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Oh yes, the House with another non-binding resolution. This is just a grandstand for House Democrats to attack the President. A non-binding resolution has the weight of nothing, it is not a law, just a statement.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but throughout the campaign the Democrats attacked the stay the course philosophy that President Bush declared. Now the President is seeking to increase troop strength, something else the Democrats mentioned, and in their non-binding resolution they are attacking this strategy and instead maintaining the stay the course philosophy of before the election.

So let's see if we can all follow this folks, this resolution will not prevent the deployment of 1 single troop, nor will it require the return of 1 single troop from in Iraq. In other words, it does not a damn thing.

Now when you say one thing and then do another they have a word for that, so somebody please help me out with that. The two that come to my mind most immediately are hypocrite and liar.

dmk

Srg, I think the main point, as evident by the title, is that Congress is sending Bush a message that going into Iran without Congressional support, is outside his powers.
Now correct me if I am wrong but aren't the majority of Congress against putting in more troops? Even twelve Republican oppose it. This is how a democracy operates, which is what this country is still suppose to be.

I watched the debate for a few hours and CNN doesn't mention the desire of congress to support the troops already there. With the current agreement, with the Iraqi government, the soldiers hands are tied in a lot of situations. If the Iraqis want to be in control, and our guys are getting killed because of it, then we should get the heck out of Iraq or give our guys, already there, the ability to do what is necessary to get the job done!
Our mission should be to truely help rebuild and clean up the denatured uranium we spread everywhere and get our combat soldiers out of that toxic enviroment as soon as we can, not send more soldiers in.

Bush should be grateful the resolution is none binding. I think this show some support of the President's ability to make the correct choice, yet still lets him know how most of congress feels.

No the whole non-binding resolution is about Iraq. It is about not sending more troops. After campaigning against the Stay the Course, this is exactly what the Congress now says the President should do. So before the election, Stay the Course was the wrong strategy, now following the election it is the correct strategy. Which one is it??? Or do they even know???

No it is not. We are a republic, and according to the Law of the Land, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is the President. That is what the Constitution states, all the grand standing about the violation of rights by the Republicans and now we see that the Democrats themselves are no better. In the name of partisan politics they are violating the Constitution, at least when the President supposedly did so, it was in the name of national security. What crap!!!!!!!!!!

Again, this resolution validates the Stay the Course. That is the irony of the whole situation. After declaring it the wrong strategy, now it is the right strategy. Instead of wasting three days of debating the War and then doing nothing, perhaps more time should be spent actually legislating.

dmk

Srg, we both know that now that the dust has settled there are many facts about why we went to Iraq to start with that were mis-managed. Our President manipulated the evidence against Iraq in order to get support, from congress, for an invasion. We fought Saddam's Guard when we went in. Only after presenting ourselves as targets did Al Quada show up.
Our government probably won't impeach Bush because of 'the message it would send.' (what a bunch of crap) He deserves to be impeached, and our country is suppose to stand for justice. It would show the world, along with our enemy, that we are actual a just people and not abunch of war mongers(which Bush has us looking like right now) This should be the legislature they are working on, but because of the wallets of all of congress, this won't happen. It's all about money and oil. Pretty disqusting really.
The longer we are there the more Trillions of dollars there is to be made, and mis-appropriated.
Personally I think Bush should insist the US take control until Iraq is ready. Then the troops already there could handle the problems they have. Putting more troops in a situation like the one that has been created by us is not the answer. Untying the hands, of our troops that are already there, is.

That's kind of funny, in light of the FACT that the Senate Intelligence Committee was privy to the SAME information Bush had.

And they sided WITH Bush.

But now they don't, because the Iraq War is very unpopular.


It's interesting how popularity-driven most of our pathetic politicians are.

(CBS) When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bush insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence.
But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller — a 26-year veteran of the agency — has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: Speak out.

He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.

Read the whole article here:
A Spy Speaks Out , Former Top CIA Official On "Faulty" Intelligence Claims - CBS News


This report was originally published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Follow the Threat Assessments

by Joseph Cirincione and Dipali Mukhopadhyay

Thursday, July 03, 2003

Senior administration officials say they based their escalating warnings of the imminent danger posed by Iraqi weapons on official intelligence assessments. In many cases, the statements went far beyond the classified estimates now available. In other cases, such as Secretary Powell's presentation to the United Nations, they tracked closely with the CIA reports to Congress. These reports themselves, however, underwent a dramatic transformation from 2001 to 2002 after reporting essentially the same data for many years. There is little new evidence in the reports to account for this change. So what triggered the new, alarmist tone in 2002?

Every six months the intelligence community submits a report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction. These reports outline the activities of foreign countries regarding weapons of mass destruction programs.


Nuclear Program


The assessments of the Iraqi nuclear program remained fairly consistent from 1998 through 2001, followed by a dramatic jump in 2002. From 1998 to 2001, Iraq's nuclear program was addressed in one paragraph, if at all. Until 2000, the intelligence agencies were concerned that Iraq continued to hide nuclear-related documents, and probably some equipment, but made no claim that Iraq was trying to reconstitute the program. In the first half of 2000, the report noted explicitly "we do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox [December 1998] to reconstitute its WMD programs," though analysts suspected that this might be underway. The nuclear program merited only two sentences, noting, "Iraq has probably continued low-level, theoretical R&D." The report for the last half of 2000 began to talk about a "reconstituted nuclear weapons program" and cited rallying calls from Saddam to the "Nuclear Mujahidin." In the first half of 2001, came the first mention that "Baghdad may be attempting to acquiring materials that could aid in reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" (emphasis added). The first report after September 11, however, changed this judgement to a definitive "is attempting to acquire materials" (emphasis added).

The January-June 2002 report, however, raised alarm at unprecedented levels rhetorically, though it provided little new evidence of increased capability. This report, which moved the nuclear program from the last program mentioned to the front of the assessment, devoted six long paragraphs to the nuclear weapons, mostly detailed narrative of Iraq's nuclear history and the IAEA inspections and dismantlement process. This report introduced the allegation of Iraqi efforts to procure tens of thousands of aluminum tubes and noted that all intelligence experts agreed that these tubes could be used for a centrifuge enrichment program, though "some believe that these tubes are probably intended for conventional weapons programs." The Director General of the IAEA, Dr. ElBaradei later refuted this lone piece of new evidence in his March 7, 2003 presentation to the Security Council.

The 2002 intelligence report also definitively concluded: "Iraq is working to reconstitute its nuclear program." The tone of the report presented previously known activities in a new light, indicating a heightened threat. The report noted "expanding international trade provided growing access to nuclear-related technology and materials," "foreign nuclear expertise," "an increase in dual-use procurement activity in recent years," and "numerous meetings between Saddam and nuclear scientists over the past two years." Connecting these dots in a new way, the report concluded with a stark warning: Iraq could develop a nuclear device, with indigenously-produced fissile material, by the last half of the decade and, with foreign-procured fissile material, within one year.

Carnegie Analysis of CIA Reports

Kind of funny how that worked huh?

In addition, The FBI, in 2001, sent 300 different Iraqi US citizens, that all had relatives in Saddam's old nuclear program, back to Iraq to ask their relatives if there was anything going on. They all came back and said there was no program but this evidence never made it past the Whitehouse because Bush thought they were all lying. I posted a link to a story about this last year, here on DTT, if you'd care to look for it.

closest *we'll* ever get to a vote of "no confidence."


too bad it couldn't be passed in the senate.

And yet, what's SO odd about this is that these are MANY of the exact same people who voted FOR invading Iraq.

So these cowards had their staffers run a few opinion polls, then made their decisions based on those polls.

It was the President's administration who decided what intel to show Congress. The info provided was one sided. Plus the fact that the Nigerian purchase deal of yellow cake had been debunked before the start of the war and Bush never mentioned that. Check into it.