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Debunking Liberal Myths about the Iraq war Debunking Liberal Myths about the Iraq war
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Old 07-12-2005, 10:29 AM
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Default Debunking Liberal Myths about the Iraq war
-
This site goes on into more detail on all of this stuff, but I will summarize the 8 items here for you. Please pay attention, because the next time one you liberals brings up one of these topics, I will be using these same arguments. So save yourselves some time now.

Black text is my comments. Blue text is a quote from him. Purple text is him quoting someone else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
1) George Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Short Answer: numerous prominent Democrats with access to intelligence data also openly declared and obviously believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ... The aforementioned Democrats include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, Robert Byrd, Henry Waxman, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Pelosi among many, many others. ... To believe that George Bush lied about WMDs is to believe that there is a vast conspiracy to lie about WMDs that goes to the highest level of both parties & that stretches across both the pro and anti-war movements. ... all the non-American intelligence agencies that also believed Saddam had WMDs. ... When you add it all up, it appears that George Bush, like a lot of other people, was wrong about Saddam Hussein having stockpiles of WMDs. But without question, he did not lie about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
2) A study released in March of 2003 by a British medical journal, the Lancet, showed that 100,000 civilians had been killed as a result of the US invasion.

Short Answer: What Lancet was in effect saying was that they believed 98,000 civilians died, but they might have been off by roughly 90,000 people or so in either direction

Fred Kaplan wrote: Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.) This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board. ... Imagine reading a poll reporting that George W. Bush will win somewhere between 4 percent and 96 percent of the votes in this Tuesday's election.

What Lancet was in effect saying was that they believed 98,000 civilians died, but they might have been off by roughly 90,000 people or so in either direction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
3) The Bush Administration claimed Iraq was responsible for 9/11

Short Answer: ...that simply never happened.

Many people may believe this was the case because in "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore truncated a comment by Condi Rice in order to deliberately give viewers of his movie that false impression. Here's the quote as it appeared in the film:

Michael Moore (quoting Rice) said: "There is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11"

Now here's the full quote:

Condoleeza Rice said: "Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York."

Furthermore, after the war had begun, in September of 2003, President Bush himself publicly & explicitly said: "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks."
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
4) The war in Iraq was actually planned by people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz back in 1998 at a think tank called the Project for the New American Century.

Short Answer: overthrowing Saddam Hussein by hook or crook was the de facto policy of the US government for more than a decade before the war in Iraq and the disagreement was over how to do it. That argument was settled in many people's minds by 9/11, not by people conspiring in a think tank back in 1998. [The short of it is that everyone on both sides was conspiring to get Saddam out of power...not just Bush]
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
5) The war on terror has nothing to do with Iraq.

Nine days after 9/11, George Bush said, "(W)e will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

That definition fits Iraq and since they happened to be the easiest nation to make a case against at the UN and in the court of World Opinion, they were our next logical target after Afghanistan -- although they're not our last target."

Even John Kerry, the flip-flopping Democratic candidate for President last year, seemed to at least agree that the fate of Iraq was crucial to the war on terror: "Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror, and therefore any advance in Iraq is an advance forward in that and I disagree with the Governor [Howard Dean]." -- John Kerry, 12/15/03
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
6) Saddam Hussein had no ties to terrorism.

Short Answer: Saddam provided "safe haven" for terrorists with "global reach." Among them were terrormaster Abu Nidal, Abdul Rahman Yassin, one of the conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing, "Khala Khadr al-Salahat, the man who reputedly made the bomb for the Libyans that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over...Scotland,"Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer," & "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan" who is now believed to be leading Al-Qaeda's forces in Iraq.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
7) Saddam Hussein had no ties to Al-Qaeda.

Short Answer: What the 9/11 Commission was trying to get across was that there was no evidence that Saddam and Al-Qaeda collaborated on specific attacks, not that they didn't have a working relationship. ... While there may not be evidence that Saddam and Al-Qaeda cooperated in attacks on the United States, the evidence that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al-Qaeda worked together is absolutely undeniable. For example, no one disputes that Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who once ran an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and is leading Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in Iraq today, was in Iraq BEFORE the war started getting medical care. [Additional examples are givin on the link as well]
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hawkins
The Downing Street Memo proves Bush lied to the American people about the war.

[I think I have thoroughly shredded this argument several times, but this guy has some additional arguments on his site that might be worth looking at]

Note that no particular person in the Bush administration said war is "inevitable," it's just the perception that C, AKA Sir Richard Dearlove, has.

Furthermore, to even try to interpret the Downing Street Memo as supporting the idea that Bush was making up evidence -- presumably about weapons of mass destruction -- is extremely difficult to square with the fact that the DSM itself makes it absolutely clear that the British believed Saddam had WMDs. From the DSM: "For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary." If the Bush administration and the Brits believed Saddam had WMDs and was capable of using them, what exactly is supposed to have been forged?

As Cassandra at Villainous Company correctly pointed out: Quote (the DSM) all you want. Is there some evidence to back this up? Say, to refute the conclusions of the Butler Report (British), the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, or the 9/11 Commission, which all concluded that there was no improper manipulation of intelligence? Or are we now willing to disregard the conclusions of three official inquiries on the strength of one (word in an) unattributed set of minutes from a single foreign staff meeting?"
Enjoy.
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Old 07-12-2005, 02:23 PM
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right so.. how goes that search for the WMD?
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Old 07-12-2005, 02:41 PM
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The war was valid even if a single WMD is never again found.

Because the WMDs were not the point.
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Old 07-12-2005, 02:41 PM
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Default This must be
what is going round on FREE REPUBLIC!!

Who is John Hawkins, anyway?
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Old 07-12-2005, 02:47 PM
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Quote:
Who is John Hawkins, anyway?
Don't know. Dont care. Never heard of him before today. His arguments make sense though.

The only reason I used his name and linked to his site is because I didnt want people to think I was ripping his ideas off.

Feel free to explain why anything he said was wrong though.
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Old 07-12-2005, 02:52 PM
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Default I've heard of him
I see his articles posted on right wing blogs all the time.

It doesn't matter who he is, the guy is articulate and his arguments are sound. Normally I might be able to play devil's advocate and come up with a counter argument, but I couldn't do anything to what he has argued, it's pretty conclusive that they left has been dead wrong all along.
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Old 07-12-2005, 03:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sadistic-Savior";p=&quot View Post
The war was valid even if a single WMD is never again found.

Because the WMDs were not the point.
right sooo I git it now.. again

Imminent threat to the USA was not point of invading Iraq.
Soooyeah umm, what flavors do the casusbelli come in today?
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Old 07-12-2005, 03:15 PM
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Quote:
right sooo I git it now.. again
Good to hear. Not sure why it took you this long, but better late than never.

Quote:
Imminent threat to the USA was not point of invading Iraq.
the point was ensuring that he did not have WMDs and was not trying to get them.
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Old 07-12-2005, 03:24 PM
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Default The point
was doing what the UN should have done back in 1991; take the madman out of power. As far as I'm concerned, the UN and their anti American, anti logical decision makers have the blood of every man woman and child that Saddam Hussein killed between 1991-2003 on their hands. When we went in there, we should have fought the war like we have fought every war before that, by utterly defeating the enemy and setting them straight in order to bring peace and prosperity into the world (i.e. Japan and Germany). Iraq was an example of internationalism gone wrong, Bush Jr.'s plan for Iraq sought to rectify this mistake.
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Old 07-12-2005, 03:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sadistic-Savior";p=&quot View Post
Quote:
right sooo I git it now.. again
Good to hear. Not sure why it took you this long, but better late than never.

Quote:
Imminent threat to the USA was not point of invading Iraq.
the point was ensuring that he did not have WMDs and was not trying to get them.
riiight so yeah, thanks for informing us of that.

Iraq's Imminent threat against the USA with weapons capable of massive destruction is OUT.

exIraqi dictator's thought of imminent threat against the USA with weapons capable of massive destruction is IN.

..it all makes sense now. wonderfull.
Pls keep us uptodate on latest goalpost moves.
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