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Iraq War lies, past and present, and punishments?

Should lying Mass Media be punished?

  • No, they were just doing a favor to get inside access.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    11
  • Poll closed .
This was the second Iraq war. The first Iraq war achieved an objective and left. The second Iraq war was an explosion of profits. If Saddam was so bad why didn't we take him down and depart? Why are we financing them to this very day? Why have we eroded our honor and hurt so many of us for so little reward?

Vietnam was equally pointless but differently motivated. Maybe we'll figure it out during this century.

I'm not sure I follow part of your argument. We did take down Saddam, and we aren't financing him or the Baath Party establishment. Part of the practical criticism of the war in fact was that we were to aggressive in removing vestiges of the regime and thus destabilized Iraqi society.
 
We whipped Saddam's butt, and he continued to stick his thumb in our eye.

Trying to kill YOUR NEIGHBORS by firing on our jets, in the words of that JOINT RESOLUTION you Democrats signed "thousands of times...."

After 9/11, we stuck ours in his.......

I guess you miss the idea of his gassing women and children in their homes, huh?

And lest you forget DEMOCRATS were cheer-leading us into that war HARDER than Republicans were, until they found that turning their backs on our soldiers was worth more politically than supporting them.....

The Who Said It Game - Iraq Style
 
I'm trying to say that it was not our responsibility to do anything but dispose of Saddam, determine those elusive WMDs did not exist and exit stage left. Instead we remained for 10 years and are just now winding down reconstruction aid. So, trillions just to make a point? I think if you follow the money, especially in the first years of the "war", you'll see that we fought for profits, not for necessity.

Obviously, it's just my opinion.


I'm not sure I follow part of your argument. We did take down Saddam, and we aren't financing him or the Baath Party establishment. Part of the practical criticism of the war in fact was that we were to aggressive in removing vestiges of the regime and thus destabilized Iraqi society.
 
The Bush Administration used weapons grade propaganda on the citizens of the US to manipulate the nation to support the invasion of Iraq. Never before had the media been used in such a manner on the American public. It was nothing short of masterful. In and of itself, it was a grand success. In fact, for those who care to read about such things, the process is well documented. There are/have been university classes dedicated to the subject. The grand secret? Most people, most Americans don't care to read about such things! How much more perfect can propaganda campaign have been?

The beauty of it all is that it was and is hidden in plan sight. Unfortunately, the genie will never go back in the bottle. Every administration will take what was learned from the Bush Administration and improve upon it.
 

Just as a note, I wish people would start saying "No Nukes" or "Not the amount/severity of WMDs that were implied". But then again, that would require people actually being knowledgable of what constitutes a WMD cand actually looking at sources other than truthout.net.

We actually DID find WMDs. That's not a statement against or for the war, or hte justifications, but it's correcting a factual innaccuracy.
 
Just as a note, I wish people would start saying "No Nukes" or "Not the amount/severity of WMDs that were implied". But then again, that would require people actually being knowledgable of what constitutes a WMD cand actually looking at sources other than truthout.net.

We actually DID find WMDs. That's not a statement against or for the war, or hte justifications, but it's correcting a factual innaccuracy.

That statement is technically accurate. I remember them finding some obsolete mustard gas stuff. Abandoned or trashed weapons. No nukes, no mobile labs, no nerve gas, no evidence of yellowcake from Niger, no evidence of anything mentioned by Powell in his UN speech with Tenet sitting directly behind him. Misinformation, misspoke, inaccurate, faulty, etc. as descriptors doesn't work for me. Lies are lies and no political distortion can alter that. History can be re-written by the victors, but it is fiction at that point. I'm a realist.
 
We shouldn't have had to go into Iraq, if the UN was actually effective and did their job...15 years of ignoring sanctions of knowing that Saddam was murdering groups of innocent people was 15 years too many.

There was a whole list of reasons cited for why we went into Iraq, possible WMD's was just one of the many reasons.


The resolution cited many factors to justify the use of military force against Iraq:[2][3]
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

Iraq Resolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Longer version here:
Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq
 
The Bush Administration used weapons grade propaganda on the citizens of the US to manipulate the nation to support the invasion of Iraq. Never before had the media been used in such a manner on the American public. It was nothing short of masterful. In and of itself, it was a grand success. In fact, for those who care to read about such things, the process is well documented. There are/have been university classes dedicated to the subject. The grand secret? Most people, most Americans don't care to read about such things! How much more perfect can propaganda campaign have been?

The beauty of it all is that it was and is hidden in plan sight. Unfortunately, the genie will never go back in the bottle. Every administration will take what was learned from the Bush Administration and improve upon it.
Excelent post. Let me comment on one thing from my POV. Recalling how things were done, especially by Dick Cheney, I don't think all administrations are the same. Please recall how the Dick went after people that were speaking thuthfully.
 
Excelent post. Let me comment on one thing from my POV. Recalling how things were done, especially by Dick Cheney, I don't think all administrations are the same. Please recall how the Dick went after people that were speaking thuthfully.

Thank you for the kind words.

Dick Cheney was one for the record books. I agree with you. I suspect that Cheney may have been more directly involved in the overall propaganda campaign than Bush. The entire effort required orchestration and buy-in at the highest levels. Cheney, in my humble opinion, was the one in the Bush Administration who got it. He understood how powerful weapons grade propaganda could be. Was he more adept at mass manipulation than Joseph Goebbels? He was certainly no less so. Perhaps it was Cheney and Rove working in concert.

As a side note, is illegal to for the US Government to use propaganda on the citizens of the United States. Or at least it was. It was the 4th quarter of 2012, if I recall, that there was wording in the defense bill that would strike that law and make it legal to for the US Government to purposely deceive the citizens of the United States through the use of propaganda. I don't know that the attempt to change the law was successful.
 
We shouldn't have had to go into Iraq, if the UN was actually effective and did their job...15 years of ignoring sanctions of knowing that Saddam was murdering groups of innocent people was 15 years too many.

There was a whole list of reasons cited for why we went into Iraq, possible WMD's was just one of the many reasons.




Longer version here:
Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq

The US had no legal authority to invade Iraq
 
I'm not sure I follow part of your argument. We did take down Saddam, and we aren't financing him or the Baath Party establishment. Part of the practical criticism of the war in fact was that we were to aggressive in removing vestiges of the regime and thus destabilized Iraqi society.

I'm not so sure it was the removal of the regime as much as the (unexpected?) discovery that there was no other social capital left alive. That was the real mistake, not realizing how little there was to work with. Saddam set the country a few decades back by slaughtering every free and critical mind he could find.
 
The Bush Administration used weapons grade propaganda on the citizens of the US to manipulate the nation to support the invasion of Iraq. Never before had the media been used in such a manner on the American public. It was nothing short of masterful. In and of itself, it was a grand success. In fact, for those who care to read about such things, the process is well documented. There are/have been university classes dedicated to the subject. The grand secret? Most people, most Americans don't care to read about such things! How much more perfect can propaganda campaign have been?

The beauty of it all is that it was and is hidden in plan sight. Unfortunately, the genie will never go back in the bottle. Every administration will take what was learned from the Bush Administration and improve upon it.

Never before? You seem to forget the last century.

You're right though, the truth is hidden in plain sight. Iraq was a victim of complicated individual and group interactions within the government and intelligence agencies. The most interesting part is it was less than a quarter as sinister as some folks grant it, and thirty times less sexy than many would want to think. Everyone here seems to think everyone knew the weapons did not exist, but were lying to the public. How romantic of a concept. People are so quickly dismissing what we know to be more of the actual case: they convinced themselves of what they were seeing and what needed to be done, and did not like dissent. W's management style required a great deal more common viewpoint before presenting their thoughts to the President. He wanted it more or less sorted out at a lower level if at all possible. The people who were charged with that task engaged in shoving out the competing views, not because of sinister intentions, but because they were absolutely convinced they were right and the other person did not get it​.
 
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We shouldn't have had to go into Iraq, if the UN was actually effective and did their job...15 years of ignoring sanctions of knowing that Saddam was murdering groups of innocent people was 15 years too many.

There was a whole list of reasons cited for why we went into Iraq, possible WMD's was just one of the many reasons.




Longer version here:
Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq

But we musn't forget that Containment policy was a major sticking point for nearly all parties. Few spoke of Containment with much affection at all. To many, the containment policies were crippling the people who needed to be crippled the least (the masses), while harming Saddam the least. Others were convinced that this "pissing around" could have been solved by toppling the regime. Others still were convinced that there ought not be a containment policy to begin with and we should just pull out resources out.

People forget how unsatisfactory containment actually was. It wasn't until the subsequent invasion that the policy started to receive more favorable thoughts.
 
Never before? You seem to forget the last century.

You're right though, the truth is hidden in plain sight. Iraq was a victim of complicated individual and group interactions within the government and intelligence agencies. The most interesting part is it was less than a quarter as sinister as some folks grant it, and thirty times less sexy than many would want to think.

"Never before in such a manner..." In brief, I refer to the Age of Information. The evolution of electronic media and the sophistication of the art and science of mass communication provided the Bush Administration with power that was unknown to previous world leaders. If the Bush Administration had not used weapons grade propaganda on the citizens of the US, the following president(s) would have (are and will). It was only a matter of time.
 
Have we established a lie yet? The title promised many, past and present. Why is this CT crap in a general forum?
 
"A Clean Break": A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
 
Yes. ****ty journalism, playing with ****ty intelligence sticking up to the govs card. Manufacturing consent? I think so.
 
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