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You
are a LIAR, Mr. Bush, and for such a dedicated Christian, You bear an
inordinate amount of “False Witness.” By
Lonna Gooden VanHorn GEORGE
W. BUSH said on Sept. 21st in Derry, New Hampshire: “Today
my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind with new
contradictions of his old positions on Iraq. He apparently woke up this
morning and has now decided, no, we should not have invaded Iraq. After
just last month saying that he still would have voted for force, even
knowing everything we know today. Incredibly, he now believes our
national security would be stronger with Saddam Hussein in power, not in
prison. Today he said, and I quote, “we have traded a dictator for a
chaos that has left America less secure.” He is saying that he prefers
the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of Democracy. I
couldn't disagree more, and not so long ago, so did my opponent.” http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/1348211#transcript
In
October of 2002 in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, George Bush
in speaking about the resolution that would allow him to take
this country to war with Iraq if Hussein could not be disarmed of his
weapons of mass destruction by peaceful means said: “Approving
this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or
unavoidable… It
means America speaks with one voice.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
Regardless
of how the rationale for going to war with Iraq has morphed since 2002,
the rationale for war that was voted on at that time was to rid Hussein
of weapons of mass destruction
if
peaceful means failed to achieve that goal. The
president
indicated
he would try to solve the problem of Hussein’s weapons without
resorting to war. Of
course as we now know, and some experts tried to tell us then, Hussein
had no significant WMD’s. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php
Contrary
to what the president said yesterday, Kerry never did vote to use
“force.” In his speech
before the Senate in September of 2002 John
Kerry
very clearly said: …
If we
can eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
through inspections…then we have an obligation to try that as the
first course of action before we expend American lives in any further
effort… …I
will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever
exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will
not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is
imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any
circumstances…
…“war
must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and
that we must act in concert with allies around the globe. If
what George Bush said yesterday does not fit the definition of
"Bearing False Witness," I do not know what does.
It goes far beyond the misrepresentations of fact and the exaggerations
that are part of every campaign. John
Kerry’s mistake was in believing that the president actually had any
interest in trying to avoid war. In
yesterdays statement, Bush lied about what John Kerry’s position had
been. His statement also
made it clear that war and deposing Saddam Hussein had been his own
objective all along, in spite of the fact that in order to win
Congressional approval for the resolution, his argument to Congress and
the people was that Saddam must be “disarmed.”
John
Kerry said in his speech that: “The
reason for going to war, if we must fight, is not because Saddam Hussein
has failed to deliver gulf war prisoners or Kuwaiti property. As much as
we decry the way he has treated his people … regime change in
and of itself is not sufficient justification for going to
war--particularly unilaterally--unless regime change is the only way to
disarm Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction
pursuant
to the United Nations resolution. As
bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war.
Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction is a different matter… I
want to underscore that this administration began this debate with
a resolution that granted exceedingly broad authority to the President
to use force. I regret that some in the Congress rushed so quickly to
support it. I would have opposed it. It gave the President the
authority to use force not only to enforce all of the U.N. resolutions
as a cause of war, but also to produce regime change in Iraq , and to
restore international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region. It
made no mention of the President's efforts at the United Nations or the
need to build multilateral support for whatever course of action we
ultimately would take… The
revised White House text,
which we will vote on, limits the grant of authority to the
President to the use of force only with respect to Iraq…None of those
resolutions… calls for a regime change… When
Secretary Powell
testified before our committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, on
September 26, he was asked what specific U.N. Security Council
resolutions the United States would go to war to enforce. His response
was clear: the resolutions dealing with weapons of mass destruction and
the disarmament of Iraq. In
fact, when asked about compliance with other U.N. resolutions which do
not deal with weapons of mass destruction, the Secretary said: The
President has not linked authority to go to war to any of those
elements. When
asked why the resolution sent by the President to Congress requested
authority to enforce all the resolutions with which Iraq had not
complied, the Secretary told the committee: That's
the way the resolution is currently worded, but we all know,
I
think, that the major problem, the offense, what the President is
focused on and the danger to us and to the world are the weapons of mass
destruction.
“war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein.” …"if
we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons
inspections in joint concert with our allies." …
If we
can eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
through inspections…then we have an obligation to try that as the
first course of action before we expend American lives in any further
effort… …I
will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever
exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will
not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is
imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any
circumstances…”
http://www.c-span.org/vote2004/kerryspeech.asp
In
his speech before the Senate John
Kerry also clearly stated
that the most important thing to consider in our dealings with Iraq was that
any actions we took regarding Hussein
must
not undermine our efforts on the war against terrorism: “…
And
most importantly, we
need to be able to successfully wage the war on terror simultaneously.
That war on terror depends more than anything else on the sharing of
intelligence. That sharing of intelligence depends… on the cooperation
of countries in the region. If we disrupt that, we could disrupt the
possibilities of the capacity of that war to be most effectively
waged” Unfortunately,
we now know resources needed to fight the war on terror were diverted
from Afghanistan to Iraq before Bin Laden had been captured.
Consequently, Al Qaeda was allowed to disperse and regroup.
Its’ numbers have swelled, and although it did not
exist in Iraq prior to the war, elements of Al Qaeda are almost
certainly there now. And
the whole world hates us. At
least the whole world overwhelmingly hates Bush.
There is no way that making so many more people
world-wide hate us makes us safer.
There is no way we have any chance of
regaining our status as an admired and leader of the world until
we are led by a different president.
Additionally,
the president’s own advisors are saying that any chance of an American
style Democracy in Iraq, is slim and getting slimmer.
In fact Iraq is becoming more fundamentalist, and is very likely
to erupt in civil war.
Before the invasion, most Iraqis did not like Saddam Hussein,
but, in spite of the years of sanctions against them, most did not hate
the American people. Now,
sadly, in any poll taken the majority of the Iraqi people would rather
have their former murderous dictator back in power than have American
troops occupying their country. Especially
since Abu Ghraib. But,
George Bush continues to lie and attempt to deceive the American people
by saying things are improving in Iraq when the opposite is true.
And our soldiers and the Iraqi people continue to pay the price
for his lies. http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
For all his evil, Hussein had the power back and running in three
months after Gulf War I. It
has now been 18 months and the Iraqis still have only sporadic
electricity, and many are drinking what amounts to raw sewage. Coverage of the war in Iraq is, for the most part, off the front pages and out of the headlines. Consequently, the America people also tend to believe things are getting better in Iraq. The truth is that American soldiers are pretty much holed up in safe locations and have basically ceded control of most of the country to the rebels. It is widely believed that the president will delay launching what will undoubtedly be a bloody offensive to take back parts of Iraq until after the election. Right now, in order not to alienate voters, his primary objective is to keep the American casualty count low. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092204D.shtml
In July of 2003 George Bush said we went to war with Iraq because
Hussein wouldn’t let the weapons inspectors in.
“And
we gave him [Hussein] a chance to allow inspectors in, and he wouldn’t
let them in”. http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=30536&d=19&m=8&y=2003
An
out and out lie. Shamefully,
the press corps stood mute and let him get away with that blatant
falsehood. In case I need
to remind any of you, Hussein had let the inspectors in, and had given
them surprising access. The
inspectors said the inspections were working and they wanted more time
in Iraq to search for weapons. But,
Bush, et al wanted war. So
they ordered the inspectors out and began their war of choice for
control of that region and control of Iraq’s oil -- their war for the
financial health of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Chevron, and for what
George thought would be the “glory” of that grounded, AWOL
pilot George W. Bush.
That rush to war has proven to be what Hal Crowther described in
“With Trembling Fingers,” “the
worst blunder, the most staggering miscarriage of judgment, the most
fateful, egregious, deceitful abuse of power in the history of American
foreign policy. If you don't believe it yet, just keep watching.” Henry
Waxman chronicled 237 lies or misleading statements made by the
administration in the run-up to war, and that was months ago.
Cheney continues to spout lies every time he opens his mouth.
Economist Paul Krugman has said Bush’s budgets are the most
dishonest in history. We
know the administration edits EPA reports to make its’ policies look
better. The
lies of George Bush and this administration would fill volumes.
In fact, as Bill Gallagher points out Bush is a serial liar.
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher152.html.
Entire
books have been written about the lies of George Bush and this
administration. And, unlike
Clinton’s infamous “I did not have sex with that woman” lie, the
Bush administration’s lies are lies about things that are important to
the welfare of the nation. Nichlas
Kristof in “Sex Lies, and Bush on Tape” writes that in the 2000
campaign Bush promised that his tax cuts would leave most of the surplus
intact. Bush said: “My
plan is to take a… little over a trillion of the $4 trillion surplus
and give it to the people who pay the bills.”
Instead,
Bush borrowed money from our children to take the country into unending
deficits mostly to benefit corporations and his rich friends and
campaign contributors, not the people who “pay the
bills.” Lies
about the tax cuts, lies about the economy, lies about the environment,
lies about jobs and medical care, lies that took us to war, and then
when no WMD’s were found, lies about the justification for taking us
to war in the first place. The
Bush administration by its lies demonstrates how low an opinion it has
of the intelligence of the American people.
They believe they can do anything, tell any lie, and the American
people will still support them and vote for them.
Sadly, too many of the American people are proving Bush and
Rove are justified in that belief. The
Bush Administration, in spite of the fervent professions of their
Christian faith by many of its’ members, especially those made by the
president, is the most dishonest in memory.
Bush
and this administration get away with their dishonesty and deceptions at
least in part because at every juncture the media fails to hold them
fully accountable for their statements, pronouncements and policies. And,
ladies and gentlemen, such deceit by the administration and duplicity by
the media, in my humble opinion, is neither proper nor is such
consistent and blatant dishonesty, deception and “bearing of false
witness” in any way the marker of a dedicated Christian. Bio: Lonna Gooden VanHorn is the mother of six and a grandmother. The Minnesota daughter of small farmers, she now lives in New Mexico, with her husband a Vietnam veteran. She has not left her computer for months. Nor is she likely to until after the election. Someone, please send her food. What
John Kerry Really Said about the Iraq Resolution and Going to War with
Iraq, from the text of his speech before the
Senate in Sept. of 2002
…war
must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and
that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the
world's case against Saddam Hussein.
As
the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving
this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or
unavoidable." It means "America
speaks with one voice." Let me be clear, the
vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only:
To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot
accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in
joint concert with our allies. …war
must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and
that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the
world's case against Saddam Hussein.
As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving
this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or
unavoidable." It means "America
speaks with one voice." Let me be clear, the
vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only:
To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if
we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons
inspections in joint concert with our allies. |
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