WMDs - Words of Mass Deception

[jay_too]

or can you ever trust them again?

Granted I was against the Iraqi War, and I did not see clear and over-whelming evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated weapons delivery systems; but I did expect that a responsible government had some evidence of some weapons. Remember Colin Powell and Rumsfeld told us that THEY knew where there were WMDs in Iraq. If I was to quibble with the Bushies, it would be over whether or not the identified weapons and programs would constitute a clear and present danger to the U.S.. I guess I did expect that they would find prototypes or functional designs of a weapon system.

Not only have the Bushies not delivered any WMDs; they have tried to cover-up the exagerations and mis-statements of January - March 2003. I know what I think of the information cover-up....but what about the rest of you?

jay

 

[13788]

7x6andchg: I feel sorry for Colin Powell, actually....

He hitched his wagon to that team of horses like the good soldier he is, and now he, as Secretary of State, is the one being made to look like a liar to the rest of the world. Somehow, and perhaps I am being naive, I don't think he honestly thought there was anything there....

As for trusting the government? Well the joke since the Vietnam era has been:
What are the 9 words you never want to hear?
"We're from the government, and we're here to help."

7x6&C

 

[13788]

SchroederJr: It really sucks for Colin since supposedly he doubted the evidenec beforehand, but ignored the doubt and put it in his summary anyway. He's gotta feel really duped right now...

 

[13788]

mindseye: [quote author=jay_too link=board=99;num=1058058510;start=0#0 date=07/12/03 at 17:59:30]Not only have the Bushies not delivered any WMDs; they have tried to cover-up the exagerations and mis-statements of January - March 2003. I know what I think of the information cover-up....but what about the rest of you?
[/quote]

You know, thinking isn't enough in this case -- I hope you'll take time to write your Senators and Congresscritters and insist they hold this president accountable for his statements.

Recall that his immediate predecessor was impeached for speaking an untruth. Fair is fair, after all...

 

[13788]

Javierdude22: Very true Mindseye...writing is indeed a very goo idea...

All his been said already in many past threads.....loads of people were against, some pro....for each their own reasons...

But no-one who was fór the war, is gonna tell me that this kinda deception is ok....id like to hear a response from the war advocates, what do YOU think NOW?

And Colin...welll...i respect him a lot....and i think he is very decent....but he made a choice, not to step down, or put his foot down when he doubted the evidence....

In Britain, several people stepped down and kept their personal, and political integrity....he made a choice....tough noogies on him...

 

[13788]

mindseye: The AP is reporting something that many of us has suspected all along: The Iraqi government had no ties with the Al Qaeda network, according to both anonymous and non-anonymous intelligence sources.

"Before the war, Bush and members of his cabinet said Saddam was harboring top Al Qaeda operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam to the group responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was never more than sketchy at best."

 

[13788]

mindseye: And I'll smugly point out that three days into the war, some of us were questioning the accuracy of the Bush administration's info.

At the time, I had my ears boxed by some of you for my liberal peacemongering -- why couldn't I just shut up and love my country?

Prior to my raising this question, the Secretary of State stated, that Iraq "has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." (Feb. 5, 2003, in a statement to the U.N. Security Council)

Even after I raised this question, the Secretary of Defense insisted, "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. . . ." (March 30, 2003, press conference)

If and when these WMDs are found, I promise I'll eat my words. Until then, I'll continue to trust my sources and instincts.

 

[13788]

throb919: WMD = weapons of mass distraction

 

[13788]

BIGBOYDAVE: ITS so amazing A country is destroyed
American Crediability is lost
the UN is in A mess
European Unity is In trouble
African Nations Tetter on Chaos
Millions are Starving and Dying
All because of Bushes need to uponemanship on his Greed and Need to prove he is a powerfull World Leader
Not! He is Just Another Cesar and instead of Rome Burning this time Its The Entire Nation of America going down in Flames and draging the rest of the World along with it.
A sad reflection of The times we are now in Future History will mark this as a Dark spot in Human History A VERY DARK TIME

 

[jay_too]

mindseye..

impeachment? nah, i don't think so...i did not approve of the clinton impeachment. a rather shameful affair...just think if the congress and the presdient had been concerned with terrorism in 1998 - 2000 instead of oral sex, we might not have had 9/11.

besides look at whom we might end up with...cheney! probably, if anyone should fall on the sword to protect bush it should not be tenet but cheney. a few weeks ago, on the op-ed page of the ny times, a former ambassador (author of the piece) was sent last october by cheney to africa to determine if the uranium export license was valid. he came back with the information that everything was a hoax. the niger minister signing the export license had died 10 years before....and oh yeah, he was no longer export minister.

so the question for bush-cheney is not "when did you find out that the uranium sale was a fantasy?" but "why did you use erroneous information in the state of the union message?" for me, this is a question that transcends liberal-conservative petty politics. it appears that the bushies wanted a war and desired to justify the the action as a pre-emptive strike to prevent the development of nuclear weapons or wmd's.

if i remember correctly from my college course, only defensive wars (pre-emptive strikes under some conditons) are justified under the un charter. all other wars are termed agression....you know, like the german invasion of poland in 1939 so germany could have "living room." surely, we did not go to war for the glory of halliburton, bechtel, exxon and chevron...oh yeah, iraq has oil.

jay

 

[jonb]

Well, this is Cheney we're talking about. My Afrikaans isn't good enough to make a witty retort about the last time Cheney gave a damn about Africa, but let's just say he didn't see anything undemocratic about 10% of SA ruling over the other 90%.

 

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mindseye: [quote author=jay_too link=board=99;num=1058058510;start=0#9 date=07/15/03 at 20:43:26]besides look at whom we might end up with...cheney! [/quote]

Interesting you mention that -- a coalition of 30 retired intelligence officials have called for Cheney's resignation, largely for the reasons you just mentioned.

 

[jay_too]

mindseye..

good information!!

those brit journalists know how to lay it all out.

i am not sure that i agree with the recommendations of the retired intelligence agents, but i admire their courage.

i had forgotten about condileesa rice's remarks on the talk shows on sunday. she reassured the american people that the 16 words in the state of the union speech were technically correct. huh? how can a statement be technically correct when all those in the loop (intelligence community and senior intelligence agents) know it is factually incorrect. shame on you, condi.

jay

 

[13788]

bustyredhead: GWB lied. Suprise? Not really. I think Saddam is far smarter than many gave him credit for. Being able to stay in power as a tyrant in this day and age for two decades is no easy task. Chances are that he took to selling off his weapons in the years of transition from Clinton to Bush. I mean, Clinton played the situation spurisingly well, pinning Saddam down without making the French PM bitch (I wanna say Chretien, but that's the Canadian PM, right?), and otherwise keeping the Middle East tied down. Bush totally blew the diplomatic balance Clinton set up and, well, you see the results. I think a real war with Iraq was needed. You weren't ever going to get the UN involved in anything while France and Russia were in his account logs, so it had to happen eventually. It's only too bad that GWB is about as sensitive to international opinion as the Terminator is to pain. If he can turn around the debacle of civilian turnover, we can be on a road to Middle East peace in 15 years. If not, we could well be screwed for the next century.

In all, I only wish the GWB truly could have gone with his convictions, and told his PR lackies to take their Gallup polls and shove them. Going to war takes balls, but it takes more balls to be true to your beliefs. I'm most dissappointed in his failing there. I mean, it's clear to me when he's speaking from the heart vs. the teleprompter, and it seemed that the PR folks had finally corrupted hin to where he could speak teleprompter mumbo-jumbo from his heart. And that was the death of the only thing I found admirable about him.

Anyways, yeah, the government lied... a lot. Like that's some big suprise. Much like every other president, the fact that lies are so persistent ought to suggest that we believe to some extent that the ends justifies the means. Either we learn to accept that or we really stick to our guns on honesty. If you're not open with information, then you'll little better than gas-bombing-on-ones-own-people dictators.

- Nene (For President)

 

[jay_too]

nene..

you are probably right about the belief of most of the american people that the ends justify the means.

i do wonder what end the american people or the bushies thinks justifies the war in iraq. could it be to insure a supply of oil for the u.s. and europe for the next 100 years or the dream of empire and the pax americana or to shore up public perception of the president knowing something about foreign policy [oh yeah, there is an election in 2004]?

yeah, i am a little distrustful of the intelligence [ya know, i.q.] of the inner circle and their credibility. i think that any rational technical person could have concluded by late april or early may that there was no credible nuclear weapons program in iraq. why? the iraqi infastructure for electricity generation and distribution was a rube goldberg patchwork. both methods to separate the isotopes of uranium (using centifuges and gaseous diffusion) require massive amounts of dependable electricity. one might expect dedicated electrical generation stations to support either method of separation. oh yeah, they could have checked the invoices of equipment (under the oil for food program) to see if there were electrical generators had been recieved by iraq since 1991. no generators recieved? then it is not likely that a new program/site was being constructed.

still not convinced and want an on the ground inspection? well, then teams should look for massive structures with sophisticated ventilation systems which are located near generating stations. find none ans still want to look? well, inspectors should trace the major distribution systems for the generating stations. find nothing? then, i think you have a six sigma confidence that iraq

 

[jay_too]

nene..

you are probably right about the belief of most of the american people that the ends justify the means.

i do wonder what end the american people or the bushies think justifies the war in iraq. could it be to insure a supply of oil for the u.s. and europe for the next 100 years or the dream of empire and the pax americana or to shore up public perception of the president knowing something about foreign policy [oh yeah, there is an election in 2004]?

yeah, i am a little distrustful of the intelligence [ya know, i.q.] of the inner circle and their credibility. i think that any rational technical person could have concluded by late april or early may that there was no credible nuclear weapons program in iraq. why? the iraqi infastructure for electricity generation and distribution was a rube goldberg patchwork. both methods to separate the isotopes of uranium (using centifuges and gaseous diffusion) require massive amounts of dependable electricity. one might expect dedicated electrical generation stations to support either method of separation. oh yeah, they could have checked the invoices of equipment (under the oil for food program) to see if there were electrical generators had been recieved by iraq since 1991. no generators recieved? then it is not likely that a new program/site was being constructed.

still not convinced and want an on the ground inspection? well, then teams should look for massive structures with sophisticated ventilation systems which are located near generating stations. find none and still want to look? well, inspectors should trace the major distribution systems for the generating stations. find nothing? then, i think you have a six sigma confidence that iraq is not and has not separated u-235.

but no...to keep the fiction alive, during and after the war, we saw on tv that soldiers were investigating facilities that looked pretty basic....like concrete warehouses and not, sophisticated, overly engineered facilities. i am sure they were scared s------ and did their job well, but it was either a made for tv fictional news squib or the bushies did not know what they were doing....or maybe both.

so far the bushies have found NO nuclear programs, NO chemical or biological weapons (or their delivery systems), and all missiles found have met the criteria of being defensive (read not able to reach israel). we did find bad art in the palaces.....but hell, we have plenty of that here.

jay

 

[jay_too]

the washington post is reporting:

IRAQ COULD decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists, President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the presidents speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States.

yeah, yeah i know it is just another little bushie lie. but why? why did he want a war with a country half way around the world? even my most cynical side cannot believe that the war is over oil for america in the 21st century. must be the photo ops with the troops, right? karl rove, have you no shame?

i think it is time that the bushies open their kimonas and show all. this is not about consentual sex but lives of allied and iraqi forces...oh yeah, and a bunch of iraqi civilians.

unless we begin to act responsibly in iraq and provide basic services, the condition of the people will deteriorate. unfortunately, postwar planning did not have the glamour or resources of the military planners. but this is where the battle for iraq will be won....assuming we do not become a long-term occupying power.

the blogger salam pax (pro-american iraqi) suggests that the motto of the iraqi revolution is "electricity, water, security." these are the things that occupy their minds today.

jay

 

[13788]

bustyredhead: My boss reads this magazine, "International Affairs". I read the current copy this weekend. It's heady stuff.

Anyways, why did GWB want to go to war? There are several reasons, honestly.

Oil... but not like you'd think. Sure, Cheney might want to get some financial benefit over the fields. Then again, wasn't Saddam guaranteeing development rights to France and Russia? No wonder they didn't want Iraq in a suicidal war. lol The best thing to maintain the current stability of the OPEC-enforced oil pricing is to make sure that Saddam couldn't sell Iraq's black gold off to some desperately-capital-deprived Russian firm that would try to undersell OPEC, and lead to a price-gouging fest that would lead to the collapse of the oil industry. Yeah. Even IF GWB was going to set up Bushaco in Basra, at least I have an iota of faith that he might understand the need to maintain the current price balances of Middle East oil.

Family... his father should have done the job in '91, honestly. However, one of the potential downsides of working with the UN is that the UN is very uneasy when it comes to military overthrow of sovereign leaders. It would have been nice to get the UN to have commited to its resolutions, but the lessons learned by his father probably resolved GWB to take this fight to its end with or without the UN's assistance.

Publicity... unfortunately, I think that the benevolent nature of GWB's heart has been corrupted by his staff and White House pollsters. I think that, had this war been done in 2001 or early 2002, he might have been more honest as to his motives, and stressed the WMD threat less. However, it seems that the running of this operation was done in a way as to maximize the positive effect on his rating. However, many logistical flaws are causing this to backfire hard. Perhaps it's a deserved lesson.

Finding weapons... okay, we must grossly underestimate Saddam's intelligence when we expect to find anything, after giving him four years to hide or sell off his goodies. He had them and used them before. The fact that we can't find any now doesn't change that. It's an insult to the Iraqis gassed by Saddam to suggest that the current lack of evidence somehow acquits him at all. Sure, GWB blew this out of proportion. I wish he didn't, but that kind of gutsy move didn't sit well with the pollsters, I'm sure.

The nuclear threat... thank Yaoweh for Israel. Had they not shot down the reactor France had provided for Iraq, we might have found a nuclear warhead, alright... falling on the troops outside of Baghdad. Despite the efforts of several UN member states, some of which with veto power, the US and Israel pinned the wings of nuclear development down. And given the huge expenditures on presidential palaces, assuming that Saddam couldn't hide a fairly signifigant power plant for his own uses is not the safest bet out there.

In all, the war was needed, though I would have bet on the guerilla war we're caught in now as being Saddam's goal. I think there are many conflicts out there we need to manage sooner rather than later, and we need to do a better job of it, because the trend seems to have been that the US puts new problems in to replace the old ones.

- Nene (Poly-Sci Rant Mode)

 

[Pecker]

Yes, it was needed. And it isn't over with Iraq.

We're in a new defense mode - fighting a new kind of war - a war on terrorism and terror. It's too bad that so much time has to be spent on public relations and the feeding frenzy of those who'd rather just put their heads in the sand and who hope it'll just be like it used to be.

We've got a man now who's willing to go it alone if necessary, who feels the urgency, who feels the loneliness of leadership. The man has balls.

God help us if the next president is more interested in public (i.e. international) acceptance than leadership.

Diversions, finger-pointing, blaming, attributing ridiculous motives and just plain politics must not stop the United States from saving the world from itself. We've done it before, just not on this scale.

If not we, then who?

 

[jay_too]

pecker..

a bit of serendipity, i found a listing of dubya's accomplishments...huh?..on my desk when i got in this morning (yeah, i work for a very republican company)...the token and "out" independent. among the accomplishments is the claim that

dubya "spent more money on polls and focus groups than any presidnet in history."

i remember reading this in newsweek (i think) earlier this year about the time his information-in-chief went back to texas.

today's new york times op ed page has a piece by paul krugman, "Who's Unpatriotic Now?" i think the article should be read in its entirety, but here are the last paragaraphs:

But instead of explaining what happened to the Al Qaeda link and the nuclear program, in the last few days a series of hawkish pundits have accused those who ask such questions of aiding the enemy. Here's Frank Gaffney Jr. in The National Post: "Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power plays. . . . Signs of declining popular appreciation of the legitimacy and necessity of the efforts of America's armed forces will erode their morale. Similarly, the enemy will be encouraged."

Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden — who really did attack America — and Kim Jong Il — who really is building nukes.

And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative.

Think about that: if their characterization of Mr. Wilson's wife is true (he refuses to confirm or deny it), Bush administration officials have exposed the identity of a covert operative. That happens to be a criminal act; it's also definitely unpatriotic.

So why would they do such a thing? Partly, perhaps, to punish Mr. Wilson, but also to send a message.

And that should alarm us. We've just seen how politicized, cooked intelligence can damage our national interest. Yet the Wilson affair suggests that the administration intends to continue pressuring analysts to tell it what it wants to hear."

i think you must see the administration making tough decisions with resolve....i see on the other hand, questionable decisions made by the clueless. but this is a democratic republic where both points of view deserve articulation.

jay