Unfortunately the Bush administration was duped by misleading foreign intelligence. This was done to pull us into this war. If our intelligence was so accurate inside Iraq as to pinpoint Iraqi military leaders going into meetings surely this intelligence could have pinpointed and followed the path of WMD. Afterall this was the number one reason for us entering this war. I am beyond being skeptical because it has taken this long to come up with any substantial evidence of WMD. The only chance this administration has now of getting out of this mess is to plant the evidence which will be have to carefully thought out before implementing.
Oh I think any intel should always be scrutinized until a pattern develops. Should Bush be impeached because he believed the CIA, the British, and the Israelis? No.
And I agree with you also. As I said, I have a feeling this is a classic 'rope-a-dope.'
"Oh give me a break. If they impeach Bush, they have to impeach Clinton- AGAIN. It's the same intel." ~ rintense
Exactly:
CNN ^ | Feb. 17, 1998 | Bill Clinton
Text Of Clinton Statement On Iraq - Text of President Clinton's address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff: [EXCERPTS]
"...I have just received a very fine briefing from our military leadership on the status of our forces in the Persian Gulf. ..
I want you, and I want the American people, to hear directly from me what is at stake for America in the Persian Gulf, what we are doing to protect the peace, the security, the freedom we cherish, why we have taken the position we have taken. ...
Those who have questioned the United States in this moment, I would argue, are living only in the moment. They have neither remembered the past nor imagined the future.
So first, let's just take a step back and consider why meeting the threat posed by Saddam Hussein is important to our security in the new era we are entering. ...
... people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals.
We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. ... And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us. ...
Remember, as a condition of the cease-fire after the Gulf War, the United Nations demanded not the United States the United Nations demanded, and Saddam Hussein agreed to declare within 15 days this is way back in 1991 within 15 days his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them, to make a total declaration. That's what he promised to do.
The United Nations set up a special commission of highly trained international experts called UNSCOM, to make sure that Iraq made good on that commitment.
We had every good reason to insist that Iraq disarm.
Saddam had built up a terrible arsenal, and he had used it not once, but many times, in a decade-long war with Iran, he used chemical weapons, against combatants, against civilians, against a foreign adversary, and even against his own people.
And during the Gulf War, Saddam launched Scuds against Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain.
Now, instead of playing by the very rules he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam has spent the better part of the past decade trying to cheat on this solemn commitment.
Consider just some of the facts:
Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War.
When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports.
For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.
In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan.
He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.
Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks.
Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth.
Now listen to this, what did it admit?
It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs.
And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
As if we needed further confirmation, you all know what happened to his son-in-law when he made the untimely decision to go back to Iraq.
Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM.
They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door.
And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it.
Despite Iraq's deceptions, UNSCOM has nevertheless done a remarkable job.
Its inspectors the eyes and ears of the civilized world have uncovered and destroyed more weapons of mass destruction capacity than was destroyed during the Gulf War.
This includes nearly 40,000 chemical weapons, more than 100,000 gallons of chemical weapons agents, 48 operational missiles, 30 warheads specifically fitted for chemical and biological weapons, and a massive biological weapons facility at Al Hakam equipped to produce anthrax and other deadly agents.
Over the past few months, as they have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions.
By imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large by comparison, when you hear all this business about presidential sites reflect our sovereignty, why do you want to come into a residence, the White House complex is 18 acres. So you'll have some feel for this.
One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. That's about how many acres did you tell me it was? 40,000 acres. We're not talking about a few rooms here with delicate personal matters involved.
It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them.
The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons. ... [end excerpts]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921194/posts?page=51#51
They have to prove Iraq didn't have WMDs first. Then, if they prove that, they have to prove that Bush wasn't duped himself. But, I don't think they can prove either of the two things I just said.
Dean quotes the thoroughly discredited Guardian story about Paul Wolfowitz and the "sea of oil". Even the Guardian retracted the story on Thursday. Yet Dean wrote this piece on Friday and should have known full well the story had been wtihdrawn.
The guy has no business talking about credibility or lies when he repeats them himself.
And citing Krugman and Dowd as sources? Gee, why did he leave out Molly Ivins?
Helen Thomas, on the other hand, has no "pictures" at all, and we don't even have to guess at that!
HaHa!!!! What a joke. Where are the dems who said that Saddam had WMDs?
john dean was, of course, the first rat off of dick nixon's sinking ship.
radio kfi this afternoon was advertising dean as a "republican" and devoted a lot of time to the coming impeachment of bush. you heard it first on kfi, they said.
