Bush Lied About Iraq Talk (breaking story from AP)

[CreekDog]

Bush told public that important Iraq meeting with war commander was about Afghanistan

full article at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/04/17/national1545EDT0582.DTL

PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 17, 2004(04-17) 14:57 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch.

"I'm right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan," Bush told reporters after talks on Dec. 28, 2001, with top aides and generals.

A "war update" was the White House description of the news conference Bush held with Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of U.S. Central Command.

Details of the meeting's focus on Iraq have since emerged in a recent speech by Franks, who now is retired, and in a new book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

The book says Franks summarized Afghan operations before turning to planning for war in Iraq -- the point of the gathering.

<snip>

According to Woodward's book, Franks gave participants in that meeting the first briefing on Iraq war plans. He described options that could allow a war to start with as few as 105,000 U.S. troops, assuming full foreign cooperation with the force growing 230,000 over 60 to 90 days.

The books says Franks presented a list of assumptions that were behind the plan. They included that Iraq would be the main effort of the United States and would get priority on resources, and that the Afghan operation and the global fight against terrorism would provide a noise level under which Iraq operations could proceed. But these efforts would not diminish the Afghan or terrorism efforts.

In the Washington speech a month ago, Franks said he told the president at that Dec. 28 meeting that the existing contingency plan for Iraq had called for sending in a half-million troops, an operation so massive it would require a six-month buildup.

Franks said he told Bush that the long-standing plan needed to be redrawn and if the U.S. military did go in, "We should go all the way to Baghdad."

According to Franks' public account of the Dec. 28 meeting, Bush expressed the hope that "we don't ever have one boot on Iraqi soil except by invitation."

According to Woodward's book, Bush told Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001 -- less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan -- to prepare for possible war with Iraq, and kept some members of his closest circle in the dark.

The meeting with Franks on Dec. 28 was apparently the first briefing from him that the president had received since those instructions.

The book says Franks uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.

<snip>

[MikeG]

1. Bush lied? Like I said, no news here.

[mzmolly]

3. Notice how the headline doesn't dare say "Bush Lied"

:eyes:

I am glad to see this trickle in though. *drip, drip, drip, drip*

[CreekDog]

7. Actually, the headline on SFGATE.COM said "Bush lied..."

"Bush Lied About Iraq Talk"

I didn't come up with that on my own. Although based on Bush's record, I probably could have thought of it with "half my brain tied behind my back" as Rush would say.

[Shrubhater]

2. That's no surprise!

Shrub ALMOST ALWAYS lies to America! And how many soldiers have had to suffer because of that?

[dennis4868]

4. No, Bush....

would never lie...he is a man of god and even talks to god...shame on you for even suggesting that :-(

[pretzel4gore]

22. are you saying Geebush aint the 2nd coming!

how dare you! go back to russia you commie bank robber crack seller and sneak!

[xultar]

5. They are boing to blame it on his stupidity and he'll get off. n/t

[snippy]

6. Bush lied? Does God know?

Bush is the most compulsive and incessant liar in the history of American politics.

Bush claims that John McCain has an illegitimate Negro daughter and the yawning boy was not there and was not yawning and besides he was standing some place else and Richard Clarke had complete access to Bush and Rice which proves that Clarke was out of the loop which is Clinton's fault which means that unnamed White House sources may be identified whenever Bush wishes even though everyone except Bush himself knows where he was during his Alabama National Guard service which was after he volunteered to go to Viet Nam but before he was no longer required to take a flight physical and about the same time that God ordered Bush to smite Saddam which is Clinton's fault because the 60 lines of embryonic stem cells amd more arsenic in the water and more mercury in the air prove that republican science is better than sound science but the Bush administration did not illegally conspire to illegally reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative which resulted in 2,000,000 new jobs being created because democrats support terrorism and are not good Americans just as the Jews were not good Germans and the White House is cooperating with the 9/11 Commission which is why the White House withheld documents and called the republicans on the Commission before Clarke testified and is not co-ordinating an attack on the integrity and bi-partisanship of the Commission since the dental xrays prove that Bush spoke with the CIA director everyday and did not ignore either the repeated warnings of the dangers of al Qaeda and Osama or the August 2001 intelligence briefing specifically warning of the upcoming 9/11 attacks because the United States is a nation with a mission and that mission is to bring freedom to every single person in the world which will cut the deficit in half if you do not count those parts of the deficit which will increase under Bush which is Clinton's fault but the boxes from China were labeled "Made in USA" which resulted in 2,600,000 new jobs being created even though the $400 billion decorative medicare turkey was not labeled $550 billion and was passed without bribery or criminal deception which proves that government spending under Bush has gone down if you do not count the increased government spending under Bush which is Clinton's fault and Bush's plane to Baghdad was spotted because before Saddam bought the uranium and became an urgent but not an imminent threat which is Clinton's fault Bush had no plans on his desk to invade Iraq since the invasion was not planned before Bush took office even though it was the subject of Bush's first national security council meeting and in December 2001 Bush was focused on the military operations in Afghanistan and the aircraft carrier was too far offshore for the Navy to make a large enough "Mission Accomplished" banner to describe the WMD we have found in Iraq some of which Saddam was giving to Osama for following Saddam's plans and using Iraqi hijackers on 9/11 which is Clinton's fault but everyone who pays income taxes got a tax cut which created 3,000,000 new jobs and allowed Iraqi oil revenue to pay for the cost of the reconstruction of Iraq after the invasion by a small number of troops who would be greeted with floral program related activities except for the dead and wounded troops who are being brought home secretly which is Clinton's fault since Bush is the one who hugs the mothers and the widows and the wives and the kids and that is why Bush who will use the jawbone of an ass to force OPEC to open the spigots and who is responsible for good economic numbers but not bad economic numbers which is Clinton's fault wrote the poem that he did not write blaming Laura for dropping the dog?

There is no subject so somber, serious, or shallow that Bush will not lie about it. The only other option is not to lie. And that apparently is something Bush can not do.

Ridiculing Bush for his compulsive and incessant lying needs to become common.

FIRE THE LIAR

[0rganism]

11. Extra Credit: diagram that sentence for big points

Drinking game: say it aloud, but after every interrupting breath you must quaff a beer.

Impossible Dream: write it in a letter to the editor, and hope it gets published. :D

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

19. Yeah...

Needs the tender ministrations of an editor.

[liarliartieonfire]

12. Well written Snippy! I agree

George the Liar deserves nothing less than ridicule and it is up to concerned American citizens to continue yelling this as loudly as we can.

It's come down to a war of wills.
The Liar, the liar's protectors, and us.
This is NOT going away, George!

[PfcHammer]

13. or... * rather climb a tree to tell a lie than stay on the ground and tell

the truth.

[truthisfreedom]

8. please edit to put headline in subject line

[CreekDog]

9. The headline is in the subject line

go to sfgate.com and see for yourself

[truthisfreedom]

14. i see... it does say that on the main page of sfgate, but not as the

headline of the article. my bad.

[maddezmom]

15. sfgate.com must've changed it

because it now reads: Bush told public that important Iraq meeting with war commander was about Afghanistan

[truthisfreedom]

18. no, i was wrong... go to the main page, http://www.sfgate.com/

it does actually say BUSH LIED!

[maddezmom]

20. oops~ that's impressive

I just went to the link of the article....

BUSH LIED...and now folks are willing to report it.

Sorry about the confusion Creekdog. :)

[dfong63]

10. it's impressive that the headline says outright, "Bush lied".

most news stories try to soften it by saying things like, "X contradicts Bush claim" or something less judgmental. to me it seems significant that this time the story directly accuses Bush of deliberate lies.

[ldf]

16. a great campaign ad would be

remember rumsfeld saying that they would like to the american people antyime they felt it necessary?

a great ad would be the video footage of that remark, then show tape of lie after lie after lie that came out of bush's, and the other bush liars', mouths.

that sums up the major credibility problem of bush and gang. and i think the american people would understand that.

do want to be told the truth, or not?

[janx]

17. These guys need to be put in jail. This is outrageous. Two

and a half months after 9/11 they're doing this, when the loved ones of those killed on 9/11 were still sobbing in their beds?! What kind of filthy opportunism is that?

[PurityOfEssence]

21. It's not going to really resonate until we have him planning BEFORE 9-11

Why does nobody bring up the fact that it was a pipeline deal through Afghanistan that whetted the appetites of these thugs in the first place, causing them to ease up on Clinton's harsh approach to the Taliban?

Showing the Junior was planning to do Iraq after 9-11 isn't anywhere near as damning as revelations need to be; it fits with his inability to distinquish between threats. His whole point is that "everything changed after 9-11", and for far too many people, that's the reality. What needs to be shown is that plans were laid far in advance.

[LittleApple81]

23. By the way, what happened with all those maps of Iraq assigning

the oil to different companies that Cheney had to cough up for Judicial Watch? Remember? Did they go into the memory hole?

[ConcernedCanuk]

24. Just for my memory books

.
.
.


ok so I like to finally see it in PRINT

Just a few years LATE, but's begun !

BUSHGATE

[Moderator]

25. This was posted earlier - please continue here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=493050