Ted Cruz attacks Airline Pilot Profession

[G100driver]

Vote for the candidate that does not want change age 65, believes in collective bargaining, does not want foreign pilots in our cockpits and wants to modernize our ATC system. The rest is all BS ....and you are an utter moron if you vote against our industry

 

[xjlifer]

vote for your economic self interest...it what we all do.

 

[shootr]

vote for your economic self interest...it what we all do.

No, it is not what "we" all do. Far too many vote on single issues that have NOTHING to do with their economic self interest. It's rigged that way on purpose.

 

[B190Captain]

This polarizing crap by instigators on both sides is so readily gobbled up by the sheep. I can't tell you how painful it is to listen to Maddow or Hannity (or any of them) when the facts are known.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs...bob-woodward-bush-didnt-lie-to-start-iraq-war

No Lie
Bob Woodward throws cold water on the left's claim that Bush lied the nation into war with Iraq.


For a lot of people, especially those inside the Washington Beltway who are curious about the internecine goings on that accompany the formulation of policy in administrations of both parties, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward is often the authoritative last word. He's turned up a lot of "scoops" going back to the administration of President Richard M. Nixon who he, along with then-writing partner Carl Bernstein, did more to drive from office in disgrace than just about anyone.

Like him or not ? and there are plenty who don't ? he's got the scalps on his belt to prove he knows what he's doing.

His latest bit of journalism isn't likely to win him any more friends on the left, as he's just knocked down a revered piece of conventional wisdom that will force a reassessment of George W. Bush's presidency. For according to Woodward, there's no evidence the 43rd president of the United States "lied" the nation into war.

Bush's political opponents like to make this claim to delegitimize not just the war but his entire presidency. No man who knowingly and dishonestly took a nation to war is worthy of any kind of honor, hence history's reluctance to focus on the substantive accomplishments of President Lyndon Johnson. Whatever good he did is eclipsed by his use of a fabricated incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to secure congressional authority to increase the number of combat troops being sent to South Vietnam. The notion that Bush lied in similar fashion about Iraq discredits ? in the eyes of his political opponents certainly ? everything he did, everything he stood for and everything he accomplished.

It's a brutal axe but, according to Woodward, one that is itself based on an untruth. An argument could certainly and persuasively be made, he told moderator Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," that the Iraq War was a mistake, but "there was no lying in this that I could find."

According to Woodward, Bush himself was skeptical about the presence of weapons of mass destruction and urged caution on then-CIA Director George Tenet lest he stretch the case that there were.

The whole thing of course exploded after Bush, in a speech to Congress, asserted that foreign intelligence sources had shared with the U.S. information that Saddam Hussein's regime had attempted to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger, a country in the African Sahara, only to have former U.S. Amb. Joe Wilson claim he had investigated the claim and found it wanting, as he said in The New York Times in a piece called "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

That Wilson's investigation was hardly thorough enough to be called the last word on the matter was soon lost in the rising storm over the claim that someone in the White House (it later turned out to be the No. 2 man at the U.S. Department of State) had, in pushing back on what Wilson was saying, told at least one reporter that Wilson's wife (who went professionally by the name Valerie Plame) was a covert CIA employee

For a time the whole business made celebrities out of Wilson and his wife among Democrats, the left-wing intelligensia and the Hollywood crowd. And it made goats out of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and others who asserted that Hussein's drive to obtain weapons of mass destruction ? in violation of the cease fire agreement that ended 1991's Gulf War ? rendered him a global threat that needed to be dealt with harshly and severely.

Woodward's already being bashed for letting this little bit of truth out into the open. Esquire magazine is already up with a post questioning his integrity and saying he sounds like "someone waiting for that check from a Nigerian price to clear." More of the same is coming. Too many people have too much invested in the idea that Bush lied to allow the debate to start up again on the chance that they were wrong. It won't change what happened if those people were in fact wrong, any more than it will change any of the outcomes; what it will do is generate some confusion about who wears the white hats and who wears the black ones, which is not what the progressive Democrats ? who are still reeling from President Barack Obama's foreign policy failures ? need right now. After all, if Bush didn't lie, how can it be his fault that the Islamic State group continues to gain ground in Iraq now that Obama has pulled almost all the troops out of there?

You get your facts from USNews and Esquire? LMAO.

 

[SWA Bubba]

You get your facts from USNews and Esquire? LMAO.

That's all you got from that quote, huh?

The OP is not "getting his facts from USNews and Esquire." The cited article was actually a piece written by Bob Woodward, a vastly-respected journalist, and not just a piece written by a staff writer from a magi zone that you believe to be either biased to the right or just fluff. The fact that Woodward is widely held up by the left as the very definition of journalistic integrity, makes the article, which is critical of a common left claim, even more worthy of objective scrutiny.

Bubba

 

[HowardBorden]

That's all you got from that quote, huh?

The OP is not "getting his facts from USNews and Esquire." The cited article was actually a piece written by Bob Woodward, a vastly-respected journalist, and not just a piece written by a staff writer from a magi zone that you believe to be either biased to the right or just fluff. The fact that Woodward is widely held up by the left as the very definition of journalistic integrity, makes the article, which is critical of a common left claim, even more worthy of objective scrutiny.

Bubba

Wrong. Get your facts straight. The piece the original poster cited was not written by Bob Woodward, it was written by Peter Roff. This piece is from his blog where he is giving his opinion as to what Bob Woodward has publicly stated. Roff is affiliated with Let Freedom Ring whose stated mission is "to counter the attacks of anti-conservative groups on patriotic candidates as well as attacks on the important issues of our day, those that affect the core of our society: the family, marriage, the economy, energy, abortion, health care and foreign policy, to name just a few." Roff is also affiliated with the conservative group Let Freedom Ring and a Fox News contributor as well.

If you want to know how Woodward feels about it in his own words, here are some of his thoughts:

"The relationship between Cheney and Powell is essentially broken down. They can't talk. They don't communicate," says Woodward. "Powell feels that Cheney drove the decision to go to war in Iraq. And Cheney feels that Powell has not been sufficiently supportive of the president in the war or in the aftermath."

"Dick Cheney's view is that in a way, it doesn't matter how long the aftermath is... What matters is the ultimate outcome... Whether there's stability and democracy."

Are there post-war plans' "There were innumerable briefings to the president about currency about oil. And on the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming," says Woodward.

Did the administration really believe that they were going to get flowers and kisses? "Some of the exiles told them that," says Woodward. "I think the president was skeptical of that. I think people like Cheney believed it more."

Today, while most doubt that Saddam still possessed any weapons of mass destruction, the president told Woodward he has no doubts at all about going to war.

"The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment," says Woodward.

But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? "That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties," says Woodward. "That's his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble."

How deep a man is President George W. Bush? "He's not an intellectual. He is not what I guess would be called a deep thinker," says Woodward. "He chastised me at one point because I said people were concerned about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. And he said, 'Well you travel in elite circles.' I think he feels there is an intellectual world and he's indicated he's not a part of it, the fancy pants intellectual world. What he calls the elite."

How does the president think history will judge him for going to war in Iraq?

"After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, 'Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,'" says Woodward.

"And he said, 'History,' and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, 'History, we don't know. We'll all be dead.'"

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woodward-shares-war-secrets/

 

[SWA Bubba]

Wrong. Get your facts straight. The piece the original poster cited was not written by Bob Woodward, it was written by Peter Roff. This piece is from his blog where he is giving his opinion as to what Bob Woodward has publicly stated....

<the rest of the citation deleted for brevity>

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woodward-shares-war-secrets/

Thanks for pointing out the actual authorship, Howard; I stand corrected.

However, they are not my facts. The original post made it look like it was Woodward's words, as published by USNews. I don't know it that was intentional or not. I suppose if I had read the link instead of the cited quote, I would have seen the difference myself.

On the other hand, the quotes from Woodward that you posted don't actually address whether or not Woodward researched, or even believed, that Bush's administration lied in the case of WMDs. All they do is show his view of the various players in Bush's administration with respect to their relationships during the war itself, and not the stated basis of the war nor the veracity of the claims that led to it.

Bubba

 

[HowardBorden]

Thanks for pointing out the actual authorship, Howard; I stand corrected.

However, they are not my facts. The original post made it look like it was Woodward's words, as published by USNews. I don't know it that was intentional or not. I suppose if I had read the link instead of the cited quote, I would have seen the difference myself.

On the other hand, the quotes from Woodward that you posted don't actually address whether or not Woodward researched, or even believed, that Bush's administration lied in the case of WMDs. All they do is show his view of the various players in Bush's administration with respect to their relationships during the war itself, and not the stated basis of the war nor the veracity of the claims that led to it.


Bubba

Double post.

 

[HowardBorden]

Thanks for pointing out the actual authorship, Howard; I stand corrected.

However, they are not my facts. The original post made it look like it was Woodward's words, as published by USNews. I don't know it that was intentional or not. I suppose if I had read the link instead of the cited quote, I would have seen the difference myself.

On the other hand, the quotes from Woodward that you posted don't actually address whether or not Woodward researched, or even believed, that Bush's administration lied in the case of WMDs. All they do is show his view of the various players in Bush's administration with respect to their relationships during the war itself, and not the stated basis of the war nor the veracity of the claims that led to it.


Bubba

The problem with the cited peice is the only quote from Woodward that I can find is this:

An argument could certainly and persuasively be made, he told moderator Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday," that the Iraq War was a mistake, but "there was no lying in this that I could find."

It is a fluff peice because it is very light on substance from Woodward himself but rife with opinion from Roff who is clearly a partisan actor.

Again, Woodward himself has said this:

But ten days later, the vice president said Saddam already had weapons of mass destruction. And 12 days after that, the president too had apparently been persuaded: "A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction."

Three months later, on Dec. 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction.

McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says 'Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public'" Says Woodward.

In his book, Woodward writes: "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?'"

Says Woodward: "George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case.'" And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, 'The case, it's a slam dunk.' ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director ? 'Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.' Others present, Cheney, very impressed."

What did Woodward think of Tenet's statement? "It's a mistake," he says. "Now the significance of that mistake - that was the key rationale for war."

It was just two weeks later when the president decided to go to war.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/woodward-shares-war-secrets/