Wilson lied?
 

W's lying has hurt us more than the criticism of his lying.

How to control gang violence (& more on the Allawi rumors!)
 

Not sure how the New Zealand press will report this, but AP has more on the (perhaps) mythology being created for Mssr. Allawi.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._the_strongman

How to control gang violence.
 

I'll add that I don't have any problems with what the guy wrote. The "smart" allocation of resources is what the NYPD started doing. Before that, it was just basically fixed allocations (foot units way back when) or an even worse Pavlovian allocation (mobile response units).

In terms of what seems most likely for the future, his point about the relatively small number of "shooters" in the criminal culture is very important. Boston's youth profiling project showed amazing results, way back when, in identifying the most likely shooters and providing long term counseling etc.

The bottom line for me is that none of that stuff is possible without good leadership, and its been sorely lacking in many places.

Hello

Wilson lied?
 

so far you guys haven't proven any Bush "lies." but club and slave are now 1-0, or .5-0 Ty, did you lose 2 separate fights, or was that a tag team?

Wilson lied?
 

You need a good Colonel Jessup speech right about now.

Wilson lied?
 

If Wilson has a credibility problem, that hardly saves the President from his, except in a crude political sense. Nothing that Wilson putatively has lied about makes the administration look any better. To put it in your terms, even if Wilson hadn't been the spark, the administration was a fire hazard waiting to burn.

Wilson lied?
 

What do you think makes Bush not credible? Are you referring to his budget estimates?

Wilson lied?
 

If he announced this morning that Syria posed a threat to us because it was developing WMD and aiding terrorists, the majority of the country would not believe him.

Wilson lied?
 

An early contender for POTD.

Wilson lied?
 

Putting aside the substantive issue, that seems to be a US intelligence credibility problem, rather than a Bush specific credibility problem, which would not change under Kerry.

Wilson lied?
 

Remember what you said to me when I posted that the GOP-led campaign against Clinton, culminating in his impeachment, had damaged our national security by severely constraing the administration's ability to accomplish anything for several years?

Consider it returned. Too bad, so sad.

If the invasion and resulting occupation had turned up anything CLOSE to the key allegations made by the administration and its supporters beforehand, you wouldn't have the issue at all. i.e. If we had found actual stocks of WMD, and/or hard links with al Qaeda, the anti-war crowd would have been reduced to muttering ("But is was STILL bad, and ILLEGAL.") which would have got them nowhere.

The abject failure of intelligence and/or diplomacy and/or policy-making is what has hurt the administration and our efforts abroad. [Effete liberal metaphor] The rest is just froth on the latte. [/Effete liberal metaphor]

S_A_M

I leave you with the words of Gen. (Ret.) Zinni in response to Secretary Rumsfeld's expression of surprise over the course of the occupation and the Iraqi insurgency. [Paraphrase] "I don't understand how he could be surprised. People were telling him for years that this would happen."

Wilson lied?
 

The buck stops here.
-- Harry S Truman

It was the CIA's fault.
-- George W Bush

Wilson lied?
 

Our intelligence didn't fail. The administration decided it wanted to invade Iraq, and it wanted the CIA to give it good reasons. The CIA did the best they could without -- as we now know -- much to work with. If Bush or Cheney had wanted to hear that Iraq had no WMD or meaningful ties to Al Qaeda, doubtless someone would have been happy to tell them.

Now the administration wants the CIA to take the fall, and it looks like it's going to do that job well, too.

Proof that the White House is good with all of this: Heads are not rolling at the CIA. Tenet stepped down before the Senate report came out, after an incredibly long tenure, considering, but the administration is resisting the 9/11 commission's calls for reform.

This Looks Bad
 

Wilson lied?
 

This is just pure and utter crap that is being peddled as an excuse for the failure to act by the Clinton Administration, and if anything, it was Clinton's actions had constrained their ability to act. I have never blamed Clinton for 9/11, mainly because I think it could not have been prevented. But I do think he was thoroughly uninterested in foreign policy, and uncomfortable with military strength, and we are paying for that now.

Perhaps not in Iraq. But it's hard to fight a war, even harder when you don't have super majority support, and still harder when you are being criticized at home as being a liar, murderer, etc. But, I guess many on the left don't really consider this a war.

Wilson lied?
 

what if Clinton, the entire senate and the UN all backed him up?

Wilson lied?
 

Kerry
--The buck stops here and it was the CIA's fault

Wilson lied?
 

This line of reasoning may have worked before the Senate Report and 9/11 report, but it is just hot air now.

Wilson lied?
 

Right -- because his military did so poorly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We consider it a war all right, but we think the President should have approached it as a war, not a political campaign. That means leveling with people about the reasons instead of trying to snow them. That means not using foreign policy for political advantage. That means making the war effort bipartisan. That means asking everyone to share the burden.

If the President didn't want to be accused of lying, he could have tried telling the truth.

Wilson lied?
 

That's a pretty convincing defense of Bush you've got there, son.

When Kerry is elected President, I hope you're willing to put aside the personal attacks for a little while in the spirit of national unity. Or maybe that only cuts one way.

And I hope Chinaski's still around to pay for the board in December.

Wilson lied?
 

edited to say: You appear to live in this curious bimodal world in which if Wilson lied, then the President is telling the truth, and if Congress found fault with the CIA, then the President must have been absolved of having done anything wrong. Surreal.

Wilson lied?
 

I was referring to his use of military power. And saying that is like saying that the Yankees are great because they beat an SF little leaque team.

Again, this line of reasoning may have worked before the reports came out. It is dead now.

Wilson lied?
 

The fact that he is a waffler is not a personal attack, but I will support his foreign policy, much like I supported Clinton's policies in Eastern Europe.

Wilson lied?
 

The report found that the Administration did not pressure the CIA/intelligence community to reach a desired result. So it has now been established that (1) the 16 words were not a lie (2) no pressure was put on intelligence, and (3) this was an intelligence failure, rather than a lie. What are you insinuating that he did wrong (other than any disagreement you may have with policy)?

Wilson lied?
 

Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. Are you beating up on Clinton again for failing to invade Afghanistan after the embassies were bombed? Whatever.

Yeah, those reports sure are an absolute vindication of everything the President has done for the last several years.

Wilson lied?
 

This is the stupidest thing you have posted yet today, and that's saying something.

Wilson lied?
 

I'm referring to his discomfort with the use of military power.

Wilson lied?
 

I love this. This is the latest and greatest DEM spin. Anything that could possible cause doubt on someone's leadership abilities or policies is now a personal attack. The fact that a candidate has taken inconsistent positions, routinely, is fair game.

Wilson lied?
 

Cite, please.

If by "not a lie" you mean that it was literally correct that the British were telling us they had some source -- unknown to us -- that led them to believe the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium, that is true. If you think it was appropriate for the President to use the State of the Union to try to scare people about Iraq's nuclear program when his own intelligence people disagreed with the substance, simply on the basis of hearsay from another country, then let's just agree to disagree.

Bullfuckingshit. If you believe this you were on Mars two years ago.

Again with your strange bimodal world. I take it you never see dusk -- it's day, and then it's night, right?

Where do you want me to start? Should we stick to Iraq? I think it's clear, far beyond dispute, that the President and people around him decided to go to war with Iraq without regard to what the intelligence community was saying. The intel was used to sell the war. I think the President's motives were pure (but pure what?), but profoundly misguided. While others around him were hot on the idea of draining the swamp, etc., I think the President was uncomfortable with the difficulties of the containment policy and had no patience for it. I think he saw Hussein as an enemy, and 9/11 prompted him to want to act against our enemies. Having decided to go to war, he was not apt to reconsider, and so what the intelligence community then told him was irrelevant to policy formation. He convinced himself that he was doing the greater good, and that justified all sorts of other things. Like overstating the case for war.

Wilson lied?
 

"The Senate report said there was no evidence that ``administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.''

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...Byo7c&refer=us

You have some good theories, but where's your cite please

Wilson lied?
 

If I call you a moron, I'm not saying that the things that you post are moronic, I'm saying that you, club, are a moron. That's a personal attack. If, on the other hand, I say that the things you post (or the work you do, etc.) is moronic, it's not so much an attack on you. When you attack Kerry as a waffler, you are not "causing doubt" about his "policies," and you are not attacking his "positions." You are saying that what he says in these positions is unimportant, and that what is important is his personal characteristic of waffling.

In other words, what you said was just dumb.

Personal attacks are fair game in an election. Not ipso facto, but we're electing leaders, not platforms. I think there is an element of truth in the Kerry/waffler thing, but I also think it's way overstated, much like the Gore/liar thing. Whether or not it's true, it is certainly a personal attack.

This Looks Bad
 

Didn't Clinton's advisor, or someone else in his admin, get busted for taking a classified computer (that is a computer with classified information) home?

Oh, and www.jibjab.com . . . click on "this lland". I apologize if it's a repost. I blame my shitty friends who fail to forward emails like this, leaving me to hear about it on the Today show.

Wilson lied?
 

If I were taking a deposition, and a witness gave me that answer, I could have a lot of fun pushing the witness on the different qualifications. "Analysts." So officials talked to their supervisors, but not to the analysts. "Change" Not "modify," but "change," huh? And so on. As I say, if you think that sentence captures what was going on in Washington two years ago, you were living on Mars and getting your news from a FOX feed or something. Actually, even that isn't right, because it was the conservative media like FOX that was on the CIA's case for not getting with the war program. I posted a link to a piece in the WaPo by Jim Hoagland, noted pal of the neo-cons, in 2002 in which he attacked the CIA for failing to see how much of a threat Hussein was. Two years later, he's writing pieces blaming the CIA for leading the President astray. To ignore that the administration didn't do anything to pressure the CIA, you'd have to close your eyes and cover your ears to what was going on before the war.

Hoagland
 

Hoagland on October 20, 2002:

• Imagine that Saddam Hussein has been offering terrorist training and other lethal support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for years. You can't imagine that? Sign up over there. You can be a Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency.
  
  Or at least you could have been until recently. As President Bush's determination to overthrow the Iraqi dictator has become evident to all, a cultural change has come over the world's most expensive intelligence agency: Some analysts out at Langley are now willing to evaluate incriminating evidence against the Iraqis and call it just that.
  
  ...it is no surprise that Bush has until now relied little on the Langley agency for his information on Iraq. There is simply no way to reconcile what the CIA has said on the record and in leaks with the positions Bush has taken on Iraq.

Oops. Nor is this an outlier. Here's another Hoagland column from October, 2002:

• A sea change has occurred in official Washington since the president decided last summer that he would soon have to be ready to go to war against Iraq. Public attempts by officials to bury or explain away menacing information about Iraq have largely dried up or gone underground, although the CIA fights a rear-guard action. Now information and intelligence are marshaled to make the case, rather than deflect it.
  
  This is, broadly speaking, political use of information -- no more and no less so than was the previous phase of denial and obfuscation. Bush mobilized facts on Monday to mobilize the nation for a challenge that is no less dangerous for being "largely familiar," as the New York Times labeled Bush's arguments in Tuesday editions.

Oops.

Hoagland in 2004:

• The truth in Machiavellian terms is worse: Bush and Blair accepted and actually believed the flawed intelligence that their spy bosses and senior aides provided, and then inflated it in their public speeches. Credulity, not chicanery, would be the plea, your honor.

Two years ago, Bush was out in front, and the CIA was struggling to keep with him. Now we need to all pretend that Bush's error was "accepting" what the CIA told him and "inflating" it in his public speeches. "Inflating." Right.

This Looks Bad
 

Yes. Chinese-American Wen Ho Lee was accused of spying for the Chinese at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting trial, and he ultimately plea bargained to putting classified information on a insecure computer.

I'm not sure if Clinton even knew who Lee was prior to his prosecution.

I believe that the security issues at Los Alamos National Laboratory have not been resolved.

This Looks Bad
 

I think Burger is thinking of John Deutch, DCI after Woolsey and before Tenet, who had top secret stuff on his home computer.

In California, we blame the continuing story on Texas's efforts to steal the laboratories away from UC. Doubtless the security is not good, either.

Wilson lied?
 

the only fear there is your boy Mr. pulling the plug on me.

Wilson lied?
 

If you keep the plug in place until Dec, you are going to have some serious intestinal problems.

This Looks Bad
 

That's the one.

I can understand how this stuff happens for top-level folks, who are on duty essentially 24 hours a day. Not to excuse it, but it's understandable.

Wilson lied?
 

did i ever tell the "butt plug performance art story?" its quite good, but I think I told it? Graduate art school master thesis films a crap after a month on butt plug?