Mass graves and beheadings 
Posted on 06/17/2005 10:54:05 AM PDT by Graybeard58
WASHINGTON -- Congress should conduct an official inquiry to determine whether President Bush intentionally misled the nation about the reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein, a senior House Democrat suggested Thursday.
New York Rep. Charles Rangel was among Democratic House members who participated in a forum to air demands that the White House provide more information about what led to the decision to go to war in Iraq.
"Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has to make, going to war," said Rangel, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Rep. John Conyers and other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee organized the forum to investigate implications in a British document known as the "Downing Street memo." The memo says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam.
Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has -- to put it mildly -- come into question," he said.
In the opening hours of the forum, witnesses spoke mainly about their views on the decision to go to war and not the memo, which the Bush administration has dismissed.
"We are having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war," former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said.
"It used to be said that democracies were difficult to mobilize for war precisely because of the debate required," Wilson said, going on to say the lack of debate allowed the war to happen.
Wilson wrote a 2003 newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. After the piece appeared someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, exposing her cover.
Wilson has said he believes the leak was retaliation for his critical comments. The Justice Department is investigating.
The Downing Street memo states the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
recounting a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his national security team. The meeting took place just after British officials returned from Washington.
U.S. officials and Blair deny the assertion about intelligence and facts being "fixed," a comment that the memo attributes to the chief of British intelligence at the time.
"This is simply rehashing old debates that have already been discussed," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday.
The London Sunday Times disclosed the contents of the memo May 1. It also reported on an eight-page briefing paper prepared for Blair that concluded the U.S. military had given "little thought" to the aftermath of a war in Iraq.
The briefing paper of July 21, 2002, said that a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise and that "as already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
You have to admit though that John Kerry was an abysmal alternative. It's sort of like offering someone a shit sandwich for lunch, or death by execution. Just because the majority choose the sandwich, doesn't mean it's tasty. JK was unfit for command; don't you think that devalues the choice we all made last November?
No they should not. No they wont.
Apparantly so. It certainly wasn't connected in any real way to 9-11, other than that it made a nice war marketing plan to sell it that way. You think defying the UN is a good reason to attack a country? I don't. There may have been good reasons to go, but I don't believe that was one of them.
He's gone and that's a good thing,
Great, we removed 3 bad people from Iraq. Whoopee! And it only cost us....how much?
Democracy is happening in Iraq and that's the best thing.
Perhaps.
They're looking at polls and think there's blood in the water. They're overplaying their hand.
I didn't say you were. I said the msg implicit in post #2 is well worn among that crowd.
2) I DID NOT make the argument that Iraq and 9-11 were linked explicitly.
No, but post #2 does.
3) The War on Iraq was a just war. No sideshow. Look at a map and see where Iran and Syria and Afghanistan are wrt each other.
I can see that. While that may be strategically desirabe, it never came up as a ratoinale for war. the war was marketed as an urgently needed intervention to keep suitcase nukes and anthrax drones and other horrors from reaching our shores. Turned out to be buncombe, which is when the whole wilsoniam freedom fest took over.
War in Iraq is about preventing the next 911. The President has never been anything but crystal clear about that.
I remember it. You tell me what was inaccurate.
9-11 Commission links five instances to 9-11. And Charles Rangle voted for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Huck,
You must have been asleep in the 90's. We dropped ordnance on Iraq on almost a weekly basis as well as attacking four other nations in 1998.
We just can't allow these failed nation states to cause terror anymore. This will take years. Every Islamacist that dies in Iraq is one we won't have to kill somewhere else.
You have to admit though that John Kerry was an abysmal alternative.
That's their problem.
I think he's been fairly clear on it. His supporters have been much less clear. There is no connection between Iraq and 9-11. Iraq War is not an answer or response to 9-11. The President frames his messianic Wilsonism freedom march as a strategic response to the post 9-11 world. I understand his point. But many many people, including the poster on post #2, seem confused by that. Al Qaida attacked us on 9-11, not Iraq.
And I frankly don't care how many "new" terrorists we're creating. If you take up arms against the civilized world . . . you die!
There is no connection between Iraq and 9-11.
You know this . . . how?
"The 9/11 Commission ruled out any involvement by Iraq."
They did not . . . and even if they did . . . so what?
I agree. There was no viable alternative. That's why the mandate has to be discounted. If you take the pepsi challenge, with pepsi in one cup, and urine in the other, it's not really a ringing endorsement for pepsi, is it? That's why I say you can't look at the election results as an endorsement for the war.
(I say this as some one that voted CP in '96 and '00).
Oddly enough, I voted for GWB for the first time in 04, AFTR his team had totally botched this whole Iraq situation. Talk about a bitter pill. But Kerry was worse and that's that.
That's their problem.
No, it's all our problem. If we don't have two viable candidates, we've got a problem.
Mass graves and beheadings
The two party system will be the death of us yet.
I remember in the months leading up to the elections even here on FR how many of us were told to shut up and sit on our hands (wrt discussing alternatives).
I am re-evaluating for '08.
Just when you think the Democrats can't find a bigger idiot than Dean, they proffer Rangel and Durbin. God bless them!
That Karl Rove is a genius. How does he get them to make these statement?
You know this . . . how?
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks," Mr Bush told reporters as he met members of Congress on energy legislation.
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