Third Party & Independents: Archives

I sure hope your correct David, but I fear otherwise. Listening to Scott McClellan on CSPAN yesterday seemingly respond to every question with something like The President took decisive action against Terrorism, I kind of got the feeling that your really could fool most of the people all of the time.

My hope rests in the Presidential debates, especially the first one, which will permeate the media should the President be boxed in on this question. Even those who don’t watch it (the majority) will pick up some media or word of mouth within the next 48 hours.

Let’s face it, it would be a shocking revelation for 52% of Americans to discover Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Bush opponents have to get the public’s awareness on this issue to the forefront of the agenda. Else, we face another 4 years of Bush, and at least 8 to 12 years beyond that undoing the harm to the national debt, public credibility in Washington, and repair of international relations and restoration of the U.S.’s leadership role in the U.N. and NATO.

The reluctance to give a straight answer can be as revealing and damaging as giving the answer you don’t want to give.

I don’t know how long the Bush administration can keep this up before the electorate start noticing the elephant in the room, so to speak.

Looks like MSNBC is following the Administration’s lead on scrubbing their website to clean out anything that looks bad on the Administration. I just went to MSNBC where the transcript for Hardball is supposed to be for Dec. 18, and I get the Abrams transcript. I sent them email on this yesterday, no response.

Well, at least MSNBC can’t be accused of revising history, just failing to provide it.

Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter and Laura Graham are just some of the Bush squad pom-pom girls, isn’t it nice that we aren’t subjected much any more to Karen Hughes, Tori Clark and Mary Maitlin? They are slavishly blind to facts and align themselves squarely with the administration line (translate-Propaganda!). Now if we could just see less of Condi girl.

lenal

Lenal, I think it is a gross over simplification to classify these people as grunts in Bush’s army of conservatives. All of the people mentioned above, are bright, educated, and experienced people.

I don’t believe they are blind to the facts. In psychology, it is demonstrated that when you take a single non-descript object, place it before 3 different people, and ask them to describe what the object reminds them of, you get three different answers.

It is the world view, perspective, value system, and goal orientation filters through which they view and interpret the ‘facts’ that accounts for their understanding and explanation of what those ‘facts’ mean. The same is true for all other party affiliated persons who see the facts differently.

Denigrating their status, does nothing to further understanding or change in them, and certainly does nothing to further political debate on the issues. That is my 2 cents anyway, and no one wants to see regime change in America more than I.

Unfortunately David, I think that one could have debate after debate, and I’m not sure this 52% would ever change their minds. It’s ironic that as we as a society have become more advanced technologically we have become incredibly averse to any sort of intellectual heavy lifting. It’s kind of like the “fast food nation” syndrome. We crave quick, easy soundbite issues.The reasoning goes like this: “Our public schools are failing? Just close them down and send everyone to private schools.”
Since Bin Laden is proving to be more elusive than we all hoped, Saddam Hussein makes a convenient villian. After all we have to bring someone to justice don’t we?
I think that it says alot about the state of our electorate where more people care about Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, and Clay Aiken than they do about the next leader of this country. I just hope that we haven’t gotten to the point where a serious examination of political issues is branded intellectual snobbery.

“we have become incredibly averse to any sort of intellectual heavy lifting. It’s kind of like the “fast food nation” syndrome.”

Well stated.
This works to the advantage of the current administration. Scrubbing un-sightly facts, mono-themed advert style responses to pertinent questions just make the average person that isn’t concerned about where our country is heading glaze over. Leaving decisions up to the revisionists. Then a day comes when this glazed over person looses their job and asks “WTF?”, he/she will be labeled subversive or unpatriotic or pehaps a troublemaker that needs to be “re-educated”.

“Vote! It’s your duty”

>>Listening to Scott McClellan on CSPAN yesterday seemingly respond to every question with something like The President took decisive action against Terrorism, I kind of got the feeling that your really could fool most of the people all of the time.

>>Let’s face it, it would be a shocking revelation for 52% of Americans to discover Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Boy, liberals really do live in their own little fantasy world.

According to Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes, military think-tank expert Frank Gaffney and even the moderate Morton Kondrake of Roll Call, and likely many other informed people, there is now PROOF of ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And the evidence grows daily. I belileve it’s highly likely that Hussein aided those who committed the 9/11 attack. He might even have direct knowledge it would happen. The US military has tremendous numbers of documents from the Hussein regime. When the experts have gone over them, liberals like Dean are in for some nasty suprises, heh.

So get a clue, even.

Your opinion is only as good as your source and your own personal spin on the facts. The President, Dryer and a host of others including Biden, and they are in the know, have stated their was no direct link between the 9/11 Al-AQueda and Hussein. After the invasion, Al-Queda moved into Iraq, and prior to the invasion, there were Al-Queda in the norther Kurdish territories, which Hussein had no presence or control over. It was in the the no fly northern zone.

Spin all you wish, the facts remain.

>>So get a clue, even.

>>Your opinion is only as good as your source and your own personal spin on the facts. The President, Dryer and a host of others including Biden, and they are in the know, have stated their was no direct link between the 9/11 Al-AQueda and Hussein. After the invasion, Al-Queda moved into Iraq, and prior to the invasion, there were Al-Queda in the norther Kurdish territories, which Hussein had no presence or control over. It was in the the no fly northern zone.

You’re mixing things up. White House officials, including Colin Powell and CIA Chief George Tenet HAVE alleged and documented links between Hussein and al Qaeda. They have not yet alleged that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack.

Over time, perhaps they will.

>>Spin all you wish, the facts remain.

The facts, heh, as if you have any on your side.

Okay, let’s quote Frank Gaffney, who is very influential, along with being extremely well-informed. Capitals are my emphasis.

“Under the headline “Case Closed,” Steven Hayes reveals details from a highly classified, 16-page Defense Department memorandum sent last month to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The UNAVOIDABLE CONCLUSTION: Saddam Hussein’s regime had been guilty as charged - TIED FOR OVER A DECADE to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network (among other terrorist groups) for the purpose of waging attacks on their mutual foe, the United States.

The Pentagon memo was compiled for my friend and colleague, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. It was forwarded to the intelligence panel last month in response to bipartisan questions put to him by the Committee’s top Republican and Democratic members, Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, respectively. The memo’s contents reflected YEARS OF REOPRTINGcompiled by U.S. intelligence agencies from various sources.

According to Hayes, FITY INDIVIDUAL ITEMS (which he infers must be JUST THE TIP OF THE PROVERBIAL ICEBERG, since the bulk of materials seized from Iraqi files have yet to be analyzed) establish that Saddam Hussein collaborated extensively with bin Laden and his ilk in, for example, the following ways:

Top Iraqi intelligence officials and other trusted representatives of Saddam Hussein MET REPEATEDLLY WITH Osama bin Laden and his subordinates. Since Saddam personally insisted that the relationship between the two be kept secret, the contents of their conversations have apparently not yet been discovered. It is a safe bet, though, that operational cooperation was among the topics discussed.

According to the memo, U.S. intelligence received reports that Iraq provided SAFE HAVENS, MONEY, WEAPONS and fraudulent Iraqi and Syrian passports to al Qaeda. It also provided training in the manufacture and use of sophisticated explosives. In that connection, Laden reportedly specifically requested that “[Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed,] Iraqi intelligence’s premier explosives maker - especially skilled in making car bombs - remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required.”
A Malaysia-based Iraqi national, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, reportedly secured a job at the airport in Kuala Lumpur thanks to help from Iraq’s embassy in Malasia. He subsequently facilitated the movement of two of the September 11 hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi, through passport control and customs en route to an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. The memo notes that “One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as THE MASTER MIND of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole.”
“Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to OBTAIN POISONS AND GASES TRAINING. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for [Chemical and Biological Weapons] CBW-related training beginning in December 2000. Iraqi intelligence was ‘encouraged’ after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training.”
The memo indicates that there were as many as four meetings between the alleged MASTERMIND of the September 11th hijackings, Mohamed Atta, and the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani. “During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service [IIS] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office.”
In short, thanks to a much-maligned Pentagon effort to perform an independent review of existing intelligence on Iraq — undertaken at Secretary Feith’s initiative - it is simply not possible any longer to claim that there is “no evidence” of links between Saddam and al Qaeda. It behooves most especially those who have access to the full classified memo, like Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, to stop misleading the public on this point for transparently partisan purposes.”

And the evidence will only grow as we uncover more.

Produce the links or documents and I would be more than willing to reconsider my position based on the veracity and validity of those documents.

Thanks.

>>Produce the links or documents and I would be more than willing to reconsider my position based on the veracity and validity of those documents.

Gaffney’s carried on the Jewish World Review at http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney.html.

Go into the archives at the bottom to find his column entitle,”Tied to terror,” if I recall.

You’ll have to go into the archives or hit your local library to read the Stephen Hayes analysis of the leaked CIA documents. He’s the one who broke it.

The point is that this is all out there, but the liberal media are typically refusing to do even the basics, because it A) will help Bush and those meany Republicans, and B) it will make them look as clueless as most journalists are.

You’d be stunned at the amount of material you’ve never seen related to all kinds of subjects that never gets picked up by the liberal media.

It’d knock you over with a feather.

Thanks, Richard, I will check it out. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the media. All people have biases, and a great many selectively view the media for like, kind, and quality news and commentary. Many liberals have commented an opposing view on the media, some even here in the archives. Overall, I think the media does a decent job of covering the news from all perspectives.

>>Many liberals have commented an opposing view on the media, some even here in the archives. Overall, I think the media does a decent job of covering the news from all perspectives.

Oh, geez, come one. Republicans treat journalists like they’re enemy combatants.

Again, Clinton’s Chinagate scandal was replete with obstruction of justice, disappearing witnesses, perjury, corrupt judicial decisions by Clinton judges, abuse of power within the Justice Dept. itself, suitcases of cash from the Communist Chinese, and on and on and on and on.

Not to mention a dead White House employee under suspicious circumstances (which the Wash Post buried inside the Metro Section).

Toss in abuse of the IRS, abuse of the INC by naturalizing criminals including rapists and child-molesters, illegal FBI files, political blackmail, a “Secret Police” used by the White House as quited by former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, and it’s clear that Clinton’s abuse of office ABSOLUTELY DWARFED anything Nixon did.

But what did the liberal media cover? Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica, to the point that when guests on the Clinton News Network tried to bring up Chinagate, CNN talking heads would INTERUPT them to bring the covnersation back to the safe subject of Monica Lewinsky.

I will never trust the “mainstream” media on a single subject. NEVER.

OK, Richard, I checked out your resource as far as I could. I concede that your resource substantiates your claims. However, your resource does not make a believer out of me for two reasons. First problem occurs with the following from the article you cite:

Steven Hayes reveals details from a highly classified, 16-page Defense Department memorandum sent last month to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

If the details are from a highly classified document provided for perusal behind closed doors by the Senate Intelligence Committee, why were the details released to the public by Steven Hayes? And why isn’t Steven Hayes being indicted for leaking sensitive information.

Second problem is, a Democrat privy to the memorandum apparently contradicts the conclusions from the memorandum data as the article quotes:

It behooves most especially those who have access to the full classified memo, like Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, to stop misleading the public on this point for transparently partisan purpose.

And Jay Rockefeller is curiously silent. It seems to be a case of the kettle calling the pot black for Gaffney to fail to recognize any political motive for selected details of the memorandum to be leaked in support of the President, details that apparently should never have been leaked in the first place, while hiding the evidence for any conclusions one way or the other under the cloak of National Security, presumeably, the reason for the memorandum remaining highly classified.

All appears very politically cloak and dagger to me and provides no evidence whatsoever that the public can scrutinize and make up their own mind about. One can believe the leaker while ignoring any possible political motive, while chastising those who have seen the memorandum first hand and refute the conclusions drawn by those who seize upon the “leaked” tidbits as proof.

I appreciate the fact that the conclusions drawn by Gaffney may be correct, and that is enough for many to accept them as true and valid. However, no proof to me as a skeptic of all powerful figures in government exists in the reference you cited.

>>I concede that your resource substantiates your claims. However, your resource does not make a believer out of me for two reasons. First problem occurs with the following from the article you cite:
Steven Hayes reveals details from a highly classified, 16-page Defense Department memorandum sent last month to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
If the details are from a highly classified document provided for perusal behind closed doors by the Senate Intelligence Committee, why were the details released to the public by Steven Hayes? And why isn’t Steven Hayes being indicted for leaking sensitive information.,

Uh, Dave, just curious, but are you a 22-year-old kid? Because this is standard operating procedure in Washington. Leaks are made all the time without fear of prosecution. Leaks can be made for legitimate reasons, like defending a president against the lies of the opposition, or to inform the public.

>>Second problem is, a Democrat privy to the memorandum apparently contradicts the conclusions from the memorandum data as the article quotes:
It behooves most especially those who have access to the full classified memo, like Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin, to stop misleading the public on this point for transparently partisan purpose.

If you trust a hack politician like Levin over Frank Gaffney, fine. I don’t. If it was Biden making the criticism, that would have some weight. Levin doesn’t, and I’ve seen him many times say things that were self-apparently false. He lies for political reasons.

But again, if you read the quotes from the report itself, it does come to the conclusion that Hussein had ties to al Qaeda. So who do you believe, your own lying eyes, or Carl Levin, Beltway politician?

>>One can believe the leaker while ignoring any possible political motive, while chastising those who have seen the memorandum first hand and refute the conclusions drawn by those who seize upon the “leaked” tidbits as proof.

From what I’ve seen, almost no one has refuted it. Dem’s are avoiding the subject almost entirely, which implies they don’t want it discussed, because it vindicates Bush.

The Bush administration might well have a legitimate motive not to make the case, because it might reveal our intelligence capabilities or sources. As Bush has said, much of what happens during the war on terrorism will not be seen.

>>I appreciate the fact that the conclusions drawn by Gaffney may be correct, and that is enough for many to accept them as true and valid. However, no proof to me as a skeptic of all powerful figures in government exists in the reference you cited.

In other words, nothing will convince you other than a videotaped Bin Laden confession.

“Leaks are made all the time without fear of prosecution. Leaks can be made for legitimate reasons, like defending a president against the lies of the opposition, or to inform the public.”

And you are not indignant about such violation of law when it is a conservative president? Hmmm….

” If you trust a hack politician like Levin over Frank Gaffney, fine. I don’t.”

If you trust those in government working behind closed doors with reported information they cannot of course reveal, you are far more trusting than the Founding Fathers ever intended voters to be.

But I need to move on to more current articles. Thanks for the discussion though and the reference.

>>”Leaks are made all the time without fear of prosecution. Leaks can be made for legitimate reasons, like defending a president against the lies of the opposition, or to inform the public.”

>>And you are not indignant about such violation of law when it is a conservative president? Hmmm….

The system’s ugly, but it works. I get more outraged at the result, which in this case is benign, than the leak itself.

If anyone leaks information that damages the country or unduly hurts an individual, I’ll get upset.

” If you trust a hack politician like Levin over Frank Gaffney, fine. I don’t.”

>>If you trust those in government working behind closed doors with reported information they cannot of course reveal, you are far more trusting than the Founding Fathers ever intended voters to be.

It hsa become crystal clear to me that Democrats learned from Bill Clinton to tell the Big Lie. I’ve seen Levin tell some real whoppers.

Gaffney has always been credible when I’ve read or seen him. I rest my case.