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The mistake was headquartering the military and Occupation Authority in Saddam's palaces in the first place: ie symbolicly replacing Hussein&gang with another set of aristocrats.
Shoulda housed the grunts there: ya know, the underpaid soldiers who actually did some fighting, who actually risk themselves to keep peace&order. Woulda better given the message that the war was for the benefit of regular folk. Command tents are more than luxurious enough for command officers and the Occupation Authority.
quote: Man. Every instinct I have tells me that document's a forgery.
Lol perhaps it is I am not going to believe it quite yet either but it's funny because your instincts tell you to ignore possible evidence that goes against your view.
On Bush using 9/11 he certainly has used it for justification for fighting the war on terror and Iraq is part of the war on terror he is conducting. But the difference is that people are claiming Bush or his administration has stated Saddam was behind 9/11. Which is a very different stance and please don't confuse them there is a very important distinction.
Because using 9/11 as an exmple for fighting terrorist and "rogue" states is much different than Bush saying Saddam attacked us on 9/11. Which is why many Bush opponents are attempting to call him a liar.
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"your instincts tell you to ignore possible evidence that goes against your view."
Nope. My instincts -- and these are instincts that, mind you, are generally pretty good -- warn me that the source is biased, the publishing paper has not shared the information or background, and that the information appears customized to buttress claims that were already publicly challenged and/or disproved. It's therefore a "convenient" letter, and one that hasn't been properly investigated. Ergo, I strongly suspect that it's a fake.
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Or it is simply possible that the supposedly disproved claims weren't disproved after all. All I ever heard was that there was "no evidence" for what the document claims. Now we have evidence. Viola.
"the publishing paper has not shared the information or background,"
I don't understand what you mean. The first sentence of the article says it comes from Iraq's coalition government. Do you mean that they didn't say where they got it? I would say that they might not be able to just yet, as it might endanger their source.
And if the U.S. hasn't been trumpeting it, it might just be because it the capture of Saddam completely overshadowed it.
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The uranium smuggling documents were thoroughly disproven, and in fact were such bad fakes that anyone who had done a high school report on the country could see they were fakes.
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Having some evidence turn out to be bad is a far cry from having negative evidence. I have seen no negative evidence for uranium smuggling. Furthermore, the British have always claimed that they had other evidence besides those documents.
By the way, on what do you base your assertion that it was so easy to see that they were fake?
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What about the negative evidence that we haven't found any smuggled uranium after many months of searching?
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"By the way, on what do you base your assertion that it was so easy to see that they were fake?"
It's been a while since this was in the news, but I'm pretty sure that the letter was printed on a poor imitation of governmental letterhead and cited officials who were not in office at the time the letter was dated.
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The documents were "signed" by individuals (in their official capacities) who had left power around a decade ago. The documents were supposed to be much more recent. These were high level officials such that anyone doing a report on the country would likely run into.
Anyone who read them who knew anything about those people at all would recognize them as forgeries instantly.
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quote: Jutsa Notha Name said: No, I do not have printed out statements where Bush said it, but if you take your own time to get the print of every speech he made since January, you will see at least five references that Hussein was the cause of 9/11.
Who the hell is on another planet now? You’ve gone way beyond the implied people with this one – if you know there are 5 statements, why can’t you point me to one of them. Because there is not one direct statement that “Hussein was the cause of 9/11.”
quote: Jutsa Notha Name said: Are you really trying to stick to saying that Bush never made direct references to Hussein having a part in 9/11? If so, anyone who wishes to invest the time to get the text of his speeches, especially in January and February, can easily show you otherwise.
But several people have invested the time, and no one has shown such a “direct” statement. None of them have claimed the statements were direct – we were discussing whether he implied it. Had a direct statement existed, I have no doubt Chris Bridges or jack would have found it.
Of course, if such a statement really existed I bet you would have found it, too. But it doesn’t, and you were tired of googling, so you just posted a link that happened to mention Iraq and 9/11, stated your conclusion that this was a “direct statements that Hussein and 9/11 were linked,” and asked if I was from another planet. For the record, I’m either from Earth or have very credible implanted memories.
You can either revise your claim to be that of an implied link as the others have said, you can post some evidence of a direct statement, or you
quote:Tresopax said: As a general rule, I don't spend my time looking for specific facts to formally prove things I think we both already should know are true, just so I can score debate points or something. I mean, if I found such a quote would you really change your mind?
Just for future reference, could you point me to the master Hatrack list of “things I think we both already should know are true” so I can avoid debates that touch on those in the future? If you found a quote that said something like, “Capturing Sadaam is a measure of justice for the victims of 9/11,” that would be implying. If you found something that said, “The invasion of Iraq is needed to punish/bring to justice/get revenge on/slightly annoy the people responsible for 9/11,” that would be implying. Either of those or any of thousands of possible variations would cause me to change my mind.
Statements that basically say, “We invaded Iraq as part of a global war on terrorism that began on 9/11” do not imply that Iraq was an accomplice in 9/11.
Again, a simple argument: Terrorism <> 9/11. No one has bothered to refute it. Ignoring Justa Notha Name, who is still saying Bush directly claimed a link, all anyone has done is list speeches where Bush mentioned both 9/11 and Iraq. How is that implying (“to express or indicate indirectly”)?
What he has explicitly said: “We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks.” He has also said 9/11 demonstrates the danger associated with leaving a man with WMDs or the ability to create WMDs in power since those WMDs can be used by terrorists with greater effect than the planes were in 9/11. He has not said, “Iraq was connected to 9/11.” And I don’t consider any of those statements to imply such a statement.
quote:fugu13 said: Dag -- if Bush wasn't implying such a thing (for most people's definition of implying), then where in the heck did most of the country get the idea that Saddam was directly linked with 9/11?
Probably for the same reason people think that Gore got a majority of the popular vote; that a majority of European countries actively opposed the Iraq invasion; that most abortions happen because of teenage pregnancy, rape, or incest; or that Columbus had to convince people the world wasn’t flat to get permission for his voyage.
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Dag, is it sincerely your contention that Bush and his staff never meant to imply any connection between Saddam and the events of 9/11?
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quote: TomDavidson said: Dag, is it sincerely your contention that Bush and his staff never meant to imply any connection between Saddam and the events of 9/11?
If you mean by connection, did Sadaam or any agent of Sadaam’s government know about it in a general sense (they planned to hijack planes and crash them into civilian targets), then I sincerely mean that they never meant to imply a connection. I also don’t think Bush and his staff implied that Sadaam provided any resources that were directly used in the attack.
They have definitely stated (implicitly or explicitly) that there are links between al Queda and Sadaam, that these links included support of the general al Queda infrastructure and possibly training. I also believe Bush was aware of and made use of the universal outrage over al Queda’s acts on 9/11 in emphasizing these links. I’m not naïve about political campaigning.
However, relying on outrage generated by truthful (as far as I know at this point) links between two of our enemies is very different than accusing a sovereign nation of knowingly participating in, or providing specific resources that were used in, the 9/11 attacks. This is how I interpreted the accusations of Bush implying a connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
I believe Bush’s implied or stated connection between Iraq and 9/11 has been that 9/11 awoke us to the dangers of terrorism, and made us capable of imagining what they could do with WMDs. I believe Bush has explicitly stated that one of his justifications for going in now is the threat of those WMDs being provided to terrorists. It is likely we would not be invading Iraq if 9/11 hadn’t happened. In this sense, there is a connection between the 9/11 attacks and the justification for invading Iraq.
I really am able to be convinced on this. I’m also not entirely happy with the way the war has been presented to the public. But I absolutely do not believe Bush has implied a connection between 9/11 and Iraq, as I defined it above. If other people are defining connection differently, then I could very possibly agree that Bush has implied a connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
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I believe Bush's implications helped sell the idea of the war, by linking Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, because there was not enough justification without that implied link to get the vote, and I think the implications were made for that very reason. I think he did what any politician in the same position would do, which is to push an idea in the public mind to achieve his goals without coming right out and stating anything.
Stating that there was no link after the war is a little too late to play the 'I never said..." game.
There was no reason to go after Iraq when we did that was more compelling than using the international goodwill to build a worldwide rout of terrorist cells, something I consider to be the biggest wasted opportunity in American history.
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Actually fugu13, I was thinking because the American public as a whole has zero sophistication in the way it assimilates information. But your reason can stand as a corollary if you slightly modify: because people keep repeating things that allow the unsophisticated news consumers to jump to conclusions.
Just finished Torts exam, so am slightly logy. Only fun threads for the rest of the evening.
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