Blood for oil?

The question isn't who knew, it's who didn't know.

Bush was just looking for an excuse. Oil wasn't a good enough reason.

Is it a contradiction to say that Pence's lying Admin sanctioned talking points are both boring AND infuriating?

Wow, Pence sounds like a little kid tangled in his own cookie jar lies. I'm starting to think that if more Americans get to compare the evidence for the pretty obvious oil reason (even Greenspan finally!) with evasions like that, we just might get a few more of these conservative corporate whores out o' Congress.

We have come full circle.

Gates blamed the WMD's too.

Hey, it worked the first time but we all know Hunt got the oil.

Unbelievable! He got bitch slapped on his talking point, so he just made up some bullshit on the spot!

what kind of moron still believes these propagandists?

I dunno, I recall the Thinker-Upper had to set Lantos straight about Sweden.:

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''

As to the, "we would be worse with Saddam" meme, that is entirely untrue. Saddam was the leader of the vicious Baathist movement, who would use dissappearings and killings to contain the even more vicious and insane tribalists lurking in Iraq. Look at what happened in Iraq once you removed the secular Baathists referees. Sectarian warfare sprung up in months. Saddam was a necessary evil. People who don't understand the region think all dictators are bad, some people, Iraqis, need to have the boot on their necks just to keep them from killing each other.

This should go on an open thread, but it's just too hard to resist...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDoDPKjs0Q

sorry hit the button before i finished my rant.

you know, with the way bush/cheney have changed the laws in this country

why don’t we just take everyone who diagrees with our personal view back behind the barn and shoot them.

i am a democrat, but i am tired of the “one party" pit system we are falling into. we need real representatives who are NOT tied/married to any PAC. now that bush has squandered our national treasure for the next generation or two, we might not ever get back to a healthy society. are are going to have to fight vigorously as "Citizens" to repair the U.S. Constitution. Corporations are not people and we need to address this grievance against the real citizens before they force us all back into a feudal system and not a democracy, all be it a republic. it still serves us than the fascist we now have in office, shit-for-brains bush.

I don't know why you are lauding Lantos, of all people. For pete's sake, not only is he APAIC all the way, he colluded with the now defunct and discredited PR firm, Hill & Knowlton, in the "baby incubator" lie that mobilized public sentiment for the first Gulf War.

Lies upon lies upon lies. Nobody seems to be able to keep track anymore. When we lose track of the premise upon which all the lies are built we lose the argument.

Pence: “It was, but uh, you know, I don’t think anyone really doubts today Wolf, that uh that uh, if the government of Saddam Hussein was in place with everything that Iran is doing with a nuclear weapons program that there would be a nuclear weapons arms race going on between those two countries.”

How would Saddam accomplish this with American Jets overhead and UN inspector on the ground?

That's why the claim that Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake uranium was so ridiculous. It would have taken hundreds of truck loads of uranium that could gave never been moved undetected and a processing plant that never could have been built without detection. Just look at the size of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Pissed-American @ 5:

Alexander @ 4:

Wow, Pence sounds like a little kid tangled in his own cookie jar lies. I'm starting to think that if more Americans get to compare the evidence for the pretty obvious oil reason (even Greenspan finally!) with evasions like that, we just might get a few more of these conservative corporate whores out o' Congress.

He's almost as good a speaker as bush.

No offense, but I don't think the words "good", "speaker" & "Bush" should ever be used in the same sentence.

Damn Pence! I didn't know the Republicans had a 'what if ' crystal ball

We also know that we are going to have to make a move on IRAN... and guess what...

We know it is not about Nuclear Weapons...because they are far away from doing it and by all accounts of inspection teams they are not pursuing that course of enrichment.

We know it is not about Nuclear power... because after all, when your stooge the Shah was in power... you freaks were all Koo-Koo for Plutonium puffs for him to build Nuke Reactors..

So .... Guess what is left for our reason to go into Iran?

Need any more hints?

So what will China do if the US bombs Iran to steal the oil... the oil that China perceives as its own oil?

Oh comeon Pence! Where's the pizazz of spin?! They're not even trying anymore. "Well uh, they had WM [cough, cough] "

rp2008 @ 20:

Lantos is a hard-core socialist, and all for aipac (jewish). Pence is just another corporate whore with zero integrity, clinging on to whatever power is left before his party dies out. The neocons have destroyed the party, especially when you have bigwig jews like greenspan bad mouthing you, you know it's over. The Jews are distancing themselves from the impending doom that is to become of the republican party. Lantos on the other hand is an extremist. More money for education? The federal departments are absolutely inefficient, and wasteful as it is. Point of fact is that none of our tax dollars go back to the states for education anyway. Get rid of all the wasteful depatments and the IRS too, return power to the states. Then we are getting somewhere.

vote Ron Paul 08!!

I am a hard core socialist, too. Ron Paul is an idiot who would take women's rights back to the 1950s. Federal departments are efficient when fully funded. Power to the states? African Americans riding at the back of the bus down south? Are you for real?

.
.
.
Here's another Democrat spewing the bullshit that the invasion was a disaster do to incompetence.

NO!!

It is a disaster from the moment the first soldier set foot in Iraq. American foreign policy is the issue here -- NOT military leadership.

Jeezus!!!
.
.
.

Wolf, that fine conservative midget, actually made the better point. Bush can finally afford to go back to his
roots and start vetoing spending bills now that they are Democratic spending bills. Lantos actually did a good
job. Did you see the cosmetic reasons why they choose Lantos. Handsome All American Republican vs oldest
politician in the world next to Bird. They are very good at this on CNBC also and that's why I can't watch their crap.
They think they have their demographics all figured out.

rp2008 @ 20:

Lantos is a hard-core socialist, and all for aipac (jewish). Pence is just another corporate whore with zero integrity, clinging on to whatever power is left before his party dies out. The neocons have destroyed the party, especially when you have bigwig jews like greenspan bad mouthing you, you know it's over. The Jews are distancing themselves from the impending doom that is to become of the republican party. Lantos on the other hand is an extremist. More money for education? The federal departments are absolutely inefficient, and wasteful as it is. Point of fact is that none of our tax dollars go back to the states for education anyway. Get rid of all the wasteful depatments and the IRS too, return power to the states. Then we are getting somewhere.

vote Ron Paul 08!!

Good point. As I've expressed many times on various threads. There really is no difference between Republicans and Democrats other than the tired arguments that they use to obtain the same objective. It's time for a serious change in this country, but until the militry/industrial complex can figure out what to manufacture rather than missels, tanks and bombs, it will just have to be we the people that finally say enough is enough.

and last year the line with the neo cons was Israel and Lebanon were going to bring us into WWIII with Iran. of course that didnt happen. I swear these people can only get a hard on for war.

I don't think anyone doubts that if Barbie Dolls were made to be explosive and grizzly bears could fly, that we'd have had a nuclear apocalypse by now. I don't think anyone doubts that.

Cat Atomic @ 43:

I don't think anyone doubts that if Barbie Dolls were made to be explosive and grizzly bears could fly, that we'd have had a nuclear apocalypse by now. I don't think anyone doubts that.

Message to BackSe@t, code red, NSCI, we have a leak, Do NOT tell Tumber, repeat, code red to Back Seet.

Oh sh!t 111

What an excellent point that Pence makes. If Saddam, who lost power, was still in power and if Saddam, who is dead, were not actually dead, there could be an actual problem based on what he might do. Brilliant.

And to think Pence is considered a rising star in the GOP House caucus. (This is the blockhead, after all, who compared Baghdad markets to those in his own Indiana...guess those Indiana marketplaces are more violent than I thought.) It's a pity he didn't win his bid to become Minority Leader last fall. He makes Boner look like a Mensa scholar.

Can someone tell me why Mike "Baghdad is like a normal outdoor market in the summertime" Pence is being promoted as an expert...in anything?

Does the MSM (or just CNN) think their entire viewership is as mind-numbingly dumb as Pence's Repug wingnut base?

nsr @ 13:

I dunno, I recall the Thinker-Upper had to set Lantos straight about Sweden.:

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''

Yikes! Stories about Bush would be so funny if he were some little minor Senator who got elected because his Daddy had so much money.......as stories about a President who has actively destroyed so much of our nation's health and welfare, they are somewhat frightening.

Do you ever notice that these Conservatards, including resident Bush, keep coming up with good reasons for invading Iraq that weren't apparent at the time? Reasons that never existed at all except in their fevered imaginations?

I guess that's human nature when all your carefully crafted lies are exposed. But, I wouldn't know not being a Repuglicon.

Let me see...I'm supposed to get excited because on lying sack of shit war mongering propagandist is calling another lying sack of shit war mongering propagandist a lying sack of shit war propagandist?

Those of you old enough, or with enough brain cells left to recall might remember that Lantos, knowing full well that "Nayirah" was nothing more than a fabricated propaganda tool, invited her to testify about all those poor infants that those evil Iraqis were tossing out of incubators., etc.

The vote on the first Iraq war was close....it looked as though Bush's pappy wasn't going to get enough votes until this shit, brought to you compliments of Lantos hit the airwaves.

Gimme a break.....Lantos a "hero"? He's part of the problem, not the solution.

1991 Persian Gulf War

Main article: Gulf War

Lantos was a strong supporter of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the run-up to the war, Lantos used his Congressional Human Rights Caucus to host a well-spoken young Kuwaiti woman identified only as "Nurse Nayirah", who told of horrific abuses by Iraqi soldiers, including the killing of Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor of the hospital. These alleged atrocities figured prominently in the rhetoric at the time about Iraqi abuses in Kuwait. This story later proved to be a complete fabrication. "Nurse Nariyah" was, in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and had been coached on this story by the PR firm of Hill & Knowlton, who were paid $14 million by representatives of the Government of Kuwait to create a PR campaign to generate U.S. support for an invasion. Hill & Knowlton also provided free office space to the Congressional Human Rights Foundation (distinct from the similarly named caucus), of which Lantos was co-chair at the time.[11][12]

Mike Pence? Mike Pence is on the foreign relations sub committee? Get him off off that comittee right now. This nation can no longer afford to have intellectually challenged individuals leading our country.

Andrew @ 39:

rp2008 @ 20:

Lantos is a hard-core socialist, and all for aipac (jewish). Pence is just another corporate whore with zero integrity, clinging on to whatever power is left before his party dies out. The neocons have destroyed the party, especially when you have bigwig jews like greenspan bad mouthing you, you know it's over. The Jews are distancing themselves from the impending doom that is to become of the republican party. Lantos on the other hand is an extremist. More money for education? The federal departments are absolutely inefficient, and wasteful as it is. Point of fact is that none of our tax dollars go back to the states for education anyway. Get rid of all the wasteful depatments and the IRS too, return power to the states. Then we are getting somewhere.

vote Ron Paul 08!!

Good point. As I've expressed many times on various threads. There really is no difference between Republicans and Democrats other than the tired arguments that they use to obtain the same objective. It's time for a serious change in this country, but until the militry/industrial complex can figure out what to manufacture rather than missels, tanks and bombs, it will just have to be we the people that finally say enough is enough.

The RNC will start funding the "no real difference, they're all the same nonsense" more and more if their candidates are in
any kind of trouble. This is why they got Nader to run the last 2X. Would you believe Nader has been caught working
with Grover Noquest. The Military Industrial Complex would not be in the position of power it has now under Gore.
We would not be in Iraq now if Gore was President which even Nader admits.

The biggest point that Spence is missing is that Iran's desire to make nuclear weapons is the EFFECT of Bush's cowboy foreign policy. Just like North Korea was, Iran believes that Bush is going to invade their country. If not for the Iraq war, there would be no nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Should have read .."who is incapable of doing anything other than uncritically regurgitating talking points".

The left said: oil.

The right said: 9/11, then al Qaeda, then WMDs, then freedom & security in Iraq, then only freedom, then possible freedom in the very long run for the region, then relative and hypothetical security in the region in a possible universe of non-invasion, then ...?

Rep. Chris Shays, Australian Minister for Defence Brendan Nelson and now apparently Alan Greenspan has all come out and confirmed what the left knew all along.

In the end most repubs just might get so desperate to actually admit the truth, - but of course only if it's their very very last option.

Of course Saddaam had weapons of mass destruction, he used them against his own people.
We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.
If we give up and leave, they'll follow us home.

Time for some new talking points. These are getting old and tired.

Let's face it. After the first Gulf War, Iraq was a paper dragon. We were lied to, plain and simple. The Bush administration hasn't got a shred of credibility left. I can't wait until they're history.

Now that I've seen Pence for 1 minute, put him in the plain idiot category with Glenn Beck. His suit clearly outweighs his moronic arguements.

Jeez, I didn't realize that Pence was such a brickhead.

That was astoundingly stupid.