Yeah, it was a screw up, but at least he has already apologized, which of course is more evidence a grown-up is in the White House.
cKGunslinger
Lifer
- Nov 29, 1999
- 16,411
- 57
- 91
Zenmervolt
Elite member
- Oct 22, 2000
- 24,514
- 44
- 91
There's a difference between making decisions based on faulty data (when one does not yet know that the data are faulty), and making something up. Yes, the WMD debacle turned out to be ridiculous, but it's not like Bush invented the story. Garbage in, garbage out. Should he have investigated the data more thoroughly? Almost certainly. But this canard about it all being made up is just ridiculous.
There are a lot of valid criticisms of Bush, such as his opposition to stem cell research, but to say that he lied about WMDs is disingenuous.
ZV
dumb dumb choice of words for a national broadcast for the president.
that said, i say worse things on like an hourly basis
that said, i say worse things on like an hourly basis
JEDIYoda
Lifer
- Jul 13, 2005
- 33,986
- 3,321
- 126
That was not a stoopid mistake...sheese....
It was only stoopid to those of you who critsize everything including the good....
I never understood why so many people want to see the POTUS fail.....hmmmm
Ahhhhh...I see...disgruntled Republicans..hahaaaaa
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
- 7
- 76
Eug
Lifer
- Mar 11, 2000
- 24,175
- 1,815
- 126
Wow, that was a really braindead thing to say. That's something you'd wouldn't expect a city councillor to say, much less the prez of the US of A. Basically, this negates any positive sentiment he would have gotten from the interview. This interview will always be remembered for his Special Olympics comment.
Zenmervolt, you strike me as someone trying to be 'moderate' and 'fair', and I"ll respond to you in that spirit - sometimes it's possible to do that in a misguided way.
There are two issues I see about Bush and WMD beyond the simple attack that he 'made it up' and 'knowingly lied', which you responded to, condemning those attacks.
The first is the issue that he took steps that in some manner did less than was appropriate to get to the truth, and/or actively blocked the investigation of the accurate information.
The facts supporting that attack include the history showing a small amount of his pursuing the truth, challenging the conclusion - rather, the facts suggest he was on a course to war with Iraq for whatever reasons that were his real reasons, and that he was then just looking for a 'sales pitch' to get the war authorized. Almost exactly that was confessed to by Paul Wolfowitz, actually, if you recall his surprisingly candid article that explained that 'the bureacracy decided on WMD as the issue to most effectively get support on'.
Perhaps the incident that reflects best on Bush was the conversation where he expressed that the evidence wasn't all that convincing to Tenet, who assured him that the case for WMD was a 'smal dunk', but the info I've read was that the discussion was about whether the WMD issue could be used well to 'sell the war', not whether it was true.
Additionally, Bush's allowing his government to run wild - Cheney out pressuring CIA analysists to say what he wanted, to set up a competing intelligence group with the CIA that was much less careful and funneled the questionable facts directly to Cheney to get worked into the top level case building, the misuse of the extremely unrelible 'Curveball' information as the only source for the WMD evidence that was most of the case (when Curveball was one guy that was a refugee from Iraq to Germany, who knew that he was competing for a spot for amnestry where only one in 25 people were granted it, and that providing such info would greatly help his odds), with reported alchohol abuse issues, who the US *had never spoken with directly*, but had only received the reports from German intelligence *with warnings it was unreliable*, and many other examples - there's a storng case to be made of Bush not being 'honest' on the WMD issue.
Secondly, the fact is that Bush had said the war was justified exclusively on WMD - any other cause or benefits were secondary and did not justify invaidng - and Bush lied when he got Congress to pass the war authorization bill (which was conveniently push two weeks before elections when there was great political pressure to vote for it), as he told Congress the bill 'was not a vote for war', but that rather it was a vote to give him leverage to get inspectors back in with a credible threat, and war would only be a last resort if the inspectors were refused and every option were tried first - but then he *kicked out* the inspectors rather than letting them complete the inspections which were nearing completion and finding no WMD, making him a liar and showing that the policy was war, not WMD, with WMD only being used as a pretext.
There are countless revelations since then by officials who say that they understood early on from various communications and planning that the decision for war was made early.
So, there's plenty of other areas in which to make the case for Bush as dishonest on the issue, even if you accept, reasonably, that he did not simply 'make up WMD'.
I caught this when he said it and told my GF about it, but quickly forgot lol
THat was a faux pas
THat was a faux pas
Honestly though, I voted for Obama and despised Bush, but they would have killed Bush over something like that.... Obama will get a little chastisement but nothing too serious.
Firefox always shows Obama's name misspelled and the suggestion states Obadiah.......
This reminds me of the funniest joke I ever heard about Bush, by Wanda Sykes.
It goes something like this:
But you can't root against President Bush, it's like booing at the special olympics.
Here's another by Wanda:
Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno (hey, I'll watch anything) was very funny about Katrina.
Jay: "But President Bush took responsibility."
Wanda: "I don't think the President should have taken responsibility.... I don't blame the President. I blame the American people. Y'all knew the man was slow when you voted him in. You can't blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you're the one who gave him the keys."
It goes something like this:
But you can't root against President Bush, it's like booing at the special olympics.
Here's another by Wanda:
Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno (hey, I'll watch anything) was very funny about Katrina.
Jay: "But President Bush took responsibility."
Wanda: "I don't think the President should have taken responsibility.... I don't blame the President. I blame the American people. Y'all knew the man was slow when you voted him in. You can't blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you're the one who gave him the keys."
Sheik Yerbouti
Lifer
- Feb 16, 2005
- 14,080
- 5,453
- 136
jonks
Lifer
- Feb 7, 2005
- 13,918
- 20
- 81
Actually he apologized immediately, to the president of the spec olymp, who accepted his apology, and I doubt we'll hear about it again except from right wing lists of Obama's "mistakes".
What's amusing is this guy authored two autobiographies before the age of 50, wrote most of his own speeches, is articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, and one of the best public speakers we've ever seen, and the nutjobs take a couple of verbal bombs and try to spin reality around their own perceptions. You think if you put anyone in front of a teleprompter they could become Obama?
Seriously, the right wing trying to hit Obama on his use of langauge and public speaking? You people really need to learn to pick your battles. It's like making fun of Joe Montana for throwing an interception that one time and saying "he sucks!"
Sure why not? If GWB was qualified, anyone is. Tony Robbins just needs to get a bunch of Texas corporate execs to back him with a ton of money. Anythings possible, this is America.
Think of how handicapped you would have to be to make an issue of what Obama said. This thread is like a short bus of hideous vultures screaming throw him under. Talk about the inferior........
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