If Bush Was Going To Lie, Why Would He Lie About WMD?

Toogoodreports.com ^ | Weekender June 08, | Lowell Phillips

[Egregious Philbin]

Would you then be willing to contribute $5.00 to Bush's presidential campaign?

Alas, you'll never get your answer. Not with some of the squeamish moderators and posters here. Yet "phaser" had not been especially rude, or inarticulate.

[24-7Freeper]

"What's that you say, Mr. Blix?.. You say Iraq has NO Weapon of Mass Destruction, eh??

(ahem) "Ha, Ha, YES That's right, Bahgdad Bob! Iraq has no Weapons of Mass Destruction!!"

Oh very good Mr. Blix!! Thats Right Mr Blix!! There you see?... We have NO Weapons of Mass Destruction!

"Ha, Ha, Thank you Bahgdad Bob!!"....   No, Thank YOU Mr. Blix!

[The Great Satan]

Ask this man. He knows the real story.

[VRWC_minion]

Alas, you'll never get your answer. I really do believe we have far more information regarding Iraq's program and that its not going to be disclosed until the admin is much farther along in its interviews and data checking.

Just like the war plan was kept secret and the critics shot themselves in the foot until it completely unfolded, this search plan will be the same.

[smadurski]

I would think if Bush had lied about WMDs wouldnt he have planted some to cover it up? Im not saying that he lied so no flames please.

[TomB]

Actually, anybody who would say or believe this regarding Iraq opening the country to inspectors:

They did. The UN inspections, forced to a halt by Bush (and in 1998 by Clinton) were allowed to go about unfettered. They encountered a lockeddoor once, and the problem was immediately corrected when the superintendent of the building came over to unlock it.

is undoubtedly a troll. That said, I would have liked for him to have been allowed to stick around to defend that statement.

I give the moderators the benefit of the doubt, they've got a tough job. As I said earlier, he had the smell of a previously banned poster.

[Egregious Philbin]

I really do believe we have far more information regarding Iraq's program and that its not going to be disclosed until the admin is much farther along in its interviews and data checking.

At the risk of going the way of phaser... why would the Administration sit on it while the potential political and diplomatic costs of having possibly lied about WMDs escalate? They certainly didn't wait for an airtight case before entering the war. In fact, the first justification for the war was "regime change," and the final one was liberation.

[My2Cents]

That's a curiousity to me as well. Basically, the Freeper Community is a mish-mash of folks and perspectives. I've been amazed, actually, at how many frenzied anti-war types there are on FR. Not many, but enough that they pop up frequently in these threads. I'm curious about where they're coming from. Perhaps they are so "paleo" in their conservatism that they go back to the isolationist policies of the early 20th Century, you know, around the 1920s. They resent Bush's interventionism, and are as fervently anti-war as some of the peace-nazis on the left.

[My2Cents]

Bush is the one prosecuting this nation's war on terror. He deemed it vital to take out Saddam as part of that war. You may disagreed. Fine. Vote against him. I trust Bush and the way he's prosecuting the WOT, and have seen nothing in the rhetoric of the naysayers to withdraw that trust.

[Egregious Philbin]

I give the moderators the benefit of the doubt, they've got a tough job. As I said earlier, he had the smell of a previously banned poster.

You're right, it can't be easy. My experience at lucianne.com makes the moderators here look like kings of restraint. FR is a conservative site, but I think it needs at least a handful of "liberal" posters, but only if they debate issues rather than spout dogma from the far left.

"phaser" didn't seem like a party crasher, though. I wanted to see what he was going to say next too. In my experience crashers come once, try to hit hard with an outrageous statement, and then meet their ban.

[dark_lord]

If the cops were outside my house with a search warrant and a sledgehammer, and made it clear they were coming in no matter what, I'd GLADLY open the door..... ....provided I had nothing to hide.

Unless you were paranoid and thought the cops might happily plant something and then "oh look what we just found right here under the sofa cushion! Book 'em, Danno!".

Saddam was clearly very paranoid. But in this case perhaps reasonably so. He knew we needed to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia, and having an excuse to park them in the western desert of Iraq for oh say the next 50 years or so fits into our political and economic needs. So he may have figured that if he did let in a whole mess of "inspectors" without any restrictions they just might find something that wasn't there to start with. I am not saying that this would have occurred, but I am saying he could logically have concluded that it would occur.

[Registered]

"If you want to prevent mass graves, then we should be joining French troops in the Congo right now."

I want you to know, that I received an email from a local Democratic "activist" group, and you know what? They said the exact same thing as you. Do you happen to write on the side?

[VRWC_minion]

At the risk of going the way of phaser... why would the Administration sit on it while the potential political and diplomatic costs of having possibly lied about WMDs escalate?

Good question. the same reason Bush and Co didn't explain there battle plan. They care more about the end result than the politics.

Releasing information prematurely complicates any investigation. the investigation of this scale is going to require chasing down good leads as well as false leads. It is going to require determining if someone is cooperating. Like any investigation the people doing it are better off if they don't have to beat the press to every potential site, if they can use the private information they currently have to verfiy statements made by others, if they can use the threat of imprisonment to get folks talking.

There are countless reasons why the investigation itself would be less effective if the press were given a full detailed report of its progress each day.

When everyone was yelling what was taking Bush so long to go to war with Iraq, Bush stayed silent about his intentions even though he had a plan. Some have forgotten but Tony Blair on the other hand virtually announced the exact date. The same thing occured here. While everyone is attacking Bush and Blair on what is going on, Tony Blair explained that it would all come out at once.

[TomB]

Saddam was clearly very paranoid. But in this case perhaps reasonably so. He knew we needed to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia, and having an excuse to park them in the western desert of Iraq for oh say the next 50 years or so fits into our political and economic needs. So he may have figured that if he did let in a whole mess of "inspectors" without any restrictions they just might find something that wasn't there to start with. I am not saying that this would have occurred, but I am saying he could logically have concluded that it would occur.

The inspectors didn't go anywhere without "minders". If Saddam was paranoid, but knew he had nothing to hide and wanted the sanctions lifted, he could have assigned 3 minders to every inspector, each with a video camera.

If he were any more paraniod than that, he would have NEVER even allowed the inspectors in the country.

[TomB]

At the risk of going the way of phaser... why would the Administration sit on it while the potential political and diplomatic costs of having possibly lied about WMDs escalate?

What "political and diplomatic costs" are you talking about? You present that as if it were a truism, yet I don't see the WMD issue hurting Bush at all.

And as I pointed out previously, phaser didn't run afoul of the "thought police", he was obviously a previously banned poster.

[Captain Kirk]

1920s? How about 1998 when most conservatives were against the "liberation of Kosovo" war? Now...when "their side" is in charge most of these conservatives turn on a dime and become do-gooding, international social engineering Wilsonians. A few, however, have remained consistent in their 1998 convictions.

[alnick]

I don't recall either of those things. Anybody know what he's talking about?

I tried to find the articles here, but couldn't. Shortly before the war started, Saddam threatened to use chem or bio weapons against us.

President Bush laughed about Saddam threatening us with weapons that he "doesn't have."

[Captain Kirk]

I notice you danced around his question rather than answering it. Why aren't you are on your hind legs demanding that we "liberate the Congo" through troops? BTW, if he do make such a demand you will be a rarity among conservatives. So much for consistency.

[Redcloak]

Something else that doesn't make any sense: Saddam Hussein and the entire Ba'athist regime going to the grave protecting George Bush's lie.

[My2Cents]

Ah, Capt. Kirk! I was wondering when you'd "beam in" to these discussions.

I think we hail more from the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt than Wilson, thank you very much.