lowing wrote:
Bertster7 wrote:
jamriche wrote:
Here is my view of how the Bush administration went wrong. Okay after 9.11 we immediately went after the people we believe and know to be responsible Al Queda (I think that is how you spell it, anyway), we invaded Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban and had Osama Bin Laden cornered in the Afghanistan Mountains. But somehow, a 6ft. tall Arabian male on dialysis was able to outmanuever or armed forces! Secondly, once everything was wrapped up in Afghanistan (when I say wrapped up I don't mean to sweep under the rug everything that our forces continued to deal with and still do to this day) we made Iraq a priority. First it was for weapons of mass destruction and that is what we invaded on. Once we were there and we could not find any WMD's we made the cause for invading Iraq a humanitarian one. Then once the situation in Iraq went from bad to worse, we switched the reason for why we went into Iraq again this time to establishing freedom and democracy in a middle eastern country. Now we find ourselves in a war that can best be described as a quagmire because when we start to reduce the amount of troops in Iraq something occurs and we must put troops back in to keep the country from destablizing; this time it may be because we are all hearing about 'civil war', whatever the case maybe we will probably not be able to leave Iraq for some time and it is this slow, arduous war that is hurting the President, Republican congressmen and woment and House of Representatives candidates for the upcoming election in 2008. Well this post has stretched on longer than I anticipated, but this are some of my opinions on the subject. Thank you.
But the Bush administration didn't go into Iraq to find WMDs, they went their for something else (I don't know what - it wasn't oil, the oil companies advised against it saying it would push up oil prices, which it has). They knew there were no WMDs and it is
known that Bush told the CIA to find evidence of WMDs, when they came back and said they hadn't found any evidence, he told them to go back and look harder, that they'd better find something. The WMDs were a excuse for going into Iraq. I don't know why they actually did it. I'm inclined to believe it's sort of a PR stunt gone horribly wrong, after all Bush Snrs popularity was boosted massively after the 1st Iraq war, maybe G.W.B. was hoping for something similar.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, because I tend to think virtually all of these 'conspiracy theories' are full of shit. But it is on record that Bush told the CIA to look for WMDs and when they didn't find them told them to look again, harder. This suggests Bush wanted the WMDs to be there as an excuse for war.
I don't think Bush is evil, just not very good at running a country. Compare US economics under Clinton and Bush and you'll see what I mean. Cheney and Rumsfeld are quite shady characters though, I wouldn't like either of them in charge of anything. Cheney is always being involved in all sorts of corruption and always seems to get away with it - really not a very nice guy.
I'm not anti American (not very), I liked Clinton - I'm not even anti Republican (well maybe a bit) but Reagan wasn't too bad - he did what Republicans are supposed to do, sorted out the economy. But the Bush administration is rubbish.
Also btw you almost spelt it right, it's Al Qaeda (A not U).
If all of this is "on record" could you please provide the reference?
Sorry, don't have links, because most of the news I read/view is not online.
It will probably be possible for you to find links to it somewhere. I first learned of these facts in an article in the Times and heard it corroberated on a documentary that was on the BBC (think it was BBC4). The sources were several members of the CIA itself (who were fairly disgruntled about being told to do thsir job wrong), there are also members of MI6 who made simillar claims of intelligence being manufactured and a report stolen from a university student was in some way connected to all this, I can't remember the details of that though. This was all around the time of the Hutton report over here in the UK, I can't remember exactly when that was though. If you want to find online references to it, look up old BBC documentaries around the time of the Hutton inquiry and you'll probably be able to find it.
As for sources about Cheney and Rumsfeld being shady characters, I don't know much about Cheney except that he gets a lot of money from Halliburton, who he is apparently 'no longer associated with' and I've read lot's of bad things about him over the years, although I can't remember much specific.
Rumsfeld is even in trouble at the moment, I believe - don't know what for yet, just saw it flash up at the bottom of the screen on the news 'Rumsfeld falls foul of his own rules' and he's always doing and saying stupid things. For example he did talk of, in a videoed speech to troops in Iraq (I think it was Iraq, could have been somewhere else), a flight hijacked by terrorists (flight 93) which was SHOT DOWN over pensylvania - there is video footage of him saying this (no I don't have a link, find it yourself - it will be out there and I bet the conspiracy theorists have had a field day with it). Personally I reackon it was just a slip of the tongue and he made a mistake. Although I would readily believe that the government would have shot down another hijacked plane on 9/11 to minimise furthur casualties - that would have been the sensible thing to do certainly. If that is what happened, which it probably isn't, then good work by the government in being able to get their act together and shoot down this plane quickly.