Free Republic

The alleged meeting between Muhammed Atta and Abu Nidal was debunked by the FBI.

Frankly, I think my posts are over your head. If ad hominems and character assassination is all you can respond with I suggest you refrain from reading my posts.

If Salman Pak was a terrorist camp it would be a house hold name. The defector that made the claims about its being used as a terrorist camp claimed that they had excercises where they landed on speeding trains in helicopters in order to hijack them. His credibility was deemed fanciful.

I know I'm in the minority of Freepers on this one...but we need o let the Iraq/ 9/11 thing go. Even if there were copntacts and some cooperation that doesn't justify the scale of our response in Iraq and y'all are simply preachingto the choir.

I agree. The more stridently and desperately conservatives defend the pretext for the war the more foolish we look.

We need to focus the reality that we are there now, the consequences of leaving early, the humanitarian good that we have done, what a bad guy Saddam was and our plan to leave Iraq with a stable friendly democracy. That is the way to get the support we need to finish the job - and to not lose the house and senate in the process.

Well said. The facts as they are now need to be dealt with, not the facts as they weren't then.

No ties, right?

Exactly. Mr. Levin's essay proves nothing. In fact, I am embarrassed for him. He takes the ambiguous language of the 9/11 Commission Report and creates a definitive conclusion that ignores the definitive and all important conclusion of the Report.

Read the excerpts carefully. You will find these kind of caveats are littered throughout: "reportedly, apparently, There are indications, may even, is said to have, may have occurred ,indicate." That is why the Report concludes that "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." and that there was no evidence that a "collaborative operational relationship" existed between Al Quaida and Iraq.

Yet Mr. Levin claims that all these weasel words support his contention that there were "serious connections between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Did Iraq pose a serious threat to our national security? Yes. Did Congress believe Iraq posed a serious threat? Yes. Did Iraq have or seek to obtain weapons of mass destruction? Yes. Those are the facts.

Those are not the facts. We know that Iraq did not pose a serious imminent threat to our national security because Iraq did not have WMD's. It had no delivery system to attack the U.S. with WMD's even if it did have them. According to the Duelfer Report, all of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were abandoned or had decayed after Desert Storm and sanctions were applied to Iraq. Congress was misinformed, as we now know, " We were wrong about almost everything" Mr. Duelfer told the Senate committee, echoing David Kay's findings. Mr. Levin ignores facts.

Your link doesn't work. But nevertheless, the drones were portrayed as being capable of delivering a chemical attack to our shores. That was clearly a gross and epic exagerration.

He called our cherished republic a "democracy."

Oh....so what. A technicality. We must have some kind of democracy, otherwise we couldn't export it.

I watched the proceedings this evening and Mr. Murtha read his resolution which contained a whole lot of whereases and talked about a horizon. The Party spin is to imply that he just wants to "cut and run". Retreat and surrender. That obfuscates the truth of the matter.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...the Dems were given a real credible leader to rally around...THAT'S WHY ONLY THREE OF THEM VOTED YES TONIGHT.

Think woman! It was a parody resolution. No sane person would have voted for such a transparent spoof.

PERPETUAL WAR"? Let me see if I get your logic....

I doubt you could. But I'll spell it out for you. You oppose the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. You must want them to stay indefinitely. Thus, perpetual war. That's your policy by default.

We've been in Germany and Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50.

And the analogy is.....?

Murtha was left beaten and bloodied on the floor of the House.

That's where you are wrong. The anti-war left was handed a hero by the Republicans and your partisan-tinted glasses won't allow you to see that.

No, "WE" do not want to withdraw.

OK, we can exclude you, but I think most Americans would like to see the Iraqi adventure come to an end sooner rather than later, as polls seem to indicate. We will withdraw. It is inevitable. A democracy like ours is not going to tolerate perpetual war. The momentum is building and the Republican leadership in the house, playing hardball you so admire, just gave the Dems. a new, and credible leader to rally around..... on a silver platter.

All you're doing is repeating erroneous garbage. So, why don't you just go back to DU or whatever anti-war site it is that you are getting your talking points from; you troll?

All I'm doing is calling it as I see it (in keeping with your baseball metaphor). I disapprove of the political tactic. That's all. Shouldn't oughta call me names.

We opposed the war before we supported the war before we opposed the war and then voted for the war.

I agree, the Dumbocrats have totally goofed on this issue from the beginning.

Sure it gave him a platform and his words are those which reflect those of Crazy Cindy Sheehan.

But he's not Cindy Sheehan. He's a decorated war veteran and acknowleged big-time supporter of our military and troops. I thought he made an appealing presentation, unlike a Cindy Sheehan, and I think it a miscalulation on the Republican leadership's part. I am merely suggesting that it was a ploy that may well backfire, by providing the anti-war movement with a credible leader.

al Jazeera plastered his speeches all over the world and they are going to now have to say that his positions lost.

Which shows the world that free countries and free cultures are capable of tolerating dissent and nobody gets shot (or banned!)

We leave after Iraq is free and able to stand on its own.

Unfortunately that's an ambiguous goal unless defined in concrete terms. For instance, Saddam is gone, Iraq is free, they've a constitution and everything. As for standing on their own, what could that possibly mean? Economically? Militarily? Seems like it would be easier for America to see the end game if the end game were better defined.

now this can be used against him as a flip flopper. just like the rest of the 'RATS.

No, it can't. I heard him read his resolution and it was much more nuanced than the Republican version. If anything, the Democrats will be able to point to the Republican sponsored resolution and point out that A. Democrats don't support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and B. the Republicans are willing to offer up resolutions that go against their stated principles in order to score cheap political points. It is a mistake for our congressional leaders to adopt the tactics of radio talk show hosts and apply them to the legislative work of our country.

This vote corrected the misconception that the media has been putting out - that we want to withdraw.

I think we do want to withdraw, but the debate should be about on what terms and should include all the realities that we face. I think Mr. Murtha scored points in talking about insufficient troop levels and woeful recruitment. If it is true that 80% of Iraqi's don't want us there and 45% support the attacks on U.S. tropps, then that should be taken into consideration as well.

Has Murtha voted for his own resolution yet?

It wasn't Mr. Murtha's resolution. It was a political stunt that may prove to backfire on the Republicans. They gave Mr. Murtha an opportunity to register some of his reservations about the way the administration has conducted the war in Iraq. It also accentuated the methods and the level to which the Republicans will stoop to embarrass their adversaries. I thought it was an interesting debate, and not the last.

Ms. Noonan's reflection upon attending an audience with the pope is very moving, very Noonanesque. She's the best at getting at a reader's heart.

It is somehow disconcerting to see Ms. Noonan's name bigger than her subject's, on the cover of the book.

I read "Seven Storey Mountain" and "Inner Castle" and I marvel at Catholics who think that other denominations offer them something that the Catholic Church doesn't offer. What they're looking for is in the Catholic Church.

Amen to that!

We were always taught in catholic school that we could not attend protestant services. When did this change?

This changed when the bishop is slated to accept some local ecumenical award a few days after your executive assistant is publicly suggesting that Protestant services denigrate the Catholic faith. I think that is the motivation for the apology.

Most interesting is the resignation of Fr. Ulseldinger from active ministry, who publicly disagreed with Mr. Howard's right opinions. I wonder if Bishop Sheridan privately sided with Mr. Howard, given his stellar record of orthodoxy. He is, after all, a bishop who suggested that pro-abort politicians refrain from receiving communion. It would be inconsistent to find it acceptable for Catholics to partake in the pseudo-sacrament of bread and grape juice, were he concerned about the sacredness of the Eucharist.

I don't think that Mr. Howard was asked to leave. He probably recognized that he had become a liability to the bishop, given the political climate, in and out of the church, and left to unburden the bishop with what was perceived as a hinderance to the bishop's mission.

Of course, the bishop is not around to address any of these developments. He's with the other bishops in D.C., not that D.C. doesn't need some evangelization, like that's what they are doing there ( NOT! ), but maybe these incidents of confusion and disagreement would not occur if the bishops stayed home and actually taught the faith to the people they have been entrusted to teach.

bump for later