Opinion of the President

[bigshrimpin]

Agreed Saddam a evil bastard . . . but if you're president and going to commit our country to war for years, bomb innocent civilians, and do so going around the UN . . . then fck'n tell someone? don't lie to your own country and commit all your resources and 130,000 soldiers . . . to the capture of one man. Work through the UN!!! That's what it's there for!!

The reason we have 130,000 soldiers there is for OIL. That's it . . If Iraq had WMD then they would have already used them.


30,000 is the number bush quoted. The number are also supported by this database below of dead civilians.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/databas...it3=Enter+Site

[reelapeelin]

There's truth in all the comments here from Ranger, Willy and Bigshrimpin'...that's why it's such a difficult issue to deal with...but one aspect of our involvement that troubles me is the deceit prior to the invasion...no just the WMD line, but think about it...Cheney was in high-level politics since Nixon....then he goes over to CEO of Haliburton, YEARS B4 Iraq is invaded, then majicly pops up as VP!!!...the fix was in long time ago...middle east has been targeted for invasion for years by the big political machinery that we never see and the Bushs and Cheneys are front men for...and we have NO CONTROL over...

Our elected officials are PAWNS doing the bidding of people and corporations with pockets so deep we can't fathom...

[TheTinMan]

I've got a question......Why are our gas prices so high?

Exxon/Mobile had record profits. Last quater of "05 they posted a 10 billion dollar PROFIT!!!

Hmmmm...Oil companies have record profits.....and the rest of us Americans have negative savings since the first time since the Great Depression???

Anyone one want to borrow my calculator to add 2+2???

I have to ask the same qustion as BS. WHY and HOW do people still support Bush? It really does baffle me.

[reelapeelin]

I think it's due to being blinded by party politics...if a Dem is in office, everything he/she does must be right...if a Rep is in office, then everything he/she does must be right...I think it's one of the basic problems we face...

I hope Bush either tries to pass a draft bill or change laws about term limits on presidents. That way, nobody could argue for him any more. Halliburton up 0.06% today, democracy and freedom down.

Fun fact though: saw George Senior in Freeport harbor one time many years ago with a (supposedly) Secret Service boat. Black RIB around 24-28 feet, with 3 large, large outboards.
Of course an ex-president wouldn't go out on a rough day, but still, what a show of useless power. No need for bottom paint, just wind it up to 80 mph and the scrubbing is done!

It's amusing to me that he would bring Secret Service along on a sightseeing tour, Maine is about the safest place for a smart mariner.

[rb437]

I agree with ya Willy, especially the part about going back to boating and fishing. This other stuff is important, but way to heavy for this forum. I'm off to another thread. I'll bet there's something funny somewhere else in the Off Topic section....

[Pipe_Dream]

Eric, I think that the Secret Service calls the shots, and they know that there are psychos out there so they stick to the President like flies on . . . well, you know. Besides, even Secret Service agents need to have a little fun! ;D

Rick, I'm with you. If I wanted to talk politics I'd go elsewhere, not that you all don't have valid points, but I'm here for the boats! (and a little humor, too!) I'm not gonna look at this thread again!

[reelapeelin]

Hey Pipe...hope ya come back for this...one of the Secret Service guys had on a T-shirt that read: ''ATTACK ME...I need the practice!!....''

[TheTinMan]

Ex-C.I.A. Official Says Iraq Data Was Distorted

From the NY Times today:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — A C.I.A. veteran who oversaw intelligence assessments about the Middle East from 2000 to 2005 on Friday accused the Bush administration of ignoring or distorting the prewar evidence on a broad range of issues related to Iraq in its effort to justify the American invasion of 2003.
Skip to next paragraph
The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage
Readers
Forum: The Transition in Iraq

The views of Paul R. Pillar, who retired in October as national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, echoed previous criticism from Democrats and from some administration officials, including Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser, and Paul H. O'Neill, the former treasury secretary.

But Mr. Pillar is the first high-level C.I.A. insider to speak out by name on the use of prewar intelligence. His article for the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs, which charges the administration with the selective use of intelligence about Iraq's unconventional weapons and the chances of postwar chaos in Iraq, was posted Friday on the journal's Web site after it was reported in The Washington Post.

"If the entire body of official intelligence on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war — or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath," Mr. Pillar wrote. "What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in decades."

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Pillar said he recognized that his views would become part of the highly partisan, three-year-old battle over the administration's reasons for going to war. But he said his goal in speaking publicly was to help repair what he called a "broken" relationship between the intelligence produced by the nation's spies and the way it is used by its leaders.

"There is ground to be replowed on Iraq," said Mr. Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown University. "But what is more important is to look at the whole intelligence-policy relationship and get a discussion and debate going to make sure what happened on Iraq doesn't happen again."

President Bush and his aides have denied that the Iraq intelligence was politicized. Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in November, "Our statements about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein were based on the aggregation of intelligence from a number of sources, and represented the collective view of the intelligence community. Those judgments were shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."

Reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the presidential commission on weapons intelligence headed by Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, the former Virginia governor and senator, found that C.I.A. analysts had not been pressed to change their views. A second phase of the Senate committee review, on how administration officials used intelligence, has not been completed.

Mr. Pillar alleged that the earlier studies had considered only "the crudest attempts at politicization" and that the real pressures were far more subtle. "Intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions that had already been made," chiefly to topple Mr. Hussein in order to "shake up the sclerotic power structures of the Middle East," he wrote.

According to Mr. Pillar's account, the administration shaped the answers it got in part by repeatedly asking the same questions, about the threat posed by Iraqi weapons and about ties between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda. When intelligence analysts resisted, he wrote, some of the administration's allies accused Mr. Pillar and others of "trying to sabotage the president's policies."

In light of such accusations, he wrote, analysts began to "sugarcoat" their conclusions.

Mr. Pillar called for a formal declaration by Congress and the White House that intelligence should be clearly separated from policy. He proposed the creation of an independent office, modeled on the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, to assess the use of intelligence at the request of members of Congress.

Mr. Pillar suggested that the root of the problem might be that top intelligence officials serve at the pleasure of the president.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said the agency had no comment.

Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that the C.I.A. had long resisted intervention in Iraq, and that internal pressure on analysts to resist war was greater than any external pressure.

"If the C.I.A. had spent less time leaking its opinions, throughout the 1990's, opposed to any conflict with Iraq, and more time developing assets inside Iraq, the agency would have more credibility and better intelligence," said Ms. Pletka, who served for a decade, until 2002, as a Republican staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

On a regular schedule the New York Times is caught red-handed creating or adjusting news to fit their own political agenda. I would not put a lot of faith in what they print until a few more better respected news outlets carry the story. If the above info is true then it will slowly start making the rounds in real news. Honestly, I don't think there is a lot of truth to it or Katy Couric would have him on already she hate GW and this would make her all gushy.