So the upshot is: the Blair government blew it but didn't lie.
The Bush administration paid more attention to what the Blair government told them than what some of their underlings said.
Oops. Not that we didn't have ample reason to suspect that's all it was all along. But now it's out, and we can move on, right? Well, sane people can anyway since, of the over a dozen reasons given for the war which were debated for over a year in this country, it turns out that one (fairly small) part of one of the many reasons we were given was based on a flub.
But Democrats, of course, want a "full investigation."
Having sat through the idiocy of the Iran/Contra witch hunts, the agonizing Whitewater/Lewinsky debacle, and having seen the insanity in response to the Warren Commission's investigations, I have had just about enough of these neverending "investigations" which never end and never, ever convince the partisans of anything--except that every mistake or gap in the record is proof of the need for still more investigation. Especially when there're points to score in an upcoming election.
No thanks, kids. Let's hope the Bushies have the sack to call the Dems the witch-hunters that they are, and to otherwise ignore them.
You could include the Clarence Thomas hearings on that list.
While I agree that any 'investigation' that comes out of this will probably result in no significant findings, I think it's kind of silly to imply that Democrats are the only witch-hunters in Washington. Both sides do it every chance they get for the sake of scoring political points. This has been going on since the birth of our country, and will continue until voters as a group develop the intelligence and maturity to ignore it.
I don't think Dean implied that the Dems are the ONLY witchhunters in Washington. They are certainly MORE experienced at it though!
"Let's hope the Bushies have the sack to call the Dems the witch-hunters that they are..."
Either he's suggesting that they are not also witch-hunters, or he's advocating hypocrisy...
As far as the Dems being more experienced...It seems to me that, by the nature of our system, the party that holds the executive office is the one that gets worked over. During 12 years of Reagan/Bush I, the dems went after everything they could, then during Clintons turn the Republicans stirred the pot, and now it's back to Dems. To me, it seems the appearance of the Dems as being 'more experienced' may have more to do with the fact that Republicans have held the Presidency for 15 or the last 23 years.
and America has held a greater distrust (justified or not) of republicans than democrats. It's just part of our political discourse. Political figures either weather the storms or they don't. Clinton did. Thomas did. Reagan did, but Nixon and McCarthy did not.
As we say in the Army:
"Ya Gotta Deal With It!"
Tim the Soldier
Let’s play a game!!
Propaganda is to Sexing-Up as:
1. Lying is to truthfulness
2. Stupidity is to Intelligence
3. Certainty is to Suspicion
4. Liberal is to Conservative
5. Osama is to Gas centrifuge components
Just the latest in the "this will get Bush for sure" saga of the Democrats...lacking a program, they only have the hope of destroying President Bush as a person in the eyes of the American people. Unfortunately for them, there isn't any 'there' there.
"But now it's out, and we can move on, right? Well, sane people can anyway...."
So..... the Bush administration lied to the American people and the world but since they have now admitted they lied it's ok? Time to move on? Let by-gone's be by-gone's?
What about the untold masses of weapons of mass destruction? What about the tons and tons of chemical and biochemical weapons ready to be unleashed on the western world? What about the mobile chemical labs supposedly roaming the highways, back roads, and desert tracks of the Iraqi countryside? There appears to be little truth there.
Do you think think that the families of the six or seven thousand Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. led forces are ready to move on?
What about those who were maimed or crippled in the attacks? Or those who will die slow and painful deaths from radiation poisoning resulting from the DU bombs dropped on them by U.S./U.K. forces or from the unsecured radioactive material they dumped out on the ground so they could use the barrels to collect water in?
Do you think they are they ready to move on?
What about the mass graves of people who were killed by this repressive regime? What about the billions of dollars in Kuwaiti booty stolen and never returned by the Iraqi regime? What of the families of the kurds who were in-fact gassed by this murderous butcher?
Do they not deserve some recognition in your rantings? Whether we are able to find WMD after Saddam had months, if not years, to relocate, destroy, etc. is not as important as removing his opportunity to use them or share them with potential enemies of this country!
stageleft:
It is illogical to say that WMD's aren’t in Iraq because we haven’t found them yet.
Ossama is not buried under a rosebush. He requires food, water, shelter, medical treatment and people to bring those things to him. We still can’t find him, even though we have been in Afghanistan longer. We haven’t found Saddam either.
Perhaps S11, and Ossama was just a Republican plot to conceal W’s limited grammar by giving him more opportunity to use slogans like, "Let's roll" and "Bring it on."
Well Chief, if you're going to go this on the "repressive and violent regime" stance the question that needs to be asked is what about all the other's that have been ignored for years? If I remember correctly after the first Gulf War the U.S. stood on the border and watched while Hussein filled a goodly number of those mass graves you note didn't they?
Hayes, I don't disagree with your first statement at all. I do disagree with the "imminent threat" level these weapons supposedly posed to the western world in general and specifically to the US. This was another of the lies.
As to Mr. Noonan's 'there,' just what do you mean?
The sentence used in the state of the union address, while important in its own right, is for many people a manifestation of the Machiavellian attitude of this administration. If the other reasons for war justified the war, why was there such an insistence to include the threat of nuclear attack? My hunch is that the administration (as they themselves have said) decided that the IMMINENT threat of WMD was the best 'selling point.'
Politicians, to be sure, always sell policy with the brightest of outlooks and spins-- but a line must be drawn. If the administration is willing to embark on a program of deception, which is the 'there' that we see there, I am lost as to how you do not appreciate the concern.
There may be substantive arguments as to the merit or good of the administration's policy (and it is fairly characterized as such) of pressing a real threat of attack or aid to terrorists via readily available cham/bio, and soon to be available nukes. For our country's safety, we MUST find out whether that threat was real- because if it was, we'd better find those weapons fast. If the threat was not real, we MUST find the degree to which our leaders KNEW it was not real. And if they knew it was not real, we must ask ourselves whether this matters. I would like to see an argument defending the exagerations- an argument that does not either 1) label my concern as conspiracy-minded Bush hatred, nor 2) claim that it doesn't matter anyways.
Rather, for the sake of argument, assume that Bush knew he was stretching things when he cited British intellegence of which he knew was highly questionable. Tell me why I'm being childish to find that unsettling.
WMD's were not a selling point to US citizens. They were a selling point for the UN. Most of the US population was ready to go after S11, UN or not. Even WW2 didn't have such high approval %#. (and no, Afghanistan wasn't enough. We had to change the political reality in the region not just one backasward country. In addition consider what Ossama's primary bitch is: The US is in Saudi Arabia, the land of Mecca. We were there because of Saddam, and we aren’t there anymore are we?)
Owens,
The sentence in question, I believe, was in regard to attempts by the Saddamite regime to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. It is indisputable that Saddam sought nuclear weapons in the past and the recent discovery of nuclear weapons-related materials in Iraq shows that Saddam had not given up his desire for nuclear weapons. Sure, we got suckered by these documents - the documents are bogus, but the fact of a Saddamite attempt to get nukes is true in all respects; we don't even know for sure if Saddam didn't try to get uraninium from Nigeria...the only thing we know pretty much for sure is that the actual documents used to back up the particular claim that Saddam tried to get uranium from Nigeria were forgeries. This is hardly the "tissue of lies" that some defeatists are bruiting about regarding the reasons for going in to liberate Iraq.
As I said, there is no "there" there - its a tempest in a teapot whipped up by people of, well, lets just say of less than sterling patriotic credentials and latched on to by Democrats desperate for something, anything to derail the Bush re-election juggernaught.