Posted on 02/14/2016 6:25:46 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
It was weird that an angry Code Pink-style protester interrupted last night's Republican presidential debate with a barrage of familiar Democratic talking points about George W. Bush - that he lied the country into a disastrous war in Iraq, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks, and even whiffed on an opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden. It was especially weird that the protestor was one Donald J. Trump, who happens to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
Trump didn't just call the Iraq war a mistake. He called it "a big fat mistake." And he didn't call it an inadvertent mistake because of faulty intelligence. "They lied!" he thundered. "They said there were weapons of mass destruction .. and they knew there were none. Trump even groused that the war cost $5 trillion that could have helped rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure, a common Democratic attack line that sounded like a canine talking point at a feline convention, especially in military-heavy South Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Powell Blames Himself, Others For Specious Iraq WMD Claims to U.N.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a new book said he blames himself for not trusting his instinct and making what proved to be false assertions to the United Nations about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Bloomberg reported earlier this month (see GSN, Feb. 17, 2011).
Powell's high-profile February 2003 prewar presentation to the U.N. Security Council included now-discredited claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had movable biological weapons facilities and was involved in a "sinister nexus" with al-Qaeda.
No evidence of active WMD production facilities or usable stockpiles have been found in Iraq following the U.S.-led March 2003 invasion.
"A failure will always be attached to me and my U.N. presentation," Powell writes in "It Worked For Me," a book that provides leadership advice. "I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me."
In his recently published book, Powell asserts "there would have been no war" in Iraq had then-President George W. Bush and his councilors understood that Hussein did not possess any functioning unconventional weapons. However, he lauded the fact that under Bush "we got rid of the horrific Hussein" government and toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The retired general also faulted U.S. intelligence officers for lacking the "courage" to alert him that he was receiving bad data on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction ahead of his U.N. appearance.
"Why did no one stand up and speak out during the intense hours we worked on the speech?” the ex-secretary said. “Some of these same analysts later wrote books claiming they were shocked that I have relied on such deeply flawed evidence."
Powell said he relied on the CIA to help develop his U.N. presentation but that he was not aware at the time that "much of the evidence was wrong" (Capaccio/Tiron, Bloomberg, May 4)
Was it a false pretense? Yes.
Was it a purposeful lie by the Bush Administration? Don't know.
Is it the Bush Legacy? Yes.
Link for previous quoted article.
GWB was a disaster that led to the catastrophe of Barack Hussein Obama. After Obama rolls over the pussy(there I said it)GOPe with his SCOTUS nomination, the America of the Founders will be effectively dead.
Feb. 10, 2006A former top CIA official said the Bush administration used prewar Iraq intelligence selectively to make the public case for war after having already decided to invade the country, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 8).
“Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,” Paul Pillar, national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. The administration “went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”
“It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policy-makers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote.
Pillar, now a security studies professor at Georgetown University, was considered the CIA’s top counterterrorism analyst prior to his retirement. He was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from throughout the U.S. intelligence community, according to the Post.
The problem is all the garbage that follows will not just be imposed on his followers, but it will also be imposed on me and mine.
Trump was very close to the unhinged line last night. His utter BS blaming W for 911
Why so dishonest? He never blamed Bush, but he wanted to point out that constantly saying that Bush kept us safe is untrue, and it is untrue!
The Iraq War was indeed a horrible mistake from the start. It was not an act in furtherance of American interests. When you consider that Iraq had nothing to with 9/11 and that we were still in Afghanistan at the time, OBL was still on the loose, it becomes an unforgivable mistake. Any candidate who is not willing to say that should be eliminated from consideration.
Maybe the world has always been like this and I'm only just now coming around to it, but I think the world, and more importantly, what we think and feel about it in our interconnect way, is fairly mixed up/messed up these days.
With our politics and one-stream media especially, what is real, what is make believe? What truths are told a certain way to justify what the full truth would not? What is a blatant lie? Who is trustworthy? And when do they lie?
Whatever the reason(s), the full story about WMDs, along with the other reasons we used to invade Iraq, hasn't been told.
Maybe a President Trump will tell US the full story and it would be good for US to finally know.
As it is, I don't trust GuvCo at all and I think invading Iraq was a very costly mistake, just one of many.
Now running out of hope and options, "I want to believe"...that a President Trump can turn this crazy around before we, the frog in a pot, are "stick a fork in US" done.
If this election is a sign on the road we're on, it says: "Last Exit Before The American Apocalypse"
are these the same Evangelicals who have voted for Graham time and time again, and voted for Haley twice? They don’t sound all that conservative to me. Sure, Cruz will pick up a share of the Evangelical vote, but so will Trump and the others as well. Cruz doesn’t have a lock on their vote.
I used to talk about voting for Trump. Now, I see little difference between him and Hillary. Hillary would argue more from the left, but the GOP-E would put up mild resistance to her. Trump...the GOP-E would be free to go along with Trump, and his instincts are obviously those of a Code Pink, Abortion-supporting leftist.
Heck, just how different is he from Bernie Sanders, at heart?
This could be the first time since 1980 that I sit out an election.
If you sat out 1980, that explains you attitude.
And how many times did you vote?
“Iraq indeed WAS a big fat mistake.”
Only if you wanted a few hundred thousand muslim extremists targeting our schools instead of dying in Iraq. Me? I preferred killing them in Iraq and Afghanistan - which we did by the hundred thousand.
No mistake. Worth every penny. Don’t expect a Code Pink NYC leftist to understand, but I DO expect FreeRepublic posters to be smarter than Donald Trump.
I still find it stunning that Jeb is the smart one.....how is that possible?
I agree completely! Jeb may be smart but he has no common sense and he has no idea, absolutely no idea, how unhappy Americans are today. At least GWB was likeable, Jeb isn’t. Jeb is sometimes bordering on clueless and annoying. He has no chance of winning.
Ted Cruz wanted to give every illegal living in this country a permanent green card. End of story.
Anyone want to defend Bush the Younger here?
Me too! I guess I fell for the BS. My bad. I'm 83 and hard to pull the wool over my eyes, but not perfect.
Agree with each of your spot on posts!!
Ditto.
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