Will you re-elect Bush?

[JimmyTango Profile]

What does British intelligence have to do with the US? The CIA(you know, one of our intelligence angencies) repeatedly told Bush and his administration that no evidence supports Suddam trying to get uranium in Africa.

The real question is, why are you using another countries intelligence when our own has said otherwise(and now Bush himself admits it was a mistake). I mean, talk about a horrible arguement.

[Doug the Unforgiven]

Cream cheese, when fashioned properly, makes a superior butt-plug compared to broccoli.

[JimmyTango Profile]

Originally posted by Rule of Wrist
Come on, you expect us to believe that you know what mail the CIA is sending the President of the United States?

Last time I checked, the only people who know that information are the director of the CIA and the National Security Advisor... Anybody else has heard the info second or third hand... in a courtroom, this is called hearsay...

So unless your name is Condi or George, your crediblity is nonexistent.

Do you read the newspaper? Do you watch the news? Do you have any clue as to what is going in in D.C. besides Bush is right, any Democrat is wrong?

The kicker: the number of politicans(on both sides) and higher ups int he CIA that have even discussed how the CIA had been correcting Bush's speaches as they tried to sneak the Africa/Uranium crap in.

If you do not know about this yet, then it is apparent you have no idea about current events and should not even be discussing anything on this topic.

[Doug the Unforgiven]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
What does British intelligence have to do with the US? The CIA(you know, one of our intelligence angencies) repeatedly told Bush and his administration that no evidence supports Suddam trying to get uranium in Africa.

The real question is, why are you using another countries intelligence when our own has said otherwise(and now Bush himself admits it was a mistake). I mean, talk about a horrible arguement.

That whole statement is blatantly incorrect. "No evidence" my ass. Does it mean nothing that there are still hundreds of credible documents (in British hands) supporting the claims about Uranium?

Your line "What does British intelligence have to do with the US?" really shows us how much you've been keeping up.

[Doug the Unforgiven]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
If you do not know about this yet, then it is apparent you have no idea about current events and should not even be discussing anything on this topic.

Touche'

[JimmyTango Profile]

Yes or no did the CIA rule that Iraq tried to gain uranium in Africa?

Yes or no answer please.

[Doug the Unforgiven]

You keep running in circles with the question I've asked you. Maybe I should do the same with a superiorly intelligent question, such as: What does Uranium have to do with Africa? That makes about as much sense as asking what British Int. has to do with US.

[JimmyTango Profile]

Doug,

Look at your question. Why is the BI sticking to is overall conclusion. How the hell would I know? Do you know? Sure as hell looks like they are staying on the sinking ship, where as Bush has already bailed and gotten a life boat all for himself. find it amazing you are sticking to this iraq/Africa/uranium BS when BUSH HIMSELF HAS SAID IT IS A MISTAKE.

Your pointless queswtion is anwered. Now answer mine.

[Rule of Wrist]

My point was that none of these reports knows what is really being exchanged between the CIA and president. There is a VERY short list of who is privy to that information.

The press isn't on it. The congress isn't on it. You are not on it. What the CIA feeds to the press should be considered with a grain of salt at best.

So you saying you've seen reports in the news proves your own ignorance on the subject. The problem is your arrogance in believing it to be gospel. I bet I could take the contents of the Weekly World News and slap a New York Times label on it and you would believe it...

[Doug the Unforgiven]

I'm not "sticking" to anything. I just find it amusing that everyone wants to pile on Bush for citing British Intelligence.

My point was to question why Bush has been made out to be this evil deceiver when all he said was "British intelligence has learned....".

I'm not a sycophant. I detest most of what Bush is doing on the domestic front; sometimes it seems like he's a hard-core liberal when it comes to social issues. But I'm a national defense type, and it he stays strong there, I'll help put him back in. Maybe I'm just a simpleton that way.


Since I'm not privy to inside CIA matters, I'll try to answer your question thusly: the CIA ruled that one of the documents indicting Iraq/Niger was a fake. Sorry, that's the best I can do.

Geez, I'm tired.

[Doug the Unforgiven]

Originally posted by Rule of Wrist
So you saying you've seen reports in the news proves your own ignorance on the subject. The problem is your arrogance in believing it to be gospel. I bet I could take the contents of the Weekly World News and slap a New York Times label on it and you would believe it...

Yeah, the press blows. Just yesterday the Washington Post was saying that Colin Powell was stepping down after Bush's first term was over, according to an 'inside source'. The story turned out to be extraordinarily false.

It's a good thing these press folks don't work in the CIA....


Please, I don't want to have to explain the relevance of that last sentence. **sigh**

[JimmyTango Profile]

So, Bush himself saying it was a mistake does not count for anything at all, huh?

Guess this is my last post on this subject. If you are so blind that when bush himself says it was a mistake, and that does not count for anything, then this arguement is obviously going no where.

[RCglider Profile]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
Um, like you said, revenues to the Treasury doubled, Federal Spending tripled. Somehow, you do not see how the tax cuts were the problem?

It's called the revenue only doubled BECAUSE taxes were cut. If taxes were not cut, the revenue would have been closer to what the Federal government was (over)spending.

How blind do you have to be not to see that?

I guess I don't understand what you're trying to say. It's quite convoluted to be honest. Revenue doubled, simple. Why did revenues go up? Why did the economy flourish? Tax cuts spur economic growth, tax increases stifle economic growth. Even JFK knew that in 1960, and proposed similar cuts to accomplish two things: increase revenue to the Federal Treasury and free up money for capital investment. The economy is dynamic, do you know what that means? Question: if the income tax rate were 100% in 2003, what would the government's revenue be in 2004? Another question: how can the "poor" get a tax cut when they don't pay taxes to begin with? Hmmm?
Are you old enough to remember the Misery Index of the Carter years? It doesn't appear so. I had to laugh when Clinton/Gore used to say we had "the worst economy in 50 years" during their disinformation campaign. Obviously they were playing to voters who had no idea what a bad economy really is. The short recession during Bush 1 was long past in November 1992. Bush got the boot because he said "NO NEW TAXES". I held my nose voting for him.

A Liberal's (Republican or Democrat, makes no difference) definition of "the rich": anyone who pays taxes.

BTW, was it you that said Communism has never been tried? I apologize if it wasn't. Anyway, the Pilgrims tried it and it failed miserably. Study history since it's not taught in schools anymore.

[JimmyTango Profile]

Originally posted by RCglider


BTW, was it you that said Communism has never been tried? I apologize if it wasn't. Anyway, the Pilgrims tried it and it failed miserably. Study history since it's not taught in schools anymore.

Study English since it is not your stong suit(apparently).

[Folic_Acid Profile ICQYIM]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
Yes or no did the CIA rule that Iraq tried to gain uranium in Africa?

Yes or no answer please.

No. The CIA did NOT rule that Iraq tried to gain uranium from Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, or other uranium-producing countries. The CIA suspected that Saddam was trying to get uranium from said countries.

Everyone who is serious about national security — British intelligence, U.S. intelligence, even Dominique de Villepin — recognizes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He used chemical WMDs against his own people; he admitted to having biological WMDs; and he intended to reconstitute his nuclear WMD program. To do that, uranium was required.

Where does a rogue dictator shop for uranium? Impoverished African countries are recommended.

The British believe that's why Saddam sent a "trade delegation" to Niger in 1999. That may even explain the forged documents: Apparently, an African official understood that there were Europeans and Americans who would pay good money for documentary evidence that Saddam's trade delegation had successfully completed its mission.

None of this should imply that President Bush is beyond criticism — by Democrats or even by those who generally support his policies on fighting terrorists and terrorist masters. None of this should imply that there are no questions that deserve inquiry by members of Congress. Let me start with three:

1) The 16 words in Bush's State of the Union speech were hardly "infamous" as so many journalists have been reporting. (Actually, those who use such adjectives are not reporting — they are editorializing.) But Bush should not have said that the British government "has learned" that Saddam sought uranium from Africa. He should have said that the British government "believes" or "strongly suspects" that Saddam sought uranium in Africa. As far as we know, the evidence on which the British relied isn't certain enough to use a word as conclusive as "learned."

I don't really expect Bush to be a wordsmith. That's hardly his strong suit. But there are wordsmiths on the White House staff, and they deserve to be scolded for their imprecision.

2) Bush has said that the intelligence he's been receiving is "darned good." Distressingly, that is not true. It needs to be candidly acknowledged that since the end of the Cold War our intelligence services have not responded effectively to the threat of jihadist terrorism.

For example:

• We did not have reliable human-intelligence assets inside Saddam's regime, either before the first chapter of the Gulf War or over the past 13 years leading up to the most recent phase of the conflict.
• Our intelligence has not been able to discover what Saddam did with his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Did he hide them, transfer them, or destroy them?
• We did not have intelligence assets in the radicalized European mosques where many terrorists were being recruited.
• In the 1990s, it appears our intelligence analysts didn't grasp how dangerous it was that tens of thousands of terrorists were being trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. (I assume they at least knew that such training was taking place.)
• Our intelligence experts did not know that even as we were paying North Korea billions of dollars in exchange for not building nuclear weapons, they were building them anyway.
• President Clinton bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan based on what was apparently faulty intelligence.
• President Clinton bombed suspected WMD sites in Iraq — did he hit any?
• Our intelligence services didn't predict or prevent the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania or on the USS Cole.
• Our intelligence services still haven't been able to determine whether those Iraqis implicated in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center were doing so on Saddam's orders, as researcher and former Clinton adviser Laurie Mylroie has long maintained.
• Our intelligence services failed to respond to increasing terrorist threats from the Middle East and Central Asia by recruiting and training a sufficient number of agents and analysts fluent in such languages as Arabic, Urdu, and Pashtun.
• Our intelligence didn't predict or prevent 9/11.

I could go on, but you get the point. It is not President Bush's fault that our intelligence-gathering and clandestine capabilities are today insufficient for the challenges of the 21st century, but it is his responsibility to fix the problem. If he believes George Tenet is the man to accomplish that, fine. But it has to get done and the president is responsible for making sure that happens as quickly and effectively as possible.

3) What may be the biggest mystery in this melodrama has been missed by all the major media as far as I'm aware. Early in 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney had questions about reports of Saddam buying uranium from Niger. So he asked the Central Intelligence Agency to find out the truth.

Consider: Here's a request from the White House on a vital national-security issue. Does the CIA put their top spies on the case? No. Who do they put on the case? No one. Instead, they apparently decided to give the assignment to a diplomat.

I assume they contacted the State Department. Even so, they didn't get the Foreign Service's most talented ambassador, someone with investigative skills and broad experience in nuclear proliferation and related issues. No, the assignment went to a retiree who is far to the left of the Bush administration. Why?

That retiree was Joseph C. Wilson IV, former ambassador to Gabon, and one-time deputy to ambassador April Glaspie in Iraq. (You'll recall she was the U.S. official who reportedly told Saddam: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait.")

Wilson's investigation, according to his recent New York Times op-ed, consisted of his spending "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people." He added: "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."

Wilson's conclusion was probably correct. It's likely that no such transaction occurred — which begs the question of whether Saddam attempted to complete such a transaction, as the British believe and as Bush said in his SOTU.

But let's imagine for just a moment that one of the officials with whom Wilson met had accepted a million-dollar bribe for facilitating the transfer of uranium to Saddam's agents. What is the likelihood that that information would have been disclosed to Wilson over sips of sweet mint tea? Not huge, I'd wager.

When did the vice president learn that this was the manner in which his orders had been carried out? Is there an explanation for such dereliction of duty by CIA and, possibly, by State as well? Was anyone held accountable?

Inquiring minds should want to know.