the Downing St. memos

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by theknife

which apparently is a good thing, as long as someone else has to go get rid of him.

Hear, hear, you are so right TheKnife. So easy to say you back up some retard's decision but so easy to enjoy the protection of the Canadian citizenship. It's not like he's gonna get drafted if your gov becomes desperate for soldiers to fight this war. It's truly easy to complain when you are totally secured and not submitted to the rules of a gouv that doesn't have power over you.

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by miss_silver

Hear, hear, you are so right TheKnife. So easy to say you back up some retard's decision but so easy to enjoy the protection of the Canadian citizenship. It's not like he's gonna get drafted if your gov becomes desperate for soldiers to fight this war. It's truly easy to complain when you are totally secured and not submitted to the rules of a gouv that doesn't have power over you.

LOL---Very funny post!!!!!


Would you like me to quote your past posts you have made about America or their President you hypocrite, First I could not be drafted anyway, I am over the age limit for one and I have tried to join the military but I have a respiratory condition and I failed the medical. Which I will say pissed me off more then anything that has happened in my life seeing it really was not a real problem, to me anyways. ----I am just going to stop because I am just wasting my time with this post.

[miss_silver]

eh???

[Mazer]

Ah, to be deaf and smug is pure happiness, no?

[albed]

No need to hear others when you know everything.










Except what you need to know most.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by albed

No need to hear others when you know everything.

Except what you need to know most.

sadly true. hopefully the next president won't be so tragically flawed.

but this explains a lot:

One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency. - George Bush, as told to Mickey Herskowitz, 1999 A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House

obviously, the Prez decided a long time ago that launching and waging war, preferably in Iraq, was a prerequisite to being a great president. he got all the political capital he needed on 9/11 and spent it in Iraq.

As told to Herskowitz, Bush and his advisors were quite impressed -- politically speaking, of course -- with the minor military victories of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Falklands War) and former presidents Ronald Reagan and dear old dad (the first Gulf War was a bad scene, as mentioned, but the Grenada and Panama “campaigns” were terrific political coups). Said Herskowitz of Bush & Co.’s view of Thatcher: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at her and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches." Looking back further, they believed Jimmy Carter's political troubles emerged as the inherent result of a peaceful presidency.

ah, this explains Cheney's "dancing in the streets of Baghdad, greeting us as liberators" fantasy.

So what a successful presidency came down to for Bush, according to Herskowitz, was this: “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” Once accomplished the chief executive will have secured the support needed for ramming through his domestic agenda. Seen through this lens, then, 9/11 for George W. Bush wasn’t so much tragedy as opportunity. He had his “chance to invade.”

which is why the Downing St. documents Minutes (they are actually not a memo, but rather minutes of a meeting with the head of British intelligence) dovetail perfectly with every aspect of the run-up to the war. from PMCarpenter:

the Bush interviews reveal that the president was genuinely fixated on war as a policy staple -- it would secure what you might call a permanent revolution. Nothing was to be left to chance. Peace presented a constant political threat.

Now of course we have the Downing Street Memo as proof that we would have war -- justified or not, necessary or not. Thousands of lives for “political capital” -- Bush's “basic essence.”

[theknife]

The Freeway Blogger strikes again:

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Ah, to be deaf and smug is pure happiness, no?

Yes it is, especially if you are projecting your uneasyness about your prez on this situation

[theknife]

the Downing St. Minutes are only a part of the picture....there's lots more:

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’
Michael Smith

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

this means that Bush and Blair were both lying at last week's joint press conference:

"Look, both of us didn't want to use our military," Mr. Bush added. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Mr. Blair, standing at Mr. Bush's side in a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House, said, "No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all."

Michigan Congressman John Conyers opens congressional hearings next week on the Downing Street Minutes.

the ongoing leak of these various documents to the British press suggests a faction within the British government is determined to set the record straight. watch for corroboration from the US side under similar circumstances.

[Mazer]

I'll be waiting. We'll see if the "secrets" these rags are publishing actually lead anywhere.