EVADING THE TRUTH-Switching Stories

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Registered: 08-21-2004
EVADING THE TRUTH-Switching Stories
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Thu, 10-07-2004 - 11:38am

Switching Stories<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />


By E. J. <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Dionne Jr.


Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A39


When you spend so much time torturing the truth, it's hard to keep your story straight -- or even remember what you just said.


The most remarkable moment in Tuesday's debate between Vice President Cheney and Sen. John Edwards came when Cheney issued a blanket denial of the obvious.


Edwards, who proved both his value and his loyalty to Democratic nominee John Kerry, declared that "there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th. Period. The 9/11 Commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is."


What Cheney said next was, literally, incredible: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."


This is the same Cheney who, just minutes before, in the very same debate, had defended the attack on Iraq by declaring flatly that Saddam Hussein "had an established relationship with al Qaeda." Hello? If that is not a "suggestion" of a connection, what is?


Well, this: On Sept. 14, 2003, Cheney said Iraq was at the heart of "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."


If the Cheney-Edwards debate made nothing else clear, it is that the central issue in this presidential election is becoming the administration's lack of credibility and its tendency to say whatever is convenient to make whatever case it is trying to make.


Day by day, we learn more and more about how the administration led the nation into war by distorting intelligence and twisting facts. A president who once condemned a mentality that declared "if it feels good, do it" has now embraced a related principle: "If it sounds good, say it."


On Sunday the New York Times published an extensive report showing that in its public statements before the war, the administration "repeatedly failed to fully disclose" divisions in the intelligence community over the alleged nuclear threat posed by Iraq.


In September 2002, Cheney declared that high-strength aluminum tubes that Saddam Hussein had imported, allegedly to build uranium centrifuges, constituted "irrefutable evidence" that he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. It turned out, the Times reported, that "the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons." The evidence, in other words, was not "irrefutable."


But nothing -- even our knowledge that Iraq did not have those weapons of mass destruction -- stops Cheney from making the same scary case now that he was making before the war. "The effort that we've mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," he said during the debate. "The biggest threat we face today is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."


Note the double use of the word possibility and that other phrase, most likely. Quite a contrast to the "irrefutable" certainties the administration was peddling before the war. But we're supposed to ignore the fudge words. The words "nuclear weapon" and


"biological agent" are supposed to frighten us into voting for Bush-Cheney -- just as we were frightened into war.


But the administration's lack of trustworthiness is making it ever harder for the president and vice president to shroud their failures behind alarming rhetoric.


Cheney's soliloquy about nukes and bioweapons came in response to a question from moderator Gwen Ifill about former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer's statement on Monday that the United States did not have enough troops on the ground to prevent "an atmosphere of lawlessness" from taking hold in Iraq. A Post story quoted an earlier Bremer speech in which he said that "the single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout" the occupation.


Not a single word of Cheney's answer was responsive to Ifill's question. He couldn't defend the administration's strategy. He didn't even mention the word "Bremer."


The political take on the debate will see Cheney as a more skillful, more informed debater than Bush, and Edwards as Cheney's equal. But the substantive point is more important: The administration's story is falling apart. Bush and Cheney mercilessly attack their opponents and promote a climate of fear because they are finding it increasingly difficult to defend the choices they made and the words they have spoken.


 

Donna

"Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Donna
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Registered: 03-24-2004
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 7:17am
"But the substantive point is more important: The administration's story is falling apart. Bush and Cheney mercilessly attack their opponents and promote a climate of fear because they are finding it increasingly difficult to defend the choices they made and the words they have spoken."

Very true words!

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-06-2004
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 7:23am
Consider a few great moments of liberal civility:

* In 2000, during a discussion of the Supreme Court decision allowing the Boy Scouts to bar homosexual scoutmasters, (when he thought he was off camera) then-ABC News interviewer Bryant Gumbell called social-conservative spokesman Bob Knight "a f***ing idiot."

* In 1994, on a PBS program, Julianne Malveaux (a Pacifica Radio talk show host) expressed this wish for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease." Liberals regularly describe Justice Thomas as an Uncle Tom, a "house nigger" and a jockey-boy lawn ornament – doubtless, these are expressions of esteem.

* In 1999, during the Clinton impeachment trial, actor/activist Alec Baldwin said that in an ideal world, "We would stone Henry Hyde (the House impeachment manager) to death and we would go to their homes (other Republican impeachment leaders) and we’d kill their wives and children." Why not their pets, too, Alec?

* Walter Cronkite compared the US Attorney General to the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, "Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tomas de Torquemada…was largely responsible for …the torture and burning of heretics" (this in a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 22, 2003).

* Congressman Charles Rangle (D-NY) has suggested that GOP budget warriors are racists at heart. "It’s not ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore. (Now) they say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.’" Which makes Jack Kemp the Imperial Grand Dragon?

* Along the same lines, Jesse Jackson (in a British TV interview, Dec. 25, 1994) claimed conservatives are the heirs of the Third Reich. "In Germany it was called fascism. Now, in Britain and the U.S., it is called conservatism." This from the establishment’s favorite civil rights leader, who once (in the course of an interview) called New York City "Hymie-town," in reference to its Jewish population.

* After the 1998 murder of homosexual Matthew Shepard, the Gannett News Service’s Deborah Mathis blamed ‘the Christian right per se" and "some particular members on Capitol Hill" (she mentioned Trent Lott and Jesse Helms) for helping to "inflame the air that these people (Shepard’s killers) breathed that night."

* In floor debate on Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, that great moralist, Ted Kennedy warned that the former Solicitor General, Yale Law professor and federal Appeals Court judge would drag America back to "a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens doors in midnight raids" – And blondes would die in the backseats of cars off Chappaquiddick Island?

* Back in 1995, then-President Bill Clinton – the exemplar of let-the-healing-begin – implied that conservative talk show hosts had created the climate of anti-government hysteria partially responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, that left 168 dead.

* It would take a book to chronicle all of the prominent liberals who spent the 1980s telling us that Ronald Reagan was a blithering idiot, a really dumb actor who couldn’t think without cue cards.

* In his book, "Dude Where’s My Country?" Michael Moore, the left’s weapon of mass distortion, inveighed, " The bastards who run our country (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al ) are a bunch of conniving, lying, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control."

* The day before Coulter’s appearance, Kerry was in New Hampshire with actor Michael J. Fox, slamming Bush on stem-cell research. Because the president has moral concerns about embryonic stem cell research, the Senator called him a captive of "right-wing ideology." And this was what – an example of refinement and an elevated political discourse?

Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 7:57am

Here we go again with the comparisons of WWII and Iraq.


"...

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 8:05am

"Good point-and FDR believed Hitler was developing a nuclear weapon-guess what? He was wrong. Strangely no one's arguing that he should have left Hitler in power anyway."


Liveanew, to make this comparison is to suggest that FDR involved us in WWII because he knew Hitler wanted to produce a nuclear weapon.

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 8:09am

"Umm...he was trying, but wasn't even close to successful... "


Hmmm, sounds like somebody else we know of.

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 8:54am
There is one very important comparison to make with WWII. We didn't invade Raboul.

The plan of the Japanese was to cripple the American Navy, grab the outer islands and make America fight her way back island to island to get to Japan. Raboul was the centerpiece. Raboul was an island in the central Pacific that the Japanese had heavily fortified. It had tanks, artillery pieces, and fifty thousand Japanese troops. It was to be the bloodiest battle of WWII. Here, the Japanese would stand and fight to the death. Here, the Japanese would inflict such harm on the Americans, they would lose heart and sue for peace. Here, the Americans would suffer such a fight, they would never fight again. McArthur argued that we needed to invade Raboul, to secure his southern flank.

But that never happened, did it? Why?

Because the military thought in new ways. You see, the Army thought as it always did. You win a war by grabbing territory, fighting the enemy, and holding ground to deny it to your foe. By their way of thinking, land is the goal, and rivers, lakes, oceans are barriers to be crossed.

But to the Navy, rivers, lakes and oceans are highways. They allow the Navy to go where it wants and to move its men and material to the places it desires. And the Navy said, "The Pacific Ocean is our highway. We will use it to go where we want, and we will block it to keep the enemy from going where they want."

And that is exactly what happened. The Navy by-passed Raboul, blocked the Japanese from going there, bombed the airstrips so they couldn't be used, and ignored it. McArthur eventlually called it "leaving them to whither on the vine." Fifty thousand Japanese troops were still on that island when Japan surrendered.

Terrorist don't need much land. You could train a whole bunch of terrorist in a building the size of most school gyms. But terrorist need to keep moving, and they need some form of commuication. The mountain passes were Bin Laden's highways. Why? Why weren't they ours?

It's a new war, but it is being fought in an old way. If this administration had been in charge of WWII, Raboul, not Iwa Jima, would have been the big blood bath. It's a new war. We need a new administration, who can think in a new way.

By the way, America never declared war on Germany. Germany declared war on America three days after Pearl Harbor. Hitler thought he needed to support his partners. I'm not sure America ever actually formally declared war on Germany.

Avatar for tmcgoughy
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Registered: 04-08-2003
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 9:08am
Excellent post olddude!
The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-07-2004
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 9:32am
You people, you constantly shift positions on your ardent support for Bush's war. How many different sides of this issues can you guys take?

Talk about mixed messages....

Expect Kerry to pounce all over Bush's own mixed messages and we'll see him smirk over and over that it was the right thing to do as he gets his rump handed to him once again in front of 10's of millions of Americans.

I think Bush would say: This clearly shows his intent to create more intent, intent on his intention to revive his intent to create more intent to create weapons of intent.

Oh yeah, there's old saying in Tennesee...


Edited 10/8/2004 9:35 am ET ET by koronin66

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 10:44am
And your point? Sounds like a good deal of it is the truth, espcially about the stem cell research.
Donna

"Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President." -- Theodore Roosevelt.

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Fri, 10-08-2004 - 11:06am

1. Hitler had a program in place to create a nuclear bomb.

2. Sadaam had no program in place to create a nuclear bomb.>

More like

Hitler was trying for years to acquire a nuclear bomb

Saddam was trying for years to acquire a nuclear bomb

Neither succeeded.

<<>

<>

You just contradicted yourself.>

Not exactly-trying to develop is not quite the same thing as developing-but perhaps I could have worded it a little more clearly. FDR believed Hitler was close to having a nuclear bomb. He was wrong.