Another Downing Street Memo
According to The London Times, there's another leaked memo that indicates that Bush and Tony Blair had already agreed to work together on an invasion of Iraq by July of 2002, and were looking for ways to turn an illegal "regime change" legal.
The memo indicates that they'd decided the best bet was to force the U.N. to make a resolution that Hussein would refuse to follow, thus giving justification.
Just keep that in mind, the next time Bush claims that he tried to work with the U.N. to avoid a war in Iraq.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 6/13/2005 09:07:00 AM
16 Comments:
How do you work with an organization scamming millions of dollars from a corrupt Sadam regime. Carefully and strategically. I think that if you are decided that Bush lied relieves you from any responsibility for the war, then nothing is going to change your mind. If you can consider the positility that Bush didn't lie then you might read Powerline's assessment of the Blair memo.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 12:21:00 AM
It's not a matter of working with them, though. Based on these notes, it would appear that Bush never had any INTENTION of working with them, he was just trying to play them off of one another in order to justify war... all the while he was telling the American electorate and the Congress that he wanted to try every diplomatic means possible before going into a war he'd already decided on.
And your description of the U.N. sounds a lot like a description that could now be made of Halliburton in post-Saddam Iraq.
Liam
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 7:54:00 AM
Bush did work with the UN. Remember the UN resolution? What documentation do you have of Haliburton corruption?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 10:08:00 AM
No, that's the whole point of the notes. He wasn't working WITH the U.N., he was maneuvering them into issuing a resolution so that he could argue that Hussein wasn't complying "fully" and could then invade legally.
I still wonder where all the voices decrying the U.S. having to be the world's police force when we decided that it was up to *US* to punish someone for a violation of someone else's resolution.
And as to the corruption in KBR/Halliburton, how many reports have to come out indicating that they're overcharging for things, providing inadequate services, and billing the U.S. for state-of-the-art armor plating on their SUVs that rarely leave safe areas, while our fighting men and women are sent into combat zones in far less protected vehicles?
Liam.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 10:50:00 AM
Are you saying that the UN has been manipulated by the US? What a travesty.
As for Halliburton, I give up. How many reports have there been?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 12:37:00 PM
The travesty isn't in manipulating the UN. The travesty is manipulating the Congress and the citizens of this country *USING* the UN. C'mon Ralph, you're smart enough to know the difference.
Telling us all that he's doing everything he can to find a diplomatic solution, and then claiming after the fact that he was FORCED to go to war, when in fact he'd already decided to go to war and manipulated things in order to make that happen, that's just wrong behavior.
Bush lied. He lied to Congress, he lied to the American people, he lied to anyone and everyone he could to get into a war he wanted. He lied about any link to known terrorist organizations. He lied about weapons of mass destruction. He lied about trying to find a diplomatic solution. Why is it when Clinton lies about getting oral sex (something not at all related to his job), Republicans get all up in arms, but when Bush lies repeatedly about his job, that's perfectly okay? And why aren't the same people who said that Clinton's impeachment was justified by his lying to Congress not supporting an impeachment of Bush for exactly the same crime?
And as to Halliburton, I'll have to find some time to look up the articles in question. I know there have been several. Overcharging for gasoline (in the area of OPEC, for heaven's sake!), being caught in book keeping irregularities (you notice when people are got with irregularities, it always works in their favor). If you're really interested, I can probably do some searches and find some of the links.
Liam.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 5:27:00 PM
We really are at an impass here. Because you believe that Bush lied and decieved Congress and the public, there is no way that you can consider any other possibility. What I don't understand is how people become fixated with this idea to the exclusion of any other possibility. Once you accept that idea as truth, any number of correlaries must also be true. Halliburton is the devil, etc. I have to leave you with your position and move on.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 12:01:00 AM
See my latest comment on the Jose Padilla story. I do think that big corporations are... not evil, but inherently self-serving (to the point of detriment to others, if they can get away with it), which is why I don't support the Libertarian view that a free market economy would eliminate the need for the FDA. Why even now, the FDA doesn't regulate "food suppliments" and if one of them were to turn out to be highly damaging, many people would be hurt before they were taken off of the market. There's no proof of efficacy of any of them.
But I'm getting away from my point (I just woke up, the mind tends to wander). It is the close ties with major corporation, and the loosening of regulations intended to force them to be responsible that bothers me. It's fine to let people make a profit, but if you have a teen-aged child, you don't let the child make themselves a snack but leave the dishes for you, or start a project but leave the cleanup for someone else. And yet without pollution regulation, that's exactly what manufacturing companies would do. "Why is it our responsibility to spend our hard earned cash on cleaning the air?" they ask. My answer is "Because you're the one who befouled it in the QUEST for those dollars. I didn't get any of that money, why should I have to live with, or clean up, the mess?"
But I'm STILL not getting to my point.
My point is that my ultimate problem is that I honestly believe this President is the most damaging to this country that we've had in my lifetime. I've gotten too caught up in the minutia of carping over each individual misdeed, missing the fact that I'm coming across as just another Bush-basher highlighting each individual pecadillo rather than focusing on WHY I think Bush and the Neo Cons (playing a gig soon at an arena near you!) who are currently controlling his party are so damaging to this country. I'm going to try to get back to that.
Liam
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 8:46:00 AM
Do that. I have a hard time getting past the 'Bush Bad' mantra infused in your posts. I would truly like to understand how you got to that position. It eludes me and I can't bring myself to such an emotional pitch over Carter who created serious problems for us during his presidency and continues to undermine democracy throughout the world today or the immoral, self-serving Clintons. Maybe everyone in New Hampshire shares your Bush phobia but here in Blue State California quite a few (though certainly not the majority) like him, so help me out here. When and how did you uncover the problems with Bush? What is it that I am missing (or refuse to give appropriate importance). How can two people who share many common beliefs and goals come to such different judgement?
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 11:24:00 AM
Well, as I said, I'll try to cover them in the series of essays I plan to write. But my dislike of Bush goes back a long ways. I objected to BOTH candidates available to me in the 2000 elections (as I've said many times, of the "final four", I would rather John McCain, and second choice would have been Bill Bradley, so I was already set to dislike either Bush or Gore right from the start).
I didn't like his tactics in the election (impugning the record of a war veteran as though his own avoidance of active service were a badge of honor, and I mean McCain, not Kerry), I didn't like his apparent lack of intelligence (which is very likely just a lack of public speaking style), and I didn't like his smarmy "I'm one of y'all" attitude when he's clearly never been one of the "common folk".
But none of that made him damaging, it just made him a politician, not the first to wage a dirty campaign, pose as something he wasn't, or engage in frequent malapropisms.
I began to seriously question whether we were in trouble when he sat with his head in his hands for 10 minutes after learning we were under attack on 9/11. I'm not saying he should have immediately begun issuing orders, but he should have been asking for information, trying to ascertain what action TO take, not sat with head in hands doing NOTHING while as far as anyone knew, there could be 20 more planes coming, or even nukes.
And he went from minor annoyance to active detriment in my mind when he started pushing for a war when we already had one on our hands, opting not to finish the war at hand (bin Ladin, anyone?) in favor of going into another country that had NOTHING to do with the current war, in the process insulting many of the nations we're friendly with, and taking what had been a near-universal feeling of goodwill towards us from the other nations of the world (our friends were with us, those normally neutral were with us, and even our enemies were saying "Wow, you got screwed!" and giving us some leeway) and in less than a year turning into ever increasing disdain by those same nations.
But I'm starting to get into territory I plan to cover in the upcoming essays.
Liam.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 3:28:00 PM
Good start. What did you like about
Bill Bradley?
Thursday, June 16, 2005 12:01:00 AM
Bradley... I'm trying to think back, so much has happened in the four and a half years since then.
I think it was largely that he wasn't Bush or Gore, really. While everyone was attacking everyone else, the worst anyone could find to say about Bradley was that he was boring. And really, when you have other campaigns climbing into every private orafice trying to find anything that they can to discredit you so they can beat you, if the best they could find was that he's "boring", somehow that just doesn't seem so bad, compared with some of the others.
Now, would that have made for a good leader? I don't know, which was why I preferred McCain. And also, only the other Democrats got their licks in against Bradley, just like only the other Republicans got theirs in against McCain, so who knows what a truly concerted effort by the other side would have found about either.
But going into the primaries, I felt that in the election, I'd have someone to vote FOR if only either McCain or Bradley survived the process, and would end up only voting AGAINST someone if both Bush and Gore won. So of course they did.
(And for the record, even then I thought Bush was the worse of the two, if only by degrees. The primary charge against Gore was that he lied, but most (if not all) of the lies he was charged with telling were not in fact lies at all when examined in context. For example, the famous "I invented the internet" quote was actually "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.", a statement which has in fact been substantiated by Vint Cerf (referred by some as "the father of the internet").)
Liam.
Thursday, June 16, 2005 12:41:00 AM
Liam,
And after all he and Tipper were the models for Love Story.
Thursday, June 16, 2005 6:26:00 PM
It's been a while, but my recollection is that this one is also blown out of proportion.
I'll try to see if I can find the story, but if I'm remembering correctly (and I may not be), the actual quote was more along the lines of "We know Erich Segal (the author) and Tipper and I could well have been the model for...".
But let me do a little searching and find that one.
Liam.
Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:16:00 PM
Oh, I found it. I did remember incorrectly. The reason that one wasn't totally wrong was this quote from Erich Segal, author of "Love Story":
"When the author Erich Segal was asked about Gore's impression, he stated that the preppy hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled after Gore and Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones."
And in fact, Gore's actual quote was that he'd read in the Tennessean newspaper that Segal had said he and Tipper were the model. The paper, and Segal, had said he (Gore) was the model and hadn't mentioned Tipper, so in that part Gore got it wrong, but in as much as the story is mostly correct, this becomes a minor error of fact rather than the grandiose lie he was accused of.
Look Gore had his faults. Among them, he didn't strike me as being particularly Presidential (neither did, nor does, Bush). But I think the reason Gore was #3 on my list and Bush #4 is that most of the charges leveled at Gore were demonstrably exaggerations or falsehoods. Plus, there was a certain symmetry in having the Republican candidates as my first and last choices and the Democratic ones as my second and third, a symmetry that appealed to the independent centrist in me.
Liam.
Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:21:00 PM
Whoops. The quote is not (directly) from Erich Segal, obviously (most people don't speak of themselves in that way).
But the point is that Gore had mentioned ONCE in a late night interview that he'd read something in a newspaper, something which is verifiably IN that newspaper, and he'd gotten a (relatively) minor detail wrong.
But I've now officially given this more time than it deserves, so... I move on.
Liam.
Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:24:00 PM
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