All Hank, all the time.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski


http://www.migrationwine.com/

the 2004 is not the 2003.

Very nice. I recommend you stick with that instead of this Malbec.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Very nice. I recommend you stick with that instead of this Malbec.

I know- but here's my point- Spank has a friend with his own vineyard. Shouldn't you try to be his friend?

[Gattigap]

Cheap, but on a hot day, it'll do.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Coming from a Republican, that's a compliment, right?

Are you implying that only Republicans play politics?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Better check those posts again.

I don't have to check them. I remember them well. You argued for a while that FDR didn't lie, even when faced with overwhelming evidence (and critisizing those of us who claimed he did) and then finally you gave in. Do I really have to look them up?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You will also find that the Constitution doesn't say anything about lying under oath, either.

OK I realize that you are litle slow and you don't know much about Constitutional law so I will spell it out of you. Yes the constitution does not say anything about lying or lying under oath. But it does discuss what should happen when the President commits "high crimes and misdemeanors". In case you weren't aware, lying is not a crime but lying under oath is - and in some cases is a felony. Some people think that felonies fall under "high crimes" and "misdemeanors".

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
All of these are possible in the non-reality-based universe some conservatives inhabit, but after we occupied Iraq the CIA and others spent a fair amount of time looking into the question.

And only in a non-reality based universe some liberals inhabit did the CIA reach a definite incronterversial conclusion about what happened to the WMDs.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If by "did nothing" you mean "bombed and enforced trade sanctions and so on," that's right.

Do you mean the trade sanction everyone admitted didn't work, or the bombings that were in retaliation for Iraqis shooting at US planes in the no fly zone? You believe these actions pushed Saddam into destroying his WMDs.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This was reported almost two years ago:

• The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.
  
  Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."
  
  The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.
  
  Duelfer's report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government's most definitive accounting of Hussein's weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer's assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.

Well if the Washington Post reported it, it must be true. If Duelfer claim's it - then it is a fact. Please. Like I said, there are only two incrontrovertiable facts 1) Saddam had WMDs 2) US forces didn't find anything. It may surprize you to learn that opinions do not equal incontrovertible facts.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You and I both know this doesn't mean they get everything. Well, I know
it.

Whatever they got it was enough for them to address the American public that there is no question that Saddam had WMDs. They said that at the end of the Clintons administration and they went on saying it right up until the invasion. So if Bush lied, so did the Clinton administration and so did most of the Democrat and Republican leadership. Or the other option is that they all believe Saddam had WMDs.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If you say so. I think some of them were a little more calculating.

And you don't think Kerry and Sen. Clinton and Pelosi weren't trying to score points with their more conservative constitutents when they claimed Saddam still had WMDs and the administration should do something about it.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
So Democrats are partisan when they criticize the President but principled and responsible when they support him. I think I understand how that works.

You really are intellectually dishonest. Just put words in my mouth and then critisize them. Your favorite strategy. Sometimes the Democrats are principled when they don't support Bush and are being political when they do (Flag burning amendment, Gay marriage amendment etc). Believe it or not, it depends on the situation. Candidate Bush was definitely playing politics when he critisized Clinton's policies in the Balkans and then continued them when he got in office. Everyone thought there were WMDs and most of the responsible Democrats supported the invasion. Some supported the president for political reasons, some out of principles and most out of a little of both. I am sure some were worried that Bush might find that Saddam was close to developing a nuclear weapon and they didn't want to look soft on national security. But they all thought he had WMDs. When it turned out there were no WMDs, it was a political opportunity the Democrats (whether they supported the war and thought there were WMDs or not) couldn't pass up. It is just pathetic that someone with a law degree can't see when people in his own party are playing politics.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Either you know that there's far more to say about this, or you don't. If you do, wouldn't it be more interesting to have a more sophisticated conversation based on real facts -- things like what the intelligence community and foreign intelligence and weapons inspectors were saying at the time? If you don't, wouldn't it be interesting to learn?

You can't have intelligent conversation about politics because you confuse facts with opnions, especially opinions spouted off in the NYT and the Washington Post. When you can conclude something is fact not because it reinforces your preconceived notion of reality then we can have an intelligent conversation, but until then we can't. Something isn't credible because it comes from the NYT, the Washington Post, or some left wing blog. I have many friends that work for high placed Democrats in Washington, and believe it or not, I even have friends that are high placed Democrats and they all admit behind closed doors that the "Bush lied" thing is just a political smoke screen. They all know that no one was more surprized by the lack of WMDs than the Bush admininstration. It was also conventional wisdom that the sanctions were not working Saddam was developing WMDs and there was nothing the administration could do about. But even though they know that, the lack of finding WMDs was just a political opportunity they couldn't pass up. But unlike them ( and like with CAFTA) you can't separate the substantive arguments from the political posturing.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Are you implying that only Republicans play politics?

No.

I don't have to check them. I remember them well. You argued for a while that FDR didn't lie, even when faced with overwhelming evidence (and critisizing those of us who claimed he did) and then finally you gave in. Do I really have to look them up?

No -- you remember them poorly. I said that I could believe that FDR lied, but that I hadn't seen the evidence. Which was far from overwhelming. If that's overwhelming, then you are -- to say the very least -- applying a different standard to our current president. I can believe that FDR -- or any president -- lied.

OK I realize that you are litle slow and you don't know much about Constitutional law so I will spell it out of you. Yes the constitution does not say anything about lying or lying under oath. But it does discuss what should happen when the President commits "high crimes and misdemeanors". In case you weren't aware, lying is not a crime but lying under oath is - and in some cases is a felony. Some people think that felonies fall under "high crimes" and "misdemeanors".

And you have a problem with reading comprehension. I said the Constitution doesn't say anything about lying under oath. Which is true.

And only in a non-reality based universe some liberals inhabit did the CIA reach a definite incronterversial conclusion about what happened to the WMDs.

At this point, you really should not keep posting about what happened to the WMD. Instead, I would get out of the hole.

Do you mean the trade sanction everyone admitted didn't work, or the bombings that were in retaliation for Iraqis shooting at US planes in the no fly zone? You believe these actions pushed Saddam into destroying his WMDs.

No: The trade sanctions limited -- if not eliminated -- Iraq's ability to obtain what it needed to make WMD. And my recollection -- here, I will admit that I've spent 30-45 seconds Googling this in the last day and can't find what I'm thinking of -- is that we destroyed some WMD-related facilities with Clinton-era bombings.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Well if the Washington Post reported it, it must be true. If Duelfer claim's it - then it is a fact. Please. Like I said, there are only two incrontrovertiable facts 1) Saddam had WMDs 2) US forces didn't find anything. It may surprize you to learn that opinions do not equal incontrovertible facts.

Spanky, come to grips with reality. We're talking about the best work of the current government. This is not an op-ed in the Washington Post. This is an article about the congressional testimony of the man heading the program to figure out what happened with Iraqi WMD. There is no one in the world better situated to explain to you what happened than Duelfer.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Whatever they got it was enough for them to address the American public that there is no question that Saddam had WMDs. They said that at the end of the Clintons administration and they went on saying it right up until the invasion. So if Bush lied, so did the Clinton administration and so did most of the Democrat and Republican leadership. Or the other option is that they all believe Saddam had WMDs.

Other options include: (1) Iraq had programs during the Clinton years that had ended or were destroyed by the Bush years; and/or (2) Our intelligence (or the inspectors, etc.) learned something during that time.

And you don't think Kerry and Sen. Clinton and Pelosi weren't trying to score points with their more conservative constitutents when they claimed Saddam still had WMDs and the administration should do something about it.

My answer for different individuals would be different, and I haven't followed enough of them to be sure who to condemn. I suspect that very few Democrats did the work I would expect -- well, hope for -- of a legislator. Instead of actually looking at the intelligence, I think they took others words for it. An exception would be Sen. Bob Graham, who went into some depth into the NIE and related documents and then voted against the war.

You really are intellectually dishonest. Just put words in my mouth and then critisize them. Your favorite strategy. Sometimes the Democrats are principled when they don't support Bush and are being political when they do (Flag burning amendment, Gay marriage amendment etc). Believe it or not, it depends on the situation. Candidate Bush was definitely playing politics when he critisized Clinton's policies in the Balkans and then continued them when he got in office. Everyone thought there were WMDs and most of the responsible Democrats supported the invasion. Some supported the president for political reasons, some out of principles and most out of a little of both. I am sure some were worried that Bush might find that Saddam was close to developing a nuclear weapon and they didn't want to look soft on national security. But they all thought he had WMDs. When it turned out there were no WMDs, it was a political opportunity the Democrats (whether they supported the war and thought there were WMDs or not) couldn't pass up. It is just pathetic that someone with a law degree can't see when people in his own party are playing politics.

I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing here. Your last sentence is funny, given that what seems to have irritated you is the notion that some Democratic support of the war was politically calculated.

Setting aside motives, I think legislators did not have the same access to intelligence that the executive branch has -- some less than others -- and most of them did not bother to study what they could see.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You can't have intelligent conversation about politics because you confuse facts with opnions, especially opinions spouted off in the NYT and the Washington Post.

Spanky, if you are going to reject the views of -- for example -- Duelfer then you are living in a world with no facts, only opinions. It is a fact that Duelfer testified before Congress and said certain things. It is a fact that he based his testimony on considerable work by the U.S. government. If you are going dismiss those facts because they were reported in the Washington Post and because the Washington Post sometimes runs opinions, then your views are no longer reality-based.

I have many friends that work for high placed Democrats in Washington, and believe it or not, I even have friends that are high placed Democrats . . . .

So: New York Times and Washington Post are not credible, but anonymous Democrat friends quoted on a chatboard are. Got it.

And you have Democratic friends but would not vote for a Democrat running against Pombo? What's up with that?

Hypothetically speaking, a "high-placed" Democratic in D.C. these days is what? An office-building window-washer?

. . . . and they all admit behind closed doors that the "Bush lied" thing is just a political smoke screen. They all know that no one was more surprized by the lack of WMDs than the Bush admininstration. It was also conventional wisdom that the sanctions were not working Saddam was developing WMDs and there was nothing the administration could do about. But even though they know that, the lack of finding WMDs was just a political opportunity they couldn't pass up. But unlike them ( and like with CAFTA) you can't separate the substantive arguments from the political posturing.

(1) This conversation started (on my end) because I thought you were accusing Clinton of lying, not Bush.

(2) If you want to have a real conversation about whether Bush lied, you have to look at what he was being told and what he said. Although you get hints of that from the better newspapers, and maybe even from your Democratic pals in D.C., you're going to learn more from books with inside sources -- e.g., Woodward's books, or Suskinds.

(3) If you read those books, you will see that the admininstration consistently has misled people. Here is one example; here is another.

(4) I do not believe that Bush or anyone else in his administration thought there were no WMD in Iraq but said there were.

(5) I think that a decision was made to invade Iraq -- not irrevocably, but presumptively -- and then the administration's work shifted towards making a public case and building public and international support. To this end, they stressed the WMD angle, not because it was the most important to them necessarily, but because it worked the best. (Wolfowitz basically said this a few years ago.) In making the public case, they presented as facts things they did not know to be facts. They were reckless with the truth, gambling that events would prove them right.

(5)(a) A couple of posts ago, you were all over me for referring to a Washington Post news article about Charles Duelfer's congressional testimony about the search for WMD as "fact." Why don't we apply the chatboard evidentiary standards to our political leaders? Bush and those working for him said a lot more based on a lot less, and yet you apparently will not admit that he crossed the line.

(6) In contemporary politics, a more complicated idea like "Bush was reckless with the truth" gets simplified to "Bush lied." You could blame the politicians for this, but I also would blame the media, which fails to give sustained attention to communicating anything with nuance, or to sort things out for the public when politicians make competing claims, and the public, which doesn't demand more.

[i was penske]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski


http://www.migrationwine.com/

the 2004 is not the 2003.

[true story] [outable] i was out for a 199 mile run last October and happened duckhorn. went in and had a glass of the '01 Three Palms Merlot and the '02 Howell Mountain. Dee-lish [/true story] [/outable]

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is the problem with the Article II theory of extreme deference to the (Bush) presidency that you clowns have been lining up behind. Before too long, someone you don't like -- another Clinton, say -- is going to be elected President. And you'll be hoping that your Senators or Representatives or Justices can act as a check.

Not if the idiots running the Democratic party run Hillary in 2008.

As a moderate, the Democrats scare me. This shit they're doing with Joe Lieberman shows a party hijacked by a minority of clueless lunatics. We need the Democrats to take at least one of the branches, to keep some of the gridlock and checks and balances that makes for good govt. If the lunatics take over and run impossible candidates, the Dems are going to go the way of the Whigs, and the more organized lunatics in the GOP are going to get stronger.

The Dems need more, not less, Joe Liebermans.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This shit they're doing with Joe Lieberman shows a party hijacked by a minority of clueless lunatics.

I think what they're doing to Lieberman -- or rather, what Lieberman is doing to himself -- is fantastic. He's a sanctimonious gasbag.

You seem to think that they're going after Lieberman because he strayed too far to the right. Not so. Kos -- for example -- seems to love Mark Warner, whose positions are indistinguishable from Lieberman's.

Mark Schmitt explains Joe's problem here. In short, he's too happy to turn his sanctimony on other Democrats. The loyalty runs only one direction. On issues like Iraq and Social Security, he wants to be a player so badly that he sells out his own side.

Joe Lieberman's positions are fine, but enough of him.

etft[itle]

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I think what they're doing to Lieberman -- or rather, what Lieberman is doing to himself -- is fantastic. He's a sanctimonious gasbag.

You seem to think that they're going after Lieberman because he strayed too far to the right. Not so. Kos -- for example -- seems to love Mark Warner, whose positions are indistinguishable from Lieberman's.

Mark Schmitt explains Joe's problem here. In short, he's too happy to turn his sanctimony on other Democrats. The loyalty runs only one direction. On issues like Iraq and Social Security, he wants to be a player so badly that he sells out his own side.

Joe Lieberman's positions are fine, but enough of him.

etft[itle]

Ty -

OK, that's an interesting point I hadn't considered. But if that's the case, isn't the Democratic party cutting off its nose to spite its face here? I mean, why support a strident left winger who's only going to make the party seem imbecilic over a well liked centrist? Joe Lieberman is one of the few Democrats who has some across-the-aisle respect and reflects well on the party. I don't know Lamont that well, but he's so far appeared shrill.

They all sell out thier side to be players. I think in Lieberman's case the man is truly a moderate, somewhat hawkish Democrat, and I think your party needs that voice, from someone with his stature in particular.

Call me nuts, I just don't think you piss all over the Jomentum. Or maybe I just like the guy because he seems principled to me.

SD