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Al Franken on the David
Letterman show said, "Bush lied to us to take us to war" and quickly went on to
another subject, as if he was saying "Bush lied to us in his
budget."
Senator Edward Kennedy, condemning Bush, said that "Bush's
distortions misled Congress in its war vote" and "No President of the United
States should employ distortion of truth to take the nation to war." But,
Senator Kennedy, if a president does this, as you believe Bush did, then what?
Remember, Clinton was impeached for allegedly trying to cover up a consensual
sexual affair. What do you recommend for Bush for being responsible for more
than 100,000 deaths? Nothing? He shouldn't be held accountable for his actions?
If one were to listen to you talk, that is the only conclusion one could come
to. But why, Senator Kennedy, do you, like everyone else, want to give Bush this
complete free ride?
The New York Times, in a June 17, 2004, editorial,
said that in selling this nation on the war in Iraq, "the Bush administration
convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein
was somehow linked to 9/ 11, . . . inexcusably selling the false Iraq-Al Qaeda
claim to Americans." But gentlemen, if this is so, then what? The New York Times didn't say, just going on, like
everyone else, to the next paragraph, talking about something else.
In a
November 15, 2005, editorial, the New York
Times said that "the president and his top advisers . . . did not allow
the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make
reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections." But if
it's "obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans" in taking them to a
war that tens of thousands of people have paid for with their lives, now what?
No punishment? If not, under what theory? Again, you're just going to go on to
the next paragraph?
I'm not going to go on to the next unrelated
paragraph.
In early December of 2005, a New York Times-CBS nationwide poll showed that
the majority of Americans believed Bush "intentionally misled" the nation to promote a
war in Iraq. A December 11, 2005, article in the Los Angeles Times, after citing this national
poll, went on to say that because so many Americans believed this, it might be
difficult for Bush to get the continuing support of Americans for the war. In
other words, the fact that most Americans believed Bush had deliberately misled
them into war was of no consequence in
and of itself. Its only consequence was that it might hurt his efforts to get
support for the war thereafter. So the article was reporting on the effect of
the poll findings as if it was reporting on the popularity, or lack thereof, of
Bush's position on global warming or immigration. Didn't the author of the
article know that Bush taking the nation to war on a lie (if such be the case)
is the equivalent of saying he is
responsible for well over 100,000 deaths? One would never know this by reading
the article.
If Bush, in fact, intentionally misled this nation into war,
what is the proper punishment for him? Since many Americans routinely want
criminal defendants to be executed for murdering only one person, if we weren't
speaking of the president of the United States as the defendant here, to discuss
anything less than the death penalty for someone responsible for over 100,000
deaths would on its face seem ludicrous.** But we are dealing with the president of the United
States here.
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