Bush Lied About Success of Iraq Conflict, Admit...

Originally posted by zeeblebot
failure is not an option.

It's an inevitability.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung

Was it a good idea for him to lie? Was it a responsible lie or an irresponsible lie?

Does anyone get nervous when we start debating the relative merits of the rationale behind telling lies, when you consider the lives it has condemned on both sides?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=7373300&ch=4226716&src=news

Man, I hate videos.

I'm going to paraphrase because I can't easily rewind the video to get the words right and don't have a transcript.

[i]"We asked President Bush if he felt we would fail in Iraq in 2006."

BUSH: "Yeah, I thought we were failing. ...[text shortened]... s it a good idea for him to lie? Was it a responsible lie or an irresponsible lie?

I had to laugh at this 'one on one ' with the Preseident film clip. The whole clip was 2 minutes and 39 seconds long. So that was the extent of her one on one? We hear two whole questions.... so that was it? Seemed like some fancy editing going on here by the folks at ABC News but I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

The clip indicates the President thought the effort was failing (or had the posssibility of failing) .... Of course, putting it in context , this was the time that the 'surge' was started and General Petraeus took over the show in Iraq

To construe from this film clip that the President was lying is quite a feat

Maybe the question should be ... after the change in strategy effected by General Petraeus, whats the situation today? Better or worse than October 2006?

I can anticipate the responses already but I'm sure we will hear from the 'usual suspects'

Originally posted by SMSBear716
Maybe the question should be ... after the change in strategy effected by General Petraeus, whats the situation today? Better or worse than October 2006?

How can we possibly know for sure? We can't really trust what comes out of the Pentagon or the White House anymore. We can't really trust the regime that is utterly beholden to them in Baghdad. We obviously can't put much trust in what the insurgents tell us. Or 'opposition groups'. Or what demented Islamist groups say. Or secular Baathists. We can't really believe the Iranians. We can't really trust what anyone in the U.N. or any such multi-lateral agencies tells us because mealy mouthed triangulation is their lifeblood. We can't place too much store on what journalists tell us because they don't really leave the Green Zone or maybe they even just fax their copy from Dubai or Kuwait. NGO workers are just as confined as journalists. We can't really trust what leftist ranters say on web sites. We can't place too much trust in what armchair commentators like SMSBear716 and myself say - what do we know? How can anyone know anything for sure? Take General Petraeus' word for it if you want to. It's your right to do so.

Originally posted by FMF
How can anyone know anything for sure?

Ahhh relativism and the disavowal of any absolute truth, the last vestige of any scoundrel!

Originally posted by kmax87
Ahhh relativism and the disavowal of any absolute truth, the last vestige of any scoundrel!

you could tell by his ears.

Originally posted by zeeblebot
you could tell by his ears.

Don't tease him he'll take off on you!

Originally posted by kmax87
Ahhh relativism and the disavowal of any absolute truth, the last vestige of any scoundrel!

You obviously didn't understand my post, then. Or you don't know what the word relativism means. Why don't you have a stab at suggesting how anyone can obtain the absolute truth about the situation in Iraq?

How ironic that on the rather masturbatory thread you started called "Funeral Of The Vanities" you said this: In a sentence, the forum has become increasingly bland, and without any reward for a clever put down, it only encourages the thoughtless to make increasing numbers of inane responses.

Now here you are with "Ahhh relativism and the disavowal of any absolute truth, the last vestige of any scoundrel!" in response to a post that simply lamented the fact that everything coming out of Iraq seems to be either duckspeak or malevolent duplicity.

Which is it to be? Is your retort "a clever put down" or is it an "inane response" from somebody, in this instance, momentarily "thoughtless"?

Originally posted by FMF
Why don't you have a stab at suggesting how anyone [b]can obtain the absolute truth about the situation in Iraq?[/b]

Do you really want the truth? I dont think you can handle the truth! Your Mary Poppins disingeniousness at ruminating over how anyone can fathom the truth is a bit like Gidget saying now how did I get pregnant? Was it that boy that I kissed? Or was it that toilet seat I sat on?

The absolute truth of the situation in Iraq is that 37 years ago or so, America, for reasons that suited its agenda in the middle east after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the Ayatollahs brought secular humanist consumerism to an end, propped up one of the bloodiest regimes of recent times, in order that they could have a counter weight to the fundamentalist theocracy that had developed in the region. (Largely as a result of the Wests refusal to be told by an Oxford educated Persian how much the price of oil should be)

Fast forward a bitter cross border war, and an increasingly meglomaniacal Sadam who then goes for Kuwait which ushers in the last 17 years of instability in the region with the respite between outright conflict being very brief.

And then because of Sadam finally proposing a oil bourse trading oil in euros and other currencies, which would unlock the trade of oil being conducted exclusively in US dollars, and before anyone can say Who is Hans Blix, Weapons of Mass Destruction create a pretext that plunge the country fully into war again.

And you want to know what the truth is in Iraq?

Because you wouldn't know it even if it sat on you, here it is.

The truth is that the US while they are in Iraq will never be the cause of a peaceful unity being created. Too many people have been shot up by contracted security guards. Too many villages have been raised to the ground. Too many women and children have been senselessly slaughtered.

Democracy came out of revolution in America, because you had a population of Englishmen who were not prepared to be treated less than any Englishman would have been in his home country. In short because Englishmen in the New World were denied the rights of representation that they had enjoyed in their homeland, they agitated and rebelled and built up a system that would enshrine those rights for all to see.

How does America expect democracy to flourish in a land where a notion of equality amongst men has never really been enjoyed? So the stated objective of this middle east road map, is to establish a foundation for a way of life never experienced before. In America where it did flourish, it took the concerted effort and sacrifice of many men who were willing to die for a principle. Thats why America has had an enduring legacy with the practice of democracy. And yet you are still looking for the truth as to what could be going on in Iraq?

Nothing is going on other than a puppet being installed in a house of cards built on sand. What more do you need to know?

Originally posted by FMF
You obviously didn't understand my post, then.

Ronnie, you're down one reply. Are you taking a nap? Need some jelly beans?

Originally posted by kmax87
The absolute truth of the situation in Iraq is that 37 years ago or so, America, for reasons that suited its agenda in the middle east after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the Ayatollahs brought secular humanist consumerism to an end, propped up one of the bloodiest regimes of recent times...

You're preaching to the converted, my friend. And still missing the point. Spectacularly. The question posed by SMSBear716 was "[A]fter the change in strategy effected by General Petraeus, whats the situation today? Better or worse than October 2006?[/b] Either you didn't realize that, or this is a deliberate take-it-out-of-context and then lay-waste-to-it strawman exercise. You've served up as good an encapsulation of America in Iraq as I have read here. But the jelly beans bit makes you come across a little bit like DSR.

Originally posted by FMF
You're preaching to the converted, my friend. And still missing the point. Spectacularly. Either you didn't realize that, or this is a deliberate take-it-out-of-context and then lay-waste-to-it strawman exercise...The jelly beans bit makes you come across a little bit like DSR.

You happened to quote a line out of Ronnie's farewell speech to the nation on your profile, so thats the jelly bean reference.

As far as not answering the topic "After the change in strategy effected by General Petraeus, whats the situation today? Better or worse than October 2006? , the whole thrust of my comment was to point out the absurdity of thinking that the situation could ever improve while Iraq is denied its sovereignty and does not exercises its right to self determine the form and format of its own governance.

If I am preaching to the converted then I do apologize, but as ever with these sorts of debates we are expected to suspend our disbelief and ignore the elephant in the room, that America's continued presence and grooming of favorites produces an underlying instability in the country that even if we were to get an accurate picture of how things really were on the ground, how would we be able to evaluate the extent to which that was a function of American heavy handedness.

If any 'improvement' was proven to be a function of increased pressure aplied by the US, then in absolute terms my opinion for what it was worth would be that things far from getting better, were in actual fact getting a lot worse. At some point America will withdraw. Whether that be now or in 50 years, if peace in Iraq is only to be had as a result of a tighter reign held by the Americans, then the country, instead of being groomed for democracy, has simply continued on with the very same controls it has had in place since it was run by Saddam and at whatever point America finally withdraws, instead of any of that residual anger at tight control being only focussed inwards, America will also have additional concerns about latent anger focussed by extremist terrorists towards her.

All in all a lose lose scenario.