Immediate Memo from Karl Rove to all Media and Press outlets: Reserve at least 15 column inches/15 broadcast minutes daily for the next two weeks to fully and brutally discredit former GOP congressman Bereuter. Rumor should circulate about his suspected affiliation with Al Queda.

How bout this one T2

Bereuter is a disgruntled and mentally unstable employee who left because he is unfit to maintain his duties of following GWB's visions of global dominance. We shall appoint an appropriate sychophant post haste...

Wonder what MD and RC have to say about this one...

This keeps up and the Protective Custody Police are going to have to run a help wanted ad.

Bereuters...sounds German to me, plus he's a flip-flopper. Nuff said.

What a busy summer it has been for Rove and Co. Nancy Reagan, THK, stem cells, the economy and now this congressman have been added to the axis of evil.

the key word is "credibly" with regards to Mr Goss' testimony...

Wonder what MD and RC have to say about this one...

I thought you didn't want to hear the other side...but since you asked!

Senior House Republican Thinks Iraq Was A Mistake

There are many factors to this statement that one must consider.

1) Will the Iraqi people be better off without Saddam in the driver seat. Yes.

2) Are we considered the bad guys in World opinion. Yes. Why? France, Germany & Russia, that's why.

3) Would Saddam try to build nukes after the U.N. left his country. You bet your ass he would of.

4) Could the world let a man like Saddam have nukes? No. So we are back to square one again.

5) Did we attack based on bad intel? Yes/No. I have a hard time believing that Saddam would get rid of his major weapons because the U.N. told him to. All of you that believe he had no WMD's is putting your faith in a man that has murdered hundreds of thousands people because he could.

6) Unless this "Senior House Rep" has a time machine to know what the world would be like 10, 20 years from now with Saddam still in control his statement really means nothing.

7) Was it a mistake to attack Iraq? Today's view? Maybe. 10 years from now, who knows. Until this war is over and our troops our home this question can not be answered.

8) Insert troll remark here _________

#1 maybe, except for the 20k and rising Iraqis we've killed It wont be better for them

#3 assumes that we would have left Iraq go without inspections - not necessarily true

#4 is correct we could not let him. But there was no sign he had them the inspectors were not finding anything
#5 Saddam son in law had defected in 95 and told everybody that he personaly gave the order to destroy the WMDs
#6 and 7 are wishful thinking

My hypothesis has been that Bush rushed into the war precisely because he knew there were no WMDs there. The longer he waited without the inspectors finding anything, the less justification he would have.

I'm not going to give you any troll attributes for this post. You laid out your thinking without attacking/dismissing anyone. To me thats fine. I don't agree with your thinking but hey thats life.

1) Will the Iraqi people be better off without Saddam in the driver seat. Yes.

6) Unless this "Senior House Rep" has a time machine to know what the world would be like 10, 20 years from now with Saddam still in control his statement really means nothing.

Accordingly RC, in light of point #6 your statement in point #1 means nothing.

I have a hard time believing that Saddam would get rid of his major weapons because the U.N. told him to.

Yet apparently he did.

RC...

Thanks for the commentary without the vitriol...

#1 As a whole don't you think the verdict is out on this?

#2 More countries than the big three you mentioned disagreed with the war. Call it maintaining their "interests," but we've done similar things when the UN did not go with our interests.

#3 Ditto soccerdad..

#4 We let the stooge in DPNK have nukes. How did that slip by?

#5 Yeah, he was a bad man, but the gassing happened during GB 1's watch. He killed his own people, not Americans. With your logic, we could argue about dictators worldwide. Lets just call this one a wash.

#6 Saddam would not have let terrorists breed in Iraq like they are now, because it would be a threat to his power. Dictators don't like being challenged.

#7 Are you saying this was a far-sighted prevention? I doubt it. This was done for instant gratification...

#8 Much respect given...

Soccerdad is correct. The rush to an admittedly pre-ordained war in Iraq was because the BushCo knew that continued inspections would find nothing, therefore cancelling what Wolfowitz admits was simply a PR cover for a desired invasion. And how did they know the WMD's didn't exist you ask....the CIA told them so. Not Tenet mind you (who clearly had his own agenda ((where is old Georgie T now anyway)), but report after report from the agency. Why did Rummy have to make his own intel group?......to give BushCo a balance to the doubters in CIA.

Interesting thread here....Anthony's #6..you are so right about dictators......just watch the way George W. reacts anytime he's even slightly challenged.

what has happened to George Tenet?
What's he doing?
Raising money for his children's education, no doubt...or maybe a GWB version of the witness protection program?

simply put . If Bush was misled by his intel officers, Cheney, Rummy etc..then he should fire all of them or that he lied to the public thus we should fire him on Nov 2.

Absent the events of 9/11/01 Dubya would soon swing from a rope for war crimes. "Aha," wingnuts exclaim, "but 9/11 DID happen! Therefore Dubya HAD to invade Iraq!" Since it's a given Saddam had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 let's view Dubya's invasion from that vantage point. A pre-emptive attack of a country that was not an imminent threat, had no WMD's, was under control in the north and south by our own military, and crippled by sanctions to the point of strangulation. Now, despite all that Dubya kills thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, permits the looting of infrastructure and cultural sites, and pollutes the landscape for generations to come with depleted uranium munitions. You ever see a picture of Mussolini in his last moments, hanging from a lamppost by piano wire? Such a fate should befall Dubya for his reign of murder and destruction.

The rush to an admittedly pre-ordained war in Iraq was because the BushCo knew that continued inspections would find nothing,

If we knew that Saddam had no WMD's then why bother equipping our troops with the gas masks and other forms of military ware for such and event? For show?
Your reasons for Bush going to war, steal oil, revenge, war monger, because he was bored, just don't hold water. I would believe that it was a preemptive strike on a weak country to get a foot hold a region infested with terrorists.

Let me put my G.W. military hat on for a minute:
So I'm G.W. and I want a foothold in a region that I believe is becoming infested. So I attack Iraq and put in a government that does what we tell it. We establish permanent bases (which we will) to protect our Oil supply, fight terrorists and piss off Iran. Notice that I said "protect" not steal like some of you believe. While digging for our new bases we find a hidden cash of WMD's (what luck!). Iran, Syria & Saudi now are shiting their pants because we are knocking on their backdoor..."hello...any terrorist in here?" Most countries sympatric to terrorists now start playing ball with us because we now have greater leverage. Saudi is really worried that we will stop buying oil from them and buy all the oil from Iraq. Shortly thereafter Saudi produces terrorists in mass numbers for execution. Syria follows suit. Iran on the other hand will play hard ball. They will get a nuke via back channels and give it to Bin Laden. Bin will either blow the hell out of the Jews or attempt to sneak it in D.C. Either way Bush wins because he gets an excuses to blow up Iran.

OR we have the John Kerry military hat:
Finish what we started in Iraq. Get the hell out. Smooth things over with France & Germany.. i.e. kiss ass. Concentrate on home defense and pray to God that we can keep terrorist out of the U.S. (not going to happen)

Face it people we will sooner or later have to "reorganize" that whole region to keep us safe. I really don't see anyway around it. 9/11 proved that we just can't sit around and wait for the next attack. If Iraq is that stepping stone, so be it.

That's my peace boys... tear into me if you must!

Hey RC,

Did you have a little wet spot in the front of your PJ's when you woke up after that dream?

But seriously.

Who's gonna pay for G.W.'s empire?

His don't tax and spend policies are already bleeding the treasury dry.

"Saudi is really worried that we will stop buying oil from them and buy all the oil from Iraq." ?????????? Uh, Right Coaster, the Saudis are worried about us discontinuing oil purchases about as much as M.I.T. fears an application for Doctorate studies from Dubya, which is NOT AT ALL!

Oh, and as to oil from Iraq, Dubya and whose army is going to protect the pipelines and insure the flow of oil? (Hint, it won't be the U.S. army. They've tried. And failed.)

RC

As long as your posts remain reasonably worded I will not tear into you, although I disagree with your conclusions.

Unfortunaetly, I don't have a much time tonight so I'll give you an abbreviated response Sorry.

Anyway, The first thing I would point to is that if the emphasis was on terror they should have finished the job in Afghanistan, Its been 2 years and its still not stable or alQaeda free. Secondly, scaring the hell out of everyone, I would argue, is a bad approach since it will tend to inflame the terrorists. In addition, the terrorists are not state sponsored. There are other ways of putting pressure on these states without invasion. If we had finished rounding up alQaeda in Afghanistan, and really made an effort to rebuild the country (which we are not) we would have been in a much better position. Having rebuilt Afghanistan, the surrounding countries would have been much less suspicous of our intentions and cooperation would be more likely.

How familiar are you with the PNAC (progress for a new american century) and their views? The reason this group is important is that many member s of this admin were/are members. You should go to their web site and read first hand their views.

In the mean time here's a good article which describes the neocon approach. You have to come to understand their view to understand the how/why we are in Iraq. Link

Bereuter is a homo.

Too bad Kerry missed an opportunity to say he wouldn't have voted for the war given that he knows what he knows now. Makes me mad that he isn't more forceful on this. He's starting to look like Bush Lite.

Is it impossible for people to understand the difference between;

voting to give the president the authority to wage war if he decides it's necessary

and

voting for the war?

The Senate did not vote for the war.

George Bush chose to go to war, not the Senate.

O.K. Michael, that's so. But, where the heck is the rapid response team that Clinton/Gore had in place? Every time the Republicans distorted or lied, they were out there within 24 hrs. refuting it. Lou Dobbs has a questionnaire on his website asking if negative ads worked. 100 percent said yes. He needs a better response team.

Well, I think the hearts of that rapid reponse team were Carville and Stephanopolous. George is hosting This Week. Where is Carville? I know he has some role with this campaign but what is it exactly?

Carville is fat and happy at Crossfire, and Steph is a GOP toady at ABC. So what Kerry is left with is limp Bob Shrum.

It is too bad that Carville didn't take a leave of absence to return for awhile and take over the response/strategy operation that Shrum is so ill-equipped for. But either Kerry or Clinton would have had to ask him to do that, and neither of them did.

Face it people we will sooner or later have to "reorganize" that whole region to keep us safe.

Well, RC, the only problem here is that we don't have the power to 'reorganize' the region. Really. Not militarily, and not economically. (Let's look at it pragmatically, and put aside the question of whether we've got the right to do so.) We've got a burn rate of $1 BILLION dollars a week now for Iraq alone. Add it up, and soon it will be real money we're talking about.

And troops? Unless you're about to enlist, I'd say we're short of them as well...

What is it with our governmental representatives? The Constitution clearly reserves the right to wage war for the Congress by way of official declaration. Any invasion of another country requires this declaration. The argument made that the Constitution can be ignored because of a present and growing threat (or whatever words were finally settled on....not imminent threat mind you) is specious. Kinda like its OK to violate the Geneva Conventions if we call POW's something else. All members of Congress who abandoned their Constitutional obligations and authorized the President to declare war are a disgrace to their oaths of office. Welcome to the Banana Republic of the United States of America.

Not hoping for self impeachment, I plan on voting against every incumbent this November.

I have stated here for some time now Shrum is not the guy. Kerry may still win but Shrum is not a X and O guy. Shrum is good at writing speeches, that's about it. BTW, Shrum is 0 for 8.

On the war, you must read the whole essay to fully appreciate what Berueter intended to convey. He came close to calling Bush/Cheney liars in my opinion.

I find it somewhat ironic that Rep. Bereuter has come to the same conclusion I did. Here is what I wrote one year ago this August. However, even then, I knew that the intelligence had been intentionally misconstrued.