Going Rove: Courage and Consequence is full of falsehoods
Karl Rove's forthcoming memoir Courage and Consequence purports to respond to critics by "putting the record straight," but Media Matters has found that Rove's book is full of falsehoods. Below is an ongoing list of Rove's misinformation in the book, which Media Matters obtained in advance of its scheduled release.
1. Rove distorts Senate report to claim Bush didn't "lie us into the war"
3. Rove revives tired smear that Gore wrongly said "that he had created the Internet"
4. Rove revives Gore-Love Story smear
5. Rove falsehood: Gore said he had "discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster"
6. Rove pals around with falsehood that Ayers was "Obama's great friend"
7. Rove wrong on number of presidents who left office by "assassination or resignation"
1. Rove distorts Senate report to claim Bush didn't "lie us into war"
Rove claims Senate report said Bush statements were backed up by intelligence. From Pages 340-341 of Courage and Consequence:
So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not.
[...]
From my perch inside the West Wing -- but outside the frantic activity in the Situation Room -- I could see the care everyone was taking to not overstate the case or exaggerate the danger. The president emphasized this when we reviewed his speeches, and this care was reflected everywhere else in the administration.
[...]
And what about Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism? Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee 2004 report.
Senate report actually found that Bush made some statements that were not substantiated -- or were "contradicted" -- by intelligence. Rove is presumably referring to a June 5, 2008, Senate Intelligence Committee report examining government officials' pre-war statements about Iraq. (Rove identifies it as a "2004" report in the excerpt above, but he cites the 2008 report in the relevant endnote.) Rove is correct that the committee found that some Bush claims -- specifically, "[s]tatements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda and about Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda" -- were substantiated by the intelligence at the time. But the committee also concluded that Bush's allegations suggesting "that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership" were "not substantiated by the intelligence"; and that Bush's statements indicating Saddam was prepared to give WMD to terrorists were "contradicted by available intelligence."
2. Rove falsehood: Obama claims "Obamacare would not add to the deficit ... evidence shows just the opposite"
From Page 513 of Courage and Consequence:
Another thing that has badly hurt President Obama is that his claims -- especially on health care -- are simply at odds with reality. He said ObamaCare would not add to the deficit, would bend the cost curve down, and would reduce premiums, while the evidence shows just the opposite.
CBO: Senate bill yields "a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion" over 10 years. On December 19, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office reported of the Senate bill incorporating the manager's amendment: "CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that the direct spending and revenue effects of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act incorporating the manager's amendment would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion over the 2010-2019 period."
CBO also estimated on December 20, 2009, that the bill will continue to reduce the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window that ends in 2019 "with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP."
CBO estimated the House bill will result in $138 billion in deficit reduction through 2019. On November 20, 2009, CBO reported of the House health care reform legislation, "CBO and JCT now estimate that the legislation would yield a net reduction in deficits of $138 billion over the 10-year period." CBO also stated in its November 6, 2009, estimate that "[i]n the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty."
3. Rove revives tired smear that Gore wrongly said "he had created the Internet"
From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:
Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.
In fact, Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" while in Congress. During the March 9, 1999, interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that gave rise to the myth -- Rove sources his false claim to the CNN interview -- Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Blitzer set the record straight on the July 6, 2008, edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, stating that Gore "never said, 'I invented the Internet.' "
Gingrich also said Gore "most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' " In a September 22, 2000, article, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a Republican who is no friend of the Gore campaign, said earlier this month, 'Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' "
"Father of the Internet" Cerf wrote that Gore "deserves significant credit" for his efforts. On September 28, 2000, Vinton Cerf, considered to be a "father of the Internet," submitted an essay he and Robert Kahn wrote about Gore's contributions to the creation of the Internet. Cerf and Kahn, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush for their work designing the TCP/IP internet protocol, wrote that they "would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time." They added that "there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."
4. Rove revives Gore-Love Story smear
From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:
Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.
In fact, Gore attributed the claim to a newspaper article he had read, and was misquoted. In a November 30, 2002, The American Prospect article about political "pseudo-scandals," Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz wrote that Gore "never made the claim." According to a December 14, 1997, New York Times article, [Love Story author Erich] Segal "knocked down" a report in Time magazine that asserted that Gore, while on the campaign trail, "spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' '' From the article:
The Time magazine article about the Vice President included this passage: ''Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the Vice President came wandering back to the press compartment of Air Force Two. Sliding behind a table with the two reporters covering him that day, he picked slices of fruit from their plates and spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' ''
[...]
In their phone conversation a few days ago, Mr. Gore reminded Mr. Segal that while Mr. Segal was on his book tour for ''Love Story,'' a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean who knew that Mr. Gore and the author were friends had asked if there was not a little bit of Al Gore in Oliver Barrett. Mr. Segal said yes, there was, but the reporter ''just exaggerated,'' Mr. Segal said. ''He made it to be the local-hero angle.''
Mr. Segal said the Vice President told him that all he had said on the plane was that the article had made the connection -- and got it wrong.
''Al said, 'I didn't say that' about being the model,'' Mr. Segal said.
''Al attributed it to the newspaper, he talked about the newspaper,'' Mr. Segal said at another point in the interview. ''They conveniently omitted that part. Time thought it was more piquant to leave that out. He was talking on the plane off the record, a drink with the boys after a tiring day. I don't think he will be reminiscing much anymore.''
5. Rove falsehood: Gore said he had "discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster"
From Pages 161-162 of Courage and Consequence:
Over the past few decades, Gore had said that he had created the Internet, been the model for Love Story, led a crusade against tobacco, discovered the Love Canal chemical disaster, lived on a farm while vice president, never grew tobacco on his farm, didn't know that his visit to a Buddhist temple was a fund-raiser, faced enemy fire in Vietnam, and sent people to jail as a reporter. It was a compelling life story; unfortunately, none of it was true.
In fact, Gore was misqoted by Wash. Post, NY Times. As Media Matters for America noted, Slate.com editor-at-large Jack Shafer wrote on February 17, 2000, that New York Times reporter Katharine Q. "Kit" Seelye and Washington Post staff writer Ceci Connolly were responsible for creating the false Love Canal story: "[I]t's Seelye's fault -- and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly's -- that folks think Gore claimed credit for Love Canal in the first place. Which he didn't" [emphasis in original]. Indeed, in December 1 and December 2, 1999, Post articles, Connolly quoted Gore as saying of the Love Canal disaster, "I was the one that started it all." In fact, as a December 7, 1999, correction made clear, Gore actually said " 'That was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called." Additionally, the Post's obmbudman wrote in a March 5, 2000, column that what Gore actually said about Love Canal was "a whole lot different from The Post's version ... which fits the role The Post seems to have assigned him in Campaign 2000." Similarly, Seelye quoted Gore as saying "I was the one that started it all" on a December 1, 1999, Times article, which was corrected by the Times on December 10, 1999.
6. Rove pals around with falsehood that Ayers was "Obama's great friend"
From Pages 515-516 of Courage and Consequence:
Though we didn't discuss it in our West Wing encounter, Obama also went on in his book to describe me and other conservatives as "eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties," who "viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil." Now that's rich, isn't it? The last time I checked, I hadn't bombed any government buildings (like, say, Obama's great friend William Ayers); or asked that God "damn" America (like, say, Obama's former pastor and close friend Jeremiah Wright); or declared that I was proud of my country for the first time in my life only when I was in my forties (like, say, Obama's wife, Michelle).
NY Times: Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close." The New York Times reported on October 4, 2008, that Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "
McClatchy: "There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to [Obama's] campaign." McClatchy reported on October 9, 2008, that "Obama has condemned the violent 1960s activities of the Weather Underground. There is no evidence that Ayers is a close friend or an adviser to his campaign." [accessed via the Nexis databse]
The AP: "[T]here is no evidence that they ever palled around." Reporting on then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's claim that Obama sees America as so imperfect "that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," the Associated Press reported on October 5, 2008 that "there is no evidence that they [Obama and Ayers] ever palled around," and "it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts."
FactCheck.org: Obama and Ayers were "never very close." In an October 10, 2008, article, FactCheck.org wrote of the 2008 presidential campaign: "What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters -- in ads and on the stump -- with false and misleading statements about the relationship [between Obama and Ayers], which was never very close.
7. Rove wrong on number of presidents who left office by "assassination or resignation"
Rove: Eight presidents "gained the Oval Office as a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor." From Page 518 of Courage and Consequence:
But others find themselves forced to face the unknowable. Eight presidents -- from John Tyler to Gerald Ford -- gained the Oval Office as a result of the assassination or resignation of their predecessor.
Five presidents have left office via "assassination or resignation." As detailed by Stanford University history professor David M. Kennedy, four presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. The only president to resign from office was Richard Nixon. Four others -- William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt -- died of natural causes while in office.
Randy
Ah, there is it. I missed that because I was so eager to dive headfirst into the cesspool of Rovian lies. Strange that I was eager to do that. Guess it bespeaks a certain dissatisfaction with my daily routine that I would find a dip in a cesspool exhilarating.
Randy
Book by Rove: Media Matters could just find anything accurate to save time.
Why do they defend himn so?
You didn't read the story, you just saw Gore's name and whipped out a stock GOP comment.
Randy
Now; what did strike me as odd is the way MMFA has defended Al Gore. So I commented on it. A quick search of MMFA since Jan 1, 2010, shows at least 50 articles where Gore was defended by MMFA. I think its foolish to defend Gore when the books, and movies he has produced have been full of far more offensive errors. Have you seen his new book? The one for children, with several hurricanes on the cover poised to destroy the planet. At least Rove's book isn't written for kids.
But they can't make the connection that this site would naturally have a lot of items "defending" Al Gore, "defending" meaning correcting lies about him.
And If there is such errors in Gore's new book Im sure that they will come to light. If there is not any errors, Im sure Rove will make something else up to attack Gore's credibility. Either way you will defend Rove and protest the defense of Gore because justifying your immovable beliefs (even with illogical or hypocritical justification) is more important to you than pragmatism, objectivity, and open-mindedness
A lie is not the same thing as an error. For example, the "I invented the internet" thing was debunked in 2000, and has been corrected many times since then. It was easily verifiable by asking republican members of Congress(presumably you trust them as sources) involved with that project or those committees.
To keep repeating it is a lie, and not an error.
Creating plausible lies about the left is literally what he gets paid to do (see 2000 and 2004), and he is considered the best at it.
Rove continues to reveal that being the "brains" of George Bush explains why Bush is an idiot.
And can somebody tell me why this piece of human waste is not sitting in Levinworth!?
The aren't errors, they are Rovian lies!
Not every "lie" that comes from the media originates with Foxnews or the republican party. MMFA selectively chooses what they will and won't cover, and since they already decide what they will and won't choose to cover, why continue covering someone who is obviously so bad for the progressive movement?
Al Gore is no friend to the progressive movement, just like Sarah Palin is no friend to the tea party movement, both are idiots and make their respective movements look bad.
PS- IF you saw the original Al Gore interview where he said he "created" the internet, you would have done a double take. I did. It sure sounded like he said he invented the internet when he said it. Despite the fact that we all know he didn't mean he invented the internet, he did say it, and it is funny.
You can pick at things like Rove's statements about Gore but in the end it makes you look petty and hypercritical. Find a real indiscretion in his book, then I'll pay attention, but none of MMFA's points make an ounce of difference in what we thought we knew, or what we know now. That is why it isn't important to me.
Second, what's a "real indiscretion"? Ignore the Gore stuff. You're then left with lies about how Bush led the US into Iraq, what Healthcare reform would do to the country's bottom line, and the calibre of people with whom the President chooses to surround himself, all of which are still relevant to today's political discourse. Lies that affect current politics are "real indiscretions".
MMFA is a liberal site. It's not an accusation. It's a VERY simple and obvious fact. There's nothing objective here whatsoever.
Also, since MMfA makes use of verbatim transcripts, book excerpts and recorded, unedited material, your claim that there is nothing "objective" here is provably false by any simple perusal of the site's offerings. MMfA's dissection of Rove's book may seem superficial and largely inconclusive, leading you to conclude that Rove's not really a liar. Judging from Rove's political operations and history, one could also conclude that it's because he's an exceptionally talented liar and abuser of universal negatives, leaving few chinks in the armour of his narrative for MMfA to exploit.
If you have a different view of progressivism, please share.
PS. Many progressives like David Hume, Dewey, and many many others made the arguement that true objectivity is impossible since any information is filtered by the person recieving the information.
A "simple perusal" of MMFA's website shows me one thing, they have an agenda to discredit conservative media. Look at the pictures MMFA posts of people like Beck, and Limbaugh, they purposefully post idiotic pictures of them. If you think for a minute that MMFA is an objective observer then you have no idea what "objective" means. MMFA doesn't even claim objectivity, so it makes me laugh that you say they do. "Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions." (Emphasis added.) Keep talking though, I'd love for you to continue to defend a position MMFA doesn't take.
You would have been a good citizen of Germany in the 30's and the 40's.
I don't actually like Gore much, but that does not mean I'm okay with Rove lying about him.
. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
• The report, based on the work of some 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries, concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human-caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.
• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.
• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.
What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.
• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
What is Climategate?
In late November 2009, hackers unearthed hundreds of emails at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia that exposed private conversations among top-level British and U.S. climate scientists discussing whether certain data should be released to the public. [Do we know who the hackers were? Were they skeptics? Might be worth noting]
The email exchanges also refer to statistical tricks used to illustrate climate change? trends, and call climate skeptics idiots, according to the New York Times.
One such trick was used to create the well-known hockey-stick graph, which shows a sharp uptick in temperature increases during the 20th century. Former U.S vice president Al Gore relied heavily on the graph as evidence of human-caused climate change in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
The data used for this graph come from two sources: thermostat readings and tree-ring samples.
While thermostat readings have consistently shown a temperature rise over the past hundred years, tree-ring samples show temperature increases stalling around 1960.
On the hockey-stick graph, thermostat-only data is grafted onto data that incorporates both thermostat and tree-ring readings, essentially presenting a seamless picture of two different data sets, the hacked emails revealed.
But scientists argue that dropping the tree-ring data was no secret and has been written about in the scientific literature for years.
Climate change skeptics have heralded the emails as an attempt to fool the public, according to the Times.
Yet climate scientists maintain that these controversial points are small blips that are inevitable in scientific research, and that the evidence for human-induced climate change is much broader and still widely accepted.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com
Your turn now!
. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
• The report, based on the work of some 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries, concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human-caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.
• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.
• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.
What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.
• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
What is Climategate?
In late November 2009, hackers unearthed hundreds of emails at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia that exposed private conversations among top-level British and U.S. climate scientists discussing whether certain data should be released to the public. [Do we know who the hackers were? Were they skeptics? Might be worth noting]
The email exchanges also refer to statistical tricks used to illustrate climate change? trends, and call climate skeptics idiots, according to the New York Times.
One such trick was used to create the well-known hockey-stick graph, which shows a sharp uptick in temperature increases during the 20th century. Former U.S vice president Al Gore relied heavily on the graph as evidence of human-caused climate change in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
The data used for this graph come from two sources: thermostat readings and tree-ring samples.
While thermostat readings have consistently shown a temperature rise over the past hundred years, tree-ring samples show temperature increases stalling around 1960.
On the hockey-stick graph, thermostat-only data is grafted onto data that incorporates both thermostat and tree-ring readings, essentially presenting a seamless picture of two different data sets, the hacked emails revealed.
But scientists argue that dropping the tree-ring data was no secret and has been written about in the scientific literature for years.
Climate change skeptics have heralded the emails as an attempt to fool the public, according to the Times.
Yet climate scientists maintain that these controversial points are small blips that are inevitable in scientific research, and that the evidence for human-induced climate change is much broader and still widely accepted.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com
Your turn now!
Removing ourselves does seem a bit rash, though.
No, you stop!
No, you stop first!
Mom! Make him stop!
I suppose you might have a point if we could (1) control China and (2) be assured that Chinese pollution will be considerate enough to contain itself within China's borders.
It's not hard to believe since Beijing hasn't had a clear day in years, except for when they banned driving cars during the Olympics.
And no, Gore is not a terrorist.
Do you have any data? How much money has he pocketed from his work on climate change?
How much have the industries tied to continuation of fossil fuel technologies expended to refute the science of global climate change? If, as you assert, money goes to motive, let's follow the money.
Why do you hate Capitalism?
Why do you hate Jesus?
And I know you won't take this seriously, but spend some time at realclimate.org. I mean really spend some time there. Dig through the data sources and actually take the time to read them. Yes, Al Gore may be a little alarmist in his rhetoric, but his underlying philosophy is grounded in years and years of sound scientific fact.
To dumb down the debate between "The world is going to end" and "Al Gore is just trying to make money" means we all lose. Yes, the world is going to change because of the massive amount of CO2 that we have put into the air in the past 100 or so years. How much it changes and how it will affect us is a topic for contentious debate in the scientific community. It's also dependent on what we do now to curb our carbon output.
So really, stop with the anti-global warming nonsense. If you continue to repeatedly use the same tired, debunked talking points everyone here is just going to have to assume that you are a partisan hack and you are only going to receive scorn and ridicule in reply.
Errrrmmmmmmmm, to many people, yes, he was an honorable man. Just because he was a radical Muslim doesn't make him any more dishonorable than you or me or any radical Xian, Jew, pagan, atheist, etc. Just depends on which side of the fence you are on!
Because Rove lied about him, dummy.
Maybe if you lost the Fox news brainwashing mentality and tried thinking for yourself and evaluating the evidence objectively, you'd find out just how much you've been lied to all these years by these jackholes.
-----------------------------------------------------------
MMFA defends only the TRUTH. Too bad for you lot that the truth so often has a liberal bias.
I will be waiting.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! You can actually be funny sometimes.
This works out very well for the corperatocracy who'll fight regulation and unionization with all they've got. That's why over the past 40 years,starting with saint ronnie,gov't regulation of mega business and the National Labor Relations Bureau, are BAAAAD things.
Why do they defend himn so? "
They defend him because right wingers lie about him.
Rove has the blood of over 4000 Americans on his hands. Showing him for the evil he is justifies all that effort.
In best selling political biographies and memoirs here are a few notable items:
#22 Karl Rove - Courage and Consequence
#32 Edward Kennedy - True Compass
#64 Sarah Palin - Going Rogue
#69 Barack Obama - The Audacity of Hope
True or false, accurate or inaccurate, there still seems to be an ongoing appetite for this type of writing.
Sarah is going to laugh all the way to the Oval Office. She is infinitely more intelligent than Barry Hussein Soetero.
Or is it your position that intelligence is determined by the degree to which their positions align with yours? To agree with you is intelligent, to disagree is stupid. By that measure I judge you to be very stupid, indeed.
SHe is inspirational and visionary. She has a clear direction in which she wants to lead America. She has a quick mind and is a kean ovserver.
Barry on the other hand can not form a comprehensible thought without reading it off the TelePrompter. Sans TelePrompter he thinks there are 57 states (interesting that that is the number of nationsl in teh global islamic caliphate -freudian slip?) and confuses Memorial Day with Veterans Day.
THere is no doubt in my mind Sarah Palin got a higher SAT score than BHO. I would bet quite a bit on that proposition. However, little Barry won't release his academic record. I wonder why? Hmmm.
I have heard platitudes and slogans but nothing to indicate that she has presented anything as you describe. Where can one read these "very well thought out policy ideas"?
Largest state? Alaska ranks 47th.
Extraordinary job? Palin inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22-million.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/sep/09/chain-email/numbers-right-context-missing/
Kean ovserver? She’s not even a keen observer.
Did you see President Obama take the House GOPpers to school in Baltimore? They had 24+ hours to rehearse their Luntz-authored talking points and he batted them down extemporaneously.
Every schoolchild knows how many states there are. You can claim to believe that President Obama did not misspeak from fatigue but most sane, non-axe-grinding haters are willing to grant that his words did not match his knowledge. But hey, why let rationality get in the way of a childish smear?
Never heard the quote about "teh global islamic caliphate”. Can you please cite your source?
Funny, I thought it was half-term Gov. Palin who would not release her academic record. How many schools did she attend before she finally got her degree? What advanced degree(s) does she hold? Hmmm, indeed.
Context is everything. Nice try smearing her, but this attempt falls flatl.
Wouldn't that be the Glenn Beck Van Jones argument? Once a communist, always a communist? Once a health care tourist, always a health care tourist?
as for ms. mitchell's credibility, let's not forget that she is also mrs. alan greenspan. when john kerry had unkind words for mr. greenspan, head of the federal reserve, in a presidential debate, mitchell attacked him in a post debate analysis without a word of mention that she was married to greenspan.
Your text to link here...
Of course you don't, look at your log in name! jindal is a babbling bufoon!
*Scratches head*
Speech at CIA, 4/26/99
I'm going to stand with President Bush and against you and the felon you revere, BJF.
It's not that it's NOT to my liking. It's that it's disrespectful to the truth and the known facts! Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts, and it's NOT a fact that Andrea Mitchell said what you alleged she said. You don't get to present discredited statements as facts AFTER they've been discredited!
I didn't let any rant overtake ANY sound argument. That's YOUR baseless personal attack in response to me PROVING that once again YOU presented a bogus argument!
A quick look at the WSJ archives turns up the following about her status being known:
Joe Wilson's 'Secret' Wife
As we noted yesterday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby does not allege that Valerie Plame, the long-suffering wife of Bush-hating egomaniac Joe Wilson, was a covert CIA agent. It does, however, claim that Plame's "employment status was classified" and that before July 14, 2003, when her name appeared in a column by Robert Novak, her "affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community."
We guess that depends what you mean by "common." It seems that at least two journalists knew that Plame worked for the CIA long before the kerfuffle that bears her name was a gleam in the eye of Angry Leftists. From the New York Sun, July 6, 2005:
Among the letters submitted by [Time's Matt] Cooper [to the judge considering whether to compel his testimony] was one from a former Time White House correspondent, Hugh Sidey. "In this case it seems to me the protection of a source transcends the other considerations,which do not seem to threaten national security," he wrote.
Mr. Sidey said in an interview that the identity of the CIA operative, Ms. Plame, was widely known--well before Mr. Cooper talked to his sources. "You know this game as well as I do," Mr. Sidey said. "That name was knocking around in the sub rosa world we live in for a long time."
And this is an exchange between host Alan Murray and guest Andrea Mitchell on CNBC's now-defunct "Capital Report," Oct. 3, 2003 (transcript not available publicly online):
Murray: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
Mitchell: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.
In fact, Novak did not report that she was covert; Fitzgerald did not allege it; and the factual assertions Joe Wilson makes in his own book, if accurate, prove that she was not. It's further evidence that this "scandal" is about nothing, and that Libby's indictment--even if he turns out to be guilty--is a tragedy.
Also note the comment above from mefirst. I would have though that you could check through the research section to get this, but maybe I overestimated abilities.
Apology accepted.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/
Your text to link here...
But the nutjobs will keep saying that since there were no indictments/convictions, there was no crime, conveniently forgetting that all the conspirators in this treasonous act lied.
Seven is a "magic number" according to some (also, according to NUMB3RS, one of the indicators of phony numbers, because people creating false information tend to over-use seven).
But we all know that's not the progressive way; we don't need to LIE!
isn't that special!
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." --- Condoleeza Rice
Mission accomplished.
My theory is that he sent his WMDs to Syria. Hindisght has proved that President Bush was completely justified in removing this evil dictator from power.
I'd get into the real reasons we had second trumped up war with Iraq, but frankly you're not worth the key strokes.
Once again, we see a believer in a conspiracy theory that's not based upon ANY factual evidence at all.
Hindsight is that Bush is a petty man who sent Americans to their deaths because of a personal grievance with Saddam.
vint cerf interview.
They not only believe the lie they are hearing, they troll sites like this to claim they are not satisfied.
So "setting the record straight" actually means "supplying talking points to parrot when people brings up silly littly things like facts"
Yeesh, I applaud you for getting that far. I would have began my thought process of whether or not the pages would be a good substitute for bags as my dog's pooper scooper after page 3.
And before I get some thumbs down, I am only kidding about the Wal-Mart part... after all, I shop there and I am surely literate...
--------------------------
The Midnight Review
Plus the fact that 90% percent of the garbage they sell comes from one of the real enemies of the american worker; CHINA the free marketers wet dream.
Those damn corporations....making goods and services cheaper and our lives better as a result thanks to the free market and the American worker.
SEIU are goons and thugs. Unions are an anachronism of the past. We don't need unions. They only exist to serve the greedy union bosses and the Democrat party.
He himself is full of s#!t!
So, either Bush lied, or he was just plain DUMB. He has chosen to go with DUMB - which is probably closer to the truth.
Bill & Hill Clinton, Albert Arnold (AL) Gore, Thom Daschle, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Edwards (between liaisons with his concubines), John Kerry...need I go on.
Will you claim they're DUMB? I somehow doubt it.
How many Democrats advocated for an illegal invasion and occupation?
(Hint - the answer is less than 2 - not sure Lieberman did or not)
And Bush didn't do that.
If you don't know this, you shouldn't be trying to educate ANYONE else.
Foghorn was talking about the Resolution timeframe in the fall of 2002.
They advocated for doing everything but invading, and only invading if there were no other choice.
Russ139 (March 08, 2010 8:21 pm ET)
Either Bush lied about WMD, or he chose to believe one small peice of bad intel (the Iraqi informant "Curveball") while ignoring a much longer list of dissenting intel.
So, either Bush lied, or he was just plain DUMB. He has chosen to go with DUMB - which is probably closer to the truth.
Tbone Slickens (4 hours and 41 minutes ago)
How many democrats believed the intel? Here is a short list:
Bill & Hill Clinton, Albert Arnold (AL) Gore, Thom Daschle, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Edwards (between liaisons with his concubines), John Kerry...need I go on.
Will you claim they're DUMB? I somehow doubt it.
Bobby Jindal fan (4 hours and 12 minutes ago)
I will claim that all of the aforementioned are dumb.
foghornleghorn (4 hours ago)
How many democrats believed the intel?
How many Democrats advocated for an illegal invasion and occupation?
(Hint - the answer is less than 2 - not sure Lieberman did or not)
bludog1 (1 hour and 29 minutes ago)
Oh,might need to check the record on that. Seem to rememberthat immediately before the attack, there was a string of Senators, including Democrats -- yes with an "s" -- who took to the floor to "advocate for an illegal invasion and occupation" as you describe it. Clinton and Kerry come to mind, though I could be persuaded otherwise with facts to the contrary.
I point that out to you in case you missed the relevance of the comment and the irrelevance of your remarks to this part of the thread.
To your larger point, I think I remember some 14 or 16 resolutions in the UN before action was initiated. So Bush did that (I am not certain where you were). Sorry. Wrong again.
Please, That's why we became a laughing stock in the 00 (oh, oh) decade.
Sorry.
Burden's on you.
No, They wanted more info that was better detailed before they would do something that stupid. That's why inspectors were in Iraq to verify whether the intelligence was accurate.
What was it your hero Ronalds Reagan said?
Oh yeah, "Trust but verify."
Them are some good Christian Values you follow Karl.
The dirty truth is the dims were spineless and if they really believed that the invasion was wrong they voted against their conscious because they were scared of being on the wrong side of history as they were in the Cold War. When it became politically expedient they jumped ship. How very brave of the spineless dims.
The American left... some of the lowest scum in the pond...
Sad, Tbone. Truly sad.
But let's not pretend that the vast number of Americans were NOT cowed into supporting the war too.
But let's not pretend that the vast number of Americans were NOT cowed into supporting the war too.
-- Joseph Goebbels
More of the same from Rove, he's trying to rewrite history to favor the misdeeds of Bush and his administration.
"We are what we believe we are."
-- C.S. Lewis
Mistrust and verify, to paraphrase Reagan.
The man is demonstrably a sociopath.
Good on 'em for enlisting (even though it was a political calculation for his dad) and serving. Every Army since the dawn of time needs privates to peel them taters!
Why do you hate the military Tbone? You do know that the Swift Boaters were lying don't you? How you continue to impugn a war hero for being a war hero is horribly anti-American. Horribly.
Oh, and tell me, has Bobby Jindal ever served? No, he has not. Not in any context, ever.
Go to the dentist as his patriotic duty?
BTW: Karl Rove and G. Bush have more integrity in their little pinkies than ALL democrats in congress and Obama's crew combined. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will be recorded in our history books to be the most corrupt group of politicians since our founding. You can count on this to be true.
Karl Rove belongs in jail. Lot of integrity there.
Well you seem to be a Rove fan so Im not surprised. Im am also not surprised that you actually believe the conservative hype that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are anymore corrupt than the average politician.
To use the names George W. Bush and Carl Rove in the same sentence as "integrity" is the ultimate oxymoron.
GWB was drinking and snorting his way through the American War in Vietnam when others of the same generation were dying to preserve his priveledged status.
And as far as O'Keefe is concerned, even Breibart has distanced himself from that phony. Everything he dug up has been proven to be manipulated at best but mostly flat out lies.
This will all come out at his trial for breaking and entering with malicious intent into s federal office.
So keep up the good work and keep your head up your a$$. Don't ever let the facts get in the way of your small minded opinions.
I'll wait for your post.
re-treadmarketstreet obviously doesn't like modern art, but loves made up stuff from skunks like Rove.
What a hoot!!!!!
You do not know what integrity is if you ascribe it to what KR and GWB "have in their pinkies (the little was redundant)." Integrity is required when something is wrong and said party actually SAYS it's wrong. GWB and KR lied to get us into a war - unless you still believe we'll find WMDs in Iraq... They ignored the war they started where the REAL terrorists were in Afghanistan and started a war of choice in Iraq. These FACTS are not in dispute, unless you listen to Fox news. How can you call someone corrupt when they haven’t done any law breaking, unlike your people of integrity (waterboarding = torture – look it up). Please get off the talking points you hear and THINK FOR YOURSELF! Or go back to listening to Rushy and Glenny and Seanny for your “facts,” cause those guys NEVER distort the truth (NOT)!
What O'Keefe wore IS relevant to the story. ACORN has been exonerated, or didn't you hear?
So you took a lousy art class; does that make all art lousy?
There are no lemmings here and it's a bad analogy, because its a myth that lemmings actually do follow one another off cliffs...
You could look it up...
Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
Madeline Albright, 1998
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
Robert Byrd, October 2002
Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
Bill Clinton in 1998
Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
Dick Gephardt in September of 2002
Al Gore, 2002
Bob Graham, December 2002
Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002
Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
John F. Kerry, Oct 2002
Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002
Joe Lieberman, August, 2002
Patty Murray, October 9, 2002
Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998
John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002
Once again, not that facts matter to you loonies.
Talk is one thing: the decision to commit men and women to violent invasion is quite another. Pity you don't understand the difference.
"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
"Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." -- Tom Daschle in 1998
"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -- Dick Gephardt in September of 2002
"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." -- Bob Graham, December 2002
"Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction." -- Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002
"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002
"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002
"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." -- John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." -- Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002
"Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States." -- Joe Lieberman, August, 2002
"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -- Patty Murray, October 9, 2002
"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
"Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." -- Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our
I am not prepared to render a judgement on you as a human being and you should be willing to do the same.
False Pretenses
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith
January 23, 2008
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.
Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:
On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.
It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.
In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.
The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.
The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.
Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
January 23, 2008
How to Lie About Lying
Iraq Matters , Media Madness
Hatched by Dafydd
This one is simply befuddling:
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
Now, would any disinterested party read the above -- and not think the study authors were accusing President Bush and his administration of deliberately lying us into war? Surely this subtextual implication must have crept in because of bad writing; I can't imagine that the elite media would be so intentionally partisan.
Here are the specific charges:
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
One notes that "Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members" -- isn't that a lovely grammatical construct? -- do not deny that Iraq was "trying to... obtain" WMD, even though they appear to include such claims under the category of "false statements."
Nor do they deny the administration's claim that Iraq had "links" with al-Qaeda. They merely dispute the meaningfulness of those links... and dub that another "false statement" by the president and his administration.
Here is that section from the report itself, from their database of "false statements;" it's a perfect primer on the anatomy of a falsehood:
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."
This one is instructive to deconstruct:
1.What they say: "In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: 'Sure.'"
What they mean: Rumsfeld asserts that relationships exist between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
2.What they say: "[A]n assessment... found an absence of 'compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.'"
What they mean: The later assessment found that there were relationships, but they did not rise to the level of military alliances.
3.What they say: "[A]n earlier DIA assessment said that 'the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.'"
What they mean: Before we found out the nature of the relationships, we did not know the nature of the relationships.
If you can find that Rumsfeld's statement (1) -- which evidently consisted of the single word "Sure" -- is falsified by either (2) of (3), please take to the comments and explain it to the rest of us... because to me, laboring under the disadvantage of having been intensely trained only in the lesser rhetorical art of mathematical logic, they appear to be able to exist in the same 'hood without bothering each other.
Here is another "false statement" (we are meant to understand "obvious lie") that the Center discovered, after digging deeply into the substrata of hidden rhetorical diplospeak. I must admit, this one was a marvel of original research that all by itself may justify the report -- if only to bring this one hidden, obscure falsehood to the light of day:
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
This is such an out of the blue, never before seen accusation that I haven't had time to formulate a response. He has me there!
Thus the massive database of dishonesty and mountain of mendacity they unearthed, dutifully reported by the Associated Press... with but a single effort to elicit a general response from the administration -- and no attempt whatsoever to delve into these alleged "false statements" to see whether there is even a contradiction between what the administration said and what the Center for Pubic Integrity said. Yet there is also this unanswered (unasked) question that seems somewhat pertinent, at least to me:
How many of these "false statements" were, in fact, believed true by virtually everybody, Republican and Democrat alike, when they were made? How many were parroted by Democrats, including those on the House and Senate Permanent Select Intelligence Committees, who thereby had access to the same intelligence as la Casablanca? The Center doesn't tell, and the incurious media elites don't ask.
This is as close as they come in their executive summary:
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials [Eric Shinseki? Weasely Clark? Bill Clinton?], have publicly -- and in some cases vociferously ["rabidly" would be the better word choice] -- accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence.
A growing number of critics! Well, who could argue with that?
Here are a couple of inconvenient truths the AP story neglects to tell us:
◦"A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations..."
The Fund for Independence in Journalism says its "primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support for the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting institution in the world, the Center for Public Integrity, and possibly other, similar groups." Eight of the eleven members of the Fund's board of directors are either on the BoD of the Center for Public Integrity, or else are on the Center's Advisory Board. Thus these "two" organizations are actually joined at the hip.
◦"Fund for Independence in Journalism..."
The Center is heavily funded by George Soros. It has also received funding from Bill Moyers, though some of that money might have actually been from Soros, laundered through Moyers via the Open Society Foundation.
Other funders include the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts (used to be conservative, but in 1987 they veered sharply to the left, and are now a dyed-in-the-wool "progressive" funder), the Los Angeles Times Foundation, and so forth. The Center is a far-left organization funded by far-left millionaires, billionaires, and trusts.
Even the New York Times, in their "me too" article on the data dump, admits that there is nothing new in this release... just a jumble of statements, some of which later turned out to have been erroneous, others which just constitute heresy within the liberal catechism:
There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”
By "wallowing," the Times means those in the terminal stage of BDS can search for phrases like "mushroom cloud" or "yellowcake" and be rewarded by screens and screens of shrill denunciation of the Bush administration... just as Watergate junkies used to do (without the benefit of computers) in the early 1970s. (Mediocre science-fiction author and liberal "paleotruther" Isaac Asimov called this, evidently without realizing the irony, "getting my Watergate fix.")
The Nixon reference appears to have been suggested by the report itself; the executive summary ends:
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
I'm certain it's sheer coincidence that this nonsense was spewed across the news sockets during the peak of the election primary season... and right before the primary in Florida, of all states. Had anyone at AP or the Times realized how this might affect the election, I know their independent journalistic integrity would have suggested they hold this non-time-constrained story until afterwards. Say, they could even have used the time to consider whether "Iraq and al-Qaeda had a relationship" and "the relationship didn't amount to direct cooperation" contradict each other.
A less charitable person than I might imagine this "database" was nothing but a mechanical tool to allow good liberals easier access to a tasty "two-minutes hate."
But realizing that the elite media has only our best interests at heart, my only possible conclusion is that, despite the multiple layers of editorial input that must occur at these venues, several important facts just slipped through the cracks:
◦The fact that the Center for Public Integrity is a Left-funded, leftist, activist organization with a serious hatchet to grind with the Bush administration;
◦The fact that the Fund for Independence in Journalism is neither independent, nor is it engaged in journalism (it's a front group of mostly the same people whose purpose is to shield the Center from lawsuits);
◦And the fact that the vast majority of the supposed "false statements" are in fact simply positions with which liberals disagree, or else statements widely accepted at the time that later investigation (after deposing Saddam Hussein) showed to be inaccurate.
I must assume that these self-evident facts must simply have been honestly missed by the gimlet-eyed reporters and editors at AP and the NYT. Heck, even Pinch nods.
We've installed a Shia dominated government with close ties to Iran and futher destabilized the area creating over 4 million Iraqi refugees. The cost of the war that not only didn't pay for itself but was placed on the credit card courtesy of China has increased our debt and robbed us of needed economic resources, and has not made us any safer. Take a nap justtired the BS you peddle gets no play here.
If the piece was compiled by authors and backed by an organization that has a reputation of integrity and objectivity, it may be worthy of consideration. If it's just a hack job from a partisan smear machine, it is not worth the time of day.
Of course you will discount it even if it is the truth, just as 98% on this Board discount everything FOX says simply because FOX says it - truth be damned.
As to conger's comment, I give him credit for admitting "truth has a liberal bias". It's about time someone here admitted there is a liberal bias in the MSM. One gold star for conger!
1. assessment of the probability that Saddam had WMD
2. the necessity to conduct a full-scale invasion and half-scale occupation of Iraq.
To agree with premise #1 does not automatically mean that you endorse Bush's foolhardy course of action. Where does your buck stop, anyhow?
BushCo's response was not merely ineffective; it worked counter to long-term US interests. The responsibility is his alone.
This is absurd. YOu are repeating feeble talking points. I have heard this nonsense before. Try forming an independent thought. You are a parrot.
Regardless of the circumstances, COngress approved the war - ergo it was not illegal. It doesn't matter why Congress aprooved it - they approved it. Period.
International law? You don't even know what international law. The only internatinal law to which we are beholden are treaty obligations. We have no treaty with Iraq. There is nowhere in teh Constitution that states POTUS needs a UN permission slip. You do not know what you are talking about?
Interntaional law? LMAO!!!!
To provide leverage for Saddam to comply with the UN Resolutions. After all other methods were exhausted.
Not all methods were exhausted. The inspectors had access to anything they wanted. Bush pulled them out so he could have his little revenge war and feel more presidential.
It's tiresome to refute this lie over and over. Please, this isn't ancient history.
Then while both parties are sticking to the points, along comes Bobby Jindal Fan with a smear/character attack on liberals. The irony here of course is that his smear accuses liberals of being confused by facts as they only deal with smears.
Way to go Bobby! Next time you should probably stick to the points rather than asserting that your prejudice against liberals.
Sometimes you people are so silly I find myself calling the wife over to read what you post as serious or sarcasm! Earth to dgs: I never said art was lousy! Duhhhhh.
BTW: How nice of you to point out "pinkies (the little was redundant)". Albeit wrong, but thanks anyway. You must think you are really, really, really smart.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/powell-jim4.html
Tell me where I am wrong.
And his and Hoover's free market approach let to the Great Depression.
Make a note of it.
If you want to argue with me, please at least have your facts straight first.
FYI I have a degree in finance. I trust the history I've learned. You can trust some article you found online. That's your choice.
The bottom ranks often include Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
Warren G. Harding 38 of 41
http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx
Five Worst Presidents
1.James Buchanan
2.Andrew Johnson
3.Franklin Pierce
4.Warren G. Harding
5.William Henry Harrison
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/presrankings1.html
Why would I believe anything else out of this guys book? His editors must have been morons.
--------------------------
The Midnight Review
Tbone, the Burkean bells are ringing a little hollow these days, dontcha think? (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're something something unrelated to something)
I am a Classical Liberal fashioned in teh Aristotelean model. I prefer the John Locke, ROusseau, Voltaire model to anything Burke wrote. Thomas Jefferson hated Burke.
Nice try.
Isn't that an EXTREME oxymoron when applied to Rove?
Barry is Bill Ayers.
Obamcare factors TEN years of taxes and revenue and only six years of spending. THis is akin to me planning to earn $100K/yr for the next ten years and planning to spend $166K/yr for the next six years. Sure, if you want to play games like that the numbers balance, but what happens during the four out years.
Barry Hussein is a fraud and a liar (and an idiot, and a Marxist, and an America-hater, and a loser........)
Bailing them out is not capitalism - it is corporatism ----I am a capitalist. George W. Bush is not.
1. You are a widely, but shallowly read amoral cog in the stock-market machine convinced of your own ability to influnce elections through teh interwebs by sheer force of will and (poor) wit and, further, that you are unwilling to deal in anything but absolutes so as to maintain the simplicity you have read into your superficial, amateurish attempts at combining politics and economics into one overarching sociological theory.
2. You are a capable troll taking advantage of a handful of knee-jerk, well-meaning, young ideologues, very much like someone standing in the middle of an anti-corporate rally munching on a Big Mac, wearing his Gap clothing and Nike shoes, listening to his iPod, and talking about how much cheaper it is to shop at Walmart for coffee rather than that over-priced, 'fair-trade' garbage you can get at the farmer's market on Saturday mornings.
Oh and then theres this:
"You're using facts. That is going to confuse the liberals. They prefer to deal in smears and character attacks." - Bobby Jindal fan
"Barry Hussein is a fraud and a liar (and an idiot, and a Marxist, and an America-hater, and a loser........)" - Barry Jindal fan
No comment.
This article is another example of "Bush Derangement Syndrome." Compared to the incompetency of the present administration finding fault with Bush/Rove is laughable. If Bush/Rove were so stupid, why are Obama/Biden trying to count Iraq as one of the "great achievements' of this administration?
Maybe it would be better politics to 'man up' on these issues and instead of blaming Bush, admit that the Bush administration actually did some good in Iraq and Afghanistan, admit the stimulus has not worked, that the Health Care is a fiasco and there is a need to retool this administration's approach.
Not that anything like that will happen. Democrats are lemmings and Obama is headed for the cliff. "Yes we can! (make Carter look good).
I think Carter was a weak pathetic idiot who generally meant well. I do not extend the same benefit of the doubt to Barry. Carter was incompetent - Barry is malfeasant.
And as far as Obama/Biden trying to count Iraq as one of the great achievements of the administration Ive only heard this said on Fox so I dont know how valid this is. However if it is valid then 1. I may admit Obama/Biden may be taking too much credit for the success and 2. this does not get Bush or Cheney of the hook. Just because we are in better shape then we were a year ago in Iraq (a success) does not mean that Bush and Cheney were right.
Now its your turn to man up. Admit that we went to Iraq based on false pretenses, admit that we spent our war resources recklessly and in the wrong country, admit that the stimulus has worked (you can analyze unemployment rates here with the bureau of labor statistics) if you would like) (you can also look at the fat that the stock market is up 60% from its low and that we have seen some really good growth in GDP since the stimulus has been enacted. You can also compare the highs in unemployment to those of previous recessions, and the length of recession, amongst other indicators that the stimulus worked).
And yes Health care is now a fiasco, but only as a result of almost entirely conservative objections, to what was once something decent.
Spare me the lemmings insult. It just shows that you are unable to see another point of view besides your own.
It's about righting a wrong. It's about the ACTUAL truth vs. the CONVENIENT truth.
People aren't going to read Rove's book for fun...they're not going to read it to learn anything either....they're going to read it to get their EGO's CARESSED.
The conservatives have cornered the fiction market....if I were a "conservative" (a HOBO in a TUX), I'd be upset at all the fake conservatives who go through the "news" pundit circuits repeating talking points as if they're justifiable positions...we get the POINTS...we just want a REASON why you've gotta LIE about it!
But luckily, I use my brain to form my own opinions...the right needs to challenge the left on some of these lies, because using Google to prove them wrong doesn't take as much talent as they think.