Neocons, WMD, Cheney Lies, and DeLay
Last night as I watched Charlie Rose on PBS. It was just another one of those times in the last few years where I realized that to the Neocons have a total disregard for the truth. The first part of the show was an interview with Richard Perle. Now I didn't watch the whole thing but the lead-in was Perle discussing Fallujah and how you can't let the insurgents/terrorists hide behind civilians and how sometimes some civilians may have to die. He said it so matter of fact, like those civilians aren't even human. I'm not sure if he meant like this, 'I saw dogs eating the body of a woman' or not. Some of what I did see was him trying to refute the WMD report that came out yesterday. "Saddam was a threat", is the mantra of the Neocons. The best the report could come up with was that Saddam had the intent to have WMD again. Now if we are going to invade everyone who has the intent...Well you can fill in the rest. But one of their tricks has always been to put enough qualifiers in a quote so they can explain it away later while still being able to imply a false, yet scary, fabrication.

But the second half was an interview with two of the reporters, one the writer as well, of the Sunday NY Times story on the aluminum tubes, How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence. What I was reminded of when I was watching these guys talk is that the administration knew before the war, even before they started really lobbying for this war, that these aluminum tubes were meant for rockets and not for nuclear centrifuges. This reinforces my belief that they didn't care about the truthfulness of anything they said before the war. Remember this?

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with Vanity Fair.

The goal was to con the American people that Saddam was a threat so they could use our military to oust him and setup a military outpost in Iraq. To bilk the taxpayers of America of their money through an ongoing reconstruction. Also to use the bases as the foundation from which to launch future wars. In other words we just need to get in, once we're in we can stay there as long as we want. If they went in, got rid of Saddam, setup a democracy, and made Iraq a livable place in a relatively short period of time they would have to leave. And that was never their intention. So as far as they're concerned the lying was worth it because the end justifies the means. They honestly believe that this had to be done as well as the future wars they have planned. Of course they don't mention that they made the decision to do this at least as far back as 1998. More than likely the decision was made the day that Daddy decided not to do it back in 1991.

The other thing that the report about the tubes pointed out was the fact that the problem before the war was not the intelligence. The problem was that they rejected any intelligence that conflicted with their preconceived notions. In other words they let the policy set the intelligence instead of letting the intelligence set the policy.

Here is yesterday's big snooker by the Bush administration on the media, You Call That a Major Policy Address?They lied to the press about a major policy address to get them to broadcast Bush's new stump speech. It became apparent soon into this speech that it had nothing to do with a new policy and they showed the whole thing anyway. I sure hope you don't expect the media to keep you up to date on what is really happening in this Presidential election.

Juan Cole has more on the WMD report and Saddam's state of mind
WMD Myth Meant to Deter Iran
They reveal that Saddam feared using chemical weapons against Coalition troops in 1990-1991 because he was convinced that this move would cost him the support of all his backers. He said, "Do you think we are mad? What would the world have thought about us? We would have completely discredited those who had supported us."

Did Cheney lie when he said to John Edwards during the debate, "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."? Yes! But he also said this, "I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session." Was that a lie? That depends on what up in the Senate means. As the article below shows if he meant presiding over the Senate of Tuesdays then he was lying. If he meant going to the Republican Senate Caucus on Tuesdays then the answer is no he wasn't lying. But he definitely wouldn't see Edwards at the Caucus meeting. But once again how was it meant. If you watched the debate he meant he's on the Senate floor most Tuesdays presiding and he has never met Edwards there. Well, that's no surprise since he isn't there most Tuesdays.
Cheney's Senate Attendance Record
Cheney's lie about never meeting Edwards has been exposed repeatedly and by many sources. However, the first part is actually a much bigger lie. As Senate attendance records show, in the 126 Tuesdays the Senate has been in session during Cheney's tenure as Vice-President, he has actually only presided over the Senate as President on two occasions. During the same stretch, to fill in for Cheney's repeated absence, Edwards has served as acting President of the Senate on two occasions

Cheney lies again! Cheney lies again!
Rewriting History
With virtually all of the administration's original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting (They mean flip-flop, right? -LH) and sometimes misleading arguments in last night's debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction.

Tom DeLay is a crook! Tom DeLay is a crook!
Pelosi, Hoyer Slam DeLay's Ethical Cloud
"Twelve years ago, a Republican member took to the House floor and stated: 'When someone is in power for an inordinate amount of time, then this kind of oversight, this kind of corruption, if you will, continues and builds upon itself and sort of feeds on itself.'

"Two years later, that same member stated: 'We need to clean our own House for the sake of the institution.' That member was Tom DeLay. It is time for the American people to clean this House."
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 8:28 AM