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Answers from MAIA
    #10073641 -

MAIA repeats two of the same old bullshit baseless Bush-bashing accusations in this thread discussing a book by Douglas Feith. I challenged him on his assertions, and requested he respond to them here in this new thread rather than take the original thread off-topic. For those too lazy to click on the link above and read the thread in question, here is my challenge to MAIA -

Quote:
Quote:
MAIA writes:

And what's the outcome ? A "big brother" system applying more domestic control.


One of THE biggest baseless allegations made by Bush-bashers - the claim that somehow US citizens have had their rights violated or freedoms reduced or whatever.

I hereby challenge any reader of this thread again (I have issued this challenge at least a dozen times over the years) to give us specifics of the legislation passed since 9/11 which makes illegal any action a US resident could have performed before 9/11. I mean specifics - don't just chant "Patriot Act" and think you've proven your point. I want quotes from the appropriate legislation passed after September 11 of 2001 showing just which freedom of action of US residents no longer exists.

Quote:
I'll give five stars to anyone discovering the main fallacy in this quotation.


There is no fallacy in that quotation.

Quote:
Yet the administration, at that time, told you "The People" that Saddam was one of the responsible.


This is another of the Big Lies the Bush-bashers always trot out, and they can never back themselves up on it, because it is sheer unadulterated bullshit. No member of Bush's administration ever stated that the administration believed Saddam Hussein was involved in or responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Again, this is something I and several others have pointed out dozens of times over the years, and have challenged anyone to come up with a single quote from any credible source from any member of the Bush administration claiming Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Any one will do.

Guess what, MAIA? In the seven and a half years since 9/11, not a single poster has provided such a quotation. You know why that is? Because there is no such quotation. Not only did no one in the Bush administration ever say such a thing, on the very rare occasions when a reporter would actually press for clarification and ask an administration member straight out - "Do you believe Hussein bears responsibility for the 9/11 attacks," the answer was always an immediate, non-waffling, "No."

So put that "fact" back in the orifice you pulled it out of. You don't want to read the book? Your choice, of course. But it seems you would benefit from doing so.

So as not to derail this thread further, I request you post your answers to my questions in the thread titled Answers from MAIA rather than this one.


While we await MAIA's response, if anyone else would like to take a crack at supplying the information I requested, feel free. This is one of those challenges anyone can attempt to address. The more the merrier.


Phred


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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Phred]
    #10073781 -

Quote:
This is another of the Big Lies the Bush-bashers always trot out, and they can never back themselves up on it, because it is sheer unadulterated bullshit. No member of Bush's administration ever stated that the administration believed Saddam Hussein was involved in or responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Again, this is something I and several others have pointed out dozens of times over the years, and have challenged anyone to come up with a single quote from any credible source from any member of the Bush administration claiming Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Any one will do.


You may be correct here in the literal sense, and I don't have any material on the following claim...but at the time of the invasion of Iraq many many Americans saw a connection between Saddam and 9/11. I remember because I was there and I remember screaming until I was red in the face at a lot of war supporters (on TV and in the flesh) that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush administration may have been careful to not make a claim as to any links, but do you deny that the populace drew their own conclusions and that the administration was able to exploit the mass hysteria?


--------------------
:hst:
Society in every form is a blessing,
but government at its best is but a necessary evil 
- Thomas Paine

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Phred]
    #10073879 -

Phred said:
No member of Bush's administration ever stated that the administration believed Saddam Hussein was involved in or responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Again, this is something I and several others have pointed out dozens of times over the years, and have challenged anyone to come up with a single quote from any credible source from any member of the Bush administration claiming Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Any one will do.



i'd like to take this one up.  i agree with you that no administrative member ever directly made reference to Iraq's being responsible for 9-11, but are you really denying the propaganda that so explicitly implied a connection, and left the american public to connect the dots?  surely you can see the way this was all worked.  i mean, you can nit-pick all you want, but the implication was clear as day.

Quote:

Bush Says Saddam Hussein Was Not Connected to 9/11

Written by Gary Benoit


Addressing the Saban Forum on December 5, President George W. Bush stated: "It is true, as I've said many times, that Saddam Hussein was not connected to the 9/11 attacks."

Really? Well, Bush has acknowledged in the past that Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11. For example, in response to a question on September 17, 2003, Bush stated: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks]."

But how frequently did Bush make this acknowledgement? Not often, at least not publlcly. Instead, he repeatedly (and much more memorably) juxtaposed references to the 9/11 terror attacks to those of Saddam Hussein, thereby helping to create the false impression that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

For instance, on January 31, 2003, President Bush stated: "The strategic view of America changed after September the 11th. We must deal with threats before they hurt the American people again. And as I have said repeatedly, Saddam Hussein would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind."

And on March 6, 2003, he stated: "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."

Statements of this type, repeated over and over again by Bush and by others in his administration, helped to plant the idea in the public mind that there was indeed a Saddam-9/11 link without the administration explicitly saying that this link existed.

Many Americans were also led to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 attacks because of the Bush administration's repeated references to an al-Qaeda-Iraq connection. For example, on February 5, 2003, Bush's then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his presentation to the UN Security Council, warning against the Saddam Hussein threat: "Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible." Yet in a January 8, 2004 press conference, Powell acknowledged: "I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection."

The lack of evidence notwithstanding, many Americans supported the Bush administration's decision to go to war against Iraq because they mistakenly believed  that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 either directly or through al-Qaeda. But if Saddam was not involved with 9/11 — and if the administration did not explicitly accuse Saddam of involvement with 9/11 — then what reason did the administration give for launching an offensive war against Iraq? We all know the answer to that question: President Bush and other administration officials repeatedly insisted that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with dangerous weapons of mass destruction and that he needed to be disarmed pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions.

"Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people," President Bush claimed on March 6, 2003. Then on March 17, 2003, days before launching the invasion of Iraq, Bush said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

But the reputed WMDs were never found, and the administration eventually backed away from the claim. Consider this exhange between President Bush and Diane Sawyer on ABC News' Primetime program on December 16, 2003:

DIANE SAWYER, ABC News: — stated as a hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: So what's the difference?
SAWYER: Well —
BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons — if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.
SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction?
BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the fact that he has gone means America is a safer country.
SAWYER: And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction, someday —
BUSH: You can keep asking the question. I'm telling you, I made the right decision for America.

To this day, Bush has yet to back away from his position that he made "the right decision for America" by launching an offensive war against a country that had not attacked us. He may now claim that he's said "many times" that Saddam Hussein was not connected to 9/11, but that does not change the fact that the administration's war propaganda — with the help of a complicit media - misled many to believe that Saddam was involved.



again, i believe you are correct in that no individual ever made a direct connection between Iraq and 9-11...  but can you answer me this, in just one sentence please: do you truly believe that such a connection was not implied in order to gain public support for the war?


--------------------
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root."
-Henry David Thoreau
Strike The Root

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: gluke bastid]
    #10074063 -

Quote:
One of THE biggest baseless allegations made by Bush-bashers - the claim that somehow US citizens have had their rights violated or freedoms reduced or whatever.

I hereby challenge any reader of this thread again (I have issued this challenge at least a dozen times over the years) to give us specifics of the legislation passed since 9/11 which makes illegal any action a US resident could have performed before 9/11. I mean specifics - don't just chant "Patriot Act" and think you've proven your point. I want quotes from the appropriate legislation passed after September 11 of 2001 showing just which freedom of action of US residents no longer exists.



Oh ... Phred you make look things all black and white, but you know it's not like that. It's not about the amount of freedom taken away from the population. It's the amount of freedom given to the government allowing it to meddle with your privacy. Get it ?

I'll give you "stuff" about it anyway:

1 - Privacy and Government Surveillance

Government surveillance is nothing new, but the September 11th attacks gave the Bush administration an excuse to expand surveillance programs even further. Ever heard about "biometric signatures of humans" ?

      http://civilliberty.about.com/od/waronterror/p/bigbrother101.htm


2 - Where Do They Get These Wonderful Toys?

If government surveillance seems like a more frightening idea now than it did forty years ago, when even fewer safeguards existed, then it may be because technology has advanced to a point where the government can surreptitiously collect, and efficiently manage, information on a vast number of Americans. Btw, i love the word "surreptitiously". Means a lot of things you know ...
     
      http://terrorism.about.com/od/controversialtechnologies/p/Technologies.htm


3 - Total Information Awareness

In 2002 and 2003, U.S. military officials created a data mining project that looked like something out of a bad science fiction novel: Total Information Awareness, which promised to keep tabs on us all. The fact that its official symbol prominently featured the Eye of Providence didn't help.

      http://pcworld.about.com/news/May202003id110824.htm


4 - The NSA Surveillance Program

In December 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been wiretapping private telephone conversations without obtaining search warrants, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The ACLU is currently fighting the program in court, with some success.

        http://civilliberty.about.com/od/waronterror/p/acluvnsa.htm


5 - The NSA Universal Telephone Database

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the Bush administration is also attempting to compile a universal database of telephone calls made in the United States.

        http://civilliberty.about.com/b/a/257500.htm


6 - The 2007 Postal Signing Statement

In January 2007, President Bush issued a signing statement claiming federal authority to search packages, without a warrant, in "exigent circumstances." Whether this represents a real shift in policy, or simple acknowledgment of the fact that postal inspectors have always claimed this authority, is not yet clear.

        http://civilliberty.about.com/b/a/257598.htm


So, how you can look at this evidence and keep saying "my freedom has not been reduced at all" ? You can, if you keep fooling yourself.

Look, i don't give a flying fuck about Bush. He's just a puppet. I mind about the system and the way it has been "preparing" itself this last years. When the shit hits the fan, then you'll know what i mean. The evidence is out there, but if your attitude is of total disbelief then you better stay among the sheep, smiling and cheering about freedom in you own corral. After all, that's what most Americans do ...


Quote:
Guess what, MAIA? In the seven and a half years since 9/11, not a single poster has provided such a quotation. You know why that is? Because there is no such quotation. Not only did no one in the Bush administration ever say such a thing, on the very rare occasions when a reporter would actually press for clarification and ask an administration member straight out - "Do you believe Hussein bears responsibility for the 9/11 attacks," the answer was always an immediate, non-waffling, "No."

So put that "fact" back in the orifice you pulled it out of. You don't want to read the book? Your choice, of course. But it seems you would benefit from doing so.


I don't know if you really understand the implication of what you're saying because it makes things even worst. You're probably more worried in proving me wrong then proving the US government is a fucking angelical being ! But anyway, then why the hell did you invade Iraq ? To keep terrorism away ? Why Iraq, did it came in the lottery or something ?

The "fact" is back to the orifice Phred, as requested. I've got no problem with that. But then the question surfaces, why Iraq ? On what ground do you overthrow a President, kill hundreds of people and start a civil war ? Is that in the book as well ?



--------------------
Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala



Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Yrat]
    #10074346 -

They were more than happy that the public infer that Saddam was behind 9/11 as a pretext for their war. Tickled pink even. Administration officials repeatedly falsely stated that there were "ties" between Al Qaeda and Saddam leaving the public to connect the dots as you mentioned. The logic was inescapable. "Hmm..lemme see, we know that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks and our enemy Saddam is evidently plotting with Al Qaeda so we need to take him out now."

Seven in 10 people in a poll say the Bush administration implied that Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States.

And a majority, 52 percent, say they believe the United States has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0701-05.htm


--------------------
“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”  -- Rudiger Dornbusch

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: MAIA]
    #10074499 -

You haven't answered phred's question with your links.


Additionally, you're later statements regarding saddam and 9/11 are of questionable relevance.  So what if the war was bullshit?  What's that to do with anything?


Phred:  presuming you are correct that the legality of a citizen's conduct wasn't changed, this doesn't refute the point made by MAIA.  The government did become more capable of intrusive searches and monitoring after 9/11.  Your question misses the mark.  Putting a video camera in everyone's house also wouldn't change the legality of our conduct but would suck ass and be more 'domestic control' or whatever.


As for the saddam and 9/11 thing:


Bush didn't literaly say they were connected.  Bush did intent to and largely succeed in communicating this.  He lied.  It does not matter what the gramatical construction of the statements was: it is clear he intended to ( and did) make these points.  I feel there is no innocent explanation for the repeated statements linking the two.


You and zappa seem to pick fights with people who often are unwilling to concede the obvious point, but that doesn't really matter.  The fact is our president communicated something very seriously incorrect to the nation as justification for the war, intentionally, and no amount of arguing with people who refuse to admit the plain truth that it wasn't literally stated will diffuse the import of this.

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: johnm214]
    #10074791 -

Quote:
You haven't answered phred's question with your links.


It's implicit in the answer. Last time i checked, freedom of privacy is still a freedom.

I just think Phred's approach to what he depicts as control is just a part of what control is. I agree there's no evidence on a direct influence on liberties like expression or thought (there's your answer i think). But what about freedom of privacy ?

There are several forms of control and in any authoritarian system this control is exerted on the population in some way or another. There are more evident and direct ways of doing this, like in a dictatorship. But in a democracy this control has to be made differently and less evident, so it doesn't affect your "liberties". Therefore, they don't control you directly, they gather information about you and the whole population and use it at their will. Information, that's how you win wars nowadays, that's how you drive the masses, create public opinion, the process of communication at its best ! ... and we're fucking inebriated in it and demand more. So said Soren kierkegaard in one of his quotes.

But anyway, this is not the real issue anyway. The issue is about the point you're willing to trade your privacy for your security. Does it really worth it ? Remember that politics and politicians come and go but the information is always there. Information about yourself, gathered unwillingly at the disposal of who knows who. This system doesn't trust me, always peaking into my life, why the hell should i trust it ?


--------------------
Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala



Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Phred]
    #10074806 -

Rather than go line by line in response to all the replies, I will address them generally here because they are all variations on the same limited themes.

Re the "loss of freedoms" the Bush-bashers wail about:

No one has given an example of a loss of freedom because no one can. The best they can do (and it is a feeble "best" indeed) is to admit that, "Yeah... okay... I can still do all the stuff I could do before, but now the government might be watching me do it!"

To address this:

-- court decision after court decision after court decision has re-affirmed the principle that you do not have a "right" to unlimited privacy. These court decisions were made long before Bush came to power. There are around two dozen specific exceptions to the need for warrants before search, for example. A lot of people think you cannot be searched (or eavesdropped upon) without a warrant first being issued. This is not the case and hasn't been the case for a very, VERY long time. You may not like this reality, but it is reality and has been for decades and decades. Blaming it on Bush just shows a lack of knowledge.

-- more importantly, though, no legislation passed by the Bush administration expanded that list of exceptions. The Patriot Act instead was focused primarily at breaking down barriers between various government bureaucracies and at utilizing techniques that had been routinely used by police departments for decades in the case of Mob members and applying them to terrorists. 

Yes folks, that's right... the government had all these abilities all along (or at least for many many years before 9/11), they just weren't consistently exercising them.

As for this ridiculous theory that somehow the master brainwashing wordsmiths in the Bush administration were cleverly writing speeches for every spokesman loaded with subliminal messages that led the American public to believe against their will that Hussein had something to do with it --

-- this is just brainless whining. Some of you point to the fact that many Americans believed (and many believe to this day) that Hussein was involved as some sort of proof these folks came to this conclusion because the American government told them this was the case. Are you all on Datura? Hell, in this forum every few years you will see posts from people giving the percentages of American people who believe Elvis is still alive or that no one has ever landed on the moon or that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. Americans (and Britons and Germans and Frenchmen and Italians and...) need no help from their governments to believe things a hell of a lot less plausible than that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.

I wrote a post many years back about this... let me see if I can find it... about a conversation I had here in the Dominican Republic with a bunch of people from about five different countries just hours after the first plane hit. None of us had heard a single word from the American government yet about who they thought was responsible for the attack. Yet every single person in front of the TV screen was positive the attack had been carried out by Muslims. Opinion was divided about whether Hussein was responsible or Khaddafi or bin Laden. Yes... all three names were mentioned. Those people (myself included) made a snap judgment - with no input from Bush whatsoever. Some of us changed our opinions over time as more information became available, but not all of us did. At least two of those people I talked with that day are still absolutely convinced Hussein had some hand in the operation. And no... neither one of them is an American.

Finally, as has been exhaustively detailed in this forum in dozens and dozens (perhaps over a hundred by now) of posts, Hussein's Ba'athist regime did indeed have ties to and gave support to numerous terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. I won't bother listing all those links yet again for the fiftieth time since even a cursory search of the forum archives will turn them up. It is one thing to say Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 operation, it is quite another thing to say he had nothing to do with terrorists. That is just a stunningly witless ignorant assertion to make after all these years.

I am not surprised to see that both my challenges remain unfulfilled. I am just surprised that anyone is so uninformed as to trot out all that tired old bullshit yet again. Where the hell have y'all been over the last seven-eight years? Living in a cave?




Phred


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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: MAIA]
    #10074885 -

Quote:
So what if the war was bullshit?  What's that to do with anything?


I don't know if i understand you correctly but here it goes:

I assume "anything" is about Saddam Hussein and his relationship with 9/11. Now, call me paranoid but i'm no fucking kidding here, something about the war has to do with this "anything". And if the war was bullshit, then it has to do with fucking everything !!!


--------------------
Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala



Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: johnm214]
    #10074928 -

Quote:
Phred:  presuming you are correct that the legality of a citizen's conduct wasn't changed, this doesn't refute the point made by MAIA.  The government did become more capable of intrusive searches and monitoring after 9/11.


Actually, no, they didn't become more capable. I challenge you to cite a single piece of legislation describing even one new expansion of searches and/or monitoring that was passed into law after September 11, 2001.

Quote:
Your question misses the mark.  Putting a video camera in everyone's house also wouldn't change the legality of our conduct but would suck ass and be more 'domestic control' or whatever.


See my reply above. First of all, the government hasn't done anything even close to this. Secondly, even if they do ever get around to it (as they already have in the UK), the courts have so far held that it is not a given that this kind of observation of public areas  unclear is a restriction of your freedom.

Quote:
Bush didn't literaly say they were connected.  Bush did intent to and largely succeed in communicating this. He lied.  It does not matter what the gramatical construction of the statements was: it is clear he intended to ( and did) make these points.  I feel there is no innocent explanation for the repeated statements linking the two.


No, he didn't. Not even close. Again, I challenge you to provide some quotes from Bush "linking" the two. Just because he mentions "Hussein" and "9/11" in the same speech doesn't mean he is trying to insinuate Hussein had anything to do with it. Just because he mentions them in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence doesn't mean he is trying to insinuate Hussein had anything to do with it, either.

Look, John, I've made this challenge repeatedly for close to eight years now, and every time someone provides some instance of Bush talking about the two issues and claiming this quote "proves" he is trying to link them, the quotes upon even casual inspection turn out to imply no such thing. What Bush (and all the others) said was that they weren't going to let Hussein get away with his silly shit any more. Not after 9/11. On 9/11 everything changed, especially the US's tolerance for letting crap from malefactors like Hussein slide.

That's the only "link" Bush or any other member of his administration ever made between Hussein and the 9/11 attacks - explicit or implicit.

I challenge you, John, to provide me some quotes you believe demonstrate the person making the statement is trying to imply that Hussein had something to do with the attacks. Be forewarned that everyone else over the years who has tried to find such a quote ended up just embarrassing themselves, but maybe you'll surprise me.

Quote:
The fact is our president communicated something very seriously incorrect to the nation as justification for the war, intentionally, and no amount of arguing with people who refuse to admit the plain truth that it wasn't literally stated will diffuse the import of this.


This is completely, 100 per cent as wrong as it is possible to be. Bullshit, to be blunt. I demand you support this serious allegation with quotes from credible sources, and explanations as to just how the quotes show intent to deceive. Not only was it never literally stated, it was never implied, either.




Phred


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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: MAIA]
    #10074982 -

Quote:
I am not surprised to see that both my challenges remain unfulfilled. I am just surprised that anyone is so uninformed as to trot out all that tired old bullshit yet again. Where the hell have y'all been over the last seven-eight years? Living in a cave?


Dear Phred, my sentiments, but you probably won't see both of your challenges ever fulfilled. Not because people can't prove things to you, but because you simply won't believe them. I know it can be frustrating, but "the truth" is a complicated subject and knowing it sometimes means going beyond this layer of controlled information and accepted explanations. Of course it isn't evident ...

They're doing a fine job Phred. That's a way of keeping this system running :wink:


--------------------
Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala



Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Phred]
    #10075068 -

Quote:
Hussein's Ba'athist regime did indeed have ties to and gave support to numerous terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. I won't bother listing all those links yet again for the fiftieth time since even a cursory search of the forum archives will turn them up. It is one thing to say Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 operation, it is quite another thing to say he had nothing to do with terrorists.


Phred, I was pretty active during the debate prior to the war and especially during the war itself and read quite a bit of the threads here at that time. I am not aware of any which demonstrated any operational ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda. You seemed to repeat that claim and were called on that point a few weeks ago by several different people and offered what has become your standard response.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/9909644#9909644

I am aware that Saddam's regime had evidently paid some terrorists involved in activites against Israel but none having to do with active planning vs. the U.S.

Does anyone know which threads Phred is referring to?


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“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”  -- Rudiger Dornbusch

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: zorbman]
    #10075126 -

Oh... now it's "operational links", is it?

Again, no one in the Bush administration has ever claimed Hussein's minions ever involved themselves in terrorist operations against the US run by Al Qaeda or Hamas or Fatah or Black September or whoever. However, it is indisputable that Hussein's Ba'athist regime provided shelter, funds, and even training to known terrorists. It is also indisputable that Hussein offered bin Laden safe haven when he got the boot from the Sudan. As it happens, bin Laden felt Afghanistan's offer was more to his liking, but that doesn't change the fact the offer was made.




Phred


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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: MAIA]
    #10075141 -

MAIA said:
Dear Phred, my sentiments, but you probably won't see both of your challenges ever fulfilled.


That's because neither can be.

The first hasn't happened (although who knows what changes will come in the future).

The second didn't happen (although those with a limited amount of understanding and rational thought like to claim it did).


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Phred]
    #10075243 -

Quote:
Oh... now it's "operational links", is it?


I can't speak for everyone else but that has always been the relevant criteria for me. If there is no operational link there is no justification for war.

People, even enemies, talk all the time. Talk is talk and actions are actions.

Quote:
.. However, it is indisputable that Hussein's Ba'athist regime provided shelter, funds, and even training to known terrorists.


See above. No threat to us.

Quote:
It is also indisputable that Hussein offered bin Laden safe haven when he got the boot from the Sudan. As it happens, bin Laden felt Afghanistan's offer was more to his liking, but that doesn't change the fact the offer was made.


I don't recall Saddam himself being involved in that meeting. Some Iraqi officials evidently discussed it but of course it never happened and there was no operational relationship there either.


--------------------
“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”  -- Rudiger Dornbusch

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: MAIA]
    #10075247 -

MAIA, I agree with you regarding the fact that the iraq war was stupid, but I'm just saying that wasn't at issue in phred's objections (and maybe make another thread if you want to discuss it as it will get complicated)


Phred:


The statements I'm relying upon to say that bush intended to justify the iraq war by linking them with the 9/11 attacks as responsible parties (similar to how afghanistan was responsible in the public eye) follow.  You make the distinction between bush and his speechwriters in your post, so maybe I've been unclear.  I am saying the administration communicated, intentionally, these things.  I don't care if the speechwriters did it or if cheney did it or if the janitor did it on their own own initiative or at bush's direction. 


While I agree with you that studies revealing the american public thought iraq was responsible for 9/11 or that this was the motivation for invasion aren't neccesarily relevant, I do think it demonstrates that it is possible that his comments were harmful (in the sense of misleading the public) in the way that if nobody believed it, regardless of the source, the harm would be difficult to demonstrate.

And stuff like this tends to cast doubt on your anectdotal evidence:
Quote:
Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html


Quote:
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda... There's numerous contacts between the two," June 17 2004

  bush



Quote:
Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.

Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September 11, but we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

2002 State of the Union

Quote:
We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after 11 September, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Some citizens wonder, after 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now? And there's a reason. We've experienced the horror of 11 September.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the UN Security Council, setting out the US case against the Iraqi regime, February 2003.


Quote:
For America, there will be no going back to the era before 11 September 2001, to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength.

They are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans.

We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

  September 2003, bush

Quote:
[Saddam Hussein posed a risk in] a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice defending the reasons why the US went to war against Iraq, September, 2003.


Quote:
The terrorists have lost a sponsor in Iraq. And no terrorist networks will ever gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime.

President Bush in his speech to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, September, 2003.


Cheney:
Quote:
“Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that–it’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.” [NBC, Meet the Press, 12/9/01]



Quote:
We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.

  Sept. 2003

Quote:
We don't know

Sept 2003 Cheney on whether iraq and 9/11 were connected


You get teh picture.


The fact that they continued saying this stuff and linking the two seems to suggest at very minimum they were using the hatred of the 9/11 hijackers and the arab world to justify invading Iraq, but I think its clear they were trying to link the two as closely as they could without being called, clearly, on it.

I like cheney's "we don't know" when pressed in 2003 about the link.  Maybe cheney was speaking metaphysicaly, and of course he is correct, but a "no solid link" would seem to be the responsible answer.


But I'm sure you'll argue that these were all correct and I'm not sure what I can do to say my interpretation is reasonable.  I would ask why you think they continue to link the two in the speeches though, if only temporally.  At minimum it seems a misdirection of rage from one arab state to another.

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: johnm214]
    #10075403 -

Good job proving Phred's point.

Not one of those quotes show the administration attempting to link 9/11 with Iraq.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #10075482 -

luvdemshrooms said:
Good job proving Phred's point.

Not one of those quotes show the administration attempting to link 9/11 with Iraq.



:nonono:

did you read any of the other posts in this thread?


Phred, you didn't answer my question yet:

Quote:
in just one sentence please: do you truly believe that such a connection was not implied in order to gain public support for the  war?



--------------------
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root."
-Henry David Thoreau
Strike The Root

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: Yrat]
    #10075612 -

Yrat said:
:nonono:

did you read any of the other posts in this thread?



Golly gee whiz. Now that you've posted a smiley with a shaking head I've seen the error of my ways and am a true believer!

:lol:

I read some. They are as ridiculous now as they have always been. You see..... I have this amazing superpower. I can comprehend what I read.

I can't help it that so many can not.

You (and many others) seem to have a different superpower! The ability to see what they wish to see.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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Re: Answers from MAIA [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #10075655 -

luvdemshrooms said:
I have this amazing superpower. I can comprehend what I read.

I can't help it that so many can not.



i completely agree, and that's why the mindless hordes watching fox news unknowingly followed the implied logic of the Bush Administration and were led into believing connections existed between Saddam Hussein and 9-11.

why else would Bush find it so necessary to consistently name both in successive sentences time and time again.


--------------------
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root."
-Henry David Thoreau
Strike The Root

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