View Full Version : The war in Iraq
Suby Fan
05-31-2006, 07:52 PM
Thoughts sugustions? i would give mine but i would like to keep my balls :D
plus i love reading all of your rants with bipa trowing in random bits of research
I happy that we're over there civilizing those savages over there. The end is near and we spread God's unspoken words. :p
NikFu S.
05-31-2006, 08:42 PM
I not really care what we do over there over there. :D :D
I in the US where guns are not usually pointed at me. :p
---
On serious note:
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=106624
Recent massacre in Iraq. Poster didn't give a source so it's a link to a thread.
Not happy about this event here...
i like war...
WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR!!!!!!!!!!!
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 09:59 AM
Ehhh... I don't think anyone is for the war anymore. Give it a couple more weeks, and you'll have Bush out there in front of Cheney's house with a picket sign. He'll have his press secretary write it up though.... Gotta get that speeling rite.
mohrds
06-01-2006, 10:02 AM
Well its pretty simple. Prior to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were an avearge of one terrorist attack against the US every 9 months. Since the war started there has been one for over four years.
The phiosophy is simple, bring the war back to their home soil to get it off of ours. Basic military stratagy that has been used sucsessfully for centuries.
January 25, 2003: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fires an AK-47 assault rifle into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. Two CIA employees died,
February 26, 2003: World Trade Center bombing kills 6 and injures over 1000 people, by coalition of five groups: Jamaat Al-Fuqra'/Gamaat Islamiya/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/National Islamic Front [1],
June 15, 2003: Failed New York City landmark bomb plot,
December 11, 1994: A small bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bound for LAX, killing a Japanese businessman
June 25, 1996: Khobar Towers bombing -- In all, 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 wounded, by Hizballah Al-Hijaz (Saudi Hizballah) with Iranian support,
February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
August 7, 1998: U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000, by al-Qaeda,
December 14, 1999: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
January 21, 2000: Millennium attack plot fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
October 12, 2000: USS Cole bombing kills 17 US sailors and wounds 40 off the port coast of Aden, Yemen, by al-Qaeda
September 11, 2001: killed almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, originally intended to hit The White House, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, by al-Qaeda
December 22, 2001: Richard Reid, attempting to destroy American Airlines Flight 63, is subdued by passengers and flight attendants before he could detonate his shoe bomb.
June 14, 2002: Car bomb at US Consulate in Karachi kills 12.
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 10:25 AM
The phiosophy is simple, bring the war back to their home soil to get it off of ours. Basic military stratagy that has been used sucsessfully for centuries.
Yeah, it works great. I've been worried about my house getting robbed. So last night I broke into my neighbor's house and put all his stuff out in his front yard. I tripped on a rug, which ticked me off, so I shot his dog. Just a small consequence in this war on burglary. But the results will be excellent. Any thieves will be so busy with him, I won't have to worry about me anymore!
Of course, the effect will wear off once all his stuff is gone, and then I'll also have this highly ticked off neighbor looking for revenge. I'll worry about the increased effect later. A good idea is to do the same thing to another neighbor when his effect wears off. Better yet, the next house I'll do will be on the West side... It'll lure the thieves over there.
Climb off your dream ride. Terrorism is worse today than it has ever been. There are more terrorists today. Their populations are exploding. Those are still American citizens getting blown up by those roadside bombs, and all those extra civilian deaths.... You think they are begrudging Saddam over those? Wake up.
In other words, terrorism on American citizens have increased from once every 9 months or so (by your calcs,) to a daily occurance, with new terrorists being created out of the blue with every Mother, Father, Brother, or Sister killed...... You think they aren't upset? They had nothing to do with anything, and a bomb falls on their house? Wake up. Someone bombs my house, and kills members of my family...just because I live here? And then I read in the news some yahoo is saying better me than him?? And he's the one that bombed me?? Somebody is going to pay if it takes my life doing it.
We opened up a huge terrorism machine by invading Iraq. There are about 3 people left that still buys in to that "bring the war to them in Iraq", the other 280 million have morals and knows Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism.
I'm shocked someone actually came forward with support for the war.
mohrds
06-01-2006, 11:29 AM
In other words, terrorism on American citizens have increased from once every 9 months or so (by your calcs,) to a daily occurrence, with new terrorists being created out of the blue with every Mother, Father, Brother, or Sister killed...... You think they aren't upset? They had nothing to do with anything, and a bomb falls on their house? Wake up. Someone bombs my house, and kills members of my family...just because I live here? And then I read in the news some yahoo is saying better me than him?? And he's the one that bombed me?? Somebody is going to pay if it takes my life doing it.
You seem to forget that many more families did lose loved ones under Saddam's rule. You think they forgot that? I wouldn't forget.
We opened up a huge terrorism machine by invading Iraq. There are about 3 people left that still buys in to that "bring the war to them in Iraq", the other 280 million have morals and knows Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism.
Um, you keep believing what you want. At least you won't get jailed and killed for expressing it.
I'm shocked someone actually came forward with support for the war. There are lots of people that support it. The majority of Iraqis support it, however you wouldn't know that from the liberal media. Iraqis making gifts for soldiers, saying prayers for them, thanking them for bringing them running water for the first time in 25 years, giving them the ability to watch satellite TV without fear of being jailed. Yeah, I can understand why they'd hate us. :rolleyes:
The majority of violence in Iraq is aimed at the Iraqi government and Iraqi police. The US is just there along side them. Look where the roadside bombs and IEDs are being set off. Police recruiting stations, government buildings or markets in front of government buildings, police checkpoints, Iraqi soldier barracks. The majority of the violence is related to civil unrest, not retaliation at the US. Granted there are anti-US people still there, but the media lumps ALL civil unrest as insurgency against the US to spin opinion to the way they want it.
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 11:42 AM
You seem to forget that many more families did lose loved ones under Saddam's rule. You think they forgot that? I wouldn't forget.
Um, you keep believing what you want. At least you won't get jailed and killed for expressing it.
There are lots of people that support it. The majority of Iraqis support it, however you wouldn't know that from the liberal media. Iraqis making gifts for soldiers, saying prayers for them, thanking them for bringing them running water for the first time in 25 years, giving them the ability to watch satellite TV without fear of being jailed. Yeah, I can understand why they'd hate us. :rolleyes:
The majority of violence in Iraq is aimed at the Iraqi government and Iraqi police. The US is just there along side them. Look where the roadside bombs and IEDs are being set off. Police recruiting stations, government buildings or markets in front of government buildings, police checkpoints, Iraqi soldier barracks. The majority of the violence is related to civil unrest, not retaliation at the US. Granted there are anti-US people still there, but the media lumps ALL civil unrest as insurgency against the US to spin opinion to the way they want it.
I can't deny there is a lot of spin out there on both sides. I wish they would give it a rest and just report what's happening, and leave it up to the reader to form their own opinion. That's a pipe dream.
It's also extremely obvious the insurgency is going after the civilian population.
But it still does not negate the fact that invading Iraq was a mistake. The harm it is causing us, and the future harm guaranteed against us is huge. A significant point to be made is that preventing terrorism was reason #2 from this administration, and we have since moved on to reason #3.
Regardless of their "drop down list" of reasons, we shouldn't be there. Never should have considered it in the first place due to the same reasonings Bush Sr. pointed out after the Kuwaiti liberation. "We will walk into a quagmire."
And I would bet that behind doors, Bush Sr. told his son it's a really bad idea, and is probably still beating him up today over it.
Most of the deaths under Saddam's rule was against the Kurds in the outer regions, and not in Baghdad, etc. There is our main concern, and that's where the terrorism is going to originate for the next 2 or 3 generations. The Kurds are over there fat, dumb, and happy. They are the only ones so far that have benefitted.
Manarius
06-01-2006, 02:29 PM
Simple powers of math to do this one.
War = Draft
Draft = Bad
War = Bad
'nough said. (Look at my age and you'll understand)
Simple powers of math to do this one.
War = Draft
Draft = Bad
War = Bad
'nough said. (Look at my age and you'll understand)
Naw.... ya got it all wrong. War is good! Especially when it takes place far from home. ;) It stimulates the economy. It gives unemployed youth something to do. It energizes the writers and thinkers and press. Enrollment at universities and colleges goes up (to avoid that draft if possible) The number of couples choosing to finally get married and have kids also goes up (to avoid that draft if possible). Core family values come back into vogue and everyone starts talking about honour and loyalty and bravery. Flags pop up everywhere as patriotism becomes "de rigueur".
Yep.....war is good! :rolleyes:
lhopp77
06-01-2006, 03:24 PM
Naw.... ya got it all wrong. War is good! Especially when it takes place far from home. ;) It stimulates the economy. It gives unemployed youth something to do. It energizes the writers and thinkers and press. Enrollment at universities and colleges goes up (to avoid that draft if possible) The number of couples choosing to finally get married and have kids also goes up (to avoid that draft if possible). Core family values come back into vogue and everyone starts talking about honour and loyalty and bravery. Flags pop up everywhere as patriotism becomes "de rigueur".
Yep.....war is good! :rolleyes:
Amen!! :)
Lee
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 03:54 PM
Naw.... ya got it all wrong. War is good! Especially when it takes place far from home. ;) It stimulates the economy. It gives unemployed youth something to do. It energizes the writers and thinkers and press. Enrollment at universities and colleges goes up (to avoid that draft if possible) The number of couples choosing to finally get married and have kids also goes up (to avoid that draft if possible). Core family values come back into vogue and everyone starts talking about honour and loyalty and bravery. Flags pop up everywhere as patriotism becomes "de rigueur".
Yep.....war is good! :rolleyes:
I forwarded this to Fox news. You'll be receiving your medal in about 6 days. :D
lhopp77
06-01-2006, 04:22 PM
I can't deny there is a lot of spin out there on both sides. I wish they would give it a rest and just report what's happening, and leave it up to the reader to form their own opinion. That's a pipe dream.
It's also extremely obvious the insurgency is going after the civilian population.
Most of the deaths under Saddam's rule was against the Kurds in the outer regions, and not in Baghdad, etc. There is our main concern, and that's where the terrorism is going to originate for the next 2 or 3 generations. The Kurds are over there fat, dumb, and happy. They are the only ones so far that have benefitted.
Actually the Saddam regime killed, murdered, persecuted and deported hundreds of thousands more Shiite Muslims than it did Kurds. Hence, the major problem right now in forming a viable and stable regime. The Shiites are in the majority and remember the bad times under the Saddam regime made up of mostly Sunnis. If those two can work out the differences, the Kurds are not a problem and a stable government will be possible.
I definitely hope so and have my fingers crossed since I am betting on it to the tune of 3 Million Iraqi Dinar.
Lee
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 05:10 PM
I definitely hope so and have my fingers crossed since I am betting on it to the tune of 3 Million Iraqi Dinar.
Lee
I've been contemplating this same thing. Even with complete civil war, and a new U.S. Administration that pulls completely out, the Shiites will maintain control with help from the Iranians. Or.... it goes into obscurity such as the Saddam Dinar. This is definately an all or nothing risk. I commend you for your gonads on this, and it may very well pan out to millionaire status...... or.... you lose a few thousand. We've all done that by being SVX affectionados. :D
I'm sincerely contemplating this.
oops... Hijack...
I cede back to the masses.
lhopp77
06-01-2006, 05:23 PM
I've been contemplating this same thing.
It was reported that Hillary invested $250K in Iraqi Dinar in her visit there last year. I don't have first hand knowledge of it, but that is what was reported by workers in Kuwait at the time.
Lee
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 05:48 PM
It was reported that Hillary invested $250K in Iraqi Dinar in her visit there last year. I don't have first hand knowledge of it, but that is what was reported by workers in Kuwait at the time.
Lee
At today's conversion, thats 369 Million Dinar! Whoa! If it stabilizes, and gets close to unity, you can guarantee she'll be controlling that capital gains tax. Democrat, or no Democrat. :D
Manarius
06-01-2006, 08:44 PM
Naw.... ya got it all wrong. War is good! Especially when it takes place far from home. ;) It stimulates the economy. It gives unemployed youth something to do. It energizes the writers and thinkers and press. Enrollment at universities and colleges goes up (to avoid that draft if possible) The number of couples choosing to finally get married and have kids also goes up (to avoid that draft if possible). Core family values come back into vogue and everyone starts talking about honour and loyalty and bravery. Flags pop up everywhere as patriotism becomes "de rigueur".
Yep.....war is good! :rolleyes:
I certainly hope you're being sarcastic.
And just FYI, the S1 deferments don't exist anymore. College doesn't keep you out the the draft.
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 09:01 PM
I certainly hope you're being sarcastic.
And just FYI, the S1 deferments don't exist anymore. College doesn't keep you out the the draft.
If I've learned Bipa, it was all extremely sarcastic. She probably had to clean up the sarcasm around her computer chair after that one. :)
And I wasn't aware college no longer works if a Draft is reinstituted. Which it won't be unless there is a major war. No politician is going to touch that one without something extremely major happening in the world.
Landshark
06-01-2006, 09:23 PM
i hear they will be drafting those who use bold text first.
Electrophil
06-01-2006, 09:37 PM
i hear they will be drafting those who use bold text first.
:D I think you make me laugh more than anyone on this site. :D :D
SilverSpear
06-02-2006, 02:43 AM
Ok I must have stepped in this thread a looooooooooooooooot sooner. Most of the things said here I DO NOT AGREE WITH. What I agree too is Bipa's statement about the benefits of WAR (very true) and I suggest she gets a MEDAL :D :D :p ...
What I do not agree with is the mentality with which you are all taking the Iraqi case. Understand one thing, the Ba'ath party was ruling Syria and Iraq, and both Saddam Hussein and Bachar el Assad are Alawites (a part of Muslim partitions) and they are a minorities in both countries (no more than 4-6% of total population) who assumed leadership by overthrowing (using military force) their predecessors. Then they reigned by terrorising people and killing them cold bloodedly (you know the story of Hafez el Assad when he killed protestors in Hamah and buried them under the highway), so all sunnites, shi'ites and christians feared them (Ba'ath)...
The true solution for Iraq, if USA is not interested in the oil, is to let Saddam Hussein out again and let him RESUME his Dictatorship as it was before, or else killings will never stop and terrorism will continue forever... The three powers USA should avoid (or should have avoided) is Iran in the first place (this is a true disaster and could lead to WW3), Iraq in second place and you are seeing the outcome now... and Syria in third. Syria's attack will not lead to such disasterful results.... it is a sissy country unlike Iraq whose people are barbaric in nature.
Electrophil
06-02-2006, 07:44 AM
Well, as cold and as blunt as it sounds, it wasn't our concern anyone was being buried under highways in Iraq. We keep playing the world's 24hr on call SWAT team, and we have to foot the bill. Except Kuwait, which was different on the calling, and the world chipped in. Back when we were "intelligent", Bush Sr. knew how to use a telephone.
To get even colder, we sold him the weapons to pull off those evil acts. Back in our "intelligent' days, it was the U.S.'s way of achieving balance in the area, and keeping our true enemy, Iran in check. Everyone seems to forget Iran has had weekly Anti-US marches every Friday since the 80"s. We needed Iraq as it was. A lot of us started rolling our eyes at the idiocy from day one just over that fact.
To state the obvious, Iran is no longer in check.... But they did send us a letter!
We can't let Saddam back in now. We are way past that. His power base has been destroyed. It would also be awkward..... Using our troops to hold things in check while he rebuilds. And to top it all off, I think he's a little upset with the U.S. I believed the damage done to the relationship after Kuwait could have been repaired. I'm sure Saddam even knew his move was dumb. But there isn't any repairing anything after killing off his sons in a cowboy style shootout. We may be saying things like "Oh Yeah! We did do that, didn't we?" On his side, He's sure to be dwelling on that small point daily.
So Saddam is too dangerous now of doing all the things we accused him of to justify Cheney's company making a few Billion bucks. He would develop all those WMD's just to spite us, and he "would" use them at the first opportunity in anyway to hurt our country. IF... he could ever succeed of rebuilding his power base to take over the country.
As for the oil, we don't have it now, and we won't have it 5 years from now. The Shiites, as a rule, do not trust the evil satanic empire, and they have majority control. The Sunni's feel betrayed by our actions, and usually blow someone up daily to remind us of that betrayal. The Kurds don't have the powerbase in the government to make any real decisions. I would give it 3 years after we leave that the government will model itself after Iran. The Shiites will take over the country entirely through peaceful means... They have the huge majority, and the "Democracy" will be dissolved with the consent of the people.
All of this is nothing new of course. It was pure logic from the beginning.
No,,,, we are hosed on every front at this point. We are stuck there, we can't leave, and when we do..... We lose control. And when that happens, it will be way worse without the UN inspections and controls. The Shiites will go next door to their neighbors and pick back up on the technology.
This is Bush's failed businessman Legacy, he worked hard to develop it, and we must endure it for the generations to come.
Is he in jail yet?
NikFu S.
06-02-2006, 12:25 PM
Update on the link I posted earlier.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5039714.stm
NikFu S.
06-02-2006, 11:35 PM
Update on the link I posted earlier.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5039714.stm
And the result:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198029,00.html
Yep.... the military investigation cleared the soldiers. I'll reserve judgement until after the investigation of the investigation :p
There's been a pattern emerging over the last year. First the soldiers are cleared, then comes another inquiry. That's happened a few times now - most recently with Haditha, and here's yet another example:
posted April 13, 2006 at 12:00 p.m.
Report: US soldiers 'unlawfully' shot Reuters cameraman
Independent private investigation comes week after 'firing' of Marine officers involved in civilian shooting at Haditha.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
US soldiers breached their own rules of engagement when they shot two members of an Iraqi camera crew working for Reuters last year, an independent private investigation has determined. Editor & Publisher reports that the investigation, which was commissioned by Reuters, also said that the shooting was "prima facie unlawful."
Soundman Waleed Khaled was killed and cameraman Haider Kadhem was wounded on Aug. 28, 2005, as they covered the aftermath of an insurgent attack on Iraqi police in western Baghdad.
The investigation by the British risk management consultancy, The Risk Amanagement Group (TRAG), was led by a former special investigator in Britain's Royal Military Police, who retired after 23 years of service, most recently in Iraq. The report said that the use of force was neither "proportionate nor justified." An earlier invevstigation by the Army had cleared the soldiers involved, but the TRAG report said "the Army inquiry conclusions were not supported by the evidence – including the testimony of the soldiers themselves – and expressed incomprehension that crucial footage shot by Kadhem had somehow been lost by the military."
read more (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0413/dailyUpdate.html)
NikFu S.
06-03-2006, 12:01 AM
On the site you linked to:
"The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods."
http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/iran-can-now-make-glowing-mickey-mouse.html
:rolleyes:
On the site you linked to:
"The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods."
http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/iran-can-now-make-glowing-mickey-mouse.html
:rolleyes:
That'll teach me to link without giving the explicit url. :rolleyes:
I linked to The Christian Science Monitor. Here's the whole link:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0413/dailyUpdate.html
You linked to the homepage of Juan Cole who is a history prof at University of Michigan. Yes the link was provided at the very bottom of the CSM web site under the ALSO category, but that doesn't necessarily mean an endorsement, just as FOX doesn't endorse the views of liberals but does sometimes include their comments.
Would you rather accept the actual Reuters article?
http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=1173910§ion=news&src=rss/uk/topNews
Interesting how you didn't post this one: :rolleyes:
Eight Troops May Be Charged With Murder, Kidnapping of Iraqi Man on Friday
Friday, June 02, 2006
SAN DIEGO — Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges as early as Friday in the shooting death of an Iraqi man, a defense attorney said.
Military prosecutors plan to file the charges against the men, who are being held in solitary confinement at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of here, Jeremiah Sullivan III, who represents one of the men, said Thursday.
The Iraqi man reportedly was dragged from his home west of Baghdad and shot in April.
read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197916,00.html
----------------------------------------------------------
Or even this story:
U.S. Investigates Report That U.S. Troops Killed Pregnant Woman, Cousin in Iraq
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military is investigating reports Wednesday that troops shot and killed two Iraqi women — one on the verge of giving birth — after their car failed to stop at a checkpoint north of Baghdad.
Iraqi officials and relatives say the incident in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, happened when Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being rushed to the hospital by her brother.
read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197666,00.html
----------------------------------------------------------
Go ahead and mock my news source :p
MOCK! MOCK!
How dare you use Bush's personal news service/publicist!
Oh! Damn, you're being difficult again! Aren't you, you cheeky devil...
WGJ
NikFu S.
06-03-2006, 06:24 AM
Interesting how you didn't post this one: :rolleyes:
I just scrolled down and saw the other one, then I closed it. :/
MOCK! MOCK!
How dare you use Bush's personal news service/publicist!
Oh! Damn, you're being difficult again! Aren't you, you cheeky devil...
WGJ
http://www.emotihost.com/glass12/6.gif I call it fighting fire with fire ;)
Electrophil
06-03-2006, 02:18 PM
And the result:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198029,00.html
A quote from a 13 year old girl from the Fox story above:
"We want the Americans to be hurt just like us," she told the cameraman from her cousin's house, where she is now living.
Apparently she lost her whole family.
Anybody want to say how "safe" from terrorism this Iraqi war has made us?
NikFu S.
06-03-2006, 02:40 PM
A quote from a 13 year old girl from the Fox story above:
"We want the Americans to be hurt just like us," she told the cameraman from her cousin's house, where she is now living.
Apparently she lost her whole family.
Anybody want to say how "safe" from terrorism this Iraqi war has made us?
I'm sure decimating these people and erecting (nearly) impenetrable security structure has made it unlikely we will be in harm's way for some time,
but in events like this,
are we not a source of terror and wanton destruction?
lhopp77
06-04-2006, 11:00 AM
I see that several people are showing their true Anti-military and Anti-US feelings. You actually would be very happy to see the US fail in Iraq AND Afghanistan. I do not condone some of the actions that have happened recently at the hands an extreme minority of the military and the military will investigate and punish any breaking laws, but that is no excuse to hate the military. Unfortunately these things happen and have happened in all wars or police actions. But to go out of your way to find and quote foreign US hating news media just shows where your support and real feelings reside. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO I AM POINTING TO. You are more than Bush haters--you are anti-military and anti-American.
Lee
lhopp77-"God must love stupid people----he made so many"
DO YOU EVER GET THE POINT?
WGJ
NikFu S.
06-04-2006, 03:30 PM
I have been outspokenly anti-military since I was 7.
More recently, I have become anti world police. The affairs of other nations really is not our business.
Manarius
06-04-2006, 08:37 PM
The affairs of other nations really is not our business.
Damn straight. Ever since WWII, we've had that "we police the world" mentality. And, in some cases, we needed to take action. And in others like Vietnam and Iraq, we were absolutely wrong.
And as for "hating the military".....Lee, my dad was very close to being drafted to go to Vietnam. I don't have dislike for the military because I have friends and relatives who are or were in the military. I hope Iraq fails so that it will put this administration as firmly in the failure column. Democracy simply does not work in that area. It has been and always will be an area where kingdoms win (he who hath the bigger knife rules). Arthur Schlesinger, a notable historian, rated his picks as best presidents and Thomas Bailey did the same thing in Presidential Greatness (link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents)). On the next printing of that book, I hope to see George W. Bush's presidency near or at the bottom.
And as for my text...makes it stand out, doesn't it? :p
I fear you may get even more tense because Bush will give you much more reason to be uptight. Be assured Bush will go down as THE WORST President. I say uptight because Bush will continue to be the source of much anxiety. However, I want us to be successful in Iraq and as fast as possible. As monumentally inept and incompetent as Bush is, my distaste for him is not strong enough to override my intense need to see that my brothers and sisters have not sacrificed themselves in vain. We were conned into going to Iraq but we are committed and should see it through. That's the only way we can salvage anything from this fiasco.
WGJ
Electrophil
06-04-2006, 11:50 PM
I fear you may get even more tense because Bush will give you much more reason to be uptight. Be assured Bush will go down as THE WORST President. I say uptight because Bush will continue to be the source of much anxiety. However, I want us to be successful in Iraq and as fast as possible. As monumentally inept and incompetent as Bush is, my distaste for him is not strong enough to override my intense need to see that my brothers and sisters have not sacrificed themselves in vain. We were conned into going to Iraq but we are committed and should see it through. That's the only way we can salvage anything from this fiasco.
WGJ
I wouldn't mind a little success myself, just to ease the burden on the next administration. It's like inheriting a wasp's nest with a defaulted mortgage. No... It IS a wasp's nest with a defaulted mortgage.
It is not our place to militarily intrude on the internal political processes of other nations? Instead of:
The affairs of other nations really is not our business.
Aren't we legitimately concerned with the business affairs of other nations? After all, business is what America is best at, right? Remember McLuhan's "Global Village"? I submit that every nation's business should be our business. Raising the living standard/income of everyone in the world should be our National Business Plan. Everyone prospers and we, as partners responsible for the welfare of the planet, can better focus the world's limited resources on dealing with natural diasters, pandemics and global warming.
WGJ
We're sorta fiddling while Rome burns. For example: If the AIDS virus mutates so that it can vector through mosquitoes, (right now the virus can't survive in the mosquitoe's stomach), we'll see a planetary plague that will eliminate any overpopulation concerns for many many decades to come .
NikFu S.
06-05-2006, 02:11 AM
Squandering our own resources for the sake of people that do not care for us is futile and pointless.
We would be better off focusing our energies inward.
This is not to say delegations, trade, and other day to day international affairs are to be subsided, but I think I can put this as literally and straightforward as possible:
Fighter jets, missiles, military intelligence, bio-weapons - we are better off without these things existing.
Einstein realized right away the greivous error he had made helping produce nuclear arms.
The world we live in today is a high-strung and fearful place because of it.
Because of us, we have to subdue every other nation on the planet for our own "security". If another country appears to begin approaching our level of weapons technology, we intervene. Why? Because it is the mess we have made.
It is the fault of the U.S. the world is the way it is, and all blindly patriotic Americans are to be held responsible.
demonsvx
06-05-2006, 07:24 PM
I believe we should have found the culprit for 9-11 FIRST! not divert our attention,manpower and resources to a war that has no DIRECT OBJECTIVE since its inception. SHOW ME THE WMDs MR BUSH. What next Iraqs infrastructure need bailing out, our soldiers are not trained to nation build. I think we should have went after Bin Laden full force, not half a$$:mad:
NikFu S.
06-05-2006, 07:26 PM
our soldiers are not trained to nation build.
I say we give the Iraqis a few copies of SimCity and leave them to their own devices.
Nice quote by JM by the way.
demonsvx
06-05-2006, 07:32 PM
I say we give the Iraqis a few copies of SimCity and leave them to their own devices.
Nice quote by JM by the way.
Strange how our Founding Fathers knew what the world would come to:)
demonsvx:
I believe we should have found the culprit for 9-11 FIRST! not divert our attention,manpower and resources to a war that has no DIRECT OBJECTIVE since its inception. SHOW ME THE WMDs MR BUSH. What next Iraqs infrastructure need bailing out, our soldiers are not trained to nation build. I think we should have went after Bin Laden full force, not half a$$
I must correct one error- "a war that has no DIRECT OBJECTIVE"
Actually the war was to get revenge on Saddam and secure Iraqi oil so we can continue to drive SUV's. Fat contracts for the Bush crime family's pals, Halliburton and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.
And remember another BIG BUSH LIE?
IRAQI OIL IS SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR THE WAR!
The insanity of blowing up innocent people because of their religous beliefs completely baffles me. Ultimately it accomplishes nothing. Yesterday in Irag busloads of students were murdered based entirely on what kind of Muslims they were. That's so sick and twisted that I can't begin to understand the motivation. However, when I think about my brothers and sisters, dying in the smoke and flames of the Towers, everytime I see that image and I am reminded of the carnage and the cruelity of it all...
I WANT THAT MUTHERF**KER OSAMA'S HEAD ON A PLATE!!!
WGJ
chris92svxlsl
06-05-2006, 08:35 PM
this threadis only gonna start and end in argument whats the point? i personally have no comment, but i have for one seen more than fox news or cnn. firsthand accounts are everything, and thats why i wont argue. semper fi:mad: :D
Chris,
we're having this discussion because we want you to live long enough to have a full life. We let BUSH and his posse BS us into an unecessary war with far reaching consequences and we need to analyse what happened so we can make sure it doesn't happen again.
THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT!
-George Santayana
The Life of Reason
Make sense?
OOH RAH!
WGJ
lhopp77
06-06-2006, 07:05 AM
I have been doing other more important things the last few days--besides chit chatting in this thread :D
Lee
Electrophil
06-06-2006, 11:06 AM
I have been doing other more important things the last few days--besides chit chatting in this thread :D
Lee
:eek: Oh my gosh! :eek:
That's exactly how I had you figured. Out in the middle of the wilderness with a pickup truck. :rolleyes:
I was thinking you probably have a survival school area set up with an underground vault hidden with a stash of guns, and 3 monitor cameras per 100 square feet. :D
Just joshin' you Lee. :D
Electrophil
06-06-2006, 11:09 AM
Hey Lee, Is that fence in the background electrified?
I kill me. I'm cracking myself up. :D
lhopp77
06-06-2006, 12:31 PM
:eek: Oh my gosh! :eek:
That's exactly how I had you figured. Out in the middle of the wilderness with a pickup truck. :rolleyes:
I was thinking you probably have a survival school area set up with an underground vault hidden with a stash of guns, and 3 monitor cameras per 100 square feet. :D
Just joshin' you Lee. :D
Yep, I am a true redneck and quite proud of it actually. Just a bit of an educated one. No survival school set up---I have already been through that training multiple times. No cameras or electric fence, but the cars are just over 150 yards from the house. Easy plinking distance for my mini-14 or if I want to pick the button to hit on my target--would use the deer rifle .308 with scope. Of course if he really pisses me off and want to put a hole the size of your fist and jelly the remaining insides---maybe the Remington .300 UltraMag. :) Yep, my good ole daily driver 4X4 in the pic too. You can just see the tops of some tractor implements, too, over the top of the Silver. :D
I KNOW I fit all of the discriptions of me now. :p
I like that Silver. I had to drive 400 miles (one way) to northern Colorado to get that one. I am surprised I did not show up on the Colorado Sighting thread since drove right through Denver and Colorado Springs.
Yep, pretty much in the wilderness (at almost 8000 feet), but really only 2 miles off of paved road and only 13 miles from an Interstate highway.
Wishing I did have some cameras--though. Wonder where I could set them up----?? Hummmm. :D
Just kidding of course. I actually leave the keys IN the cars at all times.
Lee
so NOW you have time HIJACK THIS THREAD and chit chat about the best weapon in your redneck arsenal for shooting people. Thanks for sharing.
Now can we get back to the topic on hand, THE WAR IN IRAQ?
WGJ
lhopp77
06-06-2006, 12:52 PM
Like I said---so very easy!! Must have gone up 60 points. Are we having a nice day yet?? :)
Lee
so NOW you have time HIJACK THIS THREAD and chit chat about the best weapon in your redneck arsenal for shooting people. Thanks for sharing.
Now can we get back to the topic on hand, THE WAR IN IRAQ?
WGJ
http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/sign/sign0101.gif Naw, there's a cute doggy in that pic! I'd much rather start talking about the joys of living in the country with a dog and nature. We can even compare farm tractors and accessories (getting clipboard ready to itemize all farm machinery in a 500 foot radius)
Besides, in case you haven't noticed, I like hijacking threads! http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/evilgrin/evilgrin0045.gif
So Lee, is that your dog? :)
Electrophil
06-06-2006, 03:03 PM
No cameras or electric fence, but the cars are just over 150 yards from the house. Easy plinking distance for my mini-14 or if I want to pick the button to hit on my target--would use the deer rifle .308 with scope. Of course if he really pisses me off and want to put a hole the size of your fist and jelly the remaining insides---maybe the Remington .300 UltraMag. :)
Lee
Yeah, right. Like you would risk the paint/wax on those SVX's. You wouldn't dare shoot in their direction. Even a clean shot would cause blood splatter. Or worse.... would throw the guy into the car causing a dent or a buckle scrape. :eek:
I suggest you grab a bowie from your oversized glass enclosed knife cabinet, and make like a commando. :D
Be wary.... I think I see a liberal on there. He's off in the distance hugging a tree. :D
I wonder how many bodies you got buried out there..... I'm sending Clinton after you. :D :D
Electrophil
06-06-2006, 03:05 PM
so NOW you have time HIJACK THIS THREAD and chit chat about the best weapon in your redneck arsenal for shooting people. Thanks for sharing.
Now can we get back to the topic on hand, THE WAR IN IRAQ?
WGJ
Heck, I forget which thread I'm in half the time. It's basically "Lee VS Everyone else" in all of them anyway. :rolleyes:
Bipa:
We can even compare farm tractors and accessories
I want my Porsche tractor in that intense Porsche red! I wonder how fast a Porsche tractor is in the 1/8 mile? Can you get a CD player to work on something as bumpy ridin' as a tractor? And what about speaker location?
Man, you could go on and on....
Bipa?
Your thoughts?
WGJ
lhopp77
06-06-2006, 07:21 PM
http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/sign/sign0101.gif Naw, there's a cute doggy in that pic! I'd much rather start talking about the joys of living in the country with a dog and nature. We can even compare farm tractors and accessories (getting clipboard ready to itemize all farm machinery in a 500 foot radius)
Besides, in case you haven't noticed, I like hijacking threads! http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/evilgrin/evilgrin0045.gif
So Lee, is that your dog? :)
Going for the jugular right away. The attached pic is good ol' "redneckerson" himself in person (me) standing beside my monster. I didn't find the pic that showed what I was pulling at the time, but I will tell you it was 50 feet wide and plowed up 49' feet at a time. Just think of the width of a house.:D
Yep, one of my dogs. I actually have 2 plus my son's right now while he is in the middle east. I will show a better pic of them when I get some software loaded so I can resize the huge pics.
WGJ--One that size rides pretty smooth actually. You could run over a car and just feel a mild bump. :)
Lee
demonsvx
06-06-2006, 07:29 PM
I see u rented a UHAUL trailer. Did you dent your doors when you got out like I did:mad:
Back on subject the war in Iraq HAS NO DIRECT OBJECTIVE. What are we doing there? America is the only country in the world that has a military presence everywhere why is this? Do we alone bear the responsibility to "go alone" when the crap hits the fan in some third world country? Why dont the "other" superpowers such as Russia, China, France, Germany, etc jump right in and send troops and aid when problems arise right next to them? Why dont we get to some core beliefs in what our country should do, such as taking care of "ourselves" for a change. Look at New Orleans, why have we half-a$$ed that problem along with immigration, energy, the economy and other problems. "Homeland Security" theres another joke, since when does the government tell us what to do,when to do it and when we get attacked the duct tape and plastic will "save us from the terrorists", whatever. If we had a administration with a contigency plan such as real protection for example, gas masks, civil defense shelters (remember those), and a real community emergency plan we wouldnt have the problems we face today. Thank you:)
Yes, there was a meet of Porsche tractors last summer that made the local papers. I'll see if I can dig up more info about them for ya.... after I get some sleep :p
Nice pic, Lee... does yours have all the little extra luxuries like air conditioning, heating, radio/CD etc etc? My landlord has a big beast that looks a bit similar to yours and his has all the extras. I was actually quite shocked when I first learned that you can get tractors with all that stuff nowadays. But then, I've only lived on a real working farm for about a year now so I'm still easily surprised by stuff. Like the size of pigs. I never realized how huge a sow can get.....or how cute newborn piglets can be. Got to see a bunch only about 5 hours after birth.
Aww...heck..... I need sleep or else I'm gonna get maudlin.
G'night y'all and have a pleasant evening
lhopp77
06-06-2006, 07:36 PM
I see u rented a UHAUL trailer. Did you dent your doors when you got out like I did:mad:
I had a similar problem the first time I rented one. I actually opened the window and crawled out and left it open--small window for me to crawl out of on the SVX. THEN I FOUND OUT---the left fender on the U-Haul trailer folds DOWN allowing you to open the door. It is still tight with your weight in it, but it will clear the tires and let you open and close the door.
I was mad because the U-Haul guys never told me that and still haven't. They just assume you know it, I guess.
Lee
demonsvx
06-06-2006, 07:49 PM
I had a similar problem the first time I rented one. I actually opened the window and crawled out and left it open--small window for me to crawl out of on the SVX. THEN I FOUND OUT---the left fender on the U-Haul trailer folds DOWN allowing you to open the door. It is still tight with your weight in it, but it will clear the tires and let you open and close the door.
I was mad because the U-Haul guys never told me that and still haven't. They just assume you know it, I guess.
Lee
Thats nice to know a year after the fact, they didnt tell me anything about the "folding fender":mad: :mad:
I protest! Breaking out a photo of that (your?) tractor was really sneaky! You have been paying attention to Rove. But I gotta tell you man, that's a tractor!
That thing is COOL. COOLER even than TWO SVX's. I would really like to know more about it. YOU should start a non-SVX MACHINE thread. We could talk about everything from Porsche tractors to cameras to firearms. That sort of stuff is definitely your area of expertise. What do ya say? Then we can return this thread to the pressing issue of the Iraq war. demonsvx has made some fine points about Iraq that need addressing.
Well?
WGJ
lhopp77
06-07-2006, 08:03 AM
I protest! Breaking out a photo of that (your?) tractor was really sneaky! You have been paying attention to Rove. But I gotta tell you man, that's a tractor!WGJ
You are right of course. I do not own the tractor, but it was mine in the sense that I was essentially the exclusive driver for a couple years. A very good farmer friend of mine had a stroke and I helped him and his family out for a couple years until he recuperated enough to drive it himself. What would I do with a tractor of that size on 30 acres? He was farming 3000 acres of wheat country in Western Okla ( where I do still own a small place and in fact still store 2 of my cars). The tractor has a 6 cyl deisel engine like the ones in over the road 18 wheelers--putting out 450HP. It has an automatic transmission with 12 forward gears. It will do a little over 35 on the road and can pull a 30 to 50 foot implement at 10MPH in the field. As you can see in the picture the 8 tires are each over 6' tall (I am 6' tall). It does have AC and a stereo. The drivers feet are 8' above the ground when sitting in the cab. A tractor like that costs in approx $125K. BIPA would be proud to know that this tractor is one of two designs that replace the traditional tractor design for large farming operations. One of them was designed and produced initially in Canada--the Versatile. This one actually started as a Steiger design. As farmer Joe, I also learned to drive a combine to harvest wheat that took a 30 foot swath at a time and an 18 wheeler to haul the wheat. Fun times for an older geezer.
I do own a tractor here, but it is a very old Ford tractor that was one of two originally belonging to my father. It is a 1952 Ford 8N tractor.
How is that for continuing to hijack this thread. :D
Lee
Suby Fan
06-07-2006, 09:04 AM
You are right of course. I do not own the tractor, but it was mine in the sense that I was essentially the exclusive driver for a couple years. A very good farmer friend of mine had a stroke and I helped him and his family out for a couple years until he recuperated enough to drive it himself. What would I do with a tractor of that size on 30 acres? He was farming 3000 acres of wheat country in Western Okla ( where I do still own a small place and in fact still store 2 of my cars). The tractor has a 6 cyl deisel engine like the ones in over the road 18 wheelers--putting out 450HP. It has an automatic transmission with 12 forward gears. It will do a little over 35 on the road and can pull a 30 to 50 foot implement at 10MPH in the field. As you can see in the picture the 8 tires are each over 6' tall (I am 6' tall). It does have AC and a stereo. The drivers feet are 8' above the ground when sitting in the cab. A tractor like that costs in approx $125K. BIPA would be proud to know that this tractor is one of two designs that replace the traditional tractor design for large farming operations. One of them was designed and produced initially in Canada--the Versatile. This one actually started as a Steiger design. As farmer Joe, I also learned to drive a combine to harvest wheat that took a 30 foot swath at a time and an 18 wheeler to haul the wheat. Fun times for an older geezer.
I do own a tractor here, but it is a very old Ford tractor that was one of two originally belonging to my father. It is a 1952 Ford 8N tractor.
How is that for continuing to hijack this thread. :D
Lee
is that old ford painted the original blue and yellow?
lhopp77
06-07-2006, 09:29 AM
is that old ford painted the original blue and yellow?
Actually it is the original gray and new rust--well maybe not to new. :)
Lee
Earthworm
06-07-2006, 12:14 PM
That's not a tractor...that's Ford's new SUV! :D
Electrophil
06-07-2006, 12:41 PM
That's not a tractor...that's Ford's new SUV! :D
I thought all Ford SUV's came with a cell phone attached to a self important middleaged woman, and an automatic lane wobbler suspension with Anti-Red Light brakes?
No auto ding mechanism built into the door either. You mean the owner actually has to manually slam the door into someone else in parking lots?
This ain't no Ford SUV I've ever seen. :confused:
Electrophil
06-07-2006, 10:57 PM
Here's someone with the Gonads of an Elephant:
Not me. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198566,00.html)
I think it's a brave act on his part. He's standing up against a huge majority in the military, and he know's he's going to pay dearly.
He'll end up a Senator. Heck, if Bush can get the presidency being a sneaky coward about Vietnam, this guy standing up should inherit the kingdom.
Suby Fan
06-07-2006, 11:06 PM
personaly i think its going to end up as fruitless as not signing up for the draft when your 18... i was temped to protest but.... then i saw what happens when you dont sign up :eek:
You are more than Bush haters--you are anti-military and anti-American.
Lee
You forgot that these people are anti-Lee. These people are allowed to have opinions different from yours, no?
I mean hell, they pay taxes too ya know. :p
Strange how our Founding Fathers knew what the world would come to:)
not too terribly strange. these things tend to be cyclical.
I was thinking you probably have a survival school area set up with an underground vault hidden with a stash of guns, and 3 monitor cameras per 100 square feet. :D
what's wrong with survival school, vaults, guns, and camera's ya hippie?
stick to the gange and leave us gun toting, trigger happy survivalists alone mmkay? :)
Landshark
06-08-2006, 01:43 AM
what's wrong with electronic gadgets, hookers, and champagne cocktails?
stick to the gange and leave us horse-faced, skateboarding, $10 BJ hustlers alone mmkay? :)
whatever you say, chicken-neck. :D :D :D
SilverSpear
06-08-2006, 03:56 AM
Abou Masaab el Zarquawi is DEAD... Now that was a terrorist which needed elimination!!!!! Great job for the US troops in Iraq ;)
lhopp77
06-08-2006, 06:38 AM
Here's someone with the Gonads of an Elephant:
Not me. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198566,00.html)
I think it's a brave act on his part. He's standing up against a huge majority in the military, and he know's he's going to pay dearly.
He'll end up a Senator. Heck, if Bush can get the presidency being a sneaky coward about Vietnam, this guy standing up should inherit the kingdom.
Instead of big gonads, I thought I saw a yellow coward stripe the width
of his back behind him. Sure strange, how different people see the same thing sooooo verrrrryyyyyy differently. The war had started before this guy ever volunteered for the Army. I think he gambled that the war would be over before he had to go---he lost the bet.
Lee
lhopp77
06-08-2006, 07:51 AM
Why is it so quiet in this thread? Isn't everyone enjoying the developments in Iraq as much as I am???????????????????? :D :D :D :D :D
Lee
Isn't everyone enjoying the developments in Iraq as much as I am????????????????????
Yup!:D
lhopp77
06-08-2006, 01:17 PM
Why is it so quiet in this thread? Isn't everyone enjoying the developments in Iraq as much as I am???????????????????? :D :D :D :D :D
Lee
Thought I should repeat that. I can't believe it---middle of the afternoon and ONLY one other comment!!!!!!!:)
Lee, Again
Electrophil
06-08-2006, 03:29 PM
I just walked in a few minutes back. And...... My wife just said I have to walk back out again. (She's still has that broken foot, and I have to drive her everywhere. :mad: :mad: )
Anyway... Haven't heard. What's going on in Iraq?
SilverSpear
06-08-2006, 11:19 PM
Do you all think that this is the end in Iraq? I mean the civil wars between Sunnites and Shi'ites? WE are talking here about two whole sects, and not just people. El Zarquawi is not the key to the solution, someone should be in leadership position of these TERRORISTS Sunnites and try to calm things down, otherwise I can see no solution for those attacks, because this is not just a civil war as did happen in Lebanon (20 yrs ago). This is rather based on F***** blowing oneself in the middle of a crowd = terrorism and not war...
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 05:57 AM
Do you all think that this is the end in Iraq? I mean the civil wars between Sunnites and Shi'ites? WE are talking here about two whole sects, and not just people. El Zarquawi is not the key to the solution, someone should be in leadership position of these TERRORISTS Sunnites and try to calm things down, otherwise I can see no solution for those attacks, because this is not just a civil war as did happen in Lebanon (20 yrs ago). This is rather based on F***** blowing oneself in the middle of a crowd = terrorism and not war...
No we do not think it solves the problems, but it does get rid of a major problem. Bush and Blair put it in the proper prospective if you listened to their comments.
Lee
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 06:00 AM
I guess this very long a deep silence by all of you far left liberals proves the statements I have been making all along. You cannot stand any good news for Bush, the military or this country. Sort of sad actually.
Lee
I guess this very long a deep silence by all of you far left liberals proves the statements I have been making all along. You cannot stand any good news for Bush, the military or this country. Sort of sad actually.
Lee
Hey there! I've been meaning to come online, but after three weeks of almost non-stop rain, we've finally had two wonderful sunny days. Could be a bit warmer but much better without the knee deep mud and "almost flooding" conditions we were dealing with. So I've been spending almost all day outside when not catching up with housework. Plus I had to do my "kehrwoche" yesterday :( Also, Hubby took a few days off and we've been spending some quality "family time" with the puppy. :)
So that's my excuse for not being here. Heck, I didn't find out about the US successful bombing until late last night! And yes, I cheered. Then I started thinking about all the guys waiting to step into his shoes and wondered how long it will take before the group splinters and like a hydra there will be several smaller groups instead of one larger one. Not sure yet if that will make it easier or more difficult. Time will tell.
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 07:31 AM
Hey there! I've been meaning to come online, but after three weeks of almost non-stop rain, we've finally had two wonderful sunny days. Could be a bit warmer but much better without the knee deep mud and "almost flooding" conditions we were dealing with. So I've been spending almost all day outside when not catching up with housework. Plus I had to do my "kehrwoche" yesterday :( Also, Hubby took a few days off and we've been spending some quality "family time" with the puppy. :)
So that's my excuse for not being here. Heck, I didn't find out about the US successful bombing until late last night! And yes, I cheered. Then I started thinking about all the guys waiting to step into his shoes and wondered how long it will take before the group splinters and like a hydra there will be several smaller groups instead of one larger one. Not sure yet if that will make it easier or more difficult. Time will tell.
The same old opposition answer----great, but..........
Why am I not very surprised? At least you said something---the others are AWOL probably waiting for the spoon fed liberal Democrat official position.
Lee
The same old opposition answer----great, but..........
Why am I not very surprised? At least you said something---the others are AWOL probably waiting for the spoon fed liberal Democrat official position.
Lee
What do you expect me to say? That now that he's dead, everything is over and its all daisies and roses from now on? C'mon ... we both know that it was an important symbolic blow. I acknowledged that removing him was something to cheer about. But consider the following:
"The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi deprives Islamic terrorism of one of its most high-profile and violent poster boys. But it leaves largely intact the threat of attacks from independent cells -- the "100 bin Ladens" that Egypt's president once said could be spawned by the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
SHOWN GREAT RESILIENCE
Once they absorb the psychological blow of his death, al-Zarqawi's followers and other militants outside of Iraq not directly associated with him could regroup and continue with their bomb plots and killings.
Al-Qaida has shown great resilience, and its networks and followers have continued even as top leaders have been killed or captured. Even with Osama bin Laden in hiding, other militants have stepped forward to make good on his calls for terror attacks.
There seems little certainty who will succeed al-Zarqawi, but some observers think it will be Egyptian-born, Afghanistan-trained Abu al-Masri, whose name is an obvious alias, meaning "father of the Egyptian." "
June 9, 2006
Fresh start for terror?
Death of divisive al-Zarqawi may be catalyst for more attacks from militants
By JOHN LEICESTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.torontosun.com/News/World/2006/06/09/1622212-sun.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"U.S. officials were quick to draw attention to the brutality of al-Zarqawi and his followers - from their slaughter of Shiite civilians to their beheading of foreign hostages, captured on video.
Yet that may exaggerate al-Zarqawi's relative importance, leading to an impression, deemed incorrect by most experts, that the entire insurgency was orchestrated and directed by a single figure.
In fact, more than a dozen Sunni Arab insurgent groups are believed to be operating in Iraq. Several employ tactics just as ruthless as al-Zarqawi but do not share his goal of re-establishing the ancient Islamic caliphate.
Whether these organizations operate entirely on their own or take direction from a central leader has long been the subject of intense debate.
"Most of the insurgency will not be affected, because al-Qaida is a highly visible and extraordinarily brutal cadre within a much larger group of different insurgent movements," said former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman.
"These groups will not be directly affected by Zarqawi's death and could be strengthened if his death weakens al-Qaida," he said.
French terrorism expert Dominique Thomas speculated that al-Qaida might actually step up the pace of attacks just to prove it has survived its leader.
"While Zarqawi's death is a symbolic gain for the Americans, I don't think we'll see a real change on the ground," Thomas said. "
Will al-Zarqawi's death slow insurgency?
By ROBERT H. REID
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/06/08/1621420-ap.html
Anyone else see the irony in this statement? :rolleyes:
"The air strike occurred in the village of Hibhib, which is known for producing anise-flavoured arak, one of the most popular alcoholic drinks in the Middle East. "
June 9, 2006
Al-Zarqawi killed in air raid
By PATRICK QUINN
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/06/08/1620180-ap.html
andrew.anderson
06-09-2006, 08:58 AM
This is a great step forward for the middle east. His own navive country of Jordan wanted him dead even.
Royal Tiger
06-09-2006, 09:10 AM
I loved the part where it said he didn't die right away. Looks like God was right and Allah wasn't.
The systematic elimination of idiotic "fundamentalists" is the only way to ensure peace has a shot. Killing women and children is a cowardly act any god would frown on.
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 12:08 PM
I loved the part where it said he didn't die right away. Looks like God was right and Allah wasn't.
I loved that, too. He was able to see and realize who had send him to hell. I wonder what happened to the suicide vest he wore all of the time swearing to never be taken alive. Why didn't he try to activate that---maybe because he had one foot in hell?? :)
This silence from my normal bothersome friends------is extemely deafening!! :)
Lee
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 12:48 PM
Since no one will say it on here--I will. I think the appointment of a Sunni to the post of Defense Minister is equally important and should play a very big role in quietening the civil strife between sects. I think the completion of the Iraqi government is on par with the death of Zarqawi.
Lee
Electrophil
06-09-2006, 12:57 PM
I loved that, too. He was able to see and realize who had send him to hell. I wonder what happened to the suicide vest he wore all of the time swearing to never be taken alive. Why didn't he try to activate that---maybe because he had one foot in hell?? :)
This silence from my normal bothersome friends------is extemely deafening!! :)
Lee
This particular bothersome friend is just under a temporary time constraint. I have been keeping up with the threads, but temporarily... I'm short on time to reply with my highly intelligent, resourceful, and "better than yours" posts. I regret that, for I have this deep psychological need to be a post ho'.
I'll be back personally, as soon as I get out from under this temporary gun of a deadline.
As for "da leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq"..... Great! Glad about it.
The bad parts are: Timing is suspect, they are already talking about who will replace him, and whether he will be just as deadly, and the biggest bad part....
There wasn't an Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Bush administration caused the foundation, and rapid massive buildup of Al-Qaeda in Iraq due to their unjustified invasion.
Killing al-Zarqawi is like throwing a bucket of water on a thousand acre forest fire that you started yourself. Chances are, you are going to jail for starting the fire, no matter how effective that one bucket of water may have been to that tree.
Electrophil
06-09-2006, 01:01 PM
I think the completion of the Iraqi government is on par with the death of Zarqawi.
Lee
Yeah, they are both temporary.
Munch on that Beeache!!
Electrophil
06-09-2006, 01:06 PM
---the others are AWOL probably waiting for the spoon fed liberal Democrat official position.
Lee
The family nature of this site will only star out my reply. I'll leave it up to your imagination. :D
lhopp77
06-09-2006, 01:13 PM
Robert, I am extremely disappointed. Even good old Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton had better responses than you. Why can't you just be a big enough man to say how great it is for the US and the new complete Iraqi government and let it go at that instead of trying to make something less than good out of it? Or to find some reason for it actually being bad. I think this is a time to give a lot of credit to the military, intelligence, the Iraqi government and even the US government. I will agree that Bush did not have a direct role in it any more than he had a direct role in all of the things you and WGJ blame on him. Don't you think it is time to be realistic and fair??
Lee
Electrophil
06-09-2006, 01:48 PM
Robert, I am extremely disappointed. Even good old Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton had better responses than you. Why can't you just be a big enough man to say how great it is for the US and the new complete Iraqi government and let it go at that instead of trying to make something less than good out of it? Or to find some reason for it actually being bad. I think this is a time to give a lot of credit to the military, intelligence, the Iraqi government and even the US government. I will agree that Bush did not have a direct role in it any more than he had a direct role in all of the things you and WGJ blame on him. Don't you think it is time to be realistic and fair??
Lee
I don't play "partial refunds" on monumental mistakes that has killed thousands of our troops. It makes no difference on the scheme of things that some idiot is dead. I didn't make him out to be an idiot. Our leaders did. And now I'm suppose to be impressed?? It would make no difference to me if the "mother of all enemies" Usama is knocked off.
Fix the problem, not the symptom.
And you! Quit hunting for something you can give this administration credit for. This "success" happened at the same time they were approving another 60 BILLION for a war that was suppose to pay for itself. Coincidence?
demonsvx
06-10-2006, 08:48 PM
Would Al-zarqawi been a problem if we DIDNT invade Iraq? Hatred breeds more hatred, did we not learn this from previous wars? Why did Bush sit on his a$$ when the FAA had protocols to act upon for hijacked aircraft? Oh yeah he was retarded like the rest of our government Republicans and Democrats on what their jobs are, SERVING the American people not scamming them. Iraq is a lost cause, we havent found WMDs, Saddam is captured(not a terrorist a dictator) rebuilding Iraq(why not NEW ORLEANS, oh I forgot its poor) Al-Zarqawi has been killed. Are we keeping a tally of who gets high score in death count? He who kills more wins? I dont think so.
lhopp77
06-10-2006, 09:28 PM
Would Al-zarqawi been a problem if we DIDNT invade Iraq?.
You need to review the facts about Zarqawi before you blame his actions on the US. As early as 1999 he was behind attempts to kill Americans and was in Afghanistan in 89 and again in 99 when he operated a terrorist camp funded by Osama Bin Laden. Went to Iraq in 2002 and again was behind terrorist training and terrorist acts. He was responsible for the death of Laurence Foley, a US diplomat in Jordan in 2002. He was hardly a creation of the US. He was a functioning terrorist at least aligned with Al Qaeda if not a member until later. The US fighting him in Iraq kept him from attacking American targets in other countries or in the US. Just keep it straight and not Aniti-American, please. ;)
Lee
demonsvx
06-10-2006, 09:42 PM
Im not trying to be anti-american, but was killing him going to solve the real problem? Im glad another terrorist is gone but what is our goal in Iraq? Dont try to take peoples opinion here too personal. I appreciate everyones view on this matter thank you:)
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
lhopp77
06-11-2006, 08:35 AM
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
Not bad, but there are definitely more principles of warfare outlined long before US Grant thought of any. Von Clausewitz was pretty good at laying out the principles. :)
The principles of war are actually not our current dilemma in the conventional sense.
Lee
Not bad, but there are definitely more principles of warfare outlined long before US Grant thought of any. Von Clausewitz was pretty good at laying out the principles. :)
The principles of war are actually not our current dilemma in the conventional sense.
Lee
Naw... Lee, you're right. The principles of war aren't the current dilemma, just basic strategy and tactics! :eek: :rolleyes: :p
demonsvx
06-11-2006, 10:51 AM
Kill Them Before They Kill Us Am I Correct?
lhopp77
06-11-2006, 11:00 AM
Kill Them Before They Kill Us Am I Correct?
Works for me!!!!:D
Lee
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"
Unreported: The Zarqawi Invitation
By Greg Palast
Friday 09 June 2006
They got him - the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi - who invited him into Iraq in the first place?
If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.
The General had arrived in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack, Jack - you're fired.
What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner's job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.
Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.
"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."
But elections were not in The Plan.
The Plan was a 101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we'd just conquered. There was nothing in it about democracy or elections or safety. There was, rather, a detailed schedule for selling off "all [Iraq's] state assets" - and Iraq, that's just about everything - "especially," said The Plan, "the oil and supporting industries." Especially the oil.
There was more than oil to sell off. The Plan included the sale of Iraq's banks, and weirdly, changing it's copyright laws and other odd items that made the plan look less like a program for Iraq to get on its feet than a program for corporate looting of the nation's assets. (And indeed, we discovered at BBC, behind many of the odder elements - copyright and tax code changes - was the hand of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's associate Grover Norquist.)
But Garner didn't think much of The Plan, he told me when we met a year later in Washington. He had other things on his mind. "You prevent epidemics, you start the food distribution program to prevent famine."
Seizing title and ownership of Iraq's oil fields was not on Garner's must-do list. He let that be known to Washington. "I don't think [Iraqis] need to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government that represents the freely elected will of the people." He added, "It's their country, their oil."
Apparently, the Secretary of Defense disagreed. So did lobbyist Norquist. And Garner incurred their fury by getting carried away with the "democracy" idea: he called for quick elections - within 90 days of the taking of Baghdad.
But Garner's 90-days-to-elections commitment ran straight into the oil sell-off program. Annex D of the plan indicated that would take at least 270 days - at least 9 months.
Worse, Garner was brokering a truce between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. They were about to begin what Garner called a "Big Tent" meeting to hammer out the details and set the election date. He figured he had 90 days to get it done before the factions started slitting each other's throats.
But a quick election would mean the end of the state-asset sell-off plan: An Iraqi-controlled government would never go along with what would certainly amount to foreign corporations swallowing their entire economy. Especially the oil. Garner had spent years in Iraq, in charge of the Northern Kurdish zone and knew Iraqis well. He was certain that an asset-and-oil grab, "privatizations," would cause a sensitive population to take up the gun. "That's just one fight you don't want to take on right now."
But that's just the fight the neo-cons at Defense wanted. And in Rumsfeld's replacement for Garner, they had a man itching for the fight. Paul Bremer III had no experience on the ground in Iraq, but he had one unbeatable credential that Garner lacked: Bremer had served as Managing Director of Kissinger and Associates.
In April 2003, Bremer instituted democracy Bush style: he canceled elections and appointed the entire government himself. Two months later, Bremer ordered a halt to all municipal elections including the crucial vote to Shia seeking to select a mayor in the city of Najaf. The front-runner, moderate Shia Asad Sultan Abu Gilal warned, "If they don't give us freedom, what will we do? We have patience, but not for long." Local Shias formed the "Mahdi Army," and within a year, provoked by Bremer's shutting their paper, attacked and killed 21 U.S. soldiers.
The insurgency had begun. But Bremer's job was hardly over. There were Sunnis to go after. He issued "Order Number One: De-Ba'athification." In effect, this became "De-Sunni-fication."
Saddam's generals, mostly Sunnis, who had, we learned, secretly collaborated with the US invasion and now expected their reward found themselves hunted and arrested. Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born US resident who helped with the pre-invasion brokering, told me, "U.S. forces imprisoned all those we named as political leaders," who stopped Iraq's army from firing on U.S. troops.
Aljibury's main concern was that busting Iraqi collaborators and Ba'athist big shots was a gift "to the Wahabis," by which he meant the foreign insurgents, who now gained experienced military commanders, Sunnis, who now had no choice but to fight the US-installed regime or face arrest, ruin or death. They would soon link up with the Sunni-defending Wahabi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was committed to destroying "Shia snakes."
And the oil fields? It was, Aljibury noted, when word got out about the plans to sell off the oil fields (thanks to loose lips of the US-appointed oil minister) that pipelines began to blow. Although he had been at the center of planning for invasion, Aljibury now saw the greed-crazed grab for the oil fields as the fuel for a civil war that would rip his country to pieces:
"Insurgents," he said, "and those who wanted to destabilize a new Iraq have used this as means of saying, 'Look, you're losing your country. You're losing your leadership. You're losing all of your resources to a bunch of wealthy people. A bunch of billionaires in the world want to take you over and make your life miserable.' And we saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, of course, built on - built on the premise that privatization [of oil] is coming."
General Garner, watching the insurgency unfold from the occupation authority's provocations, told me, in his understated manner, "I'm a believer that you don't want to end the day with more enemies than you started with."
But you can't have a war president without a war. And you can't have a war without enemies. "Bring 'em on," our Commander-in-Chief said. And Zarqawi answered the call.
lhopp77
06-12-2006, 08:07 AM
They got him - the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi - who invited him into Iraq in the first place?
Zarqawi was a successful terrorist already in Iraq BEFORE the Americans thought of an invasion. The only point that can be argued about him is whether he was actually part of Al Qaeda at first or simply working with Al Qaeda or even in competition with Osama for terrorist leadership and notoriety.
Lee
Greg Palast is a left wing Ann Coulter. The source tells you a lot about the content.
Gene
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
http://stderr.de/funstuff/GOERING.JPG
lhopp77
06-23-2006, 12:41 PM
http://stderr.de/funstuff/GOERING.JPG
Are you getting out of your Bailiwick (pun intended) and expressing some Anti-American sentiment?? If you are---shame on you. If you are not, I will go back to sleep even though that is a very strange post for a foreigner in a political discussion thread relevant to our country. :)
Are you a true "les anes"? The post would imply that you might be related to ours here. :)
Lee
I believe that the Iraq war involves most of the western world, not just America. I just find the quote poignent, so i thought I would share it.
Electrophil
06-23-2006, 06:27 PM
I believe that the Iraq war involves most of the western world, not just America. I just find the quote poignent, so i thought I would share it.
It's an excellent quote and rings true at every level. It's also exactly what happened in the case of Iraq. It's the silliest, wastefull move I think the US has ever made. Thought that prior to Bush throwing his "Ya got 48 hours ta get out", and I still think it today.
The only difference is, a heck of a lot more people openly agree with me now.
Royal Tiger
06-23-2006, 06:42 PM
Goering was misquoted. He meant that we could invade france and no one would care! :)
It's a joke people.
How many troops does it take to defend Paris?
No one knows, hasn't been done successfully yet.
Why did the french plant trees on the Chante de'liazon (sp?)?
So the Germans would have shade when they marched.
On a serious note, I'd like to see a better source for the quote. I could make a picture of Adolf Hitler in a secret meeting with Neville Chamberlin before the invasion of the Saar on my computer and start a British conspiracy thread.
lhopp77
06-23-2006, 06:51 PM
It's an excellent quote and rings true at every level. It's also exactly what happened in the case of Iraq. It's the silliest, wastefull move I think the US has ever made. Thought that prior to Bush throwing his "Ya got 48 hours ta get out", and I still think it today.
The only difference is, a heck of a lot more people openly agree with me now.
There were many countries and political leaders including Kerry, Clinton, etc that thought the same things about the Saddam regime and threats. True, many have changed their minds, but that is not unusual for most of them.
There are also a heck of a lot of people that disagree with you.
Lee
Are you getting out of your Bailiwick (pun intended) and expressing some Anti-American sentiment?? If you are---shame on you. If you are not, I will go back to sleep even though that is a very strange post for a foreigner in a political discussion thread relevant to our country. :)
Are you a true "les anes"? The post would imply that you might be related to ours here. :)
Lee
If you ever were "awake" or even conscious you'd recognize the TOTAL RELEVANCE of Andy's use of the Goering quote. More and more the Bush administration emulates the Nazi's with BIG LIE after BIG LIE after BIG LIE.
And while you condescend to pretentiously and hyporitically say "shame on you", you again fail utterly to refute the point. Hell, you fail to get the point! AGAIN! As for trying to intimidate Andy, that's just so lame I can't believe you still try that crap. Apparently you've learned nothing from Bipa. The rest of your post is the usual irrelevant crap.
STICK TO THE POINT! JUST ONCE!
WGJ
The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)
lhopp77
06-23-2006, 10:19 PM
If you ever were "awake" or even conscious you'd recognize the TOTAL RELEVANCE of Andy's use of the Goering quote. More and more the Bush administration emulates the Nazi's with BIG LIE after BIG LIE after BIG LIE.
And while you condescend to pretentiously and hyporitically say "shame on you", you again fail utterly to refute the point. Hell, you fail to get the point! AGAIN! As for trying to intimidate Andy, that's just so lame I can't believe you still try that crap. Apparently you've learned nothing from Bipa. The rest of your post is the usual irrelevant crap.
STICK TO THE POINT! JUST ONCE!
WGJ
I doubt that you have any knowledge as to some of the things I referred to in the response to Andy. I know he does and expect that he does not consider my post as you do. It is obvious that I did not agree with him and questioned why he was posting somethat that disparages the US, but I did not insult him in any way or try to intimidate him. You need broaden your knowledge a bit. ;)
Lee
Nothing but patronizing, lame, assinine, inane kaka. Not one point addressed. Not one fact, not one piece of evidence. Just more drival.
WGJ
Electrophil
06-24-2006, 04:02 AM
There were many countries and political leaders including Kerry, Clinton, etc that thought the same things about the Saddam regime and threats. True, many have changed their minds, but that is not unusual for most of them.
There are also a heck of a lot of people that disagree with you.
Lee
Kerry never thought the same thing about Iraq, and neither did Clinton. I gave you the link to Kerry's speech the last time you misquoted him. He made it clear in that speech that we shouldn't unilaterally invade Iraq before he voted on the resolution.
Clinton thought Al-Qaeda was the number one threat, and he told Bush that. Of course Bush ignored him, and 9/11 is the result.
And if you notice, there are less and less people disagreeing on this screwed up and fiscally unconservative administration.
lhopp77
06-24-2006, 08:54 PM
Kerry never thought the same thing about Iraq, and neither did Clinton. I gave you the link to Kerry's speech the last time you misquoted him. He made it clear in that speech that we shouldn't unilaterally invade Iraq before he voted on the resolution.
Clinton thought Al-Qaeda was the number one threat, and he told Bush that. Of course Bush ignored him, and 9/11 is the result.
And if you notice, there are less and less people disagreeing on this screwed up and fiscally unconservative administration.
It is a matter of record that BOTH thought that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat. Maybe Clinton did think that Al Qaida was a threat but he sure had a funny way of showing it by not taking actions or taking Osama when he had the chance.
I did NOT misquote Kerry--it was a direct quote and not taken out of context. The message we both quoted proves that Kerry thought the WMD did exist. The part of the speech you refer too was only cautionary as to actions to be taken and when. He still believed the weapons existed--very clearly.
War is never popular, particularly in modern times and the more prolonged it is the more problems encountered. Unfortunately no one asks what the majority of the soldiers that are fighting it believe and leave it up to them instead of getting involved. If they feel it is worth dying for their country and our way of live--leave them alone and them them do the job. Like whatever her name Sheehan is---her son believed in the war and would probably be vocally against her if he had not been killed. Of course, she would be nobody if he was still alive.
Lee
You've completely lost it. Lee I can't believe that you would be so disrepecful of a grieving mother and her dead son, nor have the temerity to speak for the dead:
Lee:
"Like whatever her name Sheehan is---her son believed in the war and would probably be vocally against her if he had not been killed. Of course, she would be nobody if he was still alive."
How the hell do you know what Cindy Sheehan's son thought? I know you can talk to dogs but I'm fairly sure you aren't having any conversations with Cindy Sheehan's dead son. And if her son hadn't died so you could put gas into all those cars you don't really need, she wouldn't have needed to become well known for opposing the war. That's all this war is ultimately about, OIL. Bringing democracy to Iraq is the default PR program, because the WMD BS and all the other BS wouldn't fly.
WGJ
Electrophil
06-25-2006, 09:07 AM
Whoa... Lee does have a lot of SVX's. That's a good thing though. He's keeping our small worldwide fleet alive. :)
What's this about talking to dogs. Lee, you have conversations with dogs??
Spot!! Come here boy!! Let's have a dash of tea and talk about that anti-abortion bill.
So that's where your point of view comes from! :D :D (J/K :D )
Royal Tiger
06-29-2006, 05:23 PM
Since the left have taken the Bush lied and run with it, with no factual basis, I find the silence over the article I read in the local paper today that classified documents released to no fanfare, show that since September 2003, the US forces have stock piled over 500 artilary shells containing mustard gas, among other nerve and chemical agents. There was much more in the article, and I wish I would have brought the paper home, but it stands to reason some of the Intel received may have been correct. And believing what your advisors tell you is not lying. Lying is having factual information about what you plan to say is false, and saying it anyway. It seems that Bush, although no mental giant, might have just been saying what he was told. A common occurance in the White House. Has everyone forgot when it was revealed that JFK's advisors had been falsifing troop counts at the beginning of Vietnam? Can we debat the merits and stop all the name calling and other BS? Let's try to be above what we so call despise about American politics. Hard to take the high road with the handful of mud.
lhopp77
06-29-2006, 06:42 PM
These weapons found do actually constitute "weapons of mass destruction". However, even George W is honest enough to say that these are not the weapons that he went to war over. That is what really gets me---he was not lying then and he is honest (not lying) now. That is the point that most of the Bush haters should appreciate. So far the shells found have been late 80s and 90 or 91 manufacture dates. What little I have read about them there are indications that the Ricin may have detiorated, but don't kid yourself they would still be extremely lethal. I wish they would release more of the classified information on them, but I know it is mainly to keep in country terrorists from trying to locate caches of the shells and using them as roadside bombs in Iraq or other countries.
Lee
Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 25, 2006; Page A01
In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.
Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.
Statements by Former CIA Officials
A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."
The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.
"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."
While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.
lhopp77
06-29-2006, 08:47 PM
Your questionable source only addresses ONLY the mobile labs. AGAIN, nearly every leader in the WORLD---repeat after me--THE WORLD, as well as our own leaders of BOTH parties thought there were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Lee
Posted at 08:30 AM ET, 06/27/2006
The Calendar for Victory in Iraq
Here's what President Bush and Company are not saying: Before we leave Iraq, we will kill every last foreign fighter, neutralize the insurgency and destroy the sectarian militias.
It has been obvious since December that the president's National Strategy for Victory in Iraq is to drawdown U.S. forces, and eventually to withdraw the vast majority, before any of the missions with which most Americans identify are accomplished.
When Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) called the Iraq war an "open-ended commitment in Iraq," he was not only dead-wrong, he willfully ignored the truth about the Bush administration's policy and the U.S. military's acceptance of reality.
They stand up, we stand down.* A calendar is already in play, the clock is ticking.
The accepted end-state is not "victory" as most Americans would understand it.* No one in the military still is arguing that the "mission" must be completed before U.S. forces are reduced or withdrawn.
The very essence of the Bush "plan" is instead a carefully calibrated balancing act that carries an implicit recognition of the limitations of American power, and of the American public's patience.
WGJ
For the complete story:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email
Your questionable source only addresses ONLY the mobile labs. AGAIN, nearly every leader in the WORLD---repeat after me--THE WORLD, as well as our own leaders of BOTH parties thought there were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Lee
Who would those leaders be? Where's YOUR documentation? NONE AS USUAL.
You can roll your eyes all you want and claim that the Washington Post lies but, and this will come as a shock, your OPINION doesn't feed the bulldog. Talk is cheap, particularly yours, because you just keep repeating Republican talking points, with no evidence. So, where are your facts?
How many times are you going to SHOOT FROM THE LIP and then get slapped down because you got it WRONG AGAIN before you come up with some freakin' evidence, substantiation, or documentation?
You popped off about the sqeeky clean, morally superior Republicans and look what it got you. Have you even finished counting all the jailed Republican perverts? How many of my documented assertions have you directly addressed, much less with evidence? There are pages and pages just in the political forum of documented, public record Bush and his admin f**kups. You still have yet to address even one of the Fabulous 50 posted long ago...and there's been so much more since then that you'll never catch up. Every day there's another Bush f**kup in the papers. Hell, I can't keep up with all his mistakes. But the body count keeps gettin' higher, and the rich keep gettin' richer,while the planet turns to SH*T.
Take a break and go see AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and learn where our priorities ought to be. Bush is the new NERO. We're one or two generations away from America becoming a nasty amalgam of Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner and Soylent Green. What a wonderful legacy.
WGJ
... the Earth hath skin, and the skin hath diseases. One of these... is called man.
Nietzsche said that over one hundred years ago.
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 12:31 AM
Who would those leaders be? Where's YOUR documentation? NONE AS USUAL.
You can roll your eyes all you want and claim that the Washington Post lies but, and this will come as a shock, your OPINION doesn't feed the bulldog. Talk is cheap, particularly yours, because you just keep repeating Republican talking points, with no evidence. So, where are your facts?
How many times are you going to SHOOT FROM THE LIP and then get slapped down because you got it WRONG AGAIN before you come up with some freakin' evidence, substantiation, or documentation?
Since we haven't found WMD in Iraq, a lot of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd is saying that the Bush administration lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Well, if they're going to claim that the Bush administration lied, then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same "lies" since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples that prove that the Bush administration didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction...
"[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." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
"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. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine 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." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
"(Saddam) 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 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained 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 capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002
"The community of nations may see more and more of 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. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998
"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, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. 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. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
"Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." -- Tom Daschle in 1998
"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -- Dick Gephardt in September of 2002
"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. 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." -- Al Gore, 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." -- Bob Graham, December 2002
"Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction." -- Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 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." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002
"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002
"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. 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. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." -- John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003
"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 mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." -- Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002
"Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States." -- Joe Lieberman, August, 2002
"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -- Patty Murray, October 9, 2002
"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. 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." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
"Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." -- Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998
"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. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. 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. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts." -- Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002
Read it and weep Williford.
Lee
Royal Tiger
06-30-2006, 03:51 AM
WGJ, you insist Lee admit the Republicans aren't perfect, but how come you can't see the democrats are just as flawed. slick willie got out the door, trashing the White House, whose repairs came from our tax money, pardoned convicted felons in exchange for cash payments, had Communist Chinese sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom, and numerous other "questionable" acts out of spite for GB moving in. Out of all the silly banter and name calling, my point stills rings true. It was in my last post in case you missed it.
AGAIN, nearly every leader in the WORLD---repeat after me--THE WORLD, as well as our own leaders of BOTH parties thought there were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION.?
Lee
Nice research on the American leaders...but they're old news. We know our politicians on both sides were full of it. But your claim is "nearly every leader in the WORLD". Besides Tony Blair who are these "nearly every leader in the WORLD" that "thought" there "were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION."
WGJ
Every country that voted for the United Nations resolution.
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 12:45 PM
Nice research on the American leaders...but they're old news. We know our politicians on both sides were full of it. But your claim is "nearly every leader in the WORLD". Besides Tony Blair who are these "nearly every leader in the WORLD" that "thought" there "were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION."
WGJ
Well, at least I see that you AGREE that nearly ALL of the American leaders of both parties believed the WMDs existed.
Now--on to world leaders. I already provided a statement by France's Chirac that said they existed.
Now--first--ALL of the coalition members believed they existed and just in case you forgot who they were: UK, Spain, Japan, Italy, Poland, Australia, Ukraine, Romania, South Korea, Denmark, Thailand, El Salvador, Hungary, Singapore, Norway, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mongolia, Latvia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Albania, Slovakia, New Zealand, Tonga, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia and Moldovia.
The position of Israel is a given and Jordan provided some of the intell. Countries that provided support for US troops and basing also believed it and include: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.
I would say that these countries represent a large contingent that believed that the weapons existed and that Saddam was a threat.
Get real and open your eyes (your mind, too).
Lee
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 12:55 PM
It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying “it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]…a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for” in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today." :)
Lee
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 01:01 PM
I really don't understand this debate. They did at one time have WMD's. That's a given, Rumsfield kept the receipts.
The debate should be: Why the hell are we there? Why did we go there?
Royal Tiger
06-30-2006, 01:36 PM
The dems have been running around yelling Bush lied, there were no WMDs, now you say everyone agrees there were.
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 03:10 PM
The dems have been running around yelling Bush lied, there were no WMDs, now you say everyone agrees there were.
The article is on chemicals existing prior to OP Freedom. We sold them those weapons. The UN inspectors even had the ones spoken about here documented. They weren't a secret. They were... OK... Where do we dispose of them... I know!! Right here! They never moved, they were always known and declared. Did you think the Magnificent 7 loaned them a nuclear powered vacuum that ejected this stuff out into space? Where do you think the inspectors put the stuff they found after OP Freedom? In their garage?
It isn't the mobile chemical labs, weapons processing plants or new productions that this administration lied about. "Those" don't exist, never did, don't now, and they knew that all along. Just like the United Nations inspection team was telling them. "If they have it, we can't find it." Ya can't prove something does "not" exist. This is just another one of those "confuse the issue" routines by fudging the dates a little. Ha. Like Hussein had the capabilities to make sausages after 1990. He was a little busy just getting the roads and bridges rebuilt until the late 90's.
It isn't part of the debate unless the ones wanting justice allows it to be.
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 03:18 PM
It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying “it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]…a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for” in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today." :)
Lee
I have $30 missing and unaccounted for. I wonder if the gas station will accept it. I think I'll pay my taxes next year with unaccounted for funds.
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 03:56 PM
The dems have been running around yelling Bush lied, there were no WMDs, now you say everyone agrees there were.
This current argument started over the fact that Dems NOW (and have for a couple years) run around and say there were NEVER any WMDs in Iraq prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and that Bush lied about it.
The previous posts were only proving that NEARLY EVERYONE---world leaders AND US political leaders of BOTH parties were convinced that there were WMDs in Iraq. Bush DID NOT LIE about them--the intelligence that the WORLD depended on was either erroneous or the weapons moved. We are not arguing about the recent findings of some WMD chemical muntions. The mobile labs were only entered into the argument by WGJ trying to pass that off as the entire problem.
Go back to sleep, Robert. :)
Lee
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 04:40 PM
This current argument started over the fact that Dems NOW (and have for a couple years) run around and say there were NEVER any WMDs in Iraq prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and that Bush lied about it.
The previous posts were only proving that NEARLY EVERYONE---world leaders AND US political leaders of BOTH parties were convinced that there were WMDs in Iraq. Bush DID NOT LIE about them--the intelligence that the WORLD depended on was either erroneous or the weapons moved. We are not arguing about the recent findings of some WMD chemical muntions. The mobile labs were only entered into the argument by WGJ trying to pass that off as the entire problem.
Go back to sleep, Robert. :)
Lee
Oh... you guys know he lied. Saying he didn't makes this the most ignorant administration ever in our history. Proving we weren't the only country thinking that way by comparing our intelligence capabilities up against Slovakia, etc., is just plain insulting.
I didn't see any of the respectable countries in there besides the UK. Where were the countries like Germany, or Russia? You know, countries that have a respectable and known intelligence capability? There haven't been any action movies involving Norway's intelligence agency, and there's a reason for that.
The list you gave me have no intelligence capabilities and could only benefit by going along with the US through kick backs and aid. There were no major countries. Japan? Doesn't their constitution forbid the placement of agents outside their borders? And I sure as heck didn't see any regional countries in the list like Saudi Arabia, or the UAE.
The list you coughed up is part of the lie that got us in Iraq. The so call coalition of the willing. You didn't know that?
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 05:12 PM
You are wrong again, Robert. What I have posted PROVES beyond ANY DOUBT that the world and US political leaders believed that WMDs existed. There are some countries on that list that would be insulted if their intelligence gathering capabilities were questioned. But you ask about German assessments---well here is one.
Sunday, 25 February, 2001, 12:40 GMT
Iraq 'could build N-bomb'
Iraq could produce nuclear weapons within three years, according to a German intelligence assessment.
The report also says the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has evidence that Baghdad is working to develop its short-range rockets.
The BND also believes Iraq still possesses the capacity to resume the production of biological weapons at short notice.
Details of the information contained in the report was published in various German newspapers following a briefing to journalists by BND officials.
"It is clear that we have suspicions about Iraq," a BND official told Reuters news agency.
Ceasefire agreement
The intellegence agency believes that Iraq has resumed efforts to build chemical and biological weapons since UN inspectors left the country in 1998.
But it says that Baghdad currently possesses only 10-20% of the conventional weapons it had during the Gulf War.
Under the ceasefire agreement which ended the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was obliged to end its chemical and biological weapons capacity.
The United Nations team appointed to monitor Baghdad's compliance with the agreement left Iraq in 1998 after the government ceased co-operation with the weapons inspectors.
The BND says it has evidence to suggest the following:
Iraq has resumed its nuclear programme and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years. Work has been observed at the Al Qaim site, believed to be the centre of Baghdad's nuclear programme.
Iraq is currently developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al Fatah short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300kg payload 150km (95 miles). Medium-range rockets capable of carrying a warhead 3,000km (1,900 miles) could be built by 2005 - far enough to reach Europe.
Iraq is also believed to be capable of manufacturing solid rocket fuel.
A Delhi-based company, blacklisted by the German Government because of its alleged role in weapons proliferation, has acted as a buyer on Iraq's behalf. Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai.
Since the UN inspectors left, the number of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has increased from 20 to 80. Of that total, the BND believes a quarter to be involved in making weapons.
Widespread procurement activity has been observed abroad and production of biological weapons could be resumed at short notice. It is possible that production may already have begun.
Shot down again, Robert. :)
Lee
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 05:52 PM
Robert, Of course you cannot find an assessment that says Russia thought that Saddam had WMDs. Russia was directly involved with development of the weapons and complacent with their continued pressure. Iraq was one of Russia's best weapons customers. The following makes for some very interesting reading. While it has not been proven correct the same applies to it being incorrect. Was can be verified is that many of the facts are true:
Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
October 2, 2003 | General Ion Mihai Pacepa
On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.
As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.
All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless of the circumstances.
The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we sponsored.
Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.
The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals: Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war—Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.
The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war — the technological documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks.
Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 — when Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.
Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection, since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq—ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).
It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad — even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a good price.
Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing.
Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to worry about after all.
It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible."
The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its danger. On the contrary, it increases it."
Lee
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 06:42 PM
Robert, Of course you cannot find an assessment that says Russia thought that Saddam had WMDs. Russia was directly involved with development of the weapons and complacent with their continued pressure. Iraq was one of Russia's best weapons customers. The following makes for some very interesting reading. While it has not been proven correct the same applies to it being incorrect. Was can be verified is that many of the facts are true:
Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
October 2, 2003 | General Ion Mihai Pacepa
On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.
Lee
Wow.. It took you quite a while to pull the "Commie plot" card. I thought you McCarthy guys kept that right up at the front of your sleeve.
Who was Hussein's main supplier of weapons prior? I guess that's why Bush Sr. looked the other way and allowed the invasion of Kuwait. He wanted to punch his war profiteer card. Of course he lost a great customer and the Russians gained one, but that seemed a good price to pay at the time.
Like grandfather like father like son. See the resemblance of opportunity? Allow a major invasion? Allow a major terrorist attack? Who made out on the deals? It wasn't the citizens of either the US or Iraq. Especially the Iraqi citizens. Heck, more have died as a result of our occupation than Hussein could ever dream of killing.
I notice all your posts keep coming without references. Which far right fanatic swiftboat veteran site are you pulling this from?
As for all this nuclear production within XX years, Hussein had UN inspectors in country. This "since 1998" is hogwash. The United Nations pulled the inspectors just prior to our invasion. Hussein was even allowing those guys to run through his own home.
Most countries that don't have the technology today could have it within 4 or 5 years. We aren't living in 1954 anymore. Well... Most of us aren't.
North Korea is an excellent example. They literally waved it in our faces for they know we are bogged down. But I guess Bush saw a bigger profit dealing with Iraq.
You are in denial Lee. All the facts are right there, and just pure logic leads a person to see what happened. You keep going to the swiftboat propaganda. It's called denial. The Bush administration is not going to get a gold star in our history books, nor anybody's else's history books.
lhopp77
06-30-2006, 07:13 PM
Give it up Robert. You and Williford have lost the argument. The quotes above provide the facts and none of your speculation, invention, protestations, quibbling or ranting and raving can change that. :)
Lee
Royal Tiger
06-30-2006, 07:52 PM
Allowed the invasion of Kuwait? Didn't we warn him not to do it when the troops massed on the border? Didn't we then invade to push them back?
The Iranians were flat out pissed when we pushed back and decimated the Iraqi army in Desert Storm so quickly and efficently after they struggled back and forth for 10 years fighting Iraq themselves.
News relelases from AP out of Moscow showed some of the rumblings of former party chiefs after the US was able to gain success so quickly in Afganistan.
Even when we do military ops correctly, it pisses people off.
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 08:01 PM
Give it up Robert. You and Williford have lost the argument. The quotes above provide the facts and none of your speculation, invention, protestations, quibbling or ranting and raving can change that. :)
Lee
You forgot to give me your sources for me to qualify giving up. I'm not a republican, I don't deal in "blind faith". I mean I'm not asking for DNA sampling on a dress, just the source of this information you suddenly started puking up.
Electrophil
06-30-2006, 08:04 PM
Allowed the invasion of Kuwait? Didn't we warn him not to do it when the troops massed on the border? Didn't we then invade to push them back?
The Iranians were flat out pissed when we pushed back and decimated the Iraqi army in Desert Storm so quickly and efficently after they struggled back and forth for 10 years fighting Iraq themselves.
News relelases from AP out of Moscow showed some of the rumblings of former party chiefs after the US was able to gain success so quickly in Afganistan.
Even when we do military ops correctly, it pisses people off.
The military performed admirably. The Administration dropped the ball. No.... There were no warnings to the Iraqi government. Just the opposite, when Hussein hinted, we said "no comment".
Quote:
Originally Posted by lhopp77
Your questionable source only addresses ONLY the mobile labs. AGAIN, nearly every leader in the WORLD---repeat after me--THE WORLD, as well as our own leaders of BOTH parties thought there were weapons of mass destruction. FACT--NOT FICTION.
Lee
WGJ
"Who would those leaders be? Where's YOUR documentation? NONE AS USUAL."
lhopp77 "Give it up Robert. You and Williford have lost the argument."
What argument? Read the top of this post. This is a major source of your problem, you're not paying attention. There was no arguement. You made another completely unsubstantiated assertion and were challenged to back it up with some evidence for a change. You again make the mistake of assuming you understand when you obviously don't. You have attacked me on numerous occassions when I've posted articles taken directly from a credible source and instantly dismissed them, (Example: "Your questionable source only addresses ONLY the mobile labs.") without even reading the full article, as bogus. Then you blow hard with undocumented opinion. In one instance, you were actually proven completely wrong, with documentation proving your opinion wrong, and your response was, (I'm paraphrasing) "I stand by my position" as though that settled the whole thing!
Basic prep school debate and part of the legal process (denied illegally to Gitmo prisoners) is called discovery. You present your position and documentation to support it and I do the same. Well you finally did some honest, but weak, research. Keep researching. NOW the argument begins.
Are you familiar with this basic barnyard wisdom, old timer?
"Don't count your chickens 'till the eggs have hatched."
WGJ
It's complicit - partnership in wrong doing, not complacent - smugness, self satifaction. You're complacent, that why you were challenged to stop being intellectually lazy and do some homework. Consider yourself warned, Dubya has an extensive history of alcoholism and drug use. By definition all drug addicts are psychopathologic liars. Look at Bush's track record of saying one thing and doing another. Example: Fiscal restraint is a bastion of conservatism and the Republican Party, yet Dubya's the biggest spender in history. Scary.
lhopp77
07-01-2006, 01:43 AM
My quotes were from political leaders of both parties and the date they made the speech or statement and in most cases where. The individuals themselves are the source. THEY SAID IT--I didn't.
And you still can't spell, Williford. :rolleyes:
Lee
Electrophil
07-01-2006, 07:42 AM
My quotes were from political leaders of both parties and the date they made the speech or statement and in most cases where. The individuals themselves are the source. THEY SAID IT--I didn't.
And you still can't spell, Williford. :rolleyes:
Lee
And almost every quote is taken out of context. Such as your Kerry quote where I showed earlier the speech was about "not" a blank check to invade a country. But that one particular sentence looked as if it was. Great job on spreading the deceit of your administration, or what I call the Fox mentality.
And that wasn't the post I was speaking of having a reference for. It was the other article that you posted from some unheard of foreign general.
Probably a general from the mighty kingdom of Taba, a top member of the coalition of the willing. I hear all 3 of their intelligence agents disguise themselves by pulling the bone out of their nose.
lhopp77
07-01-2006, 07:56 AM
And almost every quote is taken out of context. Such as your Kerry quote where I showed earlier the speech was about "not" a blank check to invade a country. But that one particular sentence looked as if it was. Great job on spreading the deceit of your administration, or what I call the Fox mentality.
And that wasn't the post I was speaking of having a reference for. It was the other article that you posted from some unheard of foreign general.
Just one more time, Robert. This particular argument is not about whether or Bush was authorized to go to war or when he should go to war and what should happen before he went to war, but only about the existence of WMDs. Of course, he was authorized to go to war, but that is still not THIS argument. We are discussing whether or not he lied about WMDs and IF most of the other political leaders of BOTH parties and leaders of other countries around the world also believed their were WMDs at the time.
The quotes overwhelmingly prove this point without need for further discussion. The rest of their speeches were about other things such as tactics, diplomacy, etc and NOT material to the argument of WMDs.
I know that I will not find a Russian leader quote that said anything against Iraq as they were in bed together. And as to the quote of the Romanian General, I clearly said I could not independently verify some of the information he provided. However, some of the information pertaining to the presence of high ranking Russians in Iraqi just prior to and at the start of the war can be verified.
It might also surpise you to know that NONE of this information came from FOX or Fox sources. :) Much of it actually came from congressional records and reporting by other news agencies such as your good old New York Times.
Good morning, Robert--you are up early. :)
Lee
Electrophil
07-01-2006, 08:38 AM
Just one more time, Robert. This particular argument is not about whether or Bush was authorized to go to war or when he should go to war and what should happen before he went to war, but only about the existence of WMDs. Of course, he was authorized to go to war, but that is still not THIS argument. We are discussing whether or not he lied about WMDs and IF most of the other political leaders of BOTH parties and leaders of other countries around the world also believed their were WMDs at the time.
The quotes overwhelmingly prove this point without need for further discussion. The rest of their speeches were about other things such as tactics, diplomacy, etc and NOT material to the argument of WMDs.
I know that I will not find a Russian leader quote that said anything against Iraq as they were in bed together. And as to the quote of the Romanian General, I clearly said I could not independently very some of the information he provided. However, some of the information as to the presence of high ranking Russians in Iraqi just prior to and at the start of the war can be verified.
It might also surpise you to know that NONE of this information came from FOX or Fox sources. :) Much of it actually came from congressional records and reporting by other news agencies such as your good old New York Times.
Good morning, Robert--you are up early. :)
Lee
Crazy Republicans.
I'm still working on this Database and it's driving me insane. I've never put so many (*&)(*6897*&66'en hours into a program in my entire life. Oh and by the ()()^)*&^)*(&^)'en way. I'm not a (*&^)^(*%^'en programmer and I'm sure as heck not qualified to be playing a (&*)(*^)^&^)(*&'en Software Engineer! I'm going insane and I'm ticked off!! How long has this been going on? 3 weeks? It's been 16 hour days forever. I go 10 hours and haven't accomplished not the first thing. Won't compile, Debug, won't compile, debug, won't compile, debug......................ARRGH!!!! So I slide over from the laptop to my system, and argue with you. You are my therapist.
But I digress, i'st findst myselth hijackith the threadeth and shalst returnest to the postist.
Then where are the records? What are the sources you republican elite conservative?
(You are up early yourself! It's Saturday. I thought you were rich and retired. :) )
lhopp77
07-01-2006, 09:01 AM
Crazy Republicans.
I'm still working on this Database and it's driving me insane. I've never put so many (*&)(*6897*&66'en hours into a program in my entire life. Oh and by the ()()^)*&^)*(&^)'en way. I'm not a (*&^)^(*%^'en programmer and I'm sure as heck not qualified to be playing a (&*)(*^)^&^)(*&'en Software Engineer! I'm going insane and I'm ticked off!! How long has this been going on? 3 weeks? It's been 16 hour days forever. I go 10 hours and haven't accomplished not the first thing. Won't compile, Debug, won't compile, debug, won't compile, debug......................ARRGH!!!! So I slide over from the laptop to my system, and argue with you. You are my therapist.
But I digress, i'st findst myselth hijackith the threadeth and shalst returnest to the postist.
Then where are the records? What are the sources you republican elite conservative?
(You are up early yourself! It's Saturday. I thought you were rich and retired. :) )
You should be having problems since you are so misdirected, opinionated, hardheaded, obstinate, irascible, and just down right cantankerous. Besides being a left leaning (not far left) Democrat.
I am retired, but on many days work harder around my New Mexico "ranch" than I did in prior years. I sure wish I was rich. I was up late and got up early to make up for it. Actually my critters--2 dogs and a cat-decided I needed some quality time with them very early this morning. And it is such a beautiful morning---about 57 degrees when I got up.
You like my quotes don't you? I could post some more where those same Democrats would refuse to respond to later questions about their prior WMD statements. :)
Now that I have proven that Bush DID NOT LIE--maybe we can discuss the topic of whether he should have gone to war, when it should have happened and the actual conduct of the war. ;)
Lee
Electrophil
07-01-2006, 04:29 PM
You should be having problems since you are so misdirected, opinionated, hardheaded, obstinate, irascible, and just down right cantankerous. Besides being a left leaning (not far left) Democrat.
Lee
Hey! Did you just call me a Democrat? I'll kick your arse!! :mad: :p :D
lhopp77
07-01-2006, 06:34 PM
Hey! Did you just call me a Democrat? I'll kick your arse!! :mad: :p :D
If I am going to get my arse kicked, I might as well go for it. You far left liberal pinko!!!!:D :p :eek: :) ;)
Lee
"You should be having problems since you are so misdirected, opinionated, hardheaded, obstinate, irascible, and just down right cantankerous."
- Lee
Or it could be me describing you. A bit hard on Robt don't you think? Is it necessary to verbally kick him when he's down? Not very Christian or charitable.
WGJ
"This particular argument is not about whether or Bush was authorized to go to war or when he should go to war and what should happen before he went to war, but only about the existence of WMDs. Of course, he was authorized to go to war, but that is still not THIS argument. We are discussing whether or not he lied about WMDs..."
Absolutely correct. And admittedly a tough proposition. But we shall see.
As I've told you before my misspelling is usually attributable to typos and no spellcheck. What's your excuse for misusing words?
"It's complicit - partnership in wrong doing, not complacent - smugness, self satifaction. You're complacent, that why you were challenged to stop being intellectually lazy and do some homework. Consider yourself warned, Dubya has an extensive history of alcoholism and drug use. By definition all drug addicts are psychopathologic liars. Look at Bush's track record of saying one thing and doing another. Example: Fiscal restraint is a bastion of conservatism and the Republican Party, yet Dubya's the biggest spender in history. Scary."
U.S./Iraq: Study Says Washington 'Systematically Misrepresented' Threat From Baghdad
By Jeffrey Donovan
A new report by a leading Washington think tank has concluded that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was quick to dismiss the report, but the study could help rekindle an election-year debate over whether Washington exaggerated the Iraqi threat.
Washington, 9 January 2004 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush spoke to the American people on 7 October 2002 about the threat posed to the United States by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who Bush said was "harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror."
"While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place," Bush said. "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction [WMD] are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people."
According to a new study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, however, Iraq was not an immediate threat to the United States or the Middle East and the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the danger from Baghdad.
The report -- titled "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications" -- was released yesterday in Washington and looks certain to rekindle debate in this presidential election year about whether or not Bush misled the American people.
After surveying six years of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq, the study concludes that there was no convincing evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear program or that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaeda terrorists.
It also recommends abandoning the preventative war doctrine adopted to replace deterrence as the pillar of security policy after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
The findings by the liberal-leaning think tank -- which opposed the war before it began -- contradict a series of statements about the Iraqi threat made by senior officials, including Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Joseph Cirincione, head of Carnegie's Nonproliferation Program, said Cheney's remarks began as vague assertions that Iraq may be seeking nuclear arms but later transformed into declarations of absolute certainty.
"Typical is the statement of Vice President Cheney in August of 2002, who says: 'We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us are convinced Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.' So we have these two elements now -- certainty of the threat and immediacy of the threat," Cirincione said.
The threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was the administration's chief justification for going to war. But so far, U.S. forces and experts hunting for such weapons in Iraq have not found any stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons or any evidence Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program.
The report says it is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed or hidden any such weapons without Washington or the international community taking notice. The report concludes, "Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs."
Asked about the report at a news conference yesterday at the State Department, Powell said he remains confident that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He said he stands by what he said to the UN Security Council last year before the war, when he accused Iraq of possessing of chemical and biological weapons.
"I am confident of what I presented last year [at the United Nations]. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me. I was representing them. It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly and they stand behind it, and this game is still unfolding," Powell said.
However, Powell acknowledged that he has "not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, although he had believed such a connection existed.
But Carnegie President Jessica Mathews -- who declined to state explicitly that the administration lied about Iraq -- said Hussein's alleged links to the terror network blamed for the attacks of 11 September 2001, was vital to the administration's case for war.
"The linkage through terrorists was the only way that Iraq's WMD posed a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, and it was the only reason that might invalidate or erase our capacity to deter Iraq. In those two elements lay the importance of that linkage," Mathews said.
Mathews added that not only was there no proof of a link between Al-Qaeda and Hussein, most evidence suggested that the terrorist group and the Iraqi leader harbored a deep dislike for one another.
Powell, pressed by reporters, said that while the Carnegie report accuses the administration of overstating the Iraqi threat, it was known that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the past because they used chemical arms in attacks against Iraqi Kurds.
For that reason alone, Powell said there was no question about Saddam's intention to use such weapons and suggested that that was reason enough to go to war. "In terms of intention [to develop and use weapons of mass destruction], [Hussein] always had it, and anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein last year was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up even though he was given the opportunity to do so and he didn't do it.... What he was waiting to do [was to] see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections and get back to his intentions," he said.
The Carnegie report does acknowledge that Iraq was apparently expanding its capability to build missiles beyond the range permitted by the UN Security Council. "The missile program appears to have been the one program in active development in 2002," it said.
The study accuses the Bush administration of "unduly" pressuring the intelligence community to shade its judgments on Iraq in order to support administration policies. Such pressure included the creation of a separate intelligence office at the Pentagon.
It was in this environment of intense political pressure, it says, that an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's banned weapons was hurriedly put together and presented to Congress just 10 days before it voted to give Bush the authority to wage war on Baghdad.
The NIE, as it is called, included a high number of dissenting opinions, usually in footnotes to assertions made in the main text, which is supposed to be a consensus document of the various national intelligence agencies.
Stuart Cohen, vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which produced the National Intelligence Estimate, denied this week that its analysts in any way altered their findings to fit administration policy.
What happened, according to Cirincione, is that administration officials often repeated assertions put forth in the NIE, but left out the dissenting opinions and qualifiers that were attached to them.
"So, for example, the NIE would make a statement that said, 'We assess that Baghdad has renewed production of chemical weapons.' In the administration statements, they would say, 'Baghdad has renewed production of chemical weapons,'" Cirincione said.
In conclusion, the study recommends former United Nations weapons inspectors and experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency return to Iraq to compile a full record of its weapons programs. It also urges the UN to create a special body to combat weapons proliferation.
Mathews said the greatest proliferation threat is now from Pakistan, as well as Russia and other former states of the Soviet Union, where stockpiles of chemical, biological, and radioactive materials remain at risk of being acquired by terrorists.
She urged the administration and Congress to build on past efforts, such as the Nunn-Lugar programs, to secure such weapons sites.
(The full report can be found at Carnegie's website at http://www.ceip.org)
Copyright (c) 2004. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
WGJ
Before you immediately dismiss this beause it from a 'left leaning think tank be advised the conclusions are supported by hundreds of reports, mostly by the Federal Gov't. But in typical bureaucratic style are extremely detailed and lengthy. The following post from the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate Report is a good example with their conclusions supporting Carnegie's report.
U.S./Iraq: Study Says Washington 'Systematically Misrepresented' Threat From Baghdad
By Jeffrey Donovan
A new report by a leading Washington think tank has concluded that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the months leading up to the war. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was quick to dismiss the report, but the study could help rekindle an election-year debate over whether Washington exaggerated the Iraqi threat.
Washington, 9 January 2004 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush spoke to the American people on 7 October 2002 about the threat posed to the United States by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who Bush said was "harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror."
"While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place," Bush said. "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction [WMD] are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people."
According to a new study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, however, Iraq was not an immediate threat to the United States or the Middle East and the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the danger from Baghdad.
The report -- titled "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications" -- was released yesterday in Washington and looks certain to rekindle debate in this presidential election year about whether or not Bush misled the American people.
After surveying six years of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq, the study concludes that there was no convincing evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear program or that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaeda terrorists.
It also recommends abandoning the preventative war doctrine adopted to replace deterrence as the pillar of security policy after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
The findings by the liberal-leaning think tank -- which opposed the war before it began -- contradict a series of statements about the Iraqi threat made by senior officials, including Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Joseph Cirincione, head of Carnegie's Nonproliferation Program, said Cheney's remarks began as vague assertions that Iraq may be seeking nuclear arms but later transformed into declarations of absolute certainty.
"Typical is the statement of Vice President Cheney in August of 2002, who says: 'We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us are convinced Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.' So we have these two elements now -- certainty of the threat and immediacy of the threat," Cirincione said.
The threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was the administration's chief justification for going to war. But so far, U.S. forces and experts hunting for such weapons in Iraq have not found any stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons or any evidence Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program.
The report says it is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed or hidden any such weapons without Washington or the international community taking notice. The report concludes, "Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs."
Asked about the report at a news conference yesterday at the State Department, Powell said he remains confident that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He said he stands by what he said to the UN Security Council last year before the war, when he accused Iraq of possessing of chemical and biological weapons.
"I am confident of what I presented last year [at the United Nations]. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me. I was representing them. It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly and they stand behind it, and this game is still unfolding," Powell said.
However, Powell acknowledged that he has "not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, although he had believed such a connection existed.
But Carnegie President Jessica Mathews -- who declined to state explicitly that the administration lied about Iraq -- said Hussein's alleged links to the terror network blamed for the attacks of 11 September 2001, was vital to the administration's case for war.
"The linkage through terrorists was the only way that Iraq's WMD posed a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, and it was the only reason that might invalidate or erase our capacity to deter Iraq. In those two elements lay the importance of that linkage," Mathews said.
Mathews added that not only was there no proof of a link between Al-Qaeda and Hussein, most evidence suggested that the terrorist group and the Iraqi leader harbored a deep dislike for one another.
Powell, pressed by reporters, said that while the Carnegie report accuses the administration of overstating the Iraqi threat, it was known that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the past because they used chemical arms in attacks against Iraqi Kurds.
For that reason alone, Powell said there was no question about Saddam's intention to use such weapons and suggested that that was reason enough to go to war. "In terms of intention [to develop and use weapons of mass destruction], [Hussein] always had it, and anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein last year was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up even though he was given the opportunity to do so and he didn't do it.... What he was waiting to do [was to] see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections and get back to his intentions," he said.
The Carnegie report does acknowledge that Iraq was apparently expanding its capability to build missiles beyond the range permitted by the UN Security Council. "The missile program appears to have been the one program in active development in 2002," it said.
The study accuses the Bush administration of "unduly" pressuring the intelligence community to shade its judgments on Iraq in order to support administration policies. Such pressure included the creation of a separate intelligence office at the Pentagon.
It was in this environment of intense political pressure, it says, that an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's banned weapons was hurriedly put together and presented to Congress just 10 days before it voted to give Bush the authority to wage war on Baghdad.
The NIE, as it is called, included a high number of dissenting opinions, usually in footnotes to assertions made in the main text, which is supposed to be a consensus document of the various national intelligence agencies.
Stuart Cohen, vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which produced the National Intelligence Estimate, denied this week that its analysts in any way altered their findings to fit administration policy.
What happened, according to Cirincione, is that administration officials often repeated assertions put forth in the NIE, but left out the dissenting opinions and qualifiers that were attached to them.
"So, for example, the NIE would make a statement that said, 'We assess that Baghdad has renewed production of chemical weapons.' In the administration statements, they would say, 'Baghdad has renewed production of chemical weapons,'" Cirincione said.
In conclusion, the study recommends former United Nations weapons inspectors and experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency return to Iraq to compile a full record of its weapons programs. It also urges the UN to create a special body to combat weapons proliferation.
Mathews said the greatest proliferation threat is now from Pakistan, as well as Russia and other former states of the Soviet Union, where stockpiles of chemical, biological, and radioactive materials remain at risk of being acquired by terrorists.
She urged the administration and Congress to build on past efforts, such as the Nunn-Lugar programs, to secure such weapons sites.
(The full report can be found at Carnegie's website at http://www.ceip.org)
Copyright (c) 2004. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
WGJ
Before you immediately dismiss this because it from a 'left leaning' think tank be advised the conclusions are supported by hundreds of reports, mostly by the Federal Gov't. But in typical bureaucratic style they are extremely detailed and lengthy. The following post from the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate Report is a good example with their conclusions supporting Carnegie's report.
I'll post the rest in installments. These are the Conclusions, there's several pages of prologue.
REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S
PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ
CONCLUSIONS
[PDF Version 1.89 MB]
OVERALL CONCLUSIONS - WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
(U) Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.
(U) Conclusion 2. The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
(U) Conclusion 3. The Intelligence Community (IC) suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. This "group think" dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs. This presumption was so strong that formalized IC mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and group think were not utilized.
(U) Conclusion 4. In a few significant instances, the analysis in the National Intelligence Estimate suffers from a "layering" effect whereby assessments were built based on previous judgments without carrying forward the uncertainties of the underlying judgments.
(U) Conclusion 5. In each instance where the Committee found an analytic or collection failure, it resulted in part from a failure of Intelligence Community managers throughout their leadership chains to adequately supervise the work of their analysts and collectors. They did not encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, fully consider alternative arguments, accurately characterize the intelligence reporting, or counsel analysts who lost their objectivity.
(U) Conclusion 6. The Committee found significant short comings in almost every aspect of the Intelligence Community's human intelligence collection efforts against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities, in particular that the Community had no sources collecting against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after 1998. Most, if not all, of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management, and will not be solved by additional funding and personnel.
(U) Conclusion 7. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in several significant instances, abused its unique position in the Intelligence Community, particularly in terms of information sharing, to the detriment of the Intelligence Community's prewar analysis concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
(U) Conclusion 8. Intelligence Community analysts lack a consistent post September 11 approach to analyzing and reporting on terrorist threats.
(U) Conclusion 9. Source protection policies within the Intelligence Community direct or encourage reports officers to exclude relevant detail about the nature of their sources. As a result, analysts community wide are unable to make fully informed judgments about the information they receive, relying instead on nonspecific source lines to reach their assessments. Moreover, relevant operational data is nearly always withheld from analysts, putting them at a further analytical disadvantage.
Conclusion 10. The Intelligence Community relies too heavily on foreign government services and third party reporting, thereby increasing the potential for manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign interests.
(U) Conclusion 11. Several of the allegations of pressure on Intelligence Community (IC) analysts involved repeated questioning. The Committee believes that IC analysts should expect difficult and repeated questions regarding threat information. Just as the post 9/11 environment lowered the Intelligence Community's reporting threshold, it has also affected the intensity with which policymakers will review and question threat information.
*
NIGER CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents2 on the Iraq Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.
(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
(U) Conclusion 14. The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policymakers that it had sent someone to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq Niger uranium deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador's findings.
(U) Conclusion 15. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Directorate of Operations should have taken precautions not to discuss the credibility of reporting with a potential source when it arranged a meeting with the former ambassador and Intelligence Community analysts.
(U) Conclusion 16. The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.
(U) Conclusion 17. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) dissent on the uranium reporting was accidentally included in the aluminum tube section of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), due in part to the speed with which the NIE was drafted and coordinated.
(U) Conclusion 18. When documents regarding the Iraq Niger uranium reporting became available to the Intelligence Community in October 2002, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts and operations officers should have made an effort to obtain copies. As a result of not obtaining the documents, CIA Iraq nuclear analysts continued to report on Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from Africa and continued to approve the use of such language in Administration publications and speeches.
(U) Conclusion 19. Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.
(U) Conclusion 20. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) comments and assessments about the Iraq Niger uranium reporting were inconsistent and, at times contradictory. These inconsistencies were based in part on a misunderstanding of a CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) Iraq analyst's assessment of the reporting. The CIA should have had a mechanism in place to ensure that agency assessments and information passed to policymakers were consistent.
(U) Conclusion 21. When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the National Security Council (NSC) to remove the 1116 words" or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq Niger uranium reporting. A CIA official's original testimony to the Committee that he told an NSC official to remove the words "Niger" and "500 tons" from the speech, is incorrect.
(U) Conclusion 22. The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact check it himself. Had he done so, he would have been able to alert the National Security Council (NSC) if he still had concerns about the use of the Iraq Niger uranium reporting in a Presidential speech.
(U) Conclusion 23. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Humint Service (DHS), or the Navy should have followed up with a West African businessman, mentioned in a Navy report, who indicated he was willing to provide information about an alleged uranium transaction between Niger and Iraq in November 2002.
(**) Conclusion 24. In responding to a letter from Senator Carl Levin on behalf of the Intelligence Communit in February 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should not have said that "DELETED of reporting suggest Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger," without indicating that State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) believed the reporting was based on forged documents, or that the CIA was reviewing the Niger reporting.
(U) Conclusion 25. The Niger reporting was never in any of the drafts of Secretary Powell's United Nations (UN) speech and the Committee has not uncovered any information that showed anyone tried to insert the information into the speech.
(U) Conclusion 26. To date, the Intelligence Community has not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa as stated in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Likewise, neither the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) nor the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which both published assessments on possible Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium, have ever published assessments outside of their agencies which correct their previous positions.
There's another 100 Conclusions
WGJ
From Senator Richard Durbin's report:
Administration officials' claims regarding Iraq
In his January 2002 State of the Union speech, the President identified Iraq, along with North Korea and Iran, as part of an "axis of evil." As the year progressed, it became clear from Administration public statements regarding Iraq's WMD programs that Iraq was considered a growing threat to the U.S. that should be addressed through military action.
·* June 1, 2002 -- In a graduation speech at West Point, President Bush stated: "[o]ur security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."
·* August 26, 2002 -- In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars' National Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Vice President Cheney stated: "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. ...Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. ...As former Secretary of State Kissinger recently stated, the imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action."
·* September 8, 2002 -- In an interview on FOX News Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that: "[t]here is no doubt that he has chemical weapons stocks... With respect to biological weapons, we are confident that he has some stocks of those weapons and he is probably continuing to try to develop more... With respect to nuclear weapons, we are quite confident that he continues to try to pursue the technology that would allow him to develop a nuclear weapon... So there's no question that he has these weapons..."
·* September 8, 2002 -- In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press", Vice President Cheney stated: "...the more recent developments have to do with our now being able to conclude, based on intelligence that's becoming available, some of it has been made public, more of it hopefully will be, that he [Saddam Hussein] has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability. ...He [Saddam] has and continues to conduct himself in a way that is fundamentally threatening to the United States. Now, if he doesn't have any significant capability, you don't have to worry about it. He's just a blow hard out in Iraq. ...[W]e believe that he is a danger, a fundamental danger, not only for the region but potentially the United States, as well. And I say, a lot of that is based on the evidence that's now available, that he is working actively to improve his biological weapons program and his nuclear weapons program."
The Background to the October 2002 ME
*
Minds already made up:
It was clear from such comments that Administration policymakers were not looking for the Intelligence Community's consensus conclusions regarding Iraq's WMD programs — the President, the Vice President, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Myers had already reached their own conclusions, including that the U.S. needed to go to war to neutralize the perceived Iraqi threat. An analyst informed the Committee that a subtext for Intelligence Community analysts' approach to producing the October 2002 NIE was that a decision had, in his view, already been made by the Administration to go to war against Iraq:
Of course there's more. There are about100's reports re: Iraq WMDs 2001
The inevitable conclusion is above, although faulty intelligence helped Bush et al move forward their agenda of war with Iraq. Like a woman telling you a lie you really want to believe.
WGJ
Manarius
07-01-2006, 11:40 PM
We all know the Bush admin has lied to the American people. It was just a big political scam so that Dick Cheney and Bush Sr. could make it rich off the rebuild with Halliburton.
I'm telling you, this administration will go down as one of the most corrupt in American Political History.
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 12:13 AM
Excellent reporting Bill. Great finds. :)
They are going down. It's just a matter of time. And it has nothing to do with a dress and a lie, more of deaths from a lie. They should get the chair for premeditated murder.
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 08:43 AM
I see indictments of the career intelligence community (US and worldwide), but I don't see a single conclusion that indicates that BUSH "lied about weapons of mass destruction".
Get real--you are preaching to the choir. We ALL know that the intelligence community--in the US and Worldwide--apparently failed miserably in the true assessment of WMD situation.
What you have done (other than the liberal think tank suppositions) is to actually support my position that the "intelligence community" provided BAD intelligence to ALL CONCERNED.
Lee
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 09:23 AM
I see indictments of the career intelligence community (US and worldwide), but I don't see a single conclusion that indicates that BUSH "lied about weapons of mass destruction".
Get real--you are preaching to the choir. We ALL know that the intelligence community--in the US and Worldwide--apparently failed miserably in the true assessment of WMD situation.
What you have done (other than the liberal think tank suppositions) is to actually support my position that the "intelligence community" provided BAD intelligence to ALL CONCERNED.
Lee
That's not a problem. We can start with his Medal of Freedom recipients.
The hearings will give us what we need to indict the Cheney Administration. We aren't talking the Oliver North syndrome here. The truth that the Administration was looking for very selective intelligence to justify their intentions is extremely close to the surface anyway. A person would have had to be in a coma not to notice that back in 2002 and 2003. My gosh, the entire Libby affair and indictment is based on that fact.
We can start anywhere, but nothing is going to happen as long as he has a majority in the house protecting him. It's no longer their intense blind love as it used to be during the Nazism fear period after 9/11. Now it's protecting their party from the largest scandal in American history. It's not going to be pleasant, but it must happen. Just as the republican party felt the dress stain hearings must occur, we feel the blood stain hearings must occur.
The two parties obviously have different priorities. (Lying about oral sex or killing thousands of soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and throwing hundreds of Billions of dollars out the window for personal war profiteering.)
We just feel our priority is at least as noble as yours was with Clinton, even though it doesn't involve thumping on a bible.
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 12:57 PM
That's not a problem. We can start with his Medal of Freedom recipients.
The hearings will give us what we need to indict the Cheney Administration. We aren't talking the Oliver North syndrome here. The truth that the Administration was looking for very selective intelligence to justify their intentions is extremely close to the surface anyway. A person would have had to be in a coma not to notice that back in 2002 and 2003. My gosh, the entire Libby affair and indictment is based on that fact.
We can start anywhere, but nothing is going to happen as long as he has a majority in the house protecting him. It's no longer their intense blind love as it used to be during the Nazism fear period after 9/11. Now it's protecting their party from the largest scandal in American history. It's not going to be pleasant, but it must happen. Just as the republican party felt the dress stain hearings must occur, we feel the blood stain hearings must occur.
The two parties obviously have different priorities. (Lying about oral sex or killing thousands of soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and throwing hundreds of Billions of dollars out the window for personal war profiteering.)
We just feel our priority is at least as noble as yours was with Clinton, even though it doesn't involve thumping on a bible.
Cite me a single reference in the hearing conclusions that say that anyone in the White House falsified, manipulated or lied about the intelligence.
Of course all of the Democrats that I quoted earlier in this thread were just "citing erroneous intelligence" and not lying???? Is that the position?? Go back up an reread what all of those Democrats said about the SAME intelligence that Bush/Cheney had. Get real fellas. :rolleyes:
There is not a single thing that supports your position. Remember Libby was indicted for the Plame outing affair---not manipulating intelligence.
I think you need to go back and read the panel Conclusions again.
Lee
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 01:01 PM
Sunday, 25 February, 2001, 12:40 GMT
Iraq 'could build N-bomb'
German Intelligence Service
Iraq could produce nuclear weapons within three years, according to a German intelligence assessment.
The report also says the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has evidence that Baghdad is working to develop its short-range rockets.
The BND also believes Iraq still possesses the capacity to resume the production of biological weapons at short notice.
Details of the information contained in the report was published in various German newspapers following a briefing to journalists by BND officials.
"It is clear that we have suspicions about Iraq," a BND official told Reuters news agency.
Ceasefire agreement.
The intellegence agency believes that Iraq has resumed efforts to build chemical and biological weapons since UN inspectors left the country in 1998.
But it says that Baghdad currently possesses only 10-20% of the conventional weapons it had during the Gulf War.
Under the ceasefire agreement which ended the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was obliged to end its chemical and biological weapons capacity.
The United Nations team appointed to monitor Baghdad's compliance with the agreement left Iraq in 1998 after the government ceased co-operation with the weapons inspectors.
The BND says it has evidence to suggest the following:
Iraq has resumed its nuclear programme and may be capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years. Work has been observed at the Al Qaim site, believed to be the centre of Baghdad's nuclear programme.
Iraq is currently developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al Fatah short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300kg payload 150km (95 miles). Medium-range rockets capable of carrying a warhead 3,000km (1,900 miles) could be built by 2005 - far enough to reach Europe.
Iraq is also believed to be capable of manufacturing solid rocket fuel.
A Delhi-based company, blacklisted by the German Government because of its alleged role in weapons proliferation, has acted as a buyer on Iraq's behalf. Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai.
Since the UN inspectors left, the number of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has increased from 20 to 80. Of that total, the BND believes a quarter to be involved in making weapons.
Widespread procurement activity has been observed abroad and production of biological weapons could be resumed at short notice. It is possible that production may already have begun."
Shot down again, Robert. :) I just thought it was worth posting this again.
Lee
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 01:29 PM
Cite me a single reference in the hearing conclusions that say that anyone in the White House falsified, manipulated or lied about the intelligence.
Of course all of the Democrats that I quoted earlier in this thread were just "citing erroneous intelligence" and not lying???? Is that the position?? Go back up an reread what all of those Democrats said about the SAME intelligence that Bush/Cheney had. Get real fellas. :rolleyes:
There is not a single thing that supports your position. Remember Libby was indicted for the Plame outing affair---not manipulating intelligence.
I think you need to go back and read the panel Conclusions again.
Lee
You took the sentences in the speeches out of context, remember? Well... you didn't. Just the site supporting the lie that you refuse to divulge. I guess you refuse to divulge your source due to national security, right?
The panel's conclusion on how the intelligence was handled is sealed due to ... oh yeah! once again for "national security" reasons. That has been an often used and convenient method of hiding the truth since Bush allowed the terrorist attack. Very convenient.
And also remember the reason the administration outed Plame is due to her husband saying the administration is lying about the yellow cake. Which... They were. Which...... will be part of the evidence used when they are eventually indicted. Which.... they will be.
NUCLEAR CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 27. After reviewing all of the intelligence provided by the Intelligence Community and additional information requested by the Committee, the Committee believes that the judgment in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, was not supported by the intelligence. The Committee agrees with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) alternative view that the available intelligence "does not add up to a compelling case for reconstitution."
(U) Conclusion 28. The assessments in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding the timing of when Iraq had begun reconstituting its nuclear program are unclear and confusing.
(U) Conclusion 29. Numerous intelligence reports provided to the Committee showed that Iraq was trying to procure high strength aluminum tubes. The Committee believes that the information available to the Intelligence Community indicated that these tubes were intended to be used for an Iraqi conventional rocket program and not a nuclear program. (U) Conclusion 30. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) intelligence assessment on July 2, 2001 that the dimensions of the aluminum tubes "match those of a publicly available gas centrifuge design from the 1950s, known as the Zippe centrifuge" is incorrect. Similar information was repeated by the CIA in its assessments, including its input to the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) over the next year and a half.
(U) Conclusion 31. The Intelligence Community's position in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that the composition and dimensions of the aluminum tubes exceeded the requirements for non nuclear applications, is incorrect.
(**) Conclusion 32. The DELETED intelligence report on Saddam Hussein's personal interest in the aluminum tubes, if credible, did suggest that the tube procurement was a high priority, but it did not necessarily suggest that the high priority was Iraq's nuclear program.
(U) Conclusion 33. The suggestion in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iraq was paying excessively high costs for the aluminum tubes is incorrect. In addition, 7075 T6 aluminum is not considerably more expensive than other more readily available materials for rockets as alleged in the NIE.
(U) Conclusion 34. The National Ground Intelligence Center's (NGIC) analysis that the material composition of the tubes was unusual for rocket motor cases was incorrect, contradicted information the NGIC later provided to the Committee, and represented a serious lapse for the agency with primary responsibility for conventional ground forces intelligence analysis.
(**) Conclusion 35. Information obtained by the Committee shows that the tubes were DELETED to be manufactured to tolerances tighter than typically requested for rocket systems. The request for tight tolerances had several equally likely explanations other than that the tubes were intended for a centrifuge program, however.
(U) Conclusion 36. Iraq's attempts to procure the tubes through intermediary countries did appear intended to conceal Iraq as the ultimate end user of the tubes, as suggested in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Because Iraq was prohibited from importing any military items, it would have had to conceal itself as the end user whether the tubes were intended for a nuclear program or a conventional weapons program, however.
(**) Conclusion 37. Iraq's persistence in seeking numerous foreign sources for the aluminum tubes was not "inconsistent" with procurement practices as alle ed in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Furthermore, such persistence ******************** SENTENCE DELETED ******************** was more indicative of produrement for a conventional weapons program than a covert nuclear program.
(U) Conclusion 38. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) initial reporting on its aluminum tube spin tests was, at a minimum, misleading and, in some cases, incorrect. The fact that these tests were not coordinated with other Intelligence Community agencies is an example of continuing problems with information sharing within the Intelligence Community.
(U) Conclusion 39. Iraq's performance of hydrostatic pressure tests on the tubes was more indicative of their likely use for a rocket program than a centrifuge program.
(**) Conclusion 40. Intelligence reports which showed ******************** SENTENCE DELETED ******************** were portrayed in the National Intelligence Estimate as more definitive than the reporting showed.
(**)Conclusion 41. ******************** SENTENCE DELETED ******************** in that it was only presented with analysis that supported the CIA's conclusions. The team did not discuss the issues with Department of Energy officials and performed its work in only one day.
(U) Conclusion 42. The Director of Central Intelligence was not aware of the views of all intelligence agencies on the aluminum tubes prior to September 2002 and, as a result, could only have passed the Central Intelligence Agency's view along to the President until that time.
(U) Conclusion 43. Intelligence provided to the Committee did show that Iraq was trying to procure magnets, high speed balancing machines and machine tools, but this intelligence did not suggest that the materials were intended to be used in a nuclear program.
(U) Conclusion 44. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that "a large number of personnel for the new [magnet] production facility, worked in Iraq's pre Gulf War centrifuge program," was incorrect.
(U) Conclusion 45. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission was "expanding the infrastructure research laboratories, production facilities, and procurement networks - to produce nuclear weapons," is not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 46. The intelligence provided to the Committee which showed that Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program was compelling, but this intelligence did not show that there was a recent increase in activity that would have been indicative of recent or impending reconstitution of Iraq's nuclear program as was suggested in the National Intelligence Estimate.
(U) Conclusion 47. Intelligence information provided to the Committee did show that Saddam Hussein met with Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission personnel and that some security improvements were taking place, but none of the reporting indicated the IAEC was engaged in nuclear weapons related work.
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 04:35 PM
Bill, I think we are wasting our time. Lee can read about it in all those "far left liberal news organizations" once the hearings start next year. Fox will have abandoned Bush by then trying to keep their ratings from tanking.
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 05:14 PM
I guess you refuse to divulge your source due to national security, right?
How about BBC as a source for reporting the German Intelligence on the Iraqi Nuclear threat? Hardly a Pro-Bush supporter!!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1189182.stm
Lee
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 05:18 PM
Again hardly a conservative, Bush supporting source of information.
Get real Robert!!!!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EB05Ak02.html
Lee
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 05:23 PM
How about BBC as a source for reporting the German Intelligence on the Iraqi Nuclear threat? Hardly a Pro-Bush supporter!!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1189182.stm
Lee
No, they support Bush's puppet, the PM there.
The article is dated 2001, before the UN inspectors went back in and confirmed he didn't have the capability. I think their report was: There is no evidence he is reconstituting a nuclear weapons program.
Back again to the premise that you can't prove something is "not" there.
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 05:25 PM
Again hardly a conservative, Bush supporting source of information.
Get real Robert!!!!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EB05Ak02.html
Lee
:confused: :confused: Who is disputing other countries picked up the contracts once Rumsfield quit selling to that "evil dictator" ? :confused: :confused:
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 05:53 PM
Just read a few of these. :)
http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/Comments.asp?svComment=12909
Lee
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 06:02 PM
This is what 77 Senators voted for:
Why did we go to war in Iraq? The vast majority of members of Congress who voted for the Joint Congressional Resolution authorizing war against Iraq (296-133 in the House; 77-23 in the Senate), said it very well when they committed themselves to the following mission:
Relevant Excerpts:
October 11, 2002
Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;
Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;
Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;
Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;
Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;
Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;
Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;
Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;
Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;
Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994);
Whereas in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1), Congress has authorized the President `to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolution 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677;
Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;
Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to `work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge' posed by Iraq and to `work for the necessary resolutions,' while also making clear that `the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable';
Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;
Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;
Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;
Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002'.
SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION- In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that—
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 06:06 PM
Just read a few of these. :)
http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/Comments.asp?svComment=12909
Lee
I just did. He hasn't updated his site in a while.
He must be in survival camp right now trying to light a fire with 2 sticks and a pile of leaves. I guess he's assuming that when "da big one" comes, it will knock out all the bic lighters with that electromagnetic pulse.
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 07:00 PM
Robert, how do you like the wording of the Joint Resolution that all of your "favorite" politicians voted for? It seems that they gave the President some additional powers relative to the war on Terror---I think those powers will come up again---don't you?? Maybe they already have? :eek: :)
Lee
Electrophil
07-02-2006, 07:23 PM
Robert, how do you like the wording of the Joint Resolution that all of your "favorite" politicians voted for? It seems that they gave the President some additional powers relative to the war on Terror---I think those powers will come up again---don't you?? Maybe they already have? :eek: :)
Lee
That was my entire problem right after 9/11, and before the administration's complete rape of the US budget. Fear and a bible thumping war mongering republican congress. I repeat myself on the following:
http://www.subaru-svx.net/photos/files/Electrophil/36490.jpg
demonsvx
07-02-2006, 08:51 PM
That was my entire problem right after 9/11, and before the administration's complete rape of the US budget. Fear and a bible thumping war mongering republican congress. I repeat myself on the following:
http://www.subaru-svx.net/photos/files/Electrophil/36490.jpg
I yet once again ask the question why didnt we get Osama Bin Laden FIRST!? Iraq could have been taken care of back in '91 when Bush Sr. had the chance. Oh wait stupidity repeats itself especially in family bloodlines:mad: Wake up people do you really believe we can win this war if we stay in the Middle East? These people want us out.
Manarius
07-02-2006, 09:04 PM
Hey Lee, that 77-23 vote came after the white house lied about Saddam having WMD's.
Note: We still haven't caught Osama Bin Laden and he's the sob that blew up our towers that started this whole mess.
lhopp77
07-02-2006, 09:16 PM
What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis.
AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.
When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact information for Musab Yasin and another 1993 plotter, a Kuwaiti native named Ibrahim Suleiman.
These facts alone, linking the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, would seem to cry out for additional scrutiny, no?
The Yasin brothers and Shakir have more in common. They are all Iraqis. And two of them--Abdul Rahman Yasin and Shakir--went free, despite their participation in attacks on the World Trade Center, at least partly because of efforts made on their behalf by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Both men returned to Iraq--Yasin fled there in 1993 with the active assistance of the Iraqi government. For ten years in Iraq, Abdul Rahman Yasin was provided safe haven and financing by the regime, support that ended only with the coalition intervention in March 2003.
...
Those three individuals are nowhere mentioned in the 428 pages that comprise the body of the 9/11 Commission report.
...
Why? Why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention Abdul Rahman Yasin, who admitted his role in the first World Trade Center attack, which killed 6 people, injured more than 1,000, and blew a hole seven stories deep in the North Tower? It's an odd omission, especially since the commission named no fewer than five of his accomplices.
Why would the 9/11 Commission neglect Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a man who was photographed assisting a 9/11 hijacker and attended perhaps the most important 9/11 planning meeting?
And why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention the overlap between the two successful plots to attack the World Trade Center?
The answer is simple: The Iraqi link didn't fit the commission's narrative.
...
...the 9/11 Commission's deliberate exclusion of the Iraqis from its analysis is indefensible.
...
Shakir, the Iraqi-born facilitator, would be arrested six days after the September 11 attacks by authorities in Doha, Qatar. According to an October 7, 2002, article by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, "A search of Shakir's apartment in Doha, the country's capital, yielded a treasure trove, including telephone records linking him to suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Project Bojinka, a 1994 Manila plot to blow up civilian airliners over the Pacific Ocean."
...
On October 21, 2001, Shakir flew to Amman, Jordan, where he hoped to board a plane to Baghdad. But authorities in Jordan arrested him for questioning. Shakir was held in a Jordanian prison for three months without being charged, prompting Amnesty International to write the Jordanian government seeking an explanation. The CIA questioned Shakir and concluded that he had received training in counter-interrogation techniques. Shortly after Shakir was detained, Saddam's government began to pressure Jordanian intelligence--with a mixture of diplomatic overtures and threats--to release Shakir. They got their wish on January 28, 2002. He is believed to have returned promptly to Baghdad.
...
...the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released its own evaluation of the intelligence on Iraq:
The first connection to the [9/11] attack involved Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national, who facilitated the travel of one of the September 11 hijackers to Malaysia in January 2000. [Redacted.] A foreign government service reported that Shakir worked for four months as an airport facilitator in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000. Shakir claimed he got this job through Ra'ad al-Mudaris, an Iraqi Embassy employee. [Redacted.] Another source claimed that al-Mudaris was a former IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] officer. The CIA judged in "Iraqi Support for Terrorism," however, that al-Mudaris' [redacted] that the circumstances surrounding the hiring of Shakir for this position did not suggest it was done on behalf of the IIS.
A note about that last sentence: The Senate committee report is a devastating indictment of the CIA's woefully inadequate collection of intelligence on Iraq, and its equally flawed analysis.
One, Shakir himself told interrogators that an Iraqi embassy employee got him the job that allowed him to help the hijacker(s).
Two, that Iraqi embassy employee was Ra'ad al Mudaris.
Three, another source identified al Mudaris as former Iraqi Intelligence.
So how is it that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report contains a substantive account of Shakir's mysterious contribution to the 9/11 plot, while the 9/11 Commission report--again, released two weeks later--simply ignores it?
Lee
demonsvx
07-02-2006, 09:27 PM
Well the Middle east borders are fluid in my opinion, its a radical terrorist that i have a problem with not an individual country
And what is the relevance? Please explicate. It's interesting and I'd like to follow up with some of my own research.
WGJ
BIOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 48. The assessment in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that, "[W]e judge that all key aspects - research & development, production, and weaponization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War" is not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 49. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that "Baghdad has biological weapons" overstated what was known about Iraq's biological weapons holdings. The NIE did not explain the uncertainties underlying this statement.
(U) Conclusion 50. The statement in the National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has mobile transportable facilities for producing bacterial and toxin biological weapons agents," overstated what the intelligence reporting suggested about an Iraqi mobile biological weapons effort and did not accurately convey to readers the uncertainties behind the source reporting.
(**) Conclusion 51. The Central Intelligence Agency withheld important information concerning both CURVE BALL's reliability and DELETEDreporting from many Intelligence Community analysts with a need to know the information.
(**)Conclusion 52. The Defense Human Intelligence Service, which had primary responsibility for handling the Intelligence Community's interaction with CURVE BALL's DELETED debriefers, demonstrated serious lapses in handling such an important source.
(U) Conclusion 53. The statement in the key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate that "[C]hances are even that smallpox is part of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program" is not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 54. The assessments in the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iraq's capability to produce and weaponize biological weapons agents are, for the most part, supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee, but the NIE did not explain that the research discussed could have been very limited in nature, been abandoned years ago, or represented legitimate activity.
(U) Conclusion 55. The National Intelligence Estimate misrepresented the United Nations Special Commission's (UNSCOM) 1999 assessment concerning Iraq's biological research capability.
(U) Conclusion 56. The statement in the key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad probably has developed genetically engineered biological weapons agents," overstated both the intelligence reporting and analysts assessments of Iraq's development of genetically engineered biological agents.
(U) Conclusion 57. The assessment in the National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq has . . . dry biological weapons (BW) agents in its arsenal" is not supported by the intelligence information provided to the Committee.
CHEMICAL CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 58. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has . . . chemical weapons" overstated both what was known about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings and what intelligence analysts judged about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings.
(U) Conclusion 59. The judgment in the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was expanding its chemical industry primarily to support chemical weapons production overstated both what was known about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry and what intelligence analysts judged about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry.
(**) Conclusion 60. It was not clearly explained in the National Intelligence Estimate that the basis for several of the Intelligence Community's assessments about Iraq's chemical weapons capabilities and activities were not based directly on intelligence reporting of those capabilities and activities, but were based on layers of analysis regarding DELETED intelligence reporting.
(U) Conclusion 61. The Intelligence Community's assessment that "Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of chemical weapons agents -- much of it added in the last year," was an analytical judgment and not based on intelligence reporting that indicated the existence of an Iraqi chemical weapons stockpile of this size.
(U) Conclusion 62. The Intelligence Community's assessment that Iraq had experience in manufacturing chemical weapons bombs, artillery rockets and projectiles was reasonable based on intelligence derived from Iraqi declarations.
(U) Conclusion 63. The National Intelligence Estimate assessment that "Baghdad has procured covertly the types and quantities of chemicals and equipment sufficient to allow limited chemical weapons production hidden within Iraq's legitimate chemical industry" was not substantiated by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 64. The National Intelligence Estimate accurately represented information known about Iraq's procurement of defensive equipment.
WGJ
Here's some excerpts from Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine:
Within the government, he goes on, there was frequent
frustration with the White House's hermetic
decision-making style. “Voicing desire for a more
traditional, transparent policy process,” he writes,
“prompted accusations of disloyalty,” and “issues
argued, often vociferously, at the level of deputies
and principals rarely seemed to go upstream in their
fullest form to the president's desk, and if they did,
it was often after Bush seemed to have already made up
his mind based on what was so often cited as his
'instinct' or 'gut.'”
This book augments the portrait of Bush as an
incurious and curiously uninformed executive that
Suskind earlier set out in “The Price of Loyalty” and
in a series of magazine articles on the president and
key aides. In “The One Percent Doctrine,” he writes
that Cheney's nickname inside the CIA was Edgar (as in
Edgar Bergen), casting Bush in the puppet role of
Charlie McCarthy, and cites one instance after another
in which the president was not fully briefed (or had
failed to read the basic paperwork) about a crucial
situation.
During a November 2001 session with the president,
Suskind recounts, a CIA briefer realized that the
Pentagon had not told Bush of the CIA's urgent concern
that Osama bin Laden might escape from the Tora Bora
area of Afghanistan (as he indeed later did) if U.S.
reinforcements were not promptly sent in. And several
months later, he says, attendees at a meeting between
Bush and the Saudis discovered after the fact that an
important packet laying out the Saudis' views about
the Israeli-Palestinian situation had been diverted to
the vice president's office and never reached the
president.
Keeping information away from the president, Suskind
argues, was a calculated White House strategy that
gave Bush “plausible deniability” from Cheney's point
of view, and that perfectly meshed with the commander
in chief's own impatience with policy details.
Suggesting that Bush deliberately did not read the
full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was
delivered to the White House in the fall of 2002,
Suskind writes: “Keeping certain knowledge from Bush –
much of it shrouded, as well, by classification –
meant that the president, whose each word circles the
globe, could advance various strategies by saying
whatever was needed. He could essentially be
'deniable' about his own statements.”
“Whether Cheney's innovations were tailored to match
Bush's inclinations, or vice versa, is almost
immaterial,” Suskind continues. “It was a firm fit.
Under this strategic model, reading the entire NIE
would be problematic for Bush: it could hem in the
president's rhetoric, a key weapon in the march to
war. He would know too much.”
As for Tenet, this book provides a nuanced portrait of
a man with “colliding loyalties – to the president,
who could have fired him after 9/11 but didn't; and to
his analysts, whom he was institutionally and
emotionally committed to defend.” It would become an
increasingly untenable position, as the White House
grew more and more impatient with the CIA's reluctance
to supply readily the sort of intelligence it wanted.
(A Pentagon unit headed by Douglas Feith was set up as
an alternative to the CIA, to provide, in Suskind's
words, “intelligence on demand” to both Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the office of the
vice president.)
WGJ
At the same time, Suskind suggests that Tenet acted as
a kind of White House enabler. He writes that in the
wake of 9/11, Tenet felt a “mix of insecurity and
gratitude” vis-a-vis George W. Bush, and that, eager
to please his boss, he repeatedly pushed CIA staff
members to come up with evidence that might support
the president's public statements.
In the days after 9/11 Bush defended the embattled CIA
chief to angry congressmen, and at that point, Suskind
writes: “George Tenet would do anything his president
asked. Anything. And George W. Bush knew it.”
WGJ
I'll post my theory of what I think happened shortly.
lhopp77
07-03-2006, 09:15 AM
At the same time, Suskind suggests that Tenet acted as
a kind of White House enabler. He writes that in the
wake of 9/11, Tenet felt a “mix of insecurity and
gratitude” vis-a-vis George W. Bush, and that, eager
to please his boss, he repeatedly pushed CIA staff
members to come up with evidence that might support
the president's public statements.
In the days after 9/11 Bush defended the embattled CIA
chief to angry congressmen, and at that point, Suskind
writes: “George Tenet would do anything his president
asked. Anything. And George W. Bush knew it.”
The more you post the more you support my statements that "BUSH DID [U]NOT[U]LIE!! Not a single one of the Conclusions stated above even comes close to supporting the politically driven accusation of Bush lies.
Also, remember that Tenet was a Clinton Appointee and just left in charge by Bush. Contrary to what you have posted--Tenet did not necessarily have great loyalties to Bush. I do agree that Bush SHOULD have fired him, but you are just supporting my agruments. Just check out Suskind's motivations and political beliefs. His book is pure speculation with no real basis for fact.
Thanks for doing the research that has cleared Bush. :) :D
Lee
SubaSteevo
07-03-2006, 09:28 AM
At the same time, Suskind suggests that Tenet acted as
a kind of White House enabler. He writes that in the
wake of 9/11, Tenet felt a “mix of insecurity and
gratitude” vis-a-vis George W. Bush, and that, eager
to please his boss, he repeatedly pushed CIA staff
members to come up with evidence that might support
the president's public statements.
In the days after 9/11 Bush defended the embattled CIA
chief to angry congressmen, and at that point, Suskind
writes: “George Tenet would do anything his president
asked. Anything. And George W. Bush knew it.”
WGJ
I'll post my theory of what I think happened shortly.
Lee, read again. I've bolded the part you should focus on, and I've also used the underline command properly.
lhopp77
07-03-2006, 09:40 AM
Lee, read again. I've bolded the part you should focus on, and I've also used the underline command properly.
I think YOU should read again. I said NONE OF THE INVESTIGATIONS CONCLUSIONS did anything to prove far left Bush hater accusations (he LIED). Suskind is a far left Bush hater that would LIKE to be able to prove something but cannot with factual information.
Maybe I should quote Ann Coulter or Rush to prove that he DID NOT lie. That would be the same type of proof.
Get real.
Lee
SubaSteevo
07-03-2006, 10:01 AM
I think YOU should read again. I said NONE OF THE INVESTIGATIONS CONCLUSIONS did anything to prove far left Bush hater accusations (he LIED). Suskind is a far left Bush hater that would LIKE to be able to prove something but cannot with factual information.
Maybe I should quote Ann Coulter or Rush to prove that he DID NOT lie. That would be the same type of proof.
Get real.
Lee
Let me explain this a little more with an example, as to why WGJ's statements would imply that Bush lied...
Let's say I'm looking at your house, and I see 2 women walk out. So now I think that you are running a illegal brothel out of your attic. At this point I don't have any proof, but I'm going to tell people that you are. Someone might show up to take a look at your attic, but you probably won't want them to go snooping around your house because you've done nothing wrong. People will think you're acting suspicious, so then others will look for evidence to support my claims (maybe they'll take a picture of your wife coming out of the front door, or perhaps a man walking in the front door, they might even say that the truck you have parked in your driveway is actually a prositute transport device). Eventually the police get a warrant, come in, search your attic, and find nothing (atleast I think they'll find nothing :p ).
Did I, or did I not, lie?
Please note, I'm not trying to provide credit to his source, nor do I require that you provide a far right Bush lover counterclaim in which a far right Bush lover says he didn't lie. I'm just encouraging you to look past your own political beliefs before you attack those of others ;)
lhopp77
07-03-2006, 11:07 AM
There is no evidence to prove that he lied. I don't need to come up with anything to prove that he was telling the truth.
It is interesting to note again---IF he did supposedly lie then every major figure in BOTH political parties also lied as they said essentially the same thing based on the same intelligence.
Lee
Electrophil
07-03-2006, 02:32 PM
Let me explain this a little more with an example, as to why WGJ's statements would imply that Bush lied...
Let's say I'm looking at your house, and I see 2 women walk out. So now I think that you are running a illegal brothel out of your attic. At this point I don't have any proof, but I'm going to tell people that you are. Someone might show up to take a look at your attic, but you probably won't want them to go snooping around your house because you've done nothing wrong. People will think you're acting suspicious, so then others will look for evidence to support my claims (maybe they'll take a picture of your wife coming out of the front door, or perhaps a man walking in the front door, they might even say that the truck you have parked in your driveway is actually a prositute transport device). Eventually the police get a warrant, come in, search your attic, and find nothing (atleast I think they'll find nothing :p ).
Did I, or did I not, lie?
Please note, I'm not trying to provide credit to his source, nor do I require that you provide a far right Bush lover counterclaim in which a far right Bush lover says he didn't lie. I'm just encouraging you to look past your own political beliefs before you attack those of others ;)
I like this analogy.
lhopp77
07-03-2006, 02:55 PM
Like I said the official bipartisan investigations have faulted the intelligence commnunity and have not even hinted that Bush lied.
As to friend Suskind---he has limited credibility, but strong motivation for pushing his agenda. Here is just one example:
"June 18, 2006
‘The One Percent Doctrine’: Why I’m skeptical of any report by Ron Suskind
Two years ago, Ron Suskind deceitfully pushed the idea that the Pentagon had a 2001 map showing how the allies would divvy up Iraqi oil fields after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
So excuse me if I doubt everything in his new book, "The One Percent Doctrine." The book claims al-Qaida in 2003 planned a cyanide attack on the New York City subway, but with 45 days to go, Osama bin Laden’s deputy inexplicably called off the mission. Yeah. Right.
Suskind says he has all sorts of credible sources who make this new mystery story so compelling that we must buy his book. Yeah. Right.
The crafty author. Why am I so dubious? Go back two and a half years, when Suskind himself was the primary source for a news story.
For the Jan. 14, 2004, edition of CBS’s "60 Minutes," Suskind was crafty enough give Leslie Stahl a few facts here and a few facts there, and then throw in a stray Iraq oil-field map as "evidence" of the most diabolical conspiracy imaginable in the Iraq war: "Blood for Oil."
Stahl led into the Iraq map story by saying:
"Based on his interviews with O’Neill and several other officials at the [National Security Council] meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peace-keeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq’s oil wells."
What intentions. The "60 Minutes" camera showed us the document with the map, as Stahl narrated, "Suskind obtained this Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001, entitled ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts.’ It includes a map of potential areas for exploration."
SUSKIND:"It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30, 40 countries, and which ones have what intentions or..."
STAHL: "On oil."
SUSKIND: "On oil in Iraq."
Smoking gun? The story left viewers with the clear impression that the map was the smoking gun of the anti-Iraq-liberation movement. This map of carved-up oil fields appeared to be undeniable evidence that the Iraq invasion was not ordered to end repression, to establish democracy, to punish Saddam’s support for terrorists or to penalize Saddam’s failure to cooperate fully with U.N. arms inspectors hunting WMD stockpiles.
That story shook my faith in the liberation of Iraq. My God, here was the map of Iraq, and here were lines drawn showing Iraq’s divided up oil fields. It seemed the Pentagon had sacrificed lives principally, maybe only, for oil! Defense officials apparently were even showing friendly nations which oil fields they would control as the spoils of war. But then, listening to NPR three days later, I heard the truth.
Terry Gross of NPR’s "Fresh Air" revealed the "60 Minutes" blockbuster as a hoax.
‘What was this document?’ Gross accidentally asked enough questions of Suskind to expose the deception. That day, Gross interviewed both Suskind and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, about whom Suskind had just written another book, "The Price of Loyalty." Suskind obtained a copy of the Iraq oil-field map for that book.
Gross had seen the "60 Minutes" show, so naturally she asked about the Iraqi oil-field map.
GROSS: "One of the documents that you have is a Pentagon document that’s headlined: ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oil Field Contracts,’ March 5th, 2001. And there’s a map of areas for exploration. What was this document? What was in it? I’m wondering if you think this document has any implications for the American public..."
SUSKIND: "Terry, I can..."
GROSS: "Yeah."
SUSKIND: "...respond to that. That’s actually—‘60 Minutes’ miscast it as a Pentagon document. In the book it’s clear it’s not that. It’s a Commerce Department document that was circulated, you know, in various parts of the U.S. government, including to the Cheney energy task force, that came through to land on Paul’s desk. And what it is, it’s a study of foreign suitors who are interested or have experience in terms of oil in Iraq. That’s what it’s about."
Notice, Suskind still said nothing to counter the "60 Minutes" insinuation that the map was a plan for dividing up oil in post-war Iraq. Then Paul O’Neill jumped in, and seemed to argue with Suskind in a curious, but revealing way.
O’NEILL: "Terry, this is a guess on my part, but I believe that this document had its roots in the Clinton administration. There was no way that a new administration could create this kind of document in the short period of time before this meeting."
SUSKIND: "Well, but to be fair, let’s make sure we’re clear here. This is a document that’s dated March 1 or 2 [2001]. So there probably was enough time, just based on the dating of the document. But..."
O’NEILL: "Knowing how government works, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t believe it was done in six weeks. I just don’t believe that."
So, by the time Terry Gross was done interviewing Suskind and O’Neill, it was pretty clear that the innocuous Iraq oil-field map not only was unrelated to Bush’s Pentagon, it probably was unrelated to Bush entirely.
It also was clear that Suskind was pointing the "facts" in one direction, and O’Neill in another. To his credit, O’Neill seemed to be the one pointing to the truth.
Map was not a plan. As it turns out, the Iraq map did not show how the oil fields would be divided up after an Iraq invasion. It was a map showing what actually was happening in Saddam’s Iraq in late 2000 or early 2001. It showed how Saddam had divided up Iraq’s oil among foreign companies for his own profit. (Of the 30 nations mentioned on the map, the U.S. is not one. Of the 63 oil-related companies listed, not one is a U.S. company. Why? Because these were the companies Saddam had contracts with in 2000.)
But Suskind didn’t want us to know the truth. With 1 percent "facts" and 99 percent dishonest sensationalism, Suskind was trying to sell a book. That’s "The One Percent Doctrine" in publishing circles.
Unless I missed it, neither CBS nor Suskind has ever apologized for the outrageously false allegations made in the Jan. 14, 2004, "60 Minutes" show.
Fool me once. That was a monumental case of presenting fiction as fact. Even when confronted by Gross and corrected by O’Neill, Suskind kept pushing the false impression. So no, I can’t ever take anything Suskind says seriously."
Frank Warner
And other thoughts on the Book:
"The One Percent Doctrine," a new book by Ron Suskind on the shadowy war on terror, is getting good reviews in the liberal press, which likes its portrayal of the administration as a bunch of bunglers. And conservatives like the parts that show Vice President Dick Cheney and other top Bush administration officials as committed to ruthlessly destroying al Qaeda.
But some in the intelligence community contend the book, which has reached No. 1 on Amazon.com, is riddled with errors.
"A lot of information is simply wrong," said a counterterrorism official who asked not to be named.
One glaring inaccuracy, this official said, is the book's assertion that Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002, was not a key al Qaeda figure, and was insane to boot.
The counterterror official said Zubaydah is "crazy like a fox" and was a senior planner inside al Qaeda who has provided critical information on how Osama bin Laden's group works.
" 'One Percent Doctrine' is an appropriate title for the book because it appears about 1 percent of the material in the book is right," the official said.
The book attempts to delve behind the scenes to show how the Bush team is waging a shadowy war against al Qaeda, with successes and failures.
The September 11 commission report said Zubaydah was a key terrorist recruiter for bin Laden and ran his own al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. The CIA is holding him at an undisclosed site.
It is also interesting to note that counterterrorism efforts in Somali were not even mentioned. They were on going for more than 3 years prior to publication of the book. Information is reported erroneously and cherry picked to support his liberal backing agenda."
Lee
Electrophil
07-03-2006, 07:30 PM
And other thoughts on the Book:
"The One Percent Doctrine," a new book by Ron Suskind on the shadowy war on terror, is getting good reviews in the liberal press, which likes its portrayal of the administration as a bunch of bunglers. And conservatives like the parts that show Vice President Dick Cheney and other top Bush administration officials as committed to ruthlessly destroying al Qaeda.
But some in the intelligence community contend the book, which has reached No. 1 on Amazon.com, is entirely based on facts.
"A lot of information is right on the money," said a counterterrorism official who asked not to be named.
One glaring straight fact, this official said, is the book's assertion that Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002, was not a key al Qaeda figure, and was insane to boot.
The counterterror official said Zubaydah is "nutty as a fruitcake" and was an al Qaeda "wannabe" who isn't capable of providing a shread of critical information on how Osama bin Laden's group works.
" 'One Percent Doctrine' is an appropriate title for the book because it appears only about 1 percent of the material in the book is even close to being questionable," the official said.
Lee
Fixored that last part of your post. Decided that since it played the Fox game of quoting an "anonymous official", we can have him say anything we want him to say.
If anyone is wondering who O'Neil is, he is the one that was making a deal with Dubai that started the port scandal. He was the previous owner of the company sold to Dubai that caused the whole uproar in the first place. Insider trading on a government level. Once the citizens got hold of the info and went berzerk, he no longer needed the position for his dasterdly deeds and he resigned.
So the whole story is discredited. O'Neill is the biggest crook of them all and was trying to sell our national security. He isn't worth a gallon of piss oil, and his opinion is worth less.
And did anyone notice the slip on Cheney?
Quote: It’s a Commerce Department document that was circulated, you know, in various parts of the U.S. government, including to the Cheney energy task force, that came through to land on Paul’s desk. UnQuote:
What the heck is Mr. Halliburton Cheney doing with an "energy task force"?
That smells like dog puke in every way you could possibly approach it. Serious conflict of interest here.
Man.... when the democrats gain the house, and this all breaks lose, it's going to make Watergate look like the simple break in that it was.
Stand by. It's coming.
Analyst Says He Warned of Iraqi Resistance
Danger Was Clear Early, White Said
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; Page A04
Days after the United States invaded Iraq, senior U.S. officials were warned that Iraqi Sunnis would strongly resist American troops' occupation efforts, according to testimony given yesterday before Senate Democrats.
Wayne White, a former deputy director in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told senators that when British soldiers were forced to repeatedly take the port city of Umm Qasr from Iraqi guerrillas, "I knew then and there that we would have a serious problem on our hands."
Witnesses who came before the senators included Paul R. Pillar, a longtime CIA analyst and a former national intelligence officer covering Iraq, and Lawrence B. Wilkerson, chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
White and Pillar both discussed the lack of Middle East experience by White House officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who pushed for the Iraq invasion. White said that "lack was a major impediment to sound policymaking if one already does not have an open mind and is driven by a particular agenda."
Pillar said "little if any" of the warnings such as White's, on the problems that would be faced in post-Hussein Iraq, "influenced the decision-making on going to war."
Assessments by the intelligence community, Pillar said, showed that the "political culture" of Iraq "would not provide fertile ground for democracy," and analysts foresaw "a significant chance that the sectarian and ethnic groups would engage in violent conflict unless an occupying power prevented it."
They also predicted that the occupying forces would become targets and that "war and occupation would boost political Islam, increase sympathy for terrorist objectives and make Iraq a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East," Pillar said.
These are the same buffoons that retired Zinni when he told them we need more troops on the ground.
WGJ
Full story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601306.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
DELIVERY CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 65. The Intelligence Community assessment that Iraq retains a small force of Scud type ballistic missiles was reasonable based on the information provided to the Committee. The estimate that Iraq retained "up to a few dozen Scud variant missiles," was clearly explained in the body of the National Intelligence Estimate to be an assessment based "on no direct evidence" and was explained in the key judgments to be based on "gaps in Iraqi accounting to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)."
(U) Conclusion 66. The assessments that Iraq was in the final stages of development of the al Samoud missile, may be preparing to deploy the al Samoud and was deploying the al Samoud and Ababil 100 short range ballistic missile, both which exceed the 150 km United Nations range limit, evolved in a logical progression over time, had a clear foundation in the intelligence reporting, and were reasonable judgments based on the intelligence available to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 67. The assessment that Iraq was developing medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) capabilities was a reasonable judgment based on the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 68. The Intelligence Community assessment in the key judgments section of the National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents" overstated both what was known about the mission of Iraq's small UAVs and what intelligence analysts judged about the likely mission of Iraq's small UAVs. The Air Force footnote which indicated that biological weapons (BW) delivery was a possible, though unlikely, mission more accurately reflected the body of intelligence reporting.
(U) Conclusion 69. Other than the Air Force's dissenting footnote, the Intelligence Community failed to discuss possible conventional missions for Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) which were clearly noted in the intelligence reporting and which most analysts believed were the UAV's primary missions.
(U) Conclusion 70. The Intelligence Community's assessment that Iraq's procurement of United States specific mapping software for its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) "strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.
(U) Conclusion 71. The Central Intelligence Agency's failure to share all of the intelligence reporting regarding Iraq's attempts to acquire United States mapping software with other Intelligence Community agencies left those analysts with an incomplete understanding of the issue. This lack of information sharing may have led some analysts to agree to a position that they otherwise would not have supported.
(U) Conclusion 72. Much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect. (U) Conclusion 73. Some of the information supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but not used in Secretary Powell's speech, was incorrect. This information should never have been provided for use in a public speech.
(U) Conclusion 74. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should have alerted Secretary Powell to the problems with the biological weapons related sources cited in the speech concerning Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapons program.
(**) Conclusion 75. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)3 should have alerted Secretary Powell to the fact that there was an analytical disagreement within the NIMA concerning the meaning of DELETED activity observed at Iraq's Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute in November 2002. Moreover, agencies like the NIMA should have mechanisms in place for evaluating such analytical disagreements.
(U) Conclusion 76. Human intelligence (HUMINT) gathered after the production of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), did indicate that Iraqi commanders had been authorized to use chemical weapons as noted in Secretary Powell's speech.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) COLLECTION CONCLUSIONS
(**) Conclusion 77. The Intelligence Community relied too heavily on United Nations (UN) DELETED information about Iraq's programs and did not develop a sufficient unilateral collection effort targeting Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and related activities to supplement UN collected information and to take Its place upon the departure of the UN inspectors.
(U) Conclusion 78. The Intelligence Community depended too heavily on defectors and foreign government services to obtain human intelligence (HUMINT) information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Because the Intelligence Community did not have direct access to many of these sources, it was exceedingly difficult to determine source credibility.
(U) Conclusion 79. The Intelligence Community waited too long after inspectors departed Iraq to increase collection against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
(U) Conclusion 80. Even after the departure of United Nations (UN) inspectors, placement of human intelligence (HUMINT) agents and development of unilateral sources inside Iraq were not top priorities for the Intelligence Community.
(U) Conclusion 81. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) continues to excessively compartment sensitive human intelligence (HUMINT) reporting and fails to share important information about HUMINT reporting and sources with Intelligence Community analysts who have a need to know.
(**) Conclusion 82. ******************** SENTENCE DELETED ********************. The lack of in country human intelligence (HUMINT) collection assets contributed to this collection gap.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) PRESSURE CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 83. The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
(U) Conclusion 84. The Committee found no evidence that the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.
WHITE PAPER CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 85. The Intelligence Community's elimination of the caveats from the unclassified White Paper misrepresented their judgments to the public which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments.
(U) Conclusion 86. The names of agencies which had dissenting opinions in the classified National Intelligence Estimate were not included in the unclassified white paper and in the case of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the dissenting opinion was excluded completely. In both cases in which there were dissenting opinions, the dissenting agencies were widely regarded as the primary subject matter experts on the issues in question. Excluding the names of the agencies provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of the debate within the Intelligence Community regarding these issues.
(U) Conclusion 87. The key judgment in the unclassified October 2002 White Paper on Iraq's potential to deliver biological agents conveyed a level of threat to the United States homeland inconsistent with the classified National Intelligence Estimate.
RAPID PRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 88. The Intelligence Community should have been more aggressive in identifying Iraq as an issue that warranted the production of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and should have initiated the production of such an Estimate prior to the request from Members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
(U) Conclusion 89. While more time may have afforded analysts the opportunity to correct some minor inaccuracies in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the Committee does not believe that any of the fundamental analytical flaws contained in the NIE were the result of the limited time available to the Intelligence Community to complete the Estimate.
IRAQI LINKS TO TERRORISM CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 90. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that Saddam Hussein was most likely to use his own intelligence service operatives to conduct attacks was reasonable, and turned out to be accurate.
(U) Conclusion 91. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) assessment that Iraq had maintained ties to several secular Palestinian terrorist groups and with the Mujahidin eKhalq was supported by the intelligence. The CIA was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hizballah and Hamas, and might have intended to employ such surrogates in the event of war.
(U) Conclusion 92. The Central Intelligence Agency's examination of contacts, training, safehaven and operational cooperation as indicators of a possible Iraq al-Qaida relationship was a reasonable and objective approach to the question.
(U) Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.
(**) Conclusion 94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida were the reports of training in the use of non conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. ******************** SENTENCE DELETED ********************
(U) Conclusion 95. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment on safehaven - that alQaida or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control - was reasonable.
(U) Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise.
(U) Conclusion 97. The Central Intelligence Agency's judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach - al-Qaida - to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks.
(U) Conclusion 98. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) assessments on Iraq's links to terrorism were widely disseminated, though an early version of a key CIA assessment was disseminated only to a limited list of cabinet members and some subcabinet officials in the Administration.
TERRORISM COLLECTION CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 99. Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaida.
(**)Conclusion 100. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not have a focused human intelligence (HUMINT) collection strategy targeting Iraq's links to terrorism until 2002. The CIA had no DELETED sources on the ground in Iraq reporting specifically on terrorism. The lack of an official DELETED U.S. presence in the country DELETED curtailed the Intelligence Community's HUMINT collection capabilities.
TERRORISM PRESSURE CONCLUSIONS
(**) Conclusion 101. ************************************************** ********** PARAGRAPH DELETED ************************************************** **********
(U) Conclusion 102. The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to terrorism. After 9/11, however, analysts were under tremendous pressure to make correct assessments, to avoid missing a credible threat, and to avoid an intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11. As a result, the Intelligence Community's assessments were bold and assertive in pointing out potential terrorist links. For Instance, the June 2002 Central Intelligence Agency assessment Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship was, according to its Scope Note, "purposefully aggressive" in drawing connections between Iraq and al-Qaida in an effort to inform policymakers of the potential that such a relationship existed. All of the participants in the August 2002 coordination meeting on the September 2002 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism interviewed by the Committee agreed that while some changes were made to the paper as a result of the participation of two Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy staffers, their presence did not result in changes to their analytical judgments.
POWELL SPEECH CONCLUSIONS - TERRORISM PORTION
(U) Conclusion 103. The information provided by the Central Intelligence Agency for the terrorism portion of Secretary Powell's speech was carefully vetted by both terrorism and regional analysts.
(U) Conclusion 104. None of the portrayals of the intelligence reporting included in Secretary Powell's speech differed in any significant way from earlier assessments published by the Central Intelligence Agency.
(U) Conclusion 105. Because the Director of Central Intelligence refused to provide all working drafts of the speech, the Committee could not determine whether anything was added to or removed from the speech prior to its delivery.
IRAQI THREAT TO REGIONAL STABILITY AND SECURITY CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 106. The Intelligence Community (IC) did not take steps to clearly characterize changes in Iraq's threat to regional stability and security, taking account of the fact that its conventional military forces steadily degraded after 1990.
(U) Conclusion 107. The quality and quantity of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) reporting on issues related to regional stability and security, particularly on the subject of regime intentions, was deficient and did not adequately support policymaker requirements.
(U) Conclusion 108. Subject to the limitations described in conclusions 106 and 107, the Intelligence Community (IC) objectively assessed a diverse body of intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's threat to regional stability and security, producing a wide range of high quality analytical documents on various topics. The IC's judgments about Iraq's military capabilities were reasonable and balanced, based on three factors: the size and capabilities of its military forces in relation to neighboring countries; its history of aggressive behavior prior to the first Gulf War; and, its patterns of behavior between 1991 and 2003.
(U) Conclusion 109. The Intelligence Community should have produced a National Intelligence Estimate level assessment of the overall threat posed by Iraq in the region prior to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Such a document would have outlined - in one place and in a systematic fashion the complete range of factors comprising Iraq's threat to regional stability and security.
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 110. Between 1991 and 2003 analysis of Saddam Hussein's human rights record was limited in volume, but provided an accurate depiction of the scope of abuses under his regime. The limited body of analysis was reasonable, given the difficulty of intelligence collection inside Iraq and the demands on collection resources that were primarily targeted on other priorities. Those competing priorities included weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, regime stability and regional security. There was no indication that the Intelligence Community's (IC) analysis was shaped or manipulated in regards to analysis of human rights abuses.
(U) Conclusion 111. The Intelligence Community's development of a systematic analytical method - the "mosaic approach," which grew out of approaches to "atrocities intelligence" in the Balkans - was an innovation for gaining a better understanding of the human rights situation in Iraq. The environment was a denied and hostile arena that thwarted most intelligence collection by organizations following human rights issues.
THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S SHARING OF INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQI SUSPECT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION SITES WITH UNITED NATIONS INSPECTORS CONCLUSIONS
(U) Conclusion 112. The Intelligence Community had limited actionable intelligence on suspect Iraqi weapons of mass destruction sites.
(U) Conclusion 113. The Central Intelligence Agency fulfilled the intent of the Administration's policy on the sharing of intelligence information.
(U) Conclusion 114. Public pronouncements by Administration officials that the Central Intelligence Agency had shared information on all high and moderate priority suspect sites with United Nations inspectors were factually incorrect.
(U) Conclusion 115. The rationale used by the Central Intelligence Agency for deciding what information to share with the United Nations was inherently subjective, inconsistently applied, and not well documented.
(U) Conclusion 116. The multiple Intelligence Community Weapons of Mass Destruction (WNW) site lists lack coherency.
(U) Conclusion 117. The information the Central Intelligence Agency provided to Senator Levin in reply to his letters on the sharing of intelligence information with the United Nations was, in some cases, unresponsive, incomplete and inconsistent.
WGJ
MY THEORY
The Bush Admlnistration delibertly misled everyone about Iraq. They were likely aware of the true situation but it didn’t matter because of Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine, combined with the Bush gang’s predisposition to take control of Iraqi oil. The convenient convergence of overblown intelligence estimates (see the 117 Conclusions) and the Bush gang’s desire to go into Iraq was synchronicity as far as they were concerned. Bush was/is the perfect foil for this strategy because he is disengaged (not real smart) and doesn’t do his own homework (the mark of C students everywhere). Part of the strategy was/is for Bush to be kept in the dark in order to maintain plausible deniability. And to cover their ass the Bush gang had another foil, the Intelligence community. Bearing in mind the overarching One Percent Doctrine, if only ten percent of the 117 Conclusions are accurate, for Cheney, Rummy et al, that was more than sufficient “evidence” to justify going to war. Given the prexisting anti-Iraqi agenda, Cheney's relationship with Halliburton, (and many other business opportunities), it's easy to see how the Bush gang would view the Iraqi invasion as a win/win scenario. The One Percent Doctrine, the post 9/11 environment, and the lure of Iraqi oil it was an irresistible combination.
Where they really screwed up was in not paying attention to:
Analyst Says He Warned of Iraqi Resistance
Danger Was Clear Early, White Said
Full story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...referrer=email
and they should have listened to ZINNI and the other Generals when they told them they needed more troops!
WGJ
WHERE'S OSAMA and WHY DON'T WE HAVE HIM?
lhopp77
07-05-2006, 05:50 PM
MY THEORY
The Bush Admlnistration delibertly misled everyone about Iraq. They were likely aware of the true situation but it didn’t matter because of Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine, combined with the Bush gang’s predisposition to take control of Iraqi oil.
WHERE'S OSAMA and WHY DON'T WE HAVE HIM?
I read over 100 Conclusions that prove that your theory is BS. You just went to great length to prove that Bush DID NOT lie, DID NOT manipulate intelligence and that it was the intelligence community that was providing inadequate or erroneous data. So Bush, AS WELL NEARLY ALL LEADING DEMOCRATS, thought there were WMDs and a restarted nuclear program.
One thing that did stand out in my reading was the total lack of incountry intelligence until 2002. This can be laid directly at the feet of Slick Willie for raping the intelligence budget and not placing emphasis where it should have been.
We DON'T have Osama largely because of Slick Willie. He had the best opportunity to take him.
Thank you, Williford, for proving that Bush did not lie.
Lee
Electrophil
07-05-2006, 07:46 PM
OOPs. See, I was thinking an invasion on Iraq was the best opportunity to get him, after taking afghanistan didn't work.
SubaSteevo
07-05-2006, 07:53 PM
North Korea's launching missiles, maybe we should go look for Osama over there.
demonsvx
07-05-2006, 08:04 PM
I think this is why we have a problem with terrorists. First they want us out of the middle east. Why are we there anyway? We have backed Israel for 40+ years and they are no better than any other country in the region. Yet we stay, for what? To protect , hold your breath, "American Interests" what are those interests? Oil, maybe, sand no we got plenty of that. Hmm what could it be. Strategic location within China and Russias reach no cant be that:rolleyes: Global control- pushing the limit there. Osama Bin Laden is responsible for the deaths at WTC and other acts but is not our government EQUALLY responsible for bombing the sh** out of there countries killing no doubt INNOCENT civilians? Is it retalition for 9-11? Slim chance there. Hell they even come up with fancy names for our foes "Enemy Combatants" wtf is that all about. Let alone Guantanamo Bay, if they are not being tried for crimes then what the hell are they doing there? Then North Korea shoots some missles today 9 or 10 of them and the world community says " dont do it again or else" What the hell?!? If they get it right there knocking on Japans door, what then?
what a shock! Who would have guessed you'd take that position? As usual you spin the evidence (pure sophistry, also known a spin or in my world, BS). Blamming everything on Clinton, you are OH SO PREDICTABLE. But this isn't for you. Like I said, Bush could piss on your leg and tell you it's raining and you'd believe it. You've proven you have absolutely no capacity for objectivity or deductive reasoning.
However, for those who have witnessed Bush's innumerable lies and deceits and recognized them as such, my theory makes a great deal of sense. It's actually quite clever, almost Machiavellian. Like I said the major flaw was the chicken hawks (having 0 combat experience amongst them) didn't anticipate the level of resistence nor did they listen to the experts who did and tried to warn them.
Now, about this bridge...
WGJ
demonsvx
07-05-2006, 08:40 PM
Why did the U.S. think there would be no resistance? Once Iraqs army was defeated the U.S. assumed Iraq would be a pushover. We are invading a foriegn country that HAS NOT attacked us! Sure they had WMDs if what they tell us is true to fortify there reasons for going to war. Afganistan should have been finished first with the capture/death of Osama Bun Laden. The U.N. could have dealt with Iraq because its THEIR friggin job not the U.S. Why are we sacrificing our troops because France, Spain, Russia, China etc cant do their part? Kick the U.N. out of America and put it where it belongs, in downtown BAGHDAD!
This is A PARTIAL LIST on one of many web sites devoted to tracking Bush and his criminal gang's endless BS:
9.** IRAQ WMD’s
LIE: *The Bush administration religiously chanted the contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as its basis for a war.*
For example, in his address to the nation Bush said the intelligence “leaves no doubt that . .* . Iraq . . . continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”*
*Vice President Cheney also was part of the chorus and declared that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
FACTS: According to the CIA’s Duelfer’s Report Iraq:
§******************** HAD NO WMD’s.
§******************** *“had no . . . strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions” ended.
§******************** Iraq failed “to acquire long range Iraq’s nuclear program ended in 1991 following the Gulf War.”
§******************** “Iraq unilaterally destroyed is undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991.* There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.”
§******************** In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent product systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons.”
This is consistent with pre-war findings:
Former Treasury Secretary O’Neil, who was a member of the National Security Council, indicated that “[i]n the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.”
In January 2004, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on WMDS in Iraq concluded that the evidence prior to the war indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program had been dismantled and its chemical weapons had lost most of their lethality.** In addition, the report concluded that the administration “systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs”. *
This is consistent with other pre-war reports.* For example, in September 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency concluded “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has – or will – establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.”
Sources: Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD; Ruben Bannerjee – Al Jazeera 04.06.03, NOW Update 05.22.03, Scheer – AlterNet.org 06.10.03; WMD in Iraq – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 60 Minutes 01.11.14; Dreyfus & Vest – Mother Jones Jan-Feb 04; Suskind – The Price of Loyalty.*
8.************ IRAQ AS IMMINENT THREAT
LIE: **The Bush administration repeatedly claimed that Iraq presented an imminent threat to the US and its allies, although it would later claim:
On January 27, 2004, White House spokesman Scot McClellan claimed that the administration never said Iraq was an imminent threat. "the media have chose to use the word imminent" to describe the Iraqi threat.****In a February 2004 speech at Georgetown University, CIA Director Tenet revealed that CIA "analysts never said there*was an imminent threat" from Iraq before the war.*
FACTS:* The director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research stated that "Iraq possessed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States."
*A January 2004 report by the Army War College concluded that Iraq was not an imminent threat and characterized the war as "an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deferred Iraq."
The Carnegie Endowment for Peace's report on WMD's in Iraq also concluded that Iraq*did not pose an immediate threat to the United States or to global security.*
Sources: Daily Mis-Lead 02.05.04; Rivers-Pitt – Truthout.org 07.11.03, McGovern –AlterNet 06.30.03, NBC News 07.21.03, Krugman – New York Times 07.22.03; WMD in Iraq – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Bounding the Global War on Terror – Army War College
7.* NEVER SAID IMMINENT THREAT
LIE: *On January 27, 2004, White House spokesman Scot McClellan claimed that the administration never said Iraq was an imminent threat. "the media have chose to use the word imminent" to describe the Iraqi threat.
FACTS:******** *
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld* (09.19.02)
*"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."* President Bush (09.26.02)
*"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . It has developed weapons of mass death"* President Bush (10.02.02)
*"There's a grave threat in Iraq.* There just is."* President Bush (10.02.03)
*"There are many dangers in the world; the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most*serious dangers of our age in one place.* President Bush (10.07.02)
*"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace." President Bush (10.16.02)
*"There is a real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to America in the form of Saddam Hussein."* President Bush (10.28.02)
*"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."* President Bush (11.01.02)
*"Today*the world is...uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq."* President Bush (11.01.02)
*"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."* President Bush (11.23.02)
*In January 2003, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, when asked “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests”; he replied “Well, of course he is.”
*In February 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said “[t]his is about [an] imminent threat.”
*In May 2003, Ari Fleisher was asked “Didn’t we go to war because we said WMD’s were a direct and imminent threat to the U.S?” He responded, “Absolutely.”
*Sources: Daily Mis-Lead 01.28.04, CAP Daily Progress Report 01.29.04 *
6.* 9-11 WARNINGS
LIE: *In her public testimony before the 9-11 commission, Dr. Rice stated: “I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons.”
*After the attacks, Ari Fleischer stated that the President had no warnings of an attack and President Bush explained
*“[n]ever [in] anybody’s thought processes . . . did we ever think that the evil doers would fly not one but four commercial aircraft into precious US targets . . . never.”
*In May 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”* (05.16.02)
*Dr. Rice: “[W]e received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists.” (03.22.04)
President Bush: “Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us.* I would have used very resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people.”* (03.25.04)
Surprisingly, Bush reiterated this comment at an April 13 press conference.* “[T]here was nobody in our government, at least, and I don’t think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings.”
FACTS:* Dr. Rice admitted privately to the 9-11 panel that she had “misspoken” when she said there were no prior warnings, but then proceeded to repeat this claim in public.
*The warnings received (see below) were sufficient for Attorney General Ashcroft to begin “traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines” because of what the Justice Department called “a threat assessment.”* The Justice Department has yet to release this “threat assessment.” *
Sibel Edmonds, a translator with the FBI, indicates "that it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack."
“President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said.* There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away. (22)
Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport."
*Bush received an August 6, 2001 memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” which mentioned bin Laden’s desire and capability to strike the US possibly using hijacked airplanes.* The CIA warned that bin Laden will launch an attack against the US and/or Israel in the coming weeks that “will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests.”*
The Bush administration prevented the release of details of the August 6th briefing in the report issued by the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the 9-11 attack.*
Also that spring and summer intelligence reports indicated that
(i) Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack “American and Israeli symbols which stand out”;
(ii) there was a threat to assassinate Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit using an airplane stuffed with explosives;
(iii) al-Qaeda was planning an attack using multiple airplane hijackings; and
(iv) that bin Laden was in advanced stages of executing a significant operation within the US.*
This was included in reports entitled “Bin Laden planning multiple operations,” “Bin Laden’s network’s plan advancing,” and “Bin Laden threats are real” which warned of catastrophic damage.
The CIA’s National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise in which a small corporate jet would crash into an office tower following equipment failure for the morning of September 11th.*
In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman report warned that “mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S. homeland was of serious and growing concern” and that the US was woefully unprepared for a “catastrophic” domestic terrorist attack.*
President Bush refused to act on this report, preferring to await the findings of Cheney’s terrorist task force which failed to even meet before 9-11. The Bush administration prevented the release of details of the August 6 briefing in the report issued by the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the 9-11 attack.*
Sources: (1) The Left Coaster 07.14.03, Waterman – UPI 07.23.03, Priest – Washington Post 07.25.03, Dean – Findlaw.com 07.29.03, Ridgeway – Village Voice 07.31.03, Franken – Lies And The Liars Who Tell Them, Daily Mis-Lead 03.11.04, Center for American* Progress Fact Sheet 03.22.04, Progress Report 03.26.04, Rice – Washington Post 03.22.04, Progress Report 03.26.04, Daily Mis-Lead 04.14.04; *Lumpkin – Associated Press 10.28.03; CAP Fact Sheets 04.08.04
This is only the beginning...notice that I'm starting with the most relevent to the WMD issue at #6 through #9! Bush has lied so much that this will make the Republican pervert list look short. That was the last time Lee popped off and apparently he still hasn't learned, I do my homework.
WGJ
Here’s what Bush said:
Bush’s Claim
Reality
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq has 500 tons of chemical weapons:
-****** Sarin gas
-****** Mustard gas
-****** VX Nerve agent
Not True
Zero Chemical Weapons Found
Not a drop of any chemical weapons has been found anywhere in Iraq
Recent discoveries of weapons have been pre Gulf munitions, greatly deteriorated and unusable.
“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein
had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable
of delivering chemical agents.”
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq has 30,000 weapons capable of dumping chemical weapons on people
Not True
Zero Munitions Found
Not a single chemical weapon’s munition has been found anywhere in Iraq
“We have also discovered through intelligence
that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq has a growing fleet of planes capable of dispersing chemical weapons almost anywhere in the world
Not True
Zero Aerial Vehicles Found
Not a single aerial vehicle capable of dispersing chemical or biological weapons, has been found anywhere in Iraq
"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people
now in custody reveal that
Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida."
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda
And implied that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11
Not True
Zero Al Qaeda Connection
To date, not a shred of evidence connecting Hussein with Al Qaida or any other known terrorist organizations have been revealed.
(besides certain Palestinian groups who represent no direct threat to the US)
"Our intelligence sources tell us that he (Saddam) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq has attempted to purchase metal tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production
Not True
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as dozens of leading scientists declared said tubes unsuitable for nuclear weapons production -- months before the war.
"Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at [past nuclear] sites."
Bush speech to the nation – 10/7/2002
Iraq is rebuilding nuclear facilities at former sites.
Not True
Two months of inspections at these former Iraqi nuclear sites found zero evidence of prohibited nuclear activities there
IAEA report to UN Security Council – 1/27/2003
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Iraq recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa
Not True
The documents implied were known at the time by Bush to be forged and not credible.
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
VP Dick Cheney – “Meet the Press” 3/16/2003
Iraq has Nuclear Weapons for a fact
Not True
“The IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."
IAEA report to UN Security Council – 3/7/2003
"We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
Bush Press Conference 7/14/2003
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein *refused to allow UN inspectors into Iraq
Not True
UN inspectors went into Iraq to search for possible weapons violations from December 2002 into March 2003
There's more if anyone's interested,
WGJ
#22 - Withdrawing Troops From Iraq
(a) Will Withdraw if Asked
President Bush said in an interview on Thursday that he would withdraw American forces from Iraq if the new government that is elected on Sunday asked him to do so, but that he expected Iraq's first democratically elected leaders would want the troops to remain as helpers, not as occupiers. . . .
But asked if, as a matter of principle, the United States would pull out of Iraq at the request of a new government, he said: "Absolutely. This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."*
(b) Iraqi's Oppose Withdrawal Timetable
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Could you characterize the worry you heard from Iraqi leaders about U.S. troop levels that you first mentioned on the flight home from Iraq? And here in the Rose Garden a week ago, you said that Zarqawi's death is an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide in this struggle. After your visit, do you truly believe that the tide is turning in Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: First part of the question? I'm sorry.
Q About the worry that you --
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. No question, there are concerns about whether or not the United States will stand with this government. And I can understand why. You know, ours is a society that encourages debate and people are free to express themselves. And they do so; they say, look, this is my view of how we ought to go forward, this is what I think. And the willingness of some to say that if we're in power we'll withdraw on a set timetable concerns people in Iraq, because they understand our coalition forces provide a sense of stability, so they can address old wrongs and develop their strategy and plan to move forward. They need our help and they recognize that. And so they are concerned about that.
Rose Garden Press Conference (June 14, 2006)*
THE FACTS
The Bush administration has ignored repeated requests to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
June 2005:** Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country. The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).* “We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored,” read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.
November 2005:* Leaders of Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish majority and Sunni minority call for the withdrawal of foreign troops "according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation" and end terror attacks
June 2006:* When George Bush visited Baghdad on June 13, Iraq's vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, asked him for a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. The following day, President Jalal Talabani released a statement expressing his support for the vice-president’s request. Then in an op-ed in the Washington Post on June 20, Mowaffak al-Rubbaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, called for a significant reduction in US troops this year, with most leaving next year. “We envisage the US troop presence by year’s end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007,” wrote Dr. Al-Rubbaie. Al-Rubaie said that Iraqis now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators, and that their removal will strengthen the fledgling government by legitimizing it in the eyes of the Iraqi people.
Asked about the article by the Financial Times, the State Department official reaffirmed the US position that withdrawal would be based on conditions, not timelines. The Bush administration’s refusal to set a timeline for withdrawal puts it on a collision course with the Iraqi government, which is increasing trying to “gain its independence from the United States,” as Dr. Al-Rubbaie said in his op-ed.
# 21 - We Do Not Engage in Torture
We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture."* - President Bush (Nov. 7, 2005).
THE FACTS
The State Department's*annual report on*human rights practices worldwide has*condemned countries such as Burma and North Korea for the disappearance and indefinite detention of political prisoners without trial; while also condemning Libya, Syria and other countries for engaging in acts of torture that include hooding, stripping detainees naked, sleep deprivation, subjecting detainees to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, threatening them with dogs, submerging them in water to simulate drowning — which is known as water-boarding — and other acts of physical abuse all of which have occured at U.S. detention facilities.* See State Dept. Study Cites Torture of Prisoners: Rumself Approved Similar Practices (Washington Post March 10, 2005).
Rumsfeld Approved Similar Practices
In addition, post-World War II Japanese war crimes tribunals*found that both the Japanese soldiers engaging in water-boarding and the officers who approved it were guilty of war crimes.
#*20 - Finding WMDs
BUSH: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. [Bush on Polish TV, 5/29/03]
POWELL: We have already discovered mobile biological factories of the kind that I described to the Security Council on the 5th of February. We have now found them. There is no question in our mind that that’s what their purpose was. Nobody has come up with an alternate purpose that makes sense. [Powell, 6/2/03]
WOLFOWITZ: We — as the whole world knows — have in fact found some significant evidence to confirm exactly what Secretary Powell said when he spoke to the United Nations about the development of mobile biological weapons production facilities that would seem to confirm fairly precisely the information we received from several defectors, one in particular who described the program in some detail. [Wolfowitz, 6/3/03]
RICE: But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5th talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that–dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described. … This was a program that was built for deceit and concealment. [CNBC, 6/3/03]
JOHN BOLTON: And I think the presentation that Secretary Powell made to the Security Council some months ago, which he worked on day and night for four or five days before going up to New York, is actually standing up very well to the test of reality as we learn more about what was going on inside Iraq. He explained to the Security Council and, indeed, showed diagrams of mobile biological weapons production facilities. We have already found two such laboratories. [Testimony before House International Relations Committee, 6/4/03]
BUSH: We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. [Bush, 6/5/03]
POWELL: And I would put before you exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found. Now, people are saying, well, are they truly mobile biological labs? Yes, they are. [Fox News Sunday, 6/8/03]
POWELL: I believe that they did have them and still have them, and I am confident that as we continue our efforts we will find these weapons, as well as the programs that supported these weapons. The mobile biological laboratories that were found and presented to the world, I think, is a further evidence of this. [Powell on al-Arabiyya, 6/23/03]
POWELL: [The State Department’s intelligence analysts’] confidence level is increasing. … And so we have been in complete open analysis with, you know, having a complete open analysis with the CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence remains confident of his judgment. And frankly, I haven’t seen anything to suggest that that judgment is wrong. [Powell, 6/26/03]
POWELL: I reviewed that presentation that I made on the 5th of February a number of times, as you might imagine, over recent weeks, and it holds up very well. It was the solid, coordinated judgment of the intelligence community. Some of the things that I talked about that day we have now seen in reality. We have found the mobile biological weapons labs that I could only show cartoons of that day. We now have them. [NBC Today Show, 6/30/03]
CHENEY: We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack. [Meet the Press, 9/14/03]
POWELL: And even though there are differences within the overall intelligence community, the Director of Central Intelligence, examining all of the material with respect to that van and examining counter-arguments as to what it might be, stands behind the judgment that what we found was positive evidence of a mobile biological weapons lab, and it has not been discounted sufficiently. [ABC This Week, 9/28/03]
(Center for American Progress)
THE FACTS
The*Washington Post reported an explosive story that a secret, fact-finding team of scientists and engineers sponsored by the Pentagon determined in May 2003 that two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops were not evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program. The nine-member team “transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003.”**
Despite having authoritative evidence that the biological laboratories claim was false, the administration continued to peddle the myth over the next four months.
(Center for American Progress)
#*19 - Guantanamo Detainees
These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan.* They weren't wearing uniforms . . . but were there to kill. *(President Bush 06/20/05)
These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants . . . They were picked up on the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces. *(Scott McClellan 06/21/05)
The people that are there are people we picked up on the battlefield, primarily in Afghanistan. They're terrorists. They're bomb makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban....We've let go those that we've deemed not to be a continuing threat. But the 520-some that are there now are serious, deadly threats to the United States.* (Vice President Cheney 06/23/05)
These are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker.* (Defense Secretary Rumsfeld 06/27/05)
*
THE FACTS
Defense Department Data.**Counsel for the detainees released a report based entirely on the Defense Department's own data which found:
1.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2.
Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed "fighters for;" 30% considered "members of;" a large majority - 60% -- are detained merely because they are "associated with" a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.
National Journal Review of*Defense Department Filings in Habeas Petitions.* National Journal reviewed the transcripts for 314 Gitmo prisoners and found the following:
1. A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).
2. Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.
3. Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
4. The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.
5. Seventy-five of the 132 men, or more than half the group, are -- like* -- not accused of taking part in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. (The 75 include 10 detainees whom the U.S. government "no longer" considers enemy combatants, although at least eight of the 10 are still being held at Guantanamo.) Typically, documents describe these men as "associated" with the Taliban or with Al Qaeda -- sometimes directly so, and sometimes through only weak or distant connections. Several men worked for charities that had some ties to Al Qaeda;*one detainee*lived in a house associated with the Taliban.
6. Some of the "associated" men are said to have attended jihadist training camps before September 11, an accusation admitted by some and denied by others. The U.S. government says that some of the suspected jihadists trained in Afghanistan, even though other records show that they had not yet entered the country at the time of the training camps. Just 57 of the 132 men, or 43 percent, are accused of being on a battlefield in post-9/11 Afghanistan.
7. The government's documents tie only eight of the 132 men directly to plans for terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan.
8. At least eight prisoners at Guantanamo are there even though they are no longer designated as enemy combatants. One perplexed attorney, whose client does not want public attention, learned that the man was no longer considered an enemy combatant only by reading a footnote in a Justice Department motion asking a federal judge to put a slew of habeas corpus cases on hold. The attorney doesn't know why the man is still in Cuba.
Blaise Pascal:
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible - and no one can now doubt the word of America.
George W. Bush
WGJ
lhopp77
07-06-2006, 12:24 AM
Williford, go back and read every single one of the Conclusions that you have posted above. Read them and just try a little to understand the English language. READ THE CONCLUSIONS!!!! The ones that you published.
Lee
lhopp77
07-06-2006, 12:34 AM
What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis.
AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.
When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact information for Musab Yasin and another 1993 plotter, a Kuwaiti native named Ibrahim Suleiman.
These facts alone, linking the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, would seem to cry out for additional scrutiny, no?
The Yasin brothers and Shakir have more in common. They are all Iraqis. And two of them--Abdul Rahman Yasin and Shakir--went free, despite their participation in attacks on the World Trade Center, at least partly because of efforts made on their behalf by the regime of Saddam Hussein. Both men returned to Iraq--Yasin fled there in 1993 with the active assistance of the Iraqi government. For ten years in Iraq, Abdul Rahman Yasin was provided safe haven and financing by the regime, support that ended only with the coalition intervention in March 2003.
...
Those three individuals are nowhere mentioned in the 428 pages that comprise the body of the 9/11 Commission report.
...
Why? Why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention Abdul Rahman Yasin, who admitted his role in the first World Trade Center attack, which killed 6 people, injured more than 1,000, and blew a hole seven stories deep in the North Tower? It's an odd omission, especially since the commission named no fewer than five of his accomplices.
Why would the 9/11 Commission neglect Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a man who was photographed assisting a 9/11 hijacker and attended perhaps the most important 9/11 planning meeting?
And why would the 9/11 Commission fail to mention the overlap between the two successful plots to attack the World Trade Center?
The answer is simple: The Iraqi link didn't fit the commission's narrative.
...
...the 9/11 Commission's deliberate exclusion of the Iraqis from its analysis is indefensible.
...
Shakir, the Iraqi-born facilitator, would be arrested six days after the September 11 attacks by authorities in Doha, Qatar. According to an October 7, 2002, article by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, "A search of Shakir's apartment in Doha, the country's capital, yielded a treasure trove, including telephone records linking him to suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Project Bojinka, a 1994 Manila plot to blow up civilian airliners over the Pacific Ocean."
...
On October 21, 2001, Shakir flew to Amman, Jordan, where he hoped to board a plane to Baghdad. But authorities in Jordan arrested him for questioning. Shakir was held in a Jordanian prison for three months without being charged, prompting Amnesty International to write the Jordanian government seeking an explanation. The CIA questioned Shakir and concluded that he had received training in counter-interrogation techniques. Shortly after Shakir was detained, Saddam's government began to pressure Jordanian intelligence--with a mixture of diplomatic overtures and threats--to release Shakir. They got their wish on January 28, 2002. He is believed to have returned promptly to Baghdad.
...
...the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released its own evaluation of the intelligence on Iraq:
The first connection to the [9/11] attack involved Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national, who facilitated the travel of one of the September 11 hijackers to Malaysia in January 2000. [Redacted.] A foreign government service reported that Shakir worked for four months as an airport facilitator in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000. Shakir claimed he got this job through Ra'ad al-Mudaris, an Iraqi Embassy employee. [Redacted.] Another source claimed that al-Mudaris was a former IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] officer. The CIA judged in "Iraqi Support for Terrorism," however, that al-Mudaris' [redacted] that the circumstances surrounding the hiring of Shakir for this position did not suggest it was done on behalf of the IIS.
A note about that last sentence: The Senate committee report is a devastating indictment of the CIA's woefully inadequate collection of intelligence on Iraq, and its equally flawed analysis.
One, Shakir himself told interrogators that an Iraqi embassy employee got him the job that allowed him to help the hijacker(s).
Two, that Iraqi embassy employee was Ra'ad al Mudaris.
Three, another source identified al Mudaris as former Iraqi Intelligence.
So how is it that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report contains a substantive account of Shakir's mysterious contribution to the 9/11 plot, while the 9/11 Commission report--again, released two weeks later--simply ignores it?
Lee
NikFu S.
07-06-2006, 01:05 AM
That's a lot of reading, so here's a nice on-topic video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5702006622816922747&q=iraq
Electrophil
07-06-2006, 09:40 AM
North Korea's launching missiles, maybe we should go look for Osama over there.
Last I heard, he leased a strip store cigarette shop up there in Maryland. I heard he's got Kools at $29.50 a carton. That ain't bad!!
It's going to take me a week to catch up on all these postings. I've only got 10 minutes a shot everytime I log on.
Can't you guys come up with a reader's digest version until I get out from under this gun? :D
SubaSteevo
07-06-2006, 10:08 AM
Last I heard, he leased a strip store cigarette shop up there in Maryland. I heard he's got Kools at $29.50 a carton. That ain't bad!!
It's going to take me a week to catch up on all these postings. I've only got 10 minutes a shot everytime I log on.
Can't you guys come up with a reader's digest version until I get out from under this gun? :D
WGJ - Bush sucks, he lied
Lee - No, Clinton does, and he lied too
WGJ - Here's like 50 reasons why Bush sucks
Lee - Hey, WGJ learn to read!
WGJ - Here's 50 more reasons why he sucks
Lee - Look, there were a couple of Iraqis who knew something about 9/11! And this justifies killing more than 100,000 people!!!!
lhopp77
07-06-2006, 12:00 PM
WGJ - Bush sucks, he lied
Lee - No, Clinton does, and he lied
WGJ - Here's like 50 reasons why Bush sucks
Lee - Hey, WGJ learn to read!
WGJ - Here's 50 more reasons why he sucks
Lee - Look, there were a couple of Iraqis involved with 9/11!
Lee - Read the Conclusions to see if Bush lied or manipulated intelligence
Lee - Your 50 reasons are either falsifications, half truths or ridiculous fantasies
Lee
Electrophil
07-06-2006, 12:50 PM
Wow. Thanks guys!! :)
Here's your hero, flip flopping like a fish out of water and lying his ass off on video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q4FD9ddHh4&mode=related&search=daily%20show
Thanks Weebitbob, just too funny,
WGJ
George W. Bush - AWOL from Supporting our Troops
Between tax cuts for the rich, war profits for Halliburton, or support for our troops - which does the Bush Administration choose, time and time again?
Bush Administration cuts $1.5 billion from military family housing. The Bush Administration cut $1.5 billion for military family housing, despite Department of Defense statistics showing that in 83,000 barracks and 128,860 family housing units across the country are below standard. ("Nothing But Lip Service," Army Times, June 30, 2003; "House Appropriations Committee Approves $59.2 Million for Ft. Hood," U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards Press Release, June 17, 2003)
Bush Republicans support millionaires instead of military veterans. Bush allies in Congress stopped efforts to scale back the tax cut for the nation's millionaires by just five percent - a loss of just $4,780 for the year - in order to restore this funding for military family housing. ("The Tax Debate Nobody Hears About," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration underfunded veterans' health care by $2 billion. The Bush Administration's 2004 budget underfunded veterans' health care by nearly $2 billion. ("Vets Health Low on Bush's Priority List," The Hill, September 17, 2003; "Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003; U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, September 2002)
Bush Administration proposal would end health care benefits for 173,000 veterans. More than 173,000 veterans across the country would be cut off from health care because of Bush Administration proposed budget cuts and its plan requiring enrollment fees and higher out-of-pocket costs. ("Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration budget cuts force more than 200,000 veterans to wait for health care. Over 200,000 United States veterans have to wait more than six months for a medical visit because of health care shortages. ("VA Health Care Funding Alert," Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States Press Release, January 31, 2003)
Bush Administration opposed plan to give National Guard and Reserve Members access to health insurance. Despite the war efforts of America's National Guard and Reserve Members, the Bush Administration announced in October 2003 its formal opposition to give the 1.2 million Guard and Reserve members the right to buy health care coverage through the Pentagon's health plan. One out of every five Guard members lacks health insurance. ("Bush Opposes Health Plan for National Guard," Gannett News Service, October 23, 2003)
Bush Administration cuts $172 million allotted for educating the children of military personnel. The Bush Administration's 2004 budget cut $172 million of impact aid funding. Impact aid funding assists school districts by making up for lost local tax revenue from tax-exempt property, such as military bases. These education cuts will especially affect school-age children of troops serving in Iraq who reside on military bases. ("Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration tax cut denies military families increase in child tax credit. The families of 262,000 children of military personnel do not receive the child tax credit increase because the plan fails to cover taxpaying families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625. According to The Washington Post, the House version of the Bush Administration plan "wouldn't help many of those serving in Iraq." One solider who will not benefit is Army Specialist Shoshana Johnson, the soldier and single mother who was wounded twice in the same convoy as Jessica Lynch. ("Ex-POW's Family Accuses Army of Double Standard on Benefit," Washington Post, October 24, 2003; "The New Senate Child Credit Legislation - What It Does and Does Not Do," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 25, 2003; "Whose Child Is Left Behind," Children's Defense Fund, July 23, 2003)
WGJ
demonsvx
07-08-2006, 08:00 PM
George W. Bush - AWOL from Supporting our Troops
Between tax cuts for the rich, war profits for Halliburton, or support for our troops - which does the Bush Administration choose, time and time again?
Bush Administration cuts $1.5 billion from military family housing. The Bush Administration cut $1.5 billion for military family housing, despite Department of Defense statistics showing that in 83,000 barracks and 128,860 family housing units across the country are below standard. ("Nothing But Lip Service," Army Times, June 30, 2003; "House Appropriations Committee Approves $59.2 Million for Ft. Hood," U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards Press Release, June 17, 2003)
Bush Republicans support millionaires instead of military veterans. Bush allies in Congress stopped efforts to scale back the tax cut for the nation's millionaires by just five percent - a loss of just $4,780 for the year - in order to restore this funding for military family housing. ("The Tax Debate Nobody Hears About," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration underfunded veterans' health care by $2 billion. The Bush Administration's 2004 budget underfunded veterans' health care by nearly $2 billion. ("Vets Health Low on Bush's Priority List," The Hill, September 17, 2003; "Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003; U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, September 2002)
Bush Administration proposal would end health care benefits for 173,000 veterans. More than 173,000 veterans across the country would be cut off from health care because of Bush Administration proposed budget cuts and its plan requiring enrollment fees and higher out-of-pocket costs. ("Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration budget cuts force more than 200,000 veterans to wait for health care. Over 200,000 United States veterans have to wait more than six months for a medical visit because of health care shortages. ("VA Health Care Funding Alert," Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States Press Release, January 31, 2003)
Bush Administration opposed plan to give National Guard and Reserve Members access to health insurance. Despite the war efforts of America's National Guard and Reserve Members, the Bush Administration announced in October 2003 its formal opposition to give the 1.2 million Guard and Reserve members the right to buy health care coverage through the Pentagon's health plan. One out of every five Guard members lacks health insurance. ("Bush Opposes Health Plan for National Guard," Gannett News Service, October 23, 2003)
Bush Administration cuts $172 million allotted for educating the children of military personnel. The Bush Administration's 2004 budget cut $172 million of impact aid funding. Impact aid funding assists school districts by making up for lost local tax revenue from tax-exempt property, such as military bases. These education cuts will especially affect school-age children of troops serving in Iraq who reside on military bases. ("Support for Troops Questioned," Washington Post, June 17, 2003)
Bush Administration tax cut denies military families increase in child tax credit. The families of 262,000 children of military personnel do not receive the child tax credit increase because the plan fails to cover taxpaying families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625. According to The Washington Post, the House version of the Bush Administration plan "wouldn't help many of those serving in Iraq." One solider who will not benefit is Army Specialist Shoshana Johnson, the soldier and single mother who was wounded twice in the same convoy as Jessica Lynch. ("Ex-POW's Family Accuses Army of Double Standard on Benefit," Washington Post, October 24, 2003; "The New Senate Child Credit Legislation - What It Does and Does Not Do," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 25, 2003; "Whose Child Is Left Behind," Children's Defense Fund, July 23, 2003)
WGJ
But Congress will APPROVE more money to fight "the war on terrorism" whatever the hell that means:rolleyes: The troops in Iraq,Afganistan,and around the world fight and die by doing what they are ordered to do. The U.S. in Mr. Bushs' eyes only has one purpose-to be a global security force in the name of what he considers right. If he is a "Christian" man:rolleyes: who believes what is Gods' will to invade,bomb,kill,destroy,etc than let God have him. Why are we not invading N.Korea? they boast of having WMDs and somewhat of a means of delivering them.WTF is going on?
SubaSteevo
07-08-2006, 08:31 PM
But Congress will APPROVE more money to fight "the war on terrorism" whatever the hell that means:rolleyes: The troops in Iraq,Afganistan,and around the world fight and die by doing what they are ordered to do. The U.S. in Mr. Bushs' eyes only has one purpose-to be a global security force in the name of what he considers right. If he is a "Christian" man:rolleyes: who believes what is Gods' will to invade,bomb,kill,destroy,etc than let God have him. Why are we not invading N.Korea? they boast of having WMDs and somewhat of a means of delivering them.WTF is going on?
There's less sand in North Korea
and by sand, I mean oil
Electrophil
07-09-2006, 12:19 AM
There's less sand in North Korea
We can fix that.
The sand part anyway. :D
Royal Tiger
07-09-2006, 09:39 PM
I always wonder why the Washington Post gets quoted so often around here.
As for military housing, I was in the service from 94-05, reserves, but 18 months active following 9/11. I saw more cuts and misappropriations before 2000, then after. But I can't speak for all of the military from my limited exposure. I haven't been to every base. We should spend more time and energy educating the mass of idiots in this country over who's on the horizon since we can't change what we have now.
Electrophil
07-09-2006, 11:07 PM
There were more cuts before 2001. There will always be misappropriations as long as we have a congress. Congress is a good thing, so I guess we'll have to live with that misappropriation thing.
But!! Those cuts were for a reason to enjoy our new found peace dividend. Bush screwed that up by not doing his job protecting our country and putting on a war..... and Surprise!! I ain't happy about it. The financial sacrifices made by the military... which included me... for those years are for naught. He tossed it all in the wind.
Shut up Lee. I know you are going to jump in here saying there wasn't a surplus. And I'll answer the same way I always do. They use the same formulas now as they did then.
Grrrrr... :mad:
Electrophil
07-09-2006, 11:11 PM
Incidentally and just to hear my head roar. Those military cuts, and this draft dodging AWOL Bush fraudulent waste of the windfall is my button. That's what did it for me. The day of the tax cut announcement and that silly azzed $300 refund after all those years of struggling.
I didn't need a set of tires.... Not that $300 was going to be enough to buy a set. That was the day. 5 Months later, I re-registered as a Democrat.
lhopp77
07-10-2006, 07:45 AM
That was the day. 5 Months later, I re-registered as a Democrat.
I knew you were always a democrat and now you finally admit it. The only thing is you have moved much further left and slipped into the conspiracy in everywhere mode. :p
Lee
Electrophil
07-10-2006, 08:19 AM
I knew you were always a democrat and now you finally admit it. The only thing is you have moved much further left and slipped into the conspiracy in everywhere mode. :p
Lee
Quite a few things out there are conspiracies. Business and political leaders call it planning, but it all depends on the degree of secrecy and intended outcome, right?
Lay and his helpers have so far executed an excellent plan to remove his charges, protect his assets, and get him out of the country.
But the insurance companies, banks, and Federal prosecutors? Well you just know those nutjobs are going to call it a conspiracy if they find him. :D
I also guarantee all 3 woke up to the news with the same thought I had. All 3 were thinking... "Man...that just seems a little too convenient at this point in the ballgame." The next thing they did was pick up the phone saying "Hey Pete, have you read the news? Yeah... Hey, find out if this guy had any previous conditions, this doesn't taste right."
The question here is not whether they are checking it out. The questions are: Who's involved, how well are the tracks covered, and was it done professionally enough that they won't be able to crack it.
I don't think they'll be able to crack it. I firmly believe this was done by the best in the business on a very high federal level, and his wife isn't even in the loop, but will be taken care of.... and absolutely... I firmly believe Lay is alive.
Or.... Maybe WGJ has a point, and he was taken out.
Either way, this supposed death is just too convenient to be a random occurrance.
lhopp77
07-10-2006, 08:21 AM
Not even worthy of further comment.
Lee
Electrophil
07-10-2006, 10:11 AM
Because you know I'm right.
lhopp77
07-10-2006, 10:58 AM
Because you know I'm right.
You are so far from wrong--you need help. Go see your shrink, Robert. Maybe you better look behind you or under your desk first---I bet some guy in black is lurking there some place. :rolleyes:
Lee
Electrophil
07-10-2006, 11:02 AM
I'm just a realist. I see the world as it is.
I don't say "What a great week!" until I know for sure that week will actually make a difference.
You catch my meaning?
Well.... do ya? Punk? :p
SubaSteevo
07-10-2006, 12:01 PM
You are so far from wrong--you need help. Go see your shrink, Robert. Maybe you better look behind you or under your desk first---I bet some guy in black is lurking there some place. :rolleyes:
Lee
If he is far from wrong, doesn't that mean he's right? :confused:
Royal Tiger
07-10-2006, 01:14 PM
The circle logic flying around here is beginning to look like NASCAR at Bristol.
If he is far from wrong, doesn't that mean he's right? :confused:
HA HA HA...so there you rude man.
WGJ
The circle logic flying around here is beginning to look like NASCAR at Bristol.
Lee wouldn't know a logical syllogism if it bit him in the ass. And it's obvious he's just as unfamiliar with Freudian projection. According to Lee everyone who disagrees with him needs to get "help" or see a "shrink".
Lee - ""--you need help. Go see your shrink, Robert"
This from a guy that has conversations with his dogs!
Apparently in "The World According to Lee", he and Bush are the only sane people left in the country.
You know what it means when you think EVERYONE ELSE IS NUTS?!
WGJ
SubaSteevo
07-10-2006, 06:19 PM
Lee wouldn't know a logical syllogism if it bit him in the ass. And it's obvious he's just as unfamiliar with Freudian projection. According to Lee everyone who disagrees with him needs to get "help" or see a "shrink".
Lee - ""--you need help. Go see your shrink, Robert"
This from a guy that has conversations with his dogs!
Apparently in "The World According to Lee", he and Bush are the only sane people left in the country.
You know what it means when you think EVERYONE ELSE IS NUTS?!
WGJ
Well just because you think everyone else it nuts, it doesn't necessarily mean they aren't...
Do you know what it means when you claim everyone else is nuts and they aren't?
WGJ
SubaSteevo:
Thanks for getting Wittgensteinian* on my ass. It's nice to know someone's paying attention. Besides presidential candidate, are you a philosopher, linguist or a lawyer...?
* Limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Electrophil
07-10-2006, 07:44 PM
Me too.
(Post plus one.)
SubaSteevo
07-10-2006, 10:17 PM
Do you know what it means when you claim everyone else is nuts and they aren't?
WGJ
SubaSteevo:
Thanks for getting Wittgensteinian* on my ass. It's nice to know someone's paying attention. Besides presidential candidate, are you a philosopher, linguist or a lawyer...?
* Limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
All of the above, I also sell crack to school children.
Electrophil
07-10-2006, 10:41 PM
All of the above, I also sell crack to school children.
In Pokemon dispensers.
Q: What's the difference between Ann Coulter and Adolph Hitler?
A: Hitler only had one testicle.
WGJ
Electrophil
07-13-2006, 09:41 AM
Q: What's the difference between Ann Coulter and Adolph Hitler?
A: Hitler only had one testicle.
WGJ
Bwahaha!:D :D
lhopp77
07-13-2006, 11:03 AM
Lee - ""--you need help. Go see your shrink, Robert"
This from a guy that has conversations with his dogs!
WGJ
Obviously, you don't have pets. ANYONE that has pets talks to them. Some just talk more than others. They are great company and are actually members of the family to me and other pet owners. And if you don't think pets can answer in their own way--you have not been around them very much. Like I said--I think some of my more intelligent conversations (both ways) have been with my pets. :D
I seem to recall a great man once said--"Never trust anyone that does not own a pet." :)
Lee
andrew.anderson
07-14-2006, 09:21 AM
http://logo.cafepress.com/4/356074.1524734.jpg http://logo.cafepress.com/7/356074.1610227.jpg
SubaSteevo
07-14-2006, 10:12 AM
http://logo.cafepress.com/4/356074.1524734.jpg http://logo.cafepress.com/7/356074.1610227.jpg
http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/media/MA-RepublicansPeople.jpg
When you absolutely, positively have to have it destroyed overnight...
MARINE CORPS
as for that weak BS about cutting and running, I recommend you review your recent (last century) history. Republicans are the cut and run party. Only really stupid or woefully ignorant people could be foolish enough to bring up the issue considering the Republican Party's 'combat' record. You Republicans need to shut up, do your homework, and feel the shame, before you start accusing FELLOW AMERICANS of being cowards.
WGJ
of Iraq's civil/religous war, particularly after the recent Supreme court decision regarding adhereing to the Geneva Convention:
The United States is bound by customary law and international laws of war, by The Hague Conventions of 1889 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Nuremberg Conventions adopted by the United Nations December 11, 1945—all of which set limits beyond which, by common consent, decent peoples will not go. Under the Constitution, all treaties are part of the supreme law of the land. Humanitarian law rests on a simple principle; that human rights are measured by one yardstick. Without that principle, all jurisprudence descends into mere piety and power.
When laws of war were codified, military necessity ceased to be the final arbiter of human rights and civility. Nor do violations of the laws of war by one belligerent vindicate the war crimes of another.
While George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are guilty of breaking almost every established agreement for standards of human decency in times of war, we do not refer to incidental transgressions of humanitarian law.
We can even bypass war crimes of desperate infantrymen in the heat of battle or the chaos of occupation—like soldiers who recently fired bullets into crowds of anti-occupation demonstrators in Iraq—follies committed out of fear, confusion, and the hatred that all war evokes. It is not crimes of passion, but the crimes of calculation that require moral reappraisal.
For the policy-making officials who planned and supervised military operations in Iraq, the "shock-and-awe" campaign encompasses three major types of war crimes, all in violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949:
· The "wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages" in violation of the Nuremberg principles.
· The premeditated use of weapons known to cause unnecessary suffering and indiscriminate destruction.
· The use of depleted uranium, the poison of radiation that is destroying the lives of untold numbers of civilians and soldiers, including American personnel.
WAR CRIMES FROM THE AIR
"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or destruction not justified by military necessity." Nuremberg conventions, Principle VI
Combatants "shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and, accordingly, shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Geneva Conventions, part IV, Article 48
Under the Geneva Conventions and customary law, it is a war crime to launch indiscriminate attacks affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attacks will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects. The distinction between combatants and non-combatants is fundamental to all humanitarian law.
No Iraqi citizen who survived the air war in Iraq, especially the sustained six-day bombing of Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, will ever forget the devastation and terror of the "shock-and-awe" campaign against Iraq.
According to Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor, the air war over Iraq was "the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that U.S. forces have fought since Vietnam." Reports gathered from hospitals, homes, mosques and morgues show a level of civilian casualties that far exceeds the First Gulf War, which cost about 5,000 civilian lives. Nearly 100 villagers, for example, "were killed by U.S. bombing and strafing on April 5, including 43 in one house. 'There was no military base here,' said Hamadia. 'This is just a peasant village.'" (Christian Science Monitor, May 22) The Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict (CIVIC) deployed 150 surveyors and carried out detailed interviews with victims. CIVIC recorded more than 1,000 civilian deaths in Nasariya alone.
In early April, Agence France Presse reported that "twenty people, including 11 children, were killed Saturday when a nighttime air raid hit a farm in the AlJanabin suburb on the edge of Baghdad." The next day Al Jazeera TV showed footage of Bartallah, a predominately Christian town north of Monsul, suffering heavy civilian casualties after a night of intense bombing. According to the chief surgeon at the local hospital, 120 dead and wounded civilians were brought into the hospital in one week. Commenting on the Iraqi toll, a representative of the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad said, "It is a big disaster. Thousands are dead; thousands are missing."
The Christian Science Monitor estimates that 30 civilians die for every U.S.military casualty, a ratio that manifests criminality of military operations under Bush and Rumsfeld.
Writing for the INDEPENDENT (U.K.) Robert Fisk, an unembedded international reporter known for his impassioned dispatches, wrote: "On April 8 three weeks into the invasion, the Americans dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the Baghdad residential area of Mansur. They knew they would kill civilians because it was not a 'risk-free- venture'.
They killed 14 civilians in Mansur, most of them members of a Christian family. No American officers have apologized for this appalling killing, and I can promise them that the baby I saw being placed under a sheet of black plastic was very definitely not Saddam Hussein."
Day after day, Robert Fisk describes the bombs that fail to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, the "wanton destruction of cities."
"It was an outrage," Fisk writes, "an obscenity...the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smoldering car. Two missiles from an American jet killed them all—by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians torn to pieces...Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm....Everyone I spoke to heard the plane.
"Abu Hassan and Malek Hammond were preparing lunch for customers at the Nasser restaurant on the north side of Abu Taleb Street. The missile that killed them landed near to the carriage way, its blast tearing away the roof of the cafe and cutting the two men to pieces. A fellow worker led me through the rubble. At least 15 cars burst into flames, burning many of their occupants to death."
DEPLETED URANIUM
"It is especially forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." Hague Convention IV, Article 23
Eleven miles north of the Kuwaiti border on the "Highway of Death," disabled tanks, armored personnel carriers, gutted public vehicles—the mangled metals of Desert Storm—are resting in the desert radiating nuclear energy. American soldiers who lived for three months in the toxic wasteland now suffer from fatigue, joint and muscle pain, respiratory ailments—a host of maladies often known as the Gulf War Syndrome.
Ever since the end of Desert Storm, where the Pentagon unloaded 350 tons of depleted uranium, American officials were well aware of the health hazards of the residue that is collected from the processing of nuclear fuel. When the Pentagon authorized new use of depleted uranium for the preemptive invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration not only committed a war crime against Iraq, it demonstrated reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops.
Of all the violations of the laws of war by the highest officials of the country, none is more alarming or portentous than the widespread, premeditated use of depleted uranium in Iraq. What if other countries follow Bush's example?
The use of depleted uranium is a war crime. Article 23 of the Geneva Convention IV is clear: "It is forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." the Geneva Protocol of 1925 explicitly prohibits "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices."
The radiation produced by depleted uranium in battle is a poison, a carcinogenic material that causes birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities.
Depleted uranium is much denser than lead and enables U.S. weapons to penetrate steel, a great advantage in modern war. But under the Geneva Conventions, "the means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited." When DU munitions explode, the air is bathed in a fine radioactive dust, which carries on the wind, is easily inhaled, and eventually enters the soil, pollutes ground water, and enters the food chain. Unexploded casings gradually oxidize, releasing more uranium into the environment.
Handlers of depleted uranium in the U.S. are required to wear masks and protective clothing—a requirement that Iraqi and American soldiers, not to mention civilians, are unable to fulfill.
After the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi hospitals recorded a surge in cancer and birth defects. Hospital statistics from Basra show that in 1988 there were 11 cancer cases per 100,000 people. By 2001, after schools, homes, and entire neighborhoods were leveled from the air, the number increased to 116 per 100,000. Breast and lung cancer and leukemia showed up in all areas contaminated by depleted uranium. Dr. Jawad al-Ali, cancer specialist at the Basra Training Hospital, noted that "The only factor that has changed here since the 1991 war is radiation." Thirteen members of his staff, all present when the hospital area was bombed, are now cancer patients.
The Christian Science Monitor recently sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation. The families who survived the tragic decade of sanctions, even the children who recently survived the bombing of Baghdad, may not survive the radiated aftermath of military profligacy. Uranium remains radioactive for two billion years. That's a long time for reconstruction.
According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, "Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy," he said. After performing clean-up operations in the dessert (mistakenly without protective gear), thirty members of his staff died, and most others—including Rokke himself—developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems. "We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension."
The growing outcry against the use of depleted uranium is not a matter of minor legal technicalities. The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm after the war concludes. The use of depleted uranium is a crime whose horrific consequences have yet to run their course.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush said that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa. Bush lied. Authorized by the Pentagon, 2,000 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq —and the inevitable tragedies of radiation sickness—came from U.S. merchants of death, not Africa. The epitaph for the Punic wars is quite appropriate for the U.S. in Iraq: "They made a wasteland and called it peace."
CLUSTER BOMBS ARE INDISCRIMINATE
It is a war crime to launch "an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians." Geneva Conventions, Article 85
"It is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army." Hague Conventions, Article 23
"The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited" Hague Conventions, Article 22
The formal war in Iraq has ended, and most of the big guns have fallen silent. Yet the death toll continues to rise, not merely because of the brutality of occupation and the resistance, but because of one of the most heinous, unpredictable weapons of modern war—the cluster bomb.
All over Iraq, unexploded cluster bombs, originally dropped by U.S. troops in populated areas, are still killing and maiming civilians, farm animals, wildlife—any living thing that touches them by accident.
A cluster bomb is a 14-foot weapon that weighs about 1,000 pounds. When it explodes it sprays hundreds of smaller bomblets over an area the size of two or three football fields. The bomblets are bright yellow and look like beer cans. And because they look like playthings, thousands of children have been killed by dormant bomblets in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. Each bomblet sprays flying shards of metal that can tear through a quarter inch of steel.
The failure rate, the unexploded rate, is very high, often around 15 to 20 percent. When bomblets fail to detonate on the first round, they become land mines that explode on simple touch at any time. Human Rights Watch reports that 1600 Kuwaiti and Iraqi civilians have been killed, many more injured, by explosive duds following the Persian Gulf war.
Under the Geneva Conventions, cluster bombs are criminal weapons because it is impossible to use them in significant numbers without indiscriminate effects. It is a war crime to use weapons in the knowledge that they "will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians."
In the war in Bosnia in 1995, Major General Michael Ryan recognized the inherent danger to civilians and, out of respect for the laws of war, prohibited the use of cluster bombs in the European theatre. According to Air Force reports, "The problem was that the fragmentation pattern was too large to sufficiently limit collateral damage and there was also the further problem of potential unexploded ordinance." A U.N. clearance expert said that "our experience in Kosovo showed us that children and youths are highly susceptible to the submunitions."
There is a humanitarian crisis in every country where the U.S. dropped cluster bombs—in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Under Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions on Civilians, the Occupying Power has a responsibility to return evacuated personnel to their homes at the end of hostilities—a responsibility which live cluster bombs make impossible to fulfill. Thousands of displaced persons in Afghanistan cannot return to their homes because their farms, houses and villages are replete with unexploded bomblets.
Before the invasion of Iraq, Human Rights Watch called for a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs. Human Rights director Steve Close predicted that "Iraqi civilians will be paying the price with their lives and limbs for many years." A U.N. weapons commission described cluster bombs as "weapons of indiscriminate effects."
In defiance of U.N. reports, Air Force studies, and repeated warnings from Human Rights Watch, Rumsfeld reauthorized the expanded use of cluster bombs with full knowledge of their indiscriminate and treacherous results. The consequences of his war crime, as reported by international journalists and photographers, are appalling.
On April 10th Asia Times described the carnage of U.S. cluster bombs. "All over Baghdad, the city's five main hospitals simply cannot cope with an avalanche of civilian casualties. Doctors can't get to the hospitals because of the bombing. Dr. Osama Saleh-al-Deleimi at the al-Kindi hospital confirms the absolute majority of patients are women and children, victims of...shrapnel and most of all, fragments of cluster bombs. 'They are all civilians, ' he said. 'The International Committee of the Red Cross is in a state of almost desperation...casualties arriving at hospitals at a rate of as many as 100 per hour and at least 100 per day.'"
Anton Antonowicz reported in The Mirror (U.K.) from a hospital in Hillah: "Among the 168 patients I counted, not one was being treated for bullet wounds. All of them, men, women, children, bore the wounds of bomb shrapnel. It peppered their bodies. Blackened the skin. Smashed heads. Tore limbs. A doctor reported that 'All the injuries you see were caused by cluster bombs...The majority of the victims were children who died because they were outside.'"
Reporting from Baghdad March 27th, Doug Johnson wrote: "I'm overwhelmed and tired. For three days now I've concentrated on visiting injured civilians in hospitals and seeing bombed sites. This morning we interviewed an extended family of 25 that had been living in six houses together on one farm just outside of Baghdad. At 6:00 p.m. yesterday, B-52s dropped cluster bombs on their farm destroying all six houses, killing four and severely injuring many others. Even the farm animals were killed. We were told that the yellow cylinders landed in their yard, and when they and the animals crept closer to investigate, the bombs detonated."
During the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld lauded the accuracy of stealth bombers and missiles—a boast met with mockery in the streets of Baghdad. But whatever we think about Rumsfeld's humanitarian missiles, he cannot plead ignorance about the traits and effects of cluster bombs.
Ever since the Vietnam catastrophe, from the hospitals of Saigon to the clinics of Afghanistan, into the wailing hospitals of Iraq, doctors have been digging shrapnel out of the maimed bodies of once-playful children all around the world. Cluster bombs were always known for their inaccuracy, their indiscriminate and unpredictable nature.
A BACKWARD GLANCE
Even before the U.S. invasion began, as Bush prepared to shock and awe a country crippled by sanctions, Iraqis feared for their lives, for their farms and small businesses, and for the safety of their children.
Anticipation itself is a kind of terror. Thousands of citizens fled the city of Baghdad in search of safety, if not peace. No one knew what structures would be targeted, or when the rain of death would commence, but well-educated Iraqis knew all about U.S. air power—the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the B-52 carpet bombing in Vietnam, the indiscriminate use of napalm and cluster bombs, the infamy of agent Orange.
Gross violations of the laws of war in Iraq did not begin with George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. The path from the first Gulf War to the current Occupation is filled with horrific episodes.
Every major city in Iraq has stories to tell about civilian casualties, the chaos caused by fire storms from the skies. The entire Arab world remembers the infamous bombing of the civilian bomb shelter in Amariyah, where two fire-bombs burned more than a thousand civilians to death in the early morning hours of February 13th, 1991. While the story of Amariyah spread by word of mouth throughout Iraq, Western journalists acquired a video-tape of the catastrophe. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "the unedited Baghdad video feeds showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness. Rescue workers collapsed in grief."
After the first Gulf War, hundreds of soldiers and veterans, including active duty troops and reservists, came together and signed a call-to-conscience: "We are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. In the last Gulf War, as troops we were ordered to murder from a safe distance. We remember the road to Basra—the Highway of Death—where we were ordered to kill fleeing Iraqis. We bulldozed trenches, burying people alive."
While the mass burial in the sand, the raw images of death, never appeared on national TV—owing to rigorous censorship of the sordid realities of Desert Storm—the soldiers themselves will never forget what took place on the road to Basra, when thousands of disabled Iraqi troops, seeking to surrender, were mowed down by fuel air explosives, napalm bombs, and even super-bombs nearly equivalent to low-yield short-range nuclear missiles.
The U.S. Army Field Manual, the GI's authoritative guide on the laws of war that contains extensive passages from the Geneva Conventions, states: "Members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for."
Article 23 of the Hague Conventions is unequivocal: "It is especially forbidden to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defense, has surrendered at discretion."
At the March-April European Parliament hearings at the end of the Gulf War, Mike Erlich, member of the Military Counseling Network, described the execution of defeated soldiers: "Hundreds, possibly thousands of Iraqi soldiers began walking toward the U.S. position unarmed, with their arms raised in an attempt to surrender. However, the orders for this unit were not to take any prisoners...the commander of the unit began firing. At this point, everybody in the unit began shooting. Quite simply it was a slaughter."
Portions of the desert story did appear in the print media, after Newsday reporters got to see Pentagon video tapes of the deadly assault on defenseless units. According to Newsday (September 12, 1991) entire units of the Iraqi Army did not want to fight. Vehicles with white flags of surrender were destroyed, and pilots in attack planes likened the campaign to "shooting fish in a barrel." Veterans of Desert Storm describe the massacre on the road to Basra as "the turkey shoot".
The slaughter of helpless troops was followed by a second war crime: mass burial of Iraqi soldiers, some dead, some still living. Mounting ploughs on their tanks, U.S. soldiers were ordered to bulldoze Iraqi bodies into trenches, soon covered with sand.
Burial of the dead weighs heavily on religious people, and military authorities know the importance of proper burial to the morale of the survivors. The Geneva Conventions not only prohibit desecration of the dead, they require belligerents "to search for the dead and prevent them from being despoiled."
The televised and sanitized triumph of technology in Desert Storm will never eclipse the soldiers' memory of human carnage. Soldiers who are forced to act against the laws of war, against their religious faith and conscience, must live with their acts for the rest of their lives.
STILL WE HOLD OUR TONGUES
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is a story about industrial warfare and computerized violence, a story that goes beyond the Air Force and the Pentagon, even beyond the unlicensed acts of a President and his Secretary of Defense. From the beginning it is a tale of masterful propaganda refined into Machiavellian science. It is also a story of lawless individuals and collective complicity. The story of U.S. war crimes in Iraq also includes the scientists who invent new ways to kill.
It is about pilots and arms merchants, decent folk "just doing their job." The story also includes millions of employees, decent, hardworking bureaucrats and assembly line technicians who manufacture new weapons in order to make a living, to send their kids to college and drive SUV's. It's a story, in the words of Hannah Arendt, about the banality of evil.
Years ago in the midst of France's brutal war in Algeria, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre admonished the French intelligentsia: "It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name. It's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues."
Paul Rockwell
Bush and his gang have brought us from the worldwide support we enjoyed right after 9/11 to this. Having my country brought before a war crimes tribunal is unacceptable but may very well happen for all the reasons in the article.
WGJ
Electrophil
07-14-2006, 01:07 PM
I'm going to come up with a program that summarizes and make millions and millions of dollars.
Then I'm going to have 2/3rds of my brain removed, buy a pick up truck, and a case of beer. Then I'll watch football until my education dwindles to 4th grade level. That will qualify me for the Republican party, and I can demand tax cuts for the top 1% of the wealth.
The important part is I have a plan.
lhopp77
07-14-2006, 02:54 PM
I'm going to come up with a program that summarizes and make millions and millions of dollars.
Then I'm going to have 2/3rds of my brain removed, buy a pick up truck, and a case of beer. Then I'll watch football until my education dwindles to 4th grade level. That will qualify me for the Republican party, and I can demand tax cuts for the top 1% of the wealth.
The important part is I have a plan.
Lol, I don't even read those long posts authored by far left blathering idiots. Saves a lot of wear and tear on the eyes and very little of importance or substance ever included.
Now I might read some on the environment to hear the other side of that, but most of it is not worth wasting my time with.
That is my "summary program"!! :D
Lee
lhopp77
07-14-2006, 03:02 PM
When you absolutely, positively have to have it destroyed overnight...
MARINE CORPS
as for that weak BS about cutting and running, I recommend you review your recent (last century) history. Republicans are the cut and run party. Only really stupid or woefully ignorant people could be foolish enough to bring up the issue considering the Republican Party's 'combat' record. You Republicans need to shut up, do your homework, and feel the shame, before you start accusing FELLOW AMERICANS of being cowards.
WGJ
You love to provide a bunch of BS answers and slant the facts as usual. It is very true that a Democrat got us in to both the Korean War and the Vietnam War and that a Republican was in charge when we got out.
BUT--you seem to forget the reasons for getting out and who let the demonstrations and charge to leave. It was the far left in both cases----the far left Democrat activists. Remember, Kerry, Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda, etc, etc and the millions of hippie Democratic supporters.
Don't even think about blaming the Republicans for cutting and running---anyone with half a brain knows better than that. ;)
Just like now--who is demonstrating and pressuring for withdrawal----well surprise, surprise---far left liberal democrats. :rolleyes:
Lee
with the multiple violations of the Geneva convention documented by those lefties at the Christian Science Monitor. At least I show you the courtesy of reading your posts. Typically weak BS, WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE THE FACTS. It can't be true it didn't come from Fox!
"Don't even think about blaming the Republicans for cutting and running---anyone with half a brain knows better than that."
Lee
You're SO CONFUSED. Think, don't think. But the half brain would explain a great deal. Like the fact that there's still morons who support George "I thought you were gonna ask about the pig!" Bush. Freakin' brilliant! Of course that figure is down to 23%. So less than a quarter of the country has only half a brain! That explains why they get Bush and the rest of us don't. Gosh Lee you're always using weak BS about the majority. Well the vast majority of the country is most unhappy with Bush's "performance", so why doesn't he do the honorable thing and resign?
WGJ
I knew that you were full of crap with that garbage about getting both sides of the story. You can't handle the truth!
The debate over 'cut and run'
President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove's recent “cut and run” accusations against Democrats cannot go unanswered for they fly in the face of any reasonable reading of history. Who cut and ran in Korea? It was Dwight Eisenhower, who told the nation that, if elected, he would “Go to Korea” and end the war.
Eisenhower was not wrong in doing so. Harry Truman had “won” the war by September 1950. Had he accepted the status quo ante bellum, tens of thousands of American lives would have been saved and North Korea might not have been condemned to the isolation it has experienced ever since. Instead, Truman followed the advice of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and allowed the United States to get into a totally unnecessary quagmire.
Who cut and ran in Vietnam? It was Richard Nixon. Who can forget the pictures of the American Embassy in Saigon being evacuated by helicopter in 1975 as we left the Vietnamese people, who had depended upon us, to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese Communists? Remember, almost half of the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam did so on Nixon's watch. He should have gotten out in 1969, as soon as he entered the White House. The real mistake in Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's, when he escalated the war after the bogus Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Who was it who cut and ran after 241 American servicemen died in Beirut in the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks? It was Ronald Reagan. The fact that Reagan pulled out wasn't the tragedy; the tragedy was that those Americans were put into an untenable position in the first place.
And who cut and ran after the first Gulf War? It was George H.W. Bush, who refused to annihilate Saddam Hussein's personal army when he had the chance. The elder Bush not only pulled out, but on the way out, he invited the Kurds and the Shiites to overthrow their repressive dictator. Then the U.S. military stood by and watched while Saddam's army ripped the Kurds and Shiites to shreds.
History tells us that “cut and run” has all too often become the only option available because of unwise commitments on the part of the United States. We should not allow Rove's distortion of history, now being parroted as a campaign staple throughout the Republican ranks, to determine the outcome of this year's elections.
THOMAS MICHAEL HOLMES
WGJ
lhopp77
07-15-2006, 02:45 AM
Who can forget the pictures of the American Embassy in Saigon being evacuated by helicopter in 1975 as we left the Vietnamese people, who had depended upon us, to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese Communists?
WGJ
I definitely can't forget that one----I was actually there-----in person. BUT--you forget THE major factor contributing to that-----THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS CUT OFF FUNDING TO THE VIETNAMESE. NO MORE MONEY FOR THE ARMY TO FIGHT.
Based on your recent postings, Williford, it is pretty obvious that you are a pacifist as you are quoting pacifist material.
What do you even know about a DU round of ammunition??? Have you ever handled one---seen one---shot one?? I have-many. Have you ever had a watch with a luminous face of iridium? It probably put off about the same amount of radiation as most of the rounds of ammo. Now of course if your vehicle gets hit by the rounds the aersol effect of DU round particles is a bit more lethal---but you wouldn't know it anyway----you would already be dead. The DU penetrator from a 120MM tank round is only 22MM in diameter.
You quote material attacking the US for using precision guided munitions which in fact save thousands of innocent people during the nasty business of war. Yes, a few close to the targets get killed by blast, debris and simply by being a part of the target's family or associates. You talk about 10s and 20s and seem to forget things like hundreds of thousands getting killed in a single bombing raid during WWII--even prior to the A-bomb.
Anti-american pacifists make me sick. Many ARE religious people like Jehovah Witnesses, Quakers, etc----But they seem to forget one fact of life-----THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO WORSHIP OR LIVE AS THEY DO WITHOUT WARS AND SOLDIERS FIGHTING TO PROTECT THEIR FREEDOMS. The same applies to the extreme left secular pacifists like you.
Lee
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