AFP: New York Times calls on Bush to apologize for waging war on Iraq

[Bhaisahab]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The New York Times called on President George W. Bush (news - web sites) to apologize to the American people for going to war on Iraq (news - web sites) after an official probe into the September 11 attacks found no evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.

"Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different," the Times editorial said.

"Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040617/wl_mideast_afp/us_attacks_report_press_040617080732&e=3

[LittleApple81]

1. But the WP is defending BushCo:

from the same link:

But the Washington Post pointed out that the 9/11 panel's report "has not denied there were contacts" between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda, shoring up the Bush administration's contention that it never suggested Iraq was behind September 11 but that it did have long-established ties with the group.

It criticized Bush administration foes for seizing on the commission's sentence that it found "no credible evidence" linking Iraq to September 11 to claim the White House has been lying.

"The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been," the Washington Post editorial said.
___________________________________________

Not on my book, it isn't. The WP is irresponsible, in my opinion, not TO SHOW the reality. Bush's links were an implication that Iraq was involved in 9/11 not that there were "contacts"..

[wryter2000]

32. Aaaarggghhh

There were no links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Even the Bushies are saying links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which could mean that Zarqawi was operating in the north outside Saddam's control.

There were no freaking links between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

[0007]

38. I agree, do you have the link to the Washington Post?

[Tellurian]

41. It would be good if the WP pointed out Rummy and BushI had ties to

Saddam and Osama at the same time!

[Jose Diablo]

45. Well, there are links between

rev Sun Moon and the WPost and that is the reason for the WP view on Iraq war.

Why isn't Moon in jail?

[struggle4progress]

49. I think you're thinking of the "Washington Times"

[Nay]

2. Wow! Will all the other newspapers pick up the drumbeat?

Dare we hope? Not that we will ever get an apology out of *, but maybe this will hurry things along in voters' minds.

[LittleApple81]

6. Did you see my post 1 above? The WP statement says the won't. n/t

[Leilani]

3. The N.Y. Times should apologize

for being a war cheerleader, & publishing bogus stories by Judith Miller, who was getting her info from Chalabi.

[dusty64]

18. That is VERY

true. The corporate media is almost as responsible as the regime for all the messes they have and continue to allow them to get away with.

[Jacobin]

21. Until they fire Judith Miller's silly ass

The NYT has NO room to talk. None at all. They were a huge cheerleader for the invasion.

[0007]

39. The New York Times has talked about Judith Miller's article

and how out of line they were.

[4_Legs_Good]

40. Agreed! Thank you for saying it!

Although I think that AFTER they apologize for it (front page headine), then they can call for the Bush Administration to apologize (and resign).

david

[nolabels]

42. They are using this RAG as the paper of record would be my guess

There are so many pinheads trying to cover their asses in so many ways.

When will it ever end :crazy:

[radfringe]

4. ....wait for the spin

what bush* inc. will do if asked about the article....

1. claim that the NYT is partisan
2. bush* choir will sing the overture from "Media is Liberal" opera
3. stories will be dregged up from the bottom of the cess pool about NYT reporters/editors manufacturing stories

none of which has anything to do with this article, but if you throw enough mud on something..... :eyes:

[gandalf]

5. Here is the original link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17THU1.html

[ronatchig]

7. The response from WH

has been "Who can deny we are better off with Saddam out of power in Iraq".
I would like to ask exactly how we are "better off". Has Al Qaeda been defanged? Has our policies of destabilization of ME regimes changed?
And exactly who are you referring to as "we"?

[Kahuna]

13. Haven't you heard? We are more "free" since Saddam was outed.

:puke:

[pinto]

22. "better off with Saddam gone" Wish someone would plainly say NO,

the world is not better off. The contained danger of a failing dictator has been replaced with a growing, amorphous "militant movement". We have created havoc in Bushco's "greater Middle East". An American led Iraq, if we are to believe the PNAC, was to be the first domino in a Soviet style pro-US bloc. Not.

[sidpleasant]

29. The answer to "better off without Saddam"

Here's a brilliant article from The Nation titled
The Moral Case Against The Iraq War that crushes the argument that the invasion was justified because "Iraq is better off without Saddam." A few excerpts:

Talking about the world, or at least Iraq, being "better off" avoids confronting the civilian carnage caused by the war. As the late Robert Nozick cautioned in his classic work on the moral basis of freedom, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, we should be wary of talking about the overall good of society or of a particular country. There is no social entity called Iraq that benefited from some self-sacrifice it suffered for its own greater good, like a patient who voluntarily endures some pain to be better off than before. There were only individual human beings living in Iraq before the war, with their individual lives. Sacrificing the lives of some of them for the benefit of others killed them and benefited the others. Nothing more. Each of those Iraqis killed in the war was a separate person, and the unfinished life each of them lost was the only life he or she had, or would ever have. They clearly are not better off now that Saddam is gone from power...

But even if as many as 5,000 civilians have been killed by US forces, isn't freedom for 25 million people in Iraq worth the cost of 5,000 lives?...

What is overlooked by those who believe the benefits of the war outweigh the costs is that killing even one innocent person to benefit others violates the most basic human right--the right to life. The right to life is one of those unalienable rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. "Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual," William Blackstone wrote in his eighteenth-century Commentaries on the Laws of England, one of the leading sources of American civil liberties. What Blackstone meant when he characterized the right to life as a God-given right is that it is beyond the power of any mere government to abrogate or repeal. Innocent people may not be killed or injured by the state, even when a majority believes it serves the greater good...

Viewed in the light of our own moral ideals, as embodied in our constitutional tradition, the right to life is so fundamental that killing the innocent to advance the cause of freedom of electoral choice or any other purpose, however worthy, must be regarded as wrong. We denounce terrorists because when the freedom of self-determination they seek is weighed in the balance against the right to life of innocent people, it is the right to life that our collective conscience has decided should prevail. Terrorism is simply a criminal technique for coercing a political agenda by killing innocent people. And it should make no difference whether the people who do the killing are freedom fighters like Palestinian suicide bombers, who purposefully kill civilians, or freedom fighters like the American liberators of the Iraqi people, who aim at military targets but who know with substantial certainty that they will incidentally kill civilians. In the eyes of the criminal law, a person is regarded as intending the death of another when he either has the purpose to cause the death of the victim or when he knows that death is substantially certain to result from his acts.

[Francine Frensky]

48. But, but, there's more terror, more al-queda there than ever, PLUS

we have officially worsened our standing with not only the Iraqi people (only 2% of Iraqi's see US as "liberators") but also with generations of middle-easterners. Read Friedman today, US name is mud over there, thanks to the Iraq-le debacle.

This was a blunder of epic proportions.

[teryang]

8. Apologize!

The King should apologize? Maybe he should go to prison.

[Karenina]

15. Apologize to Americans???

Errraaaa.... Okay... The cradle of civilization destroyed, tens of thousands murdered... I think I must have missed a memo. :freak:

[dbt]

9. A tiny step from the NY Times.

Would they be calling for an "apology" if Clinton had done something as evil as starting a War For Profit? Of course not. The Times would be howling for his resignation and/or impeachment and/or imprisonment.

And why does the Media Borg STILL have to tiptoe around the L-word? What bu$h did was, as Merle Haggard so eloquently put it, lie to us all on TV.

:grr:
dbt

[Kahuna]

10. The 9/11 Comm. conclusion about Iraq is very damaging to bush...

That's the official government stamp. Chimp and Cheney can crow all they want about Saddam. The more they crow they more they will prove what liars they are.

[anarchy1999]

11. I do believe my brain is blowing at least a fuse or two. I feel many

short circuits coming on. Damn. I'm more amazed every day.

The New York Times calls for an apology from Bush, oh my goodness, my gracious, what might be next?

[Disturbed]

12. No WMDs, No Al Q. connection

Does that invalidate the invasion reasons?

[leftchick]

14. The Emperor has No Clothes!

Have they mentioned this to Judith "the liar" Miller?

[xchrom]

16. too little too late from the times

the info that iraq and al quaida were not involved is old news indeed.
where was the times with that info from the get go?
in the new america no major news organization must agree initially peace mongers or leftists in any way.

[neuvocat]

34. Maybe so, maybe so...

still I'm willing to take it over nothing at all.

[TahitiNut]

17. "NYTimes says Charles Manson should apologize ...

... but Washington Post disagrees." It's truly Bizarro World. :puke:

[JohnOneillsMemory]

37. "White House asks Messiah Moon heal all wounded troops in mass ceremony"

Next: Faith-based veteran benefits.

[ima_sinnic]

19. who cares about a #%(*& "apology"?

unless it's accompanied by an immediate resignation of the stinkin dumb*** and his band of corrupt co-conspiring greed-heads, as well as immediate massive reparations to the Iraqi people.

None of which is going to happen so what difference would an "apology" make?

and by the way, the NYTimes needs to APOLOGIZE for adding its influential voice to the lock-step rush to war more than a year ago, aiding and abetting the colossal hoodwinking of the American public, the complicity of England and Australia, the torture and murder of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children, the devastation of a 2000-year-old culture, and ensuing poverty, disease, violence and heartbreak of a war zone.

[ixion]

20. war of choice -> war of aggression -> illegal invasion -> war crime

I think it's a pretty straightforward call.

[Insider]

30. 'war of choice'

incredible choice of words. incredible, NYT.

[CWebster]

23. HA and the NYTimes is innocent

How about Kerry? Shouldn't he apologize?

[Darranar]

24. Well, good for them...

now why not actually REPORT what's happening there?

[CWebster]

25. because they are occupied with wiping the doo-doo

off their hands at the moment.

[happyExpat]

26. Pot calling the kettle stupid

or something like that. Right, so I'm merely restating the obvious here, but as long as the WP will defend the administration and Cheney will defend his own administration with that whole "history of contact" garbage, I suppose we should be readying ourselves for the impending preemptive strike that is sure to be launched against the US. The US does, after all, have a Loooooong(er) history of contact with bin laden, and with Hussein. Not only that, it gave material aid and support not only to Bin Laden, but to Hussein, both of the "evil-doing enemies of FREEDOM"

So umm, Im glad I don't live there anymore since Cheney has ok'd the invasion, occupation, and destruction of the US. And the WP advocates the same based on his logic of being guilty be contact.

sorry, makes me feel better to vent...

[Tommy_Douglas]

27. What they should do...

Is call for his impeachment and then remove the shroud from themselves that makes them believe they are still and old, credible, respectable, newspaper, instead of the media whores they actually are.

[Poiuyt]

28. Don't forget to rank the story

[wryter2000]

31. Yeah, sure, idiots

Right after you apologize for inflicting Judith Miller on us. :argh:

[sonias]

33. It's a start

The Times came pretty close to calling the admin "damn liars" which they really should have done. Plainly dishonest, really isn't strong enough and they only make that comment about the connection the administration keeps making about Iraq and al-Qaeda. They lied about everything, WMD, Powell's evidence before UN, Valerie Plame's cover blown, 9/11, Niger Uranium story, bio-weapons labs in Iraq, aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons production, the number of US forces needed for their war, the cost of their war ad infinitum.

The Cheney bot still keeps repeating the lie
Smack That Cheney-Bot!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/opinion/17DOWD.html
"Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . ."

-------------
Sonia

[leesa]

35. Call me crazy, but I don't think an apology to the AMERICANS is

sufficient. Off to the Hague!

[Just Me]

44. I agree, "Off to the Hague!" BUT, this article makes me giddy *LOL*! n/t

[goodhue]

36. The NYT should apologize for enabling the administration.

Their recent editorial simply did not go far enough in taking responsibility for this fiasco. Pot, meet kettle.

[lebkuchen]

43. There is an apology aired on Al Jazeera on behalf of all religious leaders

in the US, of all denominations, apologizing for the US' brutality at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, an apology (not to mention the brutality) which serves to undercut Bush's remaining reason for attacking Iraq i.e. to overthrow an evil man.

[JoFerret]

46. Steve Bell's Bush Whoop

[Claire Beth]

47. an apology from this hubris administration???...

history will remember * and his administration as the most arrogant EVER! Their hubris is second to none....There won't be apologies coming from them.