Rethinking the Iraq Critics

Chris of AZ

No supersecret info required to determine Barone is lying.

Barone said the Silberman-Robb commission determined that nobody misused the intelligence. He states this unequivocally.

However, right in the overview of their report, the commission says that they were not authorized to determine if the intelligence was misused.

Tell me, Chris, when the Silberman-Robb report specifically states that they did not investigate and were not allowed to investigate misuse of intelligence, how can Barone honestly claim that Silberman-Robb investigated and found no misues of the intelligence? Please tell me, because it is logically impossible for Barone to be telling the truth, which means he is either clueless as to the scope of the commission, or more likely, is lying, to promote a failed Republican agenda.

The problem is not liberals; the problem is people such as yourself who completely refuse to see when partisan folks like Barone, Limbaugh, Hannity, Kristol, Malkin, and other assorted pieces of garbage will directly lie to you, verifiable lies, and you continue to believe them, even when it is proven to you that they have lied.

Don't feel bad if you supported the war and now realize that you were lied to from the beginning about it. Intelligent, rational, and honest people should by now have been able to change their original position. People who cannot accept that they were duped, used, misdirected, and made to look stupid are the only ones maintaining their steadfast stance that the Bush administration did not knowingly lie, and people like Barone are feeding you more lies to ensure that you maintain those beliefs. Your entire faith in the administration was built upon lies, and is now being reinforced by more lies, and you are either too stupid or too stubborn to face it.

Start Thinking for Yourself

"Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others."

Why don't you tell that to the 5-year-old boy who fatally shot his 4-year-old sister with his father's gun? You call that a capability and will to kill? Meanwhile, you've taken a threat that was isolated in Iraq and managed to re-pervert the faulty intelligence to make a case for a war that is bankrupting this country and never should have happened. Yes, conventional warfare is a great solution to fight terrorism (this is sarcasm). Would not a surgical strike have worked somewhat better to take out Saddam? You are a dangerous man with perspectives that are not good for this country. Flush your "liberal" and "conservative" and "left" and "right" down the toilet and start thinking for yourself and doing what is right for this country and not just what makes you cool in the Sean Hannity club that must mean so much to you. Do you also chant "for more years" whenever George W. Bush appears at a GOP fundraiser? No surprise here.

Gutless

"Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, ...."

With these words, the author makes it clear his is a political agenda. He doesn't want to objectively present the argument; he simply wants to be inflammatory and incendiary. He has no credibility.

As to his argument that we really don't know what happened that the time decisions were being made; there is some validity. However, he overlooks the fact that even the US intelligence agencies were highly suspicious of the "evidence" Bush was using to justify the war. A lot of the 'information' was coming from a single source which had not been verified as reliable. Case in point was the Niger/Yellowcake story that was found to be unsupported. Yet, Bush went forward despite facts to the contrary. Even after Bush had invaded, he grabbed at anything to justify his rash and reckless actions. Case in point is the "portable chemical weapons labs" which were later (after being plastered all over the news as absolute proof of the danger) found to be portable desal units to make drinking water.

While it is true "There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups." Again, the author uses a false logic to sucker the reader into his political agenda. He leaves out the fact the contact was only to tell them to stay out of Iraq. Saddam didn't want in competition in his tyrannical rule of the country. These groups - particularly al Qadea - could stir up opposition to his party and his power. He had bigger headaches ( like the UN) and didn't need the additional distractions. If I tell some racist neo-Nazi to stay away from my house, does that mean I'm a neo-Nazi? No.

Saddam and Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11 and were NO THREAT to the US. He didn't have WMDs and he had no actual capability to produce them. The neocons running the White House just wanted an excuse top invade and used whatever means necessary. Even if it meant lying to the American people.

Eric of ME, I'm glad you are so confident that you know that Mr. Barone is lying, as I'm sure you have had access to some supersecret information that no one else was privy to.

Oh, btw, nice how you pull out a section of the Silberman-Robb commission report which half-heartedly supports your argument. However, this is what I have come to expect from liberals on the Iraq War.

Feith and Barone

Comparing Feith with Sherwood and Churchill? Well, okay. But, honestly, doesn't this probably move, sir, you from commentator to advocate?

Barone Blatantly Lies

I pity the fools who read and believed anything Barone has to say, because Barone is either a liar, incredibly stupid, astoundingly ignorant, or a combination of all three, which is likely the case. Barone falsely claims the following: "The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded."

Barone is blatantly lying. Silberman-Robb (aka "The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction") was mandated to discern what had occurred in a specific scope; they could NOT investigate any ppoliticization, lying, or other misuse of prewar intelliegence, or exactly what Barone is claiming the Commission did investigate and learn. In fact, the Silberman-Robb Commission stated the following, in the Overview section, on page 8 of the unclassified version of the report: "Finally, we emphasize two points about the scope of this Commission’s charter,

particularly with respect to the Iraq question..... Second, we were

not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments

they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we

interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of

our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the

Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about

Iraq’s weapons programs—not to review how policymakers subsequently

used that information."

Guys like Barone will continue to mislead, and reinforce the doubting Thomases among you, in order to save his face after having been so wrong so many times. He will lie to you, and, sadly, some of you will believe it.

Douglas Feith

The attempt to compare Douglas Feith described by Gen Frank as "The DUMBEST Man I ever Met" and by Lawrece Wilkerson as "The STUPIDEST" to the writings of Robert Sherwood & Winston Churchill is an UNMITIGATED INSULT to the Memory of both these INTELLIGENT & Patriotic MEN. For Mr Barone to call Doug;las Feiths book "Well Sourced" is an AFFRONT to readers

Douglas Feith

The attempt to compare Douglas Feith described by Gen Frank as "The DUMBEST Man I ever Met" and by Lawrece Wilkerson as "The STUPIDEST" to the writings of Robert Sherwood & Winston Churchill is an UNMITIGATED INSULT to the Memory of both these INTELLIGENT & Patriotic MEN. For Mr Barone to call Doug;las Feiths book "Well Sourced" is an AFFRONT to readers

Being right isn't good enough for Mr. Barone

Yes, in typical conservative fashion Barone portrays the critics of the war (the ones who were right all along) as naive, slow-witted and too literal. We''re fools for believing the very specific claims of Rumsfeld, Powell and Cheney.

Apparently, we should have just trusted the Bush administration, and forgiven them when the claims of WMDs proved to be false. When we were threatened with mushroom clouds, we should have seen this as merely a metaphor. When Rumsfeld said we know where the WMDs are "in and around Tikrit" - we should have understood that as we know where weapons might be one day.

Well, Mr. Barone and Feith should realize people don''t like being lied to. No amount of spin, rationalization or blatant rewriting of history will change this fact.

Full of holes - pick your object

The narrative that was sold to the American public was deceptive at best. There are two or three or more sides to every story and this one is no exception. Of course some truth lay at the bottom of this tale, all great fiction is tinged with truths which ground it in the real world.

The real world is far more complex than a simple, washed out story can convey. Just as this article does, the administration washed and washed this tale until the true believers became washers themselves, unable to even use their own common sense.

Did Saddam have WMD? Yes, we gave it to him to fight Iran.

Did Saddam use WMD on his own people? If you consider the Kurds Iraqi, which Saddam did not, and remember they joined Iran in an attempt to overthrow Saddam, well is that justification (there were kids), in a time of war who could say.

Did the world believe by '03 that S still had WMD? No, at all, some doubted it, some where not sure, even we where not sure. Hence the inspectors and Blix says no. If we don't believe him what was the point of sending him if not for show?

As for the poorly received story the administration told. I remember near 95% of Americans bought it, the media sure did. Until a few started to ask questions. Then the story changed, not our perception of it, the actual story being sold. If I remember correctly building democracy was a last minute, last stand story. "The administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around"... WMD not found? Sorry, no, this administration could not keep its lies straight enough for the critics to frame anything. Besides the fact that no WMD have been found was not part of the public (non-progressive) narrative until well into the war. Even then GWB tried to control the message by deriding the very man he picked to evaluate the situation.

This administration has lied, not merely mislead, and no amount of blaming the public for not getting IT will change that absolute fact. This is yet one more blame the victim routine by republicans - a giant, mass hysteria boondoggle. The snake is misunderstood while the bitten, well tough, they should have known better. Its a snake.