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Tuesday, October 18. 2011History's Mysteries: The 'Bush Lied' Meme Because no more than a week ago I was reading some article and the guy was listing out all of the bad things our government has done in recent years (granted, it was a long article), and stuck right in the middle of his list was "lying us into an unnecessary war". This refers to Iraq, and how Bush 'lied' by telling us Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. As the lefty meme at the time declared, Bush lied, thousands died! And, much like global warming, the 'Bush lied us into war' meme has become so ingrained and believed that even a conservative writer might include it on the list without even thinking about it. Either way, I couldn't fault the guy. Below the fold is the single greatest collection of quotes I've ever seen, regardless of subject. They were stuck in the comments of some throwaway article a while back and I hate to see the effort go unnoticed. One quote deserves particular attention:
Yes, Saddam had literally tons of WMD in his possession at the time. Bush and the CIA and the British, French, German and Israeli intelligence services were entirely correct. Estimates vary, but he'd already gassed somewhere between 100,000 and 350,000 Kurds with deadly Sarin gas and the like. The problem is that the anti-Bush MSM took 'WMD' to only mean nuclear at some point, ergo, if they didn't find any nuclear weapons in Iraq after the invasion, then Bush lied. And, yes, we found tons of WMD, in the form of Sarin gas, in Iraq — but you never heard about that in the MSM, did you? Power Line was the one who broke the story, about eight months after the invasion. The army had found over 1,500 shells of Sarin gas in one underground bunker alone. I don't expect you to be particularly interested in the list, but I'd like you to keep this post in mind the next time you see the 'Bush lied' meme dragged out and wish to respond. This is one of those things that simply cannot be refuted. If Bush 'lied' about Saddam's WMD, then guess who else 'lied'?
If Bush 'lied', then so did a whole pisspot full of Democrats. Comments
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Just what did Sandy Burglar stuff into his pants and smuggle out of the National Archives? Alas, perhaps we shall never know.
The army had found over 1,500 shells of Sarin gas in one underground bunker alone.
Doc, I know that there were a few potential finds (and I did a search at Powerline's site to double-check) but none of the potential finds in the Powerline posts panned out. Do you have a link to another report for that? I was watching pretty closely in those days and I read enough of the ISG's report to know that Saddam was most definitely violating the terms of the cease-fire (as if shooting at our planes wasn't enough of a violation) and trying to build illicit weapons programs on the sly but IIRC we found some chemical agents necessary to make Sarin and labs/factories where Sarin could have potentially been produced but no Sarin itself aside from that one roadside IED. There have been some great guesses, but you're right -- to this day, no one knows. If the guy had an ounce of class, he'd write down the list in a sealed deposition only to be opened upon his demise. Okay, his and Clinton's demise. No sense in embarrassing his buddy. But you'd have to think the stuff he grabbed was relatively inconsequential, so he should do it just for history's sake.
Semi-related note: When I was doing research for that last NASA post, I read that they know very well exactly how many moon rocks there are, and that one had mysteriously been missing for years. Investigators had spent hundreds of hours trying to track it down. Somehow, that one rock had gotten lost in the Great Bureaucratic Shuffle we call government. And where did they finally find it? In Bill Clinton's personal archives. :) PowerLine did a switch to new software about five years ago and something odd happened to their database. The articles still come up, but only an encapsulated version of them. This might be the article I was remembering (dated 2003), but it's just an encapsulation. The original article had all kinds of details, probably quoting from the NYT article that's been removed.
A Google site search shows later Power Line articles with a number of interesting quotes, like referring to "the shells containing Sarin that have recently been found", so they were certainly there, and, as you noted, literally hundreds of tons of the chemicals needed to make them. And a key point is that Saddam had A YEAR AND A HALF to get rid of things (that's how long it takes to actually go to war in the modern 21st century), so what we found was just the overlooked stuff. Yep and there was plenty of evidence that suggested much of it found its way to our friends in Syria.
There are a bunch of interesting quotes here, but what is missing (unless I missed it) is any reference to Bill Clinton's appearance on the David Letterman show on September 11, 2002. The videos used to be available on the web, but I can no longer find them. Here is a CBS article about Clinton's appearance.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/12/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main521789.shtml
Here are some quotes from the CBS link: Letterman asked, "Are we going into Iraq? Should we go into Iraq? I'd like to go in. I'd like to get the guy. I don't like the way the guy looks." [Clinton's response] "He is a threat. He's a murderer and a thug," said Mr. Clinton. "There's no doubt we can do this. We're stronger; he's weaker. You're looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I'd be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished." About WMD Clinton said: Even if the U.S. wins a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Mr. Clinton said, a threat remains. He noted, "If he's got these stocks of chemical and biological weapons, and if he knows he's toast, don't you think he'll use what he can and give away what he can't to people who'll be using them on us for years to come so he can have the last laugh...." So, quite clearly, Clinton, who knew as much about Iraq's WMD as Bush did, believed there was the possibility that Iraq still had WMD and that this posed a significant threat. You're right, I just spent 15 minutes on YouTube and Google trying to chase it down, and it's toast, baby. Pretty understandable, though. Saying all those bad things about that nice Mr. Hussein? What a warmonger!
Rolling Stone magazine started arriving in my mail box, unbidden and certainly unpaid for.
A recent article repeated the same lie about Bush, just in case Rolling Stone magazine had some new, young readers who hadn't been indoctrinated yet. I agree that there was plenty of evidence that Syria got most of Saddam's stockpiles prior to the invasion. --i heard they used the Fukushima hazmat protocols to go thru those files. Volunteers, older men with no Dependants, double lead-lined area shields, Nuclear/Biological/Chemical warfare suits, full oxygen bottles, last wills and testaments written and registered with unit COs, et cetera.
Those Japanese really know how to party, don't they? None of that prissy "Ooo, it's too dangerous!" stuff for them, no sir! It's amazing they ever lost the war, given the mental steel they exhibited at Fukushima.
As for Clinton's files, two of the brave 'volunteers' (wink-wink) ended up in mental homes after trying to track down what Sandy Berger had stolen, but for the most part the victims brave volunteers came out unscathed, discounting the two years of intensive psychotherapy they required before fitting back into a normal society. Brave men and women, all! (clink!) Those new young readers --that's what Matt Taibbi is for. As good as he is on the Wall Street end of the bust-out, he minimizes and generalizes, equivocates and dissembles, every time, on the DC end of the racket.
He was doing what the OWS crowds are doing, before they were doing it. === As far as the ''Bush Lied'' --it came out of nowhere when the Democratic primaries for the 2004 election started up. Suddenly it was everywhere, and just as suddenly those very Democrat leaders who had pushed for OIF were just going blank on everything they had previously said. It was totally baffling in its egregiousness --until 2008 and 2009 unfolded, and exposed what was really happening. I was looking for the name of the Iraqi Air Force General who filled in the de tails of the Russia/Syreia help in relocated so much of the aresenal. His name is Sada. http://www.bing.com/search?q=iraqi+air+force+general+wmd+russian+ship+dump+&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox oodles of good articles here. Some things never change... I have a biography of Hunter S Thompson kicking around somewhere in which there is a photo of a Rolling Stone magazine editorial staff meeting from the early '70s/late '60s - can't chase it down right now. In the room are Wenner, HST, a bunch of others, and a guy identified as Rolling Stone attorney Sandy Berger... if I recall correctly.
On the list of reasons Congress and PotUS Bush gave for going [back] into Iraq, weren't WMDs around number eight?
They were promoted mostly by the MSM, at least at first, as with the "ring of fire" Saddam claimed he would establish around Baghdad. Scary sells, and threatened chemical warfare against Coalition troops was scarier than unsuccessful anti-aircraft fire that had been going on for years. Nukes are even scarier - but while the regime had start-stop-restart research, no-one claimed Iraq had atomic bombs. here's another 'the truth shall set you suicidal' pic:
http://www.cah.utexas.edu/photojournalism/detail.php?nickname=walker&picid=6 (sorry, Mr. Payne N. "Red" D'arse, Hall Monitor, will not accept hyperlink) Plus, he was breaking the 'Stormin' Norman' treaty, and running that secret system behind 'oil-for-food'. We forget how serious that was, as our MSM largely squelched it due to the Dem Party's umbilical tie to mamma UN. But it was a doozy --it was on its way to turning the UN from an informal crime syndicate into a formal --which would've made Earth a far different place, sooner or later:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=claudia+rosett+oil+for+food+scandal&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox Rosett, if she hadn't been a writer-investigator from the rebel press, would've won more Pulitzers than there's Chins in the Chinese Telephone Directory. "will not accept hyperlink"
Absolutely not. Why would anyone think it would? You're just being silly. BTW, have you ever tried just doing a straight cut & paste from the directions? Like so: text Straight cut & paste. Fill in own site address and text and there ya go. Phil - to follow up that lead. Ion Pacepa. Sarindar. Good reading.
Yes, Alex, i have tried that many times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=bB6KFa7-6B4 But thank you, Alex. There must be a buhg in my m'sheen. Remember Hussein's promise to chirac if france ever sided with the west against iraq? I often wonder how many of our own politicians were on the saddam payroll? They could agitate all they wanted (ala the narrative against halliburton while the likes of kennedy and kerry owned stock in that corporation)but not actually take action against saddam.
QUOTE: It's amazing they ever lost the war, given the mental steel they exhibited at Fukushima. It's not amazing at all, when you consider that it was the US Marines who kept going ashore. |
These are what I consider my better pieces: "Do these genes make me look fat?" — As these things go, this is probably the most official 'exposé' on the site. It's amazing how we're being lied to. Beautiful Camp Elmwood — I just l
Tracked: May 06, 17:21