Another Bush Lie

“Speaking of cash, Bush is asking Congress for mucho billions more for Iraq...”

“Some comedian, I think David Frye, once did a Lyndon Johnson impression: "Ah nevah lied to yuh. Ah mighta kidded yuh a li't bit, but ah nevah lied to yuh!"”

“If Bush did lie to get us into Iraq, thousands of people have died because of his lies. This is a deadly serious subject not to be dismissed by "all politicians lie" or treated as a joke.”

“Lyndon's lie got us mired down in Vietnam. We've been down this road before.”

“Bush's latest lie: Pushing for an energy crisis plan that has no concern for the environment to solve a problem of which the source hasn't been identified yet.

Boy that was a mouthful!”

“Man, I'm starting to hope Bush loses in '04 just so the kool aid drinking black chopper chasers will shut the phuck up.

Bush couldn't break wind without you guys calling for an investigation.”

“The consistent deaths of our troops are a little more important than a fart, nigal.”

“travelgate?
filegate?

Get a grip!”

“If Bush did lie to get us into Iraq, thousands of people have died because of his lies.

That's a disingenuous bit of hyberbole. People haven't died because Bush lied - people have died for the larger strategic interests of the U.S - oil, war on terror, regional hegemony, etc.”

“Mutt, do you find that the larger issues surrounding iraq excuse the administrations lies to get us to this pont?”

“While calling it That's "a disingenuous bit of hyberbole" may be hyperbole in itself, Mutt is correct in challenging the statement.

Imagine if Bush was somewhow magically prevented from lying (like in that Jim Carey movie). I think we would have gone to war anyway. If so, then his lie did not cause the deaths.”

“I don't know that we could have managed to go to war without the spectre of WMDs. I'm pretty sure that even the most hardline bush supporters would have balked at the political capital that would have cost.”

“Mutt, do you find that the larger issues surrounding iraq excuse the administrations lies to get us to this pont?

Not excuse, but it was justified, arguably. There was genuine concern about Iraqi WMD, but clearly it wasn't very urgent. Hyperbolizing the threat was dishonest, but it was the most politically efficacious manner of drumming up popular support. The public in general does not understand the complexities of the global strategic milieu. It would have been folly for Bush to try to convince the ignoratti of the need for hegemony. However, those of us who do have at least some understanding will be able to see the situation for what it really is - regardless of the propaganda flowing out of Washington. Moreover, we have the media at our disposal to put forth any divergence in perspective. However, one should note there has been a dearth of creative and realistic alternatives to Bush's foreign policies - because Bush is right! That the Left is focusing on WMD and the Big Lie rather than the relevant strategic issues is very telling of their (dis)honesty!

I oppose Bush on MANY issues, but he was right about Iraq. I didn't agree with his timing, but eventually the U.S. had to intercede in a big way to protect its interests. The reality of the situation is that in this century, America is going to be forced to deal with many situations in which the use of force may be necessary - North Korea, archipelagous SE Asia, oil-rich africa, Muslim Africa, China, etc, etc. The Left would do well to realize the fact that America cannot maintain its preeminence in global affairs if it does not possess the capability and willingness to use decisive military force when diplomacy fails.”

“Nary a tear was shed for the death of representative democracy.”

“Interesting.

I'd have been more inclined to be swayed by a humanitarian goal in Iraq. Also, if the W admin had diplomatic skills, I believe we could have convinced the UN security council to vote in favor of military action - not as quickly as happened, but eventually. This would have put us in a much better position for our nationbuilding effort, and we wouldn't have lost the credibility points we did. Also, having this as a UN action, rather than a US action would obfuscate the American interests involved, possibly causing less anger among the other arab populace.

I don't see the long-term effects of the invasion as a given, by any means, in our favor, especially without a much broader UN role to diffuse the cost of rebuilding. The W admin seems to be resistant to letting the UN on the potential profits to be gained from the effort, which may be a consequence of campaign fundraising.

In general, while I disagree with the cause given for the war, the method for reaching it, and the precedent it sets, I would have supported the action based on a broader coalition, and UN approval.

One other thing - it would have been nice to get Afghanistan in a better state before abandoning it. I get the feeling we'll be going back in there in my lifetime.

In short, I have seen this action as reckless, poorly planned, and ineptly implemented. The costs will be steeper than necessary.”

“if the W admin had diplomatic skills, I believe we could have convinced the UN security council to vote in favor of military action - not as quickly as happened, but eventually. This would have put us in a much better position for our nationbuilding effort, and we wouldn't have lost the credibility points we did. Also, having this as a UN action, rather than a US action would obfuscate the American interests involved, possibly causing less anger among the other arab populace

I whole-heartedly agree. Iraq could've sat on the back-burner while we go chase terrorists around the globe, build up our military presence in a host of countries, and perhaps deal with North Korea. Bush could've used that time to build up international support for invasion.

Truly, it was amateur hour in the White House in the leadup to the war.”

“ don't see the long-term effects of the invasion as a given, by any means, in our favor, especially without a much broader UN role to diffuse the cost of rebuilding. The W admin seems to be resistant to letting the UN on the potential profits to be gained from the effort, which may be a consequence of campaign fundraising.

Actually, Washington is bargaining with the Ruskis rather than the EU (note the Ruskis didn't toe the line on the EU reaction to Washington's resoultion). Chances are, Russia's oil contracts will be honored if Russia agrees to send troops into Iraq and to speedily rebuild the oil infrastructure. With Iraq having the world's second-largest oil reserves, there's plenty to go around - at least to the U.S. and Russia.”

“Interesting again. Perhaps we could set up an anti-OPEC cartel consisting of Russia, Iraq and the US. :)”

“Re: the earlier point about the U.S. could have tried to go after terrorists, while building U.N. support for an invasion of Iraq...

I'll admit to not being a tremendous student of history, but I posit theat there are many prior examples of nations trying to maintain a global presence, and falling into a decline. The Roman Empire and the Spanish empire (of the ca 1400's-1600's) come to mind.”

“The Revision Thing

A History of the Iraq War, Told Entirely in Lies

By Sam Smith Harper's Magazine

All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity.

Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil.

It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was from Saddam Hussein. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level contacts that went back a decade. We learned that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases. The regime had long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. Iraq and Al Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq. Iraqi officials denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were not credible. You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talked about the war on terror.

The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was, absolutely. His regime had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox. Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. We had sources that told us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons--the very weapons the dictator told the world he did not have. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes after the orders were given. There could be no doubt that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.

Iraq possessed ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles--far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations. We also discovered through intelligence that Iraq had a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We were concerned that Iraq was exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States.

Saddam Hussein was determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. We knew he'd been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believed he had, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. The British government learned that Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources told us that he had attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production. When the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied-finally denied access, a report came out of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I didn't know what more evidence we needed.

Facing clear evidence of peril, we could not wait for the final proof that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. The Iraqi dictator could not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Inspections would not work. We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. The burden was on those people who thought he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they were.

We waged a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it, but we fought it, and we prevailed. We fought them and imposed our will on them and we captured or, if necessary, killed them until we had imposed law and order. The Iraqi people were well on their way to freedom. The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad were breathtaking. Watching them, one could not help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

It was entirely possible that in Iraq you had the most pro-American population that could be found anywhere in the Arab world. If you were looking for a historical analogy, it was probably closer to post-liberation France. We had the overwhelming support of the Iraqi people. Once we won, we got great support from everywhere.

The people of Iraq knew that every effort was made to spare innocent life, and to help Iraq recover from three decades of totalitarian rule. And plans were in place to provide Iraqis with massive amounts of food, as well as medicine and other essential supplies. The U.S. devoted unprecedented attention to humanitarian relief and the prevention of excessive damage to infrastructure and to unnecessary casualties.

The United States approached its postwar work with a two-part resolve: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave. The United States had no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belonged to the Iraqi people. We have never been a colonial power. We do not leave behind occupying armies. We leave behind constitutions and parliaments. We don't take our force and go around the world and try to take other people's real estate or other people's resources, their oil. We never have and we never will.

The United States was not interested in the oil in that region. We were intent on ensuring that Iraq's oil resources remained under national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country. The oil fields belonged to the people of Iraq, the government of Iraq, all of Iraq. We estimated that the potential income to the Iraqi people as a result of their oil could be somewhere in the $20 [billion] to $30 billion a year [range], and obviously, that would be money that would be used for their well-being. In other words, all of Iraq's oil belonged to all the people of Iraq.

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were.

We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We didn't want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We've tried every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to go to war than President Bush.

It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning. The number of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region dropped as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. There is a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain--he is no longer a threat to the free world, and the people of Iraq are free. There's no doubt in my mind when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind.”

“Ooops!”

“Bush incorrectly disavows 'Mission Accomplished'

Associated Press www.azcentral.com
Oct. 28, 2003 05:45 PM

WASHINGTON - Six months after he spoke on an aircraft carrier deck under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," President Bush disavowed any connection with the war message. Later, the White House changed its story and said there was a link.

The "Mission Accomplished" boast has been mocked many times since Bush's carrier speech as criticism has mounted over the failed search for weapons of mass destruction and the continuing violence in Iraq.

When it was brought up again Tuesday at a news conference, Bush said, "The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished."

"I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff - they weren't that ingenious, by the way."

That explanation hadn't surfaced during months of questions to White House officials about proclaiming the mission in Iraq successful while violence continued.

After the news conference, a White House spokeswoman said the Lincoln's crew asked the White House to have the sign made. The White House asked a private vendor to produce the sign, and the crew put it up, said the spokeswoman. She said she did not know who paid for the sign.

The president's appearance on the Abraham Lincoln, which was returning home after service in the Persian Gulf, included his dramatic and much-publicized landing on the ship's deck.

Bush's disavowal Tuesday brought new criticism from Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who are both seeking the Democratic nomination to run against the president. Clark said Bush "backtracked on his May 1 political photo op on the USS Abraham Lincoln by blaming the troops on the aircraft carrier for the declaration of 'mission accomplished' in Iraq."”

“Some doubt idea of foreign influx
Patrols at Iraq's borders say few infiltrators seen

By Stephen J. Hedges
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 1, 2003

BAGHDAD -- Though the Bush administration has for months claimed that foreign fighters were entering Iraq to kill Americans, U.S. military commanders who are responsible for monitoring the borders here say that they have not witnessed a large infiltration of foreign terrorists.

As recently as Tuesday, President Bush said that "the foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits."

But officers whose areas of operations include Iraq's borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran -- the primary Arab entry points into Iraq -- all said there is no evidence that a significant number of foreign terrorists have entered the country.

"We cover the border, so we would know if they came in or not," said Lt. Col. Antonio Aguto, executive officer of the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which monitors Iraq's border with Syria and Saudi Arabia. "Most of them are locals."

The officers said that very few foreigners have been captured while crossing into Iraq illegally, arrested later inside Iraq or detained when trying to enter the country at existing border checkpoints.

One intelligence officer said emphatically that there was simply no evidence to support the claim.

"We keep hearing that, but we haven't seen anything to back it up," the officer said.

continued...”

“Everything that comes out of Bush's mouth is a lie. The scumbag has no chioce but to resort to lies & deception to rationalize his bogus war to the American sheeple.”

“The White House claims that State of Union addresses are carefully vetted, suggesting that the distortions on Iraq were some kind of rare bureaucratic snafu. In fact, for George Bush, the State of the Union address is a form of presidential performance art.

The president's pollsters pre-test key words and phrases. His handlers preview each practiced gesture, dramatic whisper, narrowed eye. The speech is vetted, but as much for message and image as for fact.

And in his last State of the Union address, the gulf between word and reality was immense and purposefully misleading.

Mr. Bush devoted the first half of his address to domestic issues, no doubt to prove his concern about rising unemployment and falling wages. But this placed some of the most mendacious portions of the speech first. Consider:

"We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations," the president began, while peddling a plan of top hat tax breaks and wartime spending that has taken the federal government from record surplus to record deficit in less than two years.

The president's own figures project deficits as far as the eye can see, adding $1.9 trillion to the federal debt over then next 5 years, while vital public investments -- in schools, in energy independence, in health care and homeland security - are starved of funds.

In fact, he will pass on to the next generation the burden of both the fiscal debt and the investment deficit.

His "first goal," he said, is "an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks job," but his own economic advisors project that his economic plan - if everything goes well - will create fewer jobs this year than were lost in the last. In fact, George Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over an economy that has lost jobs, not created them - more than 2.9 million lost since 2001.

In selling his tax breaks, the president was at his most disingenuous. "This tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes…Ninety-two million Americans will keep this year an average of almost $1,100 more of their own money."

This is a perfect example of the old caution about "lies, damn lies and statistics." As Citizens for Tax Justice reported, 80% of Americans get less than the president's "average."

More than half of all taxpayers get less than $100. Almost a third get nothing at all. Millionaires will enjoy tax breaks averaging $90,000 a year, while middle income Americans will pocket an average of $256. Together they make up the president's "average."

The president promised "we continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable…" But the costs of his tax cuts alone exceed by three times the entire projected shortfall in Social Security - the shortfall the president invokes to justify cutting benefits by privatizing the program.

His "second goal," he announced, is "high quality, affordable health care for all Americans," that will put doctors not "bureaucrats and trial lawyers and HMOS" in charge of American medicine.

But in fact, his plan does nothing to extend health insurance or to control the soaring prices. His prescription drug plan requires seniors to move into an HMO in order to receive a drug benefit.

More than one-third of all seniors wouldn't even have that option since HMOs aren't available in most rural areas. Worse, the president's plan provides no check on soaring drug prices, and would prohibit Medicare from negotiating the best price for seniors.

In essence, the president would provide a $400 billion subsidy not to seniors but to drug companies, giving them a fine return on the investment they made in Republican campaigns last year.

Incredibly, President Bush declared that his "third goal" was "to promote energy independence for our country while dramatically improving our environment."

In fact, the president has proposed a Big Oil energy program that treats conservation with disdain and, by the administration's own estimates, would only increase our reliance on Persian Gulf oil. It was Enron and the oil lobby that Vice President Cheney met with to draw up his plan, not the Sierra Club.

On environmental issues, the president became simply Orwellian in his inversion of the truth. "I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70 percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years," he declared to applause.

In fact, his plan does nothing to regulate carbon emissions, allows 50% more sulfur emissions and five times more mercury emissions than enforcement of current law.

Compared to alternative legislation developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Resources Defense Council estimates that the Bush "clear skies" legislation will result in 100,000 additional premature deaths by 2020.

Similarly, his "healthy forests" initiative used the recognized need to clear out flammable underbrush as an excuse for giving timber companies the writ to cut down wide swaths of protected forest.

On education, the president vowed that his mandated testing reforms would "be carried out in every school and in every classroom." But he did not bother to mention that he broke his own promise to fund the reforms, shorting them by $8 billion, while cutting after-school programs by 40%.

Worse, the president mocked his pledge to "leave no child behind" by insisting that the Congress pass tax cuts for the wealthy rather than avoid debilitating cuts in school and university budgets imposed by states and localities struggling with the worst fiscal crisis in fifty years.

And on Iraq, the president's distortions went far beyond the lies about the purchase of uranium in Africa, the discredited aluminum tubes, the laughable mobile labs and flying drones.

The heart of his case against Hussein was that the secular dictator of Iraq might slip his mythical secreted weapons to the stateless Islamic terrorists that he despises.

The president did not mention that the CIA's official estimate was that this was likely to happen only if Hussein saw war as inevitable and sought to exact revenge for his demise.

Nor did the president mention that this threat is surely far more likely to be posed by the communist North Koreans who have booted out international inspectors and have nuclear weapons.

Then there is the nuclear-armed Pakistani dictatorship that harbors al Queda's remnants and by the US-fortified Saudi Arabia emirate which was the source of the funds and the terrorists of 9/11.

Yet the White House chooses to talk with the North Koreans, embrace the Pakistanis, and defend the Saudis.

In his speech, Mr. Bush scorned the alternative of continued containment, air occupation, embargo and inspection as "trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein."

This distortion was at the heart of the case for launching a war against a country without waiting "until the threat is imminent."

The president did not deign to provide Americans with any estimate of the cost, scope and duration of the coming invasion and occupation, much less warn of the potential hatreds and terrorist retributions it could engender.

Nor did he mention the distraction of scarce resources and expertise from the war on terror that it inevitably required. We were left to discover those realities only after the fact.

Mr. Bush's distortions were and are the product not of oversight or editing error, but of political calculation. The president has pursued policies that are designed to reward special private interests or placate his right-wing base.

If admitted, these policies would not be popular. So the president packages them in appealing wrapping, labels them with popular names, and peddles them as something they are not. He misleads Americans because they don't want to go where he would take them.

Some suggest this represents the normal counterfeits and distortions of politics. But as the president says, this is a time of large consequence and great sacrifice.

When he delivered his State of the Union address, in the midst of recession on the eve of a war, surely the American people deserved a president who would level with them. Instead the president chose not to lead but to mislead.

In doing so, he squandered the trust of a nation that came together as one after the horrors of September 11.”

“God, people take a long time to figure crap out, don't they?”

“They were too busy rattling their sabres to notice.”

“Yeah, we should have left Saddam alone. He was not that bad of a guy, and he probably never would have bothered us. He definitely would never have supported any terrorist efforts to harm us. The whole thing was definitely a bad idea.”

“Yeah, speculation is a good reason to send our soldiers to die in a foreign country. What kind of patriot are you?”

“In retrospect I have to say that we should have slowed down a bit and took a wait and see position. I also now feel we should have focused more pressure on the UN to get off it’s a$$ and do what it is supposed to do.

I was all for going in but it pained me to see Bush continually swapping out reasons for going. They threw everything at the wall and hoped something would stick. He should have said, “This guy’s a #&%!$. Let’s go get ‘em.” from the start.”

“In retrospect I have to say that we should have slowed down a bit and took a wait and see position. I also now feel we should have focused more pressure on the UN to get off it’s a$$ and do what it is supposed to do.

This is EXACTLY my point, Nigal. You and I have come to a point on this that we agree on.”

“Jeeze Nigal. Maybe you're not so evil afterall.”

“It’s like I said on the other Rush thread…if I refuse to see and recognize shortcomings then I have no credibility. I’m not as lock-steppish as Tom T says I am.”

“Nah, you're still evil. But you're alright anyway.”

“Im not gonna sit here and spew nonsense about this administration having no faults of shortcomings. But "wait and see"? Let the UN "get off their a$$es"? The UN would still be stalling and we would have had another empty resolution. I think that action needed to be taken, and I am glad that it was.”

“Yeah, but Clinton had sex with an intern! And Hillary is a b¡tch! And somebody killed Vince Foster!”

“Guess we'll never know that for sure, c bat! Easy to speculate when it's hindsight. Sorry, man. Cop out!”

“c bat - Somebody post a link here from the Freeper boards again?”

“But "wait and see"? Let the UN "get off their a$$es"? The UN would still be stalling and we would have had another empty resolution. I think that action needed to be taken, and I am glad that it was."
c bat
11:19:11 AM
11/14/03

If this administration could not convince the UN that removing Saddam Hussein was in the world's best interest, then they have zero statesmanship skills. It is a longer, more difficult road to build a meaningful coalition than to just invade with our lapdog allies. Is the administration lazy, or unable to build said coalition?”

“"But "wait and see"? Let the UN "get off their a$$es"?"

No, not LET them get off their a$$es, I said FORCE. I also think in retrospect that the money we have invested in Iraq would have gone much further if applied to increasing security and sealing our boarders. $87 billion is a whole lot of fence my friend.”

“As for money, it may not have been as expensive for us if we didn't alienate so many potential allies. Building a coalition is not just about troops. It's also about sharing the expenditures...”

“Yeah, sharing the cost of the peacekeeping is one reason it would have been a good idea. Another is the obfuscation of American interests in the region.”

“The 87 billion is just a down payment too, Nigal. We are going to have to dig deeper, i'm afraid...”

“What irked me about the way it was done was the arrogance we used our approach. So much of what goes into making a president or any outstanding figure like that in America is what you might call image and packaging. When the president stands in front of a body like the U.N., and the whole world is going to react and be affected by what he says, the message is not just in his words. It is also in the image that comes across. Bush came across like a macho, muscle flexing, no nonsense cowboy. Now, there are some that think this is a good thing, but the way America is currently perceived around the world, I don't necessarily agree. If you haven't noticed, the tone of the rhetoric spewed out by this administration has been scaled down considerably. It got the knee jerk reaction it sought out to do for the Iraq invasion. North Korea is not being approached the same way, is it? I guess what i am getting at is that I don't look at the U.N. as the impotent entity as some of you do. I think diplomacy is necessary, whether you want to admit it or not. And I feel the current administration lost sight of that and with it, lost some valuable help we could have used in this.”

“After 9-11, virtually the entire country was united in sorrow, support, patroitism and resolve. We would have hunted down the threat anywhere with overwhelming domestic support. Not so anymore, people HAVE forgotten. We are a hated nation, a hated people. Not because we invaded Iraq or Afghanistan, but becuase of what America stands for. Bad things come out of war, the death of soldiers and civilians among them. Most of you will never be convinced that this war was for anything but the ambition of Bush and the gain of his administration and their cronies. I however will not be convinced that this war doesnt have deeper meaning. Protection of Americans as well has helping the people of Iraq. To me that is important. I believe that it is important to GW Bush as well. Questioning my patriotims (phaedrus) might make you feel good, but I know who I am and I believe that there was just cause for this war.”

“Frankly, c bat, I am glad that wwe can have differing opinions and engage in healthy debate. I am thnakful for having that right!”

“Is the administration lazy, or unable to build said coalition?

By meaningful coalition you mean the inclusion of France and Germany, I take it. They opposed the war not because the Bush admin was incompetent in diplomacy, but because the war was directly in opposition to European (the Franco-German pole, obviously not the rest of Europe) goals.

Are you intentionally being dense, or did you actually think the reason the U.S. couldn't convince them was due to incompetence?”

“That, Treebeard is one of the many things that makes this country great! Can you imagine the disaster if we all thought alike??”