Posted on 01/28/2005 9:12:22 AM PST by Mikey_1962
By any standard, the ongoing American occupation of Iraq is a disaster.
The highly vaunted US military machine, laurelled and praised for its historic march on Baghdad in March and April of 2003, today finds itself a broken force, on the defensive in a land that it may occupy in part, but does not control.
The all-out offensive to break the back of the resistance in Falluja has failed, leaving a city destroyed by American firepower, and still very much in the grips of the anti-American fighters.
The same is true of Mosul, Samarra, or any other location where the US military has undertaken "decisive" action against the fighters, only to find that, within days, the fighting has returned, stronger than ever.
And yet, it now appears as if the United States, in an effort to take the offensive against the fighters in Iraq, is prepared to compound its past mistakes in Iraq by embarking on a new course of action derived from some of the darkest, and most embarrassing moments of America's modern history.
According to press accounts, the Pentagon is considering the organisation, training and equipping of so-called death squads, teams of Iraqi assassins who would be used to infiltrate and eliminate the leadership of the Iraqi resistance.
Called the Salvador Option, in reference to similar US-backed death squads that terrorised the population of El Salvador during the 1980s, the proposed plan actually has as its roots the Phoenix assassination programme undertaken during the Vietnam war, where American-led assassins killed thousands of known or suspected Vietcong collaborators.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
SCOTT: MAKE ANY MORE DATES WITH 13-YEAR OLDS LATELY?
the associated press , October 8 2004
WASHINGTON — President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue — whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.
Ridiculing the Bush administration’s evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: “You don’t make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact.”
Vice President Dick Cheney brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer — that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either — while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
“The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions,” Bush said as he prepared to fly to campaign events in Wisconsin. “He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.”
Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word “intent” three times in reference to Saddam’s plans to resume making weapons.
This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program and how it was operated and overseen.
For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer’s central findings, telling supporters in Miami, “The headlines all say ‘no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.’ We already knew that.”
The vice president said he found other parts of the report “more intriguing,” including the finding that Saddam’s main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
“As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back” to his weapons program, Cheney said.
The report underscored that “delay, defer, wait, wasn’t an option,” Cheney said. And he told a later forum in Fort Myers, Fla., speaking of the oil-for-food program: “The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars.”
Yet Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did — and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.
Bush has recently left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would “wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report.”
In July, Bush said, “We have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction,” a sentence construction that kept alive the possibility the weapons might yet be discovered.
On Thursday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:
“Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there,” Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies. In recent weeks, Cheney has glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it. But in late January 2004, Cheney told reporters in Rome: “There’s still work to be done to ascertain exactly what’s there.”
“The jury is still out,” he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.
Duelfer’s report was presented Wednesday to senators and the public with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.
In Bayonne, N.J., Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Thursday called “amazing” Cheney’s assertions that the Duelfer report justified rather than undermined Bush’s decision to go to war, and he accused the Republican of using “convoluted logic.”
Kerry, in a campaign appearance in Colorado, said: “The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won’t face the truth about Iraq.”
A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry’s charge he sought to “make up” a reason for war.
“He’s claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war,” Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: “Just who’s the one trying to mislead the American people?”
I have seen many references in the news media that in the time period between Bush making his intentions known with respect to the invasion of Iraq and the actual invasion (you remember our multiple wasted efforts to get the UN to enforce its own resolutions) Saddam moved his WMDs to Syria. This remains an open file and does not make Ritter right.
And further, with respect to Ritter, a stopped clock is right twice a day!
Scott, don't you have a playground to visit?
U.S. ends search for WMDs
By Associated Press |
Thursday, January 13, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday. Democrats said Bush owes the country an explanation of why he was so wrong.
The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said there no longer is an active search for weapons and the administration does not hold out hopes that any weapons will be found. "There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that" but that it has largely concluded, he said.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Bush should explain what happened. "Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war," she said.
Chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer is to deliver his final report on the search next month.
You're supporting a child molester? OMG.
What you didn't happen to mention is that:
1. Scott Ritter previously told Congrss that Iraq's WMD programs were a direct threat to the United States.
2. Then he was bribed by the Hussein regime to make a sympathetic movie about Iraq and to say there were no WMD.
And you consider him credible enough to back up your assertion that we were wrong to go into Iraq? You will never be taken credibly by Freepers again.
U.S. ends search for WMDs
By Associated Press |
Thursday, January 13, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday. Democrats said Bush owes the country an explanation of why he was so wrong.
Was that the time he told Congress -- under oath -- that there were WMD's in Iraq, or the time that he did an Iraqi-sponsored movie in which he reversed himself?
In testimony before congress on March 30, 2004 Charles Duelfer revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical and biological warfare agents. The ISG also found evidence of a "High speed rail gun", a previously undeclared device used for testing Nuclear Weapons material. Duelfer said that his agents had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was the Oil for Food Program." Kay and Duelfer told Congress under oath that saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled "duel use" materials to relaunch production of chemical and nbiological weapons at a moments notice.
Unless, of course, you want to throw in the time he testified under oath to Congress that Iraqi WMD's were a direct threat to the US.
--- Exclusive for Local Reporter: Ex-CIA Chief Tenet Comes to Town
By Editor & Publisher Staff
Published: October 21, 2004
NEW YORK The guest speaker was famous, and he was visiting a small town far from the spotlight of network TV cameras and the reach of big-name reporters from national newspapers. In other words: It was a perfect scenario for a local reporter to snag an exclusive. And Anna Clark, 24, correspondent for The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph, Mich., was there to grab it.
Addressing the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Wednesday night, George Tenet, former director of central intelligence, called the war on Iraq "wrong," according to Clark's article on Thursday, although it was unclear whether he meant the war itself or mainly the intelligence it was based on.
[Indeed, the newspaper issued a clarification on Saturday, explaining that after an editor examined the reporter's notes, it concluded that Tenet was referring to the intelligence failures. Earlier a spokesman for Tenet had said that he had not declared the U.S. effort in Iraq "wrong.")
Tenet also said that intelligence on Iraq was "rightly being challenged," but the CIA was making important strides toward success in the greater war on terrorism, according to the reporter.
Tenet added that while the CIA boasts "tremendously talented men and women," the agency "did not live up to our expectations as professionals" regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the search for WMDs in Iraq, according to Clark.
"We had inconsistent information, and we did not inform others in the community of gaps in our intelligence," Tenet said, with surprising frankness, as recorded by Clark, who recently covered a speech by Paul Bremer before the same group. "The extraordinary men and women who do magnificent work in the CIA are held accountable every day for what they do, and as part of keeping our faith with the American people, we will tell you when we're right or wrong."
Tenet spoke before 2,000 members of The Economic Club at Lake Michigan College's Mendel Center.
In a wide-ranging speech, and in a Q & A afterward, he said the United States is "winning the war on terror" due to the CIA's efforts to "capture or kill" three-quarters of al-Qaida's leaders, and that he expects to see Osama bin Laden captured.
As for the regime of Saddam Hussein: "I believed he had weapons of mass destruction. He didn't. At the end of the day I have to stand up accountable for that. In the meantime our nation needs to honor the commitment we made in Iraq."
Just this week, news emerged that Tenet had been appointed a professor at Georgetown University.
why do you people keep posting this enemy propaganda???
Semper Fi,
Kelly
You are now using quotes from a child molester to back up your position that the war in Iraq was wrong. That's beyond pathetic. Even for you.
It's quite a contentious issue in some circles. Before the war I never thought Saddam had any nuclear weapons or nuclear program whatsoever, and I was highly skeptical of chemical and biological weapons inventories. I also predicted extensive U.S. casualties in a post-invasion guerrilla war, having some familiarity with the military preferences of Arabs in general and Iraqis specifically. That didn't win me many brownie points with friends and family, or my boss, but that's the breaks.
Ex-CENTCOM No. 2: Intel Showed Iraq Smuggled Out WMDs
Duelfer: 'A lot of material left Iraq and went to Syria'
Both Dr Kay and Demetrius Perricos(UNMOVIC)stated WMD was moved prior to war
damn right. What's the difference between these hit squads and the massive 130,000 strong hit squad we've got there now, Ritter?
Ritter, Kennedy, et al, think that fragging a Syrian thug in a Rammalah firefight is not as bad as merely spitting on an unremorseful detainee who's forced to wear a sack over this head.
More from these people: "A man with a uniform on shooting as us can be killed. A "Iraqi" man in civvies shooting at us can only be incarcerated with padded handcuffs. A Marine who shoots an enemy combatant minutes after a firefight is over should be held accountable whereas if he would have shot the enemy DURING the firefight he acted appropriately. Or, a baby only has rights AFTER it leaves the womb", etc. . .
This "patriots" have absolutely no sense of perspective and will eventually pay the price for their staggering stupidity in the marketplace of ideas.
you people need to read scott ritters comments in 1998 when the inspectors were kicked out. this is not to you brig_gen I am just too lazy to post all the way to the top. anyway he said they were not cooperating, I think he might have even said there was wmd there. He was told by a senator he didnt the pay-grade to make those kind of decisions.
I'd love to see a credible news source for these stories. Never heard of World Tribune or the other sites.
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