Who would like George Bush tried for War crimes?

[Violent Demise]

I disagree with pretty much everything you say here. You seem to be trying to justify a petty vendetta passed on from Daddy, outright fabrication of evidence, vote rigging and an ignorance and disregard for international law. Now this kind of behaviour is never acceptable, so I am going to assume that your post is tongue in cheek. There is surely no way that you believe all of that.

Though sometimes I have to wonder with you!

I stand behind my post. It was all a personal agenda

[VictorCharlie]

I think the term lied is thrown around a little loosely. In retrospect obviously the Iraq invasion was a complete farce. Saddam didn't have WMD, didn't pose a serious security risk to the US and was largely contained. I think Bush and his advisors clearly created an enviroment that fostered finding intelligence to justify the invasion rather than decide if it was necessary or warranted at all. I know to some of you this is purely splitting hairs. I just don't believe that Powell gets up in front of the UN and knowingly tells them bold faced lies. I think if Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz etc knew he was misrepresenting the facts it would have come out by now. Saddam revealed during his debriefings that he did destroy or get rid of all of the WMD after the Gulf War but needed his military and nation at large to believe he had them to maintain power and further more needed the Arab nations to believe to keep his rep. Is it any less tragic the outcome being due to over zealous incompetence rather than malicious deceit? Not really...but since speculating should Bush be tried for war crimes is on par to speculating if Tyson would beat Ali it really doesn't matter

Wolfowitz stated personally that since the very beginning, they knew that there was no WMD but that they did need bureaucratic reasons to invade Iraq and to push Saddam. Also, never forget that they created forged papers to support that Saddam had uranium. and they punished Joseph Wilson by leaking the name of his wife for stating that such trade never happened. They knew, Powell knew and probably disagree to say what he said but it was an order and he had no choice to tell what he got told to do.

Can you site a source of Wolfowitz stating that?

Sure: USATODAY.com - Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's WMD

Iraq: No WMD, No Reason for War

CNN.com - Transcripts

I had some more complete but can't find them actually.

No where in those articles does Wolfowitz state that they knew there were no WMD

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." does not equate to knowing all along that there were no WMDs. He pretty clearly makes the point that they would have invaded regardless of WMD but that it was still an issue or at least an alleged issue.

[El Kabong]

I enjoy all the revisionist history the liberals put out there. They do it with everything.

[Gandalf]

I enjoy all the revisionist history the liberals put out there. They do it with everything.

Nonsense, people need to counter the lapdog approach of the media when it comes to events of this magnitude. The US media simply lapped up the pre war war drums coming from the government and failed to apply any sense of accountablity for the way they were blatantly manipulating public sentiment.

The US public was largely in favour of the Iraq war because of deception and outright propaganda. If you notice in Europe sentiment was quite different. That is because European media generally displays far more responsibility for the words it is printing. That's not to say that there were no war drums, but the better publications echoed FAR more caution. You also don't have pro Israel bias all over the place which is another thing that irks me with the US.

But of course, you would like to escape the fact that you have propaganda for news and would instead like to blame 'revisionism'. Fair enough.

[Andre]

. says it all, their all the same.

[Nameless]

I think the term lied is thrown around a little loosely. In retrospect obviously the Iraq invasion was a complete farce. Saddam didn't have WMD, didn't pose a serious security risk to the US and was largely contained. I think Bush and his advisors clearly created an enviroment that fostered finding intelligence to justify the invasion rather than decide if it was necessary or warranted at all. I know to some of you this is purely splitting hairs. I just don't believe that Powell gets up in front of the UN and knowingly tells them bold faced lies. I think if Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz etc knew he was misrepresenting the facts it would have come out by now. Saddam revealed during his debriefings that he did destroy or get rid of all of the WMD after the Gulf War but needed his military and nation at large to believe he had them to maintain power and further more needed the Arab nations to believe to keep his rep. Is it any less tragic the outcome being due to over zealous incompetence rather than malicious deceit? Not really...but since speculating should Bush be tried for war crimes is on par to speculating if Tyson would beat Ali it really doesn't matter

Wolfowitz stated personally that since the very beginning, they knew that there was no WMD but that they did need bureaucratic reasons to invade Iraq and to push Saddam. Also, never forget that they created forged papers to support that Saddam had uranium. and they punished Joseph Wilson by leaking the name of his wife for stating that such trade never happened. They knew, Powell knew and probably disagree to say what he said but it was an order and he had no choice to tell what he got told to do.

Can you site a source of Wolfowitz stating that?

Sure: USATODAY.com - Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's WMD

Iraq: No WMD, No Reason for War

CNN.com - Transcripts

I had some more complete but can't find them actually.

No where in those articles does Wolfowitz state that they knew there were no WMD

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." does not equate to knowing all along that there were no WMDs. He pretty clearly makes the point that they would have invaded regardless of WMD but that it was still an issue or at least an alleged issue.

Well, if the reason evoked to invade Iraq was the WMD that Saddam was about to unleash on America and its allies and that they knew they didn't exist (once again, brought by the forged documents about the bogus Uranium deal among other things), doesn't it mean that they knew very well it was bogus and that they just wanted to attack Iraq for their very own agenda? IMO, it is exactly what it means.

Just to add to the whole, Hans von Sponek, Denis Haliday, the responsible for Iraq inspection of WMD stated clearly that it was impossible that Saddam had any WMD, same call was made by Joseph Wilson which Bush administration did charge to re-view the whole uranium thing and who was pressurized into saying that there was something, he refused and they retaliated by burning his wife, Valerie Platte, CIA agent. David Key, chief inspector of the American army reported the same thing but Bush and his minions keep rolling the drums claiming they were here and that they were just yet to be discovered. Even the French and German secret services claimed at the time that there were no evidences, it was just all a set up to their program to reshape the Middle East under the terms that do suit them.

[VictorCharlie]

Here is your quote "Wolfowitz stated personally that since the very beginning, they knew that there was no WMD"

None of those articles support this statement. If your interpretation of what he said and the actions of the administration is that they always knew there were no WMDs then fine but state it that way.

Give me some sources on the forged uranium documents b/c I'm not familiar with that story line. Never the less though Saddam at one point definitely had WMD b/c he gassed his own people with them. Not having uranium is kind of a red herring.

[El Kabong]

Nonsense, people need to counter the lapdog approach of the media when it comes to events of this magnitude. The US media simply lapped up the pre war war drums coming from the government and failed to apply any sense of accountablity for the way they were blatantly manipulating public sentiment.

The US public was largely in favour of the Iraq war because of deception and outright propaganda. If you notice in Europe sentiment was quite different. That is because European media generally displays far more responsibility for the words it is printing. That's not to say that there were no war drums, but the better publications echoed FAR more caution. You also don't have pro Israel bias all over the place which is another thing that irks me with the US.

But of course, you would like to escape the fact that you have propaganda for news and would instead like to blame 'revisionism'. Fair enough.

The news is kind of similar to the way history is being taught in schools....it's wrong. It's full of spin half truths and outright lies and NO I'm not singling out Fox or anyone else I'm saying news in general be it in the US or England or South Korea is produced in a manner where it will spin stories one way or another and there is usually a lot more OPINION involved in news these days than just the plain old facts and rightfully so, the people (once again in general) are too fucking stupid to question it.

I use my example again of what people are taught about historical figures like Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. or even George Washington. I use those figures because they are treated as sinless dieties, gods on Earth when each of them had major failings (professionally and personally) in their lives. Learning that wouldn't take away the luster of the good they did but the TRUTH is the truth, the LEGEND is just a legend and I am more interested in what actually happened.

[Gandalf]

Nonsense, people need to counter the lapdog approach of the media when it comes to events of this magnitude. The US media simply lapped up the pre war war drums coming from the government and failed to apply any sense of accountablity for the way they were blatantly manipulating public sentiment.

The US public was largely in favour of the Iraq war because of deception and outright propaganda. If you notice in Europe sentiment was quite different. That is because European media generally displays far more responsibility for the words it is printing. That's not to say that there were no war drums, but the better publications echoed FAR more caution. You also don't have pro Israel bias all over the place which is another thing that irks me with the US.

But of course, you would like to escape the fact that you have propaganda for news and would instead like to blame 'revisionism'. Fair enough.

The news is kind of similar to the way history is being taught in schools....it's wrong. It's full of spin half truths and outright lies and NO I'm not singling out Fox or anyone else I'm saying news in general be it in the US or England or South Korea is produced in a manner where it will spin stories one way or another and there is usually a lot more OPINION involved in news these days than just the plain old facts and rightfully so, the people (once again in general) are too fucking stupid to question it.

I use my example again of what people are taught about historical figures like Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. or even George Washington. I use those figures because they are treated as sinless dieties, gods on Earth when each of them had major failings (professionally and personally) in their lives. Learning that wouldn't take away the luster of the good they did but the TRUTH is the truth, the LEGEND is just a legend and I am more interested in what actually happened.

I think that history in schools is taught wrongly and I would argue even in many undergraduate faculties too. I have studied the subject in both the school system and the university system and have come to reject a lot of what I was ever taught. Not all, events do indeed take place in history, but it's the slant that is given that distorts. Instead of being given access to both sides of the picture, one side is typically pushed ahead of the other. I think a lot of people go into fields such as journalism through their achievements on such courses, others go into politics and already their ideological mindset has been made up. Others like me end up on the other side of the world teaching English having rejected it all and on the way discover sources that finally begin to make some sense. I am far more politically aware than I ever was as an undergraduate student and that to me is the ultimate failing of the system, but maybe to the system itself, and the way it accomodates so many others, that is its strength. It could also be that I have changed myself and that has it's part to play too. But those people going into journalism, they have already been programmed to play 'the good journalist'. University papers have taught them to follow the rules, to kowtow to the editors wishes in the form of exam questions that expect certain answers, to understand how the paper is funded and to know where your degree came from etc. And what you get is the poor excuse for a media we have.

Having said that I do think the UK has a couple of excellent newspapers. The Independant is the one that stands above all others for me. It's not perfect, but it can be very good. The weekend Observer is another very good paper. Where some of these journalists come from, I cannot say. But none of these people suffered my education, or if they did they responded like warriors. As for the America media, I don't only refer to Fox when I talk about the low quality propaganda. It is almost uniform. South Korea is quite similar to America in this regard. The quality of the media is dismal and the people that read it are overwhelmingly sheeple. People here rarely even buy a paper. They read it online in stories that are typically several paragraphs long and where sentences don't even follow contextual patterns. But not all media is like that. The BBC is pretty good as an online source.

I see nothing wrong with opinions, but none of the news I read is largely made up of opinions. If the news is cutting the news and heading straight for more opinions, then that's a mess. News is news and good journalists can present it themselves.

As for the general public, sure a lot might be stupid. But most are too busy trying to put bread on the table. The least a good media can do is to present a balanced picture and to empower workers, but the media is a con. It isn't there to do that. It is there to empower the upper classes. Whence 'opening time on Wall street at CNN' (as if any working man could give a shit?), BBC business report (as if any coal miner gives a flying fuck?), latest currency prices (for people going on holiday?). Where are the labour reports? Or the latest REAL unemployment figures? Things that really matter to real people? Simply too few and far between.

The news is largely a con and even the better organisations like the BBC fall into it. I regard everything I read with suspicion.

[Gandalf]

And it could be argued that 'Hey miles, maybe you were just a crap student'. Well, I wasn't the best considering I had habits beyond academic pursuits but I produced some good work. I later studied for my MA and decided to follow all the rules at a British university ranked high up in the worlds top 100 and got myself a distinction. If I had decided to stand out too much, I would have been penalised and scored lower. I knew this. This for me further supports my notions about higher university education.

If you follow the accepted train of thought then you will generally perform better. You've got to respect all the others in your field. You need references, you need people who will publish you. These people are typically above you when you are writing essays. It's an old fashioned power structure, much like that found in the media or even in politics.

[El Kabong]

Miles I think we agree on this issue aside from me thinking that US media involves more opinion than fact.

The media also like trying to distract the working men and women with bullshit stories about Lindsay Lohan and celebutards how her ilk.

[Gandalf]

Miles I think we agree on this issue aside from me thinking that US media involves more opinion than fact.

The media also like trying to distract the working men and women with bullshit stories about Lindsay Lohan and celebutards how her ilk.

True, and we mustn't forget the fact that a lot of working men are probably purely ignorant creatures who couldn't care less about politics. For them it's more about being top dog in the pub.

I hate the way the media works, but I know that a lot of people just don't know how to read the media that I do. They have their own lives to live, they aren't really as smart. That kind of attitude is a bad one though. They read the tabloids, they read the ignorance. It's not easy to change those kinds of thoughts though.

It's the propaganda system in effect.

I think we are very different ideologically, but could sit down for a pint easy enough on moral grounds.

[Nameless]

Here is your quote "Wolfowitz stated personally that since the very beginning, they knew that there was no WMD"

None of those articles support this statement. If your interpretation of what he said and the actions of the administration is that they always knew there were no WMDs then fine but state it that way.

Give me some sources on the forged uranium documents b/c I'm not familiar with that story line. Never the less though Saddam at one point definitely had WMD b/c he gassed his own people with them. Not having uranium is kind of a red herring.

Saddam had chemical stuff... but nothing after the first gulf war, Von Sponeck and Denis H, the UN responsible for the cleaning and supervising stated clearly that there was nothing remaining, even the English secret services stated so and so did the CIA but Douglas Feith, Wolfowitz et cie even used their "personal intelligence services with other informations" in order to dicredit the CIA and to justify the "dangers" related to Iraq.

As for Wolfowitz, his statements clearly says it all, you have to understand it the other way: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." First and foremost, they wanted to attack Iraq BUT they had to find a reason everybody had to agree on. It was the WMD. Despite the MI6, the CIA, the UN inspectors opinion on the fact that there was nothing, they pushed the issue. They even created their very own "information agency" in order to control the proofs they would use to go to war and to undermine the CIA and the other organizations that stated there was absolutely no WMD Office of Special Plans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Among many elements, they used the bogus uranium "sheet" to prove their facts, sheet that has been proven false after a mere investigation.

Everything there is to be known on the uranium gate: Wapedia - Wiki: Niger uranium forgeries Google also Joseph Wilson Valerie Plame, you'll find all the other details.

Joseph Wilson whu used in favor of the first Gulf War and who got punished for telling what he thought was right:

What I Didn't Find in Africa