Dealing with lies about Bush lied us into war

[sirs]

Lie No. 2: “For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war.”
And the apparent "validation" is: The US-led United Nations regime of sanctions against Iraq, combined with “no-fly” zones and provocative weapons inspections, is one of brutal oppression. The deliberate withholding of food, medical supplies and other vital necessities is responsible for the death of more than a million Iraqis, half of them children. Two UN officials who headed the oil-for-food program resigned in protest over the conditions created in Iraq by the sanctions. The CIA used the inspectors as a front, infiltrating agents into UNSCOM, the original inspections program. The CIA’s aim was to spy on Iraq’s top officials and target Saddam Hussein for assassination.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Bush having any say so what so ever regarding Iraq, beyond 2001.  Hmmm, "more than a decade...."?  Bush was giving orders to Clinton in 1996?  "Provocative weapons inspections"??  Does the original poster remember who started the 1st Iraq war, and who lost it?  Do they recall what Nation was imposed clear and strictly to be enforced UN resolutions regarding weapons inspections?  Do they  recall how Saddam & the UN raided the "Oil for Food" program, that was specfically supposed to alleviate much of the Iraqi's plight, and used it instead to rebuild his palaces, pay suicide bombers' families, and reinvigorate his WMD programs?  Perhaps Kofi Annan's son could jog his memory

This whole "brutal oppression" mantra is not even a claim of Bush lied, as much as some rationalization effort in claiming how evil America is.  And EVEN if the claim is accurate that the CIA was attempting the spy on Saddam, without any logical reason as to why, the much more logical rationale would be to gather intel on Saddam, the government, their workings, and mostly to uncover what they might be able to as it relates to Terrorist connections.  The accusation of the CIA using the inspectors to plot the assasination of Saddam, is pure speculation analogus to "If Bush knew..."



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My apologies that this wasn't Tee's post, but Plane's.  I was so eager to reply to a supposed Bush lie by Tee, I jumped all over this one.  Again, my apologies

[Plane]

Wait one...


I chose that site and that line.


I was thinking about going with the fish one , but that was too easy.

[sirs]

Wait one... I chose that site and that line.  I was thinking about going with the fish one , but that was too easy.

Again, a thousand apologies, Plane.  Mea culpa, mea culpa

[Plane]

Wait one... I chose that site and that line.  I was thinking about going with the fish one , but that was too easy.

Again, a thousand apologies, Plane.  Mea culpa, mea culpa

Don't worry about it , isn't eagerness a virtue?

[sirs]

Don't worry about it , isn't eagerness a virtue?

Depends on who you ask, I suppose     

[Michael Tee]

Methinks sirs has lost it.  I read the post when it had no replies and was left scratching my head in total bemusement.  Naturally, I declined to reply to such ravings and wondered briefly whatever had the poor guy been smoking.

Later I came upon plane's post from one of the "Bush Lied" sites in another thread, read through it and plane's "rebuttal," and made short work of it.  No. 1, plane had probably lost a paragraph from the rebuttal part of his argument, so it was partially incomprehensible, but I still got the drift of it, and No. 2, plane's argument seemed to be that amongst the many issues the site dealt with, a mistake had appeared in one of them, so therefore everything else on the site must be wrong.

As I pointed out in my reply to plane in that thread, the reasoning was akin to a teacher marking a test with 20 questions, finds the answer to the first question is wrong and gives the kid a zero, figuring if the kid answers the first question wrong, none of the other answers can be right either.

Well, that was plane.  Now I see that sirs also is taking his shot at it.  sirs' rant is no more logical than plane's (why am I not surprised?) but a lot more convoluted and harder to follow.  I'll try to shorten it as much as possible, because I really think it's a waste of my time to spend it on drivel like this (as I say, arguing about whether or not Bush lied is like arguing about whether or not the sun rises in the east) but for the sake of the last two dead-enders in all of America who still believe that the Smirking Chimp is a truth-teller, and with the infinite patience of the saint that I am, here it is:

Bush Lie No. 2 (according to this site's count) was that the U.S. dealt "patiently and honourably" with Iraq for more than a decade.  This was obviously a lie, and the site pointed out why: the embargo, the deaths of a million Iraqis (half of them children) due to sanctions, the no-fly zones all constituted an unbearable unacceptable and violent oppression of an entire population, entirely at odds with the "patient and honourable" lies of the Chimp. 

And sirs' answer to the site's dead-on nailing of lie No. 2?  That BUSH WASN'T RESPONSIBLE, because his term of office only began in 2001.  As if the issue had suddenly mutated and was no longer an issue of how America had dealt with Iraq over the past decade (which was exactly what Bush had just lied about) but how BUSH had dealt with Iraq over the past decade.  And then proceeds to a ludicrous categorization of Saddam's alleged misdeeds over the interval - - paying death benefits to the families of suicide bombers (which he had every legal right to do,) invading Kuwait (which had already been resolved in an armistice agreement,) alleged corruption - - as if ANY of this could possibly have justified an embargo that killed half a million children, and even if it could have justified it, as if the killing of half a million Iraqi children somehow qualified as "patient and honourable" dealing with the country.

So this is the problem of entering a "Bush Lied/Didn't Lie" debate with dead-enders - - by persistently defending each well-documented lie with the most absurd and pathetic arguments, they are eventually defeated (as of course they would be - - truth always wins over lies) but the effort just isn't worth it.  I don't want to trivialize this - - it is important that Bush be called to account for his lies, that people know that he lied and that truth be told.  But the fact that Bush is a liar is now more or less generally accepted.  Not unanimously accepted - - obviously - - but accepted by most reasonable Americans.  Therefore the task of "convincing" the last pockets of dead-ender resistance is just something I am going to have to leave to others, if anyone wants the unenviable job, or just abandon the poor guys to their ignorance in the last resort.  The work of documenting the lies has been done - - admirably - - by others.  It's there for anyone who wants to know, but the task of re-arguing it is essentially a re-typing of facts and a re-arguing of the obvious, and for this, I have finally run out of time and patience.

So, Last Defenders of the Smirking Chimp, I am going to have to say Adios to you and ride off into the sunset.  If you can find other suckers to pursue this debate with you, I will be glad for your sakes, though not for the suckers'.  They have my sympathy. 

[sirs]

And this is the problem when entering into a Leftist's delusional reality of the facts, in this case Tee not just fails, but refuses to lodge even 1 supposedly obvious Bush lied about X.  Your squat has my pity.  Sleep well

[Michael Tee]

<<in this case Tee not just fails, but refuses to lodge even 1 supposedly obvious Bush lied about X.>>

The obvious Bush lied about was that he lied about the ten years of patient and honourable dealing.  I guess you missed that because you were tired, huh?

<<  Your squat has my pity.  >>

Oh, man, there is no comeback to such devastating wit.  I am crushed.

[sirs]

I guess Bush missed it too, as having not been in office for all those 10+years, as well as the fact of how bogus an allegation of not being "patient & honorable" by virtue of such egregious weapons inspecting & nefarious CIA spying.  I mean, how dare Iraq lose the war & be obligated to adhere to UN resolutions.  Of all the nerve.

And the "crushed" part is how you continue to avoid, like the plague, producing any actual Bush lied claims with follow-up validation.  Then again, why change now.  Let's let Plane present them like he did, so we can shoot them down, that way

[Michael Tee]

<<I guess Bush missed it too, as having not been in office for all those 10+years,>>

Which is completely irrelevant since Bush Lie No. 2 (in the web-site's count) was that AMERICA (not Bush) had dealt "patiently and honourably" with Iraq for the past decade.  The lie concerned America's dealings, not Bush's.   Much as you might believe to the contrary, America and Bush are not identical.

<< as well as the fact of how bogus an allegation of not being "patient & honorable" by virtue of such egregious weapons inspecting & nefarious CIA spying.  I mean, how dare Iraq lose the war & be obligated to adhere to UN resolutions.  Of all the nerve.>>

Uh, no, sirs, in case you missed it, what was not honourable in America's dealings with Iraq in the decade to which your lying "President" was referring, was the deliberate starving to death of half a million Iraqi children and half a million Iraqi adult civilians.  I realize, sadly, that it has to be pointed out to someone like you that starving children to death is never "honourable" because otherwise you would never see how your "President" could have been lying when he referred to America's decade of "patient and honourable" conduct towards Iraq.  Of course it was not "honourable" to insert C.I.A. spies in various humanitarian programs or weapons-inspection programs either, but these dishonourable actions pale into insignificance beside the murder of half a million Iraqi children.  So hopefully now you will understand how and why Bush Lie No. 2 was just as claimed all along, a big fat lie.

<<And the "crushed" part is how you continue to avoid, like the plague, producing any actual Bush lied claims with follow-up validation.  >>

Well of course I just validated them in my preceding posts in this very thread and in fact at the top of this very post.  But I know, your attention span is very short.  I know how easy it is for you to "forget" any time anything is posted in this group, especially anything proving that Bush lied.

And here we come to the most hilarious part of your post:

<<Then again, why change now.  Let's let Plane present them like he did, so we can shoot them down, that way >>

This is unbelievably funny.  You and plane are becoming the Laurel and Hardy of the lunatic far right.  A tag team going in after the nefarious Bush-hater Michael Tee.  But your latest escapade really takes the cake.  After I had finally shown some common sense and washed my hands of both of you, plane (who by courtesy I at least owed the response of telling him where the "Bush lied" sites were to be found, since I don't believe I had ever posted any in direct response to request by him) then goes after them, finds a site of his choice, picks a "Bush Lie" of his choice, and proceeds carefully to "demolish" his chosen lie from his chosen site.  Not.  YOU then proceed to follow up the "maestro's" alleged demolition of the non-Lie with your supportive accolades of "shrewd, plane," "masterful, boss," or similar Laurel-and-Hardy-type buffoonery, and all's well in crypto-fascist cloud cuckoo-land, until . . .

. . . until the next post, actually.  plane's "shrewd" attack on Lie No. 2 consisted of "proving" that they had miscalculated some number somewhere in the web-site.  (It's a big web-site.)  It's not clear from plane's post, which seemed to have lost a key paragraph (and I'm not criticizing plane for that, accidents do happen) or even plane's reply, just WHAT number had been miscalculated, but on the basis of the miscalculation, everything else on the web-site was conveniently "tainted" and therefore incapable of proving that the "President" lied.  Speedy.  Convenient.  Ludicrous.  Not only was NOTHING specific in Bush Lie No. 2 affected in any significant way by the alleged "error" in the calculations, but the entire methodology of plane's approach was ridiculed, and justly so, by the apt example of a high-school teacher finding one wrong answer in a student's test  and therefore giving the kid a mark of zero on the theory that one wrong answer invalidates all the other answers from the same kid.  This was the "reasoning" upon which Bush Lie No. 2 was "found" to be a hoax.

Oy. Well, you can see how much effort it takes to demolish the liars' defence of the lie.  As I say, if I had the time, I could do this forever.  There are so many lies, yet each lie is fiercely defended as truth.  In a tag-team operation, where one moron does the "heavy lifting" of defending the original lie with yet more lies and absurdities,  and the second moron eggs him on with cheesey accolades like "shrewd" and "masterful" and "LOL" as if he had just been treated to the wisdom of Solomon.  UNFORTUNATELY my time for this pathetic little game is limited, and I am not going to play any more.  I know that this will only give sirs one more chance to "declare victory, hit ENTER," but so be it.  Enjoy your "victory," sirs, you have my complete contempt.

P.S. I have one more comment to make about plane's attack on Bush Lie No. 2, but I'll save that for another post.  plane's reasoning was even more defective than I originally realized but that's another story.

[Michael Tee]

Here's what I promised in my last post: my final word in the "Bush Lied" Festival of the Absurd.

In plane's examination of what was probably a typical "Bush Lied" site, he found an error in the calculation of Iraqi deaths.  It's still not clear to me whether he was referring to the million Iraqis killed by sanctions or the 600,000 killed as a result of the American invasion, but in any event, he refers to a "base-line" error allegedly found by Pyjamas Media.  The error seems to be a base-line mortality rate of 5.5. taken during the period of time preceding the time period when the abnormally high numbers of Iraqi deaths were logged in.

[NOTE:  Because of time constraints, I am writing this without referring to the actual posts or documents, which I did look at but am now reconstructing from memory.]

In any event, plane triumphantly points out that the EU mortality rate for the same period of time as the Iraqi base-line period, was approximately 10, or roughly twice the Iraqi base-line.  Meaning that the Iraqi base-line had to be wrong because the Europeans with their "superior" health-care and amenities, could not possibly be dying off at twice the rate of Iraqis during the same time period.

Well, actually, thanks to the good offices of the Professor, who posted in another thread the entire text of the Pyjamas Media report which, according to plane, debunks the high number of Iraqi deaths as calculated in the study referred to on the Bush Lied web-site, I was able to read the whole of the Pyjamas Media article, and it was very enlightening.

Far from debunking the study, the article actually deals with objections raised to the study's methodology.  For example, the "5.5" mortality rate, half of the EU's rate for the same period, is specifically put to one of the study's authors.  The author raised the point that mortality rate is NOT a simple function of the state of public health or existing medical care; that other factors, such as the percentage of elderly in the general population, could have a great influence on mortality rate.  The author of the study pointed out that for the time period in question, Europe had a very high percentage of elderly in its general population whereas Iraq had a very low percentage of elderly in its general population.  In the opinion of the interviewee, the comparison of the Iraqi base-line mortality rate with the EU rate for the same period did not necessarily reveal any error in calculation.  Further, the interviewee stated that the base-line as calculated was in close accord with at least two other independent calculations of the Iraqi mortality rate for that period from two independent sources.

plane, I will say flat out that I am quite disappointed in the way you handled the Pyjamas Media material.  If you had read the full text of the article (which I assume you did) and knew that the discrepancy between the Iraqi base-line and comparable EU figures had been raised and answered in the interview, then you owed that much to me in your critique of the Bush Lied material that you purported to raise in my name and then critique.  Concealing that part of the interview so that only the doubts raised were referred to in your argument was really shabby and something I would not have expected from you.  I trusted you enough to respond to your post without myself going to the source and it looks like maybe that was a mistake on my part.  This would not have surprised me if it had come from sirs, but it is kind of surprising coming from you.  I really hope there is an explanation.

[sirs]

<< as well as the fact of how bogus an allegation of not being "patient & honorable" by virtue of such egregious weapons inspecting & nefarious CIA spying.  I mean, how dare Iraq lose the war & be obligated to adhere to UN resolutions.  Of all the nerve.>>

Uh, no, sirs, in case you missed it, what was not honourable in America's dealings with Iraq in the decade to which your lying "President" was referring, was the deliberate starving to death of half a million Iraqi children and half a million Iraqi adult civilians.  I realize, sadly, that it has to be pointed out to someone like you that starving children to death is never "honourable" because otherwise you would never see how your "President" could have been lying when he referred to America's decade of "patient and honourable" conduct towards Iraq.  Of course it was not "honourable" to insert C.I.A. spies in various humanitarian programs or weapons-inspection programs either, but these dishonourable actions pale into insignificance beside the murder of half a million Iraqi children. 

Sorry to burst your Bush bashing bubble Tee, but the "starving" & "murdering" of Iraqi children can be rightly placed on Saddam, NOT Bush or America.  SADDAM invaded Iraq, and lost his war.  As a result of HIS actions, Iraq was imposed harsh sanctions.  As a result of HIS doing, $$$ from the UN's food for oil program was reidirected AWAY from the Iraqi people and "the children" by way of providing much needed foods & medicines, and into rebuilding his plush palaces, and God knows into whatever WMD programs he was likely working on. 

And you again validated squat with more manure.  It's amazing how difficult a chore is for someone so predisposed to how evil, moronic and a lying bastard Bush is, to not be able to say, "look, he lied us into the war by saying X.  And this is why it's a lie".  One can only assume that their position on such is so lame, that the best thing to do is keep lying themselves and say "I have" and keep pointing to overt anti-Bush websites and claim victory

[Michael Tee]

 <<SADDAM invaded Iraq, and lost his war.  As a result of HIS actions, Iraq was imposed harsh sanctions.>>

Oh.  I understand.  As a result of invading another country and losing a war, harsh sanctions are imposed on a country.  It has to follow. It's automatic.   Nobody has to DO anything, the sanctions just magically appear out of nowhere and children die.  It's just a sad fact of life.  The U.S. is not guilty.  It did nothing to procure the sanctions.

Your ignorance or naivete, whichever you prefer, are apparently bottomless.  They proceed from a mind which is overwhelmed in dealing with the situation immediately before it and is apparently incapable of looking any further than the end of one's nose.  Did you ever wonder how it happened that Germany and Japan, which invaded many countries and also lost their wars, never had any sanctions imposed on them?  Or the U.S.A. which invaded Viet Nam and then lost its war never had any sanctions imposed on it?  Or the Argentines, which invaded the Falklands Islands and then lost their war, never had any sanctions imposed on them?

It is very unusual, sirs, for a country which loses a war to find sanctions imposed on it at all, let alone sanctions which kill a million of their citizens.  And the sanctions DON'T just happen.  Somebody - - in this case the U.S.A. - - had to work very hard and very long to make sure those sanctions were imposed.  Once the children began to die in large numbers, they had to work even harder to make sure the sanctions were continued.


  <<As a result of HIS [Saddam's] doing, $$$ from the UN's food for oil program was reidirected AWAY from the Iraqi people and "the children">>

Nice try, moron.  Forget that most of the children had already died BEFORE the Oil for Food program even began?  Don't worry, with just a slight re-adjustment, your argument can become "As a result of HIS doing, $$$ from the UN's "food for oil program" [sic] which could have paid for the resurrection of the dead children was redirected . . . "

[sirs]

Spoken like the true moral relatavist that you are.  Lets look at some choice examples

As a result of invading another country and losing a war, harsh sanctions are imposed on a country.....Somebody - - in this case the U.S.A. - - had to work very hard and very long to make sure those sanctions were imposed.  Once the children began to die in large numbers, they had to work even harder to make sure the sanctions were continued.

Yea.  And had he not invaded no sanctions would have been imposed at all.  What a concept.  I mean, it should have been perfectly reasonable, and probably in your mind, absolutely required that Saddam use Iraqi's oil revenues, to rearm and rebuild his military ASAP, right.  Screw the people, Iraq was largely defenseless and those imperialistic Americans were just outside the door. 

The sanctions were imposed precisely to impede such, NOT to punish "the children".  And the garbage that it was purely the U.S. to make the sanctions happens, simply reinforces how disconnected you are to logic.  The U.S. makes all the decisions at the UN.  The U.S. snaps its fingers and the UN says "how high"??   My supposed ignorance is completely overshadowed by your Alternate Reality perception of what is, is

Nice try, moron.  Forget that most of the children had already died BEFORE the Oil for Food program even began?

Would you mind providing us #'s, timetables, and the source for your stats please?

[Michael Tee]

<<The sanctions were imposed precisely to impede such, NOT to punish "the children". >>

The sanctions were imposed to force Iraq, a sovereign nation whose invasion of Kuwait had failed, to continue to bow to American dictates long after the cessation of hostilities.  The sanctions of dual-use products (such as chlorine, a poison gas ingredient which was also necessary for water purification) ruined the public health of the Iraqi people.  Killed a million including half a million children.  In other words, to enforce its own will on a conquered nation, the U.S. killed 500,000 children.  Something which Bush stated described as patient and honourable.  And I don't give a shit what miserable and cowardly excuses you can give, there is nothing honourable about making war on children.  Nothing honourable about killing half a million kids.  Only a fucking conservative like you could ever have the balls to claim that there was.

 <<And the garbage that it was purely the U.S. to make the sanctions happens, simply reinforces how disconnected you are to logic.  The U.S. makes all the decisions at the UN.  The U.S. snaps its fingers and the UN says "how high"??  >>

No, that's not at all what I said.  In fact it's a deliberate distortion of what I said.  Another fucking lie, this time right out of your mouth and not the mouth of your Liar God, Bush.  If you go back to my post, you will see that what I said was that the U.S. had to work God-damn hard to get the sanctions from the U.N. and even harder to keep the sanctions in place after the children started dying.  They did not just snap their fingers, I never said it was a snap for them, and I really don't know how you can expect to go on making up your lying bullshit and never get called on it.  That's got to be a sign of real, bred-in-the-bone, base-line stupidity.