Who else can't stand the phrase "16 Words"?

[Darth_Ole]

It's been driving me nuts. In the last couple days that's all people have been talking about.

"There has been much controversy about the 16 Words in the State of the Union," and other things to that effect.

16 Words-Gate is what's next.

[Exultant Democracy]

1. I want to slap the words out of Condi's mouth

[StopThief]

28. I'm gonna have to say that striking any woman. . .

is not acceptable, no matter how much you may disagree with her.

[NYC]

2. Ten Days that Shook the World.

Catchy phrase, yes? Re the Russian Revolution.

Every time I hear "sixteen words", I am reminded of that. This could be memorable.

Edit: This could wind up as "Sixteen words that led to war."

[Darth_Ole]

4. And the Cuban Missile Crisis had its 13 days.

But I don't think 16 Words will become a rallying cry or a historical phenomenon. Especially if people pay attention to the bigger issue, which is that Bush League came up with phony intelligence about a variety of things about Iraq and now he have soldiers dying almost daily.

[grytpype]

3. Possible comeback: two hundred and <mufflmuffl> dead American soldiers!

[dfong63]

5. the fallacy

or at least one of the fallacies here, is condi's assumption that only these 16 words were false. these are the ones have have been exposed as false SO FAR. since MOST of the administration's claims justifying the war were unverifiable, these "16 words" take on added significance. they cast doubt on ALL the administration's words.

[funkyru7]

6. Absurd

Why do we argue about this?
It is pretty clear that everyhing in the union adress was a collection of lies. Everthing went in, the uranium thing was oly a little lie in the whole structure, if only we could discredit it the move on other lies can be made.

[newyawker99]

21. Hi funkyru7!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[rustydog]

7. They are trying hard as hell to trivialize the LIE...

it's only 16 WORDS...
But if someone uses 16 words to threaten the life of the president (AND I AM NOT DOING THAT IN THIS POST Mr. Ashcroft) they will be imprisoned.

Bushes 16 words cost the lives of over 200 American Troops
and at least 10 THOUSAND Iraqis....

Those 16 words allowed Bush to become leader of the American Reich and invaded a nation that had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to America at all...

Those 16 words were a carefully planted LIE. Bush knew it was a lie months prior to the SOTU speech.

Bush Lied and tens of thousands of people died ( were murdered)

Those 16 words make this ass impeachable.

[Booberdawg]

8. They are framing the debate

To be about "16 words" Don't let them frame the subject. It's about MANY lies to the American people to conduct a war they decided on BEFORE 911, and completely unrelated to 911. Not to mention the MANY lies unrelated to war.

Linda

[Woodstock]

9. I heard CNN parroting it when I couldn't switch it off fast enough

after the Huffington interview on Larry King.

It's a way of trivializing it. Instead of a systematic abuse of power, it's just 16 words.

[blackcat77]

10. The first thing it made me think of was this

http://14words.com/

Not exactly the image they want to promote... :)

[w13rd0]

16. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to make...

...that connection...

Yeah, not exactly something the proBushwhores want to be wedging into the public mind...or maybe they do. Grandson of a Nazi financier and all that...oh, but EVERYONE was doing business with the Nazis (latest apologist retort I've heard)...

[peabody]

11. It took less words than that for

them to impeach Clintion; so 16 words that caused
thousands to die deserves a fate much worst.

[InMarin]

12. 8 vs. 16

"I did not have sex with that woman."

That's just eight words yet it was enough to impeach.

I like Calpundit's take:

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001650.html">WHY THE URANIUM MATTERS

The fundamental conservative response to Uranium-Gate has been that anti-war partisans are blowing a single sentence out of all proportion. As Condi Rice put it:

It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa. This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.

She's right, of course, but at the same time she's rather studiously missing the point. The uranium story is important not because it was a linchpin of the administration's argument for war, but simply because it's a smoking gun.

In 1987, with Iran/Contra closing in, Ronald Reagan and his advisors were genuinely afraid of the possibility of impeachment. And why not? After all, no one seriously doubts that Reagan knew what was going on. But in the end, John Poindexter took the fall, no smoking gun was ever found, and the Democratic Congress never brought charges.

Flash forward to 1998. Conservatives had been convinced for years that Bill Clinton lied and abused his position relentlessly. But their furious assaults went nowhere until they found a stained dress. Then, despite the fact that sex with an intern was surely the least of all the charges against him, impeachment became a reality.

In both cases, everyone who was paying attention knew what was going on. Both Reagan and Clinton lied about what they did and didn't know. The only difference was the smoking gun.

Likewise, Bush's problem is not that a single 16-word sentence of dubious provenance made it into his State of the Union address. His problem is that he promised us that Saddam was connected to al-Qaeda, he promised thousands of liters of chemical and biological weapons, he promised that Saddam had a nuclear bomb program, and he promised that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. But that wasn't all. He also asked us to trust him: he couldn't reveal all his evidence on national TV, but once we invaded Iraq and had unfettered access to the entire country everything would become clear.

But it didn't. We've had control of the country for three months, we've had access to millions of pages of Iraqi records, and we've captured and interrogated dozens of high ranking officials. And it's obvious now that there were no WMDs, no bomb programs of any serious nature, and no al-Qaeda connections.

So while the uranium is only a symbol, it's a powerful one. George Bush says we live in an era of preemptive war, and in such an era — lacking the plain provocation of an attack — how else can the citizenry make up its mind except by listening to its leaders? In the end, we went to war because a majority of the population trusted George Bush when he presented his case that Iraq posed an imminent danger to the United States and the world.

Uranium-Gate is a symbol of that misplaced trust. If George Bush's judgment had been vindicated in Iraq, a single sentence in the State of the Union address wouldn't matter. But it hasn't, and he deserves to be held accountable for his poor judgment by everybody who believed him.

And that's why those 16 words matter.

[Magical]

13. Compound Lies and Mathematical Principles of Lying

My 12 year old son and I went for a walk this evening. We talk about what is going on politically and all the lies goin' down.

So he comes up with this phrase, 'Yeah, its like a compound lie.' I cracked up...see, a compound lie is two smaller lies added together to make a bigger lie, just like a compound word. Of course this can continue ad infinitum, so you'd have compound-compound lies, perhaps easier expressed as compound lies to the Nth power.

Then, of course we start in on the mathmatical principals of lying.

Identity Principal of Lying: A = -A
Commutative Principal of Lying: You can switch the orders of the lies and get the same effect.
Distributive Principal of Lying: When lie falls flat on its face, distribute responsibility elsewhere.

See how instruktive * is for our yungsters! Teachin' 'em all about mathematiks.

[dmr]

14. You have a smart son, Magical

Welcome to DU :)

[AmyStrange]

15. 13 dead soldiers (families) per word

211/16 = 13

[Woodstock]

17. add in the civilian dead

6058 + 211 = 6269/16 = 392

(Peter Werbe's site has it at 6058 conservative estimate - not sure how recent this count is)

[Cronus Protagonist]

18. Maybe this will help sweeten the phrase for you

http://bushspeaks.com/home.asp?did=131





http://kucinichforpresident.com - Kucinich Is The One
http://cronus.com/prayer - One of Kucinich's speeches

http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13 - cute little buttons
http://bushspeaks.com - sardonic political toons
http://cronus.com - enlightening and educational liberal fun

Conceptual Guerilla

[RapidCreek]

19. Why the hell is it that people call this nasty whore Condi?

This is a cute endearing little nickname dreamed up by Republican jingo masters for this evil sack of mucus. Her name is Condoleezza not Condi. It is my guess that they decided to start calling her Condi because of the close proximity of her name to sleeze.

That brings up another little word play that really chaps my can. What the hell is the deal with attatching -gate to everything. This is another cute little ploy of the right...to dispell the sereousness of whatever word proceeds the hyphen. Uranium-Gate? Give me a break....another cute little sound bite for the pundits. Bush's lie about the Niger/Uranium connection is a scandal, an outrage, evilness in carnate not a -gate. Let's refer to it as what it is and was....lets call it the Bush State of the Union Scandal or The Bush Dishonesty Scandal.

On the 16 words? Well hell, they impeached Clinton over 8...And last I heard no one died cause Billy Boy lied about getting his skippy slurped on....and it didn't cost us 3.9 million a month.


RC

[EOTE]

25. 3.9 million a month?

Last time I checked, this war is costing us over a billion a month. And, those 8 words Clinton muttered did cost us a pretty penny(8 billion of them to be exact), the republican gestapo made sure of that.

[RapidCreek]

27. On edit...which I couldn't do...to late

I meant to say 3.9 Billion a month. No actually Clinton lying about his blowjob didn't cost a thing. We didn't pay for his blowjob and we paid no price, either in lives or tax dollars to sustain his lie about receiving one. The Republicans obsession with whose mouth Clinton's penis spent time in and the subsequent investigation they mounted is what cost money. The process of proving his statement was a lie is what cost the money.

Mr. Bush's lie is costing us money and lives right now. We are paying for the war which is based upon the lies he has told, right now. His lies have not been investigated. He has not been put in front of a grand jury to testify as to the veracity of the statements he made to Congress and the American public in his attempts to justify the war. There is quite a difference between money spent in furtherance of a lie and money spent to determine whether one has been told.

RC

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. I'm glad they decided to go with this phrase

The first time I heard it on FAUX the other night just made my day. I knew that this little phrase "It was just 16 words" would backfire and be used againsed them. I can't believe Condi was still using it on Sunday. Just some more evidence proving what an uninformed twit she really is.

[DrBB]

22. They made Tenet put it in his statement specifically

...so that they could use it as the sound-bite to hang their case on. That's what I find so amusing--how transparent it is that they brainstormed the sound-bite first and then built everything else around it.

And I'm with you: it is already in the process of becoming the hook THEY--not their case--are going to hang on. "I did not have sex with that woman"--"sixteen little words."

You can see the attraction of it to the tabloid-news mentality:

"Sixteen little words... That Brought Down a Presidency!" Oh the irony, friends. Oh the irony. <foregoing to be read in the ponderous tones of Big Media at its most pompously censorious>

[roberthall10]

23. The Whole Speech Was a Lie

They want you to think it was just 16 words, but essentially everything he said about Iraq we now know to be false.

[enough]

24. batman's "16 Words"

“It’s just Sixteen Words”
but what do ya get?
Another dead soldier and we’re deeper in debt

-- more!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=38275&mesg_id=38275&listing_type=search

[Cooley Hurd]

26. The Iraqi weapons references in SOTU were a total of 355 words...

...and every word was a lie.