'Ministers saw categoric WMD evidence'

For God's sake, show it to the world so the
Rats will leave Bush alone about it.

The question to Ministers is, What did they see and When did they see it. Were the leaders all fed the same common data? The Niger incident stands out for public investigation - Who, what, when, where, why and how. Right now Blair and Bush are holding the bag.

It will be terrible if all the Rats, media, experts etc. have to eat crow when the final report comes out if it includes all the hard evidence.

It is hard to get face recognition when it is covered with egg.

For God's sake, show it to the world so the Rats will leave Bush alone about it.

Hey, I've got an idea...just so that the 'Rats are convinced, let's let 'em test the substances themselves. You know..so they'll believe us.

It will be terrible if all the Rats, media, experts etc. have to eat crow when the final report comes out if it includes all the hard evidence.

Hypothetically, let's say you are the Pres, and you do know where the stuff is buried. However, the dems (in a election year) are salivating all over themselves with the notion there is nothing hidden. They are wrapping that rope around their own necks. When would be the best time to show the stuff. Now? or perhaps later after they have that knot firmly placed on the noose?

I wonder if it was the Iranians or the Kurds who provided the evidence, in the form of thousands of dead and maimed victims of WMDs.

That whole WMD question should not be hyped so much any longer. We can bring it up again once WMD have been found. Until then it is just bad news they will always turn against us.
I already mentioned it in another thread, I think we should work on our marketing.
One thing we should not forget is that the case is watched by the whole world. If we do not manage to improve they will turn everything against us. They cannot beat us with their military. But they can radicalize the masses, produce more terrorists.
Although Iraq was freed from Saddam, a terrible despot, people all over the planet were protesting against the US. Imagine you gave ice-cream to everyone and their reaction was: "No thanks, you are only trying to poison us." If that happens, as a businessman, I would say something has gone wrong with your marketing.
I do a lot of my trading business in Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, and Germany. If you do good business people are still nice. But you should not discuss this war with anyone outside the US, some get furious, some just mention one point after the other why the war was evil and Bush a mean guy. Fortunately they have no right to vote here. But we should keep in mind that it is easier to live with weak allies than on your own.
One thing: I stopped trading with Indonesia when the war started. They have become too aggressive. Colleagues tell me similar stories from Malaysia, not to mention Arab countries.

Would someone please explain the reason for the apoplectic interest is this issue?

Is it because "where are the WMD?" is the Bush bashing topic of the moment of the DemocRATS like we've seen in the past led by T. Dashle?

Or is it a basic governance issue that really needs to be examined? The NPR had on some individual who was the leader of some think tank who claimed to be interested in an unpartisan investigation (ya, right). It would seem that there is no other topic that is "newsworthy".

Is there a real underlying issue here?

"But Mr Hain said people should wait for the findings of the Iraq survey group. "I saw evidence that was categoric on Saddam possessing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction," he said. "

It would be a big help if CIA managed to break Dr. Germ's determined silence right about now.

Is there a real underlying issue here?

The 'Rats and liberal vanguardists would like the issue to be, "see, we were right about Bush all along......you should believe everything we tell you, because we're always right and we never lie!"

[Belated barf alert]

Or if we invaded Syria and dug out those WMD hidden in the Bakaa Valley, where Syria put Saddam's WMD -- or at least part of them.

Frankly, at this point, now that Saddam is captured, I really don't know why they don't bring this evidence forward and rub the noses of the anti-Bush and anti-Blair elements into it.

That would just about take the wind out of the sails of the Democrats.

Yes, I saw that story, but I'm not sure whether we should believe it.

It could be that someone is attempting to bait us. That story will have to be very carefully evaluated. If it turns out to be true, well, as for Iraq, so for Syria, if they try to keep them hidden.

Or maybe just for hiding them in the first place, and because they're behind the mess in the Bekaa Valley, and because we have some old scores to settle in a big way there in Lebanon. And maybe because we just don't like them.

I think we should work on our marketing.

I think you're absolutely right, and if I had to say that there was any big problem with the Bush presidency, it would be lousy marketing.

Many of his domestic proposals, even though they are being screamed about on the right (well, with the aid of an eager group of Dem enablers) are perfectly reasonable. But they've been badly marketed, or not marketed at all, and instead are sprung on people.

I attribute part of this to the fact that Bill Clinton needed no marketing because the press was busy sucking his toes, doted on him and did his marketing for him, even in inexcusable things, such as his individually launched Bosnian adventure.

Obviously, Bush & Co. are not getting the benefit of free press hacks.

But somebody somewhere should go out and buy some ASAP.

Would someone please explain the reason for the apoplectic interest is this issue? Is there a real underlying issue here?

There is a major psychological issue here with us Americans.

We were fooled before and it looks like we might be facing the same disappointment again. You sense it in your subconscious about being fooled. The Iv'e been there before feeling. I'll refresh your memory of the earlier disappointment.

Geraldo hosted The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault. After about 110 minutes of padding, historical vignettes, rag time music, and Geraldo shooting up a hotel wall with a Tommy Gun, the vault was finally opened.

In it was found dirt and an old whisky bottle. The end.

I think Kay pretty much outlined much of the same thing about the existence of programs and the willing pursuit of WMD. There just wasn't a discovery of any 'stockpiles.'

Our media is, of course, quite selective in what it reported and emphasized from Kay's presentation to Congress on this matter. Getting the truth to the people on the danger posed by Saddam isn't what matters to them, it's harming Bush. National security is secondary.

You need a sarcasm tag on that.

This whole exercise is beyond pointless. We already know how unreliable the CIA is (quite so) and we know why: We've gutted human intel since the 1970s, and liberals like John Kerry and Clinton state dept appointee weenies have influenced our foreign policy apparatus to be incapable of realism in our estimates and approach; even today, the CIA is mainly trying to undermine rather than support the Iraq effort in a massive CYA campaign.

While we fret our brows over the CIA overestimating WMD capabilities, we ignore the more serious problem of our all-too-common underestimations: Libya 2003; Iran 2003; North Korea's scamming the U.S. since 1994 with nuclear programs that broke pledges they made; and Iraq's nuclear capabilities in 1991 and their bioweapons such as anthrax in 1995, which were hidden from the UN for 4 years of inspections.

What the investigation will find, I suspect beyond the insitutional flaws of the CIA, is that a country that has programs and projects in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and which at points in time had stockpiles of such weapons - anthrax, VX, sarin, etc., and which engages on an ONGOING basis to continue programs (which Kay has proved), would be reasonably expected to have such stockpiles. Reasonable inferences were drawn. It's like finding a burglar's lair; you'd expect to find not just the plans to burgle homes, and the projects and tools, but some of the loot. No loot was found. Was it never there? Nope. Still hidden? Possibly, but Kay plausibly makes the case that more likely materials were secretly destroyed to maintain a position of "strategic ambiguity" where Iraq could get away from sanctions but still threaten neighbors and internal groups (Kurds) with the possibility of the weapons.

So the unreliability of intel is not really the issue at all. It was the deliberate campaign of Saddam to play 'poker' with the UN and the West. He didnt count on Bush.

David Kay if nothing else has made clear that Iraq was in clear and multiple violations of 1441, in missile and bioweapons development and in other areas. He makes clear that the invasion was not only justified but was the only way they would have gotten to the truth; during inspections, Iraqi scientists continue to withhold what they knew from inspectors. Inspections didnt work. Invasion and liberation did work.

So although the anti-war crowd will want to use to undermine Bush and Blair credibility to undermine support for the war, they will ignore the fact that most of what both said was reiterating UNSCOM estimates and intelligence conclusion, and enough of what was claimed WAS CORRECT to justify the war. Finding only WMD programs and no stockpiles bolters the "Iraq was not a threat" crowd, if you ignore Saddam's *pursuit* of WMDs, his programs, his support for terrorists like Ansar Al Islam/Abu Nidal/, his brutal repression, his venomous anti-americanism, the need for a state of semi-war with the no-fly zones that required US troops in S.A. which enraged the Bin Ladens and which created the 'strategic configuration' that lead to terrorism against us.

So this result, while surprising, CONFIRMS that we did the right thing. We have no doubt now of these points: Saddam WANTED WMDs and he would have gotten them post-sanctions; he had links to Al Qaeda deeper than we knew about prior to the war; and Al Qaeda was wanting access to WMDs and was trained in such matters by Iraqi intelligence.

And we also know who the real Weapon of Mass Destruction was - Saddam Hussein himself.

"The day after the liberation, my aunt put out a black banner--an Arab mourning ritual--with the names of all her relatives who had been murdered by the regime on it. And she looked down her street, and there were black banners on almost every house. On some houses it looks like a long shopping list. She said to her neighbour, 'You too?' Under Saddam it was a crime
to mourn people killed by the regime--it made you seem suspicious too. Everyone was suffering terribly, but they were suffering alone. They just didn't know that everyone else was hating it too."
-- Yasser Alaskary, co-founder of Iraqi Prospect Organisation, an Iraqi freedom group, The Independent (London), September 18, 2003

US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD

Blair comes under pressure as Americans admit it was widely known that Saddam had no chemical arsenal

Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Harris

Sunday February 1, 2004

The Observer

Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt.

Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The new revelation came as White House sources indicated that President George Bush was considering establishing an investigation into the intelligence, despite rejecting an inquiry the previous day.

The disclosure that US military survey teams sent to visit suspected sites of WMD, and intelligence interviews with Iraqi scientists and officials, had concluded so quickly that no major weapons or facilities would be found is certain to produce serious new embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.

According to the time-line provided by the US sources, it would mean that Number 10 would have been aware of the US doubts that weapons would be found before the outbreak of the feud between Number 10 and Andrew Gilligan, and before the exposure of Dr David Kelly as Gilligan's source for his claims that the September dossier had been 'sexed up' to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

It would suggest too that some officials who defended the 24 September dossier in evidence before the Hutton inquiry did so in the knowledge that the pre-war intelligence was probably wrong. Indeed, comments from a senior Washington official first casting serious doubt on the existence of WMD were put to Downing Street by The Observer - and rejected - as early as 3 May.

Among those interviewed by The Observer was a very senior US intelligence official serving during the war against Iraq with an intimate knowledge of the search for Iraq's WMD.

'We had enough evidence at the beginning of May to start asking, "where did we go wrong?",' he said last week. 'We had already made the judgment that something very wrong had happened [in May] and our confidence was shaken to its foundations.'

The source, a career intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, was also scathing about the massive scale of the failure of intelligence over Iraq both in the US and among its foreign allies - alleging that the intelligence community had effectively suppressed dissenting views and intelligence.

The claim is confirmed by other sources, as well as figures like David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector with close contacts in both the world of weapons inspection and intelligence.

'It was known in May,' Albright said last week, 'that no one was going to find large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The only people who did not know that fact was the public.'

The new disclosure follows the claims last week by Dr David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, a hawk who believed Iraq retained prohibited weapons, that he now believed that the alleged stockpiles 'had never existed'.

It also comes as the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have been hearing evidence on why no weapons have been found, prepare to publish their reports this month.

Although it is expected that they will conclude that there was no political interference in the intelligence process, as some critics have alleged, the reports are expected to be damning about the quality of the intelligence that led to war.

The revelation is likely to lead to increased pressure both in Britain and the United States for an inquiry into the intelligence marshalled in favour of war.

In recent weeks Bush has come under concerted pressure over the issue, with Democratic presidential candidates accusing both him and Vice-President Dick Cheney of manipulating pre-war intelligence to make the case for invasion.

White House sources said that President Bush is considering the formation of an independent panel to investigate pre-war intelligence on Iraq that he used to justify going to war.

Aides are discussing it with congressional officials, sources familiar with the discussions said last night.

Bush had rejected an independent investigation amid White House fears of a political witch-hunt by Democrats hoping to unseat him in elections this year, but began in recent days to reconsider the position.

'I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts,' Bush told reporters on Friday.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a range of options for such a panel was being explored and that an agreement was hoped for soon.

The White House would not comment.

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain broke party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how US intelligence got it wrong, given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction.