Jeb Bush's attempt to rehabilitate 'W' and his Presidency Continues.

Jeb Bush's attempt to rehabilitate 'W' and his Presidency Continues. Sorry Jeb - No amount of lipstick will make that pig look like Marilyn Monroe.

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire Quote of the Day

March 24, 2013


Quote of the Day
"He is like the most focused, disciplined guy. To imagine being a former president and not having an opinion on anything over the last four years, really? I mean, to have that discipline, to be respectful of the president that hasn't been as respectful of him as he should have been? Man. I could have never done that."

-- Jeb Bush, in a CNN interview, on his brother, former President George W. Bush.

Hans Blix on the terrible mistake of the Iraq war.

I've talked a lot about the UN Weapons inspectors angle including a whole segment of my show herehttp://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/03/04/making-sense-with-steve-leser--iraq-war-special-and-week Blix confirms many of my assertions including that he himself thought he would find WMD when he went back to Iraq in November of 2002 as most of the world thought that WMD existed in Iraq at that time. But as the inspections went on and sites were visited with no WMD found, the US and UK governments reacted strangely to that news. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/18/opinion/iraq-war-hans-blix/index.html Hans Blix: Iraq War was a terrible mistake and violation of U.N. charter By Hans Blix, Special to CNN March 19, 2013 -- Updated 0836 GMT (1636 HKT) The Bush administration certainly wanted to go to war, and it advanced eradication of weapons of mass destruction as the main reason. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has since explained, it was the only rationale that was acceptable to all parts of the U.S. administration. The WMDs argument also carried weight with the public and with the U.S. Congress. Indeed, in the autumn of 2002 the threat seemed credible. While I never believed Saddam could have concealed a continued nuclear program, I too thought there could still be some biological and chemical weapons left from Iraq's war with Iran. If not, why had Iraq stopped U.N. inspections at many places around the country throughout the 1990s? On February 11 -- less than five weeks before the invasion -- I told U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice I wasn't terribly impressed by the intelligence we had received from the U.S., and that there had been no weapons of mass destruction at any of the sites we had been recommended by American forces. Her response was that it was Iraq, and not the intelligence, that was on trial. And during a telephone chat with Tony Blair on February 20, I told the British prime minister that it would be paradoxical and absurd if a quarter of a million troops were to invade Iraq and find very little in the way of weapons. He responded by telling me intelligence was clear that Saddam had reconstituted his weapons of mass destruction program.

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If you missed hearing my special on the 10th Anniversary of what should have prevented the Iraq war, there are two links you can use to hear it.

The first one, which is more commercial heavy (5 minutes of introductory commercials and other news) is http://kcaaradio.celestrion.net/kcaa-podcasts/leser/20130304.html

The second one is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/03/04/making-sense-with-steve-leser--iraq-war-special-and-week

Some backup links for my March 3-4, 2013 Show on Iraq and What Should have Prevented the Iraq War

The Iraq War Resolution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq

UN resolution 1441 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_1441 calling for the immediate and complete disarmament of Iraq and demands from Iraq a report of the status of its arsenal of WMD.

UN Weapons inspector Reports of March 7, 2003 :

http://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/elbaradei-7mar03.pdf
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=6383&Cr=iraq&Cr1=inspect

My blog post (from my old blog) from March 9-10, 2003

http://www.network54.com/Forum/142834/message/1047272702/Reasons+for+attacking+Iraq+exposed+as+lies%2C+lies+and+damned+lies

Reasons for attacking Iraq exposed as lies, lies and damned lies
March 10 2003 at 12:05 AM
Steven Leser   (Login sleser001)

Reasons for attacking Iraq exposed as lies, lies and damned lies
March 9, 2003
Steven H. Leser

Two days ago, the top two UN Weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei talked of "substantial measure(s) of disarmament" across Iraqi weapons programs.  ElBaradei's report thoroughly debunked charges of Iraqis using aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons use and that after "thorough analysis, the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded, with the concurrence of ourside experts, that documents which form the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic...we have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded." The AP article discussing the report ran the headline, "BLIX: Iraq Actively Cooperating to Disarm"

So, there you have it. Iraq is now cooperating. They are destroying missiles, their scientists are disclosing all in interviews and it seems they were not working anywhere near as intently as we were led to believe to develop nuclear weapons. So, we're not going to war, right?

Wrong. In perhaps the most stunning display that all we have been told regarding why we are going to war against Iraq is total balderdash, Colin Powell and Dubya are indicating war is right around the corner, if not that plans are being stepped up. The fact is, once Dubya was elected, nothing was going to stop him from invading Iraq. It might be for the oil, it might be to avenge the attempt on his daddy, it might be to finish his daddy's unfinished business after the first Gulf War. Whatever the reasons, they have nothing to do with protecting anyone else against Iraq, and the reasons have nothing to do with terrorism. That much is now abundantly clear.

What does this tell us about the people who are leading our country? It tells us that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld are willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people and put hundreds of thousands of our men and women in uniform in harms way to prosecute a war against a nation that does not present a clear and present danger to the US or our allies. In short, when they give the "Go ahead" they will be committing mass murder and genocide. I have written articles critical of the war in the past, but characterized these people (Bush, et. al) of being confused, wrong, or stupid as was my belief at the time. They may still be all those things, but I also now believe they know full well that to wage war now against Iraq is morally bankrupt, corrupt and criminal. Bush and any Bush administration official who stands by the pResident on this issue after the war begins should be impeached and sent to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Am I being too strong? I don't think so. Our Constitution talks about the inalienable rights of all people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. War and killing go completely contrary to those basic rights, and it is because of this that past great leaders of our country have established terms like "Clear and Present Danger" to put a moral qualification as to what kind of threat another nation has to pose to us or our allies before we can morally resort to war. A proposed war against Iraq barely had a whiff of such justification before the latest weapons inspectors report.  Now, any hint of justification is gone. Americans of all parties, backgrounds, religions and ideologies need to rise up in protest against this war, because once it starts, whatever else this war costs, it will cost us our national honor.