Iraqi exile group fed news media false information

Miami Herald/Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | 3/15/2004 | JONATHAN S. LANDAY and TISH WELLS

[JohnGalt]

Whoever let this scoundrel Chalabi infect the institutions of our fair republic must be held accountable.

[MoralSense]

Caution, here. This story has all the earmarks of a disgruntled State Dept/CIA plant -- in other words, it comes from elements in those departments that have opposed modernization of the military and other Bush administration policies. And if you've bought the notion of Chalabi as a "scoundrel," you've bought that point of view.

[JohnGalt]

Another Chalabi Republican...

[JohnGalt]

*ping*

[freeperfromnj]

I think Blix may be the source of this story. He's been saying this all over the airwaves as he promotes his new book.

[Paradox]

I dont doubt that some of this stuff happened. Hey, they were eager to get rid of Saddam. Its too bad that Saddam was bad enough to want to get rid of without having to resort to this sort of thing. It taints things a bit. Its like a bogus drug charge against Jeffrey Dahmer.

[JohnGalt]

Worse, the skeptical patriot must inquire as to what kind of people believed that their agenda was so important that they had to use manipulation via this Chalabi character in order to secure political support for the war. Those are not the actions of patriots.

Bush has to deal with this troubling element within his administration.

[LibFreeUSA]

So what! Who cares!

This intelligence crap is a BIG SO WHAT - except for those who want to discredit the effort to remove this enemy.

We have removed one less enemy that we should have removed 10 years earlier.

[RandallFlagg]

The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden,---

Bush NEVER said that!!!!

[Constantine XIII]

I always laugh when people think that the government tells any of us what it really knows. We may know ten years from now, if ever.

The Miami Herald sure as heck doesn't know!

[LibFreeUSA]

Can you imagine if this crap went on back in WWII. If the Republicans back then had acted against Roosevelt like the RATS have done against Bush now, we'd still be trying to figure out how to invade Normandy!

[hobbes1]

Worse, the skeptical patriot must inquire as to what kind of people believed that their agenda was so important

Not so important. So Complex. We know, definitively that Hussein actively supported, in material ways, Arafat, and the PLO. Both, Iraq, and the PLO were soviet client states once upon a time. So Hussein directly supported terrorism.

Going a step further, there are definitive links between several supposed Al Queda terrorists, and Occupied Kuwait, this also reeks of Husseini involvement.

The Possibility more than exists that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Ramzi Yousef both were far closer to Secular Iraq, than Fundamentalist OBL. A quick glimpse at their personal habits as described my the media says as much.

If KSM was the operational commander and No.3 at AQ, and HE was linked to Iraq, via occupied Kuwait, and He is the Brother of Ramzi Yousefs mother, and we know that there was Iraqi involvement in WTC1, What does that say about Al Queda as constituted on 9/12/2001.

[JohnGalt]

It's a bogeyman story designed to scare to soccermoms into politically supporting a particular policy, in this case a war 10,000 miles away in order to achieve geopolitcal goals of a US presence in the Middle East.

[hobbes1]

No, Remember what Wolfowitz said awhile back.


There were several reasons, but WMD was the one that was actually translatable.

[late bloomer]

Right On lib free,,, And incidentally,

The lead says the media were "fed" this phony intell..
What happened to their principles of checking the validity of the story and their sources with 2 or more unimpeachable sources???? Could it be they were selling newspapers/airtime??? Caveat Emptor!

[hobbes1]

And no, not geopolitical goals. Legitimate National Security.


Iraq was definitely involved in the first Trade Center Bombing, we KNOW that. But the Administration in '93, changed terrorism from consideration as State Sponsored to Criminal Concerns (which is the most important issue in this years election).

We already had a prescence in the East, in Saudi Arabia, and we were actively warring in Iraq, enforcing the No Fly Zones. This in and of itself was sapping vital stregnth that needed to be freed up to police the War on Terror.

And You surely cant be falling into that whole "Bush conjured up the WMD argument" when the world is replete with instances of EVERYONE being on baord with the idea that they existed, from all Democrats to the UN, to Eurotrash leaders, prior to Bushs election.

[JohnGalt]

The internationalists all agreed that Iraq was bad. Clinton needed a convenient country to bomb to distract the citizenry from his troubles at home so there was general agreement from professional Washington out to the Council on Foreign Relations that Saddam was a legit target for regime change/ nation building.

Because the Right, Bush's base, does not support nation building, the national security angle was stressed in order to gather support from Bush rightwing base.

But to believe there were no geopolitical goals is naive beyond 8th grade.

BTW, since Wolfowitz declaration that WMDs was the general reason, and there were no WMDs, why are we still there?

[hopespringseternal]

Poor Saddam. He was framed! Too bad we are finding this out now, before he is executed. If we had executed him first, being so innocent, maybe he could have been elevated to sainthood.

[JohnGalt]

Do the ends justify the means in your opinion then?

[hopespringseternal]

"Oh, and could you sign that blank check?"

Its war for crying out loud. A certain (small) percentage of the bombs are going to land on women, children, and old people. When is that ever OK?

Your "ideological purity" is far outweighed by real blood. If I make the judgement call taking into account real lives, your ideology doesn't mean squat.

So some Iraqis lied to get us to drop bombs in the vicinity of their relatives because they considered our bombs less of at threat than the madman they were meant for.

Let me try to be succinct: Unless you can demonstrate that 1) Saddam was not threat, 2) Saddam was not financing terrorists, 3) Saddam was not a complete butcher, I DON'T CARE.

There was an elephant in the room and you are concerned with the dust mites.