"the worst scandal in American political history."

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Dreadsox

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Blair and Bush Aren't That Stupid

By Max Boot

Los Angeles Times, June 05, 2003


Opponents of the war in Iraq must be chagrined to see pretty much all of their arguments discredited by events. The invasion did not cause greater regional unrest; instead it led to a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. There have been no massive refugee flows or other humanitarian disasters. U.S. troops did not encounter a Stalingrad on the Euphrates. And so on.

Not able to forgive George W. Bush and Tony Blair for being right, the naysayers are now emphasizing what looks to be their strongest argument: the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction. The European press is in a frenzy about the "lies" that led to war. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is already suggesting this may be "the worst scandal in American political history."

Those who make this argument must think that the U.S. and British governments are not only deeply venal but also stupid. Their theory, essentially, is this: The president and prime minister deliberately lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion that they knew would show that no such weapons existed.

It is indeed puzzling that U.S. forces haven't found more evidence of WMD, but this hardly shows that Bush and Blair lied. It does show how imperfect our intelligence about Iraq was, which actually makes the case for preventive war that much stronger.

Critics of preventive wars (those undertaken to head off a future danger) suggest that we should wait to hit back until just before we're going to be attacked (preemption) or just after (retaliation). But how are we going to find out about an attack just before it happens, or even how are we going to assign blame afterward?

The CIA's long history of failures in Iraq -- the agency was surprised by the extent of Hussein's nuclear program in 1991 and again in the mid-1990s -- suggests that we can have very little hope of figuring out exactly what closed societies are up to.

The safer course when dealing with rogue states that have demonstrated a capacity to manufacture and use WMD is to stop them before it's too late. Iraq, despite the paucity of "smoking guns" (aside from two possible mobile bioweapons trailers), fits this category. No one -- except a discredited former CIA analyst -- doubts that Hussein used chemical weapons against the Iranians and Kurds. Neither can there be any serious doubt that he kept WMD long after he was obliged to give them up by United Nations resolutions.

It wasn't just the U.S. government (under presidents Bush and Clinton) that accused him of stockpiling WMD; so did other governments, including France. A senior French official recently told some American visitors that his government continued to believe that Hussein had WMD. Which makes sense. Why else would the French push so hard for inspections unless they thought there was something to inspect?

Nothing since the war discredits the casus belli, which was Hussein's failure to fully cooperate with weapons inspectors -- a failure that continued until the end, even though it cost the regime billions of dollars in lost oil revenue.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix's last report, released this week, found "the long list of proscribed items unaccounted for, and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues, was neither shortened by the inspections nor by Iraqi declarations and documents." Was Blix too part of Bush's pro-war conspiracy?

The mystery, in light of the postwar failure to find any WMD stockpiles, of course is why Hussein was so uncooperative. The simplest answer is that he did have something to hide -- and we'll still find it. The more unlikely but possible explanation is that he destroyed his stockpile (or smuggled some of it out of the country) but didn't want to definitively declare his lack of WMD because this would dispel his aura of power.

Hussein may well have been playing a canny game by destroying his stockpiles but keeping the capacity to manufacture more as soon as the world's interest faded. In 1998, after all, he stopped cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors and suffered no serious consequences. He provided limited cooperation this time only because of the presence of hundreds of thousands of U.S. and British troops on his borders -- a deployment he knew could not be maintained indefinitely. He probably hoped to outlast the international community again.

That strategy failed, of course, because of the determination of Bush and Blair to hold him to account. They decided that, even if Hussein was not about to strike now, it made sense, based on his long record of violating international law, to remove him from power rather than wait for him to augment his WMD capacity in the future, possibly even by acquiring nuclear weapons. It is reasonable for critics to find this rationale for war unconvincing. It is not reasonable for them to accuse Bush and Blair of lying.

Whatever the details of his WMD program, the fact that Hussein was a dangerous monster is no lie.


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

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of, American Power " (Basic Books, 2002).
 
Statement Calling for Congressional Inquiry into Presence of WMD in Iraq

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-OH
June 4, 2003

"This Administration made many assertions, for which they have yet to produce any evidence, about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The President led the nation to war, and spent at least $63 billion on that war, on the basis of these unfounded assertions. Let me repeat, the President led the nation to war on the basis of unfounded assertions. It is long past time that the Administration shows its evidence, and today, we are announcing the intention to introduce a resolution of inquiry tomorrow, to compel the White House to justify its claims.

"We all know the unfounded claims the Administration made to justify leading the country to war.

"Remember when on October 7, 2002, the President said in Cincinnati "[Iraq] possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons... And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons?"

"And in August 26, 2002, when the Vice President said "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons."

"And even this past March, the Secretary of Defense said on "Face the Nation": "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established."

"In fact, I have a list of claims that this Administration has made over the past year about evidence they claimed they had of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But we all know that no weapons have been found. It has been 76 days since the start of war, and no weapons have been found.

"So what evidence did this Administration have to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? What evidence did this Administration have for its repeated claims that Iraq was a threat to this nation? What evidence did this Administration have to spend $63 billion in taxpayer money? What evidence did this Administration have to justify war?

"We think that it's high time that we see the evidence-if there is any evidence-for the Administration's many unfounded assertions. That is why we intend to compel the White House to release its evidence through a Resolution of Inquiry that we will introduce tomorrow."
 
The concern over the PM possibly having misled parliament and the public isn't simply anti-war campaigners who "can't forgive Bush and Blair for being right." For that matter, we don't believe they were right: many anti-war campaigners look at the situation in Iraq right now with grave concern - while we are happy that Saddam is gone, we are concerned about the current situation of the Iraqi people, many of whom are now without jobs, without the ability to purchase food for their family, and thousands of whom have lost family or friends in the war. There is no indication of if or when the Iraqi people will be able to elect a government of their own and there are huge questions to be answered about why Iraq has been declared "open for business" with the rest of the world, despite the fact that this is leading to the collapse of many Iraqi businesses as cheap goods flow over the border. In addition, the involvement of many private companies in the rebuilding of Iraq is cause for concern.

However, if Blair really does have nothing to hide then why has he so strongly opposed an investigation into his decision to go to war? If he really did use only the evidence provided by the security services, if he really didn't ask for that evidence to be exaggerated in order to justify war, why will he not allow a full and impartial investigation to take place? Mr Blair made the decision to go to war, it's arguably the biggest decision a PM will ever take. He made the decision to put the lives of British troops at risk - don't the families of those troops, and indeed the rest of the country have a right to know why Mr Blair made that decision and if it was justified?

If Mr Blair did indeed lie to parliament and to the public then it is a huge political scandal, and one which should lead to his resignation. If it turns out that he did go to war on insufficient evidence then there is no way he can remain Prime Minister, he should resign immediately.
 
Congressman Kucinich,

""So what evidence did this Administration have to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? What evidence did this Administration have for its repeated claims that Iraq was a threat to this nation? What evidence did this Administration have to spend $63 billion in taxpayer money? What evidence did this Administration have to justify war?"

Congressman Kucinich, I suggest you look at the final report by the UN inspectors from 1998 that lists in detail the WMD that Saddam had at the time they were kicked out of the country and prevented from doing their job. I'm sorry you were not aware of this but it would answer all the questions listed here.



As for MAX BOOT, (I love that name!) I was a bit critical of the last article he wrote, but I have to admit this one is well done and I agree completely.


"Those who make this argument must think that the U.S. and British governments are not only deeply venal but also stupid. Their theory, essentially, is this: The president and prime minister deliberately lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion that they knew would show that no such weapons existed."

The "venal" and "stupid" comments are wrong, but the rest is true.
 
Fizzing,

Have you ever thought about the number of Iraqi's who would have died over the past few months if Saddam had remained in power? We know how many Iraqi's have died because of his rule over the past 12 years, how many years would you be willing to tolerate that level of torture and murder, not even getting into the obvious international security risk to the rest of the world? Many people in North Korea would love to be dealing with the problems that Iraqi's have today.

"He made the decision to put the lives of British troops at risk - don't the families of those troops, and indeed the rest of the country have a right to know why Mr Blair made that decision and if it was justified?"

I suggest you look into the UN inspectors final report at the end of 1998 when they got kicked out of Iraq. It carefully documents all of the WMD in Saddam's possession.

"If Mr Blair did indeed lie to parliament and to the public then it is a huge political scandal, and one which should lead to his resignation. If it turns out that he did go to war on insufficient evidence then there is no way he can remain Prime Minister, he should resign immediately."

When it turns out that none of those things are true, what do you think those who made the allegations should do?
 
STING2 said:

Congressman Kucinich, I suggest you look at the final report by the UN inspectors from 1998 that lists in detail the WMD that Saddam had at the time they were kicked out of the country and prevented from doing their job. I'm sorry you were not aware of this but it would answer all the questions listed here.



The "venal" and "stupid" comments are wrong, but the rest is true.

So you think it is okay to start a war based on a report of 5 years old ?
 
When the war started, I told someone here that if they don't find WMD, it ain't gonna bother me. To me, the whole point was getting rid of someone who was every bit as evil as Hitler, if not more, who just might do worse things than Hitler if he had Hitler's power. My words then are my words now: "Evil prevails when good men do nothing".
 
I pretty much agree with you 80's. From both sides of the war, for and against, there are many more issues apart from the WMD that are of a concern. So no weapons have been found yet, ok (I was actually under the assumption it wasn't the toops job to go find them), there is good to come out of this though - Saddam is gone from immediate power. While I'm sure no one will argue that this is not a good thing, there are still countless issues left to be resolved. They're concerns of both sides of the argument. There are many people in Iraq who have been devastated by this war, and while it is true that things still wouldn't have been all rosey for them had this not have happened, there is a problem that exists right now as to how to build this country up to all it can be. A lot more work needs to be done. Restating where the failures have occured is only helpful if plans are made to rectify them. This does include the WMD. He did have them, and they really must be found. I dont believe for a minute that he disarmed completely, but the weapons I feel are not an immediate concern. Once order is restored, inspections and whatever can resume and every effort can be made to find them.

In regards to Rono's question, not to put words in STING's mouth, its not so much fact that it was the case 5 years ago, what has happened in the meantime leads to very serious questions about what did actually happen to them. We know they existed and the fact that they are nowhere to be seen now, is not comforting when there is no solid proof they have been destroyed. I'd call it peace of mind, finding out what happened.
 
Nobody is arguing that it's not a good thing that Saddam is gone. Of course it is excellent that he's not able to oppress the Iraqi people anymore. However, this isn't a discussion about that: it's a discussion about the fact that President Bush and Mr Blair used the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as a justification for war. Mr Blair released a dossier of evidence which he claimed proved Iraq had WMDs - the contents of that dossier have since been disputed by the security services, and in fact part of it was found to have been plagiarised from a 10 year old PhD thesis!

Mr Blair based the decision to go to war entirely on the issue of WMD and so I think it's only fair that the MPs to whom Mr Blair is accountable (remember: he's a Prime Minister, not a President) are able to investigate whether he was entirely honest to them. If Mr Blair doesn't have anything to hide then why not allow an investigation?

It's not a question of whether the war was a good thing or not, it's a question of whether our leaders were honest in their justification for war. Regardless of what happens in Iraq, it is absolutely unacceptable for a Prime Minister to lie to MPs or to the public. And STING - if it turns out that these allegations are wrong, I don't believe anything needs to happen to the people who made the allegations - for the media to be wrong about a story isn't even vaguely the same thing as a Prime Minister lying to Parliament to justify war.
 
Saddam should have been removed because of crimes against humanity and brought to justice. If you support the war because Saddam is out of power and don't care why this happened I believe you are disingenuous.

What if Clinton had sold the Balkans War on protecting Americans from WMD? Then argued we stopped a potential Hitler (Milosivic) and that justifies the misinformation (lies).

Most of you have heard about Clinton ordering an attack on a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that killed the night watchman.

Clinton launched missile attacks on Bin Laden in Afghanistan trying to take him out. The right went nuts and accused him of wagging the dog (trying to distract from Monica news). If Clinton wagged the dog, is Bush shaking the kennel?

Clinton spent his political capital on a less popular war because it was the right thing to do. He had the moral courage to do this.

It appears that the Bush administration may lack the moral conviction to tell the American people the truth.
 
deep said:
It appears that the Bush administration may lack the moral conviction to tell the American people the truth.

Come On, we the people (taxpayers) paid for independant legal investigation for Whitewater ect and ended up paying to find out how Clinton relieved stress :sexywink:

This is a much bigger issue that Republicans wish would go away.
As a mother, try telling one that lost a child in Iraq that the gov't lied, which they surely did. I consider exaggeration for political expediency lying.
Then we should also throw in how Sen Delay used the Homeland Security Dept to track Texas Democrats.

Time to Come Clean, Mr. President

By Sen. Robert Byrd
June 6, 2003

With each passing day, the questions surrounding Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction take on added urgency. Where are the massive stockpiles of VX, mustard, and other nerve agents that we were told Iraq was hoarding? Where are the thousands of liters of botulinim toxin? Wasn't it the looming threat to America posed by these weapons that propelled the United States into war with Iraq? Isn't this the reason American military personnel were called upon to risk their lives in combat?

On March 17, in his final speech to the American people before ordering the invasion of Iraq, President Bush took one last opportunity to bolster his case for war. The centerpiece of his argument was the same message he brought to the United Nations months before, and the same message he hammered home at every opportunity in the intervening months, namely that Saddam Hussein had failed to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and thus presented an imminent danger to the American people. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," the President said.

Now, nearly two months after the fall of Baghdad, the United States has yet to find any physical evidence of those lethal weapons. Could they be buried underground or are they somehow camouflaged in plain sight? Were they destroyed before the war? Have they been shipped out of the country? Do they actually exist? The questions are mounting. What started weeks ago as a restless murmur throughout Iraq has intensified into a worldwide cacophony of confusion.

The fundamental question that is nagging at many is this: How reliable were the claims of this President and key members of his Administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States, such a grave threat that immediate war was the only recourse?

Lawmakers, who were assured before the war that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and many of whom voted to give this Administration a sweeping grant of authority to wage war based upon those assurances, have been placed in the uncomfortable position of wondering if they were misled. The media is ratcheting up the demand for answers: Could it be that the intelligence was wrong, or could it be that the facts were manipulated? These are very serious and grave questions, and they require immediate answers. We cannot ? and must not ? brush such questions aside. We owe the people of this country an answer. Every member of this body ought to be demanding answers.

I am encouraged that the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees are planning to investigate the credibility of the intelligence that was used to build the case for war against Iraq. We need a thorough, open, gloves-off investigation of this matter and we need it quickly. The credibility of the President and his Administration hangs in the balance. We must not trifle with the people's trust by foot-dragging.

What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. How is it that the President, who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern over the where-abouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Indeed, instead of leading the charge to uncover the discrepancy between what we were told before the war and what we have found ? or failed to find ? since the war, the White House is circling the wagons and scoffing at the notion that anyone in the Administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

In an interview with Polish television last week, President Bush noted that two trailers were found in Iraq that U.S. intelligence officials believe are mobile biological weapons production labs, although no trace of chemical or biological material was found in the trailers. "We found the weapons of mass destruction," the President was quoted as saying. Certainly he cannot be satisfied with such meager evidence.

At the CIA, Director George Tenet released a terse statement the other day defending the intelligence his agency provided on Iraq. "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong," he said. How can he be so absolutely sure?

At the Pentagon, Doug Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for policy, held a rare press conference this week to deny reports that a high level intelligence cell in the Defense Department doctored data and pressured the CIA to strengthen the case for war. "I know of no pressure. I can't rule out what other people may have perceived. Who knows what people perceive," he said. Is this Administration not at all concerned about the perception of deception?

And Secretary of State Powell, who presented the U.S. case against Iraq to the United Nations last February, strenuously defended his presentation in an interview this week and denied any erosion in the Administration's credibility. "Everybody knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," he said. Should he not be more concerned than that about U.S. claims before the United Nations?

And yet...and yet...the questions continue to grow, and the doubts are beginning to drown out the assurances. For every insistence from Washington that the weapons of mass destruction case against Iraq is sound comes a counterpoint from the field ? another dry hole, another dead end.

As the top Marine general in Iraq was recently quoted as saying, "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Again, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

Who are the American people to believe? What are we to think? Even though I opposed the war against Iraq because I believe that the doctrine of preemption is a flawed and dangerous instrument of foreign policy, I did believe that Saddam Hussein possessed some chemical and biological weapons capability. But I did not believe that he presented an imminent threat to the United States - as indeed he did not.

Such weapons may eventually turn up. But my greater fear is that the belligerent stance of the United States may have convinced Saddam Hussein to sell or disperse his weapons to dark forces outside of Iraq. Shouldn't this Administration be equally alarmed if they really believed that Saddam had such dangerous capabilities?

Saddam Hussein is missing. Osama bin Laden is missing. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are missing. And the President's mild claims that we are "on the look" do not comfort me. There ought to be an army of UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence of disbursement of these weapons right now. Why are we waiting? Is there fear of the unknown? Or fear of the truth?

This nation and, indeed, the world were led into war with Iraq on the grounds that Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction, and posed an imminent threat to the United States and to the global community. As the President said in his March 17 address to the nation, "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other."

That fear may still be valid, but I wonder how the war with Iraq has really mitigated the threat from terrorists. As the recent attack in Saudi Arabia proved, terrorism is alive and well and unaffected by the situation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the President seems oblivious to the controversy swirling about the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Our nation's credibility before the world is at stake. While his Administration digs in to defend the status quo, Members of Congress are questioning the credibility of the intelligence and the public case made by this Administration on which the war with Iraq was based. Members of the media are openly challenging whether America's intelligence agencies were simply wrong or were callously manipulated. Vice President Cheney's numerous visits to the CIA are being portrayed by some intelligence professionals as "pressure." And the American people are wondering, once again, what is going on in the dark shadows of Washington.

It is time that we had some answers. It is time that the Administration stepped up its acts to reassure the American people that the horrific weapons that they told us threatened the world's safety have not fallen into terrorist hands. It is time that the President leveled with the American people. It is time that we got to the bottom of this matter.

We have waged a costly war against Iraq. We have prevailed. But, we are still losing American lives in that nation. And the troubled situation there is far from settled. American troops will likely be needed there for years. Billions of American tax dollars will continue to be needed to rebuild. I only hope that we have not won the war only to lose the peace. Until we have determined the fate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or determined that they, in fact, did not exist, we cannot rest, we cannot claim victory.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction remain a mystery and a conundrum. What are they, where are they, how dangerous are they? Or were they a manufactured excuse by an Administration eager to seize a country? It is time to answer these questions. It is time ? past time ? for the Administration to level with the American people, and it is time for the President to demand an accounting from his own Administration as to exactly how our nation was led down such a twisted path to war.
 
I especially like this quote:

"Saddam Hussein is missing. Osama bin Laden is missing. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are missing. And the President's mild claims that we are "on the look" do not comfort me. There ought to be an army of UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence of disbursement of these weapons right now. Why are we waiting? Is there fear of the unknown? Or fear of the truth? "
 
I dunno, if Bush was lying about WMD, and actually knew there weren't any. wouldn't he have covered his bases on this by planting such materials?

Found this article in the WaPo that might be of some help on the issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26671-2003Jun6.html

An excerpt...

A Plot to Deceive?

...The absurdity of these accusations is mind-boggling. Start with this: The Iraqi government in the 1990s admitted to U.N. weapons inspectors that it had produced 8,500 liters of anthrax, as well as a few tons of the nerve agent VX. Where are they? U.N. weapons inspectors have been trying to answer that question for a decade. Because Hussein's regime refused to answer, the logical presumption was that they had to be somewhere still in Iraq.

That, at least, has been the presumption of Hans Blix. Go back and take a look at the report Blix delivered to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27. On the question of Iraq's stocks of anthrax, Blix reported there existed "no convincing evidence" they had ever been destroyed. On the contrary, he said, there was "strong evidence" that Iraq had produced even more anthrax than it had declared "and that at least some of this was retained." Blix also reported that Iraq possessed 650 kilograms of "bacterial growth media," enough "to produce . . . 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax."

On the question of VX, Blix reported that his inspection team had "information that conflicts" with Iraqi accounts. The Iraqi government claimed that it had produced VX only as part of a pilot program but that the quality was poor and therefore the agent was never "weaponized." But according to Blix, the inspection team discovered that the Iraqi government had lied. The Iraqi government's own documents showed that the quality and purity of the VX were better than declared and, according to the inspection team, there were "indications that the agent" had indeed been "weaponized."

Blix reported as well that 6,500 "chemical bombs" that Iraq admitted producing still remained unaccounted for. Blix's team calculated the amount of chemical agent in those bombs at 1,000 tons. As Blix reported to the U.N. Security Council, "in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."

Today they are unaccounted for. But the answer to the continuing conundrum is not that Bush and Blair are lying. The weapons were there. Someday we'll find them, or we'll find out what happened to them.

Unless, of course, you like your conspiracies to be as broad and all-pervasive as possible.


"And if bush is lying so was?...

One would have to assume as well that the German intelligence service was lying when it reported in 2001 that Hussein was three years away from being able to build three nuclear weapons and that by 2005 Iraq would have a missile with sufficient range to reach Europe.

Maybe French President Jacques Chirac was lying when he declared this past February that there were probably weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that "we have to find and destroy them."

And then there's Al Gore, who declared last September, presumably based on what he had learned as vice president, that Hussein had "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Finally, we get to Bill Clinton. In a speech delivered at the Pentagon in February 1998, Clinton described what he called Iraq's "offensive biological warfare capability, notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs." Clinton accurately reported the view of U.N. weapons inspectors at the time "that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.


Yep it's a big conspiracy.
 
Scarletwine said:
I especially like this quote:

"Saddam Hussein is missing. Osama bin Laden is missing. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are missing. And the President's mild claims that we are "on the look" do not comfort me. There ought to be an army of UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence of disbursement of these weapons right now. Why are we waiting? Is there fear of the unknown? Or fear of the truth? "

Exactly.

And ditto what Fizzing Whizzbees and deep said.

Angela
 
US3 Where have you been?

My fear is not that the administrationis lying. My fear is that the administration had it right, but that the WMD has been moved outside of Iraq. It is not farfetched at all to think this. There were reports before the war of ships that were sent out to sea that were being monitored.

I still think that Iraq was lying about what it had from the start. Why wouldn't Iraq lie? It is a natural deterrent against outside agression, and who is to say that Saddam did not think that the reason he survived Gulf I was because of the fact that the WMD deterred the Coalition from finishing the job.
 
I'm pleased that Saddam is out of power. He's a :censored: on the level of Hitler, Ceceauscu and Milosevic. I really think the politicians should have focused on that rather than WMD's. I supported the strikes in Bosnia and Kosovo because I thought Milosevic was a total :censored: who needed to get kicked out for the sake of the Serbian people as well as the Bosnians and Kosovars. Maybe Saddam did move the WMD's out of Iraq. I wouldn't put it past him to lie. I'd like it if they arrested both Saddam and Osama. What a couple of :censored:'s.
 
I agree with Dreadsox. It is indeed a possibility that these weapons were moved to another location. I believe that Bush and Blair did not lie. They did indeed think that Saddam had WMD, because...and this is the important part...Saddam DID HAVE WMD. Now come on, even though we have not found the weapons yet, we have found certain facilities that in all probability produced such weapons. Come on, what else would someone use a mobile biochem lab for? As an ice cream truck?
 
verte76 said:
I'm pleased that Saddam is out of power. He's a :censored: on the level of Hitler, Ceceauscu and Milosevic. I really think the politicians should have focused on that rather than WMD's.

Verde.....I think that it is a SHAME that this was NOT the focus given what we are learning on a daily basis.
 
Dreadsox said:


Verde.....I think that it is a SHAME that this was NOT the focus given what we are learning on a daily basis.



The American people, or should I say the Administration's supporters would not support spilling American blood to rid Iraqis of a cruel dictator.
 
us3 said:
I dunno, if Bush was lying about WMD, and actually knew there weren't any. wouldn't he have covered his bases on this by planting such materials?

.

I am a bit surprised to see you suggest that they might plant WMD.


I want to believe this is beneath them.

When/if WMD are found they will have to past the credibility test.

That is to say even critics will believe they are legit.
 
Dread, I'm reading all sorts of damning things on 4iraqis and other sites. The Iraqis on 4iraqis all disagree on alot of things but they all want Saddam's blood for crimes against his people. One of the Iraqi groups supporting Jubilee Iraq, the Iraq Prospect Organization, has a site with articles about all of this stuff. Here's the link.
http://www.iprospect.org.uk/
The mass graves, the torture chambers, and the other crimes are truly blood-curdling. I just hope they bust the :censored: and his equally evil sons so justice can be carried out against them. Using the WMD's argument was much more vague and confusing and sort of depended on what Kierkegaard called "a leap of faith" IMO.
 
Re: Rove is too smart,

Karl Rove is very calculating. He has not let his guard down once. This Administrations every decision, move, statement is measured and evaluated in terms of broadening their base of likely voters.


Because they have said there are WMD emphatically, leads me to believe they may be there.

deep said:
Rope-a-dope.

The mobile labs are in my opinion a one, on the old 1-10 scale. 10 being the bio weapons Saddam used to kill the Kurds and Shia in the 80s and 90s (irrefutable).

If there truly are some WMD in Iraq more damning, say in the 5-7 range why release it now. W?s poll numbers might go from 60 to 80-85. Then, if the economy remains stagnant the 2004 election becomes problematic.

I think they may be suckering in the Dems, much like Ali used the ropes in the middle rounds to tire out his opponents. Ali saved his best stuff to finish big, when his opponents had punched themselves out.

Karl Rove is no fool.
 
I never understood why the Bush Administration (+ the rest of the coalition) chose to make the issue of WMD the main reason on the war against Saddam

I fear a bit that Deep is right and that they thought they wouldn't be able to convince the US citizens that Saddam being pure evil + a thread to peace in that region was enough reason to "spill american blood"


what annoys me a bit is that a lot of the people who now say that there weren't any WMD in Iraq are (for a large part) the same people who month ago claimed "of course Saddam has WMD, we (the US etc) provided the stuff he needed to create those weapons ourselves"

now, not both of these statements can be true
(personally I believe the 2nd statement is true and that indeed Saddam was given the means to create those weapons by ourselves)
 
----
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction:
Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 06, 2003

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations Address
September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio Address
October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses - including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the President of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that - at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton - statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find - for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the President had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American Press Reaction to the Missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption --when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons--exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame - informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it - they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct - and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Senator Bob Graham - a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee - told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they find WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "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." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMDs Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.
 
Having stated in another thread that I believe the US invasion of Iraq was illegal in the eyes of international law, and that I supported this invasion with or without the UN based on this administrations' arguments for war, I must say now that it is looking more and more like I have been sold a bag of shit.

If it turns out to be the case, and I still am open minded enough to give them more time to prove me wrong, I will not be voting for GW in 2004.

Peace
 
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Dreadsox said:
Having stated in another thread that I believe the US invasion of Iraq was illegal in the eyes of international law, and that I supported this invasion with or without the UN based on this administrations arguments for war, I must say now that it is looking more and more like I have been sold a bag of shit.

If it turns out to be the case, and I still am open minded enough to give them more time to prove me wrong, I will not be voting for GW in 2004.

Peace

Dreadsox,
You're at least the fifth or sixth person I've heard say the exact same thing in the last few days. I have so many friends who supported the war because they believed Bush and Blair's arguments regarding WMDs and are now beginning to feel as though they have been lied to. The thing I hate most about this is that I'm seeing how it has entirely undermined people's trust in politicians: they think if they couldn't even trust Blair to tell the truth about something as enormous as a war, how can they trust anything another politician says to them? I have three friends who are saying they won't even bother to vote at the next election because they don't see the point if they can't believe a word politicians tell them. I hate how much this has undermined people's confidence in government.

I remember something one good friend of mine wrote in an email: "You wouldn't believe the number of people who have been angry with me because I supported that war or the number of arguments that have left me feeling as though I'm supporting the slaughter of innocents. And all the time I kept justifying my opinions by talking about the threat Iraq posed to the world, I even quoted Tony Blair's claim that Saddam could use WMDs within 45 minutes of giving the order! But now it turns out to have been, if not outright lies, at least exaggeration. I supported a war which killed thousands of innocent Iraqis and devastated their country, and now it turns out that the arguments that convinced me to support it were false. I feel betrayed by Tony Blair: I'd never vote Labour again and that in turn means I'm unlikely to bother voting at the next election."
 
Is anyone here familiar with the UN inspectors report to the United Nations after being kicked out of Iraq in 1998. It clearly documents that Iraq had thousands of tons of various chemicals and biological agents and various means to deliver them. The Majority of the Bush administrations and others justification for war was Iraq's failure to either hand over or verifiably destroy the above materials. If you think the Bush Administrations case for war is a "bag of shit", that must be your opinion of the UN inspectors and their work that documented Iraq's possession of the WMD to begin with.

It is not incumbent upon any member state of the UN to prove that Saddam's regime has Weapons of Mass Destruction, it is incumbent Saddam to prove that his regime does not have Weapons Of Mass Destruction. Saddam failed to do that.

Of course, people like John Dean seem to be of the opinion that we should take on faith when a person like SADDAM claims that he destroyed the WMD on his own between 1998 and 2002, and produces no evidence to demonstrate that fact, that everyone in the international community should accept that as the gospel truth. After all, Saddam's past behavior and actions are of a person of deep honesty and integrity, correct?

The war itself was a huge success and has prevented Saddam from ever killing another 1.5 million people like he already had or invading and attack 4 independent countries or developing a nuclear weapon to murder millions of people within seconds. The war was clearly justified on both security, legal, and humanitarian grounds and clearly the world and especially the Iraqi people are better off because the actions of the countries involved in operation Iraqi Freedom.
 
But if my President told me that we were going to war because Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and we would find them, then it is in fact incumbent upon my President to find these weapons and tell me where they were found. It might not have been incumbent on Bush to demonstrate that there were WMDs, but since the alleged WMDs were used as justification for war, it is incumbent now.

I am a voter, a taxpayer, and a citizen. I am entitled to these answers. And I won't have any problem voting Bush out of office if I don't get them.

(I mean, I'd have voted him out anyway. But you get the point.)
 
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