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Not the bogus Michael Moore reasons. Disagreeing with policy and articulating why is one thing, but hating for no reason is, well, hypocritical of those who consider themselves peace activists. I'm not saying the President is perfect, but he's ours...during a time of war....who according to dozens of very prominent newspapers working several months in Florida (as well as the electorate and the Supreme Court) is THE winner of the 2000 election.

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According to IRS Revenue Procedure 93-27, “…The receipt of a partnership capital interest for services provided to or for the benefit of the partnership is taxable as compensation.” As most people know, compensation is taxed as ordinary income, subject to the highest tax rates; in this case 39.6%. Mr. Bush treated the incentive portion of his proceeds as long term capital gain, and accordingly reduced his tax liability by at least $2.4 million.

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Iraq is free

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Further, the interim constitution of Iraq, written by the U.S.- appointed Iraqi Governing Council, solidifies the orders by making them virtually impossible to overturn.

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Originally posted by rue:

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Iraq is free

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Not free, it was a very expensive acquisition in terms of lives, money, opportunities lost.
If you don't think it was bought as a present for the corporations with US blood and your health care and Socials Security,
read here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-juhasz5aug05,1,
3665796.story
The Hand-Over That Wasn't
By Antonia Juhasz
(excerpts)
Not only do 138,000 troops remain to control the streets, but the "100 Orders" of L. Paul Bremer III remain to control the economy.
The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life — from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Order No. 39 alone does no less than "transition (Iraq) from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy" virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat.

Although many thought that the "end" of the occupation would also mean the end of the orders, on his last day in Iraq Bremer simply transferred authority for the orders to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi — a 30-year exile with close ties to the CIA and British intelligence.

Further, the interim constitution of Iraq, written by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, solidifies the orders by making them virtually impossible to overturn.
A sampling of the most important orders demonstrates the economic imprint left by the Bush administration: Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) "national treatment" — which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses.
Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations.


Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts.

Order No. 40 allows foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.

Order No. 49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.

Order No. 12 (renewed on Feb. 24) suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq." This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap foreign consumer products — devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors.

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Originally posted by rue:
The 9/11 Commission had no references to 'yellowcake' 'yellow cake' or 'Wilson'.
The link was to an article (in a seriously right-wing publication BTW) about the Senate Report, not the 9/11 Report.

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Originally posted by rue:
The numbers don't take into account Iraqi dead.
HOWEVER, does it not bother you that people died for a lie? That Iraq is not 'free'? Or are you so propagandized that things like that don't matter anymore?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Yo are overstating the UN's case. What they said was that they could not confirm the destruction of WMD from the 90's, but that three or four months of work would allow them to reach a conclusion.

The operative word is HAD (past tense) WMD. IF you had looked at all into WMD you'd see that they are all unstable (except mustard gas) in the form that Iraq produced them.

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Originally posted by rue:

The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life — from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Order No. 39 alone does no less than "transition (Iraq) from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy" virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat.

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Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises;

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(2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses;

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(3) "national treatment" — which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses;

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Order No. 40 allows foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.

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Order No. 49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.

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Order No. 12 (renewed on Feb. 24) suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq."

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Our Man in Niger
Exposed and discredited, Joe Wilson might consider going back.

Joe Wilson's cover has been blown. For the past year, he has claimed to be a truth-teller, a whistleblower, the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy — and most of the media have lapped it up and cheered him on.

After a whirl of TV and radio appearances during which he received high-fives and hearty hugs from producers and hosts (I was in some green rooms with him so this is eyewitness reporting), and a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair, he gave birth to a quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover, and verbosely entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir.

The book jacket talks of his "fearless insight" (whatever that's supposed to mean) and "disarming candor" (which does not extend to telling readers for whom he has been working since retiring early from the Foreign Service).

The biographical blurb describes him as a "political centrist" who received a prize for "Truth-Telling," though a careful reader might notice that the award came in part from a group associated with The Nation magazine — which only Michael Moore would consider a centrist publication.

But now Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — he of the Hermes ties and Jaguar convertibles — has been thoroughly discredited. Last week's bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report concluded that it is he who has been telling lies.

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For starters, he has insisted that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, was not the one who came up with the brilliant idea that the agency send him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had been attempting to acquire uranium. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson says in his book. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." In fact, the Senate panel found, she was the one who got him that assignment. The panel even found a memo by her. (She should have thought to use disappearing ink.)

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Wilson spent a total of eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," as he put it. On the basis of this "investigation" he confidently concluded that there was no way Saddam sought uranium from Africa. Oddly, Wilson didn't bother to write a report saying this. Instead he gave an oral briefing to a CIA official.

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Oddly, too, as an investigator on assignment for the CIA he was not required to keep his mission and its conclusions confidential.

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And for the New York Times, he was happy to put pen to paper, to write an op-ed charging the Bush administration with "twisting," "manipulating" and "exaggerating" intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs "to justify an invasion."

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In particular he said that President Bush was lying when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he pronounced these words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

We now know for certain that Wilson was wrong and that Bush's statement was entirely accurate.

The British have consistently stood by that conclusion. In September 2003, an independent British parliamentary committee looked into the matter and determined that the claim made by British intelligence was "reasonable" (the media forgot to cover that one too). Indeed, Britain's spies stand by their claim to this day. Interestingly, French intelligence also reported an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Niger.

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Yes, there were fake documents relating to Niger-Iraq sales. But no, those forgeries were not the evidence that convinced British intelligence that Saddam may have been shopping for "yellowcake" uranium. On the contrary, according to some intelligence sources (unnamed even by agency), the forgery was planted in order to be discovered — as a ruse to discredit the story of a Niger-Iraq link, to persuade people there were no grounds for the charge. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm.

But that's not all. The Butler report, yet another British government inquiry, also is expected to conclude this week that British intelligence was correct to say that Saddam sought uranium from Niger.

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And in recent days, the Financial Times has reported that illicit sales of uranium from Niger were indeed being negotiated with Iraq, as well as with four other states.

According to the FT: "European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."

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There's still more: As Susan Schmidt reported — back on page A9 of Saturday's Washington Post: "Contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence."

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The Senate report says fairly bluntly that Wilson lied to the media. Schmidt notes that the panel found that, "Wilson provided misleading information to the Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'"

The problem is Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: "The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."

Ironically, Senate investigators found that at least some of what Wilson told his CIA briefer not only failed to persuade the agency that there was nothing to reports of Niger-Iraq link — his information actually created additional suspicion.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
"The WMD points are as follows:

1) WMDs were found in 1991."

Yes, I know- we sent them the materials to make them. And we also destroyed a number of them at the time.

2) Saddam kicked out the inspectors and risked war...why? To "appear" to be tough, or actually get the time and spec to acquire those weapons that would in fact make him tough.

Saddam did not "kick out" the UN inspectors, they withdrew because of anticipated bombing by UK and USA. Why do people keep repeating this? It's just not the case.

3) They're still finding Mustard Gas AND Sarin nerve agent in Iraq.

They are NOT finding mustard gas and sarin. If you think that they are, please post the links to the info because all of the links I have found so far pretty much come up with a lot of false alarms that ended up being retracted.

http://cshink.com/no_chemicals_on_mortar_shells.htm

4) The case by the UN was that Iraq was NOT in compliance with its resolutions, period. That was the trigger for military action.

The UN also did not request our "help" in getting Iraq to comply and according to Blix was within a few months of completing their inpsection, despite lack of cooperation from Iraq.

5) The Bush administration spent 14 months working with the UN and other allies to get the Iraq worked out. War WAS the last resort, waiting for something to happen wasn't an option.

But what was so terribly urgent that it couldn't wait until Blix completed the inpsection? Was Bush afraid that he might actually lose his excuse for invading if he waited that long?

6) The policy of the United States, as signed by Executive Order by Bill Clinton in 1998 was the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

By what means....?

7) What if we didn't go and topple Saddam
....where would Iraq be?

It would have been cleared by the UN and sanctions would have been lifted. It would have signed contracts with Russia, France and Germany for oil production and oil production equipment. More goods and services would probably have started flowing to the population since they would no longer be "black market" items.
In any case, it would not be harboring al Qaida terrorists... just as it was not before. And it would not have WMD, just as before.


"Keep a civil tone and don't assume you know anything about what I know other than what I write. "

I already know a lot about what you think you know from what you've written. You assert many things that would be more interesting if you would only back them up with links.

And if you HAD looked up anything about chemical and biological weapons and you KNEW they had a shelf life, then you conveniently ommitted that fact. So either you didn't know, or...

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