Need some help ffor dmolishing a Freeper-type

[Archae]

I need some eloquent answers to this post from a Freeper-type, that includes sources for the information.

I get angry and screw it up.

Thanks.

Starts here:

Nobody has made a remotely persuasive case that Bush lied about WMD's. The German, Russian, French, Israeli, British, and Chinese governments all agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the German assessment of Iraq's WMD potential was even more dire than ours; they were convinced Saddam would have a nuclear weapon by 2005.

Former President Bill Clinton and his entire administration also believed Saddam had WMDs. In 2002 Robert Einhorn, Clinton's point man on WMDs, testified to Congress, "Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors" -- including our 100,000 troops in Saudi Arabia.

The threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against U.S. territory proper was only a few years away according to Einhorn. Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder. All of these people believed Iraq had major stockpiles of WMDs.

So, here's a question for the class: Were all of these people "liars", like President Bush?

No? Why not?

You can't have it both ways. You can't say Bush lied while others who said the same thing were being honest. The Bush White House was operating with fundamentally identical information to that of the Clinton Administration, Robert Einhorn, et. al. so how do you justify excusing their dire pronouncements as a mere "mistake" caused by poor or misleading intelligence, while claiming that the same pronouncements of the Bush Administration, based on the same intelligence estimates, were "lies" motivated by greed and bloodthirstiness?

Now, let me say that I do think the failure to find WMD's is troubling, and may well constitute the second-biggest blunder in faulty intelligence since Pearl Harbor (9/11 being the first) -- though I would also temper that assessment by referring you to my previous post a few comments up; given the enormous scale of the task, and the difficulty in finding what we're looking for just within those "approximately 130 known" sites alone, much less somewhere within a land mass the approximate size of California, it could take years to find what's been hidden. (Hell, they're still finding old minefields from wars fought 50 years ago!)

If it was an intelligence screw-up, though, then given that France, Germany, Russia, Britain, China, and Israel all believed the same thing we did -- that indeed, much of what we thought we knew (such as the infamous "yellowcake-from-Niger") came from information given to us by the intelligence agencies of those same countries -- then Saddam managed to bluff a hell of a lot of people into believing he was holding a royal flush when all he had was a pair of twos, and George W. Bush was hardly the only person to have bought it...

[La_Serpiente]

1. Why the hell were the inspectors in there?

to find WMD. Too bad their mission was subverted by the Bush administration.

[Bread and Roses]

2. Why is Bush

going to Mars to try to find them?

(courtesy of DK)

[Kellanved]

3. BS

The German intelligence feared biological weapons, but had completely ruled out nuclear.
The "yellowcake" was planted in Italy and picked up by US and UK agencies. I do't see a France, a Germany or a Russia in it.

As there was no viable proof of Iraqi WMDs being still in existence, Inspections were the only legal and fair way.

[SheilaT]

4. No one has made a persuasive case

that Bush lied about WMDs? What cave is this person living in?

[Kamika]

5. Apparently they weren't fooled enough to support an invasion

best I could do..

Oh and tell them Bush was the one that wanted to use the phony evidence to start a war not the germans

Seriously just quit debating with these guys

[Guaranteed]

6. The difference is that Bush lied for

THE PURPOSE OF STARTING A WAR. Bush started a war. None of these other people started a war.

FURTHER, don't forget about the yellowcake debacle way back when. I'd suggest looking up articles from this summer and reviewing the leaks that came out showing that Blair, Condi, and Cheney knew that the Niger documents were forgeries, yet they were still scaring people with the "mushroom cloud" tactic.

And from there you can delve into the Plame debacle and the fact that Bush hasn't outed the traitor in the White House. He lies all over the place- even when he said that he WOULD find the traitor.

[kaitykaity]

7. "Deflect, distract, deny."

Where are the massive stockpiles Bush said were
there? Aren't there? Bush lied. 2+2=4. Geez,
these people are sick.

[rasputin1952]

8. This is really not that difficult to debunk...

Keep it simple, where are the WMD's?

If bush was privy to intelligence that was above what was given to other members of the gov't, (as I would suspect),he didn't delve into to it as he should have.

The UN inspectors were NOT thrown out of Iraq, they were recalled after the administration started pounding the war drums. They were never allowed to complete their task.

There was never a viable threat to the US proper. If there was a possibility that Iraq could have attacked the US soil, it was many years down the road.

The administration's own inspectors were quietly removed from Iraq 2 weeks ago, after finding nothing. The intelligence bush received was faulty at best, and downright false at worst. He fell for a bunch of propaganda. (Yes, there were Chemical weapons used against the Kurds, and that could have been avoided if ghwb had kept his word and supported the Kurdish uprising).

There are many other states that pose a far more severe threat to the US than Iraq, yet the thought of pre-emptive strikes are far from the minds of these of this admin.

The attackers on 9-11 were mostly Saudi's, when are we going in Saudi Arabia?

Where is Osama? Let's not forget, that is where the real problem lies.

On at least one occasion, bush publicly let loose the real reason for going to Iraq, "he tried to kill my daddy".

The oil in Iraq cannot be forgotten for even a moment.

If the administration really wants to get rid of evil despots, why don't they tender their own resignations, starting with Ashcroft? bush could turn out the lights of the WH on his way out, after making sure all of the rest of his cronies are headed home.

O8)

[RC]

9. You almost nailed it.

"If the administration really wants to get rid of evil despots, why don't they tender their own resignations, starting with Ashcroft? bush could turn out the lights of the WH on his way out, after making sure all of the rest of his cronies are headed home."

They should be put in prison for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. If they are allowed to just go home, they will then be free to enjoy their spoils from their ill gotten war. Justice would not then be served.

[Archae]

10. My thanks to all of you

I doubt the Freeper-type will even LOOK at anything that contradicts what he has been brainwashed to believe, but it's at least worth a try.