I recognize that much of the Democrats’ complaining about the use of prewar intelligence on Iraq — including the move Tuesday to force a closed-door session in the Senate — is a lot of political gotcha. I also understand that most members of Congress and a number of other countries thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But I don’t buy the current GOP line that everyone made a mistake so no one is really to blame. The Bush administration led the charge in selling Congress and the American public on the need to launch a pre-emptive war, so it deserves the most scrutiny and accountability for how it used intelligence information.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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23 Comments
Oooh, Phillip,Careful using that “A” word – accountability – around this administration. It tends to upset them a bit.
Steven
It’s time “We the People” got upset. This so-called administration needs to be “outed.”
Get real.
The Bush administration { karl Rove and his neoconservatives } led the charge in selling Congress a pack of lies and they knew each and every one of those lies to be lies.
Back-off and take a good look.
This is a power-play toward world conquest, and that is froth with nothing but trouble.
It sounds like it should be easy for a superpower to conquer the world, but the people being conquered tend to fight back.
Think about it: These pansy neoconservatives have never won a fist-fight in their miserable lives.
The don’t realize that people hit back, especially when defending their homes.
Whatever happened to “the buck stops here”?
“Whatever happened to ‘the buck stops here’?”
The principle got buried along with Harry S. Truman.
The logical problem Phillip points out above, is the opposite of the Alice in Wonderland assertion:”All have won, and all must have prizes.”
Instead, BushCo, in BushWorld demand:”All were wrong and all must accept responsibility (EQUALLY!)”
Thanks Phillip for pointing this out.
Collapse of the Bush Junta: Day 4 and counting . . .——————————-
One other Lewis Caroll lesson Bush, et al. learned:
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,As he landed his crew with care;Supporting each man on the top of the tideBy a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice;That alone should encourage the crew.Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:What I tell you three times is true.”
From:_The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits_
The Demorats had a chance to take a stand against this criminal war for Israel and they blew that opportunity! They didn’t speak up because they thought that things might have gone smoothly, cowards all.
I will never forget that mealy mouthed fool John Kerry explaining that he was “for the war before he was against it”.
Alas, it’s true. When the Bushistas claimed that a vote against the Iraq War was a vote FOR Al Qaeda, many Democrats WIMPED OUT and went along with it–Kerry and Hillary among them.
However, a few, a happy few, didn’t.
Anyway, Mr. Brownlee is exactly right. You can’t blame the Democrats for getting dragged along with this quagmire. The Dragger-in-Chief was George W. Bush.
Never thought I’d hear Mr. Brownlee write it though. I may have to re-up my subscription.
But that would mean subsidizing Cal Thomas, hmmm . . .
Ron Paul (r) and Pat Buchanan were two voices from the patriotic Right that spoke out strongly against this criminal enterprise.
I’ll agree with you on Ron Paul.
Buchanan was against the war on his website. On his TV appearances however, he couldn’t ever seem to work up the will to say anything negative about it.
Hypocritical bastard.
Whose War?
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”
Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.
Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)
David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: “Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. … Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It’s just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left.”
Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: “In London … one finds Britain’s finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the ‘neoconservative’ (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy.”
Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine “has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of … Ariel Sharon and the ‘neoconservative war party.’”
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Beating the War Drums
When the Cold War ended, these neoconservatives began casting about for a new crusade to give meaning to their lives. On Sept. 11, their time came. They seized on that horrific atrocity to steer America’s rage into all-out war to destroy their despised enemies, the Arab and Islamic “rogue states” that have resisted U.S. hegemony and loathe Israel.
The War Party’s plan, however, had been in preparation far in advance of 9/11. And when President Bush, after defeating the Taliban, was looking for a new front in the war on terror, they put their precooked meal in front of him. Bush dug into it.
Before introducing the script-writers of America’s future wars, consider the rapid and synchronized reaction of the neocons to what happened after that fateful day.
On Sept. 12, Americans were still in shock when Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in “a struggle between good and evil,” that the Congress must declare war on “militant Islam,” and that “overwhelming force” must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama’s terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us?
The Wall Street Journal immediately offered up a specific target list, calling for U.S. air strikes on “terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt.” Yet, not one of Bennett’s six countries, nor one of these five, had anything to do with 9/11.
On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, “Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan.” Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while “attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain … Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable.”
On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”
Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon.
President Bush had been warned. He was to exploit the attack of 9/11 to launch a series of wars on Arab regimes, none of which had attacked us. All, however, were enemies of Israel. “Bibi” Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, like some latter-day Citizen Genet, was ubiquitous on American television, calling for us to crush the “Empire of Terror.” The “Empire,” it turns out, consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and “the Palestinian enclave.”
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Good post, Ed. I don’t know why Buchanan can’t say this when he’s on T.V.
Galahad
Thank you…..In order to get on Zionist TV you have to say whatever they want or you either get edited or you’re not asked back.
We desperatly need a law that mulible Media outlets cannot be owned by one entity.
I get little support when suggesting that, but I don’t know how else to safeguard the 1st amendment from a single viewpoint.
I really don’t care what that viewpoint might be, but I’d like to be the one who decides its merit.
Television news all appears scripted to me, as I switch from channel to channel { driving my wife nuts }, while trying to get a different slant or subject.
They even run their commercials at the same time.
Your thoughts please.
A recent poll now says Americans support by a margin of 53% to 42% the impeachment of President Bush if it is proved he lied to the country about going to war in Iraq.
Even the “consideration” of impeachment should be a wake up call to all those who voted their “moral values” and elected this administration to power.
Danny Newland – http://dannewland.blogspot.com/
OK, From the CSM….Here it is:
“Democrats have called on Bush to fire Rove, and Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi has questioned whether Rove should retain his policy-making role at the White House. The White House has rebuffed calls for a staff overhaul.
“I understand the anxiety and angst by the press corps to talk about this. On the other hand it’s a serious investigation and we take it seriously, and we’re cooperating to the extent that the special prosecutor wants us to cooperate,” Bush said.
Notice the qualifying operative phrase: ” and we’re cooperating to the extent that the special prosecutor wants us to cooperate,” Bush said.”
“to the extent” means this: If the prosecutor misses something we’re not going to bring it up. And that smells like some arm-twisting is going on in the background, for the prosecutor not to bring it up. Rove gave Bush that slick-answer, bet your boots on that. Do I trust the Bush administration to be forthcoming, Hell no, not as far as I could throw a grand piano.
Stay tuned.
“Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s warning sets our guidelines at the very outset.”‘Christianity is totally opposite to Judaism and any mixture of the two must result in the loss of all that is vital in the present plan of Salvation. One made its appeal to the limited resources of the natural man and conditioned his life on the earth; the other sets aside the natural man, secures a whole new creation in Christ Jesus, and counsels that new being in his pilgrim journey to his heavenly home.’ (The Kingdom in History and Prophecy, p. 64)
Below is a link to a blog where the owner is comparing approval/disapproval ratings of Nixon and Bush. GW looks to be on track to outdo RMN in this somewhat dubious honor.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000682.html
Ooops, fogot:
Collapse of the Bush Junta: Day 5 and counting . . .
They thought the entry in to Vietnam was phoney with the bogus tonkin gulf resolution when the USA maintained that a vietnamese submarine shot at one of our boats.
The phoney WMD and 911 is way more phoney than Vietnam. Besides we never gave the identity of our CIA officers serving our nation back with the Tonkin Gulf resolution in Viet-Nam! Deception -YES … TREASON Hell NO!
What do you mean: “No one to blame”?
Any other time in history we had a president woth at least 1/2 a brain and a ball who would take command and be in charge? Hell, the liar who got us in this mess then tries to retailate using revealing our covert agents who tell the truth- should be responsible. He is commander-in-chief ain’t he?
Clinton lied about 1 cigar.
Bushka lied now we have 2000 dead Americans and a whole world who hate us?
There are two sides to an argument. If you’re only presented with one as the entire evidence, no one can make an intelligent decision.
IF the intelligence was good, but the cabal twisted it to make the best argument, than the american public should have a right to know that.
Reblicans and democrats alike would have voted differently if they woudl have had ALL the evidence.
He should resign immediately and save America from having to go through another republican impeachment again!
Thanks
Gerry Ford