I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
And on the American Blogwhoring Front, We know that the Buck stops Anywhere but with Our Chimperor.
attaturk -
Link went kablooie, please whore again.
oops, man blogwhoring is really bad when you f-it up. We know where the Buck stops in the U.S. and it ain't with Chimpy
attaturk -
Pat your head and rub your belly at the same time.
Hey, it worked once. 
Just once Holden, fool me once shame on me, fool me twice, won't get fooled again.
I read that Blair was seriously thinking of resigning a month ago, but a few ministers lobbied him piteously to stay put. He agreed and became *steely* again.
Wonder how his newfound resolve is doing now.
I'd like to, oh, I don't know, parachute those guys (Perle, Wolfie, etc.) naked into North Korea. Blair too. One can dream.
And the Phillipino hostage has just been released.
Be aware that Norway, included in the Coalition of the Willing by Rumsfeld, has now withdrawn its troops from Iraq, under the radar.
Powell pleaded with the Norwegians to not withdraw their troops, and a compromise was reached, where a few staff officers remain, working at the Coalition's headquarters. This lets the Pentagon pretend that Norway is still a member of the Coalition.
In Norway, the politicians responsible for sending Norwegian troops to Iraq kept claiming they were there on a UN humanitarian mission, and were not part of the Coalition.
But the Pentagon, always eager to spice up its good-news-factor, would include the Norwegian contingent in the total tally of nations supporting the Coalition.
Question - how many other nations have made similar arrangements. Quietly pulling out their troops in a similar fashion?
Sissy Pants may be resigning? Oh, hell.
I may be screwed.
"Nobody except Washington and London thought that Saddam was such a threat that we had immediately to go to war," he said.
Bingo.
So when morons like Hannity whine, "But Germany said he had weapons! And France! Whaaaa!" you can just point out that only Nero and Poodle were so bamboozled by Saddam that they were tricked into attacking him.
Liars, or utterly incompetent for leading a country.
I don't care which. Put them both in jail for trying to cover up their mistakes.
Holden's broken link is to this story.
SteinL, there might be another reason for the Norwegians to want to get out. They're the ones making noise right now about the American abuse of children in Iraq prisons. I think this is going to be dynamite, and it's not going to disappear.
"Liars, or utterly incompetent for leading a country."
Seraphiel,
What frightens me is that these are not mutually exclusive categories.
Cook had it right when he said: "The intelligence agencies were then left in a position of having to find evidence to support a conclusion."
Here, it isn't only Bush that needs to be judged for manipulating intelligence. If we don't repudiate what he has done by impeachment, it means we see what he did as simply bad policy that needs to be corrected at the ballot box. But it isn't. It is so much more, so much worse, that I expect our children to look upon us with embarrassment as appeasers.
"Nobody except Washington and London thought that Saddam was such a threat that we had immediately to go to war," he said.
Hopefully someone will compile an apendix with links to show that this was the truth. The whole world was opposerd to the war. Even the Pope called it immoral. There was nt justification for it apparent to the rest of the world and even many among the republican foreign policy establishment and the military brass.
We can't let them get away with the lie that it was due to bad intelligence. It was due to their incompetence and immoral/illegal drive to war.
Lupin
Yeah baby!
Chickenhawk McNuggets.
The "coalition of the willing" didn't take a minor hit. American foreign policy took a MAJOR hit because the Iraqi insurgents have just demonstrated that an American ally has more concern for a single citizen than they have confidence in American leadership.
I always love the part where they say, "...but, b-b-but Bill Clinton even said Saddam had weapons!"
It's like, gosh, that's funny, and here I always thought Clinton was supposed to be a lying sack of shit...
BBC are on to the Blair resignation story big time.
I think he's trying to get "pity" support and his acolytes are saying the usual bullshit about blah blah blah.
Fuck Off Tony Blair. (Jeez, that made me feel good)
> I think he's trying to get "pity" support and his acolytes are saying the usual bullshit about blah blah blah.
Cloned Poster, I agree
Look at the three cabinet depts. that urged him not to quit and sought to assure him he had wide government support
Health Secretary John Reid
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell Education Secretary Charles Clarke
Where was Jack Straw - humping the back of a camel ?
And most of all I'd be interested in what ex Cabinet minsters Clare Short and Robin Cook have to say on this ruse of a mattter
Standa, where's Geoff Buffoon?
Humping Mandelson?
Yeah, fuck off you big poodleman.
I'll believe that Tony Blair is resigning when I see it.
He thinks that's he's annointed just as much as chimpy does. They both need to go. At least the BBC has the balls to say it out loud. Our press is still quaking in their boots at any suggestion that they point out that the boy king is nekkid.
Pity support was a specialty of Nixon. Checkers was just the beginning. It's so unattractive for a head of state who has screwed up so badly to go bawling like this:
For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd,
All murder'd-for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
Shakespear; Richard II
The PEOPLE of the entire world, except here, knew this war was bullshit and was wrong and didn't believe Bush or Blair. Poor dumb Americans got bamboozled by a dumbassed nit-wit like Chimpy. Oh, the shame.
Fourlegsgood, Bernhard is going well over at you know where. Check the current thread.
As for the BBC, it's payback time and watch Panorama tomorrow night.
Robin Cook said the suggestion that there had been a "global" intelligence failure was "garbage"
"Nobody except Washington and London thought that Saddam was such a threat that we had immediately to go to war," he said.
Of course, Bush has also recently stated: "I never said Iraq was an imminent threat!"
The buck will stop firmly with the Foreign and Defence Secretaries. Geoff Hoon was always set to carry the can for "intelligence failures", and for poor military planning and execution - Blair has just been waiting for the point where it looks like he can use Hoon's departure to draw a line under the affair. Leaks suggest Butler will report that Jack Straw over-ruled the government's legal officers on the legality of the war, so he's being lined-up for the chop as well. This will give the media two top-level scalps and should keep Gordon Brown quiet (since it removes a potential rival for the leadership in Straw, and a loyal Blairite in Hoon).
"The buck stops there and I don't think that the political layer in any country can escape the consequences of a systemic failure," [Dame Pauline Neville-Jones] said.
Interesting that a Brit uses the expression "the buck stops here" -- a sign of U.S. cultural hegemony. Someone "the euro stops here" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
"Somehow," not "someone."
The story about ministers persuading Blair to stay isn't a pitch for sympathy (if he wanted that, Blair would let the media report the devastating family incident that happened a couple of months ago). It's a warning to Brown not to challenge for the leadership. We've had statements from John Prescott (Deputy PM) and now Peter Mandelson (despised Machiavellian architect of New Labour) indicating that Brown is the certain successor, but that his time hasn't yet come. This new development underlines the point - senior figures want Blair to stay. I think it also, subtley, implies that the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility damns Brown - if Blair goes down for the war, everyone in the cabinet goes with him, because they all, publicly, supported it (leaving Robin Cook, a long-standing rival of Brown's, as the only likely successor).
Reid and Clarke (former fixers, now major figures in the cabinet heading the privatisation programmes in Health and Education that New Labour will base their next election campaign on; fiercely loyal to Blair, hate Brown) and Jowell (a Blairite before Blair, quietly planning the privatisation of the BBC in 2006; does need to rehabilitate her image after doubting the glorious leader's ability to get the backbenches to vote for war without the UN) are no surprise. But Patricia Hewitt (Trade and Industry Secretary) has always been closer to Brown than to Blair. For a long time she's been the odds-on favourite to follow Brown as Chancellor, especially if Brown becomes PM. But her star has been on the wane since mid-2002, when several of her contemporaries were retired and coming Blairites and Brownies were given junior positions in the Treasury and at Trade. There will be a reshuffle this summer, whatever happens, and I wonder if one of Blair's acolytes got Hewitt to pledge herself to him with the promise that Blair'd be persuaded to reward her, either by promoting or at least not retiring her.
They know where the buck stops and THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE BUCKS!
Gregg, you probably called it right.
greg,
What was the "the devastating family incident " the blairs have suffered ?
"
What was the "the devastating family incident " the blairs have suffered ?"
forget i asked. It's not something to be aired about.
kenny:
related to this 2000 story mayhaps:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/822238.stm
Okay, here is a Conspiracy Theory I read in a dKos diary the other day and I really like it. I couldn't find it again so I could properly attribute it but, here it is:
We invaded Iraq, not because we thought they had weapons but because we KNEW they didn't. Our biggest fear was that Saddam would let the inspectors in to prove they were weapons free, get the Int'l sanctions lifted and be able to get their oil out on the open market. Think about it, who had the Iraqi oil contracts? France and Russia, that's who. Who on the security council fought going into Iraq? France, Russia & China. Sanctions get lifted, France & Russia make a ton of dough, Saudi Oil loses it's value, China gets to grow it's economey in hyperdrive with all of the cheap fuel, etc, etc. 9/11 gave the Neocons the excuse to pull the PNAC play book off of the shelf but it's the threat of sanctions being lifted that put the urgency behind it.
Maybe I spend too much time reading Blogs but, this has a certain symmetry to it.
If that's a conspiracy theory, where are the expeditionary and residual invasion divisions on standby to crush Pakistan, India, North Korea, Libya, Chad, Israel, China and Iran? How could that not be the closest to reasonable?
also, we left out EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION AND MOST OF THEIR ALLIES!
Holden: "Also, the Coalition of the Willing took a small hit as the Phillipines announced that it will withdraw their 50 troops as scheduled in August."
OH. MY. GOD.
As the Phillipines go, so goes Palau.
"Nobody except Washington and London thought that Saddam was such a threat that we had immediately to go to war," he said.
But part of Washington's argument was that with WMDs and terrorism, you can't wait until there's absolute knowledge of an immediate threat--by the time you have that knowledge, the attack will already have taken place. And with Saddam, who had consistently violated UN resolutions and lied about his weapons programs in the past (even in 2002-2003, he continued to develop other banned weapons in violation of the UN even though he apparently wasn't developing WMD's), you just couldn't take the chance.
No one said the attack would come tomorrow if we didn't invade--what they said was that our previous policy essentially entailed waiting to be attacked. Bush and Blair considered the stakes too high to wait.
I don't think I agree with them on that point, but that was the argument.
I think, Dave, that the concept was that the threat was imminent, not that if someone had the potential somewhere along the line to attack, we should attack them now. I know they've been backpedalling with all their might "I never said imminent," but that was the heart of the argument, not just that it was going to come, but that it was going to come soon, which was why we couldn't wait for the completion of the inspections.
Baseballgirl (love the handle), the problem with your theory is that Saddam would never have allowed the inspectors back in if the Bush administration hadn't been rattling its sabres. If they had just kept quiet about Iraq and focused on Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries with clearer ties to Al Qaeda, the sanctions would have remained in place probably until Saddam's death.
Plus, I really have to think that Bush really believed there were WMD's in Iraq. I mean, the absence of WMDs is likely going to cost him his presidency. He had to have known that people would be pissed when they weren't found. Or do you think he wanted to risk becoming a ridiculed, one-term president just to put some extra money in the hands of American oil companies? He's too much of a political actor for that, in my opinion.
I know they've been backpedalling with all their might "I never said imminent," but that was the heart of the argument, not just that it was going to come, but that it was going to come soon, which was why we couldn't wait for the completion of the inspections.
If you go back and read the speaches, you can find what I'm talking about. I think the argument was that the inspections would never really be complete because Saddam still was not providing full access.
Spinsanity on the "imminent threat" claim basically says we're both sort of right:
link.
I know how some people here feel about Spinsanity, but I figured I'd provide the link anyway.
Why I Love The Minneapolis StarTribune, Reason #4568940986:
http://www.startribune.com/stori...61/
4869054.html
Editorial: Intelligence CYA/Senate GOP aims to help Bush
July 10, 2004
If anyone thinks the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, released Friday, is all about making needed corrections to U.S. intelligence agencies and procedures, they're mistaken. This report is all about covering the Bush administration's posterior and getting President Bush reelected this fall.
More than a year ago, when the Senate Intelligence Committee began talking about doing this investigation, the Republican committee majority wanted no part of it. The Democrats wanted a single broad investigation, similar to the work of the congressional 9/11 commission, that looked both at how the flawed intelligence was produced and how it was used by the Bush administration.
To get any investigation at all, the Democrats had to settle for dividing the work into two parts. The first part, the basis for the report released Friday, investigated the intelligence failures themselves. The second part, yet to begin and conveniently due long after the fall election, investigates how the Bush administration used the intelligence to build its case for war.
There's more at the link above (free registration, or use www.bugmenot.com).
Dave, we are responsible for Saddam and the weapons and the weakness of the UN and the sanctions. We did that. Saddam did not control the United states through telepathy, that was all us.
"Phoenix Woman" above has it just right, as does the Star-Tribune.
Bush decided to attack Iraq, then sought a for a justification for it.
It is really that simple.
Now the only question that remains is *why* did Bush think that attacking Iraq would promote America's standing in the world?
Whatever his original motivations were, they have backfired badly.
The vast majority (over 90%) of the Muslim world now think the US is their enemy.
THe standing of the US in Europe is at an all-time low. The Russians and the Chinese and the Indians are similarily disenchanted.
So that leaves whom? Israel, for whom the war was fought; Micronesia, a US hand-puppet, and Tony Blair.
Speaking of ol' Tony, does anyone remember that it was the propaganda efforts of none other than Rupert Murdoch that got ol' Tony elected in the first place? You know Rupert, doncha? He runs Fox News, Sky-TV, and a bunch of other media outlets in the US, Australia, and in the UK. A right regular media mogul, him.
Bush thought that he could finesse this one because he had the media on his side, and on Tony's side. In the US, most of the media is glaringly predisposed to present the Israeli side of any dispute in the most favorable terms possible. That *possibly* explains the extreme deference to the White House position, because everyone in Washington knew that this war was for Israel. (See the comments of retired Marine General Anthony Zinni.)
That *may* be why the NYT presented Judith Miller's warped synthesis of the story as fact, when it had every reason to doubt it. There were many stories that I read in the international press that stood Miller's stories on their head, but they went unheeded at the NYT. Judith Miller's stories justified the invasion, and that's why they were run on the front pages of the leading newspaper in the US.
That *may* be why the Washington Post let Jim Hoagland's (and Charles Krauthammer's) op-ed pieces run on their editorial page: they served the same purpose--they justified the invasion.
Now, of course, anyone who notices that war was undertaken as a service to Israel--in spite of the Vulcan's plan to "Secure the Realm", in spite of the well-known prejudices of most of the Bush Administrations advisors--will automatically be branded as an "anti-Semite". That has become SOP.
It is a lowly smear. The only people who should decide when American forces are deployed in the service of America are Americans.
Not a bunch of lying, conniving scoundrels, of which George W. Bush is the epitome.
Dave, we are responsible for Saddam and the weapons and the weakness of the UN and the sanctions. We did that. Saddam did not control the United states through telepathy, that was all us.
I know. I'll never forgive Clinton and the democrats for it, either.
Have we learned nothing from Hutton?
If there is one thing we can know for certain about the Butler report, it is that whatever the facts of the matter are, Blair will get away with a slapped wrist and a bit of a finger-wagging, if that.
Unfortunately, Dame Pauline also said 'the head of the CIA is a politically appointed job, so it's the equivalent of the minister going.'
She was quoted thus in the third paragraph beneath the section "US criticism". So if you use her comments about the 'political layer' be prepared for somebody to rebut your argument by quoting her entire sentiment on the issue.
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