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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on January 03, 2007, 06:13:02 PM
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Before they jumped off the bandwagon. Interesting reading.
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.
"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.
"There is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seing and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002,
"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do."
Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002.
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. "[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.
More statements, complete with pictures, here: http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
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If America nuked london would it matter what anyone said about it?
No.
A mistake is a mistake no matter who voted for what. And the administration who pushed this war the BUSH admin. They provided the reasons. Not the dems.
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That's what we get when Cheney/Rummy make up their own intelligence agency in the bowels of the pentagon to make up false intelligence and provide every member of congress a report built from lies... If what they read had been true, all the above statements are valid. Once they learned as most have that the report was bullshit, they flipped... I see nothing here other than they trusted an admin that lied.
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If America nuked london would it matter what anyone said about it?
No.
A mistake is a mistake no matter who voted for what. And the administration who pushed this war the BUSH admin. They provided the reasons. Not the dems.
Then there are the resolutions supporting the war, after it started, which nearly every Democrat voted in favor of.
Of course it matters what our legislators said about the war. They help set policy. They vote on resolutions. They influence public opinion.
They also get to play "hear no evil, see no evil" when things go south and pretend like they didn't have a clue about what was going on. Like Hillary categorically saying "It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." Amazing.
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Then there are the resolutions supporting the war, after it started, which nearly every Democrat voted in favor of.
Of course it matters what our legislators said about the war. They help set policy. They vote on resolutions. They influence public opinion.
They also get to play "hear no evil, see no evil" when things go south and pretend like they didn't have a clue about what was going on. Like Hillary categorically saying "It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." Amazing.
probably so BB. But remember the contention here isn;t about who supported it, it's about it being woring and the administration that pushed the war to begin with.
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probably so BB. But remember the contention here isn;t about who supported it, it's about it being woring and the administration that pushed the war to begin with.
Actually it's about people saying Bush lied about the reason we went to war, when Democrats independently made very strong statements supporting the reason we went to war. I don't see how you can read those statements and not conclude Democrats are engaging in pure politics now with the war issue.
Now, I do not agree with the way the war has been conducted, but when we're talking about the reason we went to war in the first place, it is clear that there was bipartisan support on the WMD issue and the fact that Saddam was a threat. Or least they (Congress and Bush) believed he was and led the public to believe he was.
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Beach Bum,
Who delivered this intel to these democrats?
If they used it to make decisions about war, they sure must have trusted the source.
what was the source of this WMD intel?
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the wmd information was wrong,, who argues this. bush has admitted to that,, out cia was f'ed up..
all of the Democrats were for the war, john kerry argued for weeks about his support for the war
but guess what happend in '04.. bush had a very high approval rating and the election was comming,, so what did the dems do. they created the whole ''theres no wmd's so we were lied to''. thats where it all started.
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::) where it all started was with them lying their butts off...
THIS IS A MUST SEE, THESE ARE HIGH CRIMES... THEY COULDN'T GET THE INTELLIGENCE THEY WANTED TO MEET THE GOAL OF WAR WITH IRAQ SOOOOO CHENEY/RUMMY MADE THEIR OWN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY IN THE BOWELS OF THE PENTAGON TO PROVIDE INTELLIGENCE THAT MET THE IRAQ WAR GOALS. GOOD DOCUMENTARY, VERY DAMAGING TO CHENEY AND THE NEOTURDS...
On 9/11, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America. At that moment, CIA Director George Tenet met with his counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war. But soon a debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror, and the decision to go to war in Iraq.
Amid revelations about faulty prewar intelligence and a scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
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what was the source of this WMD intel?
the wmd information was wrong,, who argues this. bush has admitted to that,, out cia was f'ed up..
Which CIA members have been fired/jailed/disciplined for delivering information so blatently false, leading to the death of 300 soldiers?
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Dems didn't drum this up, it's a fact...
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
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what was the source of this WMD intel?
the wmd information was wrong,, who argues this. bush has admitted to that,, out cia was f'ed up..
What was the date Bush realized the information was wrong?
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What was the date Bush realized the information was wrong?
when he ordered it...
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The WMD issue predates Bush. Just ask Speaker Pelosi:
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.
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The WMD issue predates Bush. Just ask Speaker Pelosi:
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.
ancient history... He was delt with then... all intelligence showed Iraq was not a danger after 9/11 Powell and Rice both said this before 9/11. The CIA said this in the days after 9/11... Bush pushed for intelligence to meet his policy and got his way... That's pretty much a fact now...
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the ignorance of you guys is incredible.. do you really think bush went up to the senate and say "hey guys lets start a war in iraq, i wont give you any proof lets just do it for fun" ,, john kerry saw the same shit that bush did. they were all given the same intelligence. you cant argue that bush had made the shit up either, because every intelligence agency in the world thought the same thing,, remember we didnt go to war alone because other countrys saw him as a threat too.
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the ignorance of you guys is incredible.. do you really think bush went up to the senate and say "hey guys lets start a war in iraq, i wont give you any proof lets just do it for fun" ,, john kerry saw the same shit that bush did. they were all given the same intelligence. you cant argue that bush had made the shit up either, because every intelligence agency in the world thought the same thing,, remember we didnt go to war alone because other countrys saw him as a threat too.
That is absolutely correct. That's why John Kerry said: "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.
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the ignorance of you guys is incredible.. do you really think bush went up to the senate and say "hey guys lets start a war in iraq, i wont give you any proof lets just do it for fun" ,, john kerry saw the same shit that bush did. they were all given the same intelligence. you cant argue that bush had made the shit up either, because every intelligence agency in the world thought the same thing,, remember we didnt go to war alone because other countrys saw him as a threat too.
by all means don't review any material provided, just ignorantly accuse others of ignorance ::)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/
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Amazing how Beach and other righties have to make their case by constantly ignoring and outright refusing to look at data provided that refutes their false image... Keep living in lala land ::)
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Amazing how Beach and other righties have to make their case by constantly ignoring and outright refusing to look at data provided that refutes their false image... Keep living in lala land ::)
yes, yes it is
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What amazes me is that people are still making this a rep/dem issue.
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What amazes me is that people are still making this a rep/dem issue.
(http://240fm.com/gb/cheers.gif)
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Yeah i don't get why people can;t see this. foriegn policy doesn;t change all that much with different administrations. Our foreign policiy is driven by our economic interests the more our economy flourishes, the more our companies get richer the more our government can tax them and the middle class. Companies and corporations will lobby and support representatives in congress, the presidency and the senate who have their interests at heart. There is now way you can get elected with out corporate support of some kind.
When people say if the dems were in power we'd be unsafe is crazy.
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One thing I noticed watching hannity & Colmes tnoight...
Colmes kept attacking policy and actions of Bush and republicans. he pointed out their mistakes, their bad current decisions, and
Hannity retorted by delivering some hypothetical of how it would be worse if the liberals had their way", then tried to apply the local policy of one extreme dem to the war in iraq. Essentially, he created a position that he believed they would take.
Repub vs. Dem
Policy vs. Prediction.
Deeds vs. Hypotneticals.
history vs. labels.
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The dems would have done the same thing and the repubs would be attacking just like the dems are. Its politics and about power. They could all care less that our guys are dying over here.
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It may be true that a lot of dems would have voted for war anyway, but it doesn't change the fact that they are given an easy out explanation due to the falsified intelligence provided to them... Kind of hard to nail a guy for a flip flop when there is a valid reason for it. The valid reason exists, watch the frontline report. The drive to fix intelligence around the policy is the error here... Without it, we could all hold the politicians accountable for voting yes on a bullshit war. So who was the enabler here... Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby... In this regard, you can draw political lines. Neocons vs. Everybody else...
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i cant believe that frontline report,, if this was true bush and cheny would have been executed a long time ago.
sean hannity sucks. someone stuck that far in the right is just as bad as the bush haters on the left.. alan combs sucks too,, he's your typical nerd looking liberal
bill o'reilly and glenn beck are the only people i can watch
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What amazes me is that people are still making this a rep/dem issue.
I agree, but you've done it too Ozmo. You've said Bush lied. Most of the liberals say he lied. But the fact is he relied on information and formed opinions right along with the rest of the world. What these comments show is if you're being intellectually honest the start of the war was not a partisan issue. That's what the numerous statements by Democrat leaders show (including statements made BEFORE Bush took office). That's what the multiple, near unanimous resolutions supporting the war show.
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I agree, but you've done it too Ozmo. You've said Bush lied. Most of the liberals say he lied. But the fact is he relied on information and formed opinions right along with the rest of the world. What these comments show is if you're being intellectually honest the start of the war was not a partisan issue. That's what the numerous statements by Democrat leaders show (including statements made BEFORE Bush took office). That's what the multiple, near unanimous resolutions supporting the war show.
I believe bush lied. I believe it becuase of statements made by Rice and Powell prior to the invasion. I believe the BUSH administration waged a PR campaign in the post histeria of 9/11 and made the WMD things much more than it was. They sold it to everyone including the Dems on the threat and the dems voted for it.
You are right it's not a partisan issue.
But who pushed the war? the BUSH administration.
Who said Saddam was a threat worhty of going to war over? The BUSH administration.
Who made a case before the American public justifying or intent to go to war? The bush admiistration.
If the American Public is in a friendzy over terrorist and the Bush administration had successfully waged a PR campaign whipping up support for the war.......... what choice does any politician have but to back it if they want to stay in office? (understand these politicians were sold on the same intell the republicans were sold on)
Was Saddam more of a threat in 1996 or 2006? Exactly what was saddam going ot do with WMD's even if he had them? He wasn;t going to strike the US. That would have been suicide.
It's no different than N. Korea having nukes. Even though they have them what are they going to do? Nothing. Anyhting they do will mean their country will become a McDonalds Parking lot.....(do you think they'll spam and eggs on the menu? ;D)
Saddam was predictable to the extent he would have chose courses of action that kept him in power. But by the time Bush started his campaign it was too late. Saddma was an unfortunate target of an opportunistic Bushy Administration.
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i cant believe that frontline report,, if this was true bush and cheny would have been executed a long time ago.
sean hannity sucks. someone stuck that far in the right is just as bad as the bush haters on the left.. alan combs sucks too,, he's your typical nerd looking liberal
bill o'reilly and glenn beck are the only people i can watch
That frontline report is not even close to the first to reveal this stuff. Frontline very well known for it's meticulous investigations and attention to details. You'll have an extremely hard time just writing off Frontline as some left wing spin.
Glenn Beck... ahahahaha... At least we have a perspective on you. That you like Glen Beck puts everything into context... ::)
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The entire world believed Saddam was a threat. Bush simply repeated what legislators and world leaders were saying for years, both before and after he took office, leading right up to the invasion. Here is what Bill Clinton said before he left office about this threat:
"In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton
Address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff
February 17, 1998
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/transcripts/clinton.iraq/
Here is what Clinton said years after he left office about this threat:
"People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons."
Former President Clinton
During an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live"
July 22, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/23/clinton.iraq.sotu/
There are a plethora of other similar comments by Republican and Democrat members of Congress, world leaders, and the UN. This is what the world believed about Saddam.
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I agree, but you've done it too Ozmo. You've said Bush lied. Most of the liberals say he lied. But the fact is he relied on information and formed opinions right along with the rest of the world. What these comments show is if you're being intellectually honest the start of the war was not a partisan issue. That's what the numerous statements by Democrat leaders show (including statements made BEFORE Bush took office). That's what the multiple, near unanimous resolutions supporting the war show.
That's not the facts, you're ignoring the facts. You're going off statement made by Bush and spewed by Fox and company as truth... ::) How about you go by facts and not exuses calling them facts... Watch the frontline special... Then listen to all the testimony from our officials that suggest we fixed the intelligence around the policy, then look at the AUTHENTICATED DOWNING STREET MEMOS that prove we were intent on fixing the intelligence around the policy... The neocons have systematically attempted to discredit all these sources, but come on, at some point you have to look at the mountain of testimonies and documents and say, oh, shit.
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That's not the facts, you're ignoring the facts. You're going off statement made by Bush and spewed by Fox and company as truth... ::) How about you go by facts and not exuses calling them facts... Watch the frontline special... Then listen to all the testimony from our officials that suggest we fixed the intelligence around the policy, then look at the AUTHENTICATED DOWNING STREET MEMOS that prove we were intent on fixing the intelligence around the policy... The neocons have systematically attempted to discredit all these sources, but come on, at some point you have to look at the mountain of testimonies and documents and say, oh, shit.
I'm not ignoring the facts. I'm repeating the facts. "Facts" being the numerous statements made by Democrats before and after Bush took office. Like these facts from 1998:
"Imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor
Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University
February 18, 1998
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html
Bush had nothing to do with those comments.
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The entire world believed Saddam was a threat. Bush simply repeated what legislators and world leaders were saying for years, both before and after he took office, leading right up to the invasion. Here is what Bill Clinton said before he left office about this threat:
Fuck Clinton... The bottom line is if this were true, if Saddam posed a valid threat, we wouldn't have needed to actively fix the intelligence to show him as a threat. It is not good enough to say he may pose a serious thread sometime down the road so take him out now. That kind of preemptive policy will start completely unnecessary wars around the world and that policy has a better chance of starting a nuclear war than any other policy. If we have that policy, we can hardly complain when others adobt it. The fact was that Saddam was not a threat. Collin Powell and Condi Rice both noted this in 2001 before 9/11.
Feb. 24, 2001
, while meeting at Cairo's Ittihadiya Palace with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.
Asked about the sanctions placed on Iraq, which were then under review at the Security Council, Powell said the measures were working. In fact, he added, "(Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."--Colin Powell
"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him.
His military forces have not been rebuilt."--Condoleezza Rice
CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer, July 29, 2001
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I'm not ignoring the facts. I'm repeating the facts. "Facts" being the numerous statements made by Democrats before and after Bush took office. Like these facts from 1998:
"Imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor
Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University
February 18, 1998
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/20/98022006_tpo.html
Bush had nothing to do with those comments.
You're ignoring the fact that the intellegence was fixed around the policy. What dems said does not green light this administration's lies. And again, stop with the 1998 shit... we was dealt with him then, bombed his ass back to the stone age again. According to Powell and Rice, he wasn't shit in 2001. ;) According to the CIA in 2001 he wasn't shit ;) That's a fact ;)
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I see. So he wasn't a threat in 1998, even though numerous Democrats said he was. And he wasn't a threat after Bush took office, even though numerous Democrats said he was. He wasn't a threat in 2002, when Gore made these comments:
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Former Clinton Vice-President
Speech to San Francisco Commonwealth Club
September 23, 2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-23-gore-text_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,797999,00.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/24/1032734161501.html
I find these comments amazing. I'll start another thread about the war resolutions. :)
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I see. So he wasn't a threat in 1998, even though numerous Democrats said he was.
You're obvioulsy not reading anything I say ::) This is so not even close to what I said I don't know where to correct you. please read my posts again. slowly.
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SO funny when people will blame CLinton 98 for Bush's continued inability to adjust when he learned the intel was bad.
It's like my friend tells me to check out a new nightclub. I walk in the door and find out it's a gay bar. I can blame him for that. But if I stay, get drunk, and hook up with a tranny, that's my own damn fault.
Iraq is that tranny.
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You're obvioulsy not reading anything I say ::) This is so not even close to what I said I don't know where to correct you. please read my posts again. slowly.
O.K. I read it again. Slowly. Except for the profanity, which I skimmed. :) You said "the intellegence was fixed around the policy. What dems said does not green light this administration's lie . . . ." How could the intelligence be fixed around the policy, when the intelligence said the same thing for over a decade, including before Bush took office and set his "policy"? Doesn't make sense Berserker. If the intelligence was being fixed around the policy and Bush was "lying" it would make more sense if everyone believed Saddam was NOT a threat before Bush took office. Instead, you have an unbroken chain of comments from Republicans and Democrats uniformly saying Saddam was a threat. Cannot logically separate what the world was saying about Saddam before and after Bush took office from Bush's "policy."
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For the last time 240 and others, Bush didn't learn the intel was bad... Watch Frontline's The Dark Side, read the downing street memos. look at the many officials that have come forward with confirmation of this... There is a mountain of information suggesting the admin fixed the intelligence. There is Bush's word that he was fooled by bad intel ::)
Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/HowSenate_Intelligence_chairman_fixed_intelligence_and_diverted_blame_fromWhite_House__0811.html
"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, British intelligence, who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials. Dearlove went on, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html
The former CIA official, Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17601
As the downing street memos show, the Brits were aware the intelligence was being fixed around the policy and they had to get on board with that. The result is seen in powell’s 19 page dossier presented to the UN… It turns out 11 pages of the dossier was plagiarized from a student paper with information obtained during the first gulf war…
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/
In the months following the September 11th attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on 8 April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence".[14] The Bush Administration frequently cited these allegations as evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. (as is revealed in the frontline documentary, Libby told Clarke to get on board with this even though Clarke believed beyond any doubt that no such meeting took place. Intelligence actually showed that he was in a different place when the meeting was said to have happend. This meeting was one of the little intelligence items that came from the Rummy Pentagon made up intelligence agency. This is the crap that shows they didn't learn of bad intelligence later, they fargin made the bad intellignece) In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. It is possible that the informant mistook another man for Atta, and the consensus of investigators has concluded that Atta never attended a meeting in Prague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta_al_Sayed
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O.K. I read it again. Slowly. Except for the profanity, which I skimmed. :) You said "the intellegence was fixed around the policy. What dems said does not green light this administration's lie . . . ." How could the intelligence be fixed around the policy, when the intelligence said the same thing for over a decade, including before Bush took office and set his "policy"? Doesn't make sense Berserker. If the intelligence was being fixed around the policy and Bush was "lying" it would make more sense if everyone believed Saddam was NOT a threat before Bush took office. Instead, you have an unbroken chain of comments from Republicans and Democrats uniformly saying Saddam was a threat. Cannot logically separate what the world was saying about Saddam before and after Bush took office from Bush's "policy."
gimme a break ::) I said f**k clinton once which is blocked and the only other things I said was friggin and fargin... Don't come at me like the post was filled with unreadable obscenities ::) Get off my balls, you act like an 1885 prairie school teacher who also serves as the town's sunday minister ::) I'm not even close to the worst profainer on getbig. See my latest post before this post for your answer.
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gimme a break ::) I said f**k clinton once which is blocked and the only other things I said was friggin and fargin... Don't come at me like the post was filled with unreadable obscenities ::) Get off my balls, you act like an 1885 prairie school teacher who also serves as the town's sunday minister ::) I'm not even close to the worst profainer on getbig. See my latest post before this post for your answer.
"You're ignoring the fact that the intellegence was fixed around the policy. What dems said does not green light this administration's lies. And again, stop with the 1998 shit... we was dealt with him then, bombed his ass back to the stone age again. According to Powell and Rice, he wasn't shit in 2001. According to the CIA in 2001 he wasn't shit That's a fact"
:-\
Calm down dude. Good grief. You cuss in probably 90 percent of what I read on this board, which is the primary reason I have trouble reading much of what you post. You sound like an angry man. That isn't a criticism. I know people like you. I've learned to ignore it. No need to get worked up over. Don't start the diatribe stuff. :)
And my kids call me a "goody two shoes." I consider it a compliment. :)
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You're offended by ass and shit ::) Oh Brother ::) I missed that but should have known you would be sensitive to such extreme obscenity ::)
Beach is happy to be a goodie two shoes :-\
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You're offended by ass and shit ::) Oh Brother ::) I missed that but should have known you would be sensitive to such extreme obscenity ::)
Beach is happy to be a goodie two shoes :-\
I didn't say I was offended. I'm not. You're being just a little sensitive. Anyone who is offended by profanity would have a difficult time surviving in our society. What I've found is most people I encounter use it strategically. Some use it ALL the time. Some have difficulty communicating without using it. I deal with all kinds. But when I have the opportunity to ignore it, I do. Not a big deal.
One of my former supervisors (back when I had a boss) used to cuss ALL the time. I bought him a Lee Ermey action figure (the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket). He LOVED it. You should buy one. :) http://www.palleyd.com/sgtermey.html
And yes I am happy to be a "goodie two shoes." I sleep well. :)
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I love that show "mail call"
You guys were doing great with your debate. I was learning a bunch but some how we've sunk to Ad-Homonin or w/e.
Can we get back on track?
:)
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I love that show "mail call"
You guys were doing great with your debate. I was learning a bunch but some how we've sunk to Ad-Homonin or w/e.
Can we get back on track?
:)
For the last time 240 and others, Bush didn't learn the intel was bad... Watch Frontline's The Dark Side, read the downing street memos. look at the many officials that have come forward with confirmation of this... There is a mountain of information suggesting the admin fixed the intelligence. There is Bush's word that he was fooled by bad intel ::)
Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/HowSenate_Intelligence_chairman_fixed_intelligence_and_diverted_blame_fromWhite_House__0811.html
"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, British intelligence, who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials. Dearlove went on, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html
The former CIA official, Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17601
As the downing street memos show, the Brits were aware the intelligence was being fixed around the policy and they had to get on board with that. The result is seen in powell’s 19 page dossier presented to the UN… It turns out 11 pages of the dossier was plagiarized from a student paper with information obtained during the first gulf war…
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/
In the months following the September 11th attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on 8 April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence".[14] The Bush Administration frequently cited these allegations as evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. (as is revealed in the frontline documentary, Libby told Clarke to get on board with this even though Clarke believed beyond any doubt that no such meeting took place. Intelligence actually showed that he was in a different place when the meeting was said to have happend. This meeting was one of the little intelligence items that came from the Rummy Pentagon made up intelligence agency. This is the crap that shows they didn't learn of bad intelligence later, they fargin made the bad intellignece) In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. It is possible that the informant mistook another man for Atta, and the consensus of investigators has concluded that Atta never attended a meeting in Prague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta_al_Sayed
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Beach, you mind??? There's hardly any shock and awe obscenity in this post... A response maybe? ::)
For the last time 240 and others, Bush didn't learn the intel was bad... Watch Frontline's The Dark Side, read the downing street memos. look at the many officials that have come forward with confirmation of this... There is a mountain of information suggesting the admin fixed the intelligence. There is Bush's word that he was fooled by bad intel ::)
Committee Pat Roberts (R-KS) ensured there was no serious investigation into how the administration fixed the intelligence that took the United States to war in Iraq or the fabricated documents used as evidence to do so.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/HowSenate_Intelligence_chairman_fixed_intelligence_and_diverted_blame_fromWhite_House__0811.html
"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, British intelligence, who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials. Dearlove went on, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html
The former CIA official, Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/47/17601
As the downing street memos show, the Brits were aware the intelligence was being fixed around the policy and they had to get on board with that. The result is seen in powell’s 19 page dossier presented to the UN… It turns out 11 pages of the dossier was plagiarized from a student paper with information obtained during the first gulf war…
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/07/sprj.irq.uk.dossier/
In the months following the September 11th attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on 8 April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence".[14] The Bush Administration frequently cited these allegations as evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. (as is revealed in the frontline documentary, Libby told Clarke to get on board with this even though Clarke believed beyond any doubt that no such meeting took place. Intelligence actually showed that he was in a different place when the meeting was said to have happend. This meeting was one of the little intelligence items that came from the Rummy Pentagon made up intelligence agency. This is the crap that shows they didn't learn of bad intelligence later, they fargin made the bad intellignece) In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. It is possible that the informant mistook another man for Atta, and the consensus of investigators has concluded that Atta never attended a meeting in Prague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta_al_Sayed
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Beach = teh pussy. HTH.
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I didn't say I was offended. I'm not. You're being just a little sensitive. Anyone who is offended by profanity would have a difficult time surviving in our society. What I've found is most people I encounter use it strategically. Some use it ALL the time. Some have difficulty communicating without using it. I deal with all kinds. But when I have the opportunity to ignore it, I do. Not a big deal.
One of my former supervisors (back when I had a boss) used to cuss ALL the time. I bought him a Lee Ermey action figure (the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket). He LOVED it. You should buy one. :) http://www.palleyd.com/sgtermey.html
And yes I am happy to be a "goodie two shoes." I sleep well. :)
And BS... You have come across offended over and over and over... You have stated in the past you won't read anything I write... If you're that hung up on words like ass and shit... Oh brother ::)
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Beach, you mind??? There's hardly any shock and awe obscenity in this post... A response maybe? ::)
What. No cussing? Now you went and confused me. :) I'll let Rep. Gephardt respond:
Congressman Gephardt links Saddam with the threat of terrorists nuking US cities:
BOB SCHIEFFER, Chief Washington Correspondent:
And with us now is the Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt. Congressman, you supported taking military action in Iraq. Do you think now it was the right thing to do?
REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT, D-MO, Democratic Presidential Candidate:
I do. I base my determination on what I heard from the CIA. I went out there a couple of times and talked to everybody, including George Tenet. I talked to people in the Clinton administration.
SCHIEFFER:
Well, let me just ask you, do you feel, Congressman, that you were misled?
GEPHARDT:
I don't. I asked very direct questions of the top people in the CIA and people who'd served in the Clinton administration. And they said they believed that Saddam Hussein either had weapons or had the components of weapons or the ability to quickly make weapons of mass destruction. What we're worried about is an A-bomb in a Ryder truck in New York, in Washington and St. Louis. It cannot happen. We have to prevent it from happening. And it was on that basis that I voted to do this.
Congressman Richard Gephardt (Democrat, Montana)
Interviewed on CBS News "Face the Nation"
November 2, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/03/ftn/printable581509.shtml
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And BS... You have come across offended over and over and over... You have stated in the past you won't read anything I write... If you're that hung up on words like ass and shit... Oh brother ::)
::) I'm not ignoring many of your posts because I'm offended. I ignore them because I don't feel like reading profanity-laden ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you. ::)
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Beach = teh pussy. HTH.
I'm glad as hell I didn't grow up in Wyoming a "goodie two shoes" LOL, I can only imagine the missery that would have come from being the kind of person that's put off by hearing shit and ass...
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What. No cussing? Now you went and confused me. :) I'll Rep. Gephardt respond:
Beach, there is ZERO information in Gephardt's statements to refute the information that I posted and the Frontline doc... ZIP... It only shows me that you didn't adequately understand the material or you didn't look at it.
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I'm glad as hell I didn't grow up in Wyoming a "goodie two shoes" LOL, I can only imagine the missery that would have come from being the kind of person that's put off by hearing shit and ass...
he's admitted in the past that he would trust alex jones to warn him of a terror attack than his own president.
he's a hypocrite in that he's been around long enough to see BS wars for profit and still supports them.
he's a fool because he dropped out of high school but mocks others for "being dumb".
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Beach, there is ZERO information in Gephardt's statements to refute the information that I posted and the Frontline doc... ZIP... It only shows me that you didn't adequately understand the material or you didn't look at it.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I think Gephardt's comments clearly show he relied on Clinton administration information to determine Saddam was a threat, which cuts directly against the claim that Bush invented a threat to support the war.
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We'll just have to agree to disagree. I think Gephardt's comments clearly show he relied on Clinton administration information to determine Saddam was a threat, which cuts directly against the claim that Bush invented a threat to support the war.
::) are you completey close minded? It simply does not refute in any fashion anything I posted. But even if it did, you're placing FAITH in the words of a politician justifying his vote over the facts which you are refusing to address. Are you serious with this argument. I will not let this stand at agree to disagree because you are flat out dead wrong.
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Beach, address this one small portion of my lengthy post proving a conserted effort by the admin to fix intel around the policy:
In the months following the September 11th attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on 8 April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence".[14] The Bush Administration frequently cited these allegations as evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. (as is revealed in the frontline documentary, Libby told Clarke to get on board with this even though Clarke believed beyond any doubt that no such meeting took place. Intelligence actually showed that he was in a different place when the meeting was said to have happend. This meeting was one of the little intelligence items that came from the Rummy Pentagon made up intelligence agency. This is the crap that shows they didn't learn of bad intelligence later, they fargin made the bad intellignece) In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. It is possible that the informant mistook another man for Atta, and the consensus of investigators has concluded that Atta never attended a meeting in Prague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta_al_Sayed
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Seems to me that Beach Bum *feels* that saddam was a bad guy and while there was some misleading/exaggeration took place, he believes it was justified by the ends.
I think beach bum sees the 3000 soldiers as cannon fodder too. After swallowing hard every night when the news tells him four more died, he comes here and makes fun of those who oppose it. He knows his side is lying and abusing power, but he *feels* whatever info the other side presents will fuck with his head, and won't look at it.
He knows downing memo pwns the official fvcking story. he's scared.
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https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1.html (https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1.html)
Thought I would include this in the debate.
This is the report from the CIA after the fall of Saddam.
240- This is the whole precursor argument. If you get rid of the weapons but don't destroy the precursors. New chemical weapons can be made quickly.
Scientific Research and Intention to Reconstitute WMD
Many former Iraqi officials close to Saddam either heard him say or inferred that he intended to resume WMD programs when sanctions were lifted. Those around him at the time do not believe that hemade a decision to permanently abandon WMD programs.Saddam encouraged Iraqi officials to preserve the nation’s scientific brain trust essential for WMD. Saddam told his advisors as early as 1991 that he wanted to keep Iraq’s nuclear scientists fully employed. This theme of preserving personnel resources persisted throughout the sanctions period.
* Saddam’s primary concern was retaining a cadre of skilled scientists to facilitate reconstitution of WMD programs after sanctions were lifted, according to former science advisor Ja’far Diya’ Ja’far Hashim. Saddam communicated his policy in several meetings with officials from MIC, Ministry of Industry and Minerals, and the IAEC in 1991-1992. Saddam instructed general directors of Iraqi state companies and other state entities to prevent key scientists from the pre-1991 WMD program from leaving the country. This retention of scientists was Iraq’s only step taken to prepare for a resumption of WMD, in Ja’far’s opinion.
* Presidential secretary ‘Abd Hamid Mahmud wrote that in 1991 Saddam told the scientists that they should “preserve plans in their minds” and “keep the brains of Iraq’s scientists fresh.” Iraq was to destroy everything apart from knowledge, which would be used to reconstitute a WMD program.
* Saddam wanted people to keep knowledge in their heads rather than retain documents that could have been exposed, according to former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq ‘Aziz. Nuclear scientists were told in general terms that the program was over after 1991, and Tariq ‘Aziz inferred that the scientists understood that they should not keep documents or equipment. ‘Aziz also noted that if Saddam had the same opportunity as he did in the 1980s, he probably would have resumed research on nuclear weapons.
* Ja’far said that Saddam stated on several occasions that he did not consider ballistic missiles to be WMD and therefore Iraq should not be subject to missile restrictions. Ja’far was unaware of any WMD activities in Iraq after the Gulf war, but said he thought Saddam would reconstitute all WMD disciplines when sanctions were lifted, although he cautioned that he never heard Saddam say this explicitly. Several former senior Regime officials also contended that nuclear weapons would have been important—if not central—components of Saddam’s future WMD force.
* According to two senior Iraqi scientists, in 1993 Husayn Kamil, then the Minister of Military Industrialization, announced in a speech to a large audience of WMD scientists at the Space Research Center in Baghdad that WMD programs would resume and be expanded, when UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq. Husayn Kamil’s intimate relationship with Saddam added particular credibility to his remarks.
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Sorting Out Whether Iraq Had WMD Before Operation Iraqi Freedom
ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation—including detainee interviews and document exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability. Several senior officers asserted that if Saddam had WMD available when the 2003 war began, he would have used them to avoid being overrun by Coalition forces.
* ‘Amir Hamudi Hasan Al Sa’adi told an emissary from the RG leadership, on 27 January 2003, that if Saddam had WMD, he would use it, according to a former officer with direct knowledge of Iraqi military ground operations and planning.
* According to a former senior RG official, Iraq had dismantled or destroyed all of its WMD assets and manufacturing facilities. Had Saddam possessed WMD assets, he would have used them to counter the Coalition invasion.
* If he had CW, Saddam would have used it against Coalition Forces to save the Regime, according to a former senior official.
* Iraqi military planning did not incorporate the use—or even the threat of use—of WMD after 1991, according to ‘Ali Hasan Al Majid. WMD was never part of the military plan crafted to defeat the 2003 Coalition invasion.
Senior military officers and former Regime officials were uncertain about the existence of WMD during the sanctions period and the lead up to Operation Iraqi Freedom because Saddam sent mixed messages. Early on, Saddam sought to foster the impression with his generals that Iraq could resist a Coalition ground attack using WMD. Then, in a series of meetings in late 2002, Saddam appears to have reversed course and advised various groups of senior officers and officials that Iraq in fact did not have WMD. His admissions persuaded top commanders that they really would have to fight the United States without recourse to WMD. In March 2003, Saddam created further confusion when he implied to his ministers and senior officers that he had some kind of secret weapon.
* Prior to December 2002, Saddam told his generals to concentrate on their jobs and leave the rest to him, because he had “something in his hand” (i.e. “something up his sleeve”), according to Minister of Military Industrialization ‘Abd-al-Tawab ‘Abdallah Al Mullah Huwaysh.
* Saddam surprised his generals when he informed them he had no WMD in December 2002 because his boasting had led many to believe Iraq had some hidden capability, according to Tariq ‘Aziz. Saddam had never suggested to them that Iraq lacked WMD. Military morale dropped rapidly when he told senior officers they would have to fight the United States without WMD.
* Saddam spoke at several meetings, including those of the joint RCC-Ba’th National Command and the ministerial council, and with military commanders in late 2002, explicitly to notify them Iraq had no WMD, according to the former presidential secretary. Saddam called upon other senior officials to corroborate what he was saying.
* In Saddam’s last ministers’ meeting, convened in late March 2003 just before the war began, he told the attendees at least three times, “resist one week and after that I will take over.” They took this to mean he had some kind of secret weapon. There are indications that what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition.
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Beach, address this one small portion of my lengthy post proving a conserted effort by the admin to fix intel around the policy:
In the months following the September 11th attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on 8 April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence".[14] The Bush Administration frequently cited these allegations as evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have concluded that such a meeting did not occur. (as is revealed in the frontline documentary, Libby told Clarke to get on board with this even though Clarke believed beyond any doubt that no such meeting took place. Intelligence actually showed that he was in a different place when the meeting was said to have happend. This meeting was one of the little intelligence items that came from the Rummy Pentagon made up intelligence agency. This is the crap that shows they didn't learn of bad intelligence later, they fargin made the bad intellignece) In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. It is possible that the informant mistook another man for Atta, and the consensus of investigators has concluded that Atta never attended a meeting in Prague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta_al_Sayed
What's there to address? This is one piece of information. Assume it is true (i.e., there was really no Atta meeting), that doesn't change the fact that the entire world considered Saddam a threat.
We just have different takes on the start of the war. You believe Bush manipulated intelligence and formed policy around that intelligence. I believe what they did was adopt the view that existed before they took office that Saddam was a threat. I cannot ignore what Congress and the rest of the world stated both before and after the war started. Those statements are highly relevant IMO and directly contradict the view that Bush manufactured a threat. In my view, too many independent people around the world believed Saddam was a threat to conclude Bush invented that Saddam was a threat.
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I give up... I post a long post of proof that the bush admin worked to cherry pick and fix intelligence and you won't, absolutely won't, address it... so I post one thing from the long post and you note that it's just one piece of info ::) I give up... Your ignorance in impenetrable.
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I give up... I post a long post of proof that the bush admin worked to cherry pick and fix intelligence and you won't, absolutely won't, address it... so I post one thing from the long post and you note that it's just one piece of info ::) I give up... Your ignorance in impenetrable.
You're not making any sense. I give up too. ::)
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You cannot justify lies of a president to congress and the people because you personally like the intended outcome, nor note the words of politicians or policies of past presidents for justification. That's goddamned destructive, dangerous and all around wrong as hell. The downing street memos alone show that intent of the Bush Admin to fix intel around the policy and for the brits to get on board...
Oh and if the "Entire World" considered Saddam a threat, please explain why Collin Powell and Condi Rice were not on board with that notion :-\
Feb. 24, 2001
, while meeting at Cairo's Ittihadiya Palace with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.
Asked about the sanctions placed on Iraq, which were then under review at the Security Council, Powell said the measures were working. In fact, he added, "(Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."--Colin Powell
"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him.
His military forces have not been rebuilt."--Condoleezza Rice
CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer, July 29, 2001
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You're not making any sense. I give up too. ::)
Oh yea right, because no sence could be pulled from the clear cut black and white sources I gave ::)
Clown >:(
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Oh yea right, because no sence could be pulled from the clear cut black and white sources I gave ::)
Clown >:(
Now that's the Berserker I'm used too. The one who cannot discuss or debate an issue without attacking people. Cannot get an agreement, lash out at the person. Pretty juvenile. It's 240's m.o. too. ::)
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Now that's the Berserker I'm used too. The one who cannot discuss or debate an issue without attacking people. Cannot get an agreement, lash out at the person. Pretty juvenile. It's 240's m.o. too. ::)
Go on, run away....
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The matter of whether or not the United States rightfully considered Iraq as an imminent threat has been a matter of much international discourse.
The following addresses claims and the spin from the Bush administration, as well as response and commentary from the media.
However, the question was more or less settled May 1, 2005, by revelations found in The secret Downing Street memo, July 23, 2002 and June 12, 2005, in The leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, July 21, 2002: "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" that the illusion of threat was fabricated by the Bush regime as a justification for its forthcoming invasion of Iraq.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Iraq_as_an_imminent_threat
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(CBS) When no weapons of mass destruction surfaced in Iraq, President Bush insisted that all those WMD claims before the war were the result of faulty intelligence. But a former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller — a 26-year veteran of the agency — has decided to do something CIA officials at his level almost never do: Speak out.
He tells correspondent Ed Bradley the real failure was not in the intelligence community but in the White House. He says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtml
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"It is the duty of any president, in the final analysis, to defend this nation and dispel the security threat. Saddam Hussein has brought military action upon himself by refusing for 12 years to comply with the mandates of the United Nations. The brave and capable men and women of our armed forces and those who are with us will quickly, I know, remove him once and for all as a threat to his neighbors, to the world, and to his own people, and I support their doing so."
Senator John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts)
Statement on eve of military strikes against Iraq
March 17, 2003
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030331&s=lizza033103
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WAM BAM, CORROBORATION OF THE FRONTLINE ACCUSATIONS
The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA
Devising bad intelligence to promote bad policy
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 12.16.02
Print Friendly | Email Article
Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war. These morsels sometimes go directly to the president.
The war over intelligence is a critical part of a broader offensive by the party of war within the Bush administration against virtually the entire expert Middle East establishment in the United States -- including State Department, Pentagon and CIA area specialists and leading military officers. Inside the foreign-policy, defense and intelligence agencies, nearly the whole rank and file, along with many senior officials, are opposed to invading Iraq. But because the less than two dozen neoconservatives leading the war party have the support of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, they are able to marginalize that opposition.
Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war. At the State Department, where Secretary of State Colin Powell's efforts at diplomacy have thus far slowed the relentless pressure for war, a key bureau is chilled by the presence of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Elizabeth L. Cheney, the vice president's daughter, who is in charge of Middle East economic policy, including oil. "When [Near East Affairs] meets, there is no debate," says Parker Borg, who served in the State Department for 30 years as an ambassador and deputy chief of counterterrorism. "How vocal would you be about commenting on Middle East policy with the vice president's daughter there?" Undersecretary of State John Bolton is also part of the small pro-war faction.
And at the Pentagon, where a number of critical offices have been filled by hawkish neoconservatives whose commitment to war with Iraq goes back a decade, Middle East specialists and uniformed military officers alike are seeing their views ignored. "I've heard from people on the Middle East staff in the Pentagon," says Borg, referring to the staff under neocon Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. "The Middle East experts in those officers are as cut off from the policy side as people in the State Department are."
But the sharpest battle is over the CIA. "There is tremendous pressure on [the CIA] to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted," says Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. What's unfolding is a campaign by well-placed hawks to undermine the CIA's ability to provide objective, unbiased intelligence to the White House.
Voice crackling over his cell phone, Jim Woolsey is trying hard to sound objective and analytical, but he is, well, gloating. The former CIA director has been one of the leaders of the get-Saddam Hussein faction for years, promoting a unilateral U.S. strike against Baghdad. Woolsey is not quite a private citizen, serving as an adviser to the CIA and as a member of the Defense Policy Board, which is chaired by the ringleader of the pro-war neocons, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. Woolsey has also, at least once, served as unofficial liaison to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and other Iraqi opposition groups.
What's got him excited is an Oct. 7 letter, recently declassified, from CIA Director George Tenet that put the CIA on record for the first time as saying that there have been "high-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade"; that Iraq and Osama bin Laden's gang have "discussed safe haven"; that members of al-Qaeda have been present in Baghdad; and that Iraq has "provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases."
"The CIA has started saying things that the Defense Department has been saying all along, but up until that letter, I hadn't seen any evidence publicly that the CIA was acknowledging all these contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda," says Woolsey. "What I read the Tenet letter as saying is that they are starting to. The CIA has started to come around to point out some of the things that the Pentagon has been talking about."
Tenet's statement on Iraq and al-Qaeda was a significant departure from the consensus view among intelligence professionals. Since September 11, many of them, inside government and out, have pooh-poohed the notion that Iraq has provided support to al-Qaeda, and they continue to do so. Daniel Benjamin, co-author, with Steven Simon, of The Age of Sacred Terror, was director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC) in the late 1990s, and he oversaw a comprehensive review of Iraq and terrorism that came up empty. "In 1998, we went through every piece of intelligence we could find to see if there was a link [between] al-Qaeda and Iraq," says Benjamin. "We came to the conclusion that our intelligence agencies had it right: There was no noteworthy relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. I know that for a fact. No other issue has been as closely scrutinized as this one." The State Department's annual review of state-sponsored terrorism hasn't mentioned any link, either.
A sign of how the Iraq-al-Qaeda issue is roiling the agency is how Tenet himself qualified the analysis. In his letter, addressed to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Tenet wrote: "Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability." Benjamin, along with other analysts, points out that the CIA's letter seemed to strain to make the connection, noting that the phrase "sources of varying reliability" is "a way of saying that there isn't much evidence."
But if after failing to find links between Iraq and al-Qaeda for years the CIA is suddenly discovering a connection between the two, some analysts believe that it is Tenet, the CIA director, playing politics and arranging to tell the Pentagon what it wants to hear. "[The CIA] is giving Bush what he wanted on Iraq and al-Qaeda," says Melvin Goodman of the Center for International Policy, who is also a former CIA Soviet expert and a fierce critic of politicized intelligence. "Tenet is playing the game, to a certain extent." Goodman, who has maintained contacts inside the agency, says that the CIA's key intelligence analysts are upset with Tenet and concerned that he will frame their conclusions in a way that kowtows to the Pentagon's preconceived view. "There's a lot of anger and questions about whether Tenet will hold off this pressure," Goodman says. "[The CIA analysts are] worried, and they don't have a lot of confidence in him. But the analytical core is holding fast to the evidence, and the evidence doesn't show that link."
However, the intense pressure from the Pentagon seems to be having an effect. Tenet is, after all, a politician, not a CIA veteran. After serving as staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Tenet moved over to the CIA itself and was named to the director's job by President Clinton. But he took pains to ingratiate himself with the Bushes, père et fils. He quickly acted to name the CIA headquarters after former President Bush in 1998, organized a major intelligence conference at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University -- itself headed by Robert Gates, a former CIA director -- and personally briefed then-Texas Gov. Bush during the 2000 election campaign. Tenet's quiet politicking was enough to persuade Bush to keep him on at the CIA, and the director's recent actions signal that he doesn't intend to buck the drive toward war.
"It's demoralizing to a number of the analysts," says Cannistraro. "The analysts are human, and some of them are also ambitious. What you have to worry about is the 'chill factor.' If people are ignoring your intelligence, and the Pentagon and NSC keep telling you, 'What about this? What about this? Keep looking!' -- well, then you start focusing on one thing instead of the other thing, because you know that's what your political masters want to hear."
Spy vs. Spy
For more than a year, one of the main sources of Defense Department pressure on the CIA has been a unnamed, rump intelligence unit set up in Undersecretary Feith's policy shop at the department. Begun as a two-person group, it has since expanded to four and now five people, and was set up to provide Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Feith with data they can use to disparage, undermine and contradict the CIA's own analyses. Established just after September 11, the unit's main focus -- though not its only one -- has been on Iraq, especially Iraq's alleged links to al-Qaeda and Iraq's alleged intent to use its alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
In a controversial Oct. 24 briefing at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld noted that a primary purpose of the unit was to provide him with ammunition that he could use to harass the CIA staffer who briefs him every morning. "In comes the briefer, and she walks through the daily brief and I ask questions," said Rumsfeld. "What I could do is say, 'Gee, what about this? Or what about that? Has somebody thought of this?'" Using powerful computers and having access to reams of intelligence factoids, Feith's team could create a steady stream of data bits that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith himself could use to pick apart the CIA's conclusions, sending the CIA's collectors and analysts back to rewrite their reports.
The fact that the unit is overseen by Feith, an ideologically committed partisan who is pushing for war with Iraq, raises questions about its impartiality and its willingness to reach conclusions that might contradict the Pentagon leadership's stated policy intentions. "It's one thing to create a unit to provide an independent look, and it's another thing to go on a fishing expedition," says Benjamin, the former NSC official. "The fact that this unit has been there for more than a year suggests that it is a fishing expedition."
Informed sources say the person in charge of the unnamed unit is Abram Shulsky, another key member of the Perle-Wolfowitz war party. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) was elected to the Senate in 1976, he "brought with him some of [Sen. Henry M.] Jackson's most militantly neoconservative former aides, among them Elliott Abrams, Chester Finn, Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt," according to a 1986 account in The Washington Post. Perle was also a former Jackson aide, and Shulsky, Perle and many kindred thinkers got jobs in President Reagan's Department of Defense in the 1980s. Shulsky also spent years at the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, a project of the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC), and at the RAND Corporation. At RAND, along with other fellow neocons, including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (now Cheney's chief of staff), Shulsky contributed a study called "From Containment to Global Leadership: America and the World after the Cold War." That study was a forerunner of the recent military strategy document released by the Pentagon suggesting that the United States act to preserve its global hegemony, even if it means preemptive war or preventive war making.
Roy Godson, the head of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence and a colleague of Shulsky's for many years, has high hopes for the success of the Pentagon's Iraq intelligence unit, despite its small size when arrayed against the CIA's might. "It might turn out to be a David against Goliath," says Godson.
Dubious Intelligence
The Pentagon's war against the CIA relies heavily on intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress. But most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil. Yet, Perle, Woolsey and the Pentagon's policy-makers increasingly use the INC as their primary source of information about Iraq's weapons programs, its relationship to terrorism and its internal political dynamics. "A lot of what is useful with respect to what's going on in Iraq is coming from defectors, and furthermore they are defectors who have often come through an organization, namely, the INC, that neither State nor the CIA likes very much," Woolsey told me.
Earlier this year, the State Department abruptly stopped funding an INC scheme to collect intelligence inside Iraq. "The INC could only account for $2.5 million out of $4.5 million they received for the program," says a State Department official. "I can't say that there was evidence of corruption or embezzlement, but $2 million was unaccounted for." The more the INC began getting into intelligence work, the more the State Department grew uncomfortable funding the program. "The only reason they stopped paying for that program is that the State Department hates the INC," says a knowledgeable source. Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon picked up the tab. Now, whatever intelligence the INC collects goes straight to the Defense Department, according to spokesman Lt. Col. David Lapan. "The intelligence guys here get the information first and do the analysis," he says. Goodman, the former CIA analyst, concurs, saying, "The INC is in the Pentagon every day."
But the Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else. [See "Tinker, Banker, Neocon, Spy," tap, Nov. 18.] "The [INC's] intelligence isn't reliable at all," says Cannistraro. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."
Adds Cannistraro, "They're willing to twist information in order to serve that interest. They've opened up a channel at the Pentagon to collect intelligence from Iraqi exiles, using people off the books, contractors. It's getting pretty close to an Iran-Contra type of situation."
Manipulating the CIA is nothing new, of course. For decades, politicians annoyed that intelligence from the agency might work against policy goals have sought to bring pressure to bear on the CIA to alter its views or, failing that, to diminish the CIA's standing. During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon disparaged CIA analyses that cast into doubt the projected "light at the end of the tunnel." In the 1970s, then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush invited a so-called Team B group of neoconservative hawks to spin out a report accusing the CIA ("Team A") of consistently underestimating the Soviet threat. (Team B, it's worth noting, was created at the instigation of Albert Wohlstetter, the political godfather to Perle, Wolfowitz, et al.) That pressure continued, in other forms, during Ronald Reagan's military buildup in the 1980s. In the 1980s, too, then-CIA Director Bill Casey was notorious for constantly trying to politicize the CIA, repeatedly trying to influence the agency's reporting on Central America, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
The Uses of Endless War
The hostility by the hard-liners against what they see as the CIA's myopia on Iraq at least matches any of those earlier fights. Perle, who said recently that the CIA's analysis of Iraq "isn't worth the paper it's written on," adds that the CIA is afraid of rocking the ark in the Middle East. "The CIA is status-quo oriented," he told me. "They don't want to take risks. They don't like the INC because they only like to work with people they can control."
According to informed sources, Perle, who's currently based at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has for the past several years sponsored the work of a former CIA clandestine operative, Reuel Marc Gerecht, helping him financially, lending him the use of his villa in France to write a book and getting him a fellowship at AEI. Gerecht, who spends much of his time living in Brussels, maintains close ties to the INC via its centers in London and Washington. According to a person familiar with the arrangement, Gerecht is privately working with the INC's intelligence people to help funnel information to Feith's office in the Pentagon.
Asked whether he is working as an unofficial intelligence handler for the INC, Gerecht demurs but doesn't deny it. "It's pretty overstated," he says. "I talk to the Iraqi opposition now and then, but there are a lot more people in Washington who talk to the Iraqi opposition. So I don't think that Pentagon requires my assistance ... in gathering information from Iraqi opposition." But Gerecht is quick to criticize the CIA over Iraq. "There is a great deal of hesitancy if not opposition to the war at the agency," he says. "I don't think [Rumsfeld] is terribly happy. The collective output that CIA puts out is usually pretty mushy. I think it's fair to say that the civilian leadership isn't terribly cracked up about the intelligence they receive from CIA."
To call Gerecht a hard-liner on Iraq would be an understatement. For him and for many of his allies -- Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and others -- an attack on Iraq is a strategic necessity, not because Saddam Hussein is a threat but because America needs to display an overwhelming show of force to keep unruly Arabs and Muslims all over the world in line. "If we really intend to extinguish the hope that has fueled the rise of al-Qaeda and violent anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, we have no choice but to re-instill in our foes and friends the fear and respect that attaches to any great power," he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last December. "Only a war against Saddam Hussein will decisively restore the awe that protects American interests abroad and citizens at home. We've been running from this fight for 10 years."
The Pentagon's campaign against the CIA is broader than just Iraq. Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has been squeezed by the military again and again. Through its control over the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other entities, the Pentagon already controls the vast bulk of America's spy budget. To consolidate that control, Rumsfeld is currently pushing to create an intelligence czar at the Pentagon whose power and influence would rival that of the CIA director's. And more and more often, the CIA's covert-operations arm finds itself dominated by the Defense Department's Special Forces units, the gung-ho soldiers who've been on the front lines in the ongoing, and apparently endless, war on terrorism.
What's at stake here is far greater than a bureaucratic turf battle. The CIA exists to provide pure and unbiased intelligence to its chief customer, the president. George W. Bush, whose knowledge of world affairs is limited at best, probably depends more heavily than most presidents on what his aides tell him about the outside world. And there is mounting evidence that the decision to go to war is based on intelligence of doubtful veracity, which has been cooked by Pentagon hawks.
Robert Dreyfuss
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Beach??? John Kerry ::) Oh Brother ::) I must be wrong ::)
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"Ten years after the Gulf War and Saddam is still there and still continues to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Now there are suggestions he is working with al Qaeda, which means the very terrorists who attacked the United States last September may now have access to chemical and biological weapons."
James P. Rubin, President Clinton's State Department spokesman
In a PBS documentary titled "Saddam's Ultimate Solution"
July 11, 2002
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/saddam/
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More corroboration of the Frontline Doc....
CIA Warned Bush of No Weapons in Iraq: Retired Official
The Central Intelligence Agency warned US President George W. Bush before the Iraq war that it had reliable information the government of Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, a retired CIA operative disclosed.
The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.
Tyler Drumheller
retired CIA operative
But the operative, Tyler Drumheller, said top White House officials simply brushed off the warning, saying they were "no longer interested" in intelligence and that the policy toward Iraq had been already set.
The disclosure, made in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program due to be broadcast late Sunday, adds to earlier accusations that the Bush administration used intelligence selectively as it built its case for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's regime.
The administration claimed in the run-up to the war that Baghdad had extensive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was working clandestinely to build a nuclear arsenal, therefore, presenting a threat to the world.
An extensive CIA-led probe undertaken after the US military took control of Iraq failed to turn up any such weapons. But Bush and other members of his administration have blamed the fiasco on a massive intelligence failure and vehemently denied manipulating information they had been provided.
However, Drumheller, who was a top CIA liaison officer in Europe before the war, insisted Bush had been explicitly warned well before an invasion order was given that the United States may not find the suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The information about the absence of the suspected weapons in Iraq, according to excerpts of Drumheller's remarks, was clandestinely provided to the United States by former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who doubled as a covert intelligence agent for Western services.
Then-CIA director George Tenet immediately delivered this report to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking administration officials, but the information was dismissed, Drumheller said.
"The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," the former CIA official recalled. "And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
Drumheller said the White House did not want any additional data from Sabri because, as he pointed out, "the policy was set."
"The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," he argued.
The CIA declined to comment on the disclosure.
Drumheller admitted that Sabri was just one source, but pointed out that the administration would not shy away from other single-source information if it suited its policy goals.
"They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all," he complained.
The White House had embraced a British report that Iraq had purchased 500 tons of uranium from the African nation of guy, allegedly to restart its nuclear weapons program.
A special CIA envoy Joseph Wilson, who made a secret trip to guy in late 2002 to verify the report, dismissed it as unfounded -- much to the displeasure of the White House.
Drumheller, who retired from the agency last year, is the second high-ranking ex-CIA official to criticize the administration's use of intelligence in months leading up to the war.
Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, wrote in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that the White House was "cherry-picking" information and that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made."
There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the latest charges.
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"Ten years after the Gulf War and Saddam is still there and still continues to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Now there are suggestions he is working with al Qaeda, which means the very terrorists who attacked the United States last September may now have access to chemical and biological weapons."
James P. Rubin, President Clinton's State Department spokesman
In a PBS documentary titled "Saddam's Ultimate Solution"
July 11, 2002
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/saddam/
If you would bother to review the frontline doc and info I posted, you would clearly see this statement is derived from lies drummed up with false Intel out of the pentagon
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same ol same ol... all backed up in the frontline doc...
CIA Intelligence Refutes Bush's War Rhetoric
by David Corn
The Washington Post front-page headline read, "Analysts Discount Attack by Iraq." The New York Times said, "CIA Warns That a US Attack May Ignite Terror." But these newspapers could have reasonably announced, "CIA Information Indicates Bush Misleads Public on Threat from Iraq."
In the past week, President Bush has been on a tear; in speech after speech (many of them on the campaign trail), he has been excoriating Saddam Hussein as a direct threat to Americans. At a political fundraiser in New Hampshire on October 5, he called Hussein "a man who hates so much he's willing to kill his own people, much less Americans." And Bush noted, "We must do everything we can to disarm this man before he hurts a single American." During a primetime speech in Cincinnati two days later, Bush characterized Saddam as a "threat...that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America." He pronounced the Iraqi dictator a "significant" danger to America and said, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." He remarked, "we're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using" unmanned aerial vehicles "for missions targeting the United States." And he proclaimed, "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us." At an October 8 campaign rally in Tennessee, Bush remarked, "I've got a problem, obviously, with Mr. Saddam Hussein, and so do you, and that is he poses a threat. He poses a threat to America."
The message is, Saddam is coming, Saddam is coming, and the United States better take the sucker out before he strikes America--meaning, you. But Bush has a problem: the CIA doesn't back him up on this. In fact, it says the opposite.
At a hearing held by the House and Senate intelligence committees on October 8, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate panel, read from a letter sent to him by CIA chief George Tenet. In that note, Tenet reported the CIA had concluded that "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological weapons] against the United States." The CIA, according to Tenet, also had determined, "Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." And the Agency found, "Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
The bottom-line: Saddam is not likely in the near future to hit the United States or share his weapons with al Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists, unless the United States assaults Iraq. This is hardly the picture the President is sharing with the American public.
Tenet's letter also referred to an exchange at an October 2 secret hearing in which Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, asked a senior intelligence official, "If [Saddam] didn't feel threatened...is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?" The intelligence official replied, "My judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack--let me put a time frame on it--in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low."
In all of Bush's dash-to-war rhetoric, where does he refer to this "low" likelihood? Well, he doesn't. And it was telling that this information had to be squeezed out of the CIA. On October 6, the Agency released a white paper on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which maintained that Saddam possessed certain chemical and biological weapons but "probably would not be able to make a [nuclear] weapon until the last half of the decade," unless he could acquire sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad. But this unclassified version of a classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate left out the original's findings on Saddam's views on the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The CIA, it seems, was trying to keep from the public crucial information: its judgment of what Saddam might do with his arsenal. But members of the intelligence committee had been able to peruse the full NIE, and Graham subsequently leaned on Tenet to declassify this material.
Tenet, good soldier that he is, tried to downplay the significance of the disclosure. In a statement, he said, "there is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the President in his [Cincinnati] speech. Although we think the chances of Saddam initiating a WMD attack at this moment are low--in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses WMD--there is no question that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD against the United States or our allies in the region for blackmail, deterrence, or otherwise grows as his arsenal continues to build."
Nice try. While Bush has raised the specter of a WMD-wielding Saddam bullying his neighbors and Israel, that threat is indeed different from the threat of an Iraqi strike against the United States. Bush is not arguing the nation must prepare for war now--that is, Congress must immediately grant him the power to launch a unilateral and preemptive attack as he sees fit--because sometime in the future Saddam can intimidate Jordan by threatening the use of chemical weapons. Review those quotes above. He is asserting Saddam must be prevented from striking at the United States--an action the CIA deems not probable "in the foreseeable future."
This information from the CIA ought to prompt members of Congress--who are placing aside other matters to debate (so to speak) legislation that would authorize Bush to invade Iraq--to shout, "Time out!" But it's unlikely this piece of awkward news will derail the rush to approve a use-of-force resolution. Besides, the Bush administration, in case it is inconvenienced by this disclosure, is beefing up another of its reasons for war: the al Qaeda-Iraq connection.
In that same letter, Tenet declassified "points for unclassified discussions" on the possible al Qaeda-Saddam link. One point is, "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade." Another is, "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression." A third is, "We have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad." And a fourth point is, "We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."
A link between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime would indeed be troubling--even frightening--and require a response. But the nature of the response should depend on the nature of the connection. Tenet's "points" do not present enough information on which to render a judgment. When did these "senior level contacts" occur and what did they concern? When were the discussions regarding safe havens and reciprocal nonaggression? If all this happened ten years ago and led to no agreements or actions, that would not be reason for attacking Iraq. And what does it mean that al Qaeda members are in Iraq? Al Qaeda has a presence in 60 countries, including the United States. If the CIA knows al Qaeda leaders "sought contacts in Iraq" in order to obtain weapons of mass destruction--and can share that tidbit with the public--can it say whether it knows when this transpired and whether the al Qaeda members succeeded in establishing these contacts? If so, who were their Iraqi contacts? Officials in Saddam's government? As for the training Iraq provided to al Qaeda members, it would be important to understand when that occurred, who supplied the training, and how extensive it was. Given the track record of his CIA, it is difficult not to suspect Tenet was being selective in his release of these "points."
Recently, Representative Jim McDermott, a Seattle Democrat, was lambasted when he commented, while in Baghdad, that it was conceivable Bush would "mislead" the public in his pursuit of Saddam. Pundits and Republicans howled, and some Democrats complained McDermott had tainted their party. Any campaign consultant could have told McDermott it was politically unwise to utter such an inflammatory statement while in Iraq, the land of the enemy. But McDermott's point--that Bush is willing to stretch the truth to obtain authority to launch a war--has been confirmed. By the CIA.
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Ah those Pentagon liars. I guess they fooled all the following Democrats and Republicans before Bush took office:
"Dear Mr. President: ... We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraq sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Sincerely,
Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Frank R. Lautenberg, Dick Lugar, Kit Bond, Jon Kyl, Chris Dodd, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Alfonse D'Amato, Bob Kerrey, Pete V. Domenici, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Mikulski, Thomas Daschle, John Breaux, Tim Johnson, Daniel K. Inouye, Arlen Specter, James Inhofe, Strom Thurmond, Mary L. Landrieu, Wendell Ford, John Kerry, Chuck Grassley, Jesse Helms, Rick Santorum.
Letter to President Clinton
Signed by Senators Tom Daschle, John Kerry and others
October 9, 1998
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Letters,%20reports%20and%20statements/levin-10-9-98.html
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again and again and again and again... But BEACH would have me listen to politicians justifying their votes over facts and testimony from inside sources.
ANOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ex-CIA official: WMD evidence ignored
'60 Minutes' report: White House disregarded good intelligence
Sunday, April 23, 2006; Posted: 10:04 p.m. EDT (02:04 GMT)
Manage Alerts | What Is This? (CNN) -- A retired CIA official has accused the Bush administration of ignoring intelligence indicating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no active nuclear program before the United States-led coalition invaded it, CBS News said Sunday.
Tyler Drumheller, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe, told "60 Minutes" that the administration "chose to ignore" good intelligence, the network said in a posting on its Web site.
Drumheller said that, before the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in 2003, the White House "ignored crucial information" from Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, that indicated Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Drumheller said that, when then-CIA Director George Tenet told President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking officials that Sabri was providing information, his comments were met with excitement that proved short-lived.
"[The source] told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," Drumheller is quoted as saying. "The [White House] group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.' "
Drumheller said the administration officials wanted no more information from Sabri because: "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."
CBS said the White House declined to respond to the charge and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Sabri was just one source and therefore not reliable.
But Drumheller said it was not unusual for the administration to rely on single-source stories when those stories confirmed what the White House wanted to hear.
He cited a report the CIA received in late 2001 that alleged Iraq had bought 500 tons of uranium-containing compounds from Africa.
"They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all," he said.
Bush included the reference, which was attributed to the British and turned out to be false, in his 2003 State of the Union Address.
The CIA in 2002 had sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to guy to investigate the claims, and he went public in July 2003 criticizing the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq. The subsequent publication of his wife's identity as a CIA employee spawned an investigation that resulted in the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff and is still ongoing. (Full story)
"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure," Drumheller told CBS' Ed Bradley. "This was a policy failure. I think, over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to be one of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time."
The White House earlier this month reacted angrily to a report that Bush had cited trailers suspected as biological weapons labs as proof of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after intelligence officials knew that the trailers were not part of a WMD program. (Full story)
"I cannot count how many times the president has said the intelligence was wrong," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
He added that the administration has implemented reforms to make sure that "the executive branch and the Congress have the best possible intelligence as they move forward to deal with the threats that face this country and face this world."
Another retired CIA official in February said the Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war.
In an article published in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken." (Full story)
In November 2005, CNN obtained a 2003 CIA report that raised doubts about a claim that al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons -- assertions that were repeated later by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in making the case for the invasion of Iraq. (Full story)
A day after that report surfaced, Bush gave a speech on Veteran's Day in which he accused critics of the Iraq war of distorting the events that led to the U.S. invasion.
Bush said that "intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein" and that a Senate Intelligence Committee report issued in July 2004 "found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments." (Full story)
The Silberman-Robb commission, which was appointed by Bush, also found no evidence that political pressure skewed the intelligence. But neither that commission nor the Senate panel addressed how the administration made its case for war.
Senate Democrats have pressured the Intelligence Committee to complete a second phase of its report that would focus on how the prewar intelligence was used by the administration, rather than how it was produced.
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gentlemen...
the warhawks penetrate both parties. HTH. To defend or attack either party is pointless.
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"Dear Mr. President:
The events of September 11 have highlighted the vulnerability of the United States to determined terrorists. As we work to clean up Afghanistan and destroy al Qaeda, it is imperative that we plan to eliminate the threat from Iraq.
This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs.
The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained. For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later.
Mr. President, all indications are that in the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power."
Sincerely,
Congressman Harold Ford (Democrat, Tennessee)
Senator Bob Graham (Democrat, Florida)
Congressman Tom Lantos (Democrat, California)
Senator Joseph Lieberman (Democrat, Connecticut)
Senator Sam Brownback (Republican, Kansas)
Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina)
Congressman Henry Hyde (Republican, Illinois)
Senator Trent Lott (Republican, Mississippi)
Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona)
Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Alabama)
Letter to President Bush
December 5, 2001
http://www.house.gov/ford/12_06_01a.htm
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gentlemen...
the warhawks penetrate both parties. HTH. To defend or attack either party is pointless.
I'm not that much... I have long long long long been very critical of dems for their pro-war blank check they gave bush... Long time... This just happens to be the only point Beach feels he has to use against me... BUT, I will say that the Republicans quite obviously took it to a higher level than dems. One thing for sure, the neocons are 100% to blame... There is no arguing that. Find me a neocon that is a dem.
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Beach, what in the heck is that last post of yours supposed to prove? I mean really... What?
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Beach, what in the heck is that last post of yours supposed to prove? I mean really... What?
Why are you asking me that question Berserker? I mean, you're just going to frustrated by my response. :) But since you asked . . . It proves members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, believed Saddam was a threat and had to be removed from power before the war. Or to put it in their words, "The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained. For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later."
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neocons are some greedy, deceptive fvckers.
can anyone, even you beach, deny that?
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Why are you asking me that question Berserker? I mean, you're just going to frustrated by my response. :) But since you asked . . . It proves members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, believed Saddam was a threat and had to be removed from power before the war. Or to put it in their words, "The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained. For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later."
Hilarious that it doesn't register with you that some of these members of congress you're quoting for proof ::) that saddam was a threat got the notion from the false report built with false intell. Absolutely hilarious... Even more funny that you're going to politicians to make your case and I'm going to the CIA, weapons inspectors and revealed official documents and serious investigative reports like Frontline to make my case... Politicians given false intell vs. Facts... hmmm... I'm not upset beach, I'm laughing...
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neocons are some greedy, deceptive fvckers.
can anyone, even you beach, deny that?
If I remember right, Beach didn't know what a neocon was until about a month ago. He thought it was a derogatory liberal term for conservatives.
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If I remember right, Beach didn't know what a neocon was until about a month ago. He thought it was a derogatory liberal term for conservatives.
Correct. I asked Ozmo what his definition was and he said extreme conservative views. I suspect many others use "necon" in this fashion.
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Correct. I asked Ozmo what his definition was and he said extreme conservative views. I suspect many others use "necon" in this fashion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative
Essentially, Neocons believe in US imperialism. As much as the world we can control, the better. Utilitarian use of human, monetary, and earth resources is their way to go.
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Correct. I asked Ozmo what his definition was and he said extreme conservative views. I suspect many others use "necon" in this fashion.
no... Beach... no... Infact many on far right of conservatism oppose the neoconservatives... example: Pat Buccannan. http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/History_of_Neoconservativism
Now the term has become somewhat misused at times and missapplied but that is actually partly do to the neocons themselves... With huge failures looming, they didn't much like the label identifying them with these failures. So you have guys like Kristol running from a once embraced term. At one point they tried, Kristol and others, to associate the term with anti-semitism... Kristol said it was codeword by liberals for Jew ::) That was an attempt to destroy the term and save some credibility.
[edit] Distinctions from other conservatives
Most people currently described as "neoconservatives" are members of the Republican Party, but while neoconservatives have generally been in electoral alignment with other conservatives, have served in the same Presidential Administrations, and have often ignored intra-conservative ideological differences in alliance against those to their left, there are notable differences between neoconservative and traditional or "paleoconservative" views. In particular, neoconservatives disagree with the nativist, protectionist, and isolationist strain of American conservatism once exemplified by the ex-Republican "paleoconservative" Pat Buchanan, and the traditional "pragmatic" approach to foreign policy often associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which emphasized pragmatic accommodation with dictators; peace through negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control; détente and containment — rather than rollback — of the Soviet Union; and the initiation of the process that led to ties between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States.
Donald and Frederick Kagan's book While America Sleeps argues, at book length, an analogy between the post-cold war United States and Britain's post-World War I reduction in its military and avoidance of confrontation with other major powers.
As compared with traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which sometimes exhibit an isolationist strain, neoconservatism is characterized by an increased emphasis on defense capability, a willingness to challenge regimes deemed hostile to the values and interests of the United States, pressing for free-market policies abroad, and promoting democracy and freedom. Neoconservatives are strong believers in democratic peace theory.