non-profit tax exemptions and public policy...,
2005-11-15 14:33:10
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Is that a mushroom cloud above...,
2005-11-15 20:33:23
concerning bush's defense of his use of intelligence using the words of john kerry:
in which two wrongs make it right! I think I said everything I really needed to say about the record of intelligence manipulation a long time ago. I mean, just the repetition of that old aluminum tube story in the goddam SOTU ought to have been enough to make the press raise an eyebrow. So ok.
Except. Except I did not point out that the previous Democratic administration was also lying routinely to the American public about Iraq's weapons programs, and was impeached for lying, if not about those particular lies. It is to Clinton we owe the classic falsehood that "Saddam kicked the inspectors out" in 1998, or the withholding of Hussein Kamel's full testimony in 1995 from public disclosure until its leak a month or two before the war a decade later, or the vast bulk of barely credible testimony offered to us by the Bush administration, most of which was just warmed over Clinton administration propaganda used to justify the maintenance of the sanctions regime. Were anybody being honest they would have admitted that the "WMD" problem was simply a matter of sloppy accounting on Iraq's part.
And in fact, behind the closed doors of congress during the first year of the Bush regime, they were all being quite honest [Tenet's earlier testimony on the matter isn't new news]. That's how we know they lied about this "unique threat". We also know that those in Congress who heard that classified testimony in 2001 knew they were having one pulled over on them during the congressional 'debate' of 2002, and decided to carry the administration's water for them.
The proper course of action for those involved in this grandiose campaign of distortion is to impeach those who lied about the evidence and abused it under false pretenses, and then for themselves to resign from their own offices for gross negligence and dereliction of duty. The massive, unprecedented cleansing of congress of the vast majority of its incumbents would then clear the way for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to go about its work unhindered by the obvious desire for the controlling parties involved to cover their own asses.
update: Steve King (R-Iowa) making some truly absurd comments on this before the floor of the House tonight during this 30something thingy.
