It would appear that the need to justify our invasion of Iraq actually outweigh our national security. Such is the desire to retain power.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?ei=5065&en=9b92b000e0a064e6&ex=1163134800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

 

 

Frances

Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Distrubing and revealing. I agree. What does this do to Democrats' claims that Saddam was not an equal threat to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons?

Distrubing and revealing. I agree. What does this do to Democrats' claims that Saddam was not an equal threat to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons?

 

For what it's worth, I would think that the fact that we have now been in Iraq for over four years, and have yet to find the promised WMD's would go a long way toward showing that Saddam was not a threat. Of course, I wouldn't expect a little fact like that to stand in the way of someone wanting to justify four years of wasted lives and ridiculous spending ...

 

Side note - the war in Iraq is now costing the US taxpayers right around $2 BILLION PER WEEK. Contrast that with the total bill for the first Iraq war - $8 Billion. That's $8 Billion for the entire Gulf War. Other coalition countries paid for almost 85% of the cost of the first Gulf War. Since Bush didn't need, or want, the approval of the rest of the world for this invasion of a sovereign nation, we are pretty much footing the bill alone for this one.

 

 

Frances

I don't think it is humanly possible to miss the point of an article by a wider margin than that ...

 

It just isn't possible.

 

37 paragraphs, over 1900 words, and you pick out one sentence to justify a war that should never have been fought, while ignoring the fact that selfserving politicians were more than willing to give nuclear secrets to rogue states like Iran to save face and retain a hold on power.

 

That is truly amazing.

 

 

 

Frances

Is this the same newspaper that has made a habit of leaking classified materials to the world at large since President Bush took office? The same newspaper that has used vast amounts of ink telling us that Iraq had no nuclear program, that Iraq was not a serious threat to our security, and that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat Iraq posed to justify the war?

For what it's worth, I would think that the fact that we have now been in Iraq for over four years, and have yet to find the promised WMD's would go a long way toward showing that Saddam was not a threat. Of course, I wouldn't expect a little fact like that to stand in the way of someone wanting to justify four years of wasted lives and ridiculous spending ...

 

Side note - the war in Iraq is now costing the US taxpayers right around $2 BILLION PER WEEK. Contrast that with the total bill for the first Iraq war - $8 Billion. That's $8 Billion for the entire Gulf War. Other coalition countries paid for almost 85% of the cost of the first Gulf War. Since Bush didn't need, or want, the approval of the rest of the world for this invasion of a sovereign nation, we are pretty much footing the bill alone for this one.

 

 

Frances

You (and the NYT) can't have it both ways. Either Saddam was actively pursuing a WMD program and was close to having the technology to develop and deploy nuclear weapons or he wasn't. The New York Times seems to be in full campaign mode.

This particular debate is getting hackneyed. Lets make sure we stick to the issue and not one another.

Whether right or wrong, when I puilled up the article, the first thing I did was to check its source, When I saw it was the New York Times, I didn't bother to read it because I pretty well knew what it would say. If the atricle originated with National Review, I would have known that it came with an opposite spin.

 

Where, in this day and age, do we get unbiased reporting? Excellent question, I believe. In the end, we either don't know what to believe as truth or we choose to believe what suits our own preconceived ideas best.

 

Nonetheless, I believe we have botched the war because we have fought it half-heartedly. You fight to win and not to maintain political correctness. The result that bothers me more than any other is that it may well produce a Democrat U S Senate which, in turn, will, over time, make the federal judiciary far more prone to broadly interpreting the constitution and "discovering" more of those "rights" (ex.: Griswold and Roe) that were never "found" during the first 200 plus years of our federal court system. That concerns me more than anything else.

Scooterbob -

 

I fully understand your hesitancy to grant the article any weight, due to the source that printed it.

 

However, had you read it, you would see that it is neither the author, nor the editorial board of the NYT that made the claims. Rather, the people that cried "foul" over the posting of the material on the web site are a variety of institutions that are charged with overseeing the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.

 

Just for the sake of it, I'll try to find another source that addresses the story.

 

 

Frances

Whether right or wrong, when I puilled up the article, the first thing I did was to check its source, When I saw it was the New York Times, I didn't bother to read it because I pretty well knew what it would say. If the atricle originated with National Review, I would have known that it came with an opposite spin.

 

Where, in this day and age, do we get unbiased reporting? Excellent question, I believe. In the end, we either don't know what to believe as truth or we choose to believe what suits our own preconceived ideas best.

 

Nonetheless, I believe we have botched the war because we have fought it half-heartedly. You fight to win and not to maintain political correctness. The result that bothers me more than any other is that it may well produce a Democrat U S Senate which, in turn, will, over time, make the federal judiciary far more prone to broadly interpreting the constitution and "discovering" more of those "rights" (ex.: Griswold and Roe) that were never "found" during the first 200 plus years of our federal court system. That concerns me more than anything else.

 

If U.S. government officials are quoted on record as saying that they shut down the website because it needed to be reviewed for sensitive security information, I don't see how a perceived bias of the NY Times is relevant or how the veracity of a report with on-the-record quotes from government officials can be questioned based on its source. It sounds like more bad news for the White House that some would rather ignore or see buried than brought to light.

 

So now we have sensitive nuclear information (according to the assessments of numerous weapons experts) posted on a website for all the world to see at the urging of Republicans for political purposes. Disgusting. Wouldn't it be ironic if North Korea or Iran found some critical, missing nugget of nuclear information from these documents, made available by the Bush White House in a feable attempt to justify its misguided Iraq adventure? How would that be for an ironic twist on the party that has sold itself as best suited to protect Americans from terrorism and others that would seek to do us harm? Even if Iran and North Korea didn't gain any useful information from the posted documents, the fact that they were evidently posted indiscriminantly, and without rudimentary review by the experts, for obvious political purposes poses huge questions about the judgement of those who pushed to release it.

 

Well, in recent months we have found out that not only has the Iraq war made the soil more fertile for Islamic extremists, but through the bungled attempts of the Bush White House to justify its unmitigated disaster of a war, we may have unwittingly passed critical bits of nuclear know-how to the other two members of the "Axis of Evil".

 

And scooterbob, make no mistake--we have botched this war because it was started on false pretenses by people who have shown themselves to be grossly incompetent at every turn. No more, no less.

You (and the NYT) can't have it both ways. Either Saddam was actively pursuing a WMD program and was close to having the technology to develop and deploy nuclear weapons or he wasn't. The New York Times seems to be in full campaign mode.

 

"I" don't have "it" either way. The story is NOT about whether Saddam did or did not have WMD's. My post (#4) was in response to your selective reading of one sentence of the article.

 

The article is about the fact that a group of politicians demanded the release of extremely sensitive documents that lay out the step by step path to building a nuclear bomb. In this instance, the information was (apparently) not previously available. That is not my opinion, nor that of the staff of the NYT. It is the position of the nuclear scientists and the intelligence community.

 

IF you read the article, it is clear that these politicians forced the release of the material in the hopes that someone outside of the nuclear community would be able to find a reason that would have justified the invasion of Iraq. The fact that the material being released would enable a country such as Iran to greatly speed up their pursuit of nuclear arms was (in their minds) of little consequence, if the payoff was the retention of political power for themselves.

 

These are the same people that are trying to sell themselves to America as the group that can best protect us against terrorism.

 

 

Frances

If U.S. government officials are quoted on record as saying that they shut down the website because it needed to be reviewed for sensitive security information, I don't see how a perceived bias of the NY Times is relevant or how the veracity of a report with on-the-record quotes from government officials can be questioned based on its source. It sounds like more bad news for the White House that some would rather ignore or see buried than brought to light.

 

So now we have sensitive nuclear information (according to the assessments of numerous weapons experts) posted on a website for all the world to see at the urging of Republicans for political purposes. Disgusting. Wouldn't it be ironic if North Korea or Iran found some critical, missing nugget of nuclear information from these documents, made available by the Bush White House in a feable attempt to justify its misguided Iraq adventure? How would that be for an ironic twist on the party that has sold itself as best suited to protect Americans from terrorism and others that would seek to do us harm? Even if Iran and North Korea didn't gain any useful information from the posted documents, the fact that they were evidently posted indiscriminantly for obvious political purposes poses huge questions about the judgement of those who pushed to release it.

 

Well, in recent months we have found out that not only has the Iraq war made the soil more fertile for Islamic extremists, but through the bungled attempts of the Bush White House to justify its unmitigated disaster of a war, we may have unwittingly passed critical bits of nuclear know-how to the other two members of the "Axis of Evil".

 

And scooterbob, make no mistake--we have botched this war because it was started on false pretenses by people who have shown themselves to be grossly incompetent at every turn. No more, no less.

:thumb::thumb:

If U.S. government officials are quoted on record as saying that they shut down the website because it needed to be reviewed for sensitive security information, I don't see how a perceived bias of the NY Times is relevant or how the veracity of a report with on-the-record quotes from government officials can be questioned based on its source. It sounds like more bad news for the White House that some would rather ignore or see buried than brought to light.

 

So now we have sensitive nuclear information (according to the assessments of numerous weapons experts) posted on a website for all the world to see at the urging of Republicans for political purposes. Disgusting. Wouldn't it be ironic if North Korea or Iran found some critical, missing nugget of nuclear information from these documents, made available by the Bush White House in a feable attempt to justify its misguided Iraq adventure? How would that be for an ironic twist on the party that has sold itself as best suited to protect Americans from terrorism and others that would seek to do us harm? Even if Iran and North Korea didn't gain any useful information from the posted documents, the fact that they were evidently posted indiscriminantly, and without rudimentary review by the experts, for obvious political purposes poses huge questions about the judgement of those who pushed to release it.

 

Well, in recent months we have found out that not only has the Iraq war made the soil more fertile for Islamic extremists, but through the bungled attempts of the Bush White House to justify its unmitigated disaster of a war, we may have unwittingly passed critical bits of nuclear know-how to the other two members of the "Axis of Evil".

 

And scooterbob, make no mistake--we have botched this war because it was started on false pretenses by people who have shown themselves to be grossly incompetent at every turn. No more, no less.

 

You not only beat me to it, H, you also said it better.

 

 

Frances

For those that do not trust the article from the NYT (and I do understand why), here are two more sources that have an equivalent article concerning the debacle:

 

From Britain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1939055,00.html

 

From China: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-11/03/content_5287842.htm

 

Without a doubt, this story will begin to get some legs of it's own. Stay tuned.

 

 

Frances

I am not saying the article is biased or unbiased. I don't know the backgrounds and allegiances of either the named or the anonymous sources. However, the fact that it is played up in the NYT is enough to raise red flags. I'm sure those of you who have accepted it as gospel would interpret otherwise if it were written as pro-administration and printed in the WSJ.

"I" don't have "it" either way. The story is NOT about whether Saddam did or did not have WMD's. My post (#4) was in response to your selective reading of one sentence of the article.

 

The article is about the fact that a group of politicians demanded the release of extremely sensitive documents that lay out the step by step path to building a nuclear bomb. In this instance, the information was (apparently) not previously available. That is not my opinion, nor that of the staff of the NYT. It is the position of the nuclear scientists and the intelligence community.

 

IF you read the article, it is clear that these politicians forced the release of the material in the hopes that someone outside of the nuclear community would be able to find a reason that would have justified the invasion of Iraq. The fact that the material being released would enable a country such as Iran to greatly speed up their pursuit of nuclear arms was (in their minds) of little consequence, if the payoff was the retention of political power for themselves.

 

These are the same people that are trying to sell themselves to America as the group that can best protect us against terrorism.

 

 

Frances

Please don't presume that I have not read something just because you do not agree with my take on it, and I will do the same when I post an article for your reading pleasure.

 

Thanks.

 

Where has the Democrats' concern been for all of the classified intelligence data that the New York Times has leaked over the last few years? The article you posted uses several unnamed sources. Given the NYT's record on leaking classified materials, forgive me if I suspect that there are some disgruntled Clinton holdover's in our intelligence agencies who are up to no good. I am, I believe, naturally skeptical about a hand picked NYT expert translating something written in Arabic and telling me how damaging the contents are to national security. The New York Times does not have much of a record for veracity or accuracy, IMO.