Article: Tie Iran propaganda to Iraq's and take power away from W!

If we allow this doofus to trump up another war against an oil rich Middle East country then we are doomed! Big bro 43's and Herr Karl's intended audience is just that 5% of the US population that can be played-apathetic red staters, not history, reality or the objective international community. That is why they can casually, blatantly lie and shaft the vast 99% as they only care about manipulating objective facts into their twisted version of reality!

The NIE of Iran-which the Democrats demanded or we'd never be having this discussion, proves Rove's mis-informers not only lie, but they shade their response and frame their argument to meet their needs-and somehow we are surprised. The 4th estate regurgitate verbatim the propaganda on page 1 and extensively concealed they hide the rebuttal. Why?

The December 4, 2007 "Press Conference by the President" at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/12/20071204-4.html
has these questions being asked of big bro 43:
"Iraq's WMD turned out not to be there, and now Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003. Are you concerned that the United States is losing credibility in the world, and now may be seen as the boy who cries -- who called wolf?"

"I'd like to follow on that. When you talked about Iraq, you and others in the administration talked about a mushroom cloud; then there were no WMD in Iraq.
When it came to Iran, you said in October, on October 17th, you warned about the prospect of World War III, when months before you made that statement, this intelligence about them suspending their weapons program back in '03 had already come to light to this administration. So can't you be accused of hyping this threat? And don't you worry that that undermines U.S. credibility?"

"Just to follow, I understand what you're saying about when you were informed about the NIE. Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as "World War III" was making it into conversation, at no point nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, maybe you want to back it down a little bit?"

The answers were transparent lies and don't deserve to be repeated.

The article "Bush Insists Iran Remains a Threat Despite Arms Data" at
click here
puts it this way "As recently as October, Mr. Bush continued to warn darkly of Iran's nuclear weapons threat, invoking World War III, despite the new information. He responded to a question about that on Tuesday by saying he had received the final assessment, with its drastically altered findings, only last week.
"That's not believable," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the
Democrat who is chairman of the foreign relations committee and a candidate for resident. "I refuse to believe that. If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in American, modern American history and he's one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history."

The fool "bubble boy" is bleating "Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Mr. Bush said during a news conference dominated by questions about the fallout of the assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate.
"What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"

How is the international community dealing with these all too similar to Iraq lies? "There were already signs that that effort had been complicated by the new report. R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, held a teleconference call Tuesday morning with his counterparts from France, Germany, China, Britain and Russia.
"We're all flabbergasted," one European diplomat said of the report generally.
"You get such a surprise, and then you sit together and consider how to move forward. To be on safe ground, we decided to keep moving forward" with the effort to press for further sanctions.
A senior administration official said the intelligence assessment on Iran was a setback in the effort to persuade China to endorse a new round of sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. While there had been indications over the weekend that the Chinese might drop their opposition to such a move, it appeared on Tuesday that they were reconsidering again, the official said.
The new intelligence assessment, the official said, "gives the Chinese an
opportunity to get off the hook."

He's a worse than just a waste of time because his hypocrisy is alienating our allies. The Democrats have to show some balls and challenge his lies not just lie against the rope and take his punches.

December 3, 2007 Harry Reid in "Democratic Caucus's Senate Journal - Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader" at
http://democrats.senate.gov/journal/entry.cfm?id=288133&
was quoted as "This President and his allies in Congress have led American down a dark path. This Democratic Congress - in its first year - has made America stronger, safer and more prosperous. But with the President and Republicans fighting us tooth and nail, with empty rhetoric, obstruction and vetoes, we still have a lot of work left to do. In this final work period of the year, our plate will be full.
"First, we will return our focus to finally ending the war in Iraq that has cost our troops and our country so dearly. We will take up a House-passed bill that provides $50 billion in emergency funds to our troops and requires the President to transition the mission from combat operations to security, training and anti-terrorism.
"Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we began to hear the rumblings of what is sure to be an outrageous line of attack from the Bush White House. The President and his enablers are starting to blame Democrats for refusing to send money to troops. This is plainly untrue. It is cynical politics at its worst. And the American people are far too smart to fall for it. The facts are clear. We just passed a nearly half-trillion dollar Defense appropriations bill. The Department of Defense is fully funded.
"Before the holiday, we offered another $50 billion funding package on top of that to support our troops in combat - provided the President heeds the call of the American people and begin to change course. The President and his enablers in the Senate rejected that package. The President said no to funding his own war unless he is given a blank check to continue his failed policies.
"The American people know the current course has not brought about the political reconciliation the President promised. They realize that it makes no sense for President Bush to blame Democrats because he rejected the funding package we offered. This week, we will try to give the President the opportunity to accept troop funding once again. We will try to return to the House-passed bill. We will give our Senate Republican colleagues another opportunity to stand on the side of our brave troops in battle by passing legislation that contains additional funding and provides a strategy to bring the war to a responsible end. But Iraq is just one of many priorities we must address in the weeks ahead."

Reid also called W out regarding his lying as in the statement contained in "Reid: Bush Must Throughly Review Iran Policy In Light Of Newly Released Intelligence" at
http://reid.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=288161&
Reid stated that big bro 43 must "conduct a thorough review of his Iran policy in light of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program that concluded Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003:
"President Bush's heated rhetoric on Iran - including comments about a potential World War III - is even more outrageous now that we know the intelligence community had informed him that it believes Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago. This is the latest in a long line of inaccurate and misleading comments that got us into the Iraq war to begin with. They further diminish the credibility of a President with a dangerous record of overstating threats."
"In light of yesterday's remarkable new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, I urge the President at his press conference today to announce a top-to-bottom review of his Iran policy and a diplomatic surge to advance U.S. interests with regard to Iran. He should announce that his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense are prepared to meet anytime, anywhere with their Iranian counterparts to conduct vigorous diplomacy to advance U.S. interests and address the challenges of Iran."

Psych 101 talks about ego-continuity. W has one pattern when caught in blatant lies. Rove's prized pupil attacks those who are trying to bring the truth to the light of day. If he isn't punished for these assaults on reality why would he stop?

The article "A new course on Iraq (for Democrats, that is)" at
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20071205/opledewednesday.art.htm
succinctly describes that "The party that forced a new direction in the war needs to embrace the positive developments rather than remaining stuck in a pre-surge funk.
Rarely in U.S. history has a political party diagnosed a major failure in the country's approach to a crucial issue of the day, led a national referendum on the failing policy, forced a change in that policy that led to major substantive benefits for the nation - and then categorically refused to take any credit whatsoever for doing so....
Democrats were not the authors of the surge and in fact generally opposed it. But without their pressure, it probably never would have happened....
Violence rates have dropped by half to two-thirds in the course of 2007, the lowest level in years. Iraq is still very unstable, but it has a chance.
Despite this progress, many Democrats are inclined to provide Bush the roughly $12 billion a month he requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 only if the money is devoted narrowly to counterterrorism and bringing home U.S. troops. This is a mistake.
On strategic grounds, it appears that we now have an opportunity to salvage something significant in Iraq. Given sectarian tensions and brittle Iraqi institutions, this almost surely requires us to execute a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces there rather than an abrupt departure. In political terms, it would be rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory to mandate an end to an operation, however unpopular, just when it is showing its first signs of progress.
Democrats should change course. Rather than demand an end to the operation no matter what, they should continue to keep up the pressure for positive results in Iraq. They can retain their antiwar stance, emphasizing that their default position is that U.S. troops should soon come home absent continued major progress. The surge was never designed as just a military operation; it was intended to create political space for Iraqis to forge reconciliation with each other across sectarian lines. Since that is for the most part not yet happening, it is perfectly reasonable for the Democrats to demand more as a condition for continued funding.
The way to do this is to tie funding for Iraq operations to further progress by Iraqi leaders on their nation's political front. Release of our money should be partly contingent on progress on the so-called benchmarks in this year's funding bill - reforming the de-Baathification process to allow amnesty for lower-level former Baathists, expunging extremist and militia leaders from key government jobs and the security forces, passing a hydrocarbon law, moving to provincial elections and creating a provincial powers act. But we should add other stipulations to the list as well, some already raised by the Iraq Study Group in 2006."

It is a shame that politics comes into play when our forces, and innocent Iraqis, are being slaughtered, but it does. If the Democrats let big bro 43 portray them as weak pre-9-11 thinkers who knows what further atrocities W can perpetrate on the world?

In addition to tying any future Iraq funding to political reconciliation legislation must be passed that clearly states that the AUMF doesn't allow the neocons to attack any other countries.

The article concludes "Who should decide whether enough has been done in these areas to justify release of Washington funds?
One straightforward option would be to reform the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. It could then issue two reports this upcoming year evaluating progress in each key area and determining whether that progress was non-existent, poor, mediocre, good, or excellent. Iraqis would need to average at least "mediocre" progress across all areas to gain continued U.S. funding. There would need to be some wiggle room in meeting these criteria, since nation-building is more art than science.
Iraq will not be a stellar success for U.S. foreign policy in any event, and the Bush administration will be forever tainted by its poor handling of the war. Even so, we have a good chance to salvage a passable outcome, and that is largely because of what Democrats have done over the past year. Now these same Democrats have a chance to take the next crucial step."

Democrats need to do more than contain W's opening of the "Pandora Box" in Iraq. They need to connect the dots and tie W's cherry-picking of valid intelligence regarding Iran into hypocritical Iran propaganda to the "Ministry of Truth" fabrication regarding Iraq's WMDs and take the military and intelligence gathering apparatus away from W, until, as Reid demands, we can trust that W isn't lying about "imminent threats" again!