I post these articles, not for political reasons, but for spiritual. Christianity in many places has become a culture. Many look to men who support their own way of life. What kind of life does the Lord call us to? What kind of life do men call us to? Here is an article about the ways of President Bush. Is he like the mighty men of David in 2 Samuel 23?By Robert ParryRepublished from Consortium NewsKnowledge and Intent: More of the same old lies...The White House is taking umbrage over new press reports that George W. Bush misled the American people on a key justification for invading Iraq. But Bushs latest excuse that he was just an unwitting conveyor of bad information, not a willful purveyor of lies has been stretched thin by overuse.Nevertheless, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at a Washington Post report that in May 2003, Bush described two Iraqi trailers as mobile biological weapons labs although two days earlier a Pentagon field investigation had debunked those suspicions in a report to Washington. The lead in the Washington Post left the impression for the reader that the President was saying something he knew at the time not to be true, McClellan said on April 12, 2006. That is absolutely false and it is irresponsible, and I dont know how the Washington Post can defend something so irresponsible.But the truth is that Bush has been caught, again and again, relying on lies and distortions to confuse the American people about the Iraq War. Sometimes, he can blame U.S. intelligence agencies for the false information, but other times, he simply lies about facts that he personally knows.For instance, just weeks after Bush made his false statement about the bio-labs, he also began rewriting the history of the Iraq War to make his invasion seem more reasonable.On July 14, 2003, Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had barred United Nations weapons inspectors from Iraq when, in fact, they were admitted in November 2002 and given free rein to search suspected Iraqi weapons sites. It was Bush who forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in March 2003 so the invasion could proceed.But faced with growing questions about his justifications for war in summer 2003, Bush revised this history, apparently trusting in the weak memories of the American people and the timidity of the U.S. press. At the end of an Oval Office meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Bush told reporters:We gave him (Saddam Hussein) a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldnt let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.In the following months and years, Bush repeated this claim in slightly varied forms as part of his litany for defending the invasion on the grounds that it was Hussein who chose war, not Bush. Meeting no protest from the Washington press corps, Bush continued repeating his lie about Hussein showing defiance on the inspections. Bush uttered the lie as recently as March 21, 2006, when he answered a question from veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas.I was hoping to solve this (Iraq) problem diplomatically, Bush said. The world said, Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences. We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did. And the world is safer for it.The significance of this lie about the inspectors when judging Bushs proclivity to lie rests on the fact that he cant simply blame his advisers when cornered. Bush was fully aware of the U.N. inspectors and what happened to them. Downing Street MemoIndeed, documentary evidence shows that Bush was determined to invade Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 regardless of what U.S. intelligence could prove or what the Iraqis did.For instance, the so-called Downing Street Memo recounted a secret meeting on July 23, 2002, involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security aides. At that meeting, Richard Dearlove, chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, described his discussions about Iraq with Bushs top advisers in Washington.Dearlove said, Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.At an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, Bush and Blair discussed their determination to invade Iraq, though Bush still hoped that he might provoke the Iraqis into some violent act that would serve as political cover, according to minutes written by Blairs top foreign policy aide David Manning.So, while Bush was telling the American people that he considered war with Iraq a last resort, he actually had decided to invade regardless of Iraqs cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the five-page memo of the Oval Office meeting reviewed by the New York Times. The memo also reveals Bush conniving to deceive the American people and the world community by trying to engineer a provocation that would portray Hussein as the aggressor. Bush suggested painting a U.S. plane up in U.N. colors and flying it over Iraq with the goal of drawing Iraqi fire, the meeting minutes said.The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours, the memo said about Bushs scheme. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach. [See Consortiumnews.coms Time to Talk War Crimes.]Regardless of whether any casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had penciled in March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning, Manning wrote.According to the British memo, Bush and Blair acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, nor were they likely to be found in the coming weeks, but that wouldnt get in the way of the U.S.-led invasion. [NYT, March 27, 2006]In ChristJeff
_________________Jeff Marshalek
Here is another article concerning the fruit... State Department Memo: "16 Words" Were False By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t | Report Monday 17 April 2006 Sixteen days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo. The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq. The memo says: "On January 12, 2003," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries." Moreover, the memo says that the State Department's doubts about the veracity of the uranium claims may have been expressed to the intelligence community even earlier. Those concerns, according to the memo, are the reason that former Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to cite the uranium claims when he appeared before the United Nations in February 5, 2003 - one week after Bush's State of the Union address - to try to win support for a possible strike against Iraq. "After considerable back and forth between the CIA, the (State) Department, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), and the British, Secretary Powell's briefing to the U.N. Security Council did not mention attempted Iraqi procurement of uranium due to CIA concerns raised during the coordination regarding the veracity of the information on the alleged Iraq-Niger agreement," the memo further states. Iraq's interest in the yellowcake caught the attention of Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Association. ElBaradei read a copy of the National Intelligence Estimate and personally contacted the State Department and the National Security Council in hopes of obtaining evidence so his agency could look into it. ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) in December 2002, warning senior officials he thought the documents were forgeries and should not be cited by the administration as evidence that Iraq was actively trying to obtain WMDs. ElBaradei said he never received a written response to his letter, despite repeated follow-up calls he made to the White House, the NSC and the State Department. Vice President Dick Cheney, who made the rounds on the cable news shows that month, tried to discredit ElBaradei's conclusion that the documents were forged. "I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said. "[The IAEA] has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past." As it turns out, ElBaradei was correct, the declassified State Department memo now shows. Monday's declassified State Department memo was obtained over the weekend by the New York Sun under a Freedom of Information Act request the newspaper filed last July. The Sun's story Monday morning, however, did not say anything about the State Department's warnings more than a week before Bush's State of the Union address about the bogus Niger documents. The memo, dated June 10, 2003, was drafted by Carl Ford Jr., the former head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in response to questions posed in June 2003 by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, about a February 2002 fact-finding trip to Niger that former ambassador Joseph Wilson undertook to investigate the uranium claims on behalf of the CIA. The memo had originally been drafted in June in response to Libby's questions about Wilson. But after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times July 6, 2003, in which he disclosed that he had personally investigated the Niger uranium claims and found that they were false, Powell requested further information from his aides. Ford went back and retrieved the June memo, re-dated it July 7, 2003, and sent it to Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage. The Sun reported that the memo contained no direct reference to Plame Wilson's CIA status being marked as "secret" despite the fact that the word "secret" is clearly marked on every page of the INR memo. The memo does not say that the State Department alerted the White House on January 12, 2003, about the bogus uranium claims. But the memo's author, Carl Ford, said in a previous interview that he has no doubt the State Department's reservations about the Niger intelligence made their way to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. One high-ranking State Department official said that when the department's analysts briefed Colin Powell about the Niger forgeries, Powell met with former Director of the CIA George Tenet and shared that information with him. Tenet then told Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley, that the uranium claims were "dubious," according to current and former State Department and CIA officials who have direct knowledge of what Tenet discussed with the White House at the time. The White House has long maintained that they were never briefed about the State Department's or the CIA's concerns related to the Niger uranium claims. "I refuse to believe that the findings of a four-star general and an envoy the CIA sent to Niger to personally investigate the accuracy of the intelligence, as well as our own research at the State Department, never got into the hands of President Bush or Vice President Cheney. I don't buy it," said a high-ranking State Department official. "Saying that Iraq sought uranium from Niger was all it took, as far as I'm concerned, to convince the House to support the war. The American people too. I believe removing Saddam Hussein was right and just. But the intelligence that was used to state the case wasn't." A spokeswoman for Tenet said Monday that the former head of the CIA wouldn't comment on the newly declassified document but promised that Tenet would tell the "full story" about how the infamous 16 words wound up in Bush's State of the Union address, in Tenet's book, "At the Center of the Storm," expected to be published in late October. Many career State Department officials interviewed Monday said they were upset that the so-called "16 words" made their way into the State of the Union address and they are pleased that the INR memo has been declassified, thereby proving that their colleagues sounded early warnings about the dubious Niger intelligence. A State Department official who has direct knowledge of the now declassified INR memo said when the request came from Cheney's office for a report on Wilson's Niger trip it was an opportunity to put in writing a document that would remind the White House that it had been warned about the Niger claims early on. Many other State Department officials believed that the existence of a memo that would, in essence, disagree with the White House's own assessment on Niger would eventually hurt the administration. "This was the very first time there was written evidence - not notes, but a request for a report - from the State Department that documented why the Niger intel was bull*#%^ (edited:)," said one retired State Department official. "It was the only thing in writing, and it had a certain value because it didn't come from the IAEA. It came from State. It scared the heck out of a lot of people because it proved that this guy Wilson's story was credible. I don't think anybody wanted the media to know that the State Department disagreed with the intelligence used by the White House. That's why Wilson had to be shut down." end of article...A mighty man of David or is it like in Isaiah 3Is. 3:1 For behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah The stock and the store, The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water; 2 The mighty man and the man of war, The judge and the prophet, And the diviner and the elder; 3 The captain of fifty and the honorable man, The counselor and the skillful artisan, And the expert enchanter. 4 I will give children to be their princes, And babes shall rule over them. In ChristJeff
Here is another thought to ponder...Former President Clinton and Vice President Gore are members of the Southern Baptist denomination. Why did they not receive the same respect from the "Christian Right" as does President Bush? In ChristJeff
I dont feel this is a place for a liberal agenda.This has done absolutely nothing to uplift christ.My brother is a member of the Marines and is proud of the fact that they are in Iraq defending against tyrants like Sadaam. I am not saying Bush really is a christian, I have heard some real weird stuff come out of his mouth about the Koran, uniting faiths etc. but to attack and to give into a already proven false liberal agenda. You need more discernment, and I pray that you will put your focus on christ and him crucified and stop trying to convince people who is right or wrong. the people who are lying and reporting this to you hate christians, and dont care a lick if we become a communist state. May god bless you and I pray you will take this into consideration. I love you, but I dont feel we should be subjected to this on a site where we should be uplifting each other.
_________________Matt Kroelinger
Hi Jeff,
Former President Clinton and Vice President Gore are members of the Southern Baptist denomination. Why did they not receive the same respect from the "Christian Right" as does President Bush?
_________________Robert Wurtz II
bro boomatt
I dont feel this is a place for a liberal agenda.
I post these articles, not for political reasons, but for spiritual. Christianity in many places has become a culture. Many look to men who support their own way of life. What kind of life does the Lord call us to? What kind of life do men call us to
_________________Farai Bamu
Brother Robert, You have expressed a somewhat valid point in regard to abortion. Yet I believe that the most recent men selected for the Supreme Court were not pick for their stance on abortion but for their support of the economic interests of the corporation. In terms of what the Supreme Court can really accomplish in overturning abortion, I think this article brings to light what must really come to bear in this country..."Lancaster paper, Sunday December 18 Political decisions are driven by America's culture. By Bill Wichterman A substantial part of the controversy which brought down Harriet Miers nominations to the Supreme Court centered on whether she would vote to overturn Roe Vs Wade. Although neither she nor the president's replacement nominee, Samuel Alito, would provide the crucial fifth vote to undo this 32-year old decision, the question was whether her confirmation migh open the way for the court to become anti-Roe with the next vacancy. Many Americans believe that if Roe were overturned, abortion would become illegal nationwide. Not so. Meaningfully reducing the abortion rate requires a prior cultural reformation before politicians can act. Culture is "upstream" from politics. Government is like a giant mirror reflecting the soul of the nation. While the clarity of that reflection will shift from administration to administration, we generally get the government we deserve. Or, as Plato wrote, "The state is the sould writ large." In the case of abortion, the Supreme Court simply ratified the sexual revolution begun in the 1960s. The sexual revolution said that sex without consequences was possible. The unintended baby put the lie to that notion. Abortion stepped in to take care of the inconvenient and unintended child. It's widely forgotten that 18 states had legalized abortion before Roe. There were 600,000 legal abortions in 1972. Roe didn't even accelerate the steady rate of increase that began in 1968, and continued for 25 years, before leveling off and even dropping in the 1990s. The states were ratifying the sexual revolution one by one, and the court short-circuited that ratification by making it the law of the land. Overturning Roe would begin a serious state-by-state debate about whether and when abortion should be legal from coneption to birth. But in many states, and for much of the population, first trimester abortions would continue. And it may be generations before California, New York, and other populous "blue states" significantly roll back abortion rights. The abortion rate would certainly drop, but, initially, only marginally, from the current 1.2 million annual abortions to prehaps 1 million. "Overturning abortion-rights statutes would first require a change of heart about the sexual revolution, and politics is ill-equipped for the task. Sexual mores are not set by politicians, and politicians challenge those mores at their peril. What we love, and what we hate are shaped less by laws than by our habits of the heart. And those habits are shaped more powerfully by the songs we sing, the movies we thrill to, and the books we read. Damon of Athens said, "Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws." In his farewell address of 1796, George Washington said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible supports." James Madison said, "Corruption of [morals] make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual." The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood that the genius of the American Experiment lay not in the parchment, but in the unwritten constitution of the American people. Without virtue, they knew we would be unable to sustain this form of government. Politics is important--very important. I have no doubt that law is a teacher. That's one reason I have spent almost two decades working as a congressional staff member on Capitol Hill. But politics is not up to the task of single-handedly renewing our culture. For that, we need writers, musicians, producers, and playwrites, who will tell stories that lift up the good, the true, and the beautiful. They, more so than politicians, can help us shape what we love, and what we hate. Whether the challenge is building a culture of life, boistering individual responsibility, or restoring sound business ethics, politics plays a limited role. Robert Bork wrote that, " Conservative political victories will always be tenuous and fragile, unless conservatives recapture the culture." The battles over who sits on the Supreme Court are important. But, we will be sadly disappointed if we focus all of our efforts on the political realm, and neglect the more powerful culture-shaping institutions which drive the law. The sooner conservatives send workers into the cultural vineyards of Hollywood, publishing, and academia, the sooner we'll begin to make sustainable long-term gains in building a healthy culture." end of article...The battle spoken here can only be won when a majority of this nation has the heart of Jesus and is not in bondage to the Law given on Mount Sinai. God BlessIn ChristJeff
Hi IRONMAN...
if we have been lied to it will surely be exposed and it seems it's all coming out of the woodwork now.even some generals who were involved in the war at first such as Anthony Zinni are coming out and protesting. i don't know about you but that disturbs me and leads me to have to consider that maybe all this was a sham for something else. the Lord will surely expose it all.
to question the reasons for this war is deemed unpatriotic, we were told there would be wmds, none were found, we were told there would be nuclear programs, nothing to suggest that, then it was to remove saddam coz he gassed people 20 yrs ago, why all this now?there is more to this than what is seen on fox or cnn. what if it isn't all rubbish?
_________________Christopher
Hi rookie...
Brother Chris,I brought up the idea of Clinton and Gore being Southern Baptists to raise the point of fruit inspection, just like these posts that I have made to point to the actual lies that do exist in this administration. The deeds men do in darkness will come to the light. One man's sin is different from another. One man commits adultery another covets, what is the fruit? The fruit of both administrations cause the sea of men to boil don't they? Rev. 17:1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. No matter what wine one drinks from this harlot one is made blind by it...In ChristJeff