Right, cause we all know the Iraqi Minster of INformation would never, ever lie about anything.

Look, read some books… the truth is out there if you’re really curious. Iraqi WMD’s were never a “slam dunk” like Tenet said they were. There was a lot of doubt within the American intelligence community about whether or not Iraq had WMD’s, and if so, their degree of development. It’s been said so many times before, but here goes again: the White house wanted to attack Iraq and needed the right sort of intelligence to convince the American people of its neccesity. To achieve this goal, they manipulated and cherry-picked intel while downplaying and outright ignoring intl that didn’t fit their case.

HEre’s somewhere to start:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/se.....elling.htm

“Checks and balances. Congress: Elected. Presidency: Elected. Supreme Court: 1 appointed by Bush. The rest of the 11? I guess they were programmed to be help Bush, 20 to 40 years ago, right?”

Checks and balances only work if congress is serious about standing up to the presidency. For the first 6 years of Bush II, the Republicans in congress have behaved no better than the rubber-stamp goons in the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly. Now, with Dems in control of congress, I only pray that we’ll begin to see some real checks and balances.

“Ms. England and others were punished for this. No evidence links it to Rumsfeld or Bush or Cheney. More likely it was done at the lower level by low lives who somehow got into the uniformed services, somehow.”

In Fiasco, DONald Ricks makes a great point that the torture that went on at Abu Ghraib needs to be understood as a natural development of a poorly run occuption campaign that was sorely lacking needed troops, oversight, and a clear chain of command. So while there is no order from Bush to beat Iraqi prisoners to death, as the CiC, he can be held responsible as the person who made it all possible through bad planning and execution.

And here’s a freebie for you: IRaq had nothing to do with 9/11. I know… many of the 28 percenters out there will find that shocking.

Hostilities technically never ended with Saddam after the Gulf War since he refused to fully abide by UN resolutions. Saddam fired missiles at our F-15s on a regular basis for years. So, how do you declare war when one is already happening?

MUST. STOP. FISKING.

Yes, when we rounded up the Africa Korps in Tunisia 1943 we should have given them each the right to habeas corpus and sent the good ones back to Germany.

Ruffin: “Witness New Orleans after the passage of Hurricane Katrina, where thousands of inner-city residents were left homeless with neither food nor water, sweltering under a hot sun for several days.”

Yes, it’s too bad the Democratic mayor left the evacuation school buses in a below sea-level parking lot when he had plenty of warning and the Democratic governor dithered before requesting federal aid.

Ruffin: “As one American general said to another after the firebombing of Tokyo: `You know, if we had lost WWII, we would have been convicted of war crimes.’”

This is something called “victor’s justice” and it has happened throughout history. Way to pick up on it, Dude. And hey, pass the spliff.

That said, I’m happy to remain overseas while Bush is at the helm of our once-great nation.

Dogbertt, Are you seriously saying that you expatriated yourself due to Bush or was that just a rhetorical flourish?

man, don’t you ever wish one of these expats would put their money where their mouth is and sign on up and ship on out? they do some fierce talking howdy-cowboy like ‘cept they ain’t never doing the doing, always somebody else gotta do the doing while they living it on up. always that way, isn’t it?

Ouch, Mark, I hope Ruffin reads that one.

Partypooper, I didn’t hear anybody here saying that…
“the Bush presidency has been a super success and the Iraq War has gone exactly the way that Bush had foreseen”

Nobody likes a deranged nutbar. If someone has a beef with Bush, at least debate rationally and reasonably. Foaming at the mouth just gets irritating when you’ve seen it scores of times over the last few years.

If Rick Ruffin is this stupid when it comes to Bush, what are his ideas concerning economics? Actually, I don’t want to know.