The First Vet's Day Speech Used to DIShonor
Today President Bush made a speech in which he used the Veteran’s Day podium to slam Democrats who have questioned the Bush administration’s pull for war.
Nevermind the fact that the administration has a long history of dishonoring troops – having never been to a single fallen soldier’s funeral and sending them into a misguided war without the proper armor, bullets or other equipment, and without an exit strategy, but with a backdoor draft/stop loss plan – but today he defiled those who question that very dishonor.
There are two arguments I hear from Republicans – ALL THE TIME – when they try to dodge their responsibility for voting in this president, and vicariously, for voting in this war.
THE FIRST ARGUMENT: The Democrats voted for this war too.
This is absolutely not true. The Democrats did NOT vote to bomb Iraq. The Democrats voted to give the president authority that required Bush to declare to Congress either before or within 48 hours after beginning military action that diplomatic efforts to enforce the U.N. resolutions have failed.
As we remember – inspectors were still on the ground in Iraq, doing their jobs, and they were finding nothing. The inspectors begged for more time, wanted to stay, were forced to leave, and we subsequently attacked an unarmed nation who never attacked us. Cooperation with the Iraqi government was on the increase, rather than waning.
The vote in congress was to allow the President to attack Iraq after all else failed, and all else was still very under way.
In addition – All Republicans but 1 voted for this authority. 147 Democratic Senators and House members voted to shoot it down.
THE SECOND ARGUMENT: The Democrats had the same pre-war intelligence that the President did.
This is a complete and total lie, and Think Progress does a great job explaining why:
FACT — Dissent From White House Claims on Iraq Nuclear Program Consistently Withheld from Congress:
[S]everal Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments [of intel suggesting aluminum tubes showed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program] said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department’s dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.” [NYT, 10/3/04]
FACT — Sen. Kerrey: Bush “Has Much More Access” to Intel Than Congress:
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman: “The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress — ‘We believe these would be used for centrifuges.’ — didn’t deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it’s unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.” [10/7/04]
FACT — Rockefeller: PDBs, CIA Intel Withheld From Senate:
Ranking minority member on the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): “[P]eople say, ‘Well, you know, you all had the same intelligence that the White House had.’ And I’m here to tell you that is nowhere near the truth. We not only don’t have, nor probably should we have, the Presidential Daily Brief. We don’t have the constant people who are working on intelligence who are very close to him. They don’t release their — an administration which tends not to release — not just the White House, but the CIA, DOD [Department of Defense], others — they control information. There’s a lot of intelligence that we don’t get that they have.” [11/04/05]
FACT — War Supporter Ken Pollack: White House Engaged in “Creative Omission” of Iraq Intel:
In the eyes of Kenneth Pollack, “a Clinton-era National Security Council member and strong supporter of regime change in Iraq,” “the Administration consistently engaged in ‘creative omission,’ overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. ‘The President is responsible for serving the entire nation,’ Pollack writes. ‘Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the US government – and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility.’” [Christian Science Monitor, 1/14/04]
FACT — White House Had Exclusive Access to “Unique” Intel Sources:
“The claim that the White House and Congress saw the ’same intelligence’ on Iraq is further undermined by the Bush administration’s use of outside intelligence channels. For more than year prior to the war, the administration received intelligence assessments and analysis on Iraq directly from the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), run by then-undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith, and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group of Iraqi exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi.” [MediaMatters, 11/8/05]
Nevermind the fact that the administration has a long history of dishonoring troops – having never been to a single fallen soldier’s funeral and sending them into a misguided war without the proper armor, bullets or other equipment, and without an exit strategy, but with a backdoor draft/stop loss plan – but today he defiled those who question that very dishonor.
There are two arguments I hear from Republicans – ALL THE TIME – when they try to dodge their responsibility for voting in this president, and vicariously, for voting in this war.
THE FIRST ARGUMENT: The Democrats voted for this war too.
This is absolutely not true. The Democrats did NOT vote to bomb Iraq. The Democrats voted to give the president authority that required Bush to declare to Congress either before or within 48 hours after beginning military action that diplomatic efforts to enforce the U.N. resolutions have failed.
As we remember – inspectors were still on the ground in Iraq, doing their jobs, and they were finding nothing. The inspectors begged for more time, wanted to stay, were forced to leave, and we subsequently attacked an unarmed nation who never attacked us. Cooperation with the Iraqi government was on the increase, rather than waning.
The vote in congress was to allow the President to attack Iraq after all else failed, and all else was still very under way.
In addition – All Republicans but 1 voted for this authority. 147 Democratic Senators and House members voted to shoot it down.
THE SECOND ARGUMENT: The Democrats had the same pre-war intelligence that the President did.
This is a complete and total lie, and Think Progress does a great job explaining why:
FACT — Dissent From White House Claims on Iraq Nuclear Program Consistently Withheld from Congress:
[S]everal Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments [of intel suggesting aluminum tubes showed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program] said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department’s dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.” [NYT, 10/3/04]
FACT — Sen. Kerrey: Bush “Has Much More Access” to Intel Than Congress:
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman: “The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress — ‘We believe these would be used for centrifuges.’ — didn’t deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it’s unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.” [10/7/04]
FACT — Rockefeller: PDBs, CIA Intel Withheld From Senate:
Ranking minority member on the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): “[P]eople say, ‘Well, you know, you all had the same intelligence that the White House had.’ And I’m here to tell you that is nowhere near the truth. We not only don’t have, nor probably should we have, the Presidential Daily Brief. We don’t have the constant people who are working on intelligence who are very close to him. They don’t release their — an administration which tends not to release — not just the White House, but the CIA, DOD [Department of Defense], others — they control information. There’s a lot of intelligence that we don’t get that they have.” [11/04/05]
FACT — War Supporter Ken Pollack: White House Engaged in “Creative Omission” of Iraq Intel:
In the eyes of Kenneth Pollack, “a Clinton-era National Security Council member and strong supporter of regime change in Iraq,” “the Administration consistently engaged in ‘creative omission,’ overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. ‘The President is responsible for serving the entire nation,’ Pollack writes. ‘Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the US government – and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility.’” [Christian Science Monitor, 1/14/04]
FACT — White House Had Exclusive Access to “Unique” Intel Sources:
“The claim that the White House and Congress saw the ’same intelligence’ on Iraq is further undermined by the Bush administration’s use of outside intelligence channels. For more than year prior to the war, the administration received intelligence assessments and analysis on Iraq directly from the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), run by then-undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith, and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group of Iraqi exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi.” [MediaMatters, 11/8/05]
posted by Jeremy at 5:21 PM
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