Posted on 08/19/2005 10:39:26 AM PDT by LouAvul
He had WMD in 81 or so. But David Kay, who was "our" guy, pretty much flat out said the intel was wrong. Most of the die hards have hung their hat on the "they might have left the country" explanation, cuz they ain't IN the country.
Unless you were one of those people saying we didn't need to go to war, that the WMD info was trumped up. Then you can basically say you knew it was a toy gun. The tough part is that if you go back to 98, all the Democrats were saying all the same BS the Bush Admin later said. But memories are short, and so they can harp on that, and they do. Their lack of a desire to win is what makes them unelectable, even if the current crew are bunglers.
Wow. A little defensive, aren't we? Especially since I didn't say any of the things you attribute to me, so you apparently just felt the need to make them up.
But, since you are on such an unsupported rant, let me address a couple of your points:
Your post that I responded to was about 'mistaken intelligence' and what you perceived to be an effort by the MSM to neglect certain 'intelligence.' You used the al-Tuwaitha material as your example.
The al-Tuwaitha material has nothing to do with 'intelligence', mistaken or otherwise. We didn't need intel to know what was at al-Tuwaitha. We already knew. IAEA already knew. Iraq acknowledged what was there in its disclosures. So your point about the information being 'neglected' is just utterly and completely wrong.
Second, you are being remarkably loose with your language, and I suspect intentionally. Since you are talking about 'WMD' you might want to stop for just a moment and consider what those letters stand for. Yellowcake uranium is not a weapon. Precursor chemicals are not weapons. Parts of centrifuges in flowerpots are not weapons. There is no doubt that Hussein tried to avoid completely dismantling his programs. But he didn't have stockpiles. He didn't even have operational programs. He had some ability to restart operational programs at some point in the future. That's our own government's conclusion.
But, I guess you know a lot more about it than ISG does. At least, that's what you'd have us believe.
LOL, sorry. My sarcasm detector wasn't finely tuned enough today.
It's Friday...sun's already over the yardarm where you are, eh?
The guys who have been where bullets and AAA are coming in with your name on them are the last ones to support a valueless conflict, we're the ones who have to do the job. But it's unconscionable to use lies to motivate those of us who have flown, walked or sailed into the crucible. It's even more egregious to do the same to gain an enthusiastic endorsement from the populace.
It's equally incomprehensible why FR posters would reach into infinity to rationalize Sec. Powell's speech based upon false information.
"Yet, it is clear that we were lied to by this administration. I would have been 100% in support of knocking off the tyrant in Iraq if told the truth."
While I appreciate and honor your service, I think you stretch mightily to say the administration lied about WMD. IF they were the only ones saying that, then you'd have a point. But the Clinton administration, the Congress, the UN, and every Western intelligence agency had the intel. about Saddam and WMD and came to the same conclusion: That Saddam had WMD. All these groups and every top Democrat from Bill Clinton on down were saying Saddam had WMD long before W. Bush did.
Bill Clinton stated in October 2003 on CSPAN "Based on the intelligence I left office believing Saddam had large stockpiles of unaccounted for WMD." Now yes, Bill Clinton isn't the most credible guy on the planet, but his conclusions squared with the conclusions of the experts and the prevailing opinion in both the intelligence and political community at the time.
Were they all wrong? Perhaps. Did Saddam have WMD that were later moved out ahead of the invasion? Maybe. There is little evidence to base such arguments on. But there is even less evidence to claim the administration set out to lie about WMD and was the originator of later disproven claims of their currently being WMD in Iraq at the time of the invasion. That just argues against all logic since so many disparate forces came to the same conclusion.
We do know Saddam had WMD at one time. That is not in dispute. What became of them is the question. That Saddam never provided that information was alone a violation of his 1991 UN Ceasefire agreements and justified ending his regime. The burden of proof was on Saddam, NOT THE UN or the US, to prove he did not have WMD. Saddam never did.
Indeed, some have speculated that perhaps Saddam went about creating the impression of having WMD to keep his neighbors on edge after in fact they had been destroyed in Desert Storm. Indeed, Saddam's own generals believed he had WMD, but that it was other units that were in possession of them. Again, that all came from the signals Saddam sent. It wasn't based on some supposed lie by the administration.
In any event, despite the claims by the media most of what Powell spoke about at the UN has not been proven as false. Yes they'll latch on the aluminum tubes things to claim everything else in his presentation was phony. But what of NSA intercepts that Powell played of Iraqi officers warning their men of the arrival of UN inspectors and telling them to santize the place of any evidence? What of pictures of UN inspectors arriving at the front gate of a facility and Iraqi convoys beating their escape out the back?
And what of the fact that 3 separate investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee (in a biparisan, unanimous finding), the British intelligence and the European Intelligence Agency ALL concluding last summer that the controversial yellow cake story is in fact credible and had sound basis? I bet you weren't even aware of that because the US media is out to deceive you about the war and to create the kind of opinions you hold about it. Yes, their hero Joe Wilson even admits that there was some truth to the claim in his book. But of course that's not what he told us when he was working to undermine the Bush administration's case on the war for the Kerry campaign.
At the very least Saddam created the impression he had something to hide. This cannot be denied. Was the intelligence all or mostly wrong? I guess for now until we have more evidence to the contrary we have to say it was. Keep in mind in Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" about the planning for the war, Bush was told by the CIA director George Tenent that the case for Saddam having WMD was a "slam dunk." Perhaps he was terribly wrong.
But was it because Bush and the administration lied? Your logic would have to be that somehow Bush got Clinton, Blair, France, the UN, Iran, etc. all to lie about Saddam having WMD even before he was president to be able to support a claim that the Bush administration lied.
Again, their claims of Saddam having WMD were not contrary to conventional wisdom in which case you could claim the Bush administration deceived the country. What Bush was saying was the CONSENSUS opinion prevailing at the time.
Again, thank you for your service to the country. I hope you're not just inventing that to give yourself credibility. I will go with the assumption that you are a bigger person than that. But I would ask you to re-examine the idea that the administration lied. Surely you can see that the president would have to know if he lied he would be quickly found out. And if he would go to such lengths to invent the claim of Saddam having WMD, wouldn't he then go so far as to plant them too??
With all respect, your comments just don't hold up to logic. I urge you to reconsider them in the light of both facts and logic and encourage you to beware of those peddling such fallacies all to further an extreme political agenda.
Have a good weekend and thank you again for what you've done for the country.
It is higly likely that a great deal of the WMD's are still in Iraq, buried like his airforce, only much, much deeper.
Two tunnel boring machines were sold to Iraq in the 1980's, one by France, the other by Russia, under the guise of buildig a subway under Baghdad. Neither machine has ever been found.
This is worse than Powell's attempt to whitewash the massacre at My Lai?
Oh well, it's his conscience.
Additionally, I suspect much "data" has not been released to the public yet. Saddam has a trial coming up. And, I suspect Iraqi Lawyers are being trained in the ways of law. Syria and Iran sound extremely nervous by the careful way they are currently being "addressed".
Don't worry, for 90+% of us, it was very self-evident. In fact, I liked it so much, I just threw that line in a lefty's face, regarding this news item.
Update on the true colors of Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson:
Former Sanders adviser: ‘Israel will be eliminated’
4/21/2016, 12:49:05 AM · by Nachum · 35 replies
inn ^ | 4/20/16 | David Rosenberg
Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is no stranger to controversy, with a legacy of questionable statements on Israel and the US government. In 2013 the former chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Israel was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In 2007 Wilkerson appeared in a Dutch documentary, claiming that American foreign policy was dominated by “the Jewish lobby”. Despite his history of inflammatory rhetoric and frequent conspiracy theories, Wilkerson was tapped to serve as a military and foreign policy adviser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015. In the wake...
An antisemitic Bernie supporter
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