Colin Powell on Meet the Press...

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-05-2008
Colin Powell on Meet the Press...
174
Sun, 10-19-2008 - 9:29am
and he comes out in support of Barack Obama. Wow.

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Avatar for songwright
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-28-1997
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 11:05am

. . . it has become clear here on this board that people think we (conservatives) are voting against Obama based on race.


Well, here is at least one liberal who doesn't think so.

~ SW

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-12-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 11:10am
Nice logic you are using there.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-12-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 11:11am

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 11:12am

Well said.


 

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2006
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:01pm

Right. How can we ever come together as a country if we continue to denigrate one another with the name calling and absolutes.



iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2006
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:03pm
'K' Thanks Sue!


iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 2:50pm

Excellent post! ITA exactly....On everything you've written in that post.

<>

I've just started to capitalize these things since coming to the board. I noticed that everyone does that here so I thought that was the way it should be written....and I was just doing it wrong all these years.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-20-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 3:35pm
Just trying to play by your rules.
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-20-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 5:12pm

>>> I said it then, and it evidence after the fact indicates Powell was sold a bill of good by those more zealous. If he had all the facts, no way would he have done that. He got the same package of bull doo doo Congress got, and that the administration now claims was the full range of info.

Hmmm...so Powell, the Sec of State, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a general was fooled by "bull doo doo?" Man, he must be really stupid...but then, he did endorse Barry. maybe Hudachek was right.

>>> Um, no. There are Republicans who would not have supported the president if all the info was out there.

The "info" was put "out there" by the Democrats...

"Dear Mr. President: ... We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraq sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."

Sincerely,

John Kerry, Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Frank R. Lautenberg, Dick Lugar, Kit Bond, Jon Kyl, Chris Dodd, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Alfonse D'Amato, Bob Kerrey, Pete V. Domenici, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Mikulski, Thomas Daschle, John Breaux, Tim Johnson, Daniel K. Inouye, Arlen Specter, James Inhofe, Strom Thurmond, Mary L. Landrieu, Wendell Ford, Chuck Grassley, Jesse Helms, Rick Santorum.

Letter to President Clinton
Signed by Senators Tom Daschle, John Kerry and others
October 9, 1998

Together, we must confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists, and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation's wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people but on developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them."

President Clinton
State of the Union address
January 27, 1998

"In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program."

President Clinton
Address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff
February 17, 1998

"His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us.

What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made?

Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal."

President Clinton
Address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff
February 17, 1998

"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world.

The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people."

President Clinton
Oval Office Address to the American People
December 16, 1998

"People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons."

Former President Clinton
During an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live"
July 22, 2003

Regime change in Iraq has been official US policy since 1998. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, signed into law by President Clinton, states:

"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
105th Congress, 2nd Session
September 29, 1998

>>> They basically took advantage of 11 September to sell the Iraq war.

The Guardian
February 6, 1999

Saddam link to Bin Laden

By Julian Borger

Saddam Hussein's regime has opened talks with Osama bin Laden, bringing closer the threat of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to US intelligence sources and Iraqi opposition officials.

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.

News of the negotiations emerged in a week when the US attorney general, Janet Reno, warned the Senate that a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction was a growing concern. "There's a threat, and it's real," Ms Reno said, adding that such weapons "are being considered for use."

"We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 million Americans -- 2 million of them children -- and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the chemical and biological weapons."

Islamic terrorist group "Al Qaeda"
June 12, 2002

Newsweek
January 11, 1999

Saddam + Bin Laden? America's two enemies are courting.

By Christopher Dickey, Gregory Vistica, and Russell Watson

In the no-fly zones of northern and southern Iraq, Saddam Hussein's gunners blindly fired surface-to-air missiles at patrolling American and British warplanes. In Yemen, terrorists seized a group of British Commonwealth and American tourists, and four of the hostages died in a shootout. In Tel Aviv, the US Embassy abruptly closed down after receiving a terrorist threat. Perhaps it was just a typical week in the Middle East. But in a region where no one puts much faith in blind coincidence, last week's conjunction of Iraqi antiaircraft fire and terrorism aimed at the countries that had just bombed Iraq convinced some that a new conspiracy was afoot.

Here's what is known so far: Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas -- assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. US sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two US embassies in Africa last summer. US intelligence has had reports of contacts between low-level agents. Saddam and bin Laden have interests -- and enemies -- in common. Both men want US military forces out of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has been calling for all-out war on Americans, using as his main pretext Washington's role in bombing and boycotting Iraq. Now bin Laden is engaged in something of a public-relations offensive, having granted recent interviews, one for NEWSWEEK. He says "any American who pays taxes to his government" is a legitimate target.

"The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed.

13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes."

Dr. Hans Blix, Chief UN Weapons Inspector
Addressing the UN Security Council
January 27, 2003

"The recent inspection find in the private home of a scientist of a box of some 3,000 pages of documents, much of it relating to the laser enrichment of uranium support a concern that has long existed that documents might be distributed to the homes of private individuals. ...we cannot help but think that the case might not be isolated and that such placements of documents is deliberate to make discovery difficult and to seek to shield documents by placing them in private homes."

Dr. Hans Blix, Chief UN Weapons Inspector
Addressing the UN Security Council
January 27, 2003

"I have mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions and I come back to it as it is an important one.

Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991."

Dr. Hans Blix, Chief UN Weapons Inspector
Addressing the UN Security Council
January 27, 2003

HAMZA: Saddam has a whole range of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical. According to German intelligence estimates, we expect him to have three nuclear weapons by 2005. So, the window will close by 2005, and we expect him then to be a lot more aggressive with his neighbors and encouraging terrorism, and using biological weapons. Now he's using them through surrogates like al Qaeda, but we expect he'll use them more aggressively then.

Dr. Khidhir Hamza, former Iraqi Nuclear Scientist for 20 years
Interviewed on CNN
October 22, 2001

>>> And by the way, that is only my opinion, nothing more.

I've tossed in a few facts...take a peek.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-13-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 7:36pm

We've seen other things posted which suggests he does feel rather duped by the administration's more zealous members.


As for inviting in Congress etc, Congress was badgered, with hints of not being patriotic, if they did not support the war. They wrestled with the wording, just as the UN wrestled with it, trying to find wording that would not say 'you can attack.'


Asking for missile strikes at that point in time, with no fly zones in place, etc... was routine. The war was a huge and unnecessary escalation.


In any case, I speak only for me, and from early in 2002, a year before the war... I was opposed.


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