WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday told all U.S. diplomats that posts in Iraq must be filled after some voiced unhappiness about the possibility of being forced to serve in the war zone.
One diplomat told a State Department town hall this week that serving in Iraq was a "potential death sentence." Another said the department failed to treat her for post-traumatic stress disorder when she returned from a stint in Basra.
Some U.S. diplomats are incensed following a State Department decision last week to identify "prime candidates" who may have to accept compulsory one-year tours in Iraq or risk losing their jobs. If volunteers step forward, however, mandatory assignments will not be necessary.
"Regardless of how the jobs may be filled, they must be filled," Rice said in a cable sent to all the roughly 11,500 U.S. diplomats around the world. "It is our duty to do our part toward succeeding in the vital mission in Iraq given to us by the president."
More than 200 diplomats have been told they are in a pool of people who may be forced to go to Iraq to fill 48 positions for which no qualified candidates had volunteered. Since news of this was released, 15 people have volunteered and are being vetted, the State Department said on Thursday.
US Diplomats balk at going to Iraq. It turns ugly:”Who will raise our children if we’re dead or seriously wounded?”.
Foreign service officers were screaming at the Director General’s Town Hall meeting on Iraq staffing because they are being forced to serve in Iraq. Jack Crody was especially honest calling it a “death sentence” if they are forced to go. The State Dept. didn’t even have the guts to tell them face to face. They read about it in the Washington Post.
Quote:
Crody: Who will take care of our children? Who will raise our children if we’re dead or seriously wounded?
I absolutely have no respect for the whole process because you’ve demonstrated a lack of respect for your own colleagues.
Thomas: Thank you for that comment. It’s full of inaccuracies, but…that’s OK.—Don’t you or anybody else tell me the people in HR do not care about foreign service officers. I find that insulting.
Q: You may care, but you don’t articulate it. You roll your eyes, but we have polled the foreign service. 12% of your foreign service believes that Secretary Condi Rice is fighting for them. 12%.
Thomas: That’s their right, they’re wrong.
Q: Sometimes if it’s 88-12. Maybe the 88 % are correct.
Thomas: 88% of this country believed in slavery at one time, were they correct? (grumbling) So don’t come here with that.
OMG, Harry Thomas used slavery to tell them to go f*&k themselves!
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday told all U.S. diplomats that posts in Iraq must be filled after some voiced unhappiness about the possibility of being forced to serve in the war zone.
One diplomat told a State Department town hall this week that serving in Iraq was a "potential death sentence." Another said the department failed to treat her for post-traumatic stress disorder when she returned from a stint in Basra.
Some U.S. diplomats are incensed following a State Department decision last week to identify "prime candidates" who may have to accept compulsory one-year tours in Iraq or risk losing their jobs. If volunteers step forward, however, mandatory assignments will not be necessary.
"Regardless of how the jobs may be filled, they must be filled," Rice said in a cable sent to all the roughly 11,500 U.S. diplomats around the world. "It is our duty to do our part toward succeeding in the vital mission in Iraq given to us by the president."
More than 200 diplomats have been told they are in a pool of people who may be forced to go to Iraq to fill 48 positions for which no qualified candidates had volunteered. Since news of this was released, 15 people have volunteered and are being vetted, the State Department said on Thursday.
US Diplomats balk at going to Iraq. It turns ugly:”Who will raise our children if we’re dead or seriously wounded?”.
Foreign service officers were screaming at the Director General’s Town Hall meeting on Iraq staffing because they are being forced to serve in Iraq. Jack Crody was especially honest calling it a “death sentence” if they are forced to go. The State Dept. didn’t even have the guts to tell them face to face. They read about it in the Washington Post.
Quote:
Crody: Who will take care of our children? Who will raise our children if we’re dead or seriously wounded?
I absolutely have no respect for the whole process because you’ve demonstrated a lack of respect for your own colleagues.
Thomas: Thank you for that comment. It’s full of inaccuracies, but…that’s OK.—Don’t you or anybody else tell me the people in HR do not care about foreign service officers. I find that insulting.
Q: You may care, but you don’t articulate it. You roll your eyes, but we have polled the foreign service. 12% of your foreign service believes that Secretary Condi Rice is fighting for them. 12%.
Thomas: That’s their right, they’re wrong.
Q: Sometimes if it’s 88-12. Maybe the 88 % are correct.
Thomas: 88% of this country believed in slavery at one time, were they correct? (grumbling) So don’t come here with that.
OMG, Harry Thomas used slavery to tell them to go f*&k themselves!
(I'll leave the embedded video code as is until somebody explains how to embed NON YOUTUVBE VIDEO)
It was Colin Powell’s darkest hour, but he would have went to war with Iraq without briefing the UN anyway. (Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack” tells us that) ..Bush used this fraud who wanted a green-card in Germany to fool the American people and bring the country into a war with Iraq. 60 Minutes did a fine piece on him Sunday night that should be seen so we will be reminded that “intelligence” can always be manipulated—even after it’s debunked by our own intelligence department.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. Alwan’s allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group’s final report published in 2004.
[(CBS) Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We've known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was "Curve Ball" and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he fool the world's elite intelligence agencies?
60 Minutes spent two years, and traveled to nine countries, trying to solve the mystery. We talked to intelligence sources, to people who knew Curve Ball and to people who worked with him. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, Curve Ball's real name has never been made public, nor has any video of him, until now......
Sen. Joseph Lieberman delivered a stemwinder Thursday that excoriated the Democrats for being “emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq” and for having abandoned the foreign policy legacy of Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson and John F. Kennedy. As if to underscore his point, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tossed up yet another attempt to use funding to force the president to pull troops out of Iraq in spite of the recent signs of success that even the mainstream media is starting to acknowledge.
On last night’s Special Report, the Fox all-star panel compared and contrasted Pelosi and Lieberman. When the subject turned to Hillary Clinton, resident liberal Mara Liason admitted that Clinton’s stands on the war and the surge reflect nothing more than Democrat politics. Fred Barnes exposes that kind of shifting and game-playing on the war for what it is.
Originally Posted By: FOX All-Stars panel discussion
MARA LIASSON: I think there are risks [to this narrative], and that’s why you’re not going to hear Hillary Clinton saying something like that if and when she gets the nomination. . . . She has actually said that she has seen progress in Anbar Province, She has acknowledged that there has been military progress.
BARNES: Then why is she still against the surge?
LIASSON: Because she’s running in a Democratic primary.
BARNES: Okay, then she’s just intellectually dishonest, you’re saying.
KRAUTHAMMER: And that’s news?
LIASSON: She’s performing the balancing act that every potential frontrunner or nominee tries to do.
BARNES: You know what it’s not? It’s not leadership and it’s not presidential.
I understand that President Bush is a divisive figure. I recognize the distrust that many Americans feel toward his administration. I recognize the anger and outrage that exists out there about the war in Iraq. But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.
There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.
For me, this episode reinforces how far the Democratic Party of 2007 has strayed from the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and the Clinton-Gore administration.
That is why I call myself an Independent Democrat today. It is because my foreign policy convictions are the convictions that have traditionally animated the Democratic Party—but they exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has largely repudiated them.
I hope that Democrats will one day again rediscover and re-embrace these principles, which were at the heart of our party as recently as 2000. But regardless of when or if that happens, those convictions will continue to be mine. And I will continue to fight to advance them along with like-minded Democrats and like-minded Republicans.
That's pretty telling, from the guy who was the Vice Presidential candidate of the Democrats in 2000.
Who the Democrats opportunistically threw overboard in 2004. But who was still so popular that he won re-election as an Independent candidate, and retained his Senate position. His integrity resonates with a majority of American voters, if not Democrats.
Pulling out now when the tide seems to be turning in our favour would be a mistake. I'm still a bit disapointed that my government decided to pull our troops home. But on the bright side, alot of the resources used to support the mission in Iraq are being reallocated to support the mission in Afghanistan.
Pulling out now when the tide seems to be turning in our favour would be a mistake. I'm still a bit disapointed that my government decided to pull our troops home. But on the bright side, alot of the resources used to support the mission in Iraq are being reallocated to support the mission in Afghanistan.
Exactly.
As things improve in Iraq, more resources can be focused on Afghanistan.
More troops should have been deployed in Iraq from the beginning, and when "the Surge" plan finally deployed those troops, the tide turned.
If these Al Qaida fighters are just now moving to Iraq, they can be dealt with before they can effectively re-organize in Afghanistan.
Pulling out now when the tide seems to be turning in our favour would be a mistake. I'm still a bit disapointed that my government decided to pull our troops home. But on the bright side, alot of the resources used to support the mission in Iraq are being reallocated to support the mission in Afghanistan.
The tide always seems to be turning till someone's assassinated or bombs kill 200 hundred somewhat people. I don't see that there can ever come any real progress from a war that preticated on paranoia, arrogance, and sophistry.
NEW YORK Boston.com, the Web site of The Boston Globe, has again taken a unique view of the latest Iraq War funding request, offering a look at what the $611.5 billion that would be spent so far on the war could buy if it was not used for the military operation.
The Web site provided a similar assessment in May when the price tag had reached $456 billion. Now with the latest appropriation request set to hike the cost to $611.5 billion, the Web staff has found a new list of would-be uses.
Dave Beard, editor of Boston.com, noted in an e-mail that the posting had remained the most popular news item on the Web site for the past two days.
"If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group," the staff stated in an online introduction. "The amount got us wondering: What would $611 billion buy?"
Among the findings, from college tuition to free gasoline -- each posted with an accompanying photo -- staffers revealed the following:
• "U.S. drivers consume approximately 384.7 million gallons of gasoline a day. Retail prices averaged $3.00 a gallon in early November. Breaking it down, $611 billion could buy gasoline for everybody in the United States, for about 530 days."
• "In fiscal 2008, Medicare benefits will total $454 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation summary. The $611 billion in war costs is 17 times the amount vetoed by the president for a $35 billion health."
• "According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth. At the upper range of those estimates, the $611 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world's poor for seven years."
• "At almost $15 billion, Boston's Central Artery project has been held up as the nation's most expensive public works project. Now multiply that by 40 and you're getting close to US taxpayers’ commitment to democracy in Iraq – so far."
• "At published rates for this year, $611 billion translates into almost 14 million free rides for a year at Harvard University. Tuition and fees at the University of Massachusetts-Boston could be paid for over 53 million years."
Of course, nothing in Boston is done without at least a slight connection to the Red Sox, so staffers added: "The Red Sox and Daisuke Matsuzaka agreed on a six-year, $52 million contract. The war cost could be enough to have Dice-K mania for more than 70,000-some years at this year's rate."
The comparison has also prompted dozens of comments, which range from anti-Globe sentiment such as, "I would buy a newspaper which doesn't show its leftist bias in all aspects of its operation, from editorial page, to articles, to message boards" to attacks on the Bush administration: "(It is) almost enough to buy the net worth of Bush and Cheney after 8 years in the White House!"
Originally Posted By: Dwight Eisenhower
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” (Speech delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C. April 16, 1953)
Originally Posted By: Jesus Christ: Mathew 25
The Sheep and the Goats
31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
No. I joined too late for that. But I don't see what that has to do with Whomod's article on alternative spending being stupid--Especially when it proposes to send 34 billion dollars two wipe out world-hunger when we know for a fact that it's not going anywhere.
No. I joined too late for that. But I don't see what that has to do with Whomod's article on alternative spending being stupid--Especially when it proposes to send 34 billion dollars two wipe out world-hunger when we know for a fact that it's not going anywhere.
It has nothing to do with it. You just sounded very...confident that the article was in fact bull shit.
During tonight’s Democratic Debate, Christoper Jackson, a young veteran who has served three tours of duty in Iraq, stood up with his mother to ask the candidates about a possible invasion of Iran. Christopher’s mother is scared her son is going to be deployed again, but this time to Iran.
Senator Biden gives a great response, making reference to the Kyl/Lieberman amendment, telling Mrs. Jackson if President Bush tries to invade Iran without Congressional approval he should be impeached. Edwards also does well on this question, taking a similar approach to Biden — Hillary is also asked to comment and was a bit more confident that Bush wouldn’t use the amendment as an excuse to invade Iran than the other candidates.
Jackson received a standing ovation from the crowd, then later got big applause for his answer to a question from CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux;
Quote:
Malveaux: “Your mother, I spoke with her, your mom is so worried that you’re going to be called to duty again, but not to be deployed in Iraq, but rather Iran. Do you share her concern?”
Jackson: ” Yes I do and I feel that if we continue on the path we at that’s where we’re going to end up, in Iran. And that’s not what our troops need, our troops need to come home now.”
When the president speaks publicly about the war in Iraq, he often seems confused and uninformed. Maybe Bush speaks with more authority in private? um.. probably not.
I guess the old rhetoric about the "evildoers" doesn't hold much sway anymore...
“I was in the White House a number of times to talk about the issue, and I may rankle some in the room saying this, but I was very underwhelmed with what discussions took place at the White House,” Corker said.
A few minutes later during a question and answer session a man in the audience asked him to clarify his statement.
“I was concerned about your statement that you were underwhelmed with what was going on in the White House. Did you mean with him or with his staff?”
In response, Corker said, “Let me say this. George Bush is a very compassionate person. He’s a very good person. And a lot of people don’t see that in him, and there’s many people in this room who might disagree with that…. I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them.”
The foreign minister plans to urge Denmark's Nato allies to contribute equally to the alliance's mission in Afghanistan
Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller is expected to invoke Nato's 'all for one' spirit today when he meets with his colleagues from the defence alliance's other member states.
Møller will be attending the Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Brussels, where one of the main issues will be member states' contributions to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan.
Denmark and other alliance members that have been involved in the heaviest fighting are dissatisfied that certain Nato countries will not deploy their soldiers to the most dangerous areas, including Helmand province, where the largest portion of Danish troops are stationed.
'It's important that we all show solidarity and the will to bear our share of the burden,' Møller said.
Denmark plans to increase its number of soldiers in Afghanistan to 700 within the coming months, nearly double the number it had stationed in Iraq, and the same amount as some large European powers.
In terms of population, the nine Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 is one of the highest fatality rates of all Nato countries.
My personal concern with this is that all this comes at the same I've renewed my contract with the military. While I fully support the mission in Afghanistan and by no means am afraid of going, I worry that we (my comrades and I) will have to take on a burden we cannot lift by ourselves. Yes, Danish soldiers are among the best in the world, no question. But in terms of actual firepower and numbers we are without a doubt one of the weakest nations in NATO.
Sure, we could easily afford a force 10 times the size that what we have now in Afghanistan. That's not the problem. The problem is that we simply cannot field a force of that size because we lack the manpower.
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 20 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.
"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.
"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.
"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.
VIDEO: Bill Buzenberg, the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, interviews former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission.
Quote:
San Francisco Chronicle
Hundreds of lies led to war, study says 2 journalism groups find U.S. made 935 false statements
Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
(01-23) 04:00 PST Washington - --
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks......
There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard Nixon used to dismissively call "wallowing in Watergate."
A public hanging would be too good for these Bush Administration assholes. And their accomplices and mindless, jingoistic cheerleaders in the press and in the general public, even to this day, deserve at least a spit in the face.
President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks....A public hanging would be too good for these Bush Administration assholes...
Calling for the assassination of any president is a serious matter, whomod.
Are you really saying you want to see him lynched?
And their accomplices and mindless, jingoistic cheerleaders in the press and in the general public, even to this day, deserve at least a spit in the face.
Calling for the assassination of any president is a serious matter, whomod.
Are you really saying you want to see him lynched?
Way to completely dodge the report there, champ. You even rename the thread to dodge the fact that REPORT (SAYS) BUSH LIED!!!
Assasination and war crimes trials are two different matters entirely, G-Man.
But I'm sure you already know that.
well, he is a Bushie. They're not even sure what torture is. And remember when they found that 20 year old canister of expired mustard gas that was probably given to Saddam by Reagan and he claimed this was proof that Bush was right about the massive WMD operation that was a threat to the world?
Assasination and war crimes trials are two different matters entirely, G-Man.
But I'm sure you already know that.
But we don't hang people for war crimes in this country (assuming that such a crime occurred). And I'm sure you knew that. So the only way you could see Bush hanged would be if he were lynched.
While I realize Bush is a white man, and lynching doesn't have the same offensive connotation to liberals when the victim is white, you're still calling for what amounts to killing the president illegally.
Bad form, whomod, bad form.
And, don't worry, I'll be back to discredit the report later. I just wanted to deal with your possibly illegal statements first in the hopes that you might retract them.
Assasination and war crimes trials are two different matters entirely, G-Man.
But I'm sure you already know that.
But we don't hang people for war crimes in this country (assuming that such a crime occurred). And I'm sure you knew that. So the only way you could see Bush hanged would be if he were lynched.
wouldn't it be more likely that some international authority would try him for war crimes? i think you went to lynching first because of wondy's bad influence.
Assasination and war crimes trials are two different matters entirely, G-Man.
But I'm sure you already know that.
But we don't hang people for war crimes in this country (assuming that such a crime occurred). And I'm sure you knew that. So the only way you could see Bush hanged would be if he were lynched.
While I realize Bush is a white man, and lynching doesn't have the same offensive connotation to liberals when the victim is white, you're still calling for what amounts to killing the president illegally.
Bad form, whomod, bad form.
And, don't worry, I'll be back to discredit the report later. I just wanted to deal with your possibly illegal statements first in the hopes that you might retract them.
I think you're either trying to be a noose-iance, or just getting hung up on the specifics of the word "hanging," rather than the general sentiment that whomod thinks Bush should be executed, regardless of method.
This is not vengeance. This is pun-ishment.
"The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability." — Edgar Allan Poe
Assasination and war crimes trials are two different matters entirely, G-Man.
But I'm sure you already know that.
But we don't hang people for war crimes in this country (assuming that such a crime occurred). And I'm sure you knew that. So the only way you could see Bush hanged would be if he were lynched.
While I realize Bush is a white man, and lynching doesn't have the same offensive connotation to liberals when the victim is white, you're still calling for what amounts to killing the president illegally.
Bad form, whomod, bad form.
And, don't worry, I'll be back to discredit the report later. I just wanted to deal with your possibly illegal statements first in the hopes that you might retract them.
You're the one who says that the 2nd amendment is a safeguard against despotism.
"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!" -Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah." -Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents." -Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise." -Prometheus
VIDEO: Bill Buzenberg, the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, interviews former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission.
Why you posted two links for the exact same article, I can't understand.
I read the first in its entirety, and then watched the YouTube clip of Lee Hamilton.
And once again, you make claims and falsely present articles as if they support your assertion that "BUSH LIED".
Well, the articles more accurately say: BUSH and his administation officials presented INACCURATE INFORMATION. But that's not nearly the same thing as "Bush LIED".
Hamilton, in the clip, says that the information at the time later turned out to be innaccurate, yes. But wasn't necessarily "a lie".
What Hamilton also says (and you partisanly gloss over) is that the news media and Congress didn't do their job, and they had a responsibility to investigate Bush's assertion of Iraq's threat, and that Congress had the same information and intelligence as the President, but still rubber-stamped it.
I think we can agree mistakes were made. And again, I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, and he was never someone I eagerly aligned myself with, or particularly admired. But at the same time, I don't like seeing him slandered beyond what he actually did, calling him a liar. He may have lied, but I haven't seen solid evidence of that, to the point that I'd call him a liar. Just that he presented inaccurate information.
And again, I'd rather have a President who errs on the side of defending the nation, than a president who sits by and oh, say, lets the Chinese get ICBM technology to build and aim nuclear missiles at the United States.
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