http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Suskind_Bush_ordered_fake_letter_linking_0805.html

it's only proof if the letter isn't fabricated guys...

there's only so wet you can get and then you're soaked. the bushies are just piling on the lawless, immoral thuggery at this point. we might as well exhume josef stalin and put his corpse in the oval office and work him like a sock puppet.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/05/ron-suskind-white-house-ordered-forgery-to-link-al-qaedasaddam-to-911-attacks/

If its real, he is kind of a day late and a dollar short.  We needed all this stuff to come out awhile ago. 

If its real, he is kind of a day late and a dollar short.  We needed all this stuff to come out awhile ago. 


problem is that no one wanted to mess with the Bush administration at the height of their power.  Now that he's a lame duck all the crap is starting to become revealed.

problem is that no one wanted to mess with the Bush administration at the height of their power.  Now that he's a lame duck all the crap is starting to become revealed.

Sicko neo-nazi imperialists.  Traitors.  To hell with them all!  And on top of it all, these sonofabitches have the audacity to talk of patriotism!
>:(

But I thought that already.  Of course it was all cooked up.

So, David Suskind's book is called "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism."

Remember this song and video?

Max Q: "Way of the World"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRWJP1Ktww
Note the shot of the WTC at the end!  Talk about a shivering premonition!

:o

Hold on a sec... but *nobody* (AFAIAA) has ever managed to convince anyone at all that Iraq had any link to 9/11 - a certain amount of misdirection to affect people subconsciously, but nobody's attempted to offered proof of that connection.  Of have I missed something?

Hold on a sec... but *nobody* (AFAIAA) has ever managed to convince anyone at all that Iraq had any link to 9/11 - a certain amount of misdirection to affect people subconsciously, but nobody's attempted to offered proof of that connection.  Of have I missed something?


Not so fast.  They haven't convinced any of the skeptics, but they've kept the Fox News followers believing it right along... 80% of them believed it and back in 2003 over 50% of all major American network viewers thought so as well

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php

it only took 51% of the voting American population to elect GW in 2004... I wonder where they fall in this graph...

Not so fast.  They haven't convinced any of the skeptics, but they've kept the Fox News followers believing it right along... 80% of them believed it and back in 2003 over 50% of all major American network viewers thought so as well

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php

it only took 51% of the voting American population to elect GW in 2004... I wonder where they fall in this graph...


That Lame-Duck's goose has been cooked for awhile.

Despite voting for him...twice, I didn't really expect him to win in 2004.

Like I said, he's toast.

weren't they claiming that mohammed atta met with al qaeda in prague, with the phony testimony from "curve ball," and kept trying to provide proof of that? not to mention te forged niger letter, the pattern seems to be that they would float trial balloons of phony or doctored evidence and then get cold feet and not push it, opting as philbo pointed out for the innuendo and false conflation route.

If we can prove that this forgery actually occurred, we could impeach Bush.  Of course, the process of impeachment would likely last longer than what's left of his term.

weren't they claiming that mohammed atta met with al qaeda in prague, with the phony testimony from "curve ball," and kept trying to provide proof of that? not to mention te forged niger letter, the pattern seems to be that they would float trial balloons of phony or doctored evidence and then get cold feet and not push it, opting as philbo pointed out for the innuendo and false conflation route.


Pretty much.  This administration, even more than Clinton I's, has been a great exercise in parsing.

"I did not have sex with that woman" means "I did everything but insert my penis into her vagina".

"We do not torture" means "We redefine torture to not include the things that we do, and when that isn't enough, we fly people to countries where other governments torture them."

In order to have a hope in hell of understanding what's going on, you have to turn off your common sense logic, and use lawyerthink. 

Lawyerthink axioms follow, to be applied in no particular order:

1) Anything not explicitly forbidden is legal. 

2) Anything that was once explicitly forbidden, but which has subsequently been made legal, is also legal.  (Because if it ever comes to a court of law, the judge is forced to look at the current law, and when current law says the alleged offense is legal, the judge is obliged to declare the issue moot and to dismiss the case.) 

3) It's not about the spirit of the law, it's about the letter of the law. 

4) If the law says that a guy testifying under oath must be taken at his word, if he says "he does not recall", you must give him the benefit of the doubt, even when you know he's lying.  The prosecution must prove he's lying, and if the records that might prove he was lying have been deleted, and the guy who deleted the proof also "doesn't recall" why they were deleted, then the prosection is screwed.

The usual tell for lawyerthink is the presence of unnecessary modifiers. 

For example:  "I did not have sex with that woman", means "I had sex with lots of other women, but not with her", as well as "I did not have vaginal intercourse" with the person in question.

The Gonzales testimony on wiretapping, for example, takes on a whole new meaning when parsed as lawyerspeak.  I believe Alberto Gonzalez when he said we never did any illegal wiretapping under the programme that Congress was asking Alberto about.  Gonzo went to such great rhetorical leaps to always include references to one specific programme, namely the un-named programme about which he was being questioned, that it ended up costing him his job.  No human would speak like that, only a lawyer would.

Which is how a guy can stand in front of Congress and basically say "We broke dozens of laws, hundreds of millions of times, under other programmes, but since none of you know enough about (and if you did know, you'd be prohibited from asking!) me about those other programmes, and since the one programme you are allowed to ask me about was squeaky-clean, you can't prove a damn thing.  You know it, I know it, the sheeple don't know it, and even though I'm the fall guy on this, I'm still gonna rub your faces in that fact every chance I get."

Lawyerthink is a fascinating thing.  "It's legal, therefore it must be ethical" / "It's illegal, therefore it must be immoral" are the twin fallacies behind everything from the Nanny State to the Final Solution. 

it only took 51% of the voting American population to elect GW in 2004... I wonder where they fall in this graph...



Somehow I wonder about that. There were so many reports of voter fraud, malfunctioning voter machines (made by big contributors to the Bush campaign  ::) ) and NO ONE looked into them. I wouldn't put it pass the neocons to rig the election (because they know they can't win legitimately).



If we can prove that this forgery actually occurred, we could impeach Bush.  Of course, the process of impeachment would likely last longer than what's left of his term.



I wanted him impeached many, many years ago but first the Repubs were not going to impeach him and then when the Dems got in, they really disappointed me. Of course they don't really have the votes to impeach (60%) because they only have a slight lead.

I really hope that SOMEBODY files charges against the whole lot of them even if it is after they get out. Justice is justice and I don't care how long it takes. These people have nearly destroyed not only this nation but the world. I think they need to be held accountable for their crimes against the Constitution and crimes against humanity.


Cat 

I wanted him impeached many, many years ago but first the Repubs were not going to impeach him and then when the Dems got in, they really disappointed me. Of course they don't really have the votes to impeach (60%) because they only have a slight lead.

I really hope that SOMEBODY files charges against the whole lot of them even if it is after they get out. Justice is justice and I don't care how long it takes. These people have nearly destroyed not only this nation but the world. I think they need to be held accountable for their crimes against the Constitution and crimes against humanity.


Cat 


I'm disappointed with Congress too, but not because of the Impeachment of Bush.

I wanted the dems to change this country, but what happened? Things changed...for the worse.

I said this once and I'll say it again, everything had to snowball and now the snowball is just too big to push.

It ain't parsing, it's lying by association. 

See, if every time you said "Maxwell" you also said "is a dogf**ker," you could plant the idea that "Maxwell is a dogf**ker" without ever saying "Maxwell is a dogf**ker"!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/dogrun.gif

It ain't parsing, it's lying by association. 

See, if every time you said "Maxwell" you also said "is a dogf**ker," you could plant the idea that "Maxwell is a dogf**ker" without ever saying "Maxwell is a dogf**ker"!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/04/dogrun.gif


That, too.

I'm always amazed by people (typically on the left, but occasionally on the right) who actually believe that the Administration accused Iraq of complicity in 9/11.  The actual position of the Administration, was quite clear:

1) Osama attacked us on 9/11.
2) He did so with the state sponsorship of the government of Afghanistan.
3) In order to prevent another 9/11, our strategy is to take down all state sponsors of terrorism, not just the ones currently ruling in Afghanistan.  Afghanistan's just a good place to start.
4) Saddam really was tossing cash to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers for every bombing they pulled off.
5) That means Saddam's government is, by definition, a state sponsor of terrorism.
6) And that, by #3, means he's fair game, even though his terrorists aren't actually shooting at us at the moment.

Personally, I was (and frankly, still am) OK with line #3 as a matter of policy.  States that use non-state actors to engage in acts that would normally (if performed by state actors such as armies) constitute acts of war, should be able to do so only at the cost of giving up some of their otherwise-valid rights under international law.  If you're a government and you don't like another government, you can either use diplomacy to get your way, or you can field an army and declare war openly.

Now, I'm also OK with people who disagree with me on that point.  We're all rational beings, and any disagreement we might have over whetner #3 is a good idea or not is fundamentally a difference of opinion over a policy.

I'm also fine with you, Maxwell, because I saw (just as you pointed out) that although all six steps were part of the actual rationale for war, they don't fit within the accepted format of the 10-second soundbite.  All you can get into 10 seconds is "Osama, 9/11, Saddam, terrists, fair game." 

My beef's with the people on the left who saw the 10-second version as a deliberate attempt to mislead.  It was, but there was no reason for anyone (typically those on the right) to actually believe it.  Why did the left concentrate on red herrings like "But Saddam's terrorists aren't shooting at us"?  That was true, but it was utterly moot point.  The argument stands no matter who Saddam's terrorists were trying to kill.

Why didn't the war's opponents concentrate on undermining point #3 -- because until that point was succesfully challenged, the case for war was still rhetorically solid.  Point #3 was the only thing upon which most people could have a reasonable disagreement, because everything but point #3 was a simple matter of fact.

(I've also got a beef with those on the right -- myself included -- who saw the whole thing in Straussian terms.  It was a noble lie, and it worked too well; the bumpkins the elite were trying to convince didn't need to know why #3 was reasonable policy, so it got glossed over by the right as well as by the left.  The net result was a propaganda strategy that worked too well for its own good.  To this day, there are electoral regions full of people who really believe we went into Iraq because "Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks", and not "because his government was a state sponsor of terrorism".  The rest of the country (whether they lean Elephant or Jackass) looks at those people with bewilderment, knows exactly where they got their ideas, and immediately discounts all the rest of the Administration's propaganda as bogus, too.  The net result is a massive decline in credibility for the Administration across all geographical and demographic voting blocs, and the results are plain to see in the electoral results of 2006 and 2008.  Sorta like how Reefer Madness got more kids to try marijuana than to reject it.  If the Administration's staunchest supporters are that deluded, who wants any part of anything they're trying to sell?)

Carter was hand-wringing and apologetic so they just used the hostages to secure the election for Reagan and it's been a steady decline in world power and prestige since then.  The end of the Cold War, you say? Whatever prestige we had as the "last remaining Supor Power" was wasted on Monica Lewinsky and then this clown, Dubya!

This is not the kind of majestic, visionary role JFK had in mind for the modern-day presidency, folks!
::)

I mean neither was Jimmeh Cawtah for that matter!

You tell a big enough lie and people will believe you.


Anyone want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?




Cat

You tell a big enough lie and people will believe you.


Anyone want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?


Throw in those two towers and it's a deal!
:P