Fact Check

[Jedo the Jedi]

How accurate are these claims?

I confess I don't have much experience with tracking down evidence to back this up. (There are plenty of links, but I still don't have much experience with determining the credibility of those sources either.)
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Neo]

I nearly stopped reading after the title.

I stopped reading when the author implied that Gaddafi was a good and wonderful person.

Honestly, I would not be at all surprised if Birther crap appeared after that.

I realize I said nothing of his claims. I just don't find the work worth doing.
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_{Ad Astra}

[Jedo the Jedi]

That's fair. Perhaps my request is a bit broad. (The article is rather lengthy.) Would it help if I brought up specific things which I want to know the truth of?
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Zag]

Skimming it, the article seems well-spun rather than outright lying.

For instance, it is arguable that Obama overstepped the law in attacking Libya. However, I can't see anyone making a serious argument that he did anything less than the right thing. Gaddafi had already declared that he was basically headed to commit genocide on a city of nearly a million people. Both our own military and Obama's political advisers told him just to join Great Britain in a cover-your-ass move of imposing a no-fly zone. When he asked if that would actually stop the genocide, he was told it wouldn't, because Gaddafi was using almost exclusively ground troops, anyway. Obama did the right thing, and stopped the genocide in spite of the warning that there was no military or political upside to the choice.

[Death Mage]

Bush gets approval from congress - twice - to attack Iraq, it's "an illegal war". Obama unilaterally bombs Lybia w/o going to congress first - in direct defiance of the Constitution -, he's a war hero.

Fucking hypocrites.
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[Zag]

[itisally]

I am no expert on the constitution but I was pretty sure that the president could take military action but not actually declair war. The Wars Power Act requires the president to notify congress withing 48 hours of mobalizing units and to begin withdraw within 60 day. That must be completed within 30 days.

See it here http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/dye4/medialib/docs/warpower.htm


Not sure of Iraq as an illegal war. It seems that it is more a matter of international (UN) law that may not have been complied with rather than United States law. When doing a little reading it would seem this was not the first time the US took action and the UN disapproved of it. Wikipedia has an OK write up on that.
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I could agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[Zag]

itisally, our attack on Iraq was not illegal by our laws. It was an immoral war, though (which is an opinion, of course). Bush lying to congress and to us to convince us to do it was illegal, but there isn't proof that he did. And, as I said above, I'm not convinced that it wasn't just that he was incompetent.

[itisally]

The problem with saying that is wasn't aginst "our" laws is that it implies that the rules of the UN ( to which the US belongs ) don't apply to us.
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I could agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[Death Mage]

Zag, unless you are attempting to accuse President Bush of falsifying intelligence that came from other countries, you don't have a leg to stand on on "he lied". The information did not originate in the oval office. It was the best intel everyone had at the time. Everyone. It was not just the US intel. It was not just what the US believed. A large portion of the US intel came from Preisdent Clinton's term. And one of the primary factors for the entire world's intel community to believe that Saddam Hussein was plotting to build WMDs is becuase Saddam Hussein himself wanted that impression. He did everything in his power to make people beleive he had the capability. In fact, it ONLY became "questionable" was because democrats were trying to find a way to discredit him. President Bush had the balls to do something that easily could have turned into political suicide, MERELY because it was the right thing to do. He did not stand alone, and he did not do it without approval (remember, even the UN had given approval that they tried to take back later.)

So yes, the fact that this is such a sticking point for people like you really, really pisses me off, especially when you give Obama a free pass. I say again, fucking hypocrites.
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[Zag]

No, I'm saying that the Bush administration falsified the intelligence that came from Joseph C. Wilson, which was considered a significant part of the evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to build nuclear weapons. At the time the war started, I supported it because I believed that our President must have more solid evidence than what he could share with us. I figured the rumors that Hussein had tried to buy uranium yellowcake were probably real, and the administration probably had real evidence to prove it that they couldn't share with us without exposing a CIA agent somewhere. I was shocked when Mr. Wilson later came out with his op ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," because I remembered them pointing to specifically that (non) evidence several years earlier.

The fact that they then took petty retribution on Wilson by ruining his wife's career just goes to the character of the whole pack of them. I don't actually think that Bush was involved with that, however. It has the Cheney/Rove stink on it, but that might be all.

Although he had plenty of time to do so, Bush never spoke with Wilson personally. Wilson was struggling to reach the President to say that the evidence had been over-interpreted, but couldn't get through his many layers of shit.

Obama, on the other hand, before attacking Libya, in spite of being under a lot more time pressure, studied the significant satellite images personally, and had a conversation with the actual person who is an expert at interpreting them. That is leadership.

So, are you going to own your opinion? I'll own mine:

[Zag]

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'll step in because I think this is one of the points I wanted to draw to the fore.

Did Bush and/or Obama break the law? If so, why are they not being punished for it? In a sense, from my limited knowledge, I feel like they are both culpable. Isn't it a problem if we allow somebody to be above the law like this (if indeed that is what happened)? Bear in mind, I'm not considering what was moral here, just what was legal.

Somewhat related, why is the U.S. the "world police"?
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[raekuul]

Bush followed the letter of the law, while Obama followed the spirit of the law. From a strict interpretationist standpoint, there's more grounds to censure Obama for his actions.

But, as has been pointed out, nobody's going to censure Obama for it because nobody wants to punish him for doing the right thing.

[Zag]

If Bush lied to congress to convince them to agree with the law, then he certainly did something dramatically illegal. It's not clear, and certainly not provable, that he did so. Personally, I suspect it was Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the old-school bunch of hawks, and that they kept W out of the loop.

[Jedo the Jedi]

And Obama went to war without Congresses approval, which I understand to be illegal.

Here's my problem with both of them. In some sense, they felt they were doing the right thing, so they circumvented the law in order to do it. I believe the law(s) is in place precisely to keep people from "taking the law into their own hands." You can argue that Obama did the morally correct thing, but at some point you have to say that it isn't the President's place to choose what is for "the greater good." This is a democracy (idealistically), not a dictatorship. I mean that for any President.
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[Zag]

[Jedo the Jedi]

That feeds into my point. You already believe that what Bush did was wrong, but he took it upon himself to initiate what he thought of as proper justice. He didn't follow the laws we already have established to mediate justice, and he therefore broke with our form of government. As far as I can tell, Obama has done the same, and both should be sanctioned for their illegal actions. It's really one of the problems with our nation as a whole.

People get the governments they deserve.
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Paragon Tally: 18 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[raekuul]

[Zag]

I don't agree that Obama did anything technically illegal. As itisally pointed out above, there is a law to allow the President to act quickly when it is warranted. The law limits the amount of time that we can be so engaged, but it's whole purpose is to allow action when action is needed immediately (as in this case).

I would argue that this action falls within the purview of this law, though I'll acknowledge that it is a little questionable. The original purpose of the law was for cases where national security meant that action was needed immediately. The lives of nearly a million innocent Libyans do not directly affect U.S. national security. On the other hand, the law doesn't specifically limit the President's powers in that way, so what he did was technically legal, even if it did stretch the original intent of the law.