except joe wilson is a liar...
Posted on 10/29/2005 10:34:11 AM PDT by smoothsailing
As I remember the Senate voted not to go to war, but to give President power to got to war in order to give him strong hand at the negotiations. I guess second was unconstitutional but it was different from the first. So many people have short memory.
And what this supposed plot was?
Good post and welcome.
Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate yellow cake uranium sales to Iraq. He had no expertise in that. His wife recommended him. He lied about that. He didn't turn in a written report on his return. He lied about that. He claimed that the Office of the Vice President requested this fact-finding trip. He lied about that. He claims that the WH outed his covert-agent wife. There are two lies in that; one, she's not a covert agent and two, he identified her on his own website previous to all of this. He wrote an op-ed about his fact-finding in Niger for the Wash. Post, disclosing this classified trip, before submitting a written report to the CIA. His report has been proven false. He was a major player in the Kerry Campaign during this time.
Which makes me wonder...
How is it illegal or even unethical for the administration to investigate and try to curtail a concerted effort to undermine a major point of its current foreign policy mission? A point that was (and still is) positively confirmed by multiple international intelligence agencies and concerns the attempts of a rogue nation to produce nuclear weapons while under numerous UN sanctions against that activity and while under a cease-fire agreement with our nation from a previous war.
And so I conclude...
Any Executive administration that didn't take serious action to address a national security threat like that would have to be incompetent. Maybe they are. If I were Pres. in a situation like that Wilson and Plame would have ceased to exist.
Yes. To cut to the chase, it was clear to me from the beginning (before war with Iraq) that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and that he did not have WMDs.
I have and had quite cynical view of this whole issue. Different thing is with Afghanistan, the war there had some justification and once started should have been priority and more resources should be devoted to it.
This text is very partisan. Let me quote:
"The left accepts as gospel the Joseph Wilson-inspired allegation [...] the mainstream media is only too happy to support a leftist CIA, which is out to keep its power intact at all costs."
Intelligence services have to be free to provide inconvenient/unpleasant views and facts. If you force them to tell you what you want to hear you do not have a reliable source of information. Instead you are in an echo chamber, you are blind and deaf and you make your enemies happy.
Then you would hear only what is pleasing to your ears. Very smart indeed.
But Machiavelli had different opinion:
HOW FLATTERERS SHOULD BE AVOIDED
I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell you the truth, respect for you abates.
Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires, and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions. With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt
[...]
(The Prince, chapter XXIII)
Until Friday I did not even know what he looked like. After watching him my strong impression was one of fanaticism, not partisanship. In an earlier time and place, he would have been an eager functionary for the Inquisition.
Some call him the Irish Alligator.
As for a connection between Saddam and 9/11, I don't recall that being a justification offered by the White House for the Iraq war, therefore it was never a relevent issue to me.
WMD is what prevents others from attacking you :)
except joe wilson is a liar...
http://yargb.blogspot.com/2005/10/libby-guilty-of-being-inarticulate.html
Cheers!
Nobody wants to be indicted.
Except that I am speaking from a position where no one person or group has a hold on my ear. If Pres. Bush was insulated from anything it must have been how specific and directed the CIA/Wilson attack on his foreign policy was.
One hardly needs to be flattered into countering an enemy attack.
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