie himself say the weapons were just the only story they could settle on that they could sell to the public?
They've fucking admitted it already. There's no longer any reason for anyone to to be defending a rationale for the war that the Bush administration itself has admitted was "the only story we could get the American people to believe."
Bush knows his base DOES NOT CARE that he lied to them. Republicans EXPECT their Presidents to lie to them, because, quite frankly, that's what THEY would do if THEY were Pres.
it's gonna be an awful big duck pit. i think we are gonna need some geese.
It's a genuine tragedy, isn't it? What a terrible choice for a leader to have to make.
Tipsy doesn't give a fuck about them anymore than you do, brownshirt. Blow it out your ass.
I always start reading my news on A17. Then go to the used cars for sale, then Family Circus, then the laser surgery ads. Are you saying these aren't important?
If a President had chosen inaction based upon assessments such as this, and 30,000 or 300,000 people had subsequently been massacred, would you now be applauding his caution?
Massacred with what? I was frankly amazed that 9-11 (again, perpetrated by Saddam's enemy in the Muslim world) had as low of a count as it did. Two jumbo jets crashed into the densest population area in the country, and Mr Hat's hyperbole needs to bump that number by one or two orders of magnitude. Where'd ya get those numbers? Are they based on quantities (and of course teh excellent quality expected from Made in Iraq products) of weapons that a sleeper cell could stuff in a carry-on? Please.
Luckily, Mr. Hat, we've now created a rogue-anything-goes nation with (surprise!) no sanctions, no order, and what would be a better place to try out the latest Al-Qada strategy on a sitting-duck military? Drain the swamp my ass. We made the swamp.
Shorter Hat:
9/11 means never having to say you're sorry for killing ay-rabs!!!
But people like Hat would never be sorry for killing arabs, anyways ... now he just gets to wallow in his racism some more, and in public.
I just wrote to them, asking if it's ok for me to just subscribe to the page A17 at a prorated price per page.
Nbc nightly news didn't even mention Tenet's mainline scenario about Nukes...5-7 years.( that Tenet prefaced by saying this is important and often overlooked) All they mentioned was Nukes in one year AND they didn't mention the condition that he acquire fissile material. Andrea Mitchell pulled a 'Cheney' this week. UNBELIEVABLE. "sEE HONEY, CIA TOLD PREZNIT NUKES IN ONE YEAR, how could he not act, PREZNIT GIVE US TURKEY"
Some talking heads on, I think, CNN, were argueing, and the Admin shill parroted the line that we were all SO much safer because we have Bush in office, since no 'terrist' attacks have occurred since 9/11/01. The 'other side' shill didn't see fit to ask if anthrax and ricin didn't count.
BTW, is it just me, or does it seem like an unusual amount of incidents like fires at chemical plants, explosions at fireworks factories, ect., have been happening? They don't stay on the news long, and officials are always quick to ascribe the incidents to accident, but...
The Washington Post Corporation's holdings include TV stations in Florida and Texas. They also include Kaplan Education, a test preperation service.
Now both Bush boys institute testing in their repsective public school systems, thus opening millions of dollars of buisness to Kaplan in Florida and Texas.
Be interesting to know how far back the WPost management and Busheviki go.
I think the PNAC crowd has been shopping this war around for years and years. To think tanks, publishers, broadcasters, the entire crony capitalist establishment. Just a few holdouts in the State Dept., Pentagon, and CIA who opposed it. You know, the people who would have to actually carry out the war.
" Andrea Mitchell pulled a 'Cheney' this week."
just a quick word about Mitchell, she knows the identity of the two senior adminstration officials who betrayed the CIA case officer. Now this betrayal has severely compromised the CIA's capacity to monitor the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And Mitchell is protecting these criminals with her silence.
Let me be clear, we are all at greater risk for chemical or bio-weapons attack because Andrea Mitchell will not tell us the names of the traitors in our government. Who STILL hold positions of power. And she protects them.
If you think she should name the traitors, use this email with Andrea Mitchell in the subject line to tell her so
nightly@nbc.com
could also be andrea.mitchell@nbc.com but I am not sure about that
Pulitzer will probably go to the Toledo Blade for reporting on the Tiger Force in Vietnam that wiped out villages.
Can the people here express some gladness that a dictator is gone? Nope, remove a dicatotar, try to establish a democracy, and the dictator lovers, from Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot, will come screaming after you.
It's too bad that suckers like Berend de Boer abound all over America.
I mean, if you're willing to be a lied to, have your sons and daughters die for those lies, and then blame me in some end-justifying-means bullshit for protesting the audacity of those lies ... then you are probably too dumb to be trusted to vote.
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