Senator Byrd...The Truth Will Emerge.

by searchfothetruth 63 Replies latest members adult

• 

  teejay

  Az...

  You *go* girl!
• 

  teejay

  Recapping... here's a smattering of Senator Byrd's comments -- comments that not a single Bushite here (or elsewhere) has been able to address let alone refute. Talk all you want about what groups he was a member of 40 years ago – yes – but address Byrd's scathing rebuke of megalomaniac Hitler Dubya? Not a chance...

  • Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.
  • sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue.
  • it appears that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises.
  • There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded September 11, to Saddam Hussein who did not.
  • We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear.
  • No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up... our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in.
  • It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.
  • The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.
  • What has become painfully clear is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.
  • our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk.
  • the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?
  • The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves [as liberators]. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. If the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.
  • Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.
  • lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate.
  • the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom.
  • "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.
  • Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?
  • there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury.
  • We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way.
  • The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.
  • Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.
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  freeman

  I have a question, since ALL of the members of the Security Council were in unanimous agreement that Iraq had these WMDs before the start of the war (please feel free to show any evidence to the contrary), should we not also hold them accountable now for the lack of uncovering the elusive smoking gun? Granted some members did not have the backbone, the will, or the moral clarity to enforce their own resolution, but they did create this resolution nonetheless.

  Should we not take umbrage at the fact that these same Security Council members signed a document declaring Iraq had not disarmed and that held out serious consequences for Iraq’s lack of compliance? Are not these same Security Council members, and by extension the nations they represent just as much on the hook if no WMDs are ever found?

  Freeman
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  searchfothetruth

  Thats why the Weapons Inspectors were in Iraq, to find evidence.

  Hans Blix wanted more time, the US and Britain didn't want to give it, but Tony Blair is now asking for patience.

  The security council may have wanted Iraq to disarm, but also wanted evidence before passing a resolution to attack. No evidence was found, so no resolution was passed and therefore Iraq was attacked illegally by the US/Britain.
• 

  freeman

  Search said: Hans Blix wanted more time, the US and Britain didn't want to give it, but Tony Blair is now asking for patience.

  I agree with this statement of yours 100%. The US and Britain did not want to give any more time to Iraq and so they should not be asking for any more time then they themselvs gave Iraq. Lets see now, Iraq had ten + years , so that gives the US and Britain until 2013 to find these weapons before we call them on the carpet. Ok so then it’s agreed, we will all keep are mouths shut until 2013 and then give them hell if they have not found anything by then! I'm glad we found this common ground we could agree on.

  Freeman
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  expatbrit

  Resolution 1441 said:

  Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons, their components and production facilities and locations, as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material,

  No doubt from the Security Council that such programmes and weapons existed. No use of the word "if".

  And no, the inspectors were not in Iraq to "find" the weapons, they were there to receive and examine the Iraqi declarations of their programmes and weapons. Declarations that were not made.

  Expatbrit
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  ThiChi

  ""ThiChi made a good point on another thread when he was explaining where he got a quote from, he said:

  You are correct. Anticipating the "kill the messenger" mentality, or the "Poison Well" poor debating tactic, I usually leave out the author so we can focus on the information, not the person providing it....... ""'''

  Mark:

  LOL, you got me big time, you are right!

  The claim and the reasons for the claim should be considered, not the messenger....However, you can see how powerful this tactic can be!
• 

  searchfothetruth

  ThiChi,

  LOL. Sorry about that but I couldn't have said it better myself.
• 

  teejay

  ... that gives the US and Britain until 2013 to find these weapons before we call them on the carpet. Ok so then it’s agreed, we will all keep are mouths shut until 2013 and then give them hell if they have not found anything by then! I'm glad we found this common ground we could agree on.

  That plan would make sense except for one little inconvenience: for almost a decade, the U.S. (along with the U.N. and the rest of the world) didn't bother to enforce the U.N. resolutions that were invoked following Gulf War I. That Sadaam was able to take advantage of this lack of enforcement can be laid at, not Sadaam's feet, but at the feet of the ones forming the resolutions. Sadaam just outplayed them at their own game, and for ten years no one seemed to mind.

  Finally, in mid-November, 2002, the world got serious about finding Iraq's supposed stockpile of WoMD. Almost immediately, Bush, Blair and their cronies displayed little interest in giving Blix and Crew the slightest time to do their job. This lack of support from the Administration coupled with the inability to freely interview Iraqi scientists (who supposedly knew the exact whereabouts of the WoMD) or freely move about the country (and to suspected sites) kept the inspectors from finding the (likely non-existent) WoMD.

  Since the end of hostilities, for TWO MONTHS the U.S. (with over 100,000 troops on the ground) has been able to move unchecked throughout the country. They have been able to interview at will every one of the Iraqi scientists who supposedly knew the location of the WoMD. They have offered rewards to the populace (upwards of $100,000) for information leading to the discovery of even a syringe of anything slightly resembling a WoMD and have come up with squat.

  And now you say that Bush should be given ten YEARS when we didn't give Blix two MONTHS of unfettered search?

  p.s. I'm still waiting for one of the resident Bush supporters to take a stab at answering at least ONE of the Senator's comments. I promise not to hold my breath while I wait...
• 

  Pleasuredome

  Declarations that were not made.

  well i know of at least 12,000 pages of a declaration made to the UN security council, of which 4000 pages were removed by the US before being distributed to the non- permanent members.