Bush keeps revising war justification

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."

Republicans seized on North Korea's reported nuclear test last week as further evidence that the need for strong U.S. leadership extends beyond Iraq.

Bush's changing rhetoric reflects increasing administration efforts to tie the war, increasingly unpopular at home, with the global fight against terrorism, still the president's strongest suit politically.

"We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions, or used to inflict economic damage on the West," Bush said in a news conference last week in the Rose Garden.

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush shifted his war justification to one of liberating Iraqis from a brutal ruler.

After Saddam's capture in December 2003, the rationale became helping to spread democracy through the Middle East. Then it was confronting terrorists in Iraq "so we do not have to face them here at home," and "making America safer," themes Bush pounds today.

"We're in the ideological struggle of the 21st century," he told a California audience this month. "It's a struggle between good and evil."

Vice President Dick Cheney takes it even further: "The hopes of the civilized world ride with us," Cheney tells audiences.

Except for the weapons of mass destruction argument, there is some validity in each of Bush's shifting rationales, said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution who initially supported the war effort.

"And I don't have any big problems with any of them, analytically. The problem is they can't change the realities on the ground in Iraq, which is that we're in the process of beginning to lose," O'Hanlon said. "It is taking us a long time to realize that, but the war is not headed the way it should be."

Andrew Card, Bush's first chief of staff, said Bush's evolving rhetoric, including his insistence that Iraq is a crucial part of the fight against terrorism, is part of an attempt to put the war in better perspective for Americans.

The administration recently has been "doing a much better job" in explaining the stakes, Card said in an interview. "We never said it was going to be easy. The president always told us it would be long and tough."

"I'm trying to do everything I can to remind people that the war on terror has the war in Iraq as a subset. It's critical we succeed in Iraq as part of the war on terror," said Card, who left the White House in March.

Bush at first sought to explain increasing insurgent and sectarian violence as a lead-up to Iraqi elections. But elections came and went, and a democratically elected government took over, and the sectarian violence increased.

Bush has insisted U.S. soldiers will stand down as Iraqis stand up. He has likened the war to the 20th century struggles against fascism, Nazism and communism. He has called Iraq the "central front" in a global fight against radical jihadists.

Having jettisoned most of the earlier, upbeat claims of progress, Bush these days emphasizes consequences of setting even a limited withdrawal timetable: abandonment of the Iraqi people, destabilizing the Middle East and emboldening terrorists around the world.

The more ominous and determined his words, the more skeptical the American public appears, polls show, both on the war itself and over whether it is part of the larger fight against terrorism, as the administration insists.

Bush's approval rating, reflected by AP-Ipsos polls, has slid from the mid 60s at the outset of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to the high 30s now. There were light jumps upward after the December 2003 capture of Saddam, Bush's re-election in November 2004 and each of three series of aggressive speeches over the past year. Those gains tended to vanish quickly.

With the war intruding on the fall elections, both parties have stepped up their rhetoric.

Republicans, who are also reeling from the congressional page scandal, are casting Democrats as seeking to "cut and run" and appease terrorists.

Democrats accuse Bush of failed leadership with his "stay the course" strategy. They cite a government intelligence assessment suggesting the Iraq war has helped recruit more terrorists, and a book by journalist Bob Woodward that portrays Bush as intransigent in his defense of the Iraq war and his advisers as bitterly divided.

Democrats say Iraq has become a distraction from the war against terrorism — not a central front. But they are divided among themselves on what strategy to pursue.

Republicans, too, increasingly are growing divided as U.S. casualties rise.

"I struggle with the fact that President Bush said, `As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.' But the fact is, this has not happened," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., a war supporter turned war skeptic.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, said after a recent visit to Iraq that Iraq was "drifting sideways." He urged consideration of a "change of course" if the Iraq government fails to restore order over the next two or three months.

More than 2,750 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war, most of them since Bush's May 2003 "mission accomplished" aircraft carrier speech. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died.

Recent events have been dispiriting.

The United States now has about 141,000 troops in Iraq, up from about 127,000 in July. Some military experts have suggested at least one additional U.S. division, or around 20,000 troops, is needed in western Iraq alone.

Dan Benjamin, a former Middle East specialist with the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said the administration is overemphasizing the nature of the threat in an effort to bolster support.

"I think the administration has oversold the case that Iraq could become a jihadist state," said Benjamin, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If the U.S. were to leave Iraq tomorrow, the result would be a bloodbath in which Sunnis and Shiites fight it out. But the jihadists would not be able to seek power."

Not all of Bush's rhetorical flourishes have had the intended consequences.

When the history of Iraq is finally written, the recent surge in sectarian violence is "going to be a comma," Bush said in several recent appearances.

Critics immediately complained that the remark appeared unsympathetic and dismissive of U.S. and Iraqi casualties, an assertion the White House disputed.

For a while last summer, Bush depicted the war as one against "Islamic fascism," borrowing a phrase from conservative commentators. The strategy backfired, further fanning anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world.

The "fascism" phrase abruptly disappeared from Bush's speeches, reportedly after he was talked out of it by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidant now with the State Department.

Hughes said she would not disclose private conversations with the president. But, she told the AP, she did not use the "fascism" phrase herself. "I use `violent extremist,'" she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061014/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Bush & His Dangerous Delusions

In George W. Bush’s world, Saddam Hussein defied United Nations demands that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction and barred U.N. inspectors; al-Qaeda’s public statements must be believed even when contradicted by its private comments; and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is unthinkable because it would let al-Qaeda “extend the caliphate,” a mythical state that doesn’t really exist.

There’s always been the frightening question of what would happen if a President of United States went completely bonkers. But there is an equally disturbing issue of what happens if a President loses touch with reality, especially if he is surrounded by enough sycophants and enablers so no one can or will stop him.

At his Oct. 11 news conference, Bush gave the country a peek into his imaginary world, a bizarre place impenetrable by facts and logic, where falsehoods, once stated, become landmarks and where Bush’s “gut” instinct, no matter how misguided, is the compass for finding one’s way.

In speaking to White House reporters, Bush maneuvered casually through this world like an experienced guide making passing references to favorite points of interest, such as Hussein’s defiance of U.N. resolutions banning WMD (when Hussein actually had eliminated his WMD stockpiles).

“We tried the diplomacy,” Bush said. “Remember it? We tried resolution after resolution after resolution.” Though the resolutions had worked – and left Hussein stripped of his WMD arsenal – that isn’t how it looks in Bush’s world, where the resolutions failed and there was no choice but to invade.

At other news conferences, Bush has filled in details of his fictional history. For instance, on July 14, 2003, just a few months after the Iraq invasion, Bush began rewriting the record to meet his specifications.

“We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power,” Bush told reporters.

In the real world, of course, Hussein admitted U.N. inspectors in fall 2002 and gave them unfettered access to search suspected Iraqi weapons sites. It was Bush who forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in March 2003 so the invasion could proceed.

Over the past three years, Bush has repeated this false claim about the barred inspectors in slightly varied forms as part of his litany for defending the invasion on the grounds that it was Hussein who “chose war,” not Bush.

Meeting no protest from the Washington press corps, Bush continued repeating his lie about Hussein showing “defiance” on the inspections. For instance, at a news conference on March 21, 2006, Bush reprised his claims about his diplomatic efforts.

“I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically,” Bush said. “The world said, ‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.’ … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did. And the world is safer for it.”

Determined to Invade

In reality, documentary evidence shows that Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless of what U.S. intelligence found or what the Iraqis did.

For instance, the so-called “Downing Street Memo” recounted a secret meeting on July 23, 2002, involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security aides. At that meeting, Richard Dearlove, chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, described his discussions about Iraq with Bush’s top advisers in Washington.

Dearlove said, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

At an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, Bush and Blair discussed their determination to invade Iraq, though Bush still hoped that he might provoke the Iraqis into some violent act that would serve as political cover, according to minutes written by Blair’s top foreign policy aide David Manning.

So, while Bush was telling the American people that he considered war with Iraq “a last resort,” he actually had decided to invade regardless of Iraq’s cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the five-page memo of the Oval Office meeting.

The memo also revealed Bush conniving to deceive the American people and the world community by trying to engineer a provocation that would portray Hussein as the aggressor. Bush suggested painting a U.S. plane up in U.N. colors and flying it over Iraq with the goal of drawing Iraqi fire, the meeting minutes said.

“The U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo said about Bush’s scheme. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Time to Talk War Crimes.”]

Regardless of whether any casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had “penciled in” March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. “Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” Manning wrote. [NYT, March 27, 2006]

In other words, neither the U.N. inspectors’ negative WMD findings nor the Security Council’s refusal to authorize force would stop Bush’s invasion on March 19, 2003. [For more on Bush's pretexts for war in Iraq, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President Bush, With the Candlestick…”]

Comfortable History

But Bush remains so comfortable with his fabricated history – and so confident that the White House press corps won’t contradict him – that he now sketches the false landscape in a few quick strokes, as in “Remember it? We tried resolution after resolution after resolution.”

When Bush is not taking gullible people on a tour of his imaginary history, he is testing how well sophistry works as logic, such as his oft-repeated claim that Americans must believe what Osama bin Laden says.

“What I say to the American people when I’m out there is all you got to do is listen to what Osama bin Laden says” regarding al-Qaeda’s goals and the importance of Iraq, Bush said at the Oct. 11 news conference.

Yet, while Bush argues that bin Laden’s public ravings should seal the deal – and thus lock U.S. troops into Iraq for the indefinite future – Bush never considers the well-documented possibility that al-Qaeda is playing a double game, baiting the United States about leaving Iraq to ensure that U.S. troops will stay.

In a rational world – if one wanted to give any weight to al-Qaeda’s thinking – you would look at unguarded, internal communications, not the public propaganda.

For instance, more credence would be given to an intercepted Dec. 11, 2005, communiqué from a senior bin Laden lieutenant known as “Atiyah” to the then-chief of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a document discovered by the U.S. military at the time of Zarqawi’s death in June 2006.

In the letter about al-Qaeda’s strategy in Iraq, Atiyah told Zarqawi that “prolonging the war is in our interest.” A chief reason, Atiyah explained, was that Zarqawi’s brutal tactics had alienated many Iraqi Sunni insurgents and thus a continued U.S. military presence was needed to buy time for al-Qaeda to mend fences and put down roots.

The “Atiyah letter” – like a previously intercepted message attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri – indicated that a U.S. military pullout could be disastrous for al-Qaeda’s terrorist bands, which are estimated at only about 5 to 10 percent of the anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.

Without the U.S. military presence to serve as a rallying cry and a unifying force, the al-Qaeda contingent faced disintegration from desertions and attacks from Iraqi insurgents who resented the wanton bloodshed committed by Zarqawi’s non-Iraqi terrorists.

The “Zawahiri letter,” which was dated July 9, 2005, said a rapid American military withdrawal could have caused the foreign jihadists, who had flocked to Iraq to battle the Americans, to simply give up the fight and go home.

“The mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal,” said the “Zawahiri letter,” according to a text released by the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

The “Atiyah letter,” which was translated by the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, also stressed the vulnerability of al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq.

“Know that we, like all mujahaddin, are still weak,” Atiyah told Zarqawi. “We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength or any helper or supporter.”

Indeed, the “Atiyah” and “Zawahiri” letters suggest that one of al-Qaeda’s biggest fears is that the United States will pull out of Iraq before the terrorist organization has built the necessary political infrastructure to turn the country into a future base of operations.

The Caliphate Scam

Zawahiri was so concerned about the possibility of mass desertions after a U.S. withdrawal that he suggested that al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq talk up the “idea” of a “caliphate” along the eastern Mediterranean to avert a disintegration of the force.

Even with these two fretful al-Qaeda letters in hand, Bush continued to warn Americans about al-Qaeda’s intent to follow up a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by turning the country into a launching pad for a vast Islamic “empire” that would spell the strategic defeat of the United States.

In a Sept. 5, 2006, speech, Bush declared, “This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia,” Bush said. “We know this because al-Qaeda has told us.”

Bush returned to this theme in his Oct. 11 news conference. His administration’s “strategic goal is to help this young democracy [Iraq] succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate,” Bush said. “They want to extend an ideological caliphate that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs.”

But – like much of Bush’s world – al-Qaeda’s “caliphate” doesn’t really exist. Indeed, before the Bush administration took power in 2001, Islamic extremists had been routed across the Arab world, from Algeria to Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia – explaining why so many al-Qaeda leaders were exiles holed up in caves in Afghanistan.

Plus, given the strife between Sunni and Shiite sects, it’s hard to conceive how a unified global Islamic “caliphate” would be imaginable. Most likely, if the U.S. government dealt with Muslims with greater sophistication, they would take care of al-Qaeda and similar extremists like they did before.

In Bush’s world, however, the “caliphate” is not just a ploy by al-Qaeda leaders to keep impressionable young jihadists in line; it is an entity that would be “extended” if U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq.

So, as he rationalizes the horrendous death toll in Iraq – estimated at about 655,000 dead by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health – Bush doesn’t see a disaster of historic proportions. In his world, the bloodshed is simply another reaffirmation of his decision to invade.

“I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence,” Bush said. “I am amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to – that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”

It's difficult to envision any rational person making such a statement. If anything, the level of killing in Iraq is a combination of sectarian violence and the determination of many Iraqis to drive out what they see as the American invaders. But in Bush world, such realities never intrude.

Still, perhaps, the greatest danger from Bush's delusions is that they will come to supplant any American notion of reality and spell the doom of the United States as a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate.

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/101106.html

[Spider]

well he will finaly get the right one .................

[BroncoBuff]

This morning I watched a couppla "Charlie Rose" shows I had on tape ....

George Soros, Arianna Huffington and John Grisham.

ALL THREE of these highly-sophisticated American intellectuals stated that Iraq is a quagmire, and a blight on our nation and its history. I was especially struck by the manner with which all three said this - so matter-of-factly - so without any desire to persuade.

Good post here, LABF .... but I think we should start moving on with quiet confidence that the question "whether Iraq is a mistake or not" is an issue that is absolutely positively SETTLED.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Good post here, LABF .... but I think we should start moving on with quiet confidence that the question "whether Iraq is a mistake or not" is an issue that is absolutely positively SETTLED.

I'm not acting on behalf of any royal 'we' here, dude.

The question might be "settled" as far as you and I are concerned, but the BushCo propagandists on this forum clearly didn't get the memo.

The fight goes on...

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Good post here, LABF .... but I think we should start moving on...

Here's a comment by buzzflash.com on the AP story I posted:

An Extremely Rare Associated Press Story That Actually Provides Context and Perspective on Bush Spin, Instead of Just Transcribing It: "Bush keeps revising war justification."

Totally nails the reason why the story deserved to be posted.

[Atlas]

The Administration the first day of the war was actually calling the battle

Operation Iraqi Liberation. Of course this sounded good until the abbreviated it. O.I.L. I guess they thought they were being too transparent in their goals so they changed the name of the war.

They quickly changed it to Operational Iraqi Freedom.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (DVD)

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/images/327_200.jpg

"Iraq for Sale" hits the gut with a punch by focusing on the victims of privatizing our military. The gripping documentary leaves little doubt that war is now being waged, in large part, for the direct profit of a few well-connected companies. 'Iraq for Sale' blows away the jingoism that our tax dollars are being spent for spreading democracy. Our hard-earned tax dollars are going directly into the pockets of large corporations who often provide shoddy work that puts their employees and our soldiers at grave risk.

Robert Greenwald, as his feisty Brave New Films studio did with "Wal-Mart," focuses on the true stories of victims of companies the likes of Halliburton, Blackwater, and many others who are largely unknown to the American public. They operate, at tremendous profit, with virtually no accountability in Iraq, either for insuring that our GIs receive appropriate and timely support. In fact, the documentary provides evidence that these GOP-connected privatized military companies actually put our soldiers and private citizens in harm's way in order to achieve a greater profit.

This is the story of real Americans who are victims of an administration that took the nation to war, in large part, to "feed the greed" of corporations that politically support them.

"Iraq for Sale" proves that the Bush White House and the Republican Party profit heavily off of fear and war -- and they do it with your money and our lives.

We saw an advance viewing of this film, and it is the Greenwald style at its most gripping.

(This is an advance order. The DVD of "Iraq for Sale" will be released the end of September, after a theatrical release. Home and organization screenings are being scheduled for October.)

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/327

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/327

[BroncoBuff]

I'm not acting on behalf of any royal 'we' here, dude.

The question might be "settled" as far as you and I are concerned, but the BushCo propagandists on this forum clearly didn't get the memo.

The fight goes on...

No - I meant that in a POSITIVE way ...

And imo, who cares WHY at this point? It was a major mistake for any reason imagineable.

I believe that the issue is 100% settled. And the more people act like the issue is settled, the more shrill and wacko the justifying fringe will sound.

In other words .... the longer our discussion sounnds like we're trying to "persuade," the longer the tone of the debate will seem to leave open an option that it might have been OK.

[Rohirrim]

It's so obvious that Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al actually believe none of the crap they are spouting. They are using Iraq as nothing more than political fodder. I mean listen to this horse shiite:
Vice President Dick Cheney takes it even further: "The hopes of the civilized world ride with us," Cheney tells audiences.

And yet, Iraq sinks futher into chaos every day. So, this Bush cabal thinks that all they have to do is grab a microphone and start smearing the opposition and magically, the ship will right itself? No. They might be pig headed idiots, but even they are not stupid enough to believe that. If they actually believed that the existence of the West hinged on Iraq, they would institute a draft in order to get 200,000 more boots on the ground ASAP, they would open up all contracts to NATO countries to gain their cooperation, they would host a sit down with all border countries (incl. Iran and Syria) to press for containment using the hammer of massive redeployment of forces to Iraq, they would put the entire country on a WWII scale war footing, they would raise taxes across the board, they would kick our war production into overdrive, etc. etc. etc. They are doing none of this.

They aren't even suggesting this. They are talking into microphones. They are launching a PR campaign. They are putting out steaming piles of rhetoric and using that rhetoric as sledge hammers against their political rivals. It would be pathetically funny, watching them desperately floundering around for political cover, if Americans (directly due to their incompetence), weren't dying everyday in Iraq.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

George Bush Will Live in Infamy for What He Has Done to Iraq

George W. Bush will live in infamy for what he has done in Iraq. 161 dead. 83 dead. 53 dead. 16 tortured. 17 decapitated. Shiite doctors dumping the bodies of Sunni patients they have murdered. Burn marks. Executions. Torture chambers. Revenge killings. Family members shot in front of their wives and children.

These are all the headlines from Iraq in just the last couple of days.

If this isn't a civil war, what in the world is? Anywhere from 50,000-650,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last three and half years. Let that sink in for a second. That's a gigantic number. The human toll in Iraq has been unspeakable. And none of it had to happen. This was a war of choice. And it has been one of the worst choices ever made by a world leader.

George Bush now threatens to go from one of the worst leaders in US history to one of the worst leaders in world history. Iraq had allowed the weapons inspectors back in, they were doing their job, Iraq had absolutely no weapons of mass destruction, the United States military was doing a fantastic job of containing Saddam Hussein, there was no sectarian hostility in Iraq, there was stability in the region - and we came in like a bull in china shop and turned the whole country upside down. For what?

Democracy? Conservative pundits are now saying the Bush administration is considering replacing the Iraqi government. What? I thought they had a democracy. I thought that was the noble mission (of course, I didn't really think this, but that's the bull**** they've been feeding us all this time and the press has dutifully written down as if it had any merit in fact).

No WMD. No connection to 9/11. No democracy. No stability. Nothing accomplished but a horrible, unspeakable civil war. We ought to cover our faces in shame for what we have done to Iraq. Yes, it was us. There was no civil war before us. There were no Shiite militias. There were no death squads. There was no insurgency. We broke it, now we own it. To make excuses and to blame the Iraqis at this point is revolting.

George Bush has done the impossible - made Saddam Hussein's reign in Iraq seem not so bad by comparison. When you manage to make Saddam look good, you can't go any lower.

I could go on busting him up all night long and listing the crimes of omission and commission in Iraq, but any way you slice it, the point is inescapable. We started a war in a country we had no business in and it has now spiraled out of control. We have blood on our hands. And we have a leader who is criminally negligent and barbarically clueless.

And at this late juncture we have a president, vice president, Joe Lieberman and a Republican Congress who say they would do it again. Think about the madness of that statement. They would do it again.

If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, you have no feelings left. Somewhere between 50,000-650,000 dead, some of them in the most brutal ways imaginable. For absolutely nothing. And they would do it again.

If you vote for any of these guys again, you are one hundred percent guilty. You are voting for men and women who say they would make the same horrific choices again. They have warned you of how unimaginably callous and barbaric they are - and if you vote for them again, you are no better than they are. This is a democracy. What our leaders do, we do. If we break it, we own it.

Now, it's up to you. Are you going to send these guys back in to make the same mistakes they promise to make again?

http://www.theyoungturks.com/

[BroncoBuff]

You know, I don't want the FBI coming down on me, but GW has become exactly what Saddam was: A leader you just wished somebody would 'take out' - that the world would be better without him.

And why couldn't we just put some human intel on the ground in Baghdad in '02 - with a sat phone - to verify his position, and put a Tomahawk down his throat. I know the accuracy of smart weapons has been called into question .... but if we had an agent on the ground verifying his positiopn, we could put half-a-dozen cruise missiles on the building. That oughtta do it.

And don't say "we don't assassinate," because the first sortie of F-117a Nighthawks went in the night before the invasion trying to get him and his sons.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

You know, I don't want the FBI coming down on me, but GW has become exactly what Saddam was: A leader you just wished somebody would 'take out' - that the world would be better without him.


I appreciate the sentiment, but, at the same time, I have to remind myself that Bush is just a puppet who can (and would be) replaced. He is just a symptom of an underlying disease.

It's the hand inside the puppet that needs to be cut off at the elbow, IMO.

[BroncoBuff]

I'm getting a case of the "Diebold jitters," LABF.

I saw today where insiders are claiming Rove and Mehlman are predicting they won't lose either majority. Makes you wonder what they have up their sleeve .... or maybe that the game is rigged.

Election fraud is - to me - scarier than any single issue. Scarier than NK, global warming, Iraq, evangelicals, Hizbollah, Iran ... scarier than anything.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

I'm getting a case of the "Diebold jitters," LABF.

I saw today where insiders are claiming Rove and Mehlman are predicting they won't lose either majority. Makes you wonder what they have up their sleeve .... or maybe that the game is rigged.

Election fraud is - to me - scarier than any single issue. Scarier than NK, global warming, Iraq, evangelicals, Hizbollah, Iran ... scarier than anything.

This is exactly why you haven't heard very much optimistic talk from me about the forthcoming elections.

The same issues with the voting machines that existed in '04 are still there.

They haven't gone away.

In some cases, the problems have gotten worse.

Anyone who is laboring under the assumption that Bush and the Corrupt Old Party won't take full advantage of the Diebold "edge" this time around (especially this time around) is living in a fantasy world.