WP Op-Ed: The Bush Deceit

[huckleberry]

By Peter D. Zimmerman (physicist and chief scientist of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and science adviser for arms control at the State Department during the Clinton administration)

"It was not just 16 words. It was every word concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons program in George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech.

The president's principal argument for going to war -- to prevent a "smoking gun that would appear as a mushroom cloud" -- was based on bad intelligence that was misused while good intelligence was ignored."

snip

"George W. Bush's backing and filling, his staff's confused explanations, revised explanations and new explanations, plus the immutable fact that most of his arguments for war in Iraq were misleading, have seriously damaged his credibility abroad and are eroding it at home.

When an American president needs to take the nation to war, Americans must be able to trust him and must believe that the case for conflict is sound. The next time Bush wants to use armed force to preempt or prevent an attack on this country, he will have to prove his case far more completely than before. Two presidents of the United States have forfeited the benefit of the doubt."

more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55860-2003Aug13.html

Note: Mr. Zimmerman will be Live Online at 4 p.m. today (8/14/03) at www.washingtonpost.com.


THE story is still getting out! :)

[TacticalPeek]

1. Kick this up to tomorrow....n/t

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

5. kickkkkkkkkkk

kickkkkkkkkk

[dfong63]

2. what does this mean?

Two presidents of the United States have forfeited the benefit of the doubt.

haven't they ALL forfeited the benefit of the doubt, from FDR onward?

[huckleberry]

3. Read the whole article!

He's referring to GHWB too!

[diamond14]

6. it means that BOTH bush1 and bush2 LIED about Iraq and took

OUR brave soldiers into TWO totally unneccessary wars....to make the bushies and their benefactors rich...sad, really sad...

[Raster]

4. Kick!

:kick:

[huckleberry]

7. WP Forum on this subject - very interesting.

http://forums.washingtonpost.com/wpeditorials/messages/?msg=2507.1

Read the responses to this editorial!

[freesqueeze]

8. Like 1990's Accounting Practices

I remember taking an Accounting course in the arly-nineties. We were bored endlessly for almost an entire semester and then at the end of the course, the instructor put all his references away and started a lesson on real-life accounting practices.

One of the 'lessons' was when we were told that when your boss looks over your shoulder at some spreadsheet you're working on and asks what the bottom line will be (tax liability, depreciation expenses, etc...) the correct response is not 'let me work out all the numbers and give you the true and accurate figure' but 'what do you want it to be?'

Hopefully Enron and WorldCom has changed the approach in college accounting but this issue of 'working toward the answer desired' is all over the Shrub Administration like a bad rash.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. out-of-balance society

While reading the WP article, I glanced at the accompanying animated advert. It was from Lockheed Martin, for a bomb.

Doesn't this show the military-industrial complex has become way, way too big? When the manufacturers end up marketing the products to the general public, surely something's wrong. The tail's wagging the dog; the industry is looking for a justification for its size. Iraq was the result of this: a military budget bigger than the rest of the world just had to be put to use somewhere.

"Look at our great new weapon. Where Would You Like To Bomb Today?"