so they blatantly lie and you dont care

[Michael Griffiths]

Here's another article dealing with some of the same issues...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../20030531/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_what_weapons__3

Bush, Blair Face Heat on Iraq Weapons
Sat May 31, 1:42 PM ET Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!

By DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic want answers to what is becoming the most asked question since major combat ended in Iraq (news - web sites): Where are the unconventional weapons the coalition said it went to war to destroy?

President Bush (news - web sites) said this weekend that weapons had already been found. As evidence, though, he pointed to two suspected biological laboratories which both the Pentagon (news - web sites) and U.S. weapons hunters have said do not constitute arms.
Bush's comments came as the CIA (news - web sites) was reviewing its intelligence, British agents were reportedly doubting their own assessments and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s enemies were being accused of manufacturing evidence.

For a war fought without the backing of the international community, evidence of the weapons Iraq claimed it no longer had would bolster U.S. credibility around the world.

Now that 11 weeks have passed without such proof, international pressure is mounting on Bush and his coalition partners. The Pentagon is sending a new group of weapons hunters to Iraq to expand the search beginning on Monday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), who visited Iraq this week, said he's certain unconventional weapons will be discovered eventually. But even as he and the president express confidence, members of Bush's Cabinet are offering up alternative theories that have drawn deep concerns both at home and abroad.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld speculated this week that the weapons were destroyed on the eve of fighting. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, said in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that weapons of mass destruction became a war banner because it was the only reason everyone in the administration could agree upon when citing why they were going after Saddam.

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with Vanity Fair.

The comments caused a stir in Europe, where lawmakers from such coalition countries as Britain and Denmark demanded their governments open inquiries into the matter. At home, members of Congress are also questioning the war motives.

And in countries that opposed the war, the comments are being used as fodder to justify those positions.

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interpreted Rumsfeld's comments as a sign the United States was losing the credibility battle. "The charge of deception is inescapable," the paper said.

And the leading French daily Le Monde called the weapons of mass destruction claim "the greatest lie told by statesmen in recent years."
U.S.-led teams, made up of Special Forces, unconventional weapons experts, military intelligence and scientists began visiting suspected sites in the opening days of the war. Since the fighting broke out May 20 most U.S. and British intelligence leads have been exhausted. Teams are now chasing tips from local Iraqis, none of which have not panned out so far.

As of Monday, the weapons hunters will begin working for a new Pentagon-led group of some 1,400 people, including American weapons experts who once served as U.N. weapons inspectors. The group is moving into Baghdad to oversee the weapons search and other investigations of Saddam's regime.

The Iraq Survey Group will be led by Keith Dayton, a two-star general. Troops involved in the search hope the ISG will be able to provide the effort with better intelligence and analysis.

Dayton, a top official in the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he remains convinced his team will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said Friday that he continues to believe prewar intelligence claims that Iraq had recently had unconventional weapons.

Those assessments were doubted by many members of the U.N. Security Council, which last fall agreed to send international inspectors back to Iraq to verify the country no longer had the weapons it was prevented from producing after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

The quality of that intelligence is now being reviewed by the CIA, whose director, George Tenet, released a rare statement Friday defending his agency.

"Our role is to call it like we see it ? to tell policymakers what we know, what we don't know, what we think and what we base it on," Tenet said. "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong."

British intelligence is reportedly taking stock of its own assessments as well.

On Thursday, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported that agents were unhappy with a dossier Blair's office released on Iraqi weapons last year ? particularly its claim that Saddam was able to launch such weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

The network quoted an unidentified intelligence source who said intelligence agencies added that charge at the behest of the prime minister's office, but now believe it was wrong.

There have also been reports that the Bush administration relied heavily on information provided by Saddam's enemies, including Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi exile and banker who has enjoyed years of Pentagon support.

Chalabi returned to Iraq from London after Saddam's overthrow and has been trying to build a support base. But few Iraqis seem interested in backing his leadership bid.

 

[Red Ships of Scalla-Festa]

lol, the bush admin is a total joke. its hilarious reading these articles because spin doctors will weave you a story so unfocused and lame that they dont even know what theyre talking about by the time theyre finished.

george bush, only you and your bandits could figure out a way to fuck up the economy, fall millions and millions of dollars into debt, and have most of the world hate you. well done.

anyone whos been at interference as long as i have knows that i was a big republican supporter back in the day. how embarassing.

heres to hoping the next ELECTED president represents the good people of america with domestic platforms as opposed to visions of world conquest and crusades.

 

[pub crawler]

Paul Wolfowitz, said in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that weapons of mass destruction became a war banner because it was the only reason everyone in the administration could agree upon when citing why they were going after Saddam.

hahahahahahahaha

*slaps knee

 

[STING2]

Red Ships of Scalla-Festa,

Don't forget the majority of the american people approve of George Bush's foreign policy.

What I find hilarious are some of the critics of the administration who seem to lack the objectivity to admit when Bush has done something correct or been successful.

 

[Red Ships of Scalla-Festa]

thats because ive seen almost nothing that deserves applauding. im not partisan, i dont like the democrats either. its just that i think republicans are the fox news of capital hill.

*edited to remove insenstive remark*

as for the majority of americans supporting bush's foreign policy, you could also have said most iraqi's supported the domestic policies of saddam.

 

[STING2]

Red Ships of Scalla-Festa,



"*edited to remove insenstive remark*"

Is that really necessary?



"as for the majority of americans supporting bush's foreign policy, you could also have said most iraqi's supported the domestic policies of saddam."

No, you can't! Iraq was a dictatorship, a police state. Saddam enjoyed the support of Baath Party officials and the Republican Guard. Were talking roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people that kept a nation of 24 million people hostage for 24 years. Saddam did not maintain power through popular support. Saddam maintained power through some of the most brutal terror tactics in history. Saddams regime was the only regime that had 12 different security organizations that often spent time spying on each other.

In terms of the government and democracy, the difference between the USA and Saddam's Iraq is the same as night and day. You might be able to make the claim that Saddam had popular support initially among Sunni Muslims who make up less than 1/3 of Iraq's total population. But by the mid 1980s, outside of the Republican Guard and appointed Baath party officials, Saddam really only had support from his hometown of Tikrit. A Dictator does not need popular support to rule a country. A Dictator only needs a military and police force strong enough to subdue the civilian population to control the country.

 

[pax]

The last poll I saw (CNN) had EIGHTY-THREE PERCENT of Americans DISAPPROVING of Bush's handling of international affairs.

I don't think that's a majority.

 

[Popmartijn]

Erm, pax.

Sorry to correct you, but that is a majority, especially the way you stated it. According to that poll, a (large) majority disagrees.

C ya!

Marty

P.S. Could you please look at my posts in the ICDE thread? AFAIK, the problem still isn't solved...

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

Marty - I think maybe Pax was referring to STING's assertion that a majority of people support Bush's foreign policy. If 83% of people disapprove of Bush's foreign policy, then clearly it's not true that a majority support it.

At least that's how I read it...feel free to bash me over the head if I'm wrong.

*Fizz

 

[Popmartijn]

WHACK!




I think you're right Fizz, but I just wanted to bang your head anyway. Sorry about that...



Marty

 

[verte76]

The last poll I saw (CNN) had EIGHTY-THREE PERCENT of Americans DISAPPROVING of Bush's handling of international affairs.

I don't think that's a majority.

Damn. That sure isn't a majority, and I'm not surprised.

 

[STING2]

paxetaurora,

Thats 83% approve of Bush's handling of foreign Affairs. Where do you think Bush's 62% overall approval rating comes from, the economy and domestic affairs?

I'd be interested if you could point to a source or a web link that would confirm this poll that you allege said 83% disapprove of Bush's handling of foreign policy.

If such a poll were true, Bush would never have been able to go into Iraq. It would have been political suicide.

 

[STING2]

paxetaurora,

I'm having trouble finding your poll. But I did find this one that was taken right before the start of the war.


Poll: Two-thirds of Americans support Bush ultimatum
But country is worried
Tuesday, March 18, 2003 Posted: 3:46 PM EST (2046 GMT


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- With the nation on the brink of war, two-thirds of all Americans say they approve of President Bush's stark ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and say they believe he did all he could to resolve the crisis diplomatically, according to a new CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll.

Still, the prospect of war left seven in 10 respondents feeling worried.

The poll, taken Monday night after the president's address to the nation, found that 66 percent of those polled said they approved of Bush's decision to go to war if Saddam does not leave Iraq by Wednesday night. And 68 percent said they thought the United States did all it could to resolve the crisis through diplomacy -- despite the failure to win another U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq.

The poll, however, also pointed to some doubt among the American public about the merits of going to war. Of the 66 percent who said they approve of Bush's decision, 21 percent said they were not sure it was the right thing to do, but they supported the president regardless.

More than one-third of the respondents said they believed the total number of people killed in any conflict, including Iraqis and Americans, would be high. Another 37 percent said the number of deaths would be moderate.

The poll was based on telephone interviews of 776 adults, aged 18 or older. The sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points, but polls conducted entirely in one day, as this one was, are subject to additional error or bias not found in polls conducted over several days, poll experts said.

Saddam's 'final mistake'
Bush, meanwhile, remained out of sight Tuesday, making phone calls to world leaders and meeting with members of his Cabinet. He was, said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, "preparing for a possible war."



Bush's spokesman called Iraq's dismissal of the White House ultimatum as Saddam's "final mistake."

"Iraq has made a series of mistakes, including arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction, that have brought this crisis upon itself. This is the latest mistake Iraq could make; it will be Saddam Hussein's final mistake. The president still hopes he will take the ultimatum seriously and leave the country," Fleischer said.

On Capitol Hill, the routine political wrangling was increasingly colored by the prospect of war.

Democrats, while voicing support for U.S. armed forced, faulted the Bush administration for not providing an estimate of the war's cost in the White House budget proposal. And they stepped up criticism that now was not the time to consider tax cuts.

They were joined by a handful of Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"I cannot in good conscience vote in favor of tax cuts, irrespective of their size, or to which segment of the population they are targeted," McCain. "Nor can I support any spending increases that are not related to improving our nation's defense from the obvious and serious threats facing us today."

On another front, the White House responded strongly to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's comments Monday that Bush had failed "miserably" at diplomacy and thus has forced the United States to go to war with Iraq.

After reading a quote from the South Dakota Democrat last fall in which he urged that war not be "politicized," Fleischer said, "It's hard to assess what Senator Daschle means when his remarks are so inconsistent."

CNN White House Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux and Producer Christy Brennan contributed to this report.

 

[STING2]

Here are some more poll numbers, yes they are a bit old now, but certainly supportive of my claims of strong support for Bush and foreign policy. Clearly I think pax made a mistake with the poll number she sited.

Poll: Bush advisers get favorable marks
Survey shows less support for Cheney, economic aides
Sunday, December 22, 2002 Posted: 12:18 PM EST (1718 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush has picked the right advisers, especially on the security and foreign affairs fronts, according to a CNN/Time magazine poll released Sunday.

The president's national security aides are the men and women chiefly earning their keep, 71 percent of the 1,006 Americans surveyed told the pollsters, while only 51 percent of his economic advisers are doing a "fairly" to "very good" job.

In world affairs, 54 percent of respondents said Bush himself is doing a good job, but only 44 percent said he's handling the economy well.

When it came to specifics, Secretary of State Colin Powell garnered a 77 percent favorable rating and only an 11 percent unfavorable rating, while Vice President Dick Cheney attracted a 48 percent favorable rating, versus 32 percent unfavorable.

Almost half of those polled said they were unsure of how they would rate the work of Homeland Security director Tom Ridge.

Half of those polled said Bush was a leader who could be trusted -- slightly less than the number who said his vice president could not be trusted.

Almost two-thirds -- 64 percent -- said they would not like to see Cheney run for president, while 70 percent said they liked the idea of a Powell candidacy.

None of the other choices -- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Ridge -- got a nod from more than a third of the poll-takers.

The poll, which was conducted by telephone December 17 and 18, has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

 

[STING2]

Here is some more current poll numbers about what the American people think of Bush in general from the left of center New York Times.


Bush's support strong despite tax cut doubts
By Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder
New York Times
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Posted: 7:17 AM EDT (1117 GMT)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Americans have persistent reservations about the tax cuts that are the centerpiece of President Bush's postwar agenda, but those concerns have not hurt Mr. Bush, who continues to ride a huge wave of support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The number of Americans who said they had confidence in Mr. Bush's ability to manage the economy dropped seven points, to 47 percent, in the month the president has been pushing his tax cut plan in speeches in Washington and across the nation. The poll also found that many Americans say that instead of cutting taxes, the nation should use the money to cut the deficit or finance a national health care system.

There is no evidence, however, that those doubts have damaged Mr. Bush's overall standing. The poll found that 67 percent approved of his job performance, while 70 percent said he had strong qualities of leadership, the trait that the White House has long contended would trump any concerns Americans might have about Mr. Bush's policies.

Beyond that, Americans now hold a notably more favorable view of the Republican Party than of the Democratic Party, and 53 percent said Republicans had a clear vision of where to lead the country, compared with just 40 percent who said that of Democrats. That finding is reminiscent of what the Times/CBS News poll found last fall, just before Republicans took control of Congress.

By any measure, the Times/CBS News poll, which is the second since the fall of Baghdad and was taken at a time when activity on the presidential campaign trail has been increasing, offered a glimpse of the daunting task the Democrats face at least today, 18 months before Election Day, in trying to win back the White House and Congress.

For all the emphasis that Democrats have placed on questioning Mr. Bush's economic record, Americans were evenly divided over which party was more likely to ensure a strong economy. And in a finding that suggests that Democratic attacks against Mr. Bush have yet to take hold, 67 percent of Americans said they thought that Mr. Bush cared a lot or some "about the needs and problems of people like yourself," though 54 percent said that Mr. Bush's policies favored the rich.

Still, there were a few encouraging signs in the poll for the nine Democratic presidential candidates.

Americans overwhelmingly said the nation's health care system needed fundamental change or a complete overhaul, and they said the Democratic Party was better equipped to do that.

That finding seems not to have been lost on the Democratic presidential candidates. Yesterday, Howard Dean became the latest to offer a plan for expanding health care coverage, using a speech to counter an ambitious proposal to provide universal health care put forward by Representative Richard A. Gephardt three weeks ago. A third candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, will offer his health care plan in Iowa tomorrow.

Respondents also said that the Democrats would do a better job of creating jobs and improving education. In addition, the number of Americans who named the economy as the chief problem facing the country continued to climb, to 29 percent in this poll, up from 23 percent last month, suggesting the potential potency of the issue that both the White House and Democrats believe could prove pivotal in next year's presidential election.

The poll was conducted by telephone from Friday through Monday. It involved 910 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Whatever enthusiasm Americans have for their president has, so far at least, not extended to what Mr. Bush has identified as his chief domestic goal now that the war is nearly over: slashing taxes. Almost uniformly, the Democratic presidential candidates have called for rejecting either all or most of Mr. Bush's tax cut, describing it as economically damaging and tilted unfairly to the rich, and the findings suggested that this argument could eventually have some resonance.

A plurality of those polled, 41 percent, said they believed that Mr. Bush's tax cut could help the economy. But 48 percent rejected one of Mr. Bush's central arguments for tax cuts, saying the cuts were not very or not at all likely to create jobs. In addition, 58 percent said they did not expect to find any more money in their paychecks as a result of Mr. Bush's tax cuts. And 63 percent of respondents said the tax cuts in 2001 had not helped the economy.

On matters of economic policy, Americans appear to have a different set of priorities from their president's. For example, 81 percent of respondents said that the country should make sure Americans had access to health care, rather than cut taxes. And 58 percent said the priority should be reducing the deficit.

"We need to lower the deficit," said Ed Petrone, 73, an independent voter from Boca Raton, Fla., in a follow-up interview. "Reducing taxes is only a short-term bump in the economy. Lowering the deficit will help us down the road. Reduce the deficit and we can put more money in the economy."

Carroll Smith, 76, an independent voter from Gallipolis, Ohio, said, "If they would balance the budget, the country would be in better shape."

Beyond the economy, with nine months to go before the caucuses in Iowa, most people do not know who is running to unseat Mr. Bush. Nearly two-thirds of voters, regardless of which party they were from, were unable to name a single one of the nine Democrats seeking the party's nomination.

Still, the poll suggested that some of the early contours of the coming election were becoming clear.

Continuing a historical trend that has played to the advantage of the Republican Party, the Times/CBS News poll found that Americans overwhelmingly saw Republicans as better able to make the right decisions on terrorism and to keep the military strong.

Although some Democratic presidential candidates, notably Senators John Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, have sought to challenge Mr. Bush's foreign policy credentials by saying that Mr. Bush had not done enough to protect Americans from another terrorist attack, those warnings did not seem to have been embraced by voters.

An overwhelming majority of respondents said Mr. Bush had made progress in developing a plan to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. The number of Americans who named terrorism as the most important problem facing the nation has declined steadily since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The poll, however, was completed before the latest terrorist attacks, in Saudi Arabia.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said Republicans would do a better job of protecting the United States against terrorist attacks; just 18 percent said the same thing of Democrats. And 66 percent said Republicans were more likely to make sure the nation's military forces were strong, compared with 19 percent who expressed such confidence in Democrats.

In one sign of the challenge Democrats face if they criticize Mr. Bush's foreign policy credentials, 6 in 10 respondents rejected complaints by Democrats who charged that it was inappropriate for Mr. Bush to have announced the end of fighting in Iraq by landing a plane on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.

Notwithstanding Mr. Bush's strong standing in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the poll found continued evidence that the nation remains politically polarized after the disputed election of 2000. A majority of Democrats and half of all independents said they did not consider that Mr. Bush had legitimately won the White House.

"Bush is a court-appointed president," said Jo Carney, 59, an independent voter from East Hampton, N.Y. "He was not elected. Everything was completely mishandled in Florida, and the way the court intervened was really pulling strings."

The poll suggested that Republicans have continued to do a better job in laying out an agenda that is clear to Americans. Democrats have long thought that that would change as attention moved away from Capitol Hill, where Democrats are in the minority and thus do not have a platform, and to the presidential campaign, thus improving the party's standing with the public.

The speech by Dr. Dean in New York, setting off a debate with Mr. Gephardt on who has the more realistic and efficient plan for providing health care coverage, would seem to be an example of that. For now, though, the poll found that 53 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Republican Party, compared with 46 percent with a favorable view of Democrats.

"The Republicans have a clear view of what they want and are effective in promoting it," said Wendy Satterford, 50, a Democrat from San Diego. "The Democrats don't have a clear vision. They seem afraid of the electorate and the apparent rising tide of conservatism. They don't seem to be able to speak out even for the middle-of-the-road things."

 

[STING2]

Analysis: Comparing post-war politics in 1992 with 2004
President Bush hopes history won't repeat itself
By Bill Schneider
CNN Political Unit
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 Posted: 11:34 AM EDT (1534 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Will 2004 be 1992 all over again? That's the Democrats' dream -- and the Republicans' nightmare.

In 1991, the first President Bush was riding high in the polls, savoring victory in the Persian Gulf War, but he was defeated in his bid for re-election one year later. In 2003, President George W, Bush is riding high in the polls, savoring a still-undeclared victory in Iraq. But what about next year's election?

A poll taken immediately after the fall of Baghdad this month shows the economy and jobs outweighing the war in Iraq and terrorism as the voters' number one concern.

Asked to name the most important problem facing the nation, 33 percent of those polls cited the economy and jobs, compared to 17 percent who pointed to the war and terrorism, according to the CBS News/New York Times poll.

The 1992 campaign was about one issue, summed up by Democrats who came up with this campaign slogan: "It's the economy, stupid."

The Persian Gulf War simply vanished from the 1992 campaign. Bill Clinton certainly never talked about it. It wasn't on Ross Perot's flip charts.

If the Democrats have their way, the 2004 campaign will be a re-run of 1992: It's still the economy, stupid.

We'll hear the number '2 million' a lot. That's the figure many economists have cited as the number of jobs lost since George W. Bush became president.

It was the record $290 billion deficit of 1992 that got Perot into the race. That record will be broken in 2004, with an expected deficit of more than $300 billion.

And Democrats haven't forgotten Florida.

But there are reasons to believe 2004 will not be a rerun of 1992.

For one thing, this President Bush has an economic plan. "The tax relief I have proposed and will push for until enacted would create 1.4 million new jobs by the end of 2004," Bush said at a Rose Garden event earlier this month.

Also, there's a very big difference between 1992 and 2004: The United States has been attacked, and the war on terrorism continues.

"It's a war that requires patience and focus," Bush said March 4.

There's some evidence that Democrats will have a tough time setting the agenda when voters go to the polls. In the 2002 midterm election, Democrats tried to change the subject from national security to the economy. It didn't work.

In 1992, the United States was out of Iraq. In 2004, the United States will still be in Iraq, maybe even running the country.

Is that good for Republicans? It is if things are going well. But if Americans find themselves under attack, they might ask, "What are we still doing in Iraq?" And, "Why are we rebuilding Iraq's economy. What about our economy?"

But there is another factor that could help Bush.

In 1992, the Cold War was over. The war on terrorism was 10 years away. So Americans could elect a president who had no national security credentials. That could not have happened before the 1990s. Or after. Whoever the Democrats nominate next year will have to pass a credibility threshold on national security that never came up for Bill Clinton.

 

[Red Ships of Scalla-Festa]

that last article is interesting, sting2, but i think that deserves a thread of its own, dont you?

 

[Scarletwine]

OK so back on topic:

HIGHTOWER: Our Lying President

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
May 26, 2003

What a Wonderland World it is in Washington! Wrong can be right, down can be up, a lie can be truth ? all because the president says it's so.


Our present president seems to love to lie. Not because George W likes doing wrong, but because lies simplify his life, turning his confusion into clarity. I think he even believes his lies when he speaks them, and when he gets caught lying, hey ? that's in the past, it's just a technicality, and besides... it depends on how you define "truth."


How about the big truth of WMDs? Where are those tons of Weapons of Mass Destruction that George W so absolutely insisted Saddam Hussein had targeted at the U.S., posing the imminent threat that was his moral excuse for invading Iraq?


It's a scream to watch the Bushites now try to squirm out of the inconvenient reality that they've found no masses of WMDs in Iraq. Lately they've tried to claim every slingshot, trailor, empty casing, and barbeque pit they come across as "proof" of Saddam's WMD program.


But when launching his Iraq Attack, George didn't talk about such small stuff ? he spoke specifically about a "mushroom cloud" that Saddam would ignite in America. The Bushites also flatly asserted that Saddam had 500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories, all sorts of long-range missiles and other WMDs ? that now can't be found.


First they claimed that Saddam hid them, then that he took them with him (how, in his backback?). But now, the Bushites say it doesn't matter ? we kicked Saddam's butt and that's all anyone needs to know. Doesn't matter? The president blatantly lied to We The People and it's OK? What moral message are the Bushites sending to America's children and the people of the world?


Lies don't make truth, and might doesn't make right ? even if a president says they do.


They're calling for official inquiries in the UK as well as the US.

 

[verte76]

The British press is giving Blair hell about no WMD discoveries. Why shouldn't we be giving Bush hell about this? I'm glad Saddam is no longer in power but Bush used the WMD's argument as a rationale for the war, not "nation-building". Now, no evidence of WMD's. So what if we whipped Saddam's ass. He's still missing.

 

[STING2]

Scarletwine,

The article you posted should be re-written and called the " The Ignorance of Jim Hightower".



"The Bushites also flatly asserted that Saddam had 500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories"

Jim, that is incorrect. It was the United Nations inspectors and Mr. Hussein himself that put out and confirmed such figures back in 1998.

In November 1998, UN inspectors were kicked out of Iraq without having completed the inspections process. They were let back in in 2002 because of the threat to use force from the Bush Administration and others.

Mr. Hussein claimed that he destroyed the above WMD that he had in 1998 in the years from 1998 to 2002. Mr. Hussein did not produce any evidence to support his claim which he is required to do for all WMD under the 1991 Gulf War Ceacefire agreement.

Any failure by the government of Saddam Hussein to fully account for known WMD is a breach of mulitple UN resolutions and the ceacefire agreement which mandates if necessary, the use of military force, to insure compliance with the resolutions and the ceacefire agreement when material breech happens.

IF Jim wants to talk about Truth on the issue of WMD, then he needs to look at Mr. Hussein or the UN inspectors. The above figures came from the UNITED NATIONS and Saddams regime, not the Bush Administration.

 

[STING2]

Verte76,

"The British press is giving Blair hell about no WMD discoveries. Why shouldn't we be giving Bush hell about this? I'm glad Saddam is no longer in power but Bush used the WMD's argument as a rationale for the war, not "nation-building". Now, no evidence of WMD's. So what if we whipped Saddam's ass. He's still missing"

Mr. Hussein and the United Nations both confirmed in 1998 that Iraq had multiple stocks of WMD. Inspectors were kicked out in 1998. With the Inspectors out of the country, Saddam claims that he finally did something that he had not done in over 7 years of inspections up to that point. He claims that with the UN inspectors out of the country, he unilaterally destroyed his remaining WMD stocks.

But Mr. Hussein under UN resolutions and a ceacefire agreement is required to document any such destruction of WMD. If Saddam in fact did this from 1998-2002, then he is required to show the evidence of the destruction. 30,000 shells is a lot of metal.

It is not evidence of Saddam having WMD that justified the invasion, but rather Saddam's lack of evidence to show what happened to the WMD he himself, along with the UN, confirmed that he had in 1998.

Under the UN resolutions and Ceacefire agreement, any failure to account for WMD by Saddam is grounds for the possible use of military force by member states of the UN.

It is Saddam's obligation to account for and prove that Iraq no longer has WMD. It is the member states of the UN obligation to verify and insure whether what Saddam says is so.

When Saddam says "I have no more WMDs", the UN says "Prove it". A Cooperating Saddam would then show the evidence of the destruction of all documented WMDs or hand over any WMD that would still be intact. The UN would then verify this evidence and then decide whether Saddam had proven that Iraq was successfully disarmed.

Since March 1991 when the Gulf War Ceacefire agreement was signed, the burden of proof in regards to WMD has always been completely on Saddam. Its the responsibility of the members states of the UN to decide if Saddam has successfully proved that Iraq is disarmed of all WMD.

 

[Scarletwine]

STING2,
The issue isn't really whether Iraq had to prove whether it still WMD's or not (even though you keep repeating the mantra that they did.
The issue is whether the administration hyped or "cooked" the intelligence they had to get the majority of the American public to believe there was a clear and immenent threat from Iraq. I mean they even managed to get them to believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11, to me that's sad that people don't educate themselves more, instead of just listening to news blurbs (another case for not allowing media concentration if I ever saw one). Even the CIA is all but laying the blame on Rummy by his interpretation of the message. Even in Woodards book he basically accused him & Wolfy of leading a rampage to Bagdad.
Here's a new article. I especially love the qoute attributed to Powell about bull**it.
Credibility Gap, Anyone?

By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
June 4, 2003

WASHINGTON - When all three major U.S. newsweeklies ? Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report ? run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.


And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion ? The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal ? come out on the same day with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.


The controversy has mushroomed the past week as to whether the administration of President George W. Bush either exaggerated or lied about evidence that it said it had about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion.


"This is potentially very serious," said one Congressional aide. "If it's shown we went to war because of intelligence that was 'cooked' by the administration, heads will have to roll ? and not just little heads, big ones."


The administration was already on the defensive last week as the controversy took off in Europe particularly in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair found himself assailed from all directions for either wilfully exaggerating the intelligence himself or being "suckered," as his former foreign minister Robin Cook called it this weekend, by Washington's neo-conservative hawks, who started agitating for war even before the dust settled in lower Manhattan after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.


Matters took a turn for the worse when the London Guardian reported Saturday about the existence of a transcript, obviously leaked from a senior British official, of an exchange at the Waldorf Hotel in New York between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw just before Powell's presentation of the evidence against Iraq before the United Nations Security Council Feb. 5.


It quotes Powell, whose forceful case to the Council was decisive in persuading U.S. public opinion that Baghdad represented a serious threat, as being "apprehensive" about the evidence presented to him by the intelligence agencies. He reportedly expressed the hope that the actual facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces." (At a Rome press conference Monday, Powell insisted that he considered the evidence "overwhelming" when he spoke before the Council.)


But it appears that Powell's musing was accurate, as, after almost two months in uncontested control of Iraq, U.S. troops and investigators have failed to come up with concrete evidence even of an Iraqi WMD program, let alone an actual weapon.


The scenario of an uneasy Powell received a major boost in the accounts of the three newsweeklies. U.S. News reported, for example, that, during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at CIA headquarters Feb. 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point ''tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this,' he declared. 'This is bull ? ? '."


The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that, "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas."


The accounts by Newsweek and Time were similarly damning. One "informed military source" told Newsweek that when the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) asked the CIA for specific WMD targets that should be destroyed in the first stages of the invasion, the agency only complied reluctantly.


But what it provided "was crap," a CENTCOM planner told the magazine, consisting mainly of buildings that were bombed in the first Gulf War in 1991. And agency experts reportedly could not tell the war-planners what agents were located where.


If true, that contradicts a series of bald assertions by administration officials and their supporters over the last nine months. "Simply stated," Vice President Dick Cheney declared in the first call to arms last August, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."


"We know where (the WMD) are," declared Rumsfeld in a television interview Mar. 30, well into the first week of the war. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."


He has since retreated from that certainty, suggesting last week that the Iraqis "may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer."


There is also growing doubt about the evidence that Bush himself touted this weekend as proof ? two truck trailers described by officials as mobile weapons-productions labs. According to a CIA report noted in the 'Slate' Internet magazine, key equipment for growing, sterilizing and drying bacteria was not present in either trailer. Iraqi officials have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.


Matthew Meselson, a Harvard University expert on biological weapons who 20 years ago single-handedly debunked reports by senior Reagan administration officials ? several of whom hold relevant positions in the Bush government ? about the use by Soviet allies of mycotoxins against rebels in Laos and Afghanistan, has also expressed doubts about the trailers' purpose, and called for the CIA to hand over the evidence to independent scientists to make an assessment.


Retired intelligence officials from both the CIA and the DIA are also coming out with ever-stronger statements accusing the intelligence community of twisting and exaggerating the evidence to justify war.


They say both agencies were intimidated by the political pressure exerted in particular by neo-conservative hawks under Cheney and Rumsfeld, who even established a special unit in the defense secretary's office to determine what intelligence was "missing."


Much of the evidence on which the WMD case was based came from defectors supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi that has been championed by the neo-conservatives ? including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis Libby and Defense Policy Board members Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and James Woolsey ? for more than a decade.


Retired senior CIA, DIA and State Department intelligence officers, including the CIA's former counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro and the DIA's former chief of Middle East intelligence W. Patrick Lang, have also spoken bluntly to reporters about what they call the administration's corruption of the intelligence process to justify war.


Both the CIA and State have long distrusted the INC and Chalabi, in particular, although Chalabi remains the Pentagon's favorite for leading an interim government in Baghdad.


All of this has outraged the administration, which insists the intelligence community was united in its assessment about the existence of WMD, and its neo-conservative defenders. The Wall Street Journal on Monday accused the "French and the European left" of trying to tarnish the U.S. victory and charged that discontent among CIA analysts was spurred by resentment of Rumsfeld.


But even the Journal appeared to be moving away from its previous position that Iraq's alleged WMD constituted a threat to the United States and its allies. "Whether or not WMD is found takes nothing away from the Iraq war victory," it said, citing the gains made in human rights by Saddam Hussein's demise.


Nonetheless, what the administration knew about WMD and when it knew it ? to paraphrase the famous Watergate questions ? are now claiming the limelight, to the administration's clear discomfort.


On Sunday, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he hoped to begin hearings ? with the Select Committee on Intelligence ? before the July 4 recess, while the ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has asked the CIA to produce a report by July 1 reconciling its pre-war assessments with actual findings on the ground.

IMO, I think you need to reassess your conviction that Powell has the influence you think he does, as well as the admins. culpability in deception.

 

[Scarletwine]

STING2,
The issue isn't really whether Iraq had to prove whether it still WMD's or not (even though you keep repeating the mantra that they did.
The issue is whether the administration hyped or "cooked" the intelligence they had to get the majority of the American public to believe there was a clear and immenent threat from Iraq. I mean they even managed to get them to believe Iraq was responsible for 9/11, to me that's sad that people don't educate themselves more, instead of just listening to news blurbs (another case for not allowing media concentration if I ever saw one). Even the CIA is all but laying the blame on Rummy by his interpretation of the message. Even in Woodards book he basically accused him & Wolfy of leading a rampage to Bagdad.
Here's a new article. I especially love the qoute attributed to Powell about bull**it.
Credibility Gap, Anyone?

By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
June 4, 2003

WASHINGTON - When all three major U.S. newsweeklies ? Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report ? run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.


And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion ? The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal ? come out on the same day with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.


The controversy has mushroomed the past week as to whether the administration of President George W. Bush either exaggerated or lied about evidence that it said it had about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion.


"This is potentially very serious," said one Congressional aide. "If it's shown we went to war because of intelligence that was 'cooked' by the administration, heads will have to roll ? and not just little heads, big ones."


The administration was already on the defensive last week as the controversy took off in Europe particularly in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair found himself assailed from all directions for either wilfully exaggerating the intelligence himself or being "suckered," as his former foreign minister Robin Cook called it this weekend, by Washington's neo-conservative hawks, who started agitating for war even before the dust settled in lower Manhattan after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.


Matters took a turn for the worse when the London Guardian reported Saturday about the existence of a transcript, obviously leaked from a senior British official, of an exchange at the Waldorf Hotel in New York between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw just before Powell's presentation of the evidence against Iraq before the United Nations Security Council Feb. 5.


It quotes Powell, whose forceful case to the Council was decisive in persuading U.S. public opinion that Baghdad represented a serious threat, as being "apprehensive" about the evidence presented to him by the intelligence agencies. He reportedly expressed the hope that the actual facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces." (At a Rome press conference Monday, Powell insisted that he considered the evidence "overwhelming" when he spoke before the Council.)


But it appears that Powell's musing was accurate, as, after almost two months in uncontested control of Iraq, U.S. troops and investigators have failed to come up with concrete evidence even of an Iraqi WMD program, let alone an actual weapon.


The scenario of an uneasy Powell received a major boost in the accounts of the three newsweeklies. U.S. News reported, for example, that, during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at CIA headquarters Feb. 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point ''tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this,' he declared. 'This is bull ? ? '."


The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that, "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas."


The accounts by Newsweek and Time were similarly damning. One "informed military source" told Newsweek that when the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) asked the CIA for specific WMD targets that should be destroyed in the first stages of the invasion, the agency only complied reluctantly.


But what it provided "was crap," a CENTCOM planner told the magazine, consisting mainly of buildings that were bombed in the first Gulf War in 1991. And agency experts reportedly could not tell the war-planners what agents were located where.


If true, that contradicts a series of bald assertions by administration officials and their supporters over the last nine months. "Simply stated," Vice President Dick Cheney declared in the first call to arms last August, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."


"We know where (the WMD) are," declared Rumsfeld in a television interview Mar. 30, well into the first week of the war. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."


He has since retreated from that certainty, suggesting last week that the Iraqis "may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer."


There is also growing doubt about the evidence that Bush himself touted this weekend as proof ? two truck trailers described by officials as mobile weapons-productions labs. According to a CIA report noted in the 'Slate' Internet magazine, key equipment for growing, sterilizing and drying bacteria was not present in either trailer. Iraqi officials have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.


Matthew Meselson, a Harvard University expert on biological weapons who 20 years ago single-handedly debunked reports by senior Reagan administration officials ? several of whom hold relevant positions in the Bush government ? about the use by Soviet allies of mycotoxins against rebels in Laos and Afghanistan, has also expressed doubts about the trailers' purpose, and called for the CIA to hand over the evidence to independent scientists to make an assessment.


Retired intelligence officials from both the CIA and the DIA are also coming out with ever-stronger statements accusing the intelligence community of twisting and exaggerating the evidence to justify war.


They say both agencies were intimidated by the political pressure exerted in particular by neo-conservative hawks under Cheney and Rumsfeld, who even established a special unit in the defense secretary's office to determine what intelligence was "missing."


Much of the evidence on which the WMD case was based came from defectors supplied by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi that has been championed by the neo-conservatives ? including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis Libby and Defense Policy Board members Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and James Woolsey ? for more than a decade.


Retired senior CIA, DIA and State Department intelligence officers, including the CIA's former counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro and the DIA's former chief of Middle East intelligence W. Patrick Lang, have also spoken bluntly to reporters about what they call the administration's corruption of the intelligence process to justify war.


Both the CIA and State have long distrusted the INC and Chalabi, in particular, although Chalabi remains the Pentagon's favorite for leading an interim government in Baghdad.


All of this has outraged the administration, which insists the intelligence community was united in its assessment about the existence of WMD, and its neo-conservative defenders. The Wall Street Journal on Monday accused the "French and the European left" of trying to tarnish the U.S. victory and charged that discontent among CIA analysts was spurred by resentment of Rumsfeld.


But even the Journal appeared to be moving away from its previous position that Iraq's alleged WMD constituted a threat to the United States and its allies. "Whether or not WMD is found takes nothing away from the Iraq war victory," it said, citing the gains made in human rights by Saddam Hussein's demise.


Nonetheless, what the administration knew about WMD and when it knew it ? to paraphrase the famous Watergate questions ? are now claiming the limelight, to the administration's clear discomfort.


On Sunday, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he hoped to begin hearings ? with the Select Committee on Intelligence ? before the July 4 recess, while the ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has asked the CIA to produce a report by July 1 reconciling its pre-war assessments with actual findings on the ground.

I think people need to reassess the conviction that Powell has the influence you think they think he does, as well as the admins. culpability in deception.

That is

 

[STING2]

Scarletwine,

According to UN weapons inspectors that were forced to leave Iraq at the end of 1998 and based on Saddam's own at admissions at the time, at the end of 1998 with inspectors kicked out of the country, Iraq had "500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories"

This is a FACT!

Everything in the article you posted by Jim Lobe is conjecture and speculation or words from unnamed sources.

Did the London Guardian ever produce reliable, verifiable evidence that Powell said ANY of those things? NO, suposedly there is the existence of a transcript. How about US News's claim of what Powell said at CIA headquarters, do they have the audio for that?

Lets take the so called descripency between Rumsfeld and the DIA.

"The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that, "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.""

What Rumsfeld is refering to in that statement is this:

"According to UN weapons inspectors that were forced to leave Iraq at the end of 1998 and based on Saddam's own at admissions at the time, at the end of 1998 with inspectors kicked out of the country, Iraq had "500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories""

The above is a fact, Jim Lobe's article is speculation and conjecture.

The vast Majority of the administrations case against Iraq is based on the UN inspectors final report when they were kicked out of Iraq in 1998.

The administrations case for war against Iraq is based on fact! Facts from the UN inspectors and Saddams admissions.

Jim Lobe's articles claims against the administration are not based on any facts.

The real question here is how far the administrations critics will go to HYPE and COOK up conspiricy theory's.

There is NO evidence to prove that the Bush administration cooked anything.

There is tons of evidence and proof of what Saddam Hussein had when the UN inspectors were kicked out in 1998.

That evidence was all that was needed to justify military action under a number UN resolutions and the 1991 UN Ceacefire Agreement. It constitutes the majority of the evidence the administration cited and forms the central part of their arguement for the need for military action.

If you have a problem with that evidence, direct your criticism to the UN inspections team in Iraq from 1998, not the Bush administration!

 

[Dreadsox]

Ever think Saddam might have lied about what he had to possibly deter Iran from invading, ect.

Peace

 

[verte76]

Ever think Saddam might have lied about what he had to possibly deter Iran from invading, ect.

Peace

That's an interesting idea. That's possible.

 

[verte76]

Wow, I just read some more stuff from the British press at 4iraqis. I wonder if Blair will survive this controversy? It's getting damned hot in that political kitchen. Some of the press is calling for his resignation. Some Labour people are pretty upset. Any comments from Brits on this?

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

I'm a Brit.

Blair is really having a rough time at the moment. You can see that just from looking at the response of his cabinet - he had John Reid (Leader of the House of Commons) on tv yesterday denouncing the BBC because they have two sources in the intelligence services who say the government exaggerated the threat from Saddam's WMD. Reid went on to claim there are "rogue elements" in the security services attempting to discredit the government.

In PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions - ie MPS opportunity to hold the PM to account) Blair took a lot of criticism both from the opposition and within his own party. Something that's interesting is the number of extremely well-known and respected politicians who are criticising Blair for this - Clare Short the former International Development Secretary, Robin Cook former foreign secretary, as well as a huge number of backbenchers.

The call for an independent inquiry into these allegations was rejected by Blair yesterday. There are going to be two investigations, however both are an utter farce as one is to be conducted behind closed doors (ie the public will never know what was discussed) and the other investigating committee is made up of members selected by Blair himself.

One thing that's pretty important to know about British politics (sorry if that sounds condescending - I just know next-to-nothing about the politics of most other countries so I tend to assume most people don't know loads about British politics) in understanding this issue is that MPs in the Labour party won't always vote with their conscience. Party discipline in the Commons is extremely strong and it's quite rare for MPs to rebel. (Over 130 Labour MPs did vote against the government with regard to Iraq, which is extremely impressive considering backbench rebellions usually number less than forty MPS.) MPs are also concerned for their jobs (ie my MP quite literally voted in support of the war because he knew he'd lose his job if he voted against.) or for their future political career. The Blairites use this to their advantage of course.

To be honest, prior to the Iraq war, I thought Blair was likely to survive any of the consequences of the war, although it was likely he would be weakened by it and so could easily be defeated by another controversy in the near future. Now even I'm starting to this this could eventually get rid of Blair, and even if it doesn't, there are so many controversial issues coming up (ie tuition fees, foundation hospitals - both big issues in UK politics) that he could easily be defeated over those if he comes out of this seriously weakened.

Anyway...sorry to have rambled on for so long. Once I get started you just can't stop me, lol.

 

[STING2]

Dreadsox,

"Ever think Saddam might have lied about what he had to possibly deter Iran from invading, ect."

Certainly. But that does not change the facts and evidence that UN inspectors had on Saddams WMD capability independent of Saddams own admissions at the end of 1998.

 

[Scarletwine]

"According to UN weapons inspectors that were forced to leave Iraq at the end of 1998 and based on Saddam's own at admissions at the time, at the end of 1998 with inspectors kicked out of the country, Iraq had "500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories"

This is a FACT! "

Not according to the head of the UN weapons inspection team. He has stated that fact since the WMD's in Iraq became a big thing again.