I was just listening to the radio talk about elections and Iraq and WMD, and suddenly I realized how Karl Rove plans to win the 2004 presidential election for his protege, GW Bush. After an extended period of apparently failing to discover all those WMDs Bush assured us were really there, his poll number really don't seem to have suffered very much. Taking into account this fact, combined with the long campaign season we're soon going to enter, it seems to me that the most effective way for Bush to counter strong Democratic claims of failures in Iraq -- especially claims of the absolute fallacy of Iraqi WMD which some Dems seem wont to make -- would be to allow those claims to build up momentum to the point at which they form a significantly large part of the Democratic campain rhetoric, and then, suddenly, to "find" the claimed proof of WMD just when the timing will have the greatest effect in disarming that rhetoric. In other words, if any hard evidence of WMD is found between now and the optimal time close to the election, so long as the poll numbers don't drop too low, it would be a brilliant stroke of political mastery to keep it under wraps until it is most damaging to the Democratic presidential campaign of whomever wins the primary. I'm sure that if WMD turn up in Iraq within a month or two of the election next year, pundits will be raging, left and right. On the right, that it was there all along and the windbag Dems were just too dumb to know it, and on the left, that the whole thing was orchestrated for maximum electoral impact. If it happens, remember: You heard it here first!49 responses total.
I dunno. Part of me wants to see a Dem get a fighting chance in the race in 2004. I don't particularly want to see GW get re-elected. Iraq and WMD is old news to me.
Considering how easy it would be to fabricate
or manufacture some evidence of wmd, this would
explain why that hasn't happened already.
Sure would. Hopefully the Democratic candidates will figure it out too.
I'm sick of liberal whining about WMD. So is the rest of America. Only far-left liberals with thier obsessive agenda really talk about it.
there is no way to hide the introduction of WMD from the US into Iraq. Do you know how many people would have to be involved, and you think everyone of them wants to rig an election?
(People knew about the Iran-Contra arms sales, too, but they didn't talk about it. It's -easy- to keep a secret; just classify it.)
I wasn't even suggesting that the evidence would be fabricated, though I wouldn't rule it out. Merely that its "discovery" would be timed for political effect. Given the administration's established pattern of managing events, this isn't even a logical stretch.
Last think I heard GW say on this was that he expected that evidence would be forthcoming for what he knew all along: "Iraq had a weapons program." Um, hello, we didn't go to war because Iraq had a weapons program. Of course Iraq had a weapons program. Everyone has a weapons program. The claim made was that Iraq was an imminent threat to the US. That's going to be a wee bit harder to prove.
May I retract "fabricate or manufacture",
because it would be easier to have simply claimed
we found materials, labs, documentation, and weapons
all over the place. Why did we not do so?
To manufacture and fabricate a managable
controversy?
If the US was going to plant evidence of WMD, the time to do it would have been right as we were entering Baghdad. There was a lot of confusion going on then, and the military had pretty tight and unsupervised control of a lot of Iraq. I don't think it'd be so easy now. I don't think the president is withholding evidence of WMD. His credibility has taken big hits in recent weeks. He needs the announcement of a discovery *now*, which is why we've had announcements over the last couple of days that a discovery is imminent. If there isn't a discovery of some very significant WMD (some nuclear weapons, or a big stockpile of chemical and/or biological weapons), then the president is in a lot of trouble for the 2004 election. This isn't swapping some arms for hostages, or drugs for arms, or whatever. That's an "oops", comparatively. If the president invaded another country on an incorrect basis, it's a big deal, and I think people will treat it as a big deal.
Re #4: sure - belittle Bush's lies because they indict your leader. We hear a lot of those attempts to divert public attention from the lies and deceit.
QED
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I don't think Iraq is going to weigh big on the voters' minds. Domestic issues would matter more. Iraq issue's impact on presidency is just media hype more like the SCO vs Linux thing.
Re #5: Are you kidding, Bruce? It would be *trivial* to introduce WMD into Iraq along with the other military and relief supplies going there. Do you think our spooks have no idea how to *smuggle* things? Do you really think that more than a few people would have to know what was in the packages? That said, making the evidence convincing would be a whole lot harder. Laboratories can pick out very fine differences between products, and US-manufactured VX can probably be identified as such. An Iraqi weapon would come with manufacturing and storage facilities somewhere; lack of those would be very suspicious. It would take more than just one smuggled weapon or batch of agent to convincingly frame Iraq.
Unfortunately, whether or not any evidence for a weapons program in Iraq is truly discovered or fabricated, "real news" either way is outside of the acceptable framework for corporate news media reporting. The US media is incapable of telling the public the truth about anything other than fashion or food. (Well, maybe not even fashion or food on second thought.) Both Liberal as well as Conservative seats of power manipulate the media on a daily basis. The White House blames the CIA for false information, the CIA accepts responsibility---->blame goes back to the White House<----->the CIA is essentially a part of the White House. Fingers point in a circle to defer responsibility as long as possible. George HW Bush has had both direct as well as indirect influence whithin the CIA since the early 1970's. Since leaving as director of the CIA in 1977 his level of "plausible deniability" has allowed him to conduct personal business using CIA resources at will. Serving as VP and then President follows suit. He's a business man, not a crusader for freedom. His boys are just pawns in the global crap game he's been playing since he left college. Based upon his actions thusfar, he appears to operate beyond any law anywhere and his sons have been taught to work the same way. Basic human nature. The illusion of control fuels the illusion of control. Fair and honest US presidential elections are a myth.
I wouldn't goto the extent of saying that elections in any of the large democracies are rigged but the problem is lack of choice. Politicians nowhere as good ennough to be elected. And all care about only money for themselves. Its surprising to see that people in the US can't see through GWB's designs despite the large amount of evidence out there.
I agree that elections are not necessarily rigged. I do believe that choice is effectively eliminated by misinformation and our institutionalized two-party system. Although, the lack of clear investigation and follow up on the indiscrepancies during the Florida polls during our last presidential election are troubling. Our standards have been lowered even further in regards to legal, fair elections. The fact that Jeb Bush runs Florida is an odd coincidence in regards to several current events.
It's not that most people here *can't* see, it's merely that they choose not to see. People tend to discount any "evidence" which comes from a source they don't already accept as legitimate, and our means of information distribution have proven themselves so flawed, so repeatedly, that now people are just believing whatever sources they want to unless they're motivated enough to seek out legitimate unbiased information (which is getting harder and harder to do).
A lot of people can "see through" George Bush. They can "see through" his designs not to make the political choices they favor, and in support of their positions and opposition to Bush, they can "see" he's doing really awful things. They can "see" all of this, regardless of any decisions or choices he actually makes. Pretty much everyone who can't "see through" Bush could "see through" Clinton when he was the president. Those people could have "seen through" Al Gore, had he won the last election. It goes both ways, of course. Our vision is considerably influenced by who we voted for and who it is we are "seeing through". We believe what we want to believe for the most part. We've all got marvelous eyesight for seeing through anyone we don't want to believe.
Re 4: So you're sick of bleeding heart liberals, eh? I'll take that as a compliment. We must be doing *something* right.
I agree with JEP to the extent that I don't think that Bush's supporters misunderstand him. What I view as poison injected into the American bloodstream, they view as a dose of much needed medicine. It's a values issue, not a facts issue, for the most part.
Perhaps medicine in the form of "faith based" decision making. Damn the facts and the opinions of other informed parties. As long as the US has an enemy in one form or another this type of politics will continue to grow. Unfortunately, the US has a brilliant track record for creating enemies both domestically as well as abroad. Usually just in the nick of time. Remember public opinion and the beginnings of scandal regarding GW's performance in office until 9/11..?
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This surprises you
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re resp:23, 24: There's not much respect or understanding on either side of the aisle for the other folks.
Here we are. Another month has gone by and still no evidence of WMD. Lies lies lies.
Yes, we know. Perhaps Bush thought President Clinton could be trusted to always tell the truth. He should have been more skeptical of repeating exactly what President Clinton said in 1998 about Saddam having WMDs, for, as we all know, President Clinton was a liar.
bush is to stupid to lie, cheney and the others tell him what to say.
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I finished my juice box.
Or maybe it was all just bad accounting: http://www.freep.com/news/nw/iraq8_20030908.htm --- ...Five months after the U.S. invasion, ex-inspectors now say the unaccountables may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago. Some may represent miscounts, they say, and some may stem from Iraqi underlings' efforts to satisfy Iraqi leaders by exaggerating reports on arms output in the 1980s. "Under that sort of regime, you don't admit you got it wrong," said Ron Manley, a former chief UN adviser on chemical weapons. His encounters with Iraqi scientists in the 1990s convinced him that, at times, when told to produce "X amount" of a weapons agent, "they wrote down what their superiors wanted to hear instead of the reality," said Manley. ...Chief UN Inspector Hans Blix, as he left his post this summer, became more open in discussing discrepancies. After the mid-1990s, "hardly ever did" inspectors "find hidden weapons," Blix reminded one audience. "What they found was bad accounting." ---
If this is the case, which it probably is, it illustrates one of the possible scenarios that formed a basis against starting a war unilaterally on boneheaded *assumptions*, with no proofs. It isn't as though both the inspectors - and the Saddaam regime - weren't saying no WMD were being or would not be found.
The problem with this line of argument is that the war on Iraq was a given, and the WMD were what was provided as the reason, after the decision was made to do it. Bush only accepts information from his staff which supports the decisions which have already been made, so that's the information his intelligence staff gave him. Whether it was right or wrong did not matter, only that the American People though it credible enough to proceed until they could be distracted enough to forget about it.
(As opposed to President Bubba, who could not be bothered with calls from the Pentagon about bin Laden since he was too busy watching the ball game?)
Nothing like a "clear-eyed conservative" for revisionist history.
Oh, come on please, Mr. scott. These stories are well documented.
I'm not sure that anyone considered Bin Laden a serious threat to the U.S. until after 9/11. Bush certainly showed no interest in tracking him down until that point.
Of course not. He was an ally until 1989 at least.
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re: "#40 (gull): I'm not sure that anyone considered Bin Laden a serious threat to the U.S. until after 9/11." Au contraire, my good Mr. gull. According to the following, President Bubba had Osama in his crosshairs. From TIME magazine 10 Questions For Madeleine Albright The former secretary of state speaks out on current world affairs By J.F.O. MCALLISTER AND MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Monday, Sep. 22, 2003 When Madeleine Albright became Secretary of State, the Czech-born exile was the first woman to serve in that post. On the eve of the publication of her memoir ...she spoke with TIME's J.F.O. McAllister. Did you neglect the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and leave it for the Bush Administration to clean up? President Clinton focused on terrorism from the start. The CIA set up a special bin Laden division, and the President authorized the use of lethal force against him. We struck his camp in 1998 after the embassy bombings, and we came close. President Bush has been in Afghanistan with 8,000 troops, and they still haven't found him. .
Time to start keeping better track of yourselves, klg. Total self-contradiction in less than 10 responses!
Au contraire, Monsieur scott. Although Osama was being hunted, Pres. Bubba refused to pull the trigger when he had the chance.
So what part of "the President authorized the use of lethal force" says that former President Clinton "refused to pull the trigger"? Is there a 12 step program for self contradiction?
yet, at one point they knew exactly where he was, and he refused to issue the order.
So did he authorize lethal force or not?
I would say he was attempting to have it both ways.
You have several choices: