300 Tons of WMD???

[Fmr jarhead]

Amen, sister!!!! (and I am not religious!)

 

[manu1959]

Right now I don't know what to believe about the intelligence of the general public, the polls however accurate they are or are not seem to suggest at least half are a bunch of idiots that simply do just listen to soundbites and rederic, or believe what they wish to. I suppose we will know better after the election, hopefully those that do see thru the bullshit will come out in force for Bush.

excellent point, as the son of a lifelong politician (long story) surrounded by superdoves and superhawks, i belive that those that surround themselves with those that they agree with and learn from sources they agree with appear uninformed and unintelligent ... the media has done more to widen this split and pit each side against the other than ever before

 

[theim]

Right now I don't know what to believe about the intelligence of the general public, the polls however accurate they are or are not seem to suggest at least half are a bunch of idiots that simply do just listen to soundbites and rederic, or believe what they wish to. I suppose we will know better after the election, hopefully those that do see thru the bullshit will come out in force for Bush.

Unfortunatly in the great country of ours even ignorant morons get the right to vote.

 

[manu1959]

Unfortunatly in the great country of ours even ignorant morons get the right to vote.

depending on who you talk to that will cover just about everyone

 

[Bonnie]

Unfortunatly in the great country of ours even ignorant morons get the right to vote.

The worst part is we all suffer for their bad decisions. Maybe it's partly the fault of Bush team for not being even more aggressive. We just have a darkening of the intellect in this country who are convinced that government is the solution to every one of societies woes, everything is a right mentality now the norm, very destructive to those who rightly know the only way to true prosperity and freedom is self reliance, thats becoming a hard sell to an ever increasing entitlement society. The republicans have to stop being the party of apologists.

But Im still hopeful things will work out on election day.

 

[manu1959]

The worst part is we all suffer for their bad decisions. Maybe it's partly the fault of Bush team for not being even more aggressive. We just have a darkening of the intellect in this country who are convinced that government is the solution to every one of societies woes, everything is a right mentality now the norm, very destructive to those who rightly know the only way to true prosperity and freedom is self reliance, thats becoming a hard sell to an ever increasing entitlement society. The republicans have to stop being the party of apologists.

But Im still hopeful things will work out on election day.

the bush team belive that their supporters will not by swayed by the media's reports...the kerry team relies on the media to sway supporters to their cause

every bush supporter says the meida is full of it and evry kerry supporter i have met cites media sound bites in their arguments

pitifull really....and quite the norm in california

 

[drowe]

Has anyone heard this theory? Russian Special Ops allegedly helping Iraq hide weapons prior to kickoff?

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10111

 

[alien21010]

I really can't see Russian special ops assissting the Iraqis all that much. I can see the Russians selling the Iraqis new weapons, as a field test of the weapons (re: GPS Jammers and that new AT-Missile).

380 Tons in one place goes missing before we get there, but they fail to mention the 400,000 tons of explosives we did get to. Amazingly there are still weapons caches we know about but cannot protect directly as there simply are not enough people to protect all the caches of weapons.

Clearly this is an attempt to make anybody look bad, even with 40,000 more troops as Kerry keeps saying there simply would not be enough people to protect all of the weapons across the country.

It's a tragedy that conventional explosives don't fall under the WMD category. Else Bush would be right?!

Kerry is getting desparate all right. It's like the final days of the Third Reich, as they get desparate, the more fiercely they'll fight and the more insane they'll act.

Except Kerry doesn't control the media... or what they print. No one does.

That worries me when people are persuaded by untrue unsubstantiated claims.

Such as the fairy tale that Iraq had WMD?

I may be a bit more active in trying to find out what is going on, but I don't think the majority of Americans are a bunch of dumb sheep....likely to follow and believe anything they see and hear on TV.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I doubt it (I'm humble, too)

By in large you are wrong. Americans are stupid, decadent, and believe that people out there are acting in their best interests. If it gets enough playing time on the TV, then they believe it. Which is why so many people blindly accepted that Iraq had WMD before the war without questioning it (I'm not trying to debate whether or not they exist in this paragraph). It was largely viewed as unpatriotic to question the President during that time, and that could not be farther from the truth. Patriotism is standing up and questioning your President to produce evidence. Fighting for the ideals upon which this nation was founded, and one of them was skepticism of authority. We must be skeptical of all authority, be it Republican or Democratic.

Right now I don't know what to believe about the intelligence of the general public, the polls however accurate they are or are not seem to suggest at least half are a bunch of idiots that simply do just listen to soundbites and rederic, or believe what they wish to. I suppose we will know better after the election, hopefully those that do see thru the bullshit will come out in force for Bush.

Ah, typical response. Slam those who are going to vote for Kerry, because they must be idiots to vote for him?

Keep in mind that National polls are completely irrelevent. It is the electoral college which ultimately determines who is elected.

The worst part is we all suffer for their bad decisions. Maybe it's partly the fault of Bush team for not being even more aggressive. We just have a darkening of the intellect in this country who are convinced that government is the solution to every one of societies woes, everything is a right mentality now the norm, very destructive to those who rightly know the only way to true prosperity and freedom is self reliance, thats becoming a hard sell to an ever increasing entitlement society. The republicans have to stop being the party of apologists.

Well, most of the thing's that are being fought for are rights, or should be. True prosperity and freedom are not obtainable. Human nature gets in the way.

If you want the Republicans to become your vision of what they should be, they would be committing political suicide. No one would vote for them, because you have to capture the middle. Most Americans are moderates. Republicans and Democrats will almost always mirror eachother.

the bush team belive that their supporters will not by swayed by the media's reports...the kerry team relies on the media to sway supporters to their cause

every bush supporter says the media is full of it and every kerry supporter i have met cites media sound bites in their arguments

pitifull really....and quite the norm in california

Kerry's smart for realizing that if you manipulate the media, then you control the US. In a world in which we are so incredibly interlinked with our sources for the news... To not use the media to your advantage would be stupid.


The sad part here, is that the Republican party has become so splintered. I'm a moderate Republican and I cannot associate with the current administration on any level. Bush has pandered too far to the far right, and I've had enough. He's lost my vote.

I really forsee a huge victory for Kerry, but I fear that it could turn out to be another Y2K. If it did, any recovery made by the economy would be almost certainly lost...

 

[theim]

You're a Republican like Zell Miller is a Democrat. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

Whomever wins, it is not going to be a huge victory. If Bush takes Ohio Kerry's done. If Kerry takes Ohio Bush must do one of the following:

Take Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Take Minnesota or Wisconsin, and Iowa and New Mexico.

Most popular vote polls put Bush ahead by an average of 2 points.

 

[Fmr jarhead]

I find it laughable that those that support Kerry believe there is >400 tons of missing explosives, but they cannot believe there are missing WMD.

Incredible...and illogical, to say the least.

If Kerry says it is missing it is true.

If Bush says it is missing, it never existed (although Kerry did say it existed at one time)

 

[Fmr jarhead]

By in large you are wrong. Americans are stupid, decadent, and believe that people out there are acting in their best interests. If it gets enough playing time on the TV, then they believe it. Which is why so many people blindly accepted that Iraq had WMD before the war without questioning it (I'm not trying to debate whether or not they exist in this paragraph). It was largely viewed as unpatriotic to question the President during that time, and that could not be farther from the truth. Patriotism is standing up and questioning your President to produce evidence. Fighting for the ideals upon which this nation was founded, and one of them was skepticism of authority. We must be skeptical of all authority, be it Republican or Democratic.

Thank you for offering your opinion....

You are the one blindly following the piper (who doesn't even know how the flute works....he is nothing more than a Milli Vanilli wannabe). He has changed his mind, and his opinion of the situation in Iraq more times than I have changed the oil in my 1954 Ford pickup truck! Do you believe the part where Kerry says there were 350+ tons of explosives in the weapons depot? How do we know they existed? Sounds to me like you got yourself a real David Copperfield of a candidate....making some stuff appear real, and telling how other stuff is real when it doesn't exist!

Oh yeah, I don't know any of the jarheads I have served with who would respect his leadership, let alone vote for him......there are a bunch of sheep out there, alright, and the mantra they profess is...."Anybody but Bush!" Only this time they don't have the right man to stand up to the challenge.

 

[dilloduck]

I really can't see Russian special ops assissting the Iraqis all that much. I can see the Russians selling the Iraqis new weapons, as a field test of the weapons (re: GPS Jammers and that new AT-Missile).



It's a tragedy that conventional explosives don't fall under the WMD category. Else Bush would be right?!



Except Kerry doesn't control the media... or what they print. No one does.



Such as the fairy tale that Iraq had WMD?



By in large you are wrong. Americans are stupid, decadent, and believe that people out there are acting in their best interests. If it gets enough playing time on the TV, then they believe it. Which is why so many people blindly accepted that Iraq had WMD before the war without questioning it (I'm not trying to debate whether or not they exist in this paragraph). It was largely viewed as unpatriotic to question the President during that time, and that could not be farther from the truth. Patriotism is standing up and questioning your President to produce evidence. Fighting for the ideals upon which this nation was founded, and one of them was skepticism of authority. We must be skeptical of all authority, be it Republican or Democratic.



Ah, typical response. Slam those who are going to vote for Kerry, because they must be idiots to vote for him?

Keep in mind that National polls are completely irrelevent. It is the electoral college which ultimately determines who is elected.



Well, most of the thing's that are being fought for are rights, or should be. True prosperity and freedom are not obtainable. Human nature gets in the way.

If you want the Republicans to become your vision of what they should be, they would be committing political suicide. No one would vote for them, because you have to capture the middle. Most Americans are moderates. Republicans and Democrats will almost always mirror eachother.



Kerry's smart for realizing that if you manipulate the media, then you control the US. In a world in which we are so incredibly interlinked with our sources for the news... To not use the media to your advantage would be stupid.


The sad part here, is that the Republican party has become so splintered. I'm a moderate Republican and I cannot associate with the current administration on any level. Bush has pandered too far to the far right, and I've had enough. He's lost my vote.

I really forsee a huge victory for Kerry, but I fear that it could turn out to be another Y2K. If it did, any recovery made by the economy would be almost certainly lost...

Except Kerry doesn't control the media... or what they print. No one does.

You're joking----please tell me you're joking. Do you really believe that the media operates in some kind of vacuum?
.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Alien is another fake conservative. I can tell. Real conservatives don't buy the premise that WMD was the only argument for war. Real conservatives know there were actually several reasons for the war. Only libs practice revisionism and insist wmd was "The reason".

Nice try alien. Now I'm on you like white on rice.

 

[trobinett]

Fmr jarhead posts:

I find it laughable that those that support Kerry believe there is >400 tons of missing explosives, but they cannot believe there are missing WMD.

Incredible...and illogical, to say the least.

If Kerry says it is missing it is true.

If Bush says it is missing, it never existed (although Kerry did say it existed at one time)

I think that says it all, nuff said.

 

[-Cp]

Looks like the Army took most of it:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137017,00.html

 

[alien21010]

You're a Republican like Zell Miller is a Democrat. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

Whomever wins, it is not going to be a huge victory. If Bush takes Ohio Kerry's done. If Kerry takes Ohio Bush must do one of the following:

Take Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Take Minnesota or Wisconsin, and Iowa and New Mexico.

Most popular vote polls put Bush ahead by an average of 2 points.

Haha. Have the moderates become too liberal for the far right? It's disgusting how neo conservative this administration is, and the whole Republican party. What happened to the policies of Reagan? What happened to the promise of fiscal responsibility?

Well, the latest poll that I've seen shows Kerry has a fairly significant lead in Ohio, while Bush pretty much has Florida, but the other swing states are too close to call.

The popular vote does not matter! Re: Election 2000. Gore won the popular vote, lost the electoral vote (if you still want to debate that let me know), and Bush became President.

The national popular vote means JACK SHIT.

I find it laughable that those that support Kerry believe there is >400 tons of missing explosives, but they cannot believe there are missing WMD.

Incredible...and illogical, to say the least.

If Kerry says it is missing it is true.

If Bush says it is missing, it never existed (although Kerry did say it existed at one time)

Did I once say that I believe there are 400 tons of missing explosives? Did I? Nope.

What are you talking about. There are obviously missing WMD, or else we would have found them, by definition of the word missing. The question is, where did they go, or did they even exist to begin with?

You are the one blindly following the piper (who doesn't even know how the flute works....he is nothing more than a Milli Vanilli wannabe). He has changed his mind, and his opinion of the situation in Iraq more times than I have changed the oil in my 1954 Ford pickup truck! Do you believe the part where Kerry says there were 350+ tons of explosives in the weapons depot? How do we know they existed? Sounds to me like you got yourself a real David Copperfield of a candidate....making some stuff appear real, and telling how other stuff is real when it doesn't exist!

Good job, way to completely buy the Republican propaganda. I find it ironic that you claim I'm just blindly following someone, yet you don't even do your own research on most of your articles. Instead you refer to rhetoric, be it distilled from the Republicans in this case. Reason? Logic? Those all go out the window?

Apparently to be a Republican one must not question our Commander in Chief.

Oh yeah, I don't know any of the jarheads I have served with who would respect his leadership, let alone vote for him......there are a bunch of sheep out there, alright, and the mantra they profess is...."Anybody but Bush!" Only this time they don't have the right man to stand up to the challenge.

I'm dead serious, I'm a moderate Republican, always have been. I believe in small government, less taxes, freedom to do what you want etc, and Bush represents none of that. I don't want to vote for Kerry, but I have no other option. It's picking the lesser of two evils.

You're joking----please tell me you're joking. Do you really believe that the media operates in some kind of vacuum?

Do you honestly believe that Kerry phones into the NYT and Washington Post and requests that certain stories be on the front page and to smear Bush? It's ridiculous, and is a conspiracy theory up there with the likes of the Moon landings, and the JFK assassinations.

Alien is another fake conservative. I can tell. Real conservatives don't buy the premise that WMD was the only argument for war. Real conservatives know there were actually several reasons for the war. Only libs practice revisionism and insist wmd was "The reason".

Revisionism my ass. Do you want quotes where Bush specifically denotes the threat that Saddam's WMDs were the threat to us? What were the other justifications besides WMD? He's genocidal? (We didn't step in when the Africans were massacring millions of eachother why should we step in to stop a dictator?) He's a threat to the Middle East? (I would've thought he would know that any action against another country, save Iran, would result in immediate military action.) Or perhaps most tantalizingly, Iraq sits on one of the largest strategic reserves of oil.

Make no secret of it, this war was fought for oil, and if you're trying to justify the war through the humanitarian side of it (The Iraqis are better off now), you're deceiving yourself. It's no secret that we have needed a secure trade agreement or a portion of Iraq in order to procure the oil that we need to extend our reliance on fossil fuels by another 10 - 15 years. This was a war fought over economic resources. If we lose our ability to control the flow of oil, then our economy will collapse.

I strongly remember Bush making his State of the Union speach and proclaiming how Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, had built weapons after Gulf War I. If the weapons had materialized, I would not be bitching about the war being unjust. I wish more than anything that we could justify this war to the people of America, but I fear that when all is said and done the veterans of this war will return to an ungrateful America again. A Vietnam: Redux.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Haha. Have the moderates become too liberal for the far right?

Most moderates are libs who don't want to be labelled.

It's disgusting how neo conservative this administration is, and the whole Republican party.

You coming on here lying about your political past is what's disgusting.

Oh, and by the way, The British still stand behind the story about uranium from niger.

 

[alien21010]

Most moderates are libs who don't want to be labelled.

Or most moderates are the backbone of the Republican party, and if you continue to alienate them the Republicans will lose any political strength they have now.

You coming on here lying about your political past is what's disgusting.

Haha. Lying about my political past?

Broad and sweeping assumptions count: 1

Oh, and by the way, The British still stand behind the story about uranium from niger.

Even though it's been thoroughly debunked by the CIA, the 9/11 commission, and independent research?

Question:

The most successful deceptions often use accurate facts that lead their audiences to jump to the wrong conclusion. A case in point is Prime Minister Blair's White Paper asserting that "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In what way did it succeed and in what way did it fail?


Answer:

The successful part of Blair's "white paper" was its brilliant exploitation of the public confusion between two similar-sounding substances: Uranium and Uranium 235. The crucial difference is that Uranium is not fissile, which means it cannot be split to cause a chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion, while Uranium-235 is fissile. The fissile material indispensable to making nuclear weapons is heavily-concentrated U-235.
Eleven days earlier, at a Pentagon briefing and slide show, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, using his alias "Senior Defense Official," informed reporters about the danger of Saddam Hussein obtaining fissile material from a foreign supplier. With it, he estimated Iraq could build nuclear weapons in a matter of months. "The key issue here is always fissile material," he said "And that remains probably the only issue, in the case of Iraq." When reporters at the briefing pressed Rumsfeld about whether the US had any intelligence that Iraq had means of obtaining this critical ingredient, he pointedly referred them to CIA Director George Tenet testimony that "our major near-term concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to fissile material." But that was as far as he "could" go, he explained.

So, with the press now primed for an answer, Blair ominous-sounding disclosure that "Saddam was seeking to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed source in Africa appeared to fill in the missing piece: "African uranium." Saddam's foreign connection, it then leaked out, was Niger, and allegedly Iraq was negotiating to purchase 500 metric tons of its "yellowcake." Yellowcake, or uranium oxide, is precipitated out of the raw ore so it can be efficiently shipped to processors.
The problem here is that yellowcake is not a fissile material. Like the ore it is derived from, it contains only a minute trace of the lethal isotope U-235– a fraction of a percent. To obtain fissile material directly from yellowcake requires a vast technological enterprise.

First, the yellowcake must be converted into uranium hexafluoride. Next, it must be turned under great pressure into a gas. Finally, the U-235 atoms must be separated out of the gas and concentrated into 90 percent U-235. This separation can be done through gas diffusion, which requires forcing the gas through a long series of sub-molecular size membranes. Or it can be done, as in Europe, by centrifuge technology, which requires spinning the uranium hexafluoride gas at extremely high speeds in a cascade of sophisticated centrifuges. Only a few countries in the world have mastered the technology, notably the US, France, Germany, Britain, Japan and Russia, (and most of the other countries in the nuclear game import their fissile material from them under the inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency to fuel power plants and then further enrich it for weapons .)

Iraq did not have a capability in September 2002 to enrich uranium. To be sure, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was dangerously close to achieving such a capacity. He had assembled a rudimentary arrays of centrifuges that had the potential for enriching uranium isotopes. But as a result of that war, the centrifuges and other enrichment facilities were destroyed by the US, the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the subsequent invasion confirmed. In any case, Iraq never had the gasification plant to convert it into uranium hexafluoride gas, and without it, Iraq could not produce fissile material even if it secretly obtained the centrifuges. Iraq certainly had access to yellowcake. Whatever the provenance of the "African Uranium," Iraq could retrieve yellowcake from its own phosphate deposits at Al Qaim near the Syrian border. But yellowcake, without the ability to convert it fissile material, was not a threat. The real threat, as both Rumsfeld and Tenet correctly identified, was Saddam acquiring fissile material from abroad. Even though a number of rogue states, such as North Korea, had the ability to supply it to Saddam or his intermediaries, the US had no intelligence it could cite about such possible transactions (nor might it detect any until it was too late).

So Blair's metaphoric "African uranium" managed to fill the gap. Most of the public equated uranium with nuclear weapons.
The failed– and stupid– part of the deception was associating it with forged Niger documents. With the help of the Google search engine, the International Atomic Energy Agency quickly determined that these documents were inauthentic.

Bolding mine.

Your point again was...?