This Republican Talking Point Is DRIVING ME NUTS!

[Vinca]

How many times have you heard the Repuke mouthpieces, as well as MSM, say Democrats will have a hard time parsing their Iraqi war votes since the vast majority were in favor of war? What Democrats are saying - loud and clear - is that their votes were based on the FAULTY and FRAUDULENT intelligence fed to them by the PRESIDENT. Shrub was scaring the bejesus out of everyone back then - nukes, mushroom clouds, freaking armageddon. Gandhi would have voted for war for heaven's sake. Why is this repeated ad nauseum? Even the dimmest media whore should be able to figure it out. It was lies, LIES and Shrub frightened the majority into the vote he wanted.

[GCP]

1. I don't think they were scared into anything by Bush's nuke talk

They were scared into not voting for the war by the MSM beating anyone who questioned the magnificent President over the head.

[formercia]

3. Glad you pointed this out

the MSM was complicit in the charade. They followed the oft used script to attack anyone that questions the administration's motives.

[EFerrari]

16. Yup. You got it. And then we have the outright liars

like Feinstein who has made a ton of money because of the invasion.

sigh

[eallen]

2. I think Democrats just as often get the spin wrong on this.

The fact that the Bush administration was corrupt in the way it led the nation to war by itself says nothing for or against the war. It speaks solely to the integrity of Bush and his staff. Making the corruption message a part of the anti-war message tends to bury the corruption message, and weakens it by tying it to a much larger and more complex issue.

[pa28]

4. It was the President that led us into the war.

It belongs to him. He can't blame others for it now.

[Jane Austin]

5. I think it's something else, too.

I really think the reason the Dems couldn't vote against that resolution was that it was in the month before the 2002 elections.

They knew that the republicans were just waiting in the wings with ads calling them all unpatriotic and weak on defense.

It was a masterful Rovian stroke to do it then and to rush it through before the elections.

If they had voted against the resolution then, I have no doubt that most of them would have been thrown out of office a couple of weeks later.

[kentuck]

6. and they also say...

Well, they had the same intelligence as everyone else...

[Bluerthanblue]

7. how will the Repubs parse their "Integrity" and "Responsibility"

debacle? The kind of morality they claimed was so desperately lacking in our previous administration?

Sexual indiscretion between a husband and his wife, is something all 'parties' are prone to. Misleading a nation into global warfare and the death of thousands of people 'because we could' is a far cry from the kind of moral 'integrity and responsibility' they sold themselves on.

Perhaps someone should point out the scripture about 'casting stones' to this 'religious' republican Pharisaical administration.

[No Exit]

8. Well, you have certainly answered it effectively. And

remember when Kerry said terrorism was more of a crime/police problem, than a national security problem?

Geez, they practically strangled him with the fucking flag! People confused "being unpatriotic" with wanting to take a clear look at what terrorism--and the then-perceived "threat" from Iraq--really were.

If democrats had wanted to come out and do ALL the right things, they'd have first had to convince the public that this Iraq threat was bullshit. That, as we have seen, takes/took years. They didn't have the time. Those who were suspicious that maybe Iraq WASN'T really a threat had to contend with the overwhelming viewpoint of "you're either with us or against us".

The Bush regime had bought the media (which it still owns). The democrats had to work within that hard reality.

And those democrats who DIDN'T know at the time that Saddam posed no real threat WERE, in my opinion, scared into backing the Iraq war.

All these average people who are attacking the democrats for "voting for the war"--I wish I could find out what each of those critics was thinking as the lead-up to the war was going on. I'll bet the majority of those critics didn't have any more clue, or less fear, than did the democrats in congress. THEY'D HAVE DONE THE SAME THING THE DEMOCRATS DID. Now they're looking back with 20/20 hindsight, and pretending to be "outraged" when, BEFORE THE VOTE, THEY WERE PROBABLY FRANTICALLY WRITING/CALLING THEIR REPRESENTATIVES TO SCREAM HYSTERICALLY, "IF YOU DON'T DO SOMETHING ABOUT SADDAM, I'LL VOTE YOU OUT IF I'M STILL HERE AFTER THE MUSHROOM CLOUD HAS DISSIPATED!!"

[No Exit]

9. Who should be hanged first--Hitler, or his followers?

Hint: if you cut off the head, the body dies.

George W. Bush--and not the democrats who voted to go to war--is the number one enemy of this country. Let's deal with number one first--let's impeach George W. Bush.

[Critters2]

11. If the head needs to die first,

wouldn't that mean firing or indicting KKKarl....or maybe Dick?

I can dream...B-)

[No Exit]

13. Touche.

As for Fat Karl, I'm enjoying watching him die the death of a thousand cuts, as his stupid/stubborn president refuses to let go of him. The more unrepentant Bush is, the better for the rest of us, because he's digging his own grave (and Fat Karl's.)

Dick is also digging remarkably fast for a guy who allegedly has heart trouble. His stubborn, insane, stance on torture... may it come back to haunt him. May it either 1) result in a resounding defeat for him, as the congress passes the anti-torture legislation and then overrides any veto, or 2) if Dick wins, and torture stays in our law, may he one day be subject to said torture.

[Vickers]

10. I call it the Susan Smith Syndrome

Remember that lady who killed her kids by driving them in to a lake?

Initially she said they were kidnapped, and everybody had a lot of sympathy for her. Then her whole story started sounding like bullshit, and people started getting suspicious.

Then it turns out she killed them herself.

Right now we are at the point in this where George is on TV crying, "Help me find my babies!"

[No Exit]

14. I like your analogy.

There's another good one out there, too. Repukes are saying, "never mind how we got into Iraq... now that we're there, we need to stay in order to fix all that's going wrong there."

IOW, they are like the murderer who killed his parents, and then asked for mercy from the court because he was an orphan.

[MissMarple]

12. Didn't Kerry say George lied to the Senate?

And Russert asked Ted Kennedy that question this morning, but Kennedy didn't directly address it. That was a mistake, but if he was caught unaware that that rationale is out there, he needs to get with the program.

That question needs to be confronted and the issue clarified for the pitiful misdirection that it is.

[Lexingtonian]

15. That will only go so far

Moderate Republicans are the people both sides are fighting for, and until that bloc gives up on the Iraq venture (which should happen in the weeks or month or two following the December elections there) there is nothing that Democrats can say that changes anything for the better.

The Democrats' present line that they voted as they did because they were lied to on WMD is inherently weak and unsustainable on its own. It's temporary, though, and the idea is just to keep Republicans on the defensive. When the time comes and moderate Republicans no longer buy the hardline Republican line on Iraq, Democrats can take a far more solid and comprehensive and straight one.

That line is the reality, shifting proportionate blame and responsibility to their constituents and themselves while pointing out the blame to assign proven hardline Republican overreaching, failure, irresponsibility, and lies. Toppling Hussein (for 13 years of being a vicious pain in the a**) should be admitted as what the war votes were 'for', but that it took WMD 'evidence' and a pile of other lies and bullying and insanity and pies-in-the-sky to people whose judgment was off or skewed to get persuasion from under the threshold to "Yes" just over that threshold from a default of 'No'. Collective responsibility properly apportioned.

A second reason Democrats can't stray from some amount of collective responsibility taking is that the Iraq business is coming into the danger zone of political collapse, after which civil war and American withdrawal from control of the country- Baghdad- is inevitable. That's when the really brutal version of the blame assignment takes place, and if your side gets stuck with blame you want it to be for things and to the proportion it actually is culpable for.