Posted on 10/23/2014 6:31:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Contrary to the expectations of all 16 of our U.S. intelligence agencies, the "weapons hunters" sent to Iraq by President George W. Bush found no "stockpiles" of WMD.
Never mind that there was a 15-month run-up to the war, during which time Saddam was not combing his moustache. A former Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who met with members of Congress, has long claimed Saddam Hussein moved tons of WMD by land and air into Syria during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, has also said publicly that he, too, believes the WMD were there. But Bush's two weapons hunters found no stockpiles.
President George W. Bush looked like a fool.
Bush-hating critics chanted, "Bush lied, people died." About the prewar intelligence, Sen. Ted Kennedy said, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Critics said the lives of over 4,000 troops were wasted, in addition to the money supposedly squandered prosecuting the Iraq War.
Now comes the 10,000-word, eight-part story in The New York Times. The front-page story, called "The Secret Casualties Of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons," says WMD were in Iraq: "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."
Moreover, the soldiers were told to keep quiet about the WMD:
"Troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. ?'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,' said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.
"Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of 'wounds that never happened' from 'that stuff that didn't exist.' The public, he said, was misled for a decade. 'I love it when I hear, 'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq,' he said. 'There were plenty.'"
This is not new news to those who get news from publications other than the Times. Following a 2010 WikiLeaks leak, Wired magazine wrote: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."
But, rest assured, the Times emphatically insists, the discovered WMD "did not support the government's invasion rationale." It doesn't? Well, you see, according to the Times, Bush still misled Americans because the discovered WMD were "old" and "degraded," not part of an "active" weapons program. "Active?"
But only days before the bombshell Times piece, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow restated why she felt Bush "lied." Not once during her three-minute send-up about Bush "lies" and "wrong" intel, did Maddow ever use the word "active," let alone the term "active weapons program":
"There still exists -- on the right -- a sort of dead-ender fringe who believe that actually Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction. He must have. George Bush couldn't have been wrong about that. I say it's a dead-ender fringe because even ... George W. Bush had to admit he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did not have them. ...
"We are four weeks out from the elections this year. It is 10 years today since our own government officially admitted the whole WMDs thing about Iraq was a lie. It's not like an accusation that it was a lie. It's a lie. We've admitted it was a lie."
Maddow then handed the floor to colleague Lawrence O'Donnell, who promptly piled on. But again O'Donnell, like Maddow, said nothing about "active": "Rachel, I wish this wasn't true, but I do have a prediction for you -- and that is that you have not done your last segment about a Republican who believes that there were (starts laughing) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Now we know. WMD were, in fact, in Iraq.
The New York Times, Democrats and the doofi at MSNBC should apologize to President George W. Bush, an honorable man who attempted to do the right thing, only to be savaged by his critics. Fox's Charles Krauthammer has a term for this inability to acknowledge a scintilla of decency in our 43rd president -- "Bush Derangement Syndrome."
It is more toxic than Ebola.
My a$$. If GW were so honorable he wouldn't be sitting on the sidelines, content in his contempt for Americans, stating succinctly that "I'm retired..." and letting the Puppet and his sycophants run roughshod over the Constitution and those that still believe in it...
And ALL THOSE LIES go unpunished, RATs and media freely lie and deceive Americans and World!
Any justice left? People should hang for this type of deception and crimes!
Time to cleanup RAT infested media and wishy-washy “republicans”.
Vote the bastRATs out into oblivion!
Just found an article from late 2003 and at that time Saddam’s old intel guy al Douri, Zarqawis group and Ansar al Islam were becoming a big problem and we were starting to capture foreign fighters, so Gen. Abizaid put in a request for more counterterrorism people to help hunt down these old regime Baathists. The admin decided to divert the ISG from focusing on finding WMD to focusing on hunting these guys and their networks down.
As soon as we did this, whadaya know, the Dems started their no wmd mantra.
AGREED.
Bush was a willing patsy.
Not to mention, look at the BORDER today.
Whose fault is that?
BUSH BUSH BUSH!
We KNOW a Dem would NEVER close the border - but Patsy Bush SHOULD COULD (WOULD???) have closed the border.
He reminds me of a stale spittoon.
So you think he should be like Carter and shoot off his mouth every chance he gets? What good would it do with the press denigrating him at every turn? Who would listen? Sarah Palin speaks out and what does the press do to her? Van Jones admitted that Dems were/are afraid of Palin and that's why the press convinced the public that she's stupid. Remember the press also labeled Bush stupid.
So tell me, what good would it do for Bush to scream from the rooftops what Obama is doing?
Bush Signs U.S.- Mexico Border Fence Bill - October 26, 2006
"Unfortunately, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders for decades, and therefore, illegal immigration has been on the rise. We have a responsibility to address these challenges, we have a responsibility to enforce our laws, we have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility seriously," Bush said.
Democrats Target Border Fence 2/16/2009
“Though there are places where a fence is the most feasible option, we strongly believe the Bush administration’s approach of constructing a fence along much of the Southwest Border was ill-conceived as it was void of any meaningful input from the local communities or the Border Patrol Sector Chiefs who are most familiar with the challenges of securing our border,” eight Democratic lawmakers wrote Mr. Obama last week.
Exactly. Adults have always known what's been going on even while half of America's voters decided to live in Lalaland. Educating those who are ignorant by choice is not a matter of info.
Exactly right.
This is why debating or engaging the left is a waste of time. They believed a fantastic lie that no WMD were present in Iraq. Even after the UN spent close to 10 years destroying WMD stockpiles. Now that they know it was all a lie and WMD were present. Now that they know that GWB had left scores of US troops to guard the dragons eggs, they won’t even admit that Obama’s removal of those troops has caused the WMD to be transferred to the hands of terrorists. The same terrorists who just shot up Quebec.
That bogus adventure was always sold on the basis of nukes, not tactical chemical artillery shells past their expiration date.
Again: What good would it do with the press denigrating him at every turn? Who would listen? Sarah Palin speaks out and what does the press do to her? Van Jones admitted that Dems were/are afraid of Palin and that's why the press convinced the public that she's stupid. Remember the press also labeled Bush stupid.
So tell me, what good would it do for Bush to scream from the rooftops what Obama is doing?
So who had the power to make this disappear at a time when Bush's presidency hung by a thread on this very issue?
I'll repeat what I occasionally repeat here because it has otherwise gone down the memory hole. A few people still remember.
Thanks to the embedded reporters, we saw during the invasion a chemical plant whose plant manager was an Iraqi Army general. The plant was not on the UN inspectors' list, meaning they did not know about it. It was secured by guard towers and Iraqi army infantry. And it produced nerve agent.
But a few days after its discovery, the newsies reported back that, no, it wasn't nerve agent at all, it was agricultural pesticide.
At least 3 or 4 times after that, the soldiers would capture Iraqi army ammo dumps and find barrels of nerve agent. And each and every time after a couple of days, they would announce that, no, it was agricultural pesticide. At an army ammo dump. At one dump the reporters got sick from exposure.
So, yes, they found WMD and then re-defined it out of existence. Even then, I asked myself, who had that power? They nearly impeached Bush over that issue, and yet they made it disappear.
I am not beholden to engage you in defense of my statement. Certainly not in response to an argumentative & ridiculous presumption on your part with that question.
Neither would it serve any purpose other than gratifying whatever irrational position many hold by being emotionally-attached to a man content to watch from the sidelines. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that I write will change that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy7tFjC2mKU
Should you choose to flame me for my response, please delay your flaming until the morning.
Btw, Bush did plenty that was wrong, Dubai ports deal, Harriet Miers and amnesty to name a few.
Attacking him because he doesn't speak out when no one will listen anyway is just stupid.
Have a nice day.
I didn’t attack him. I cited his own words and actions and provided source when challenged.
Putting words in another’s mouth, metaphorically, is argumentative.
‘Have a nice day’ is metaphorical as well; I’ll leave that alone today...
fini
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