TRUMP'S POLITICAL SUICIDE !
Posted on 02/15/2016 1:47:17 AM PST by 11th_VA
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a new book said he blames himself for not trusting his instinct and making what proved to be false assertions to the United Nations about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Bloomberg reported earlier this month (see GSN, Feb. 17, 2011).
Powell's high-profile February 2003 prewar presentation to the U.N. Security Council included now-discredited claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had movable biological weapons facilities and was involved in a "sinister nexus" with al-Qaeda.
No evidence of active WMD production facilities or usable stockpiles have been found in Iraq following the U.S.-led March 2003 invasion.
"A failure will always be attached to me and my U.N. presentation," Powell writes in "It Worked For Me," a book that provides leadership advice. "I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me."
In his recently published book, Powell asserts "there would have been no war" in Iraq had then-President George W. Bush and his councilors understood that Hussein did not possess any functioning unconventional weapons. However, he lauded the fact that under Bush "we got rid of the horrific Hussein" government and toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The retired general also faulted U.S. intelligence officers for lacking the "courage" to alert him that he was receiving bad data on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction ahead of his U.N. appearance.
"Why did no one stand up and speak out during the intense hours we worked on the speech?" the ex-secretary said. "Some of these same analysts later wrote books claiming they were shocked that I have relied on such deeply flawed evidence."
Powell said he relied on the CIA to help develop his U.N. presentation but that he was not aware at the time that "much of the evidence was wrong" (Capaccio/Tiron, Bloomberg, May 4).
McCain wasn’t much help, either.
He’s still alive? Who knew?
The inevitable concession for the necessity of monetary gain. An absence of character.
Powell screwed up Gulf War l by not finishing the job. That is another day.
Not to mention the 500 Russian trucks carrying w m d out of Iraq while USAF held fire and effectively protected same.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33082-2004May17.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4997808/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/bomb-said-holddeadly-sarin-gas-explodes-iraq/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2004/05/17/sarin-mustard-gas-discovered-separately-in-iraq.html
They were there.
This is tightly parsed. We are suddenly not considering whether stockpiles were found - they certainly were - but whether those were "usable". That's sort of a high bar for intelligence to reach, the penalty for being wrong being severe.
Here's the real situation: Saddam had, produced, and used (see Halabja) chemical weapons in the past. He was obliged by the settlement of Gulf War I to demonstrate that he had deactivated the programs and destroyed the weapons. He did not do so; in fact, he played a little game of hide and go seek with the inspectors. Anyone wishing to challenge any of these recitations is welcome to.
It was not unreasonable for anyone watching this absurd dance to conclude that Saddam was hiding something he was obligated to reveal. To decide not to act on this, trusting a known liar that his programs really were inactive despite all the obvious signs, is to trust the untrustworthy. It appears in hindsight that Saddam had few, or no, active programs despite his pretense. It's a little much to demand that Bush should have had perfect knowledge of this.
Those we’re old munitions ... There were no new munitions being manufactured ... Despite what Hannity says ...
Like clockwork Powell shows up every 4 years during a national election to: a) try and inflict as much damage on Republicans especially the nominee as possible and, b) plead innocence and absolve himself of any historical culpability whatsoever.
Powell wants us to believe he was the Chauncey Gardener general. In other words, he seems to make the case that history shouldn’t hold him accountable for anything because he was just an affirmative action hire and didn’t do nuffin.
One cannot claim both that they did not exist AND they were old.
Either they existed or they didn’t.
And didn’t you read “sarin ied”?
Did it exist or not?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/14/isis-chemical-weapons-_n_5987106.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/saddam-era-chemical-weapons-now-under-isis-control-reports-1705144
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/world/isis-seizes-chemical-weapons-depot-baghdad-sarin-gas-rockets-article-1.1859934
But none of it exists.
The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.
The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Note that despite the firestorm of slander the Bush administration endured over its “lies†on WMD, the president never acted to declassify the information on the CIA buyback program, and as a result today it is an article of faith on the left that he lied us into war.
At the time of the invasion of Iraq, there was no way to know that:
These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion,
But:
they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets.
American Thinker reported on the WMD evidence found in Iraq 11 years ago.
The CIA’s program appears to have put at risk soldiers who were not warned of the risks they faced in handling these potent weapons:
Not long after Operation Avarice had secured its 400th rocket, in 2006, American troops were exposed several times to other chemical weapons. Many of these veterans said that they had not been warned by their units about the risks posed by the chemical weapons and that their medical care and follow-up were substandard, in part because military doctors seemed unaware that chemical munitions remained in Iraq.
In some cases, victims of exposure said, officers forbade them to discuss what had occurred. The Pentagon now says hundreds of other veterans reported on health-screening forms that they believed they too had been exposed during the war.
Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the belated acknowledgment of a chemical-rocket purchases, as well as the potentially worrisome laboratory analysis of the related sarin samples, raised questions about the military’s commitment to the well-being of those it sent to war.
We have been fed a line of bull over Saddam and WMDs.
President Bush “lied†about Iraq’s WMDs – thus goes the article of faith among liberals, endlessly repeated by the likes of Ron Fournier and Jon Stewart as a kind of progressive catechism. Except that it is a libel, as even the New York Times indirectly acknowledges today.
C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt write:
The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.
The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Note that despite the firestorm of slander the Bush administration endured over its “lies†on WMD, the president never acted to declassify the information on the CIA buyback program, and as a result today it is an article of faith on the left that he lied us into war.
At the time of the invasion of Iraq, there was no way to know that:
These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion,
But:
they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets.
American Thinker reported on the WMD evidence found in Iraq 11 years ago.
The CIA’s program appears to have put at risk soldiers who were not warned of the risks they faced in handling these potent weapons:
Not long after Operation Avarice had secured its 400th rocket, in 2006, American troops were exposed several times to other chemical weapons. Many of these veterans said that they had not been warned by their units about the risks posed by the chemical weapons and that their medical care and follow-up were substandard, in part because military doctors seemed unaware that chemical munitions remained in Iraq.
In some cases, victims of exposure said, officers forbade them to discuss what had occurred. The Pentagon now says hundreds of other veterans reported on health-screening forms that they believed they too had been exposed during the war.
Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the belated acknowledgment of a chemical-rocket purchases, as well as the potentially worrisome laboratory analysis of the related sarin samples, raised questions about the military’s commitment to the well-being of those it sent to war.
We have been fed a line of bull over Saddam and WMDs.
"Romanian intelligence defector Ion Mihai Pacepa alleged that an operation for the removal of chemical weapons was prepared by the Soviet Union for Libya, and that he was told over thirty years ago by Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Yevgeny Primakov, about the existence of a similar plan for Iraq.
It is 'perfectly obvious', wrote Pacepa, that the Russian GRU agency helped Saddam Hussein to destroy, hide, or transfer his chemical weapons prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. 'After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place.'[13]
John Loftus, director of The Intelligence Summit, said in the November 16, 2007 issue of FrontPage Magazine that many documents from Iraq point to WMD being transferred to other countries such as Syria: 'As stated in more detail in my full report, the British, Ukrainian and American secret services all believed that the Russians had organized a last minute evacuation of CW [chemical] and BW [biological] stockpiles from Baghdad to Syria.'
His researchers allegedly found a document ordering the concealment of nuclear weapons equipment in storage facilities under the Euphrates River a few weeks before the invasion.[14]"
....”Not only is Trump ignorant of the thousands of chemical weapons found in Iraq, he’s spouting talking points you likely won’t even hear from Hillary Clinton. But he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.........
...Even before Saturday’s debate, [Trump had] already lost any pretense of being a revolutionary. Aside from his border fence and his temporary ban on Muslim immigration, his primary policy prescription consisted of little more than “Put me in charge, and I’ll make things right.” That’s the oldest piece of political pie-in-the-sky there is, and it doesn’t become revolutionary simply because it’s accompanied by a barrage of personal insults and a shock-and-awe media presence.
But after Saturday’s debate, it’s clear there’s a Democrat in the GOP field. Trump doesn’t threaten the Republican establishment because he’s too conservative or too populist. He threatens the Republican establishment because he belongs in the other party. He’s hid it well until now. But as his family Bible says - in the same Testament as Two Corinthians - “There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.”
Donald Trump has been revealed. The ball is in your court, South Carolina. Will the state that prides itself on picking the Republican nominee select the GOP’s first Democrat?”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431320/donald-trump-conventional-democrat
who was President when that happened?.. hey Yeb that was your brother
who was President when all those trucks were heading out and they did nothing?
was it Yeb’s brother?
Jack Straw, UK Foreign Secretary (equivalent of SecState) went along with Powell in 2003. However, in private, before the big UN dog and pony show, he looked at the intelligence and exclaimed “this is sh!t, I can’t use this”. Powell knew too and did it anyway.
This doesn’t make Trump right in what he did the other day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
