Bush Says Many Felt Iraq Was Threat, Not Just Him

[Khephra]

SNIP............

"My administration looked at the intelligence and we saw a danger," Bush said. "Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence and it saw a danger. We reached a reasonable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a danger."

In addition, he said in 1998 President Bill Clinton and the U.S. Congress "made it the policy of the United States to change the regime in Iraq."

Bush said he had no doubts about his decision to go to war regardless of whether clear-cut evidence of weapons of mass destruction is found.

"Saddam Hussein showed defiance and we had a choice of our own: Either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend America and the world. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time," he said.

MORE............................

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4377430

[BigBigBear]

1. Oh, ok

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/933.htm

Colin Powell, Feb 2001:
"We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

[roguevalley]

42. Don't forget the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Peter Pan and Wile E.

Coyote. 'K?

[loudnclear]

59. Nobody elese went to war except him and his dad.

Iraq was not a threat when Rummy and gang were courting them and building up their weapons base. Just ask Ronnie! Never mind.

[diamond14]

2. bush* blames Congress, Clinton, and Saddam all in the same

short statement....

guess bush* learned how to do that when he found a nice safe hideout during the Vietnam War...

BUSH LIED.....OUR SOLDIERS DIED

take him to the Haig....

[treepig]

10. fine!

in addition to mr. bush,

let's get rid of congress, clinton, and saddam!

good riddance to them all.

[Womblestuffer]

16. Clinton still haunts the dreams of republicans

it a sexual thing

[leesa]

50. I want to keep Henry Waxman and Dennis Kucinich, and maybe

a handful of others, but I agree...dump the rest of the corporate whores.

[Fovea]

24. So much for the party of personal responsibility

Bush points at everyone else and says... they told me to do it.
It didn't work in the 3rd grade, and it really don't work in the Whitehouse.

[bif]

3. The United Nations said NOT TO INVADE!

You fucking asshole! I love the way he's twisting tthe truth to make it seem like he had the blessing of tthe whole world. Lying piece of shit!

[teach1st]

4. Bush is running skeered

..we had a choice of our own: Either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend America and the world. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.

I'll take pre-emptive war for $1000, Alex.

Defending America, Mr. President? I think the real evil-doers are still at large.

[Thor_MN]

43. Check me if I'm wrong...But the first option was shoved down our throats.

"we had a choice of our own: Either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend America and the world"

The action that would have defended America would have been to toss * and the PNACers from office. Maybe we could have used them as gravity bombs in Afganistan, but they wouldn't have been smart bombs.

[aquart]

56. Madman? Is that a clinical diagnosis?

Saddam ruled with a serious iron hand. In that part of the world, is that insane or a simple survival skill?

Could madman be as easily applied to George, who went to war knowing his justifications were untrue, who wasted the wealth of a nation to enrich the already rich, and who cares nothing for the people he is supposed to be leading and protecting?

[sadiesworld]

5. Cliton expressly ruled out military force-AAAARGH!

[sadiesworld]

7. OOPS on the Clinton misspell.

[Skittles]

26. fyi, you CAN edit the Subject and Message for an hour

:D

[CatWoman]

28. LOL

Freudian slip? :D

[kid shelleen]

44. A slip of the tongue...

...perhaps? :evilgrin:

[XNASA]

6. When you're wrong, you're wrong.......

Right?

No matter what anyone else says, if you're the President of the most powerful country in the World, you must make the correct call. It kinda goes with the job, don't it?

A failure to do otherwise, should cost you your job, right?

[teach1st]

8. Barb to GW...

"Georgie, if everybody jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it too?"

[Lisa]

9. so much for Churchill-style leadership!

He had the nerve to compare himself to Sir Winston, as a lone voice trying to sound the alarm. But now he's casting around desperately for other people to pin the blame on ... "It wasn't just me! The others led me into it!"

[Mithras61]

11. There's just one minor difference between you and them, Chimpy

You ordered the invasion, and they didn't! Besides, BC advocated non-military actions, UNSC said they DIDN't want military action, and Congress said you had to go back and work with the UN!


Of course we all know it was really those eeeevil men over at the CIA who misled you into believing that SH had WMD (even though they said repeatedly "there is no credible evidence" to support that claim).

[NickB79]

12. The BIG difference Bush overlooks

Is that even though Clinton and the some of the US Congress felt Iraq was a threat and in need of regime change, they DID NOT GO TO WAR TO CARRY THIS OUT!!! They used political means, working with the UN, enforcing economic sanctions and using international weapons inspectors to stop Saddam from rearming his military. And guess what, from what we've found (or better said, didn't find) in Iraq, is that the sanctions and weapons inspectors WORKED! No WMD development, no military rebuilding, nothing. What Bush can't admit is that the international community, which Clinton was a part of, were the ones who truly neutralized the threat from Iraq, not Bush's invasion.

[lumpy]

45. I like your reply NIck.

Nothing Bush can say will change the facts.

[Mountainman]

13. If they spiced up the intelligence and gave it to congress

Of course they saw danger but it was a hoax!

[Tuttle]

14. How often has this administration 'agreed' with Clinton???

This line of lying always cracks me up

-- it's like they think we're retarded... Jon Stewart

Tut-tut

[yellowcanine]

15. Give it up Georgie - That dog won't hunt.

First of all, YOU were president, however you got to be so. So the buck stops with YOU, little man. YOU committed combat troops to Iraq, no one else. The fact that others may have also thought there should be regime change in Iraq - well so what? We all wanted that. It was a question of means, wasn't it? You thought war was the best way to go but you knew you could not get the support for it unless you made a claim of WMDs, so you made the claim. Now that's the truth.

[Jacobin]

17. oh, i understand now. It's somebody elses fault that he fucked up

[RedEarth]

18. george....Iraq hadn't attacked us.....you didn't need to take action to

defend American. Please george, get your facts right, Osama attacked us, not Saddam. And where is Osama....are you keeping him in hiding until the first of November so you can trot him out right before the elections? george you are such an asshole and a moran.

[CatWoman]

19. This thread is perfect to piggyback this editorial

There is something childlike about the "Meet The Press" transcript. "Saddam was a danger to America," Bush said repeatedly. But how? He had no missiles that could reach our shores. He had no nuclear weapons program. He did not play ball with terrorist outfits or, for that matter, they with him. "The man was a threat," Bush said. How? "He had a weapon," the President insisted. But he didn't, remember? That was the point of David Kay's report. Oh, but Saddam was a madman.

Bush's inability or refusal to come to grips with the facts is not the product of a poor performance or an errant tongue, but of a troubling insistence that his beliefs cannot be wrong. That makes him look like a dope.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/164992p-144518c.html

[RedEarth]

25. Sure is...I read that earlier in the day and it's a great fit....loved the

title of the article....."Facts elude Bush & Vice Versa". One part I liked was......

"After Bush's "Meet the Press" performance, countless commentators tried to figure out why he had done so poorly. Many of them focused on performance - the part of politics that looks so easy until, as Wesley Clark did, you try it for yourself. Yes, Bush did not perform well. But even a brilliant actor needs material."

[Thor_MN]

54. * has an ongoing crisis of faith

that is, too much faith. He truely believes that his televangelist god will take care of any problems that he gets into. In that respect, I do have to give him a smidge of credit - his cojones have been pulled from countless fires. On the other hand, someone too stupid to see that his father and his father's buddies have been wiping his nose for his entire life is too stupid to be within 100 miles of DC, much less in charge of the country.

[Malva Zebrina]

20. I hate this evil man

I have nothing else to say. I hate his lies and I hate his obvious attempts to revise history to make it fit his lies. I hate him and I have never hated a president before him. Bush is evil and I hate his evil.

May he never sleep another night for the rest of his life because of his lies. May he be haunted by the ghosts of thousands and thousands of innocent people that he has murdered. May he soon begin to look like a serial killer, with a frightened,haunted grey look to his face.

\Sorry, but he is doing us harm. He is killing people, thousands of them, illegally and unjustly, in our name. He was not elected and he behaves as if he is royalty entitled to be dictator.

[RedEarth]

27. I feel the same way......he is the most evil President we have ever had

I thought Nixon was bad during Watergate, however compared to Bush, Nixon is an amateur. I just pray the voters will wake up by election day and kick this monster out of office.

[Terran]

21. This is the craziest spin we've heard to date

"Um, 'we' saw a danger, so had to invade another country n' kill a buncha folks. Er, yeah, it was us, and, um, some other folks."

Bush seems to become more pathetic every week.

[Skittles]

22. LOL

Bush making an ass of himself, as usual. Why is he reminding me more and more of Colonel Flagg?

[CatWoman]

29. Forget Colonel Flagg

how about Colonel Sanders?

[Skittles]

34. who could forget Colonel Flagg?

FLAGG: YOU TOOK A RED COMMIE BEFORE A WHITE AMERICAN AND THAT IS PRETTY PINKO.

HAWKEYE: YOU'RE EVEN BORING IN TECHNICOLOR.

:D

[maveric]

31. Or Randall Flagg.

The walkin dude.

[Kagemusha]

23. It's simple. He expects to be thanked.

He went to war against a threat that others paid only lip service to, taking the action others were not bold enough to take. He sees his act as singularly heroic, compared to those who simply called Saddam a concern (or worse, a threat) and refused to actually do anything about it. Like, oh, Senator Kerry.

My point being, he thinks he ought to be thanked, by us, and by history, for doing what we told him not to do but that, apparently, we secretly wished for him to do without actually saying so in order that we would have credible deniability. So Bush becomes a Christ-like figure for the sake of world peace and the prestige of the UN Security Council and the US of A.

Feel grateful now? I don't.

[UpInArms]

33. Welcome to DU Kagemusha!

my gratitude also does not runneth over.

[Zhade]

30. I love this shit. What a fucking liar this fascist is.

Now, here's my question, to all posters: why are we just bitching on a message board about this traitor?

Everyone should be sending their thoughts, as wonderfully expressed here, directly to the commander-in-thief. They changed the email system, but it's still important to show the fool that we are on to him, and that we don't fear him.

It's not that hard - I've sent emails to McCain and Powell detailing their support of this traitor, and it's very gratifying, even if I do wind up on one of John Asscrotch's 'lists'.

More importantly, though - we need to take this motherfucker and his fellow minions down. November can't come soon enough. And this asshole BETTER not try another war, or he'll fucking regret it.

And don't forget to march on March 20th!

</rallying cry>

[Danieljay]

32. One thing about life..

is you will always find and attract that which you are looking for.

[DavidDvorkin]

35. Did too! So there!

Not my fault! Mommy!

[enki23]

36. it's not about feeling, you fuck

it's about evidence. you cooked it, and you know it, and i hope to see you prosecuted for it.

[damnraddem]

37. The UN Security Council didn't invade Iraq.

Clinton bombed Iraq, but didn't invade Iraq.

Dubya invaded Iraq. He's the war criminal.

[Sabriel]

38. Misleading header...

I thought it meant people were afraid of Iraq AND Bush! I know I consider him a threat....

[ElementaryPenguin]

39. Plus - only the world's greatest weapons inspectors were scouring the plac

:puke:

:argh:

[beanball]

40. Put the blame on_______.

fill in the blank but you can't blame bush.

[Rex]

41. The UN told George Bush to go f__k himself.

This man fishes on Denial river.

[kodi]

46. that is true, the brave citizens of togo were fearful daily

what's iraqi (or togonese) for liebensraum?

[0007]

47. 'Tis amazing how junior hangs out with the military installations

to booster his wounded ego. And what military man on a military installation is gonna dispute his rhetoric? This little cowardly chicken shit lying dimwit. He looks like an ape, and talks like an ape, and acts like a an ape.
America hates this little asshole more and more everyday.

[opihimoimoi]

48. All the LEADERSHIP BOOKs say the same thing. Its a poor Leader who blames

OTHERS, who cannot accept fault, who distracts from the truth, and is myopic. Bush is all of these.

What an example to our childrem, making lying acceptable.

[0007]

49. Take away FAUX News and junior poll number would probably

be in the low 30's.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

51. Geeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I mean this is too much like Alice in Wonderland. Any person paying attention to the mews available to us over the last 12 years knows Saddam was NOT a threat to the U.S.
Saddam got the snot knocked out of him, metaphorically speaking, during Gulf War I.
Coupled with the U.S. imposed sanctions these actions rendered him relatively harmless, the operative word being relatively.
It matters not what they say, we are the most powerful, technologically advanced nation ever. We have spy satellites, spies, and all sorts of tools to allow us peer over the curtain, so to speak.
We knew when Saddam was taking a shit, let alone manufacturing WMD's. :)
By the way, did anyone catch the weekly radio address this week? In his 3 minute talk GW mentioned 9/11, the word terror or terrorists 5 times and WMD's 4 times. He keeps beating that drum........

[rhino91063]

52. What utter BS

The UN saw some much danger they wouldn't give bushy boy permission to attack Iraq. I can not believe reporters do not bring the FACTS up when bush tells a lie like this!

[bushisanidiot]

53. George W.. Bush Is a Chickenshit Snivelling Whining Pu**y!!

go cry to your momma, georgie boy. you lied. you got caught. now you will suffer the consequences (your Jan. '05 eviction notice)

[bobthedrummer]

55. We are going to put an end to this LYING PIG's regime

in November!:argh:

[74dodgedart]

57. If Bill Clinton jumped off a bridge would you ?

[Sideways]

58. No. Why Do You Ask?

After reading this entire thread of thoughtful and profound posts WTF are you talking about?

[74dodgedart]

60. He seems to be blaming his actions on Bill Clinton.........

When I was a child and used the excuse that "everyone else is doing it" my mother would reply "Well, if everyone else jumped of a cliff, would you?"

Obscure reference, I guess.

[Malva Zebrina]

61. Bush Says Many Felt Iraq Was Threat, Not Just Him

Right you stupid, ignorant ass, and many thought there were witches running rampant in Salem, Massachusetts also. That made it ok to kill them all on false pretenses, or on biblical mandates. Idiot.

[gate of the sun]

62. Defend America?

PLease.

[wabeewoman]

63. Don't forget

it wasn't just a threat; it was an immediate imminent threat that Congress had to act on immediately. He promoted a sense of urgency about it. I remember Senator Byrd begging for time to look into the threat, time to debate and time to make a rational decision. If you remember, that was the MO of this administration, lie, tell everyone it was urgent, dump the infor on them (like the patriot act) and not give them time to even read it. Another BIG lie was that he hadn't made up his mind so there was no point to talk about it until he made up his mind and then there was no time. Sorry, georgie boy, but we won't forget what really happened!