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Originally posted by Fletch2:

To my mind being wrong and telling a lie hinges completely on if the person giving out the information knows it to be false otherwise it's just bad info.

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Originally posted by rallem:
How can they be innocent if they are Muslim? Aren't all Muslims evil God haters?

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Originally posted by mal4prez:

Sniffing glue maybe?

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Bush lies, well do you consider sending information back that does not agree with your personal views on a country or reason for war and not accepting it until it says what you want a lie? Or is that just a constant reevaluation of the facts?

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Here's a real easy one. The Bush "ranch". Doesn't a ranch need animals to be a ranch? It would be a lie to call it that otherwise. A very trivial one, but one nonetheless.

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Back to real topics. How about the fact that when our budget is put forth by Bush he refuses to disclose the cost of war as part of his budget so that the budget will balance? That's a lie. Hiding the truth is a lie plain and simple.

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So what is the reason for invading Iraq again?
Is it democracy? WMD's? Saddam's non-existent ties to Al-qaeda? Aluminum tubes? Forward operating bases? Oil security?

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Oh Bush is a Christian right? So as a Christian it is okay to ignore the poor, kill, disbelieve in redemption, torture, exploit the Earth, covet money, etc ad nauseum?(sp?)

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Just on Republican presidents in general, when is that last republican president who got rid of our debt? Or a better question, who didn't leave us in a recession? In my lifespan, which has been admittedly short, the only time we have not been in recession has been under Clinton. In fact according to some statistics which I don't pretend to understand Democratic control of congress, which apparently has more power than the president has led to more expansion and less decline than republican congress. 8 years of solid downturn are enough for me not to vote for Democrats but against Republicans.

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It is choice between the lesser of two evils unfortunately and being a deist, as many of the founding fathers it does not take much to realize that faith based government has no place in our government.

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He itemize the amount of the budget it will take to run the Military

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Also I would like to point out that President Bush had been pretty consistent on stating his desire to spread a modern nation of Democracy in the Middle East for its neighbors to emulate.

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Being a Christian or calling oneself a Christian does not mean you are a perfect person.

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I would also like to point out that an economy just like almost everything else runs like a sine wave and there cannot be an upturn without there being a down.

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...while there is a stated separation of church and state that does not mean a separation of Church from State or visa versa.

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This country is made up of my kind, your kind and every kind, my point was simply were do you get the rite to call me call me and my kind evil? When you think about it you are prejudgeing me, we've never met so that makes you and your kind "BIGOTS" You think I'm evil becase I do'nt agree with you?

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Bush's "ranch" fits none of the descriptions you gave, it is neither a small camp or farm, he has no animals and it is not a ranch style of house

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Mike, all these quotes you claim are " misleading " are nothing more than OPINION !! These aren't FACTS. If the President is told by his CIA director that the case against Saddam and WMD is a " slam dunk ", wtf is the President suppose to do ? Tell the American public that his top intelligence man said one thing, but I'm just not too certain there's anything to worry about here. Even though every single Democrat leader has been saying Saddam has WMD and we must not allow him to use them again, , even though there were 17 U.N. Resolutions against Iraq , even though there were agreements from the 1st Gulf War which were broken, even though there were missing WMD materials - catalogued by the UNITED NATIONS THEMSELVES, even though all this was going on and a HELL of a lot more that's not even been reported,..... you STILL want to take the position that.....meh, there's nothing to all these things. Maybe we should roll over and go back to sleep? ( Like we did for the previous 8 yrs ??? ) Sorry, but the one legitimate thing Bush has done in his terms in office is to protect the United States, its interest and the interest of many other countries.


Them's the facts, whether you want to accept them or not.

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He do? Then why he keep going back to Congress demanding (not requesting, but DEMANDING, as if they owe him) more money to throw into that hellhole that he created in Iraq? And why does he keep referring to it as "emergency" spending? We've been in this ridiculous war for over 5 years now - do you still think sudden emergencies are cropping up every 3-4 months that require another $80-120 billion?

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How's that workin' out for ya? Let's see, we have the Palestinians electing Hamas to represent them - in elections which weren't disputed as being faked or rigged - and in response to that "democracy" the US has simply refused to acknowledge or speak to Hamas representatives.

We have a puppet regime which we installed in Iraq, and every time they try to flex a little muscle and show some free will, we shut them down and shut them up, and continue to ram our own policies down their "democracy".

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But apparently it gives you a pass on even being a DECENT person. Once you slap on that "Christian" label (and a cute little flag lapel button), you feel like you can do anything you want, because you're "forgiven". Calling yourself a Christian might not mean that you are a perfect person, but it SHOULD mean that you're damn well TRYING to be a BETTER person!

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Ah, but we seldom hear that during the upturn, do we? What we get are these horseshit predictions about how, if things continue at this pace, we'll have nickels piled to the moon in three weeks, and other such gibberish. What DOESN'T get pointed out is that things DON'T continue at this pace, because they can't, because it's a cyclical thing. Now, if you scroll around the archives, you'll find posts about how "the economy's on fire!" and "despite doom-n-gloomers, economy continues to roll" - where the Bush supporters didn't care to point out that (a) the President has very little real impact on the economy, but gets most of the blame when it goes to shit because "the buck stops here" as the man said, and (b) the Republican model of deficit-spending can only keep so many balls in the air for so long. It's a juggling act, it's smoke and mirrors - it's like me going out and buying millions of dollars worth of crap that I don't need and can't afford, just to APPEAR as if I'm much richer than I actually am.

No thought is ever given to HOW we're going to pay this off, or WHEN we're going to pay this off. Democrats get so much crap hurled at them for traditionally being the party that raises taxes, but it never once gets pointed out that ANYONE who follows someone like Reagan or Dubya is going to HAVE TO raise taxes - not to pay for new programs or increase existing programs, just to pay off the massive amounts of debt incurred by those who were trying to give a false sense of how great their economies were doing.

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???? But that's exactly what it DOES mean! The Founding Fathers, while they may have been "christian", were certainly not your modern brand of fundamentalist Bible-thumping religious zealot. Their belief in a Creator was more in line with the beliefs of the Indians, that there was a Great Spirit of the world. Many of them warned specifically against the corrosive influence of those who would use Christ as their weapon. While they may have had their beliefs, they were adamant that such beliefs should not be forced on anyone, and that no "official" church should be established, favored, or recognized.

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Originally posted by rallem:
You forgot revenge, but there were camps like Salman Pak which were used for the training of Terrorists which were ended with the invasion of Iraq.

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You say Bush's statements weren't misleading, but that it's the OPINION of the United States House of Representatives that they're misleading

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ou've stated that if Bush was told something that was wrong, and he repeated it without checking it out for himself, then HE wasn't lying.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Prepare a funeral for your computer AU.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Fascist! Fascist ! Repressin' the truth, you are !!

Help Help! I'm being repressed!!

Hey, where's my Fiona clone ??

You're nothing but a low down , double crossin' deceiver !

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Problem w/ your scenario, is that it's wrong. The President DID ask for more clarification to make sure the intel was right, he DIDN'T blindly take Tenent's word and assume it was a "slam dunk "

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So if the members of the House or Senate plays politics, you're going to completely ignore what they said before ? Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

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My opinions of Bush are that he's every bit the leader as Clinton ( Bill and Hillary ) , Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, John Kerry, Sandy Berger, Madeiline Albright, and a host of other Democrats...

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Originally posted by citizen:
Don't worry AU, Chris's computer FU is not strong. That's why he's getting me to do it :P

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Salman Pak was not used to train Terrorists, a fact the CIA was aware of. Also after the invasion it was determined that Salman Pak was used to train counter-terrorism units.

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THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.
intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group--who were among the first to analyze the finds--considered those items top priority. "At first, if it wasn't WMD, it wasn't translated. It wasn't exploited," says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.

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In the case of Samarra, I find nothing. I've not heard of it before, I admit, so I googled it. With the search "Samarra Terrorist Camp", I got nothing, the closest being news reports of the post invasion terrorist attacks on a mosque in the town of Samarra. So I see that as suspect at best.

Ramadi is much the same story. The only mention of Terrorist camps comes from the "Weekly Standard", which seems to have plucked the accusation from thin air.

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So, when Tenent says to Bush, it's a slam dunk, you say Bush is lying. But when Bush wants to point out that OTHER intelligence agencies have their own view on things, Tenent is suddenly 100% correct, trust worthy and his words are pure gold ?

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I know you like to blame it entirely on him, and Tenet will even accept his part of the blame (proving that he's not a Republican in the process), but according to Tenet, the "slam dunk" remark was him making the case that we needed more investigation and vetting. He says that us needing more corroboration was a "slam dunk" - not that Saddam having WMD was. So far, his is the only account of that conversation that has been committed to paper, so unless we have a transcript of Oval Office tapes of the day, we may never know if he's telling the truth or not.

But Tenet DOES claim an amount of responsibility for many of the failures of 9/11 and after - something Bush has NEVER done (even claiming in one interview not to have made any mistakes).

So whose account rings truer? Oh, I'm sorry... whose OPINION rings more true?

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UNDERSTAND THIS - It's impossible for Bush to have been lying about Iraq if the DEMOCRATS SAID IT FIRST!

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And I'd expect you to conveniently overlook the FACT that EVERYONE from Clinton, Kennedy, Kerry and so on were saying Saddams WMD program had to be stopped , as far back as 1998.

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It's impossible for Bush to have been lying about Iraq if the DEMOCRATS SAID IT FIRST!

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Everyone. Every single member of the House and the Senate. Not a single one of them was against the war? You state that as a clearcut, undeniable FACT. And for the record, saying "Saddam's WMD programs must be stopped" is not the same as saying "We must invade Iraq, NOW!" If it were, we'd already have invaded North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran. We haven't, so I have to conclude that wanting a program to cease and invading a nation aren't exactly the same thing.

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Although I do see that you've moderated your position on Bush's lies. You now accept that he IS a liar, but you've narrowed your focus only to the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. I *guess* that counts as some sort of progress...

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

As much as you might disagree w/ someone or their policy, that doesn't make that person a liar. Oddly, that's the one thing Liberals can't seem to get through their skulls.

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Originally posted by Asiansolo:
I saw what the Iraqi people had to put up with and I am glad that we liberated them .

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

As much as you might disagree w/ someone or their policy, that doesn't make that person a liar. Oddly, that's the one thing Liberals can't seem to get through their skulls.

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Someone tells me that you killed my mom. My policy is not to question what I'm told, so I tell everyone that you did it, and I kill you.

I'm so sorry if you disagree with my policy. At least I didn't lie.

isall

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

If I'm the one w/ a history of killing moms, and I've told you yours is next, I'd say you have a case there. But since I'm not a mom killer, and happen to think quite highly of your mom ( she made you, didn't she ? ) then there's little chance such a rumor is valid.

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You analogy does not fit the circumstances of the discussion at hand.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:


Edit to add: But hey- what do I expect? You're evil....


Chrisisall

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


Hey, I praised your mom. I can't be THAT evil, can I ?

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Originally posted by avengingwatcher:
As Auraptor is the only one on the other side of this issue who really can debate this,this is directed to you. I am assuming you either condone torture or you don't. If you condone torture, then you are an evil person, plain and simple. In all our movies and television shows its the bad guys who torture and the good guys who overcome. Well guess what, Bush condones and promotes torture, making him evil. Hell our beloved Firefly has the evil guy doing torture and the good guys using violence only when they had to. The war aside you should not agree with this policy. We can go a step further, we have tortured people who are not guilty of any crime, I mean come on, the guy is not a good man. So to paraphrase you are either with the torturers or you are against them. Where do you stand?

When there are no heroes where will we turn?

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Water-boarding ? - Fuzzy area. Only to be used in rare ,extreme situations

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Originally posted by avengingwatcher:
there are some interrogation techniques I understand them using, i.e where the woman supposedly wiped her vaginal blood on the Muslims face...

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
In tough times, I want the ABILITY to use tough tactics, even if we don't ever use them or not.

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It's funny how Iraq was training radical islamic terrorists, when as a secular government the radical islamic terrorists were gunning for iraq. It's kinda like if the US funded and trained Osama Bin Landen, oh, that actually happened didn't it. Ok, it's like if the US funded and trained the Taliban, ok, again, bad example...

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But lets take the article head on:
"The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak"
Salman Pak, you conceed, was not used for such purpose, so I assume I don't need to prove it. So we have Samarra and Ramadi.

In the case of Samarra, I find nothing. I've not heard of it before, I admit, so I googled it. With the search "Samarra Terrorist Camp", I got nothing, the closest being news reports of the post invasion terrorist attacks on a mosque in the town of Samarra. So I see that as suspect at best.

Ramadi is much the same story. The only mention of Terrorist camps comes from the "Weekly Standard", which seems to have plucked the accusation from thin air.

So the main Terrorist training centres are "Salman Pak", which even the CIA knew wasn't, "Samarra" and "Ramadi" which seems to have no mention anywhere beyond the "Weekly Standards" seemingly unsupported editorial. The very fact that Samarra and Ramadi are mentioned in the same breath as Salman Pak bring them in to question, the fact that there seems to be no corroborating evidence seals the deal for me.

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