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http://mint400.net/archives/001127.html
So maybe we can't impeach him, has an ex-pres ever been convicted of crimes??
Why are so ready to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's using these illegal wiretaps in any responsible manner? How can he still have a shred of credibility with you?
gina, don't dismiss the impeachment possibility yet. Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, Bush has publicly admitted to spying on American citizens without court approval. He has no idea how serious his own party is treating this. The slippery slope implications alone are staggering.
Bzzzzt. (respectfully) Wrong answer. Fundamentally, the grounds have not changed from day one: remove Saddam, and with it the threat of WMD proliferation because of past history ie: hostilities with neighbors, violations of cease-fire aggreement to Gulf War 1, rejection of UN inspectors…
The intel that bolstered SOME of those claims was bogus. If I tell you the the earth is flat the day after Columbus gets back from america I am a liar, If I make the a similar statement prior, the same is not the case.
As for W's statements about the PATRIOT ACT in 2004, taken in context to the act, wire-taps require warrants. Technically, he's telling you how the act works. He's not being questioned about the NSA program that came into light recently. Yeah, that's a fine line, razor thin, even.
If he was fast on his feet, he could have said something like…wire-taps require warrants under most circumstances…and then named instances like Echelon as examples. W's not that good. Call him a liar.
Why do I give him the benefit? Well, I honestly think that security is the goal not reckless abandon. Gotta go.
Imminent danger from Weapons of Mass Destruction was the line used to sell the war on Iraq. Not Saddam is a bad, bad man, that came later.
That is and was a lie. No WMDs have been found and Bush admitted that there were none and the intel for the war was "faulty".
Any other justification came after that initial lie and is just a way to try and slide out from that lie.
Yellowcake enriched uranium? Pure lies. And when the guy they sent over the check it out wouldn't lie and say Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, they smeared him and outed his CIA covert operative wife.
You say security but I see Bush covering his own ass and making sure that Reagan and his daddy's records are also sealed in spite of the Freedom of Information Act.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/r...0030128-
19.html
Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal dictator, with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to terrorism, with great potential wealth, will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States.…
Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct -- were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming.
… The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax…
The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin…
He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.…
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.
That covers UN and IAEA intel up to that point. Take out the domestic and British intel that was BS, and the list still sounds imminent. If international agencies have records of weapons from ten years ago, and they're missing now, where did they go? For a moment forget the speculated weapons. Where are the weapons accounted for at the time of Gulf1? If Saddam is not telling the international agencies where those are, you are left to interpolate the data that you have. Is it possible that Iraq could become Korea?
Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.
Again we can only speculate, but he did invade Kuwait. He did gas the Kurds…so…
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.
Translation: WMD proliferation.
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.
So there it is: Saddam is a bad, bad man that had weapons as long as ten years ago. He had a history of WMD usage, deceiving international law and no record of where any of his weapons went. Fill in the blanks with what you know and what you can speculate about. I read growing threat, if you get imminent threat and feel deceived…sorry. There is a fine line between the two, and not a great deal of room for error.
Ugggh.
Call it personal, call it a war of opportunity but not a war of necessity...there was on imminent or growing threat...the man was on his last leg as is, not if one of his crazy sons came to power, we might be talking about a whole 'nother barrel of fish!
http://neoalertz.blogspot.com/20...re-
impeach.html
It talks about some house bills:
H.Res.635 would create a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, and retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
H.Res.636 and H.Res.637 would censure, respectively, Bush and Cheney for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that they and others in the Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq
The point is that his administration was going to find some way to justify an invasion of Iraq. The fact that his justification is based on lies is impeachable. As is his admission of allowing the NSA to spy on American citizens.
And the WMD proliferation is bunkum, there's been no evidence since we took over his country that he was planning on building a stockpile with which to attack us. Evidence may have pointed in that direction but reality dismisses that "evidence" as the steaming pile it is and was.
Saddam was a bad man, but there are plenty others out in the world that make him look like a kitten. Why aren't we invading those countries? Oh yeah, they don't have enough oil.
gina, I saw Conyers bill the other day and applaud his effort even though it'll fly as well as a lead balloon in the Republican controlled House and Senate. But the more bold the Democrats get, the more lies they make the public see and the administration respond to, the better!
As Bernie Sanders, the next elections in 2006 are crucial for the Democrats to unseat the powerbase of the GOP. Without some checks and balances against the president's whims, who knows how many of our rights will be eroded in the next three years.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1...s/clinton.iraq/
…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.
I want the American people to understand first the past how did this crisis come about?
And I want them to understand what we must do to protect the national interest, and indeed the interest of all freedom-loving people in the world.
Remember, as a condition of the cease-fire after the Gulf War, the United Nations demanded not the United States the United Nations demanded, and Saddam Hussein agreed to declare within 15 days this is way back in 1991 within 15 days his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them, to make a total declaration. That's what he promised to do.
The United Nations set up a special commission of highly trained international experts called UNSCOM, to make sure that Iraq made good on that commitment. We had every good reason to insist that Iraq disarm. Saddam had built up a terrible arsenal, and he had used it not once, but many times, in a decade-long war with Iran, he used chemical weapons, against combatants, against civilians, against a foreign adversary, and even against his own people.
And during the Gulf War, Saddam launched Scuds against Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain.
Now, instead of playing by the very rules he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam has spent the better part of the past decade trying to cheat on this solemn commitment. Consider just some of the facts:
Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports.
For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.
In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.
Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth. Now listen to this, what did it admit?
It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs.…
(That is a great read, especially when CLinton refers to outlaw nations and an unholy axis…
Since you mentioned it, NK represent a threat that has been mishandled for 10+ years. Iran, is too eraly to tell where the talks might end.
Johnny, Iraq, involves numerous justifications that go far beyond your claim for ooooiiillllll. Iraq's violations after the cease-fire of '91 are a mile long. They are juxtaposed with a time when UN-run actions are seen as lacking determination; see also Rhwanda, Somalia. Take that lack of response and apply it to the first tower attack, the USS Cole, US embasies in Kenya and Tanzania in '98, US Army base in Saudi Arabia in '96, and on.
None of those give the US the exclusive right to invade sovereign states, outright. What they illustrate are examples of terrorist activity that has been met with minimal response from the US. Call it what you want, imminent, groing, pre-9/11 metality, whatever. Post-9/11 has caused a shift in tactics taken by the US gov't, in response to these types of activities. These tactics are both retalitory, Afghanistan, and pre-emptive.
Pre-emtion takes a few forms. In NK, is a re-shaping of talks between all involved parties, China, Japan, Russia, SK, NK and US. In Iran, it is in an early stage, questioning the intent for nuclear technology, encouraging domestic development only with steps to verify. All critical for a state that just denounced the Holocost as fiction. In Iraq, it takes another form. I won't waste the 1's and 0's on an reiteration.
As for H. RES. 636 and 637, FIrst I get two links that have nothing to do with what was linked above:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/qu...c108:H.RES.636:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bd...08:h.res.00637:
But I did read the text in the link and I find it pedantic. In a time when real effort needs to be made towards modernizing law enforcement legislation, improving border security, securing transit nodes, modernizing benifit programs, streamlining Federal relief efforts, and so on, our members of ocngress are still concerned with calling eachother liars. Brilliant, since the investigation leading up to now have provided so much evidence of it. 'Feh.
I hope the Dems do offer something to choose from in 2006. At this point, they are still the anti-GOP party. With all the work that needs to be done, they are still leaders of the shit-parade, tossing it at anything that moves on the other side of the fence.
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