Explaining French anti-americanism (an attempt to)Follow

Go home, gringo.

Um. Fox is going to use quotes that represent all aspects of the story. You are aware that Fox tends to hire a pair of one Liberal and one Conservative when they work stories like this one, right? It's not that they have a staff that is on the fence on everything, but that they make a point of including strong Liberal *and* strong Conservative viewpoints. Which means you'll get stories that will include quotes intended to present both points of view. Two guesses which viewpoint picked which quotes to include in the story?

And again. It's irrelevant. What the DoD says is the reason we went to war does not have to match why Congress decided to go to war. Given that the executive branch doesn't get to make that decision.




Um... I didn't "spin" to that. I've been saying that all along. This has got to be the 10th thread in which I've pointed out that the words on WMDs coming from the executive branch of the government are not in any way cannonical in the context of why we actually went to war. The DoD can say we went to war because Saddam was secretly a space alien and that changes nothing. You can certainly call them on inaccuracies, but you *can't* say that we went to war for the wrong reason by pointing to statements from the Bush administration. Nor, can you simply assume that the DoDs reasons for going to war, or their believe as to what weapons we were looking for after the war say *anything* about the actual reasons we went to war.


I've been arguing this exact point for over a year now. I've been consistent with the argument the whole time. My whole point here is not to reverse that, but to point out that even the bogus "We went to war because we were told Iraq had WMDs, and they didn't have any!" argument is even more bogus since it now turns out that they did have some and we did find them, but for the most part it's been ignored. So not only is the argument irrelevant because that wasn't why we went to war, but it's also just plain "wrong".


The reason these two guys are bringing this up now is specifically to counter the rhetoric that the Left has been spewing for 3 years straight. Look. If you want to argue that the war was wrong because Iraq didn't build any additional WMDs after 1991, then by all means do so. But then make that point exactly. Don't exagerate it into "there were no WMDs!!!". That's the issue here. Becuase most people actually think there were "none". Not "none built after 1991", or "only some old stuff that isn't very usable". None. And they believe that because the Left has put "There were no WMDs" on every bumper sticker and protest sign they could find for the last 3 years straight.


You want to argue about the legitimacy of the war, at least argue honestly about it instead of using broad and inaccurate statement that are demostrably false. That's all these guys are trying to do (ok, and there's some election issues as well too!). Is it wrong to reveal the truth? I suppose it's only wrong if you've gotten a great deal of political momentum by presenting a falsehood...

Let me add another point here.

Several of you keep pointing to the fact that the Bush administration doesn't seem to put much weight into those weapons, nor seem care about pushing them as "proof" that they were right.

But that's not really a big deal. Very simply, there's no benefit to them doing so. This is the executive branch we're talking about here. Once the decision to invade Iraq is made (by Congress), they don't care about that any more. Revisiting the issue can only cost them since it puts them in the position of having to debate the issue of which weapons are in violation of which resolutions, and what that means in terms of justification for war. Obviously, that's a tricky argument to make (judging just by the difficulty I have getting people to understand it in this forum alone). And they gain nothing by doing it. They've already gone to war. As the executive branch their focus is on succeeding. That's where they'll put their efforts into. It's far more valuable to them to trump up the successes in Iraq then delve into details of WMDs found or not found and their relevance to the decision to go to war in the first place.


But it's a totally different ballgame for Congress. As I've pointed out numerous times, Congress made the actual decision to go to war. So it's those members of congress that have to defend that decision. Specifically in the context of this coming mid-term election, we've got a situation where many/most Democrats have reversed themselves on the issue based solely on the "There were no WMDs" argument. There's also a strong push to field Liberal ex-servicement on the Dem ticket to challenge Republican members of congress. There are a number of issues to be debated, but in those challenges, the validity of the decision to go to war is definately going to be a major component.

By getting this official document declassified, they can blunt those attacks significantly. It allows them to point to the document and counter any blanket "there were no WMDs" argument effectively. It now puts the Democrat challenger in the position of having to argue the difference between old pre-91 munitions and newer ones. And for the same reason that's difficult and undesirable for the Bush administration to tackle, it's difficult for them as well. They can't just point at their opponent and say "He voted for the war. He still supports that decision. But he did it because there were WMDs in Iraq, and we never found any!". They're put in the position of trying to explain, to the general population that yeah, we did find WMDs, but those somehow don't count...


If Santorum and Hoekstra want to get really tricky they could call for a US resolution officially finding that there were WMDs in Iraq based on the declassified document. I don't know if they'll actually try this, since it has the potential to backfire, but it could create an interesting wedge issue. It'll force Democrats who've already reversed themselves on the issue once, to have to choose between voting for the resolution (finding of fact in this case) and reverse themselves again and alienate their own base, or refuse to vote along with it and be put in the position of refusing to make a statement about something that on the face is "proven" (after all, you can argue all day long about the usefulness of those WMDs, but they still *are* WMDs). It could potentially toss the rhetoric right back into the Dems faces and eliminate a powerful semantic argument at the same time.


What I'm getting at is that it's not really surprising that members of Congress view the value of this data totally differently then members of the Bush admministration. They have two different jobs. They have different issues to deal with. Arguing that it's silly for members of Congress to pursue this issue because the Bush administration doesn't seem to care about it doesn't change the actual reasons one bit.

He's a terminator unit reprogrammed by the neo-con built Skynet that was sent back in time to spout inane babble and also assassinate Hillary Clinton, our 46th president.

"cliché trendiness"?

Cool. Moveon.org is an awesome site.

So who are you fighting exactly? You think every single bomb, attack, and death of an american soldiers were fought by non-Iraqis? That the Sunni bombs dont come from Sunni Iraqis? That the civil war thats going on is all the work of "foreign insurgents"?

That when some troops raid a house and shoot its inhabitants because the soldiers are so stressed, there is not even a slight chance that these guys might be innocent?

But please, expand on your argumentation, for while it is obvious that you possess a tremendously superior intellect to most people here, it is hard to decipher what your point is, or what your argumentation is based on. Two "hard-hitting" sentences, for the record, on such a complicated subject is more Fox News than the Economist.

Enlighten us, if you'd be so kind...

Also just for the record. We arent fighting Iraqi's in Iraq, or innocent Iraqi's for that matter.

Fighting, no. Killing, yes. By the tens of thousands.

Five hundred since the report was written? Really? Wow. Now, all the media reports *I've* seen have said that...

Intelligence officials said the munitions were found in ones, twos and maybe slightly larger collections over the past couple of years

...exactly as the report said they have been found and exactly as the report suggested they'd continue to be found. But I'm sure you're going to back your assertations up with some sort of cite showing exactly how many were located both before and after the ISG report, right? Because this is your argument: "We've found the grand majority of these after the 2005 report" -- so let's see where you're pulling this from. Ok, so technically you said that the report was from 2004 despite my saying that the predictions to find more was part of the 2005 addendum but you've already proven that reading comprehension isn't your strong suite.

It's okay.. it's the internet. I'll wait right here.Holy Christ, you're retarded. I mean that. You can call it an ad hominem attack if you'd like but I seriously, honestly believe that you are retarded. Or maybe just mired in super-deep denial.

The report explictly says that the munitions were lost and abandoned and not at all indicative of Saddam not destroying his stockpiles and yet, here you are, trying to argue that the ISG didn't know what it was talking about. The were lost. Saddam destroyed the ones he knew about. Saddam did not destroy the ones he couldn't find because they were stuck in a sand dune somewhere.

This is like me saying "I'm flat broke" and you declaring it a major victory because you found an old, lost penny in my couch cushions. "Ha! You're not REALLY broke, now are you? You were lying! We found the secret hidden money stash! We were right all along!"

Sure, you just give me the cites to back this up. No "it's obvious that..." No "we can guess that...". How about we base our conclusion on real data instead of Gbaji's made up factoids. I've presented the declassified document, media reports, administration statements, and reports made by the group designed to locate WMDs. You've made up some unsupported shit about 75% of the munitions having viable chemicals, when we've found significant quantities and a bunch of crap about Santorum's word being gospel because he's in Congress and the people in the Defense Department aren't.

If this is the best you have, it's no wonder that the Right isn't pushing to make this front page news.

Edited, Jul 1st 2006 at 1:07am EDT by Jophiel

Told you he was from the future.