Hillary May Not Run For President
There seems to whispers spreading throughout the rumor mill that Hillary Clinton may not run for President. Honestly I'm really hoping that she won't. I have nothing major against her but I doubt she could win in 2008 for a variety of reasons:
- She's a woman, some people still can't seem get past that.
- Her last name is Clinton. Republicans have done a thorough job of smearing her husband over lying about his affair while ignoring the fact that Bush lied us into war.
- She's a political newcomer. Yes we may have been hearing her name for the last 14 years but she's only served one term in the Senate, the only elected position she's ever held.
- Her support for the war in Iraq will draw fire from anti-war groups. If she changes positions on the war Republicans will claim she goes back and forth on issues and is weak on terror (though Iraq had nothing to do with terror).
I'd vote for her but I'd much prefer Al Gore for '08. He's already proved he can win an election, we just need to make sure that election stands this time around.
11 comments:
Huh.
Too much error to make replying worthwhile, but I can't help asking:
What is the clearest example of a lie Bush told that arguably had a significant impact in leading the US into war (a low standard will be accepted on qualifying point)?
There's a whole list of them.
*Iraq tried to buy Uranium from Africa.
*Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda.
*Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
To name a few.
Bush was clearly correct on the first one, though Joe Wilson has shown himself to be a liar.
You read the Washington Post?
http://subloviate.blogspot.com/2006/09/another-good-editorial-from-wapo.html
That's why I asked for the clearest example. There are not multiple clearest examples, unless you consider it a tie.
See, David, I ask for the best example so that I don't get the runaround where you might say Okay, maybe Bush didn't lie about that but there are many more examples.
I'm challenging you to put your judgment on the line.
Which supposed example is the least likely to make you look foolish?
I don't recommend the uranium one, of course. You get a pass on your initial first choice.
Those three examples are all clearly lies or statements made off of bad intelligence. I believe I can defend all three of them.
First it's now admitted that Iraq probably never tried to buy Uranium. This one isn't even in contention anymore. Granted at the time of his State of the Union speech when he brought it up it hadn't been disproved so it wasn't really a lie, nut it didn't turn out to be true.
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
It's also widely known that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden hated each other. Saddam would never have knowingly let al-Qaeda operate in Iraq. The al-Qaeda presence in Iraq came after the invasion. Bin Laden even once said "the land of the Arab world, the land is like a mother, and Saddam Hussein is fucking his mother". The 9/11 commission has said that it never found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." and that "contacts" between al-Qaeda and Iraq "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
http://www.peterbergen.com/bergen/articles/details.aspx?id=233
http://www.factcheck.org/article203.html
As of today there have been no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. In all this time I'd think we would have found at least something if these weapons had existed.
If he was lying then he should be impeached. If it was bad intelligence that led us to war then there should be an investigation. I've yet to see either happen.
You offered each as an example of a lie, David, not statements made off of bad intelligence.
1) In any case, the Annenberg URL you used as your citation fails to support your claim that it is acknowledged that Iraq did not seek to buy uranium from Africa.
The opposite is true.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/
2) Again, David, the Annenberg site fails to support your claim. The issue treated there was an interim report released by 9-11 commissin staffers rather than the commission itself. Factcheck.org says, in fact, "So the commission's staff statement won't be the last word even on the narrow matter of whether Iraq had a hand in the September 11 attacks."
Your sourcing is careless, David.
3) "As of today there have been no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. Is Ohio still located on the planet Earth?
US-led coalition forces in Iraq have found some 500 chemical weapons since the March 2003 invasion, Republican lawmakers said, citing an intelligence report.
"Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," said an overview of the report unveiled by Senator Rick Santorum and Peter Hoekstra, head of the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/22/060622055545.07o4imol.html
I flubbed up the formatting a tad, but hopefully it's not that tough to sort out.
Sorry.
I should have provided more positive evidence for al Qaida links to Iraq.
Remedy to follow, albeit it's not intended as an exhaustive account.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com
/mt/archives/007505.php
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/
mt/archives/000459.php
In each of the three cases, there was good reason for Bush to believe that what he was saying was, in fact, true, and in two cases the president has been vindicated.
Even the expectation of large stockpiles of WMD may have been an accurate claim. The conclusion of the Duelfer report made clear that reports of movements to other countries (such as Syria) could not be ruled out.
The factcheck.org link wasn't supposed to prove that Iraq had never tried to buy Uranium from Africa, but rather that the sources the claims were based on didn't pan out. I will concede that your Slate link is more current than anything I've found so far.
Your links supporting the Iraq - al-Qaeda tie don't pass the "authority test" that every English class I've ever been in since high school outlines. The "Best Conservative Blog" for 2004 just doesn't cut it an impartial. It's been widely reported that Bin Laden has hated Hussein ever since he invaded Kuwait and I've yet to see any irrefutable proof of high level Iraq and al-Qaeda connection. In fact Bush himself has a closer tie to Bin Laden the Saddam did, Bush's friend from the Texas air national guard, James Bath, was the money manager in the US for Salem Bin Laden, Ossama's half brother. Bath invested $50,000 in W's company, Arbusto Exploration. But that's off topic.
As for the WMD's an 8/7/06 AP wire story contained the following quote: "The reality: After a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That 2004 finding reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors in 2002-03".
I also knew of the shells found in Iraq but I'd like to call your attention to part of the quote you cited: "which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent". These shells were leftovers and not the huge stockpiles that Saddam had supposedly been developing. I'd also like to include another quote from that article. "A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions 'in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for.'".
"Your links supporting the Iraq - al-Qaeda tie don't pass the "authority test" that every English class I've ever been in since high school outlines."
I'm not expecting you to grade it, I'm expecting you to pay attention to the evidence contained therein. Cap'n Ed links to the government originals, and you'd be aware that .gov sources are nearly always acceptable.
The bottom line is that there is evidence of links (that's what Bush claimed) and that dislike is no sure obstacle to cooperation. The United States wasn't crazy about the Soviet Union in WW2, but we sent thems scads of supplies in order to focus on the greater enemy at that time: Nazi Germany.
How do they treat blind sourcing "a Pentagon official" where you go to school, David?
As for your AP citation, the AP simply reported incorrectly. The Duelfer report affirms that Iraq systematically and consistently cheated against the UN, and (as already mentioned) that they could not rule out transport of WMDs to neighboring countries.
Go to the report itself, not the AP spin version.
Scroll down about 1/5 (relevant quotations, with source URL:
http://subloviate.blogspot.com/2006/08/clueless-principals-of-terrorism-news.html
If the URL doesn't work for you, go to my blog and hunt for the "The clueless principals of 'Terrorism News'" post.
"I also knew of the shells found in Iraq but I'd like to call your attention to part of the quote you cited: "which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent". These shells were leftovers and not the huge stockpiles that Saddam had supposedly been developing."
So you don't draw any kind of line between conventional weapons and chemical warheads that have lost some unknown degree of effectiveness over time?
"I'd also like to include another quote from that article. "A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions 'in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for.'"
So, in Ohio old and armed chemical warheads are not WMD, such that your claim that there were no WMD at all in Iraq is neither misleading nor false?
Seeya.
I've come to believe that you're too busy following orders to think about what you're doing.
If I stumble upon your blog again randomly, I'll probably check on things to see if you're demonstrating intellectual growth (which I do not take as identical with rightward drift, though that wouldn't hurt!).
Cheers, best of luck, goodbye.
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