Did the Bush administration mislead us?

[GracieMae]

Ex-Arms Hunter Kay Says No WMD Stockpiles In Iraq

David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.

In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties," he said. http://wireservice.wired.com/


Do you feel misled by the Bush administration or do you feel that because the UN took too long that Saddam had enough to hide them in another country?

[kingclick]

From what I have read and what I can tell it seems that the Bush Administration may have mislead us. Definitely? No. But that question is big enough for me to not trust him for another term. If he did move them, why aren't we searching for them elsewhere?

[Prisoner]

Well Syria won't just let us go waltzing to have a look around now would they?

First of all, ask yourself, Libya, the same intel gathering techniques were used as in Iraq and we were dead on right. So right, that they disarmend right before our eyes.

Secondly, since the Bush Administration is getting accused of misleading, and that accusation alone is supposedly enough to not allow him to be re-elected, who will you vote for?

United States Senator John Kerry, who according to Congressional record, looked at the intelligence and stated:
"It is not possible to overstate the ominous implications for the Middle East if Saddam were to develop and successfully militarize and deploy potent biological weapons. We can all imagine the consequences. Extremely small quantities of several known biological weapons have the capability to exterminate the entire population of cities the size of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. These could be delivered by ballistic missile, but they also could be delivered by much more pedestrian means; aerosol applicators on commercial trucks easily could suffice. If Saddam were to develop and then deploy usable atomic weapons, the same holds true." (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 11/9/97, pp. S12254 -S12255)

On the use of force against Saddam to prevent WMD production:

'[Saddam Hussein] cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation."(Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 11/9/97, pp. S12254 -S12255)

"In my judgment, the Security Council should authorize a strong U.N. military response that will materially damage, if not totally destroy, as much as possible of the suspected infrastructure for developing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, as well as key military command and control nodes. Saddam Hussein should pay a grave price, in a currency that he understands and values, for his unacceptable behavior. This should not be a strike consisting only of a handful of cruise missiles hitting isolated targets primarily of presumed symbolic value." (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 11/9/97, pp. S12254 -S12255)


"Were its willingness to serve in these respects to diminish or vanish because of the ability of Saddam to brandish these weapons, then the ability of the United Nations or remnants of the gulf war coalition, or even the United States acting alone, to confront and halt Iraqi aggression would be gravely damaged." (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 11/9/97, pp. S12254 -S12255)

"[W]hile we should always seek to take significant international actions on a multilateral rather than a unilateral basis whenever that is possible, if in the final analysis we face what we truly believe to be a grave threat to the well-being of our Nation or the entire world and it cannot be removed peacefully, we must have the courage to do what we believe is right and wise." (Sen. John Kerry, Congressional Record, 11/9/97, pp. S12254 -S12255)

and again in 2003:
"Without 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 is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real .."


Here is just a snippet of quotes from others who Looked at the same intelligence and came to the same conclusions as Bush did. We were even taken to war in 1998 on the same intelligence.

"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 [the USA], 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

"SaddamHussein 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."
- Madelin Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated 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, December 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 mandated 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 seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. 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 havenuclear weapons within the next five years has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (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."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002


Now for us to believe that Bush misled us we would have to believe that he infiltrated the Clinton Administration before 1997 in order to carry out his plan of becoming President in 2001 in order to attack Iraq in 2003.

[karaokeguy]

Point taken. However, this ignores the simple facts that this administration has made every attempt to link Saddam Hussien to 9/11, despite the fact that no such link exists. Also, the decision to invade Iraq was made long before 9/11. Recall the second presidential debate in 2000 when Bush stated his intention to "take out" Saddam Hussien.

However, prior to 9/11 there was little if any popular support for such action. And in the wake of 9/11, we're now finding out that this administration automatically saw the potential to link the attacks to Iraq.

And in the wake of Iraq war, we've alienated many traditional allies, as well as much of the world community.

[Prisoner]

Talking points taken. But your claim that something is being ignored is false.

Recall the second presidential debate in 2000 when Bush stated his intention to "take out" Saddam Hussien.
This is from the debate that you are referring to:

BUSH: That's hard to tell. I think that, you know, I would hope to be able to convince people I could handle the Iraqi situation better.

MODERATOR: Saddam Hussein, you mean, get him out of there?

BUSH: I would like to, of course, and I presume this administration would as well. We don't know -- there are no inspectors now in Iraq, the coalition that was in place isn't as strong as it used to be. He is a danger. We don't want him fishing in troubled waters in the Middle East. And it's going to be hard, it's going to be important to rebuild that coalition to keep the pressure on him.
Saying that he would like to take Hussein out is hardly saying that he intends to do such.


GORE: Well, when I got to be a part of the current administration, it was right after -- I was one of the few members of my political party to support former President Bush in the Persian Gulf War resolution, and at the end of that war, for whatever reason, it was not finished in a way that removed Saddam Hussein from power. I know there are all kinds of circumstances and explanations. But the fact is that that's the situation that was left when I got there. And we have maintained the sanctions. Now I want to go further. I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein

Could you provide us with some facts about Bush trying to link Saddam to 9/11, or was this administration linking Hussein to terrorism such as harboring terrorist Abu Abbas and paying for homicide bombings in Israel?

Why do you say that WE have alienated many traditional allies? Maybe they are the one's doing the alienating for not supporting us in our endeavor to rid the world of a murdering tyrant. Afterall, documentation shows that many of those so-called allies were profiting from Iraqi oil contracts for opposing us. Also, look up the wonderful success of the U.N's oil for food program and the personal profiting that was going on there.

[Peanut]

(Totally off topic---good to have you back, Pris!)

[Prisoner]

Thanks Peanut, but I am only part-time back, I am busy as hell and do not post much anywhere anymore...even my own board. But I will not miss the NASCAR contest on my board.

[karaokeguy]

Talking points taken. But your claim that something is being ignored is false.

Not "talking points", but rather a valid view of the situation. And nor is it "false". I made a small error.

"He [Saddam Hussein] doesn't need to be building them [weapons of mass destruction] . . . He just needs to know I'll take them out. It's important for a future commander in chief to state our intentions and the means will be evident to him."

-- Bush, cited in the Boston Globe
December 4, 1999

And in another presidential debate. I thought it was the second, it was a Republican debate.

From the Eagle Tribune 12/3/99

As for Iraq, he said he would not ease the sanctions or try to negotiate with Mr. Hussein, and if he discovered the country was "developing weapons of mass destruction" -- "I'd take them out."

So I was mistaken. It was the weapons (that don't exist) that Bush wished to take out. But to do that would require removing Saddam Hussein, and he made such statements long prior to 9/11.

And I've not said that Hussein didn't have links to Palestinian terror groups. Only that he had none to al Qaeda. But the administration has tried to link Hussein to 9/11. Here's a couple of links...

CSM 3/14/03 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html)

Scoop (http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00050.htm)

[Prisoner]

Not "talking points", but rather a valid view of the situation. And nor is it "false". I made a small error.
It was not a small error, it was an outright false statement, made by you.

None of what you posted proves YOUR claim that:
the decision to invade Iraq was made long before 9/11. Recall the second presidential debate in 2000 when Bush stated his intention to "take out" Saddam Hussien.
I mean, you stated this as if it were some kind of fact. Something that a simple search is all it took to show how wrong were.

Why don't you research the debate transcripts. Even if it is correct, this STILL does not support your claim that he planned to invade Iraq "long before 9/11."


So I was mistaken. It was the weapons (that don't exist) that Bush wished to take out. But to do that would require removing Saddam Hussein, and he made such statements long prior to 9/11.
Now answer this, where did the weapons go. He had them, he used them on his own people. So where did they go?

And I've not said that Hussein didn't have links to Palestinian terror groups. Only that he had none to al Qaeda. But the administration has tried to link Hussein to 9/11. Here's a couple of links...
It never ceases to amaze me how gullible you people are, how so full of hatred that you read one sentence and ignorantly think it tells the whole story.

Here is the sentence that one of "your" links are hanging your claims on.
Wolfowitz: I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it.

Here is the rest of the paragraph that puts the sentence in the context that it was spoken:
Wolfowitz: I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it. I think what the realization to me is -- the fundamental point was that terrorism had reached the scale completely different from what we had thought of it up until then. And that it would only get worse when these people got access to weapons of mass destruction which would be only a matter of time.

[karaokeguy]

I see. Rather than engage in rational debate, you prefer to call names and belittle others. But...

From the link that you so easily shrugged off...

"Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last year boasted that the Pentagon and CIA had “bulletproof” evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda, although Rumsfeld refused to declassify any of the intelligence he had to support his claims. Shortly after the attacks, however, the administration claimed that Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the 9-11 attacks, met with an Iraqi agent in Prague in early 2001, suggesting a possible connection with Saddam Hussein.


Reports of the meeting were based primarily on accounts of Czech officials like Prime Minister Milos Zeman, who discussed it with officials in Washington in November. But

Federal law-enforcement officials concluded in May that no such meeting took place. "

"Bulletproof evidence" of a link between the two? Sounds like trying to link Iraq to al Queda to me.

[Prisoner]

I see. Rather than engage in rational debate, you prefer to call names and belittle others.
What name did I call you. Do you honestly think that posting outright lies and trying to pass them off as some sort of fact is a rational debate? If you wish to do that, you need to expect to get handed the truth and I am not going to sugar coat it in order to not hurt feelings.

From the link that you so easily shrugged off...


You are changing the point that you are trying to claim. Linking Iraq to Alqaeda is different than linking them to 9/11 as you stated in your first post. Here is more for you. You have yet to provide proof that Bush stated that Iraq was linked to 9/11

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/29/sprj.irq.terrorist.capture/index.html

Also, Clinton took us to war in 1998 when he ordered the attack on the chemical plant in Sudan. This was based on Clinton's belief that Iraq was tied to Bin laden. Are you going to make the same assertion that we were misled then too?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp

How quickly many have forgotten.

I noticed that you forgot to ask the simple questions that were put forth to you. How convenient. Did you find your debate transcripts that you are referencing?

[karaokeguy]

What name did I call you.

Ignorant and gullible comes to mind.

Linking Iraq to Alqaeda is different than linking them to 9/11 as you stated in your first post.

al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. So linking al Qaeda to Iraq is the exact same thing as linking Iraq to 9/11.

You have yet to provide proof that Bush stated that Iraq was linked to 9/11

Read my posts. I stated that this administration has made such claims. Not Bush himself. And Donald Rumsfeld would qualify as part of this administration.

[Prisoner]

Ignorant and gullible comes to mind.
Gullible is an adjective that means easily decieved. The word ignorantly in my statement was used as an adverb, neither word is a name.

al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. So linking al Qaeda to Iraq is the exact same thing as linking Iraq to 9/11.
Um, for your information, it is not the EXACT SAME THING, just because you took it as such does not mean anything at all. Al qaeda was in Iraq, we busted up their camps at the start of the war.

I even read where Tarik Aziz admitted that Alqaeda wa sin Iraq, but he said they were there supporting our friends...He must think that we all are as gullible as some of us are.

So tell me, did the Clinton administration along with the war criminal John Kerry, mislead us into war for stating the same things in 1998? Of course, I do not expect you to answer that one either.

[karaokeguy]

I refuse to deal with your mindless attacks, rhetoric, hyperbole, petty insults, etc any longer. Grow up little boy.

[Prisoner]

I refuse to deal with your mindless attacks, rhetoric, hyperbole, petty insults, etc any longer. Grow up little boy.

lol, Mindless attacks, petty insults huh? Boy, I sure would hate to be guilty of anything like that. :rolleyes:

[StewieGriffin]

I have to say that the burden of proof here lies with the Democrats and other critics claiming that Bush lied or misled us into war. Norman Podhoretz has written an excellent piece about all this that is available on the Commentary website.

It's very hard to refute the fact that so many of the current critics of Bush were such cheerleaders for taking out Saddam, going back to the 1990's. And the notion that they were all misled seems quite dubious, given that they indeed did look at the same intelligence as Bush and company, and all arrived at the same conclusion - Saddam must go. But the media echo chamber is not focusing on these facts, so people are not taking them into account. I think it comes down to more and more people just being sick and tired of this and want the situation in Iraq to be resolved and they don't much care if Bush is blamed for it all. That said, I do believe that it has long been the desire of Neocon's like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle to finish the job begun in the first Gulf War. There is docmunetation going back to Bush I showing Wolfowitz's desire to take on Saddam. So I don't doubt that he and others pressed very hard for this war. But, I don't see where they actually lied or even misled anyone. Again, these critics had access to the same intelligence and believed the same things about Iraq. If they were misled at all, it's because they chose to be.

In any case, my bone to pick with the Bush team is not so much that they sent us, along with the support of Congress, into Iraq to oust Saddam, but that the Bush administration, and Rumsfeld in paticular, did such a shotty planning job before hand. That is why we are in such a mess over there now. They did not have enough troops, nor any in-depth knowledge of the culture, nor any solid plans for reconstruction and establishing peace afterwards. I think our troops, from the bottom to the top, were woefully unprepared to deal with the tribal and religious factions that exist in Iraq, and were given poor leadership all around on this. The responsibility for Abu Grahb and other such calamities lies at the top, with Rumsfeld and others who were establishing the protocols for the treatment of prisoners. They should be held just as responsible for these debacles as the soldiers who did the actual abusing. Those soldiers are taking the fall for the policy that was initiated from the top. They are taking the fall because they were foolish enough to let those photographs get out, but not becuase of what they did to those prisoners. Sadly, that abuse, it seems to me, was official policy crafted at the top by US government officials in the Bush team.

[Peanut]

Hi Stewie! Welcome aboard!

[StewieGriffin]

Thank you, Peanut! Nice to be here.

[StewieGriffin]

How do you add a picture to your signature?

[StewieGriffin]

Never mind.

[Hawkyfan99]

Hey...interesting debate. Lotsa good quotes from Prisoner.

I'm right there with you, Stewie. I think that SOMEONE needs to be accountable for the lack of planning that went into this. However, the existance of WMD was based on "truisms" that were in place WELL before GWB came into office, so to accuse him of misleading us in that arena when the previous administrations had the same thoughts is nothing short of laughable partisan politics.

[Pops In]

Wotcha Stewie. :)

Yes it is quite obvious that the invasion of Iraq was intended and inevitable and that "truisms", which could also be writen as "falsehoods", were established before W assumed office as anyone who had a passing interest in Iraq since the Gulf War of 1990 can see. For documentation I suggest you google Hans Von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinators in Iraq, who as long ago as 1998 were decrying unjustified sabre rattling against Iraq as well as the cruel sanctions and sporadic bombing of Iraq by Brtitain and the US. I would suggest further that you google the weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei who were saying before the latest invasion, that they had strong doubts about the existence of WMD, and peruse the Downing Street minute for further proof of the inevitability.

Then make up your mind as to whether there was deception to get us into this tragic mess.

Wanna picture in your siggi? You have a Private Message, as soon as I've writ it. :D

[holychicken]

And the notion that they were all misled seems quite dubious, given that they indeed did look at the same intelligence as Bush and company,
I have a hard time believing this is true. For some reason I highly doubt that the Senate sees the same intelligence that the Commander-in-Chief sees. I guess I could be wrong, but it makes no sense that the leader of the nation and our military and his staff doesn't get a bit more of the intelligence than the Senate or sees more.

However, pris, don't deny that Bush tried to link Saddam to 9/11. Before we entered Iraq, some 60%+ of the population of the US believed that he was behind the 9/11 attacks. That wasn't a misatke. Every speech that Bush made leading up to the Iraq war, he invokes images of 9/11 while talking about Saddam. Go read any of his speeches when they were pushing for the Iraq War and you will, sure as hell, see 9/11 of 9/11 imagery mentioned.

True, if you read them and dissect them, he never explicitly says that Saddam was behind 9/11. However, it is a well known psychological trick that when you mention two things side by side over and over people are going to make a connection between the two. The people who write his speeches know this, they aren't fools. . . IMO, it was either intentional (reasonable conclusion) or his speech writers are idiots who didn't know what they were doing (not even remotely reasonable).

[Jeff P]

Tragic mess? Mess, yea I will agree with, but tragic?

Like it is tragic that the rape rooms and people being thrown into shredders have been eliminated. Like it is tragic that whole towns are no longer being gassed. Or that it is tragic that all the "millions" that were claimed to be dieing from the UN sanctions has now ended.

Sheesh, it is far more offensive to me that someone attempts to rewrite history by implying that pre war Iraq was an idyllic paradise with children flying kites (i.e. the Michael Moore movie) than those who attempt to rewrite history by saying that Bush misled us on pre war intelligence.

And as for that charge, as McCain noted, at the senate hearings every intelligence official admitted that they had not been pressured to distort or change their reports to bolster a case for war.

Jeff

[Hawkyfan99]

There has, historically, been links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. I think that those have been substantiated in the past.

What Bush said, to thunderous applause I might add, was that we would go after the terrorists AND THOSE WHO HARBOR THEM. The "those who harbor them" is why we went into Afghanistan as well as had reasonable suspicion to go into Iraq.

The planning has certainly been a mess. Execution of everything after the upfront war has been poor at best. But I DO think that there was reason to go in there. I'm also, however, no fan of the impotent organization known as the UN...so going in unilaterally wasn't of utmost concern to me.

[StewieGriffin]

I don't know...to me, the problem with going in unilaterally is that we take the brunt of the blows, both in terms of our troops being killed and our image abroad being stained for decades to come. Supposedly, it's all for the sake of the very dubious prospect of establishing a democracy in a country that has never known it. Well, a lot of people now believe that is not at all why we went in there, and few believe that whatever government ends up running Iraq will be anything but a puppet of the US, there to only to insure the free flow of cheap oil. I find myself fearing they may be right. As much as I don't want to believe that, it's getting harder and harder not to.

Yes, Saddam was no good, and he was a threat that eventually would have to be dealt with. But this whole go-it-alone approach appears to have been a huge miscalculation on the Bush Administration's part, and it is the Iraqi people and young US soldiers who are paying the price. Many Iraqis say they are suffering now more than they ever did under Saddam. Believe it or not, this will matter in the long run. The U.S. is always held to higher standards, and that is due to our own high rhetoric about freedom and democracy. So we alone (well, maybe the Brits too) will be held responsible for the thousands of Iraqi's, including women and children, that have died in Iraq thanks to what is widely percieved as an unprovoked and illegal invasion. In the eyes of much of the world, Iraq did not attack us and Saddam was contained by our military, UN inspections, and sanctions that were in the process of being revamped, according to Bush in a press conference he gave on Feb. 23rd, 2001. Then, afterr 9/11, Bush said we were going in to get Saddam's WMD. After the invasion the world hears there was no weapons found and thus we had no right to invade. That becomes the reality, and that defines us as the bad guys. Sure the French and the Germans were oppossing this war for their own cynical, selfish reasons, but we shouldn't go to war just to flip them the bird. It's not worth it.

Worse still, we are now seen by much of the world as not only having invaded Iraq without any real justification, but then proceeding to occupy it using brutal force and torture, as seen on TV in pictures from Abu Ghraib, while bungling the reconstruction and provoking a deadly insurgency. The world will remember that instead of guarding the power and water systems, the cultural venues, and the government buildings, our soldiers went straight to the oil and let everything else be looted and destroyed. I can't stand it when I hear guys like Sean Hannity crowing about how we liberated 50 million people. Liberated them? Are you kidding? I'm sorry, but you are not liberated when you have to live every day in fear of being gunned down or blown up for trying to get a job. This is not liberation. This is occupation, which the Iraqi mind easily links to the Isreali occupation of Palestine. I mean how the hell did Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz expect these people to embrace our soldiers? They hate our guts! They have for a long time. The Sunnis and the Shittes, despite their own differences, share an equal contempt for the United States. And they feel completely vindicated in their contempt now.

Thanks to our actions in Iraq, too many Middle Easterners believe we are the problem, not the Jihadists. They will say we are really no better than this Jihadist enemy that we always claim to be better than. The Iraqis will say that a 500 lb bomb dropped from a bomber and exploding in their major city certainly feels like terrorism to them. I mean you can't say things like, "This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children," as Bush did, and then send our troops in and kill mothers and children with depleted uranium shells and not expect to look like hypocrits. You cannot complain about the secret prisons and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein's regime and then set up your own secret prisons and torture chambers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world, and still expect to be the good guy.

No, I'm afraid that what we have done with Iraq flies in the face of all of our expressed ideals and values, all of George Bush's speeches about Freedom and Liberty, the two words he mentions more than any others. And this will likely be a recruiting tool for Al Qeada and their like for years to come. As Kurt Vonnegut said, hunker down, folks. And as Denis Leary said, this is gonna suck.

Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. Hell, I hope I am...

[jim9215]

There's a great debate going on here. I recently did some research on this for my blog. I came up with an article written by Norman Podhertz and posted and commented on it there.


Here are some select quotes from the article:

Yet even stipulating—which I do only for the sake of argument—that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was “a slam dunk.” This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with “high confidence” was that

Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and—yes—France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix—who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past—lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

Blix now claims that he was only being “cautious” here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration “misled itself” in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.

Again, from the same article:

Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.

In explaining its dissent on Iraq’s nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about

Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program.

But, according to Wilkerson,

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, “the consensus of the intelligence community,” as Wilkerson puts it, “was overwhelming” in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. “In the late spring of 2002,” Pollack has written,

I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with “high confidence” was that

Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.

Later in the same article Hillary even goes so far as to say that Saddam was in bed with Al Quaeda:

But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 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.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk 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.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained “absolutely convinced” of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic Senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President

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.

Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:

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.

This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new President, a number of Senators led by Bob Graham declared:

There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated 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.

Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush’s benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:

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.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 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.

There's a lot to digest there, and that's not even the entire article. You can find the entire article in the december edition of Commentary Magazine online.

Finally, thanks for letting me join your little community. It's nice that people from all different sides of the political table can come and discuss things rationally. I look forward to future conversations!

P.S. -- Sorry about not providing links for you, for some reason the boards aren't allowing me to put url's in my post. I don't know if it's a setting I need to change or if it's the way that admin has things set up.

[Pops In]

Wotcha Jim.
Welcome to the fray.

I haven't read all of what your feller there has to say but from what I have, he's certainly on a propaganda trip.

[Pops In]

Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday


Published in The Guardian, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4309594,00.html) Thursday November 29, 2001


A major shift is occurring in US policy on Iraq. It is obvious that Washington wants to end 11 years of a self-serving policy of containment of the Iraqi regime and change to a policy of replacing, by force, Saddam Hussein and his government.

The current policy of economic sanctions has destroyed society in Iraq and caused the death of thousands, young and old. There is evidence of that daily in reports from reputable international organisations such as Caritas, Unicef and Save the Children. A change to a policy of replacement by force will increase that suffering.

The creators of the policy must no longer assume that they can satisfy voters by expressing contempt for those who oppose them. The problem is not the inability of the public to understand the bigger picture, as former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright likes to suggest. It is the opposite. The bigger picture, the hidden agenda, is well understood by ordinary people. We should not forget Henry Kissinger's brutally frank admission that "oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs".

How much longer can democratically elected governments hope to get away with justifying policies that punish the Iraqi people for something they did not do, through economic sanctions that target them in the hope that those who survive will overthrow the regime? Is international law only applicable to the losers? Does the UN security council only serve the powerful?

The UK and the US, as permanent members of the council, are fully aware that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN covenants on human rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other international laws. It is neither anti-UK nor anti-US to point out that Washington and London, more than anywhere else, have in the past decade helped to write the Iraq chapter in the history of avoidable tragedies.

The UK and the US have deliberately pursued a policy of punishment since the Gulf war victory in 1991. The two governments have consistently opposed allowing the UN security council to carry out its mandated responsibilities to assess the impact of sanctions policies on civilians. We know about this first hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to prevent us from briefing the security council about it. The pitiful annual limits, of less than $170 per person, for humanitarian supplies, set by them during the first three years of the oil-for-food programme are unarguable evidence of such a policy.

We have seen the effects on the ground and cannot comprehend how the US ambassador, James Cunningham, could look into the eyes of his colleagues a year ago and say: "We (the US government) are satisfied that the oil-for-food programme is meeting the needs of the Iraqi people." Besides the provision of food and medicine, the real issue today is that Iraqi oil revenues must be invested in the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure destroyed in the Gulf war.

Despite the severe inadequacy of the permitted oil revenue to meet the minimum needs of the Iraqi people, 30 cents (now 25) of each dollar that Iraqi oil earned from 1996 to 2000 were diverted by the UN security council, at the behest of the UK and US governments, to compensate outsiders for losses allegedly incurred because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. If this money had been made available to Iraqis, it could have saved many lives.

The uncomfortable truth is that the west is holding the Iraqi people hostage, in order to secure Saddam Hussein's compliance to ever-shifting demands. The UN secretary-general, who would like to be a mediator, has repeatedly been prevented from taking this role by the US and the UK governments.

The imprecision of UN resolutions on Iraq - "constructive ambiguity" as the US and UK define it - is seen by those governments as a useful tool when dealing with this kind of conflict. The US and UK dismiss criticism by pointing out that the Iraqi people are being punished by Baghdad. If this is true, why do we punish them further?

The most recent report of the UN secretary-general, in October 2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory (as it was when we headed this programme). The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad.

The expectation of a US attack on Iraq does not create conditions in the UN security council suited to discussions on the future of economic sanctions. This year's UK-sponsored proposal for "smart sanctions" will not be retabled. Too many people realise that what looked superficially like an improvement for civilians is really an attempt to maintain the bridgeheads of the existing sanctions policy: no foreign investments and no rights for the Iraqis to manage their own oil revenues.

The proposal suggested sealing Iraq's borders, strangling the Iraqi people. In the present political climate, a technical extension of the current terms is considered the most expedient step by Washington. That this condemns more Iraqis to death and destitution is shrugged off as unavoidable.

What we describe is not conjecture. These are undeniable facts known to us as two former insiders. We are outraged that the Iraqi people continue to be made to pay the price for the lucrative arms trade and power politics. We are reminded of Martin Luther King's words: "A time has come when silence is betrayal. That time is now."

We want to encourage people everywhere to protest against unscrupulous policies and against the appalling disinformation put out about Iraq by those who know better, but are willing to sacrifice people's lives with false and malicious arguments.

The US Defence Department, and Richard Butler, former head of the UN arms inspection team in Baghdad, would prefer Iraq to have been behind the anthrax scare. But they had to recognise that it had its origin within the US.

British and US intelligence agencies know well that Iraq is qualitatively disarmed, and they have not forgotten that the outgoing secretary of defence, William Powell, told incoming President George Bush in January: "Iraq no longer poses a military threat to its neighbours". The same message has come from former UN arms inspectors. But to admit this would be to nail the entire UN policy, as it has been developed and maintained by the US and UK governments.

We are horrified by the prospects of a new US-led war against Iraq. The implications of "finishing unfinished business" in Iraq are too serious for the global community to ignore. We hope that the warnings of leaders in the Middle East and all of us who care about human rights are not ignored by the US government. What is now most urgently needed is an attack on injustice, not on the Iraqi people.

Hans von Sponeck was UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000; Denis Halliday held the same post from 1997 to 1998.

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Illegal weapons my arse!

[Terrell]

Yes. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 yet bush invoked 9/11 repeatedly in the run up to the war in Iraq. Lie by implication in my book.

[Hawkyfan99]

If you mean Iraq was not DIRECTLY responsible, then you are 100% correct.

If you mean that Iraq has not been shown to have current and historical ties to Al Qaeda, then you would be INCORRECT, and it was stated that we would be pursuing ALL who harbored terrorists (To great applause, I might add).