Bob Woodward: Bush Didn't Lie About WMDs to Justify Iraq War

Bob wrote:

KarlRove wrote:She's as electable as Nixon would be right about now.

Nixon was elected twice.  As I understand it,  since Roosevelt that's the maximum time anyone can live in the White House.
So not sure that's the example you really wanted to use.  lol

Not exactly true.

2seaoat wrote:disasters in Syria and Libya.

Define disaster.  Israel is as happy as a pig in chit that two nation states which were a direct threat to their security have been neutralized.  Tribal disputes in Libya will take years to resolve.   In Syria, the 1973 war had them less than 24 hours from invading Israel and taking large chunks of the country as their tanks had tactical advantage in the Golan heights after the surprise attack, and the Syrians not realizing how successful the Egyptians had been in obliterating the Sinai defenses under the Russian air missile defense on the west side of the Suez caused the Israelis to lose almost 150 tanks in the first few days of the surprise attack.   Syria now being neutralize will take a generation before it ever poses a conventional military threat.   So define disaster.  Two dangerous dictators have either been killed or neutralized as a threat to our ally in the middle east.........and as Tom Cotton has made abundantly clear......that IS our foreign policy in the middle east........and it is time to simply cut and run like Ronald Reagan did......the man had it figured out in foreign relations, but sadly dropped the ball in domestic.

Who has been neutralized?

Aside from President Ronald Reagan, who slashed unemployment by putting people to work, NOT taking people out of the work force.

Who slashed inflation from astronomical rates to reasonable rates?

Who slashed interest rates so people could afford to buy a house again?

The GDP, in current dollars, never went below 4 per year and reached as high as 11 and 12 per year.

I lived and worked throughout the Carter and Reagan years. Compared between Carter, semi-retired Obama and Reagan, the Reagan years were paradise.

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:

2seaoat wrote:Israel is as happy as a pig in chit that two nation states which were a direct threat to their security have been neutralized.

Israel is trying to build an empire in the Middle East. It is opportunistically using the U.S. as a geopolitical guardian (our foreign aid money, the advanced weapons we provide them, and our UN veto) to protect Israel from any possible threat to its continued dominance in the Middle East.

Israel is paranoid that other nations in the region will become a nuclear power in the same way Israel accomplished this, and this is the driving factor behind its relentless push to start a war with Iran. Israel wants to hold a nuclear sword over all of its potential enemies, and not have to face the same. The notion that Israel needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from non-nuclear nations is just a load of horseshit.

I am so thankful that President Obama will not bend over for Bibi. He sees things the way they are, and if the political fallout were not so great, there would be a lot he would change.

Please explain specifically how having our best friend in the Middle East and hold dominance over that region a bad thing?

You believe Iran, Iraq and Syria dominating the area, with nuclear weapons is a better solution? How?

Markle wrote:

Bob wrote:

KarlRove wrote:She's as electable as Nixon would be right about now.

Nixon was elected twice.  As I understand it,  since Roosevelt that's the maximum time anyone can live in the White House.
So not sure that's the example you really wanted to use.  lol

Not exactly true.

Okay.  Here we go.  You've replied to my posts before with the word "liar".  
You've referred to me as a "progressive".  You've started most replies with "as you know..." when I have no clue what it is you think I know.

So,  rather than you and I insulting each other (and yes, I'm sure as hell more guilty of insulting you as you are me,  I realize and concede that); but,  this time let's you and me try to stick with what we know is real.

So we'll start with me asking you a question.  What is not true about me saying a POTUS can serve only 8 years?  I thought that was something we could all agree on,  regardless if we're right-wingers,  progressives,  queers,  straights, niggers,  honkies, zipperheads,  republicans, liberals,  conservatives,  fat, skinny,  bald,  not bald,  gooks, wops, spics,  ragheads,  bible thumpers, rich,  poor,  old,  young,  male,  female, atheists or even nips or krauts or ugly or good looking.
So correct me if I'm wrong.  And then we'll go from there.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26508.htm

Bob Woodward's Dark Side
Famed Reporter Carries Water for the Pentagon

By Russ Baker

October 02, 2010 " whowhatwhy" -- -- "Just one year before the publication of "Obama's Wars," Bob Woodward became a player in his own book-in-progress. He morphed into his true identity: Warrior Bob. Actually, there's an even deeper persona, Agent Woodward--but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

In June of 2009, Woodward traveled to Afghanistan with General Jim Jones, President Obama's National Security adviser, to meet with General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of forces there. Why did Jones allow this journalist to accompany him? Because Jones knew that Woodward could be counted on to deliver the company line--the military line. In fact, Jones was essentially Woodward's patron.

The New Republic's Gabriel Sherman wrote at the time that

Jones was a guest of Woodward at his wife Elsa Walsh's fiftieth birthday party held at Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee's house. He and Elsa were glued to Jones at the cocktail party before the dinner started

In September of last year, McChrystal (or someone close to him) leaked to Woodward a document that essentially forced President Obama's hand. Obama wanted time to consider all options on what to do about Afghanistan. But the leak, publicizing the military's "confidential" assertion that a troop increase was essential, cast the die, and Obama had to go along. Nobody was happier than the Pentagon--and, it should be said, its allies in the vast military contracting establishment.

The website Firedoglake chronicled the developments in a pungent essay:

Apparently General McChrystal and the Petraeus cabal aren't willing to wait for their Commander in Chief to set the strategy. Prior to the President's interviews, McChrystal's people were already telling journalists that they were "impatient with Obama" as Nancy Youssef reported. This "Power Play," as I mentioned last night, included a veiled threat that McChrystal would resign if he didn't get his way.

And sure enough, just hours after the Commander in Chief was on the airwaves, somehow McChrystal's classified report hit the Washington Post compliments of Bob Woodward no less.

Wow, what a coincidence!

This episode highlights a crucial aspect of Bob Woodward's career that has been ignored by most of the media. Simply put, Woodward is the military's man, and always has been.

For almost four decades, under cover of his supposedly "objective" reporting, Woodward has represented the viewpoints of the military and intelligence establishments. Often he has done so in the context of complex inside maneuvering of which he gives his readers little clue. He did it with the book Veil, about CIA director William Casey, in which he relied on Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a rival of Casey's, as his key source. (Inman, from Texas, was closely identified with the Bush faction of the CIA.) The book was based in part on a "deathbed interview" with Casey that Casey's widow and former CIA guards said never took place.

Typically, Woodward uses information he gets from his main sources to gain access to others. He then gets more secrets from them, and so on down the line. His stature--if that's the word--as a repository of this inside dope has been key to the relentless success machine that his media colleagues have perpetuated. The New York Times review of his Obama book laid out the formula:

In Obama's Wars, Mr. Woodward, as usual, eschews analysis and commentary. Instead, he hews to his I Am a Tape Recorder technique, using his insider access to give readers interested in inside-the-Beltway politics lots of granular detail harvested from interviews conducted on background, as well as leaked memos, meeting notes and other documents. Some of this information is revealing about the interplay of personality and policy and politics in Washington; some of it is just self-serving spin. As he's done in his earlier books, Mr. Woodward acknowledges that attributions of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person were in some cases not obtained directly from that person, but from notes or from a colleague whom the person told--a questionable but increasingly popular method, which means the reader should take the reconstructed scenes with a grain of salt.

And then, thanks to all this attention, and even with that grain of salt, the book went to #1..."

Wordslinger wrote:

VectorMan wrote:You libs would really be singing a different tune had Woodward trashed Bush. You know I'm right. If he'd of called Bush an out and out liar yall would be agreeing with him no matter what, because the facts don't even matter to your kind.

You're absolutely right, we Libs would indeed applaud anyone trashing the president who lied us into a never-ending, unwinnable war, and brought us the worst financial crisis since the
Great Depression.  F*** Bush!

Getting harder and harder for you to make sense isn't it? Lie, after lie, after lie. All disproven and yet you soldier on.

Do I need to tell you what to do with your spoon?

Floridatexan wrote:
Do I need to tell you what to do with your spoon?

He needs to get comfy on his chaise lounge as he floats down DENIAL River.

[/quote]

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:

Floridatexan wrote:
Do I need to tell you what to do with your spoon?

He needs to get comfy on his chaise lounge as he floats down DENIAL River.

[/quote]