Official 2004 US Elections Thread

Ahaha that sandy's always sloppy, accidentally taking code word stuff home with him, hah! The goofball!

It's blatantly obvious too many politicians don't give a **** about security unless it benefits them, but trying and pass off what is at the very least a blatant and grevious breach of security as "hah ole' sloppy sandy made another oopsie!"?

I want to know when we decided to give Barney Fife here code word security clearance.

I have seen no numbers given as to how many documents, but it is obviously more then 1. Is it five? Ten? Three dozen?

And how many times did he 'accidentally' shuffle archive material in with his own notes and walk out with it?
Was it fifty documents once? Was it ten documents five times? The frequency and magnitude of the instances could either get him off, or hang him. Frankly I think downplaying it is foolish unless you've got more info then I've seen.

And those hand written notes? How many times did he 'forget' to have them reviewed? What? did he not know?

Furthermore, I'd like more clarification on to if whatever documents are missing are copies or unique.

 

Obi-Wan McCartney

What part of "exceptionally grave damage to national security" are you apparently unable to understand?

Vaderize03

The Valerie Plame case is not a case of leaking a covert agent's identity. Plame had a desk job, and also was accused of nepotism. The revelation to Novak is much more liekly to be a case of whistleblowing.

As for those Judiciary Committee memos:
1. That also might be a case of someone blowing the whistle on unethical conduct on the part of the NAACP and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

2. The staffer implicated was for all intents and purposes, FIRED, much to the dismay of rank-and-file conservative activists.

 

In the end, the only unpardonable breach of national security that the voters are going to care about is the decision to invade Iraq. Hoping that one of these minor scandals is going to derail anyone's campaign is wishful thinking.

 

Jedismuggler, no-one is going to really care about this come November. I agree that the main determination here will be the economy, health care, and the war in Iraq.

Peace,

V-03

 

CENTCOM had aready put out at least one release back in January about the incident. The chain of command was working... until someone leaked the photos. Then the media turned it into a scandal.

the media "turned it into a scandal?" the US Army and mercenaries in our hire were raping children, among other things, and all indications are that they were doing so as part of a broader program of institutionalized torture authorized at the highest levels of the administration. it's not that it "became" a scandal after the media leak, it's that it was a coverup before said leak.

 

What part of "exceptionally grave damage to national security" are you apparently unable to understand?

-Um, the part about this actually doing grave damage to national security. I trust David Gergen (who is by all acounts a total pro) over your inflated conjecture, at least until I see something concrete.

 

It's strange OWM, anything most Bush does is likely to send you off into conspiracy fantasylands, but when someone waves off the sloppiness of sandu berger you're not even interested how many times he was "accidentally" "sloppy".


I mean I'd figure you'd want to know that before you waved away secruity breaches.

 

Or the part where Sandy Berger's bumbling is somehow even on the same level as the Bush Administration:

Right Axis. Wrong Evil.
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: July 22, 2004


WASHINGTON ? The capital has plunged into satire.

There's the bizarre investigation of Sandy Burglar, as the respected former national security adviser has now been dubbed, pulling a Fawn Hall and smuggling stuff out of the National Archives in his fine washables.

And just when you thought the Bush foreign policy couldn't sound more chuckleheaded, revelations in the 9/11 commission report being released today elevated the Bush doctrine to an Ali G skit.

The most astute prophet of the administration's Middle East muddle is Sacha Baron Cohen, the hilarious British comedian whose Ali G character is an uninformed gangsta rapper interviewing unwitting V.I.P.'s.

This Sunday, HBO will run Ali G's interview with Pat Buchanan, in which he presses the broadcaster about why no "B.L.T.'s" were found in Iraq. Mr. Buchanan plays along, but it's not clear if he actually thinks there were B.L.T.'s in Saddam's arsenal. (Mr. Cohen speculated in The Times later that Mr. Buchanan might have thought it was argot for "ballistic long-range-trajectory missiles.")

Last year, Ali G asked James Baker III, the Bush I secretary of state, if it was wise for Iraq and Iran to have such similar names. "Isn't there a real danger," the faux rapper wondered, "that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying 'Bomb Ira-' and the geezer doesn't heard it properly" and bombs the wrong one?

"No danger," Mr. Baker replied.

Well, as it turns out, the United States did bomb the wrong Ira-.

President Bush says he's now investigating Qaeda-Iran ties, and whether Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers.

Whoops. Right axis. Wrong evil.

It's like Emily Litella - "What's all this fuss I hear about making Puerto Rico a steak?" - except the U.S. can't simply shrug "Never mind" because 900 American troops are dead.

The Bush administration had no good intelligence, so it decided to invade the Ira- that was weaker.

The war was based on phony W.M.D. analyses and fallacious welcome scenarios drummed up by the neocon Chihuahua Ahmad Chalabi.

Mr. Bush should have worried about the Axis of Evil in the order of the threat posed: North Korea, which has nukes; Iran, which almost has nukes; Iraq, which wanted nukes.

Now American forces are so depleted that the Pentagon is pulling forces out of South Korea to go to Iraq.[/b] And, given the huge National Guard deployment in Iraq, states say they don't have enough manpower to guard prisoners, fight wildfires or police the streets.

Besides excoriating the C.I.A. and F.B.I. and chronicling as many as 10 missed opportunities to pick up on the 9/11 plot - in the Bush years and in the Clinton era - the 9/11 commission report has new evidence that Iran may have helped up to 10 of the hijackers with safe passage from Osama's Afghan training camps.

"Grimly, what the new 9/11 report makes clear is that nearly three years into the war on terror, America is still not close to understanding the enemy," Michael Isikoff and Michael Hersh report in Newsweek. "And Washington seems less able to force Tehran to change its ways, especially since Bush has removed one of the chief threats to the mullah regime, Saddam Hussein, and is now bogged down in Iraq. As one intel official said before the Iraq war: 'The Iranians are tickled by our focus on Iraq.' "

Just as the invasion of Iraq was "a Christmas gift" to Osama, as the C.I.A. official who wrote a book as "Anonymous" put it, in terms of recruiting in the Muslim world and diverting the U.S., so it may be a gift to Iran. U.S. military officials say Iranian agents have been helping Iraqi insurgents as a way to shape Iraq into a Shiite fundamentalist satellite.

Though the 9/11 panel found no "collaborative" relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it found one between Iran and Al Qaeda - but no evidence that Iranian off

 

dizfactor

Highest levels? Then why the investigation that was started in December? Why put out the press release on January 16?

Allegations were made, investigations started, and those who did abuse prisoners are being prosecuted. And you're calling that a cover-up?

 

EVERYTHING in American politics is a conspiracy now.

 

Obi-Wan McCartney

Back to the canard about Bush lying about WMD? Look at what David Kay was saying back in October:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.


* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

* A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

* Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence - hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use - are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts. For example,

* On 10 July 2003 an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes. Upon arrival the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.


* All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates fro

 

And contrary to Joe Wilson's claims (or should I say smears?), there was an attempt by Saddam's regime to procure uranium from several African countries, including Niger. Unless you believe the Iraqi delegation was there to bring back a lot of peas.

JS, as I recall there was no proof as to what the Iraqi delegation was there for any one thing.

While it would be naiive to think that the Iraqi delegation was not looking for some opening to get thier hands on uranium, it would be equally naiive to think that WMDs were the primary reason they went, let alone the only one. Unless you're unversed in politics, you should know that delegations are almost always sent to other nations with multiple, not singular objectives, and some are more primary than others. Considering the Nigerians admit the Iraqis never even brought the subject up in direct conversation and they were easily able to 'steer the conversation away' from uranium, this hardly amounts to a cohesive breach of any Gulf War treaty. Not even close.


Look at what David Kay was saying back in October

Why is it you have such good memory concerning what David Kay said in October, yet either have no memory, or choose not to give any fair or reasonable thought to what he said in February and March?

 

Iraq is a mess.

More and more people keep saying it over and over, and I fear that no-one will listen-or try and focus on more immediate threats such as Iran-until we get hit again.

Peace,

V-03

 

Gonk

I certainly do not recall him retracting anything he said in October.

Vaderize03

We are currently looking into the matter of Iran and conenctions with al-Qaeda. That said, Iran is not quite the threat that Iraq appeared to be two years ago.

I might also obsevre, that maybe one reason for the hesitation is because of the anti-war movement and the media - and how they have covered Iraq?

 

I certainly do not recall him retracting anything he said in October.

No, but he definately changed the signifigance of what he found in October.

 

I would tend to agree here (about Iran)

Let me ask a general question, because these same statements seem to keep cropping up..

What would people like to see happen in places like Iran and North Korea?

Seriously.. It is almost like these names have become meaningless buzzwords, much like the now out of favor "exit strategy" was, which people really didn't understand either.

The fact is that the US now has the strongest diplomatic ties with Iran than it has had in almost 30 years.

That's blowing through both Republican and Democratic administrations, including Carter, Reagan, HW Bush, and Clinton.

I would say that's quite an acomplishment, yet it is ignored.

Additionally, the UK is taking the lead, but the IAEA is monitoring just about everything Iran does.

What more can Bush do, and what do people want to see?

It is the same with North Korea. I can personally verify that just about every square mile of NK is tagged, and the sensitive spots are heavilty monitored.

Save for another preemptive strike, nothing more is needed for North Korea.

Add together Iran, NK, the major military overhaul, and everything else, and there are reasons besides Iraq that this administration is said to have an effective forign policy.

I know it is an election year, but what is wrong with focusing on the complete picture of any administration?

 

But Mr44, anyone could have done what W has done ...

Seriously, even Slick Willie has not criticized W's Iraq policy in the interviews I have read. As I have pointed out to my Bush bashing relatives who think that Fahrenheit 9/11 is the gospel truth, Kerry's policy on Iraq will not differ greatly from W. So now the Dems' mantra is that Iran should have been the target even though relations with Tehran have warmed under W.

At least the Herbert Hoover comparisons are long gone, but now the criticism is that the jobs being created are only low paying or seasonal and offer no benefits.

Though I think some criticism of the administration is justified and it is never unpatriotic, W can't win for losing. (Though, to be fair, I was not exactly lining up to give Clinton kudos during the 90's for his successes.)

 

But Mr44, anyone could have done what W has done ...

Ah, yes...How I miss that line in the discussions here..

Seriously, even Slick Willie has not criticized W's Iraq policy in the interviews I have read.

And that's kind of my point.

Clinton, who has nothing to loose, actually points out the positive aspects of Bush's policy, along with the negatives..

The weirdest exchange I have seen was when Clinton defended Bush's 9/11 policy aganist Gore.

Reno was the same way over the Patriot Act. She came out and said that she wished she had that law 8 years ago, and then pointed out the good with the bad..

Though I think some criticism of the administration is justified and it is never unpatriotic..

I agree, I think productive criticism is always welcome. But that's the key..

 

So gonk exactly how did you plot the course the solid base of the democratic party was "intellect" please use small words, I am after all a religious nut republican and am likely to condem you to hell if you use multisyllabic tongues.

<grabs torch and pitchfork>

Yes, please explain.. Is this really what you mean?

Because this statement seems to contradict past decades worth of other unproven stereotypes.

Sorry, didn't see these posts further back by Farraday and mr44:

First of all, to be technical on stereotypes, these particular ones of Republican and Democrat are only valid circa 1980 (or if you want to go a bit futher back to Goldwater in the mid-60s though he was unsuccessful). Prior to that the most religious people involved in politics were, if anything, Democrats.

This of course changed.

Now first of all, reading my statement I am not saying all Republicans are religious-minded. In fact there's an entire wing of the party which is not religious at all, which I stated. It's now a minority instead of a majority wing, but its stillt there. Even of those in the most religious or populist wing, there are those like John McCain who really don't play the note that much.

But they're not the BASE.

The base of the republican party runs right through the south: North & South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Of these, probably the absolute core are probably Mississippi and Alabama. for good measure, Utah is probably another big one, though it's not traditionally the South.

What's common in all of these states, I'm sure you'll find, is that religious attendance is larger percentage wise than in states of Democratic basis. I won't go on about it, because I'm sure even the Republicans themselves note this is quite clear.

That said, the republican party, paticularly the current leadership, sees no problem in tying faith and politics together, and thier base sees no problem in it either. The problem for this is the same problem the founding fathers of the United States found in religion: there is no solid indication any of it is actually REAL.

Becuase of this, faith is easily re-written to strengthen political rule. Is it any cooincidence the American revolutionaries stated firm seperation of church and state, and George III happened to be in the unique Anglican position of being both the secular monarch AND head of the national British faith?

The reason for this is because religion makes it so difficult for those opposing it. It sets a precedent. If you're going to vote or participate in politics with faith being your guide, at what point will you acknowledge fact? Those that do this, in this case the Republican base, do it out of FEAR.

Not fear of the Democrats, certainly not. But what the Democrats represent. And the part of what the Democrats represent that the Republican base fears has nothing to do civil liberties, foreign policy, family values, or even taxes and gun control. In the end its not even about the RELIGION.

It's the fact that the Republican base has lived with this belief from childhood. And the Democrats represent the possibility that they are wrong. Not just a bit wrong, either. Completely wrong. That they've got half the thinking backwards, and the Democrats and the rest of the first world has it forwards. That's completely bone-chilling, absolutely deflating. If they can be so wrong, even if they weren't Nazis, they've entered the position of the 1945 German populace. If they could be so wrong about so much, how could they ever be relied upon again to be right?

Therefore they've got to keep up the fight. There's no real alternative. They can never bring themselves to vote for the other side, it would be an admission of personal defeat. It sounds like pride, but its more than that. It's more akin to a matter of honor. It's bad enough the region more or less minus Texas, Oklahoma and Utah was so discredited in the Civil War.

They're protected in thier arguments by some things, like how the US may stick ou

 

Wait, WHAT? You saw Clinton and Gore speaking? How did Clinton defend Bush AGAINST Gore specifically?

And Clinton has criticized Bush, its just that he tries to offer what he thinks is a fair criticism, and more likley because Clinton believed some of the claims Bush allegedly based his decision on.

Mr. 44, the problem is now with U.S. credibility. I'm not saying we should have gone into Iran or N. Korea, but the fact is we went into Iraq for far less, you know what I mean? Its a question of the United States ability to claim it had a clear and coherent policy for going into Iraq. Fact is, we didn't, we just went into Iraq because we could, which as 42 said, is probably the most indefensible moral justification.

It's like you arrest someone and execute them for conspiracy to commit murder, but then don't even prosecute the actual murderers.

 

Wait, WHAT? You saw Clinton and Gore speaking? How did Clinton defend Bush AGAINST Gore specifically?

No, this was an interview, back when Gore was going through his Dean phase, and My Story was just released.

It was right after Clinton's 60 Minutes Interview, which I believe we discussed..

Clinton was asked what he thought about Gore's claims, and he said they were rather extreme. He then detailed what you say in your next paragraph:

And Clinton has criticized Bush, its just that he tries to offer what he thinks is a fair criticism, and more likley because Clinton believed some of the claims Bush allegedly based his decision on.

Clinton examined the strengths and weaknesses of his policy compared to Bush's.

 

I find it comical how Kerry uses the 9/11 report to do some Grand Standing; saying that he has said in the past that Intelligence reform is long overdue, etc...

He didn't bother to tell everyone that he voted to reduce Anti-Terrorist funding by 1 Billion dollars, back in 94 AFTER the 1st WTC bombing AND voted to REDUCE the CIA!!!!!!!!

 

"Iraq is a mess. More and more people keep saying it over and over, and I fear that no-one will listen-or try and focus on more immediate threats such as Iran-until we get hit again. "


***** Fierce steps into his magical Bizarro-world machine, and finds himself in a dimension where the U.S. has invaded Iran, not Iraq. He then stumbles across this post:

Iran is a mess. More and more people keep saying it over and over, and I fear that no-one will listen-or try and focus on more immediate threats such as Iraq-until we get hit again.


***** Fierce comes back to reality, finding himself back in our dimension, the year 2002, and finds this post:

More and more people keep saying it over and over, and I fear that no-one will listen-or try and focus on more immediate threats such as North Korea-until we get hit again.

***** Fierce has a good laugh at how malleable facts can be when formulating an opinion.

 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Because Americans would have gotten mad if Bush attacked a country that might have actually had to do something with 9/11, its ok to just jump in and attack Iraq.

For the record, I don't think anyone is advocating that we should have invaded Iran instead, it just goes further to prove Bush is an idiot and Iraq was handled like crackhead handles brain surgery. That is to say, not very well.

 

Drop the sarcasm, Fierce. If you want to disagree with me, that is fine, but do it without being condenscending. It's called baiting, and it's a crystal-clear violation of the rules. Your post was rude and added nothing to the discussion. Don't do that.

That being said, I am referring to the fact that the reasons with which Mr. Bush led the US to war-namely, that Saddam was imminently going to develop nuclear weapons, he already had chemical/biological weapons, and was preparing to deploy them against the US, appears to have been overblown. No amount of editorial commentary will alter that fact. You can accuse me of spin all you like, but the fact remains that a) Iran's government is still hostile to the US and american interests worldwide; b) Iran is much closer to developing the capacity for nuclear weapons than Saddam was; and c) Iran is being aided by a nuclear power, ie Russia, in its' efforts to build a nuclear plant that could potentially produce weapons-grade fuel. Oh yes, Iran has been proven to have sponsored anti-US terrorism in the past-Iraq has not.

I'm sorry, but this whole situation stinks. The reasons we went to war were exaggerated, and now have been replaced with a Machiavellian justification for Saddam's removal. Fine, the guy was a putz, good riddance to him. But look at where we are. Overstretched military. Still vulnerable at home. An Iran heading towards the bomb, and a North Korea that went ahead and built them while we looked on. What kind of message does it send when we attack the weakest link in the so-called "axis of evil" while the clearly more dangerous ones are publicly flaunting their WMD efforts in our faces? Does this make america look weak and desperate to terrorists?

I'm sorry to say, I think it does. It is for that reason I am critical of Mr. Bush's foreign policy, and if we had invaded either one of those other countries without a clear justification and international support first (as well as a plan for winning the peace), you are correct, I would have been just as critical.

Peace,

V-03