Democrats of eastern Pennsylvania opposed the Republican administration’s war.
They were suspicious of the shifting justifications for it. They weren’t interested in fighting to free anyone. They denounced the president’s restrictions on civil liberties. And they predicted the bloodshed would lead to bigger disasters.
This wasn’t the Iraq war. It was the Civil War.
Seven score and more years ago, as the Rebel army marched for Gettysburg, in south-central Pennsylvania, Democrats of the Keystone State were doing all they could to stop Abraham Lincoln’s war against the break-away Southern Confederacy.
“What has provoked, of late, the popular hostility for President Lincoln?” The Allentown [Pa.] Democrat, a weekly newspaper, asked in 1863, halfway into the four-year war. “We answer: The general belief that he really means to destroy, while affecting an anxiety to save, the American Union.”
History books seldom tell the story, but the dissent presented in Pennsylvania’s newspapers during the Civil War was part of a significant Northern campaign to leave the South alone, even as a separate nation.
At the time, The Allentown Democrat was the most popular English-language paper in a borough of 8,000, where most of the residents still spoke German. Allentown also had four German-language newspapers and a second one in English.
The Democrat was a zealous advocate of the region’s Democratic Party. Throughout the Civil War, it railed against Lincoln and his policies.
“There are but two parties in this county and state, the Democratic and the Abolition [Republican] parties,” The Democrat editorialized on Jan. 21, 1863. “With one we had peace and prosperity as a Nation. With the other, we have war, bloodshed and desolation.”
Indifference to slavery
The Allentown Democrat appealed to readers who were indifferent to Southern slavery, uninspired to defend the Union, and alarmed by Lincoln’s arrests of “disloyal” political leaders and his closings of opposition newspapers.
Another Democratic organ was the German-language Der Unabhaengiger Republikaner (The Independent Republican), an Allentown weekly named by Democrats years before there was a Republican Party. Down the Lehigh River in Easton, Pa., the Democratic paper was The Argus.
Lincoln’s war was unlawful, The Allentown Democrat said, because nothing in the Constitution allowed the federal use of force to keep states in the Union.
And when Lincoln later issued his Emancipation Proclamation, promising post-war freedom to Southern slaves, the newspaper’s editorials were full of horror. Freeing the slaves left no room for a compromise that could end the war, The Democrat repeatedly asserted.
The newspaper reminded its readers that Lincoln once promised to take no such measure. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists,” the Republican president had said in his March 4, 1861, first inaugural address. “I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
“Were those his honest convictions?” the paper asked in its March 25, 1863, edition. “Or was he even then trying to dupe and blindfold the people? If he had ‘no inclination to do so’ then, what peculiar change came o’er the spirit of his dreams since?”
Lincoln apparently had hoped his inaugural address would calm an apprehensive South. The Slave States had threatened secession if he were elected in 1860, and he was aware that even the Free States of the North were divided over his presidency.
In the 1860 election, Lehigh County, Pa., had endorsed Lincoln uneasily, giving him 4,170 votes while casting 4,094 ballots for uncommitted Democratic electors. Neighboring Northampton County had rejected the man from Illinois, casting 4,478 for an obscure Democrat and 3,849 for Lincoln.
‘First Defenders’
Nationally, Lincoln attracted barely 40 percent of the popular vote, but won 180 of 303 votes in the electoral college. His first speech as president, allowing for “slavery where it exists,” was aimed at steadying the rocking ship of state. It didn’t work.
On April 12, 1861, the new Confederate army fired on U.S. forces at Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. No one died in two days of cannon exchanges, but America’s deadliest war had begun.
The Allentown Democrat’s reaction to these first shots has been lost to time. The paper’s spring 1861 editions are missing from archives of the Lehigh County Historical Society.
But six days after Fort Sumter, 48 men from Allentown and Easton hopped a train to Washington, D.C., to join a few thousand other “First Defenders” in protecting the capital from the Rebel army gathering south of the Potomac.
The Pennsylvanians found trouble sooner than they expected. As they changed trains in Baltimore, Southern sympathizers assaulted them.
“Two of my men were hurt with clubs and stones,” Capt. Thomas Yeager of the Allen Infantry, the Allentown militia group, reported after his men reached Washington. “We have the stones in our headquarters.” Yeager’s letter was published in The Lehigh Patriot, a German-language paper that supported Lincoln.
Eventually, an estimated 2,000 young men from Lehigh County and as many as 6,000 from Northampton County fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. But local involvement did not stop the arguing.
As the fighting intensified, so did the debate. Democratic newspapers continued to condemn the war, angering Lincoln’s supporters. The Allentown Democrat and Der Unabhaengiger Republikaner received threats.
On Aug. 22, 1861, Lehigh County Sheriff C.B. Haintz felt compelled to issue a public notice that warned “all the good citizens” of Allentown to abstain from acts of violence against the two newspapers.
‘Idol’ McClellan
Though it opposed the war, The Allentown Democrat did find one war hero on the Union side. He was Gen. George B. McClellan, a Democrat whom Lincoln picked to reorganize the Union army. Democrats counted on McClellan to make sure Lincoln did not make the abolition of slavery an official condition for peace.
Allentown’s Capt. Yeager served under McClellan on June 1, 1862, at the indecisive Battle of Fair Oaks, Va. Yeager was shot three times and died. His horse took 11 bullets.
After Fair Oaks, Republicans complained that McClellan had missed a golden opportunity to capture Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Southern forces and the Confederate capital of Richmond. On July 16, 1862, The Allentown Democrat defended the general, calling him the “idol” of his men.
McClellan again led his troops against Lee’s army at Antietam, Md., on Sept. 17, 1862. It was the bloodiest single day of fighting in American history, taking 4,800 lives and wounding 17,900. Cpl. Ignatz Gresser of Allentown’s 128th Regiment earned the Medal of Honor there for rescuing two wounded soldiers under heavy fire.
But again the two armies fought to a draw.
As Antietam’s battle-weary Yankees were evacuated to the Allentown Fairgrounds, canceling the 1862 Allentown Fair, The Democrat ran an editorial criticizing the failure of Lincoln and his administration to make a quick end to the war.
“We see them as firm in their convictions as ever that the insane policy of extermination and emancipation is the only one that can end it [the war],” the editorial said.
Der Unabhaengiger Republikaner accused Lincoln of prolonging the war to profit his Republican friends in New England industry.
A year earlier, a scandal over contractors overcharging the government and delivering shoddy supplies resulted in the reassignment of Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s first secretary of war, but the accusations of fraud and corruption continued.
The opinions of The Democrat and Der Republikaner offended some soldiers, who felt the North’s war critics only encouraged the South.
Pvt. William J. Reichard of the 128th Regiment wrote home from the war to tell his father in Allentown that Der Republikaner’s Democratic words amounted to treason.
“You ought to hear the boys scold about the editors for printing such treasonable editorials,” Reichard said. He urged his father to subscribe to the English-language Lehigh Register instead.
By year’s end, Lincoln had relieved Gen. McClellan from command for being too slow to attack and too comfortable with slavery. The Democrats were furious.
Emancipation decreed
Then, on Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. To the president’s opponents, the decree was further evidence that Lincoln was a war-mongerer, a liar and a fool.
“It is a wicked, unconstitutional and, at the same time, ridiculous act which will draw down upon the President at once the condemnation and laughter of the world,” The Democrat declared six days after the proclamation. “If negro slavery is the cause of the war, as alleged by President Lincoln in his message, why did it not produce war for the last eighty years?”
The newspaper rejected the idea that black people were equal to whites. It reported that Lincoln’s policies already had burdened the North with the cost of caring for thousands of runaway slaves.
“Abolitionism, in its blind and crazy attempt to set free a few millions of African slaves, better off here in the condition of slaves than in their native country, has brought the terrible calamity of substantial slavery upon the masses of our laboring white men and women,” The Democrat said.
Lincoln’s restrictions on civil liberties, allowing the Union Army to arrest anyone suspected of aiding the South, were another major target for The Democrat’s editorials.
The paper was particularly alarmed by the president’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, a constitutional protection that normally prohibits the arrest of any citizen without immediately showing a court the legal grounds for the arrest.
The Union Army arrested Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio Democratic leader, and put him before a secret military tribunal on charges he made disloyal speeches. When the tribunal convicted Vallandigham, Lincoln exiled him to the South, which then sent him to Canada. The Allentown Democrat saw a dangerous precedent.
“We ask, is it reasonable for us to apprehend that the United States may experience a coup d’etat, converting the republic into a despotism and placing an absolute dictator in the White House?” the newspaper wondered on March 4, 1863.
“The glories of the past will become dimmed as the historian writes in future that thirty-three millions of white men lost their own liberties for the sake of four millions of negroes who asked no interference in their behalf.”
Lincoln’s orders also allowed troops to close 300 newspapers during the Civil War. The Allentown Democrat was not timid in its antiwar, anti-emancipation rhetoric, but it somehow avoided the government’s wrath.
Gettysburg battle
In June 1863, nerves were raw in the Lehigh Valley towns of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton. Lee was leading his Rebel army toward Pennsylvania. Lehigh and Northampton county officials were calling for reinforcements south of Harrisburg.
The Allentown Democrat was angry.
“When you hear a man say that he will not consent to a termination of this war until every vestige of slavery is eradicated from our soil,” the paper said June 17, “set him down as a coward, and as an Abolitionist who hates the Constitution.”
In late June, at Hagebuch’s Hotel at Eighth and Hamilton streets, Allentown, a fight broke out at the bar when someone criticized “Lincoln’s war.”
Then, 141 years ago today, Blue and Gray met at Gettysburg. As Northampton County’s 153rd Regiment battled the Rebels, 106 men of Lehigh County’s 38th Regiment left Allentown to support Union Gen. George G. Meade’s troops.
The 38th made it only to Chambersburg, Pa., where the unit was turned back because the battle was over.
Three days of violence at Gettysburg had killed more than 5,000 and wounded more than 10,000 on each side. Ten days later, many of the tired Union survivors were put on trains for New York City, where they had the bitter duty of controlling a four-day riot against the military draft.
Easton threw a wild celebration to welcome back Col. Charles Glanz and his scarred, sunburned 153rd Regiment. But the Union’s victory at Gettysburg had not changed the Democratic Party position.
The Allentown Democrat sneered at the Lehigh County Republican convention Aug. 29 in Snydersville. The paper described the Republican gathering as “a meagre affair,” having attracted a small group.
The Republicans heard a few speeches about “liberty, equality and fraternity,” the paper said. Then The Democrat, in describing the Republicans’ sympathy for black people, used racial slurs that cut as deep in that era as they do now.
Referendum on the war
The 1864 presidential election would be the decisive referendum on the Civil War. As the year began, the Union’s 1863 victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga combined to boost Republican hopes for re-electing Lincoln.
In Allentown, Pa., the optimism came through March 18, 1864, with the elections for local offices. Charles Klein, a Republican, defeated Democrat John Dillinger 748-665 for burgess, an office equivalent to mayor.
But as the presidential election approached, Lehigh Valley Democrats reminded voters that the war still had no end in sight. They argued that thousands of Americans were dying every month because Lincoln had failed to win the war or negotiate a peace.
In August, the Democratic Party nominated Gen. McClellan for president. Running against his former boss, McClellan called for a compromise that would ignore slavery but restore the Union.
Lincoln, by contrast, now dedicated himself unambiguously to freeing the slaves. His re-election prospects dimmed in mid-summer, but brightened on Sept. 2, when Union Gen. William T. Sherman captured Atlanta.
On Nov. 8, Lincoln was re-elected president. He won 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 233 electoral votes.
But with endorsements from The Allentown Democrat, Der Unabhaengiger Republikaner and The Easton Argus, McClellan won 64 percent of the vote in Lehigh and Northampton counties.
Pennsylvania went to Lincoln, but the Lehigh Valley said no to Lincoln’s war.
As he began a second term, Lincoln knew he had deep divisions to repair, North and South.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in,” he said March 4, 1865, in his second inaugural address.
Allentown’s Democratic newspapers complained immediately.
The president’s speech had an inappropriate “theological tone,” they said. In particular, they rejected his suggestion that God gave America the war as punishment for slavery. They said Lincoln was using theology to justify years of killing.
The Northern opposition to Lincoln reflected a natural revulsion to war and to a skepticism over the motives of a president steering the nation into dangerous and uncharted waters. In Pennsylvania, 99 percent white in 1860, the discord also demonstrated that many here cared little for the lives and liberty of black people.
As things turned out, Lincoln did not have to compromise. Freedom had its unconditional victory. But against a stream of arguments and objections, it took a lot of leadership and at least a little luck.
Frank Warner
Note: Much of this story first appeared June 29, 2003, in The [Allentown, Pa.] Morning Call.
This is a fine piece of writing Frank. Very relevant and very discouraging. I wonder how many of todays Appeasement Democrats would say that those times were different and that they would have supported Lincoln. It is a shame we have to go through this again and again. Why are otherwise admirable people simply deaf to the cries for freedom of distant or "lesser" folk.
Posted by: jj | July 01, 2004 at 10:33 PM
This "war" (Iraq)wasn't about freedom...
This "war" was about a "threat" from Iraq, of all places...
Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States during the Iraq/Iran war, during the Gulf War in which I played a part in, during the 12 yrs of sanctions, or 1 yr ago.
The shifting "justifications" were ridiculous at best. If it was done for "humanitarian" reasons, then why on earth would this admin state Saddam could remain in power if he disarmed? (thereby continuing to kill the itty bitty baaaaaaabies)
Manipulated data such as the Niger incident (yellowcake), the cartoon "mobile labs", the 45 min launch "theory", the aluminum tubes (cough!)
the 10 yr old college thesis found on the internet used by Powell, etc etc etc.
One bs justfication after another to take us into IRAQ, of all places...
Amazing what "patriotism" and fear tactics can do to a sheeplike nation.
I, as an AMERICAN and Veteran, I deserve revenge for 911. WE, as Americans deserve nothing less. Now this admin states Osama isn't really that big of a deal, and it's not their big priority. I do NOT however, deserve to be lied to, and "sold" manipulated data, contrary to the findings of the CIA, State Dept, Nuclear Agency, UN weapons inspectors, and US weapons inspectors.
Not everyone who disagrees with this administration's actions are what YOU deem "appeasement democrats"...Many are informed United States Citizens. I'm all for a war on terrorists.. but going into Iraq was the WRONG thing to do. This admin, (who cares if it's dem or repub), destroyed our name, destroyed our allies, and destroyed ANY chance we had for a "successful" war on terrorism. This destruction of our name and honor and a chance of a successful war on terror will not go down as being France of Germany's fault no matter HOW much we play the Patriotic card or "freedom fries" banter. It will be squarely placed upon this adminstrations failure to do what was right FIRST, and then continue doing everything wrong along the way. I could care less the "tagline" (rep or dem) placed at a govt officials name, if they do NOT do what is in the best interests of the PEOPLE of the United States, they shall be fired...We HAD the trust and will of the world on 912....Iraq, no matter WHAT the justification, was NOT 911. Saudi Arabia, (If one knows ANYTHING about terrorists ties etc), should have been waaaaaay above Iraq on the list of "concerned" Americans.
If Kerry becomes President, I will be on HIS ass also. THAT is the difference between an AMERICAN, and a blindly following sheep.
Posted by: A veteran | July 06, 2004 at 11:07 AM
Hey veteran:
You are gullible enough to take the Michael Moore distortions hook, line and sinker.
This war was about freedom but you can't accept that.
Iraq was shooting at US planes every chance they got for the last 12 years. You don't consider that a threat. Why don't you fly those planes?
One set of documents in the Niger incident turned out to be forgeries. For you, that is good enough to ignore all the other evidence. You sound like a juror in the OJ Simpson trial.
The aluminum tubes have NEVER been found in the rockets that apologists like you claim they were being made for. It seems that, like the WMDS, you have some missing weapons of your own. Any way you look at it, these tubes were being obtained by Iraq clandestinely -- a material breach of UN Resolutions.
The only manipulated data you are being "sold" is in Michael Moore's new movie -- and you can't get enough.
Posted by: truth_man | July 06, 2004 at 01:50 PM
Tell me how this war was about YOUR personal freedom OR the Iraqi's...
As for the firing at our planes? Hello... Iraq was contained. Would YOU fire at a plane that was occupying you here if this happened in the United States of America? I surely would fight tooth and nail.
"One set of documents in the Niger incident turned out to be forgeries. For you, that is good enough to ignore all the other evidence."
What evidence? The Niger incident that Joe Wilson was sent to investigate BY this admin was shown to not be what this admin stated...
In "The New Pentagon Papers," published last week on Salon.com, Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired lieutenant colonel formerly assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, writes, "I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to the Congress."
--President Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, declared that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger -- a bogus story that was discredited in the foreign press(AND Joe Wilson). Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his address to the U.N. Security Council, cited "solid" British evidence of Iraq's WMDs that was immediately exposed as 10-year-old data posted on the Internet by a graduate student.
Alum tubes--The vast majority of gas centrifuge experts in this country and abroad who are knowledgeable about this case reject the CIA's case and do not believe that the tubes are specifically designed for gas centrifuges. In addition, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have consistently expressed skepticism that the tubes are for centrifuges. In his February 7, 2003 report to the UN Security Council, Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's Director General, said: "Based on available evidence, the IAEA team has concluded that Iraq's efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to have been related to the manufacture of centrifuges."
Mobile labs--(remember the cartoon drawings shown to congress?)http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,973195,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/15/sprj.irq.no.labs/
"The only manipulated data you are being "sold" is in Michael Moore's new movie -- and you can't get enough."
I've done more research than you can possibly imagine concerning Iraq, the US Govt, and "threat analysis". Moore's movie is a simple "basic" understanding of the events that are happening and the ties of this admin to big corporations and Saudi funding. Everything given as PROOF of a threat from the tiny country of Iraq has been shown to be manipulated data, outright lies, or ridiculous findings NOT in sync with the CIA's, State Dept, UN weapons Inspectors, US weapons inspectors, etc assessments. Do yourself a favor and look into the Office of Special Plans, started by Rumsfeld. THERE is where you will find this "threat" came from...
"You are gullible enough to take the Michael Moore distortions hook, line and sinker. "
Moore has nothing to do with the proven manipulations this govt just put us through...Moore is NOT the issue, the MESSAGE is. I personally find Moore a fat, disheleved looking slob, but SOMEONE needs to counter the "opinions" of Oreilly, Hannity, and FOX news with a view of "hey waaaaaait a minute, if the US Govt is capable of thinking of Operation Northwoods, perhaps an admin with ties to the Saudi govt, big corporations, Enron, Unocal, etc MIGHT not be looking out for YOUR profits...
War is a racket, bottom line--Major General Smedley Butler.
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
again..."Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your govt. when it deserves it"..Mark Twain
Posted by: A Veteran | July 06, 2004 at 03:35 PM
Oh, I see. You do not care about freedom unless it is YOUR freedom. It does not matter to you that 300,000 Iraqis are in mass graves after being murdered by Saddam Hussein. It does not matter that Saddam Hussein invaded two countries. It does not matter that Saddam Hussein broke and defied UN resolutions for twelve years. As long as you can go to the movies every Friday night and see the likes of Fahrenheit 9/11, you are happy and we need to do nothing.
That's a very selfish attitude for someone who enjoys freedoms inherited from thousands who gave their lives for it.
Also, you failed to address the fact that Iraq was obtaining the high specification aluminum tubes clandestinely and in violation of UN sanctions. Why didn't Iraq obtain them the same legal way they obtained the rest of their aluminum tubes? Ask your "vast majority of gas centrifuge experts" to answer that question.
Also, why was it not a problem for you that Iraq continued to defy the United Nations? How many years and at what cost should we allow to contain Saddam Hussein?
Why does Britain intelligence still stand behind the claim that Iraq was seeking yellow cake uranium? Your "beyond my imagination" research should have an answer for this.
Posted by: truth_man | July 06, 2004 at 04:10 PM
"Oh, I see. You do not care about freedom unless it is YOUR freedom. It does not matter to you that 300,000 Iraqis are in mass graves after being murdered by Saddam Hussein."
I care about freedom, more than you know. The war wasn't ABOUT "freedom". Realize that simple truth and then begin here again. How many of those mass graves were between the Iraq/Iran war? How many of those mass graves were of the HWY of Death in 1991? How many of those mass graves were of men, women, and children that WE promised we would help get rid of Saddam in 1991 if THEY rose up.. WE left them to be executed. You can bring up the FOX news "mass graves" anthem over and over again, and Saddam was a "bad guy, a bad guy WE created and funded, but indeed a bad guy. But remember where a hell of alot of those "mass graves" came from.
"It does not matter that Saddam Hussein invaded two countries. It does not matter that Saddam Hussein broke and defied UN resolutions for twelve years."
Invaded two countries? Did you read the REST of the story? See, you only hear what YOU want to hear... HERE is the REST of the story... Saddam "invaded" Kuwait in August 1990 BECAUSE Kuwait was Illegally slant drilling...Saddam spoke with OUR April Glaspie (US Ambassador at the time) who told Saddam the United States has NO recourse in his actions regarding Kuwait...
During this time, the American people were "tricked" into a war/invasion of Kuwait by the wonderful "incubator story" in which the Iraqi army, supposedly came into a hospital, and threw out the babies from the incubators so they could use them for power etc...
More recently, in the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah.
In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."
Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."
But just weeks before the US bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions about the validity of the incubator tale.
Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital.
She had been coached – along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.
I spent almost eight months in the desert of Iraq, Oman, and Kuwait with 2nd Marine Division, on the words of a 15 yr old girl, a woman named April Glaspie, George Bush Sr, and the "Patriotism of the flag" over my eyes...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/us-iraq-lie.html
http://rwor.org/a/v19/940-49/944/lies.htm
"That's a very selfish attitude for someone who enjoys freedoms inherited from thousands who gave their lives for it."
I, and the men and women you speak of didn't fight for freedoms to be HAD, we did it to allow freedoms to be USED...
FREEDOM, begins when you say NO...
"Why didn't Iraq obtain them the same legal way they obtained the rest of their aluminum tubes? Ask your "vast majority of gas centrifuge experts" to answer that question. "
The issue is....The administration used manipulated data..and the UN weapons inspectors, the US weapons inspectors, the Nuclear agency ETC found the ADMINS info did not adhere to the TRUTH...Pretty simple, no threat, wasn't used for that purpose.
"Also, why was it not a problem for you that Iraq continued to defy the United Nations? How many years and at what cost should we allow to contain Saddam Hussein?"
Saddam was contained. Saddam never attacked in 29 yrs. How much was it worth to continue to contain Iraq? It worked quite well if you look at the FACTS....How much was attacking Iraq, destroying our name and honor, and killing Americans worth over Manipulated data sold to Americans and the world?
"Why does Britain intelligence still stand behind the claim that Iraq was seeking yellow cake uranium? Your "beyond my imagination" research should have an answer for this."
Joe Wilson, the man THIS admin sent to Iraq to find out about "yellow cake" has stated and shown it to be false. Perhaps you should ask Blair his reasoning behind staying with that info? Or Ask Dick Cheney why HE continues to bemoan the "threat" over and over again that keeps being proven wrong time and time again...
On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.
One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1
Posted by: A Veteran | July 06, 2004 at 06:19 PM
Your claims are tired and disproven many times over. I don't know why I bother but, here goes.
Regardless of your refusal to admit it, this war was about freedom. This blog sums it up perfectly:
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2004/02/liberation_was_.html
Many of those mass graves did indeed contain Kurds who rose up against Saddam after 1991. You talk as if they deserved it and Saddam was well in his rights to kill whole towns of men, women and children. Your potential as a humanitarian is zero.
Saddam invaded Kuwait because of slant drilling? That is not the reason he recently gave while on trial. Furthermore, the UN didn't agree that invading Kuwait was acceptable. Why is it acceptable to you?
And Saddam did indeed invade two countries: Iran and Kuwait. You suggest otherwise but give no explanation.
The claim that the US OK'd Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is another tired old lie. Again, this blog sums it up in perfectly clear terms:
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2003/12/april_glaspie_a.html
Regarding the aluminum tubes, you wrote "Pretty simple, no threat, wasn't used for that purpose."
Ironically, nobody can show where the tubes were actually used. They were never found in any mortars or rockets that were the claimed use. Furthermore, you continue to ignore the fact that they were obtained in violation of UN sanctions -- another material breach of UN resolutions. You find technicalities to criticize the US but excuse Saddam for mass murders, invasions of other countries and defiance of the UN. You are an apologist for Saddam Hussein.
Saddam was barely contained. The sanctions were becoming grotesquely immoral and porous. The fact is that we had no viable future alternative to war; the future threat was absolutely real.
Here's some more info on the yellow cake:
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373295039&p=1012571727085
Money quote:
"However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."
Here is some more info on Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material. Add this to you research that is already more than I can possibly imagine:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/May20030717.shtml
Money quotes:
"With this in mind, was what the President said truthful? Yes..."
"But the vital point is – or ought to be -- this: The case in favor of overthrowing Saddam’s regime was overwhelming, even without a frosting of yellowcake. That’s why members of Congress from both parties voted to authorize the President to use military force against Saddam more than three months before the State of the Union."
Guess what? Iraq sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are in Africa, too. See:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2003/07/whose_national__1.html
It seems there are quite a few reasons to believe that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. I guess you need to do more research.
Posted by: truth_man | July 06, 2004 at 10:42 PM
"Regardless of your refusal to admit it, this war was about freedom. This blog sums it up perfectly:"
I'm sorry did you just type a "blog" sums up the United States "justification" for war pal????
The justification for war was an IMMINENT THREAT
Proven wrong then, and proven wrong now...
"Many of those mass graves did indeed contain Kurds who rose up against Saddam after 1991. You talk as if they deserved it and Saddam was well in his rights to kill whole towns of men, women and children. Your potential as a humanitarian is zero. "
I just love how you guys dismiss debate and skip right to the name calling an lambasting... Simple O'reilly tactics and pure ASSumptions labeled with idiocy...We were discussing the mass graves, and how they WERE part of many wars etc., and YOU want to assume I think they deserve it.. How nice...
"Saddam invaded Kuwait because of slant drilling? That is not the reason he recently gave while on trial. Furthermore, the UN didn't agree that invading Kuwait was acceptable. Why is it acceptable to you?"
What was the reason he invaded???? and once again ASSUMING I think it's acceptable. The bottom line is, the "incubator story: )proven to be a fabricated story) helped take America into Iraq, when it was a simple measure of slant drilling.
"And Saddam did indeed invade two countries: Iran and Kuwait. You suggest otherwise but give no explanation."
Uh.. I gave an explanation. slant drilling for Iraq. If it's not the "free the Iraqi people" answer you expected..oh well... (also, Did Iraq have any issues with Iran concerning WATER?????)
"Ironically, nobody can show where the tubes were actually used."
Ironic aint it? Amazing it was stated they weren't used for the purpose OUR govt stated, but hey who says they weren't used for water slides right? I mean if they wern't used for our purpose we stated, I suppose we COULD say they were used for water slides... another "an unknown known is a known unknown un-beknowingly known..."?
"Saddam was barely contained. The sanctions were becoming grotesquely immoral and porous. The fact is that we had no viable future alternative to war; the future threat was absolutely real."
heh, "barely contained"? the future threat was absolutely real? Have you ever been to Iraq? Let me state this more clearly.. Have you ever heard the US Weapons inspectors or State dept in the last 5 or so yrs say Iraq was any more of a threat than they were between the Iraq/Iran war?
Proven manipulated data going against the research of the CIA, State Dept, UN/US weapons inspectors etc.. does NOT a threat make...
No threat, and CERTAINLY nowhere near an IMMINENT threat...Even TENET, (against the lie of BUSH saying he said it), stated Iraq wasnt an imminent threat to the US.
"You find technicalities to criticize the US but excuse Saddam for mass murders, invasions of other countries and defiance of the UN. You are an apologist for Saddam Hussein. "
Not the case at all...YOU want to continue calling Iraq a threat, when in fact the CIA, State dept etc disagrees. YOU want to talk about items such as Halabja (gassing his own peeeeople) when in fact it was a BATTLE between the Iraqi's and Iranians and at the time WE stated, and it was shown, that IRAN had done the gassing, and YOU want to continue down the road of "Saddam invaded Kuwait Iran etc" without putting the FULL picture in scope.. I'm not a Saddam Apologist in the least, and war was not an option over a manipulated data threat...
"Here's some more info on the yellow cake:
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373295039&p=1012571727085
Money quote:
"However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."
Thats great, and old news, and precisley what Joe Wilson was sent to research. And I'll be damned, look at the results. Joe Wilson came back and NOTHING THERE, and I'll be damned....
On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.
One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1
"But the vital point is – or ought to be -- this: The case in favor of overthrowing Saddam’s regime was overwhelming, even without a frosting of yellowcake. That’s why members of Congress from both parties voted to authorize the President to use military force against Saddam more than three months before the State of the Union."
I'm trying to remember now WHAT piece given to the world wasn't deemed manipulated, forged, or spit out by the Office of Special Plans. Let's see...
mobile labs? nope
Alum tubes? nope
yellowcake? nope
45 minute launch? nope
unmanned drones? nope
stockpiles of WMD's nope
10 yr old college thesis on the net as "evidence" nope
Everything proven wrong, Powell proven wrong, Condi proven wrong.....If there was SUCH a threat to the US, then manipulated, forged, data shouldn't have been needed to build a case against Iraq (which btw, flew in the face of the CIA, the State Dept, the US/UN weapons insepctors, the Nuclear Agency etc) Chalabi, Rumsfeld, and the Office of Special Plans would be a good place for any AMERICAN to direct their questions to......
"Guess what? Iraq sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are in Africa, too. See:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2003/07/whose_national__1.html
It seems there are quite a few reasons to believe that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. I guess you need to do more research."
Well, I went and did more research, as you asked, and here are the results....
you had a "great" sentence here from above..
With regard to reports that Iraq had sought uranium from two other countries, the Estimate says: "We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."
but then, you failed to put in the NEXT information from Tenet's statement... which is THIS. "Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious." Then Joe Wilson proved it wrong, and so did the Nuclear Agency...
Let's repeat what they SAID about this issue, since there are so many "reasons" to believe, and I need to do more research...“These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”
Posted by: A Veteran | July 07, 2004 at 05:24 PM
Let's take another look:
mobile labs? still questionable (contrary to your statement) -- never deemed fully suitable for helium making (as claimed) and never deemed fully suitable for manufacturing biological weapons.
Alum tubes? You failed to answer important questions regarding these and refuse to acknowledge they were obtained in violation of UN Resolutions.
yellowcake? Iraq was definitely pursuing it. You focus on one fake document (which I even admit) and, like an OJ Simpson juror, use it to throw out all the other facts.
45 minute launch? never claimed by Bush.
unmanned drones? drones were found
stockpiles of WMD's? There was no reason to believe that Saddam did not have WMDs. He had anthrax as late as 2001. Tell us where it is.
Now, let's take a step back and see what else we have.
Your April Glaspie story: a lie. Normally, I would simply say you were misinformed but it seems only fair that you should be held to the same truth standard that you apply to President Bush. You dwell on the forged yellowcake documents which don't even alter the conclusion. That's the best you've got. But the worst you have is a known falsehood. Despite claims of "research beyond belief," you still use a lie to attempt to make your feeble case.
In every case of your claimed Bush lies, there is very good evidence to show that he did not lie.
You loathe President Bush for his alledged lies yet you lie to make your case. Bush didn't lie; you did. You passed on some important questions (despite your "beyond belief" research). Your credibility is gone. Are you even, as you claim, a veteran? I have my doubts.
So, taking your example, now we will be like OJ Simpson jurors. Since you have been caught in a lie, we will ignore anything else you have to say. Besides, there is no sense debating someone who lies.
Posted by: truth_man | July 07, 2004 at 07:41 PM
"mobile labs? still questionable (contrary to your statement) -- never deemed fully suitable for helium making (as claimed)C."
and where is the evidence of a threat in this answer? Not pointing to a threat, but instead, AGAIN, pointing to ANTOHER IF, on top of an answer given --never deemed fully suitable for helium making (as claimed) and -- never deemed fully suitable for manufacturing biological weapons.
But chemical weapons experts, engineers, chemists and military systems experts contacted by The Observer , say the layout and equipment found on the trailers is entirely inconsistent with the vehicles being mobile labs.
A separate investigation published by the New York Times discloses that the trailers have now been investigated by THREE different teams of Western experts, with the third and most senior group of analysts apparently divided sharply over their function.
'I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter,' a senior analyst said of a tank supposed to be capable of multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms. The government's public report, he said, 'was a rushed job and looks political'.
That sure beats the hell out of ANOTHER "if"...
YOU say they can't say it was or wasnt?
again, That sure beats the hell out of ANOTHER "if"...
"Alum tubes? You failed to answer important questions regarding these and refuse to acknowledge they were obtained in violation of UN Resolutions."
and YOU fail to show they WERE a threat...
Three senior Iraqi nuclear scientists, stated in interviews that Iraq had no efforts to use the tubes in centrifuges. U.S. investigators in Iraq have not produced any
evidence to contradict these Iraqis’ statements, despite months of investigations.
However, a set of technical experts from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories reviewed the CIA analysis and disagreed with this interpretation because the tube dimensions were far from ideal for this purpose. In fact, the dimensions and the aluminum alloy were identical to those of tubes acquired for rockets by Iraq in the 1980s. Furthermore, the Iraqis had developed and tested centrifuges before the first Gulf War that were much more capable than those that could have been built with the imported tubes.
The DOE experts also pointed out that if these tubes were actually intended for centrifuges, there should be evidence of attempts by the Iraqis to acquire hundreds of thousands of other very specific components, but no such evidence existed. This critique of the CIA interpretation was seconded by the State Department’s intelligence branch and, independently, by an international group of centrifuge experts advising the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Now, have we cleared that one up also?
"yellowcake? Iraq was definitely pursuing it. You focus on one fake document (which I even admit) and, like an OJ Simpson juror, use it to throw out all the other facts."
Yeah? So NOW your changing your story from "they were trying to get it from Africa" --which the below AGAIN will show they weren't--, to "iraq was definately pursuing it.
You forgot to put this in your statement above, so let me reiterate it here...
"Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious." Then Joe Wilson proved it wrong, and so did the Nuclear Agency...
Let's repeat what they SAID about this issue, since there are so many "reasons" to believe, and I need to do more research...“These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.” The IAEA quickly realised that the documents - handed over by the US - were fake. The most glaring mistake was a letter purportedly signed by a Niger minister who had been out of office for 10 years.
"45 minute launch? never claimed by Bush."
Indeed, it was stated by Blair in a September dossier. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on Thursday also criticized British defense chief Geoff Hoon, saying it was "disturbed" he did not disclose full details of staff concerns over the dossier.
The initial failure of the Ministry of Defence to reveal details of those concerns was "unhelpful and potentially misleading," the committee's report said.
"unmanned drones? drones were found"
In Cincinnati, Bush insisted that "Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." Powell reiterated that claim in his presentation to the UN in February.
as for what was found...jesus.. yes they were FOUND, but get the whole story RIGHT....
Bush claims about Saddam's weapons capability have been undermined yet again with the discovery of remnants of Iraqi unmanned drones. The inside of their fuselage shows that they were never capable of spreading toxins but to were designed to fly reconnaissance missions, as claimed by US AIR FORCE officials before the war. (AP) - Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons.
The evidence gathered this summer matched the dissenting views of U.S. air force intelligence analysts who argued before the war with Iraq that the remotely piloted planes were unarmed reconnaissance drones.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/Iraq/2003/08/24/168088-ap.html
"stockpiles of WMD's? There was no reason to believe that Saddam did not have WMDs. He had anthrax as late as 2001. Tell us where it is."
DAVID KAY, FMR. U.S. CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Based on what I've seen is that we are very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons.
Kay has gone public with assertions that there were no large stockpiles of weapons, no biological labs, no advanced program, and no nuclear weapons.
The Weapons Inspectors have stated over and over again they got rid of aobut 90-95 percent of Iraq's WMD's around 1998, and anything that remained was probably useless.
The UN Inspectors, the US Inspectors etc etc etc., have all stated this...
"Your April Glaspie story: a lie. Normally, I would simply say you were misinformed but it seems only fair that you should be held to the same truth standard that you apply to President Bush. You dwell on the forged yellowcake documents which don't even alter the conclusion. That's the best you've got. But the worst you have is a known falsehood. Despite claims of "research beyond belief," you still use a lie to attempt to make your feeble case."
Do you not read the info I'm giving you? These arent "opinions", these are facts contrary to the admins proven manipulations. I fail to see where you think I'M making this up when I give you info
proving it.... As for April Glaspie??
HERE>BUT WE HAVE NO OPINION ON THE ARAB-ARAB CONFLICTS, LIKE YOUR BORDER DISAGREEMENT WITH KUWAIT.
I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that WE SHOULD EXPRESS NO OPINION ON THIS ISSUE AND THAT THE ISSUE IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AMERICA . James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.---APRIL GLASPIE
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html
"You loathe President Bush for his alledged lies yet you lie to make your case. Bush didn't lie; you did. You passed on some important questions (despite your "beyond belief" research). Your credibility is gone. Are you even, as you claim, a veteran? I have my doubts. "
Who lied? the US Inspectors? the UN Inspectors?
I've shut down your "opinions and assumptions" with facts. MY credibility is gone? lol yeah..
And as for not "believing" my "claim" of being a veteran, I could care less what you "think". Your "thoughts" and "ASSumptions" haven't done you well.
"So, taking your example, now we will be like OJ Simpson jurors. Since you have been caught in a lie, we will ignore anything else you have to say. Besides, there is no sense debating someone who lies."
Wow...I'm trying to recall the "lie"...but it seems my info has inflamed you PAST assumptions, beliefs, and hatred.. to outright ridiculing. I've given all you've asked of me. I think those who read our conversation up to this point are smart enough to realize your FOX news tactics..
Posted by: A Veteran | July 07, 2004 at 09:09 PM
"I've given all you've asked of me."
No you haven't.
You've ignored most of my questions.
Where is the anthrax Saddam had in 2001?
Why did Iraq obtain high specification aluminum tubes clandestinely in violation of UN sanctions when it bought other, lower specification aluminum tubes through legal channels? Where have these high specification tubes been used?
Why do you refuse to acknowledge that Iraq was in breach of UN Resolutions when it obtained these tubes?
In addition to ignoring my questions, many of your responses are non sequiturs. They don't even address the point at hand. What does being in the American Embassy in Kuwait in the 1960's have to do with April Glaspie? The fact is you indicated that April Glaspie gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait. This is false; it is a lie. The principals at that meeting contradict your claim.
Unmanned drones. Now, you are backpedalling. First, you said they didn't have them. Now, you say they did. Did you forget that
they flew further than allowed by UN Resolutions?
How about that "incubator story"? Where did it come from? Answer: Amnesty International. You blame Bush and Congress for Amnesty International's incorrect information. Should we now shut down Amnesty International?
Regardless, the bottom line is that you lied. I caught you in a lie. You can't get out of it.
Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Nobody in their right mind even disputes that. But you try to somehow justify it with. There were hundreds of thousands of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein but you focus on the technicalities of a few dozen (and even use a few lies) to protect a murderous dictator. How do you sleep at night?
Posted by: truth_man | July 08, 2004 at 01:27 PM
You havent caught anyone in a lie. If ANYONE has been caught in a "lie" it would be this admin's manipulated data? Do you ignore the references Ive given and continue on with "Iraq was a threat! Ruuun! Ruuuun! Coulda woulda shoulda, booga booga booga booga.."
Stop using the tactics of changing subjects, we were discussing a THREAT. You havent proved it STILL. We spoke of the Unmanned drones, Inver said they WERE NOT there, I stated (AND SHOWED), that they were manipulated in data, and the US Air Force stated they werent used for that purpose and practically laughed at the idea. As for the Anthrax, good question WHERE is it? Where is the threat they said he had stockpiles of. The Weapons Inspectors DISAGREE with YOUR big IF. Need I say more? lol of course not....
April Glaspie stated the above, and YOU say she didn't...Let me get this straight Mr TRUTH man... YOU are right because YOU say so, and disagree with documents provided??
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html
"What does being in the American Embassy in Kuwait in the 1960's have to do with April Glaspie?"
(uh......btw, she wasn't THERE in the 1960's, read the entire paragraph in the link above uhhhgain......)I see your "skimming" apparently. That doesn't work in research, kinda like when you forgot to add THIS extra part I called you out on earlier when YOU claimed the African yellowcake deal---> "Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious." GEORGE TENET (and lets not forget, Joe Wilson, and the Nuclear agency agreed.. NOTHING>...)
As for the aluminum tubes, the war wasn't over his breaching of aluminum tubs, the war was over the IMMINENT THREAT (which we were discussing if you recall) OF those tubes being used in a manner PROVEN to NOT be what the adminstration manipulated them into..
"How about that "incubator story"? Where did it come from?"
---"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, said of the incubator story in a 1995 interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper. He acknowledged "it was useful in mobilizing public opinion."
---"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time,"
---"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time,"
---"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time,"
THAT means it turned out to be false.. GET it now?
BRENT Scowcroft Bush Sr's National Security Advisor...Amnesty Internation reported it, the girl wasnt there, and Bush's national Sec Advisor stated it wasnt true. Are we clear on this now MR TRUTH, or shall we continue on with you desparately trying to believe it's not?
Shall I throw MORE in your face? here..
The key moment occurred on October 10, when a young woman named Nayirah appeared in front of a congressional committee. She told the committee, "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die."
Hill & Knowlton immediately faxed details of her speech to newsrooms across the country, according to CBC's Fifth Estate's documentary. The effect was electric. The babies in incubator stories became a lead item in newspapers, and on radio and TV all over the US.
It is interesting that no one – not the congressmen in the hearing, or any journalist present – bothered to find out the identity of the young woman. She was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and actually hadn't seen the "atrocities" she described take place. (When later confronted with the lack of evidence for her claims, the young woman said that she hadn't been in the hospital herself, but that a friend who had been there had told her about it.)
Perhaps you continue to believe the Gulf of Tonkin story, or maybe the Jessica Lynch story that was debunked...?
Manipulated Threat... Thats the topic, you haven't proved a threat, and neither did the admin to veterans, true Americans, or men and women with more common sense than to believe they can know Foreign Policy from ten minutes of FOX news a week...
"Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Nobody in their right mind even disputes that. But you try to somehow justify it with. There were hundreds of thousands of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein but you focus on the technicalities of a few dozen (and even use a few lies) to protect a murderous dictator. How do you sleep at night?"
Yes Saddam killed, and I'm not disputing that, OR justifying your (again) ASSumption....and no one is trying to "appease" or "protect" him..(another fine UNAmerican ASSumption I might say). The point is, YOU and the admin, (I could care less if they were dem or reb) are still lost in the Imminent threat theory that was shut down as the case for WAR, and now you're trying everything possible to cover your ass, and "appeasing" Wolfowitz, Perle, and the rest of these men we need to kick out of this country who destroyed our name and CONTINUE to do so haphazardly.
Try thinking of the Flag, the Country, and your Honor as an AMERICAN, and less about the damned "party"....
I sleep well at night as an American...counting sheep.
Posted by: A Veteran | July 08, 2004 at 06:06 PM
History has shown that when a dictator draws the United States into a war, there is only one way the United States can be sure that dictator won't cause more problems, which the Americans would be called upon to solve all over again. The only permanent solution is to remove that dictator and replace him with a democracy.
History has shown that, whenever a dictator is replaced with a democracy, human rights abuses plummet.
So everyone wins. The United States doesn't have to go out and beat the dictator all over again. That's America's biggest economic incentive in liberation, as if we need an economic incentive when dictators are torturing and murdering their people.
Democracies don't go to war with each other. Democracies are good for their people.
And yet dictators still manage to find their defenders.
Free the world.
Frank Warner
Posted by: Frank Warner | July 08, 2004 at 10:52 PM
"History has shown that when a dictator draws the United States into a war, there is only one way the United States can be sure that dictator won't cause more problems, which the Americans would be called upon to solve all over again. The only permanent solution is to remove that dictator and replace him with a democracy."
That's a great "dream", and worked real well in Chile (Pinochet), Nicarugua, etc. didn't it? Saddam wasn't 911, the govt used manipulated data to take us into an uneeded, WRONG war (Iraq), and you can guarantee the way in which the US Govt did it, there will be slim to none chance of trying to fight a successful war on terror with the help of our allies and the support of the world that we had on 911. More importantly though, after all is said and done, there is a slim to none chance that we will ever go into another nation again to "help" it TRULY become a "democracy" because of our actions on Iraq. Iraq was the wrong war, at the wrong time, and it WILL be seen as it is now, as a dire mistake, and a call to other nations to hate us even more.(thereby, destroying our chance to be seen as a great country, worthy of trust, and worthy of backing up in the name of "freedom")The State Dept warned that going into Iraq would cause us to be seen as "imperialistic", would incite MORE hatred towards the US, and would cause Skyrocketing recruitments into terrorists orgs, hell bent on getting revenge for attacking an arab oil rich country on no reason. The State Dept and men with common sense knew this would happen. As I've stated before, I AM all for a war on terrorism, and the perps that hit us on 911. We had the support of the world....
That wasn't Iraq, and
attacking/invading/manipulating/occupying them and calling them a "threat", was the worse thing we could have allowed our Govt to do. It wasn't the right thing to do ---in the WAY that it was done---
Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, Kristol, Chalabi etc. bear the responsibility of destroying the presidency, destroying our name, and manipulating the US Congress and the world with the "vision" of the PNAC (Project for a New American Century).
Saddam is gone, but so is our honor. If you can't see we just paid a terrible price, then please continue to "feel" as though Iraq is "free" and "democratic" under the true blanket of ANOTHER "our guy" govt....
I, and millions of other Americans, still wait for the day of revenge for the attacks of 911.
Posted by: A Veteran | July 09, 2004 at 04:40 PM
Containment only worked against the Soviet Union because we had no choice, and because the majority of Americans were willing to spend whatever was needed to maintain that containment for 40 years.
Containment could not continue to work in Iraq because no one understood the advantages of starving the Iraqi people while Saddam got rich. Our allies were busy stabbing us in the back and the butchers of Baghdad were slaughtering Iraqis at a steady and reliable pace that they have not approached again since Saddam's overthrow. We were trapped in a moral quagmire and we were losing our grip.
There was no way that we could allow him carte blanche, which is what the French were aiming for. It doesn't matter whether he had WMD or not. He had the desire. As soon as we backed away, he would have been back at work building those little beauties. We've learned enough about the international nuclear arms trade to know that it wouldn't have taken as long the next time. And by then, we would be unable to pursue the military option.
No one was willing or able to do the dirty work except us. We proceeded with a majority in Congress built by using arguments which were widely believed at the time. Once you are in, you've got to win. The choice is made. Bush didn't make it alone.
Posted by: jj | July 12, 2004 at 01:06 AM
Joe Wilson has a credibility problem. This is the man "A Veteran" relies on to discredit George W. Bush. He sounds more like Michael Moore with every post.
"A Veteran" wrote "Joe Wilson, the man THIS admin sent to Iraq to find out about "yellow cake" has stated and shown [the claims that Iraq was pursuing uranium from Niger] to be false."
First of all, how could he prove a negative? Wilson's eight-day junket to Niger actually bolstered the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium.
"According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998."
Why did Wilson lie about his wife's recommendation? Why did he give misleading information to the Washington Post? Why did he conclude that documents he had never seen and were not in US hands were forged?
Posted by: truth_man | July 12, 2004 at 01:44 PM
The truth is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39834-2004Jul9?language=printer
Posted by: truth_man | July 12, 2004 at 01:46 PM
Hey, here's more on Joe Wilson's credibility (or more accurately, his lack thereof):
http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/001470.html
Posted by: truth_man | July 12, 2004 at 03:00 PM
"Joe Wilson has a credibility problem. This is the man "A Veteran" relies on to discredit George W. Bush. He sounds more like Michael Moore with every post."
It's funny you base you debate about Wilson's "character" on a sentence such as this..
"Why did Wilson lie about his wife's recommendation?"
Wilson described he didn't feel like his wife's mention of it was a recommendation.. Most importantly, uh... does THIS have anything to do with Wilson finding nothing concerning the yellowcake? heh NO..
All who worked for the admin and speak out always seem to have a "credibility" problem. Isn't that extremely coincidental?
It's ALSO amazing that the State of the Union address, contained those 16 words, and it WAS NOT supposed to contain those 16 words..Could THAT mean Wilson was wrong? Wow, it seems that Rice, the CIA, and others pulled it our for a reason...I wonder what the reasoning could be? I think I faintly remember what they didn't want it in there...
Feb. 5, 2003
Secretary of State Colin Powell makes his presentation to the United Nations. He OMITS the uranium story. Three months later, he tells reporters he did not repeat the allegation because "I didn't sense in going through it all that I saw enough substantiation of it that would meet the tests that we were applying."
March 7, 2003
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei says "the reports of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic" and "unfounded."
June 8, 2003
On ABCNEWS' This Week, Rice says that at the time the State of the Union address was being prepared, "there were also other sources that said that … the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake, uranium oxide from Africa. And that was taken out of a British report. Clearly, that particular report, we learned subsequently, subsequently, was NOT credible."
July 9, 2003
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tells reporters, "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should NOT have risen to the level of a presidential speech."
July 9, 2003
In testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld says it was only "within recent days" that he learned that reports about uranium coming out of Africa WERE bogus.
July 11, 2003
Tenet releases a statement saying the CIA approved of the State of the Union speech before it was delivered. Tenet says, "These 16 words should NEVER have been included in the text written for the president."
Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
Everything that was posed, manipulated, or brainwashed into the minds of American men and women, has been shown to now be ....NO THREAT, NO LINK , NO TIES.....
The message remains the same. Joe Wilson could be a serial killer, but the message is backed by the State Dept, the CIA, the UN weapons inspectors, the US weapons inspectors, and in this case Rice, Rumsfeld etc..
Think of the country, the flag, and your Honor...
A Veteran
WAKE UP America!
Posted by: A Veteran | July 12, 2004 at 11:28 PM
Hey Veteran:
You answered zero of my questions. Then you went on to blather a bunch of basically meaningless or out of context statements.
Well here is more for you:
"A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.
"The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq. . . .
"The Financial Times revealed last week that a key part of the UK's intelligence on the uranium came from a European intelligence service that undertook a three-year surveillance of an alleged clandestine uranium-smuggling operation of which Iraq was a part.
"Intelligence officials have now confirmed that the results of this operation formed an important part of the conclusions of British intelligence. The same information was passed to the US but US officials did not incorporate it in their assessment."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373567507
George W. Bush told the truth.
Joe Wilson lied.
You stand by Joe Wilson.
Posted by: truth_man | July 13, 2004 at 12:13 PM
lol
"Hey Veteran:
You answered zero of my questions. Then you went on to blather a bunch of basically meaningless or out of context statements. "
I answered your questions before and consistently do so. I still haven't heard the threat "Truth man"..
Please, thake the time to read this AGAIN, please notice the names of the people saying it... NO threat, No link, No ties...
Feb. 5, 2003
Secretary of State Colin Powell makes his presentation to the United Nations. He OMITS the uranium story. Three months later, he tells reporters he did not repeat the allegation because "I didn't sense in going through it all that I saw enough substantiation of it that would meet the tests that we were applying."
March 7, 2003
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei says "the reports of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic" and "unfounded."
June 8, 2003
On ABCNEWS' This Week, Rice says that at the time the State of the Union address was being prepared, "there were also other sources that said that … the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake, uranium oxide from Africa. And that was taken out of a British report. Clearly, that particular report, we learned subsequently, subsequently, was NOT credible."
July 9, 2003
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tells reporters, "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should NOT have risen to the level of a presidential speech."
July 9, 2003
In testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld says it was only "within recent days" that he learned that reports about uranium coming out of Africa WERE bogus.
July 11, 2003
Tenet releases a statement saying the CIA approved of the State of the Union speech before it was delivered. Tenet says, "These 16 words should NEVER have been included in the text written for the president."
Maybe try here for a little more.
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2004/07/big_error_in_wa.html
and then research...
http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf
"George W. Bush told the truth.
Joe Wilson lied.
You stand by Joe Wilson."
muaha ahhaa hahah muahahahaaaa...
"and the TRUTH shall set you free", "truth" man...
Posted by: A Veteran | July 13, 2004 at 03:30 PM
OK, I admit quoting the informatin fromt the Washington Post was a mistake.
But, tell me again, what did Joe Wilson disprove?
Then, read this:
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2004/07/senate_intellig.html
Posted by: truth_man | July 14, 2004 at 12:58 AM
Does it matter what he "disproved"? I think the bigger question is why has all the material shown as a threat been proven as nothing? I'm really surprised that it's FINALLY out that it was all BS. I mean, since we attacked Iraq, there has been questionings going on over and over, and it's all been brushed aside by this admin as "Unpatriotic" "liberal" etc to ask these questions. These findings were talked about over and over a year now and the admin continually says, "well, uh.. it was STILL worth it.." Actually it's very clear it wasn't. We have heard every justfication under God as to why we went in to Iraq. We are not better off, the country of Iraq is set for Civil War, we have started a "terrorist breeding ground" there, and our chnces for a successful war on terror with our allies and our good name is shot....I wasn't worth it, and the men and women who didn't open their mouths are as guilty as the men and women who pushed for war with the flag over their eyes.
Revenge and Patriotism go a LONG way in promoting an "ideal".
"Of course the people dont want war...that is understood. But voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering
Joe Wilson, Paul Oneill, Scott Ritter, General Zinni, Former CIA, Former FBI, Former US Weapons Inspectors,and countless others are finding themselves being called "UN American"
for doing the VERY things we want GREAT Americans to do!....Honor, Courage, Committment etc for this COUNTRY... The message is clear, no matter the character of the "messenger"
There are plenty of Traitors in the US Govt at this moment that we should be concerned about. THEY should be called out too...
Posted by: A Veteran | July 14, 2004 at 06:21 PM
Bwah hah! You think Joe Wilson is
a "GREAT American"!? You're an idiot.
And, AGAIN you failed to respond answer my question. I'll ask one more time. What did Joe Wilson disprove?
By the way, see Ann Coulter's piece on Joe Wilson:
http://www.anncoulter.org/
I'm afraid she nails it more accurately than you do.
Posted by: truth_man | July 15, 2004 at 10:02 AM
"A Veteran" thinks Joe Wilson has "Honor, Courage, Committment etc for this COUNTRY." Hee hee! See how Robert Novak weighs in:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak15.html
We have a saying where I come from: "Trust least those who don't trust others."
"A Veteran" and Joe Wilson both accused G.W. Bush of lying; that saying holds true big time.
Posted by: truth_man | July 15, 2004 at 02:24 PM